There are dozens of floral bouquets on either side of Leslie as she speaks. Gordon Blancer’s mother quickly raised $3,000 for an exquisite marble headstone.

In the reception line at the Masonic Temple people bring their children to Leslie, who knows all their names. She bends to give them hugs and hear their condolences. She reaches into her large handbag to pull out a green plastic triceratops for a boy who came dressed in a plaid shirt and a bow tie. She hands a Marie Antoinette figurine to a shy girl whose legs are in braces.

I have never seen so much food. Here at the potluck wake there are hams the size of car batteries, epic casseroles, and enough pies to feed the high school graduating class and then some. My favorite comes in a five quart dish. It is comprised of at least two dozen eggs, chopped flank steak, a brick of cheddar, button mushrooms, sliced green olives, tomato wedges, chorizo, a quarter-inch blanket of parmesan, topped with small log cabin built with asparagus spears. A robust Mexican woman wearing a large, proud grin and wielding an enormous spatula explains:

“Souffleamundo.”

Next story segment, Seedlings

“You would leave Lance Jarvis for France?” Marjorie teases.

“The French offer free health care,” Leslie replies.

“You know his brother Victor is now tenured at Stanford,” Marjorie continues.

“I think I knew before you did,” Leslie says.

“Well, there you are,” Marjorie replies. “His brother gets tenure at Stanford and you’d still break his heart. We get French men in Seattle on a very regular basis. All they do is ride bikes and write lurid poems.”

“Which you help them translate,” Leslie slices back, without missing a beat.

Marjorie laughs. Leslie laughs. I laugh. Our laughter finds its way like a brook, rolling for a while before dissipating into rivulets, then to drops. By the time I notice, aloud, that it is after one in the morning Leslie is asleep on the thick rug in front of the fireplace.

I bend to kiss her on the forehead and to Marjorie, who sits cross-legged, staring into the glowing coals, I give a kiss on the cheek.

“I love you too,” she says.

Final story segment, Swim

From the story Angelfish

As in:

After I kiss my sisters goodnight I go upstairs and search my old room, for about the 900th time, looking for the missing eyepiece to the microscope. I still can’t find it.

I remove the tacks that hold Alaska’s stars to the ceiling and use the flag as a blanket. In the dream I’m soon having Beth is lecturing a small group of stick-bearing, Masai tribesmen on a plain in Tanzania, explaining baseball to them, and showing them how to throw a forkball without hurting their wrists. They do not understand. She hands one of them a catcher’s mitt, and begins again.

My dreams ramble on from there and somewhere deep into the morning I’m excited that I’ve learned to capture the aurora borealis in a mayonnaise jar, as if the pulsing magnetosphere were a cloud of fireflies.

That’s when I’m awakened by Leslie’s hand on my shoulder, shaking me vigorously.

“She’s gone,” says Leslie.

She is also bleeding from her foot, and we can see this from tracks that lead up from the basement and out the back door to where my car had been parked for the night.

Within minutes we are squinting into the morning sun as Leslie drives her pickup east at a speed that strongly suggests she knows where she’s headed. After a couple minutes, she pulls the truck off the pavement onto a gravel road running parallel to a canyon. We throw up a cloud of dust moving north and then we bank to the west. From a small rise, I see my car a half mile ahead alongside the road, the door open on the driver’s side.

We walk briskly along a cattle path ominously flecked with Marjorie’s blood. We skirt an outcropping of basalt and then we can see her, thigh-deep in the river. She does not respond to our calls, nor does she look our way as we wade out toward her in water so cold that it quickly numbs our legs.

Cradled in Marjorie’s left arm is a large, cardboard cylinder, stripped long ago of its Quacker Oats label. She reaches into it with her right hand and then flings it outward in an arc.

She is broadcasting fish food. When we reach her we feel her shivering and see that she is crying. She empties the container in one final sweep, the golden dust falling in a smooth crescent upon the dark water.

“I think it is wonderful,” she says. “How the fish can swim in our tears.”

the end

Return to the start of this story, Icing.