If a Stranger Approaches You: Stories

  Jane started the car and drove in the direction of the canoe livery, listening to her car’s little alarm bell chime the whole way because her father wouldn’t buckle his seat belt. She’d considered sitting in the parking lot of the retirement home with him until he agreed to let her fasten it, but then she reminded herself that he was going to die. What did it matter, and how much longer would she need to listen to that bell chiming as she drove her stubborn father places anyway? When she started the car without starting the old argument, she was quite sure she saw, in the passenger window, the reflection of his smile. He’d won an argument without even having to have it, an art he’d perfected in the course of his life.

  When they came to a stop at a red light, Jane turned to look at him, seatbelt warning chiming between them, seatbelt light flashing on the dashboard in front of her, and he was definitely smiling, and he was wearing that jacket and looking like a man in perfect health, as pleased with himself as ever, the same guy who’d greeted her every morning when she was a teenager by crowing, “Hey there. Somebody took her ugly pills again this morning!” The same guy who’d unwrapped every Christmas present she’d ever agonized over before buying and set it down on the floor at his feet never to speak of it again.

  “What’s your problem?” he asked her.

  In the corner of her eye Jane saw that the traffic light had turned green, but there were no other drivers around, and they were certainly in no hurry. She made no effort to step on the gas and pass through the intersection.

  “Huh. What’s with you. Forget how to drive? Waiting for the light to turn a little greener. Take too many stupid pills this morning?”

  Jane didn’t swallow. She didn’t even take a deep breath. She said, “You’re going to die.”

  The Flowering Staff

  It was a homely little trailer, but it was strung with plastic pink flamingo lights that blinked electrically as Zak and Angela pulled up, and there was a bush next to a little cement patio—waxy dark-green leaves and blossoms the color of the flamingos. Its petals had fallen around it in several layers, as if the bush had been generating and discarding its own beauty for years without interference in that very spot.

  Two folding chairs sat with a TV tray between them. A yellow canopy stretched over it all. This looked like a nice place. Angela unrolled her window, and Zak could smell the sweet decay beyond their rental car. Sun-lush foliage. Overripe fruit. A kind of moisturizer his grandmother used on the cracked skin of her feet, the flaking skin of her shins, the inflamed skin of her knees.

  But it was a good smell. Fragrant. Mixed up now with what must have been the air rising over the deep slow-creeping waters of the canal he’d seen as they pulled into the Linger Longer Village.

  They had come to Florida so he could meet Angela’s mother, who was an old woman, older than Zak’s oldest grandmother, before he and Angela married. Angela herself was fourteen years older than Zak (“Old enough to be your mother!” his own mother had cried out when he told her) although no one would guess this. At forty, Angela looked younger than most of the girls his friends were dating. Unless he told them how old she was (and now he wished he never had) they assumed she was his age. Maybe a year or two older because she drove such an expensive car.

  Even in a bikini. Even in harsh light.

  Until he’d told them her age and then they’d learned that she’d been his professor, that she had two children from her first marriage, none of his friends had said anything but Whoa, Dude.

  (“Robbing the coffin!” his brother, that asshole, had chortled.)

  “I should probably drive,” Angela said after they threw their suitcases into the trunk at the airport. “These Florida drivers are insane. You’ll see.”

  Zak was happy not to drive. He’d never been to Florida. He could look around while Angela drove.

  But there had been some stress on the freeway, and now that they were parked in front of her mother’s trailer Zak could see that Angela’s knuckles were still white. From the airport to the Linger Longer Village, she’d driven without speaking, leaning into the steering wheel, and Zak had known better than to try to talk to her. He’d looked out the window instead: An astounding amount of sunlight. Unrecognizable flora and fauna. Green tangled around green. Brilliantly shining vehicles passed them at alarmingly high speeds, many of them driven by white-haired men or women seeming dwarfed by the chrome around them, appearing to be in the clutches of their own terrible creations. The freeway itself seemed made of velvet—soft and black and running ahead of them in an endless bolt. As Angela was easing the rental car through three lanes of sparking hubcaps and antennas and door handles, Zak had the feeling that they were traveling across some barrier made out of the exploded bits and pieces of space shuttles, that they were dodging the jagged diamonds between time zones. Everything was really weirdly bright and new.

