Yes. Nelson would never think of anyone but Nelson. He would never say sorry. He would never thank Mayling for staying. Mayling couldn’t find the anger she was looking for—only a weird, pressed-down hollowness. Perhaps if Mayling had been less dutiful, less indulgent towards her brother, things would have turned out differently. Perhaps they’d be exactly the same, and Nelson would have remained beyond the grasp of anyone foolish enough to love him.

“Are you sure you don’t want any?” A smiling girl with blonde dreadlocks presented the pipe to Mayling as if it were a graduation scroll.

“No, thank you,” said Mayling. “I don’t really smoke.”

“Positive?” she said. “Last chance.”

Mayling noticed an incongruity between the girl’s appearance and her manner, which possessed a certain polish. As the girl waited for Mayling’s response, still smiling, still offering, it came to her. She was courteous in that earnest, practiced way that Mayling recognized as particular to children who have endured years of parental fussing and coaching. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen or so, and her prettiness was of the clean, wholesome variety. Mayling had dated girls with a similar quality, but this one’s earnestness gave her an air of childish vulnerability that sparked her sympathy. She saw a young girl in a neat suburban living room, wearing her best Sunday dress and carefully balancing a tray of hors d’oeuvres at one of her parents’ social functions, diligently working her way around the guests and being ignored, or patted on the head, or, as she got older, touched a second too long in the small of her back.

“Do you speak to your parents?” she blurted out.

“What?” The girl held onto her smile, pretending not to have heard her.

Mayling smiled, too, and shook her head, pretending she hadn’t asked. She took the pipe from the girl.

“What the hell,” she said. “I’m celebrating.”

She held the pipe above her head and shouted over her brother’s song, “To my brother, Nelson! Here for one night only, ladies and gentlemen. I shall miss you.”

Nelson took the duck leg out of his mouth, saluted Mayling with it, and resumed the song. In that moment, and for years afterwards, Mayling appreciated that Nelson didn’t attempt any further response, didn’t say, “There’s no need to miss me, I’ll be back before you know it.” In fact, he didn’t say anything that suggested they would ever see each other again—not that night, when they stumbled back to Mayling’s house through the dimly lit streets, or the next morning, as he ran out to the car honking in the drive, explaining that it was his ride across the border.

The Woman in the Closet

THE WOMAN IN THE CLOSET

AUGUST