Watermark

Also by Christy Ann Conlin

Heave

The Memento

Copyright © 2019 Christy Ann Conlin

Published in Canada in 2019 and the USA in 2019 by House of Anansi Press Inc.
www.houseofanansi.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

Permission is gratefully acknowledged to reprint excerpts from the following:

(Page 91) excerpt from Mystery and Manners by Flannery O’Connor, edited by Sally and Robert Fitzgerald. Copyright © 1969 by the estate of Flannery O’Connor. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

(Pages 253–264) passages from Letters from a Stoic by Seneca translated by Robin Alexander Campbell (Penguin Classics, 1987).

(Page 267) excerpt from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” from COLLECTED POEMS 1909–1962 by T. S. Eliot. Copyright © 1936 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, renewed 1964 by Thomas Stearns Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Permission also granted by Faber and Faber Ltd.

Part title artwork borrowed from Hamonshū v. 3, by Mori Yūzan; Yamada Geisōdō, Kyōto-shi, Meiji 36 [1903] / Public Domain Review

Every reasonable effort has been made to contact the holders of copyright for materials quoted in this work. The publishers will gladly receive information that will enable them to rectify any inadvertent errors or omissions in subsequent editions.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Conlin, Christy Ann, author
Watermark / Christy Ann Conlin.

Short stories.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-4870-0343-2 (softcover).—ISBN 978-1-4870-0344-9 (EPUB).—ISBN 978-1-4870-0345-6 (Kindle)

I. Title.

PS8555.O5378W38 2019 C813'.6 C2018-906702-0 C2018-906703-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019930409

Book design: Alysia Shewchuk

We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada.

In Friendship for Sarah Emsley

&

In memorium for Maggie Estep

1963–2014

RIP

Contents

Eyeball in Your Throat

Dead Time

The Diplomat

Full Bleed

Occlusion

Late and Soon

Back Fat

Insomnis

Desire Lines

Beyond All Things Is the Sea

The Flying Squirrel Sermon

Acknowledgements

Eyeball in Your Throat

“Eat any eyeballs lately?”

Declan thought that was so funny. Lucy waited for him to finish laughing on the upstairs phone so she could hear what Deirdre was calling to tell them this time. Jesus Christ, when was he going to get over that inside joke? Lucy rocked in her chair, waiting while her daughter and husband rambled on. That Deirdre . . . always calling to tell, not ask. Declan was on the upstairs extension and Lucy on the kitchen phone, the same black rotary wall phone which had been in the old farmhouse when they first started renting it years ago.