  Then, just past the entrance to the Linger Longer Village, Angela had grown confused, glancing furtively around her at the trailers lining the narrow, winding drive. She hadn’t been to visit her mother in six years because her research and her two children from her first marriage had kept her too busy to fly to Florida except in emergencies. There’d been no emergencies.

  “I can’t remember which one is my mother’s,” Angela said, mostly to herself, and kept driving—slowly but steadily, deeper into the park, which was dense with palm trees and viney plants and some kind of dripping moss. Somehow the sun was managing to shine through the vegetation, but it cast gnarled shadows. Then, they passed a canal. Branches and dead leaves and what looked like a flotilla of sodden spinach traveled down the frothed brown water.

  Angela slowed down then to try to puzzle out the trailers, and which one might be her mother’s when, out of the shadows, an old man began to hobble toward them. This old man was headed straight toward them down the center of the road, and was leaning on a cane decorated with white (plastic?) flowers. He wore a plaid shirt. His bony legs were exposed beneath his white Bermuda shorts. Those legs looked alarmingly like chicken wings, except for the bulbous knees. Angela stopped the car and stared straight at him, making quiet snorting noises through her nose, as if readying herself for some kind of confrontation—but the old man just continued in their direction until he was only a few feet from their bumper, and then he veered around them, without looking at them, continuing to walk and continuing to lean on his flowered cane.

  “Jesus Christ,” Angela said.

  Now, they were parked outside the trailer that must have been her mother’s, but Angela made no movements that indicated that she planned to get out of the car, so Zak sat beside her, waiting.

  There was no breeze, it seemed, but that bush with the pink flowers seemed to shiver beside the patio as if there were. From a palm tree that seemed to disappear in the sky overhead, there was the sudden raucous cawing of what sounded like several different kinds of birds competing in different languages. It was, Zak thought, what it might sound like if you stuck your head in a birdcage at the zoo.

  “You’re not going to marry her?” his mother had said. Her mouth had stayed open, and Zak could see her back teeth. They looked like a damp mountain range. He could suddenly imagine his mother dead, lying on her back in a coffin. He would miss her. It would just be him and his worthless brother after that. Except for Angela. Her two kids. He and his mother stood facing one another in the kitchen. Outside he could hear his brother whacking at golf balls in the grass, but he must have been missing them. It sounded as if he were whacking the heads off the tulips, or swinging at the seedy wigs of dandelions.

  “Yeah, Mom. I am. We’re getting married.”

  He’d tried not to sound apologetic or defensive. He truly understood his mother’s concerns. But he supposed he sounded hypnotized, maybe, or under some other kind of duress. His mother had closed her mouth then, and turned her back. He thought he heard her mutter, “You’ll be sorry,” but he couldn’t be sure. It was not the kind of thing his mother would say. She might hav
e said, “That’ll be lovely.” She might have said nothing. She might have spoken a few words from the New Testament.

  Zak and Angela went to pick out her wedding dress a few days later, and that night Zak had dreamed he was in a gym full of brides. Cake, lace, foamy whiteness. They were all young, and Zak knew he could have his pick, but mostly he just wanted to play basketball. He could see the balls in the corner. He could smell the solid rubber of them. Where were the baskets? There were no baskets.

  The door of the trailer flew open, and a woman tumbled out, and the door slammed behind her with a startling clap. Zak sat up straighter in the passenger seat. He thought he heard Angela gasp. The woman yanked open the driver’s side door, stuck her torso in. From where he sat Zak could only see the top of her head. White curls, pink scalp. But then he made out the trembling flesh of her upper arms. (“Take a good look,” Greg had said. “Your mother-in-law’s what your girlfriend will look like when she’s fifty. … Oh, wait, your girlfriend’s already fifty!” Ha. Ha.)

