Stories: All-New Tales

Abe and Sarah froze. This woman wouldn’t know—how could she? She thought, as would any other stranger, that their daughter was home with a babysitter, watching The Princess Diaries for the six hundredth time or pretending the Tupperware was a drum set. As Abe signed the credit card receipt, the checkout clerk reached beneath her cash register and pulled out a lollipop. “She likes blue, right? Tell her I missed her.”

“Yes,” Abe said, grasping it so tightly that the stick curved. “Yes, I will.”

He followed Sarah as she pushed the cart outside, where the sun was so bright it brought tears to his eyes. Sarah turned to him, speechless and staring. “What?” Abe said, his voice raw. “What did I do wrong?”

THREE DAYS LATER, SARAH woke up and pulled on her favorite sweater only to realize that her arms now stretched a good three inches past the ends of the sleeves. Annoyed—did Abe shrink it in the wash?—she pulled out another only to realize that she’d outgrown that one, too. She stared at herself in the mirror for a moment and then pushed the sleeves up to her elbows, where she could not see anything wrong.

She tried to pretend that she didn’t notice when she unloaded the dishwasher and could, for the first time in her life, reach the top shelf of the cabinets without having to stand on a stool or ask Abe for his help.

ON HIS LAST DAY of paid bereavement leave, Abe remembered sitting in the hospital with his daughter. There were starfish painted on the window glass, and while they waited for the doctor and Sarah read a waiting-room magazine from the turn of the century, his daughter had wanted to play I spy. It had gotten to the point, in the past seven years, where Abe could almost do this semiconscious—since his daughter had a habit of changing midstream what her target object was, anyway, the game didn’t make any linear sense. He guessed the exit sign over the door, the bathroom knob, the starfish on the far right, getting more and more impatient, and wishing the doctor would just come in already so that he didn’t have to play one more damn round.

It had only been a sore throat. Her fever wasn’t more than 101. That was the criteria—you weren’t supposed to worry about a fever until it spiked past 102, something Sarah had learned the hard way when she’d call the pediatrician early on, freaking out over everything from hangnails to cradle cap. But over the course of their daughter’s life, they’d weaned themselves into health care confidence. They didn’t rush her into the office at the sign of the first cough; they made her sleep overnight on an earache to make sure it was present the next morning before they went to get it checked. And this time, Sarah had kept her home from school waiting to see if it was a virus, or strep throat. They’d done what they were supposed to do as parents; they’d listened to the doctors; they’d played by the rules—and by dinnertime, the rules didn’t apply. Children weren’t supposed to die of strep throat, but then again, you did not have to look far for the shouldn’ts. All over this world there were tsunamis sweeping entire countries out to sea; there were Eskimo women with breast milk full of mercury; there were wars being fought that had been started for the wrong reasons. All over this world impossible things were happening that never should have.

Abe realized he would play I spy for a thousand years, if he could.

THE NEXT DAY, WHEN Abe left for work, Sarah cleaned. Not just a cursory vacuum and floor mop, mind you, but toilets scrubbed by hand and radiator registers being dusted and the washing of the walls. She went into her drawers and bagged all the sweaters that did not fit, and the new pile of pants that ended above her ankles. She got rid of the travel coffee mugs and gravy boats and cherry pitters she never used, weeding through the kitchen drawers. She organized Abe’s clothes by color grouping; she threw out all the medicine bottles past their expiration date. She wiped down the shelves of the refrigerator and tossed the capers and the mustard and the horseradish that hadn’t been used except for that one recipe months ago.