After that I helped her up, and in the bathroom we put her teeth in a jar of sanitizing solution. Without them, her face collapsed a little—it was alarming. But if you didn’t know her, you might just think that was how she looked—soft, sick, sad-mouthed, old.

She got into bed, where she lay on her back and pulled the blanket up to her chin. Goodnight, Brenda, she said.

Here she was—the woman who made me eat until I puked, then made me eat the puke. Wendell always was oversexed—that’s what she said when I told her what my father did. And when she found me playing in the place we dumped our garbage out back, she picked up a chunk of glass and cut my hand open with it. Brenda, she’d said, this is what happens when you play in the garbage. Understand?

But now she is dead and I am rich because everything she owned is mine, which—in my understanding—is the best possible outcome for this story.

THE BABY

They have the baby out of doors today. They are all out there together, gathered around it. I’ve seen it once and am picturing it now as they talk—its very dark and large, startled eyes and amusing hair. I will grant it is a good-looking baby, unless its looks have already shifted, as often happens with these creatures so barely and newly alive, which may help explain my reluctance to hold one in my arms—their heads, after all, are soft and malleable as a peach!

I can’t see to know what they’re doing, and their language is a different one than mine. Their laughter rolls up over my fence, through the flowering trees, up the uneven steps and through the screens of the house, which are crossed with metal bars. The family is doing something to the baby, that much is clear—they are provoking it for their own enjoyment.

The baby is difficult to figure. It sounds like a nest of squirrels I found after a storm. One of them had died in the fall from the tree, and the other two chattered next to it, to me, as though to tell me of their trouble. I understand the inappropriateness of comparing a human baby to a squirrel baby. I don’t know why I continue to do so. I cannot help it that a human baby also reminds me of an overfull helium balloon hovering too close to a hot bulb.

PLEASE

I went alone to the pagan museum and to the historic fountain because he’d been unable to defecate since we’d arrived nearly a week prior. When I returned at dinnertime he held a baguette in one hand and a hank of salami in the other, tearing a bite from each before speaking. I can force it out this way, he said.

His face was very red and he was sweating, but I washed a glass and poured him a beer and we sat on the terrace drinking until it was time to lie down—though the regular residents of that place were just waking up.