All Move
by ELIZABETH MANOS
Landing on American soil, she put a little flower near the end of a bookcase. A gust of wind knocked it behind, where it would lay forever, irrecoverable. The bright lights were out in the sky. She said, to no one in particular, practicing, "It's a relief to be home."
They came to check on her not long after that. Their shoes were shaped like miniature tugboats, she thought. Who could take such people seriously?
"We're just concerned that you get settled," the taller one said. "It's nothing more than that."
She said, "That's all right I suppose."
"It's a lovely flat. It really is," he told her. "You'll like it here." He juggled an orange between his fingertips. "You know, Sam was with him, in his detail, for many years. How many was it?"
"More than a few," the smaller, more tightly wound agent said. Suddenly she felt like telling the truth. She said, "I sense you feel I hold some responsibility."
"Oh no," the taller one said. "We all know what he was like."
She thought again of his warm manner. He'd showed her a picture of a dandelion once. It was an optical illusion. If you looked at it a certain way it was a lion.
The following Tuesday she received a package. There was food for about a month, a good half of it breakfast cereal. It was one she would probably have eaten by choice. The next day it was a lawn chair in a separate box. It cost fifty dollars to ship. In the final box were some of his possessions - perhaps they thought the items belonged to her.
But no. She made a list of the items in case someone asked for it.
a password-protected laptop,
an oversized pocket calculator,
a copy of Troilus and Cressida,
a ring with initials she did not recognize,
a broken pair of eyeglasses,
three cufflinks,
and his deoderant.
The smell of it was not entirely unmasculine, and it gave her a sensation so incomplete she had to sit down.
In the days that followed, she repudiated the thought of things, making an exception for breakfast cereal. Holding what he used to own filled her with a fury she never recalled feeling before. That gave way, predictably, to a more dull emotion, partly (but not entirely) a chilling obsolescence mixed with a heightened state of alarm, which she could not fully name. Surely there were some existential states not defined by medical science.
She ate all of the cereal, and when she was done, more came.
The boy's mother visited her the following week. She had known nothing of the woman, who was too old to travel abroad. He had never mentioned her beyond the fact that he had a mother. She offered the greying woman the possessions of her son, but the woman would only take coffee in a mug she had brought with her.
The boy's mother said, "He told me that he cared very much for you. Did you already know that?"
She nodded.
"When he was four he almost died of a food allergy."
"What was he allergic to?"
"Pesto, I think," the boy's mother said. "We never really knew for certain. It could have been anything. I should have brought you flowers. It looks like a house of mirrors in here."
"They give the idea of space," she offered in response, and tried not to look on the outside as she felt on the inside.
It was not so much the knowledge of having had something, because that itself was no more tangible than the lion in the drawing. It is possible that she herself was the lion, but there is again, no evidence of that in the literature of the period. Symbolism had not yet advanced this far, she thought. There were developments which would alter the fabric of the world.
Elizabeth Manos is a writer living in Maryland.
"Wild Race" - Dr. Dog (mp3)
"Exit for Sale" - Dr. Dog (mp3)
The new EP from Dr. Dog is entitled Wild Race.
