Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
THE LATE WORK
All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
— Buddha
Part 1
Rainer
Margaret's sitting at her writing table, then walking downstairs to put a kettle on. A dog walks in the kitchen behind her and yawns. Outside the window the weather's a film of the seasons changing. Those are geese flying south. Upstairs, she's no longer cold. It's the tea. The dog turns three tight circles and lies down on the rug he's mushed up against the wall. Margaret's working on a piece of fiction. It's autobiographical in a sense. She dies in the end.
She goes into town to buy groceries. The side-walks are covered with fallen leaves. They're trying to become a forest floor, she thinks. At the store she buys cans of soup and bread instead of ingredients. On the way back to her car she sees the bay. It looks like it goes on forever. For a moment she imagines the world like that: just the ocean and the weather.
After dinner she writes three sentences. They're not worth keeping, she thinks. She lets the dog out one last time then dries him off because he's soaked. She brushes her teeth and gets in bed. He burrows under the sheets and rests his black head on her feet. In her dream he can see ghosts.
The sun rises. It burns away the mist and the fog. Margaret watches the steam spin through the branches. The world's closed, the sky's a roof. Those are her thoughts. She sweeps up the oil seeds and millet from the porch. She sprays her hose at the eaves and the windows. Her hands are freezing from the water. She calls the dog. He runs up. She wraps her arms around his barrel chest and rests her head on his twitching back. She whispers in his ear as she tries to get him to hold still.
Margaret sticks her hand under the faucet in the kitchen. She slices an apple, drinks from a water glass. The dog eats a cracker, she takes something out of the microwave. Margaret eats and cleans up. She lies down on the couch, a shadow across the ceiling. A bird makes a sound outside. She thinks it's kids playing. There are no kids near here. She remembers something that she's holding onto. She tells herself that she will never forget it.
Margaret goes for a walk down by the water. A plastic bag washes up on the shore and gets caught on a wormy log. She picks it up. It's tangled with seaweed. She leans on her cane and thinks. The rain's suspended between the sky and everything else. The fog smudges the horizon.
Later, back up the path, she smells something. Twenty feet farther she can see in her kitchen window and it's so horrible.
Margaret's in the hotel room insurance put her in. She cries so hard she coughs, lies down on the bed, and makes a fist. She wants to punch herself like a wall.
They let her walk through what's left of her house. The fire gutted most of the ground floor. Upstairs, her office was largely untouched, her notebooks and computer.
Back downstairs, in the kitchen, her fingers are trembling. She's kneeling in front of the backdoor. She's memorizing the gouges his claws made in it as he tried to escape.
Part 2
3 DREAMS
1
We were walking on a trail that I didn't recognize. You humored me and didn't pull on your lead. We walked through a field then entered a forest. The trees blocked the sun. The trail followed down into a valley. Fog rolled in and I thought of an owl. My foot slipped on loose gravel and we fell into a cave. It'd been hidden by brush. I landed on my ankle and you landed on your head. You yelped and shrieked and I dragged myself across the cold and wet floor. A pool of blood ranged wide around your head. I loosened your collar. I petted your face and smoothed your ears back. I looked into your eyes. They told me that you were scared, strong, sad, wistful, doubtful, confused, brave, and in pain. I told you I loved you. I told you how sorry I was. The words were worthless because whatever hope they came from was unfounded. You tried to bark and instead gasped for breath. Your leg began shaking like you were fighting something, then your whole body. I was overcome. I laid over you so you would feel protected and less scared. I hoped you couldn't tell I was weeping. You became a memory.
2
You were floating in the ocean. You were dying, then dead. Something had happened to you. I didn't know. It was just your body. It was bloated and distended. I was swimming alongside of it. I was still trying to save you. There wasn't a chance in the world. Then I was standing on the shore. I could barely walk in my clothes. Your fur was slack over your shrunken bones, your bottom jaw was missing. Crabs crawled through your sand-matted fur. Your body was lying in a shallow pool. I kicked seaweed over you. I couldn't think. It was what made sense in that moment. The tide washed it away. Your body moved with the water as it flowed in and out. You were stirring then still. I fell to my knees. I scooped up filthy sand with my hands. I poured it all over you. I thought that I could hide your body from the circling birds. I gave up. They would scavenge your corpse no matter what I did.
3
It was night and I was walking you through the neighborhood where David and I used to live. It was our first house together. This was twenty years before you were born. We were walking slowly. The cars in the driveways were covered with ice. I walked through a puddle and it splashed on my pants. My feet were soaked. You sniffed at something. You just stood there. It warmed up. The wind began to blow. My hood fell back. My hair fell in my face and got into my eyes. You were panting. It seemed like you were smiling. I looked at your face. I looked into your eyes. There was so much there. The moment was frozen. Everything lasted forever. Then you took off. The lead ran through my fingers. There was no way that I could react. There were trees and wetlands and empty fields behind the houses. That's what you disappeared into. It was like a thousand miles away. I just knew it was impossible to find you. I knew that I would never see you again.
Part 3
Months Later
Margaret bites the fingernail on her left pinky. She takes a sip of cold tea then sets the cup on the saucer and picks up her notebook. She's working on her short story. She tells herself it'll be the last thing she writes. She's working on a short passage about her dog. Including him in the story is the most important thing in the world. In her latest draft she put him on a boat, surrounded by water. There's no way a fire could suffocate him there. But she realizes it's ridiculous. So the boat sinks and the inconceivable happens anyway. She still sobs as she falls asleep at night.
