The week before she left her father died. He was murdered. Some said that it had to do with his wife’s mental state; others said it that he’d been caught in some affair with another woman. When word got around, people said that if anyone should have been murdered in that family it should have been Laura’s mother.
It was then I heard it, a kind of moaning or weeping outside my door. I was afraid to open it for fear it was some kind of animal that might leap inside, circle the house in a rage if I didn’t feed it. But the moans gradually subsided into a kind of keening. Now, I thought, such a creature could hardly be dangerous. Pressing myself against the door, I opened it slowly, just a crack at first. And there, staring at herself in the mirrored doorway was a creature neither young nor old. Her face had been so badly burned it was difficult to tell her age.
First I spotted the big male lion, his head circled by a bushy mane. He was sitting on the other side of the enclosure watching us, he never took his eyes off us. The lions’ enclosure was the size of four tennis courts. There was a foot of snow and the lions had packed down a wide path all the way around the inside of the fence. When Megan and I reached the enclosure, we realized the lioness was on our side, sitting right next to the fence.
Craig has the steak knife wrapped in a dishcloth, tucked in his inside jacket pocket. He and Matt lie on their stomachs. Craig smells the dusty yellow grass, inspecting the tangle of it and the soil beneath. He takes out the knife and stabs the ground, for practice. He pulls the knife out and frees wet earth. There are people biking down the bike path—the ticking of a mountain bike when the pedals disengage.
A wake for an old person is very strange because no one knows how to feel. It’s sort of like a nineteen-year-old dog dying. It’s got to happen at some point, and everyone’s surprised it’s taken so long.
I want to settle the problem of my older sister Monica. She’s losing her marbles. She’s eighty-two and she’s still a drama queen and she’s driving me nuts. Why does the oppressive responsibility for her well-being drape itself across my shoulders like a moth-eaten shawl? Why me?