Balance. I try sometimes now to balance on one foot, and I look like a stork with vertigo, so I hold on to something and I can close my eyes and picture what I looked like the night the lights went out. I am not what I used to be. Even a series of relevés and pliés, simplest of simple, tax me. In those years when I had my school, I ended each day with a moment of balance or a series of tour jetés, or fouetté pirouettes, my eyes fixed and spotting on the photograph of my mother; and then I put on my wraparound skirt—that black knit one I had for the longest time, and probably would still, except it was what Rudolf liked to sleep with in his final years, and what I took to the vet with us the day we had to say goodbye. Too many times to count, I put on my skirt and boots and then stood there, feeling accomplished and proud in the entryway of my own business, and I smoked a cigarette, that little tiny glow on the end so contained. Powerful but contained. And I snuffed it out into a deep bucket of sand that I kept by the steps.

Thank you, Miss Lil.

Even thou you smoke like a chimbly. The general says STOP!

Your friend, Lisa

Oh, I know I romanticize. I know there were nights I rushed, needed to hurry, nights when I was worried, one of you upset about something and not saying what, and your dad and I trying to figure out what to do, how to handle it. I ran errands for my father more and more as his health worsened. One of you had the flu or a virus or a sprained ankle, broken arm. Your dad didn’t get tenure that first time, or he dreaded visiting his stepfather, or he told me he hated the drapes I had ordered or (“No offense”) whatever it was I’d cooked last night. There were all those days. But now, time allows me pure silent joy. Even with (or perhaps thanks to) this awful oxygen tank, I breathe in and I breathe out. I breathe in and I breathe out. I marvel at the snow and ice, the silence there with each cold breath. I want every breath I can get.

Frank

After the accident, Frank had moved to be with his mother in eastern North Carolina, a place below sea level, with a river once known as Drowning Creek. No wonder he had begun collecting those things offering protection or luck: rabbit’s feet and found pennies, horseshoes and wishbones. Although he has always professed no belief in superstition, Frank still kisses his finger and touches the windshield when going through a yellow light, doesn’t walk under ladders, and on and on.