It had perfect hands and I tell you this not to be sensational but because it was perhaps the only pure feeling my heart had felt in nearly thirty years. One of its hands curled itself around my index finger, wrapped itself nearly all the way around it. My finger was so concretely, so shockingly, held. I’d been held enough by my father in the short time I had him, but I had always pined after my mother’s arms, her hands. I always wanted them to make a cap over my skull, to grasp me and suck me into her. But now to have my child, its little fingers, webbed still and yet delicately discrete, to have them press into me, to hold me, it was enough love to keep me for another thirty years. It recognized I was meant to care for it as long as it lived. I don’t know why I keep saying it. Because I knew very well, it was obvious, the child was a boy.
I don’t know how long he kept breathing in my hand like that. His ribs, ivory etchings beneath the gel of his skin, moved up and down in elegant puffs. With a finger from my other hand I stroked his forehead. My baby, I said quietly. I felt peace and happiness. I knew it wouldn’t last but I allowed myself to feel it for as long as it did.
When it was over, it wasn’t sudden or dramatic. The breaths simply stopped. A small chill came over his body. My next emotion was rage. It was more well defined than the happiness because I was better acquainted with rage. At what? Everything. Everyone. I wanted to kill the world. I knew that at the very least I would kill someone. It was more than a premonition. It was a promise I could control. The rage was so great it needed to go somewhere. But for once I did not have rage at myself. For once I didn’t hate myself. I loved myself as my child had. I saw myself as something greater than I thought I could be, and though certainly the feeling would fade, it still shone radiantly in that moment.
Then suddenly from outside I heard the familiar screeches. If all the misfortunes of the world could be contained in one sound, it might be the bright hell of the coyote. Then I heard them make a new sound. An angry growl that sounded more like a human imitating an animal than an animal itself. I ran, with my cooling child in hand, to the door. Kurt the dog was being attacked by three slavering gray beasts.
That dog had nothing to prepare him for his horror, staring down the imminence of his own death. He’d been mistreated for the first year of his life and then sent to a kill shelter and had no idea he was set to die until he was saved by a young man with a love of the great outdoors. He’d gone from vicious kicks to steel cages to pure love and heaping bowls of food and scaling mountains and sleeping in a bed with a warm body.
I saw River come running from his yurt. Then I looked down and watched as one of the coyotes’ teeth, glistening and white, caught on Kurt’s fur. I saw the dog pull back and a strip of his furred skin come away from him. I screamed and one of them came toward me. Everything was going so fast. I didn’t think with my human brain and so I suppose that’s why I did the only thing that made sense. My hands released my glowing fetus. Everything stopped. The night went clear, a wash of starlight. I felt my knees buckle and the dog ran into my house.
—Where’s Kurt! River screamed.
I pointed inside. River, ignorant to what had happened, ran in and came out holding the enormous bloodied dog in his arms.
—Thank you, he said to me, weeping.
—I didn’t do anything, I said. Then I went inside and collapsed on the disgusting couch.
WHEN I WOKE, LENNY WAS stroking my hand. I noticed he’d somehow turned the air conditioner off. Perhaps with his cane, like a geriatric crusader, hitting the switch on his first jab.
—Joan, he said, thank goodness. I wasn’t sure if you fainted or what. My God, those vicious creatures! You’re bloodied, dear, did they get you? Did they nip you somewhere? They don’t generally go after humans.
I didn’t say anything. I was very still. I thought about what those people with their normal lives would think about me now. I knew I would never be able to tell anyone, not even Alice. Nobody wants to hear about great suffering or anarchic decisions. They think it’s an offense against their ears, their lives.
—I cleaned up your vomit from earlier. I understand you were embarrassed. Of course, I was, too. I told you a great deal of things about my life that—I won’t say I regret it, but I don’t feel like you understood. I don’t think you understand men on the one hand and love on the other.
I nodded, feeling my hands lit with blood.
—Proust said that hell was the suffering that comes from the inability to love. I weep for your suffering, Joan. I know you have your reasons. I hoped you would tell them to me, as I told you mine, but perhaps your condition is worse, even, than I suspected.
I looked at him, pressed my palm to my empty belly, and cackled like a witch.
He was wearing the watch. He was sure of his mental state in that moment, and that was why he was wearing it. He believed that the drugs were going to save him.
—Joan, are you all right?
—Leonard! I am more than all right! I am absolutely wonderful! Where is my red
