My first nurse’s cap
Also, this: a silver spoon like people used to collect, engraved with the word Wisconsin. Do people still collect these spoons, arrange them in little wooden curio shelves carved to secure their handles, made exactly for this spoon-collecting purpose? I don’t think so. Oh, the things that disappear from the world. This spoon belonged to Kay. Kay wasn’t from Wisconsin. After she was gone, I found it. I’ve never had any idea what it meant, but I’ve kept it all these years and whatever it meant for Kay, I believe I’ve kept that, too. The spoon is in the bottom drawer of my father’s desk. I’ve never been to Wisconsin, but when I think of it I imagine snow.
From Jennifer’s house I took a small stone. It was on a high shelf of the bookcase in her room, which is how I know it’s hers and not Milo’s. It’s a brown rock—smooth, shiny, close to round but slightly irregular. It contains many shades of brown, even approaching gold. I imagine she found it on a beach. She is the kind of melancholy person one can picture gazing out to sea. Sometimes I picture myself standing on the prow of the ship that brought me home from the war, the salt wind in my hair, on my face an expression of sorrow and resolve. When in fact I spent much of the journey home crying in my bunk, trying not to be heard by the other girls.
The rock is here on my desk now. It’s pleasing to the touch. I’ll have to hide it before the next time Jennifer comes over. One more object that no one else will ever understand.
I have Zoe’s number on my desk, too, and I can’t help but think of how not so long ago I had her mother’s number here, yet to be called, and now my life has changed. I wonder what Zoe would say if I called her. Were I a real detective, I wouldn’t hesitate. I’d think I had every right to call her and ask her what she knows.
So much depends on every choice we make. This is obvious and yet endlessly to be marveled at. So many tales of what ripples outward, so many dreams of parallel universes. Because we tell stories about the things we find impossible to bear. Then we can pretend they are only stories.
I went down the Mountain today after all. I stood for a long time at my father’s grave, and told him none of this.
Offerings
Now that she has friends, or at least potential friends—now that she knows people—Jennifer is cleaning up in case any of them drop by. In case she takes a notion to invite them over. Her grandmother used to say that having someone see your dirty house was like having someone see you naked. And her mother. And her father. They were and are constant cleaners, habitual cleaners, and for most of her life she’s been one, too. But she’s let this house fall into an embarrassing condition, in a way she’d stopped noticing until Margaret came over for the egg and she saw it under her critical eye. Ever since, she’s felt a nagging sense of duty neglected, but she’s done nothing about it until today. She’s in Milo’s room, sorting toys into bins. She saved his room for last, because it was the most daunting. Her own room is spotless, and the bathroom, and the study—everything. She’s just about ready, should anyone unexpectedly arrive.
She slides her arms under Milo’s bed to feel for small items. Wherever she looks, she finds Legos. She sweeps some out and picks through them, sorting by color—an almost entirely pointless task, but she’s feeling thorough. Red, yellow, blue, black, black, yellow, blue. Her cleaning has failed to turn up the stone that belongs on the bookshelf in her study. Yellow, yellow, yellow, green. She thought maybe Milo took it and she’d find it in his room.
When she’s finished she tours her clean house in admiration of her handiwork. The only thing that continues to nag is the missing stone. At the bookshelf in her study, she once again runs her hand over the space where the stone used to be. It’s hard not to believe, when something is lost, that you’ll find it back in the place where it was, if you just look one more time.