If what you were staring at was important, Selma says, something that upended the entire expanse of your life in a single movement, then its afterimage will resurface again and again. Even decades later, it will suddenly reappear, no matter what you were looking at just before you closed your eyes. The afterimage of the man waving for the very, very last time suddenly appears when, say, a mosquito flies into your eye as you’re cleaning out the gutter. It appears when you briefly rest your eyes after staring for a long time at a surcharge on a bill that you don’t understand. When you’re sitting at the side of a child’s bed to tell her a story and can’t remember the princess’s name or the story’s happy ending because you’re so very tired yourself. When you close your eyes because you’re kissing someone. When you’re stretched out on the forest floor, on a doctor’s examination table, in a strange bed, in your own. When you close your eyes because you’re lifting something very heavy. When you’ve been running around all day and stop just to retie your loose shoelaces and, with your head lowered, notice only then that you haven’t stopped once the entire day. It appears when someone says, “Close your eyes,” because they have a surprise for you. When you lean against the changing room wall because not even the very last pair of the pants you’ve been trying on fits. When you close your eyes just before you finally let something important slip out, such as: “I love you,” or “But I don’t love you.” When you’re frying potatoes at night. When you close your eyes because there is someone at the door you absolutely don’t want to let in. When you close your eyes because some great worry has suddenly lifted—you’ve just found someone or something you’d lost: a letter, some hope, an earring, a runaway dog, your voice, or a child who found a perfect hiding place. Again and again, this afterimage suddenly reappears, this one particular image—it resurfaces like your life’s screen saver, and often when you’re not expecting it at all.

Part One

PART ONE

MEADOW, MEADOW

When Selma told us she had dreamed of an okapi the night before, we all knew that one of us was going to die in the next twenty-four hours. We were almost right. It took twenty-nine. Death arrived a bit late and very literally: he came in through the door. Maybe he was delayed because he had put it off for a long time, even past the last possible moment.