Read Online TREYF by Elissa Altman - Free Book Online Page A

them eventually, and they lived happily ever after. He has spoon-fed this tale of abandonment to the child like pabulum—there’s no wolf or witch or getting lost in a forest in his bedtime story; desertion itself is the villain, abandonmentthe scoundrel, hovering like a cloud, always threatening—from the time she understands words and can comprehend their meaning, and the meaning behind their meaning. He tells the story not as a warning, but as a lesson, a parable, a statement of fact: sometimes, parents leave.
    â€œAnd then,” he would say to the child, “she left.”
    And then, she left.
    She left.
    â€œBut then,” he says, beaming, “she came back. And they lived happily ever after.”
    He kisses her on the forehead and the child hugs his neck and nuzzles his rough cheek and he settles her down deep between the white sheets dotted with faded pink roses and fuchsia.
    She came back
.
    The child brightens and sleeps soundly.
    The night he leaves, the screen fades as I sit on the toilet while my mother washes my face; I have no memory of being put in bed, but I wake up the next morning in that short sliver of time where everything feels normal until it doesn’t, and routine is the tenuous plank that connects sleep to waking. I lower the metal guardrail on the side of my bed that keeps me from rolling out onto the dark green carpet, and, like I do every morning, I run into my parents’ bedroom and fling myself on their bed; for a few minutes, until I see his side still tightly made, his pillow cold and untouched—my mother is already up and in the bathroom, putting on her makeup—I’ve forgotten that he’s gone. My mother and I are alone together in the apartment; she steps out of thebathroom and asks if I like her new eye shadow color; she’s trying powder blue for a change.
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    I never knew where he went or whether he intended to leave us for good. But two days later, my father came back, as my mother assured me he would. When he returned, my mother threw on her coat and went downstairs to the kosher butcher on Austin Street and bought nine baby lamb chops for what I was sure would be a celebratory meal; she deposited them in a foil tray, drizzled them with vegetable oil, and shoved them under the broiler until they ignited like dry kindling and angry blue flames licked up and out of the bottom of the stove, blackening our white Chambers oven door. I shrieked and ran into my bedroom with the dog while my mother languidly beat at them with a greasy kitchen towel.
    â€œDinner!” she yelled, and my father and I came back to the kitchen and sat at the table. The three of us ate in silence, the little Zenith television at the end of the kitchen table blaring news about Saigon; we scraped thick black layers of immolated fat off our chops, picked them up, and gnawed them down to the bone, the bitter taste of food cooked in anger filling our mouths. It was as though nothing had happened; as long as she was feeding her husband dinner, there was hope, even if it was incinerated.
    On the Saturday morning after his return, my father appeared in my bedroom doorway dressed like he was going fox hunting—jodhpurs, boots, gray-green tweed blazer—instead of for a walkout onto The Champs-Élysées Promenade with the dog. He returned an hour later carrying a heavy paper bag; while I watched from a kitchen stool, he set one of my mother’s scuffed Teflon pans on the stove and opened a small rectangular metal can with a key that came attached to its bottom. Using a butter knife, he pried the gelatinous pink brick out of the can; it slid out with a sickening
splat
onto a gold-banded white plate from my mother’s wedding china. My father sliced it into thick rafts and in the dry skillet fried the slices in their own fat until great clouds of smoky pork essence rose around us like a mushroom cloud, making my eyes