  Angela was led from the car. She looked weak with exhaustion, Zak thought, although she’d fallen deeply asleep on his shoulder during the flight to Florida. Planes put her to sleep. They’d flown together to Rome when they were secretly in love, when he was still her student, and she’d slept then, too—completely and alarmingly for the entire duration of the flight over the Atlantic as his arm went numb beneath her and he stared into the burning lamp over his seat, wishing he could also sleep.

  Now, she appeared as if a spell had been cast on her, as if she’d taken a shot of novocaine straight to the brain. Her pale blue skirt was creased, and her white tank top looked damp with sweat. Her tennis-toned arm was outstretched before her as her mother guided her toward one of the lawn chairs, and settled her into it, and then turned to the car, gesturing to Zak with wide wobbling sweeps of her own pale arm.

  Joy radiated off the old woman like the light off a pile of diamonds. He had never seen anyone who looked happier in his life, not even actresses who’d been paid millions of dollars in movies to look happy.

  Zak was directed to the lawn chair beside Angela’s with the TV tray between them, and beers and cookies were fetched from the trailer. He kept glancing over at Angela, but she did not look back. They were like the king and queen of the place, in lawn chair thrones, looking out upon their subjects as the neighbors began to hobble by.

  “My son and daughter!” Angela’s mother announced.

  Some of the onlookers had silver walkers. Many had canes. One came by in a motorized wheelchair. A few managed to snail past without aid. It was a slow-motion parade, and Zak tried several times to stand, to offer his chair to—

  “Sit!” Angela’s mother said, pressing him back down.

  The man with the flowered cane came by, again down the center of the lane. This time he had his hand poked through the white handles of a Winn-Dixie bag. He bowed before Zak, holding out the bag. Zak took it and looked inside. A fat red tomato, an enormous peach, and what appeared to Zak to be some new kind of fruit—bright yellow, rugged, spiked.

  “Thank you,” Zak said.

  He looked over at Angela again, holding the bag open for her so she could see inside, but she seemed too dazed to register the gift even as she gazed upon it. She glanced from the bag to Zak, and then back to the bag and the alien fruits within, and Zak could see that she was suffering in some way, but what could he do? Her eyes were pale blue. They were the first things he’d noticed about her when she’d clipped into the classroom three years earlier and announced that she was Professor Butler, but that they could call her Angela. And then her ass, which had been tucked neatly into a black suede skirt, when she turned to the blackboard.

  Now, she was a ghost wearing those assets. A stranger in familiar clothes.

  The old man nodded to Zak, and turned, heading slowly in the direction from which he’d come bearing that dead branch that had miraculously bloomed.

  “My son and daughter!” Angela’s mother continued to shout to all who gathered to look at them. “My angel and her betrothed. My beautiful daughter and the prince whose heart she has captured. Look at them. Behold!”

  “Eh?!” an old lady called, cupping a hand around her ear. The old woman looked like a bird. She was so thin that nothing was left of her face but her beak and her teeth and her wrinkled lips. “Eh?” she cried out again, searching with her deaf ear for some explanation. Eh? a bird overhead answered her with a perfect imitation of her, but no one else bothered to explain anything to the old woman, and when Zak opened his mouth to try to introduce himself, Angela reached over with a hand so cold and damp it seemed she’d been soaking it in rainwater for days. She clamped her fingers around his wrist and applied a kind of trembling pressure that caused Zak to sink deeply into his lawn chair—so deeply he couldn’t possibly have escaped the old woman approaching him now, reaching out to take his face in her spotted hands, bringing her own face down to his for what he suspected would be a long and lingering kiss.

  The Prisoners

  A girl woke up, and it was summer. There were handfuls of soft hair on her head, which rested on a pillow that seemed to be filled with feathers. She sat up slowly, blinking, looking around, aware that at one time she might have known this place she found herself in, this season outside the window beside her, but no longer.

  Better get out of bed, she thought. She might be late for something. She recalled that being late had always been frowned upon—by someone, for some reason. She placed her feet on the floor: Feet. Floor.

  She looked out the window.

  Apparently she’d slept for a very long time because she certainly had no recollection of a forest. How long did it take for so many trees to grow so tall?

  No.

  She did not remember any forest at all. Something else had been outside the window. Something flat. And blue. Sky? No. What had they called it. Puddle. Pond. Pool.

  Pool.

  But it had not been summer then, for swimming. It had been winter, and the pool had been empty of water. Drained. It had only been painted blue. But snow fell into it, and onto the bodies of the Prisoners.

  How had she known they belonged to the Prisoners, those bodies?

  Ribbons? Ripples? Stripples? Stripes.

  She had recognized their uniforms by their gray and white stripes.

  Names.

  They’d had them. But not simple names, like Matt, like Ben. (Her brothers!) But not just numbers either, like the Patients.

  What had she called her favorite Prisoner?

  Rotor? Roper? Rotund? Fatty!

  Fatty had been only skin and bones. He’d had yellowish eyes, and had made her laugh. She’d fed him—what? Little pills. Bread crumbs. Lozenges. Pinches of sugar, butter, something?

  Dinner mints!

  He’d catch them on his tongue and do a little dance on his artificial leg.

  “Stay away from the Prisoners!” the tall pale lady would scream, running across the green, holding her skirts up to her knees.

  But she would not stay away from Fatty, whom she’d loved. And also the other one. Witness. His name had been Witness! She did not need to think any harder to remember him. His eyes had been pecked out by birds, so they had called him Witness. How could she ever forget? He’d almost scared her to death the first time he’d asked to touch her hand with his own, but his own hand had been surprisingly cool and soft—and those blank holes in his face where he’d once had eyes, when she’d gotten used to them, she could have stared into those smooth sockets all day if they’d let her. Everything was in them. The wagons, the gypsies, the campfires blazing despite the rain, the whole history of the Kingdom. The tundra her ancestors had crossed to reach it. Their bark boats in the middle of an ocean with great chunks of ice floating in it. And the men in their reindeer skins, and the women dressed as birds—ten thousand feathers fluttering around their heads.

  Now she remembered. She’d watched them hang Witness one afternoon, and then cut him down s
till twitching, thrown his body onto the others at the bottom of the drained swimming pool. His eyes had been open. He’d been looking straight at her. And then—

  And then nothing. No one. For so long.

  How long?

  How long did it take for a forest to grow?

  She put her hand to the windowpane. It was cold. In the air out there, a bit of snow. What did they call this season again?

  Witness?

  No, winter.

  And wasn’t that also her own name, and the name of her kingdom, and the name of her country, and—?

  No. No. Something else was on the tip of her tongue. What could it have been?

  Whither, wisdom, whisper, whimper, whistler?

  Swimmer, glister, jester, luster, laughter?

  She was on her knees with her face in her hands when she heard footsteps climbing stairs.

  Psalter, ranter, rooster, banish, answer?

  And then she heard the jangling of keys. The clearing of a throat. Static crackling over some kind of radio. Bitter laughter.

  I Hope This Is Hell

  The check-out line snakes clear down aisle thirteen to the paper towel display, and then up past the plastic utensils and packaged napkins. Everyone seems to be buying their Fourth of July picnic supplies late. It is the Fourth of July. Like these others, Chloe has no choice but to stand in the line. The things in her cart, she has to buy. There will be company. It’s the Fourth of July. Last week, her husband, driving to work in his pickup truck, struck a child on a bicycle, and two days ago the child died.

  It was only a mile from their own front door, at the bottom of the hill, at an intersection through which they’d passed without incident every day, thousands of times, for years. It was a two-lane road, paved, but in the country. A yellow line ran straight down the middle of it, broken here and there to let the faster vehicles pass the old people and the tractors. There was a stop sign at the end of it. There was a house up on the hill where a nurse lived—a nurse who had already left for her own job by the time Chloe’s husband came running up the driveway, the bloody boy in his arms, calling for help.