She sets down her pencil and leans back. She rests her eyes for a moment, then dabs at them with her handkerchief. Her hand's numb. It's shaking. She rubs her wrist but that doesn't do anything. She's going to take a nap, she thinks. After that, she'll work on the story a little more.
The officer knocked, got no response, then found the spare key the neighbor talked about. It was on an old necklace, hanging from the rhododendron next to the porch. He walked upstairs and into the bedroom. He called out to the shape under the covers. When he touched her face it was like ice. He closed her eyes and called for an ambulance. While he was waiting he walked into the next room. Beside the computer he found a small stack of papers. He read them.
My Watery Death by Margaret Kroftis
I was down by the water. Someone said my name, and when I turned around to answer, I saw a boy standing in front of me. He introduced himself and apologized. He said he'd knocked for five minutes before coming around the back. I told him not to worry. He told me that he'd come to ask me to read his story and give him advice about writing. The sky behind him was white but it looked black reflected on the water. He bit his lip. I told him I could have the story read in a couple days then watched the rain pool on his hood. He handed me the manila envelope he'd been holding and the pool fell past his face and dissolved into the sand. I watched him as he trotted up toward my house and then disappeared behind the garage.
Inside, my footsteps left puddles the shape of continents on old maps. They evaporated while I ate dinner. I read magazines in the bath, then, in bed, the boy's story. It was ten loosely organized pages describing an army of demons attacking the earth via a porthole to another dimension. The next morning I wrote down my dream. In it, I was standing in the kitchen looking out the window onto the water. It was dark but I could see that the water was luminescent, like it was lit from within.
A week later the boy arrived in the rain on his bike. Inside, the steam from the kettle scalded my fingers as I made tea. At the table I held some ice cubes wrapped in a tea towel and told the boy that I didn't know anything about horror, that I didn't know if I'd be able to help him with his writing.
He said, "But isn't all writing the same, I mean, in the end?"
The boy told me where to drive. We turned left out of my driveway and headed north. He had me pull over next to a trailhead that was overgrown by snowberries. We followed it until we came upon a clearing where the boy climbed a boulder. It was rounded and smooth because eventually it will be nothing. From behind the trees ahead of me I heard the drone of cars driving on the freeway. It reminded me of an overcast sky which reminded me of my childhood.
The boy brought me to the clearing to help explain his writing. He told me he fell asleep here once, lying on the boulder, and when he woke up he had the entire plot for his story in his head. His thought was that I would understand the tone he was going for if I came here. He opened the thermos and poured him- self some tea. I had a daydream in which my ears were so sensitive that they could hear the tea evaporating. He sat on the boulder and cupped his mug in both hands. I walked around the clearing then scratched at some stinging nettle on my calf.
Then November. Each day mirrored the previous one: breakfast and coffee, then yard work until my energy disappeared. Nap, then dinner, then soaking in the tub. Bed. Once a week the boy came and we talked about his writing and the work he was doing.
One night I dreamed that a ship sank in the middle of the ocean and all the passengers drowned except for a dog. The dog swam until his muscles became numb, and then began to ache. As the sun set he stopped chasing the birds that he would never catch and tried to move toward the reflection of the moon on the water. His muscles gave up and he stopped swimming. Water coursed down his throat and he was blinded as time and his suffering stopped.
The boy told me he thought he'd never finish his story. I told him I thought that with every- thing I had ever written, that it was normal. He smiled, and asked me why I didn't write anymore. I told him I didn't have the time. I realized the boy had read my novel but knew nothing about me. He didn't seem to know about my retirement, mastocytosis, anything. As he was about to leave, he asked me if there was something he could do to repay me for my help. I asked him if he had a boat.
I was sitting at the kitchen table reading the boy's story. Several months' worth of work had improved it. The demons had been replaced by a vague and malevolent cosmic force that was causing a gradual apocalypse on earth. It was now written as a series of diary entries by a teenage girl, one of the last survivors left. In the section I was reading, the narrator was huddled in her bedroom. It had been pitch dark for the past three days and she'd not seen anyone else in two weeks. She was scared to leave her house. She used a flashlight to look out the window. The trees around her house were growing taller and thicker. The clearing was shrinking. She couldn't see the moon. She was worried it was gone. She knew that clearing would soon vanish. She feared for what would happen when the unstoppable occurred. She paced around the house. She hid under the bed. She finished the last of the cereal that she had. She still felt hungry. She began turning the dial on her clock radio. She looked for some signal She found an automated emergency response broadcast, it said that the earth had stopped spinning on its axis. The girl lay down and started crying. She missed her parents but had no hope of ever seeing them again.
The boy paced between the stove and sink as I finished his story. In it, the narrator fell asleep as the world slowly disappeared. She had a dream she was dead and that her ghost was traveling around the earth. I underlined the last sentence: The trees are like wisps, and I can float through them, but they seem even less there than they were yesterday. I told him he should be proud of it and he smiled.
After lunch the boy and I walked down to the water and got in his kayak. He rowed us through mist that became drizzle. It beaded on my skirt and clouded my glasses. There was barely any breeze and the air smelled like the sea, and diesel. The boy rowed and I daydreamed that the water was a black hole. I slipped through space and into it.
CHAPTER 2
JOYFUL THING
I'm sorry anybody dies.
— Spencer Krug
Part 1
Jyfl Thng
Beth looks out the window and squints. The sky hangs from the trees. It's just ink in water. She looks for a message in it. If it's there it's too complex. It all just washes over her. She looks at the notebook lying open on her lap. She's working on the script she's writing. It's based on a story by Margaret Kroftis. In it, Margaret helps a teenage boy write a story about the end of the world. Then she commits suicide. It touches Beth. She can't say why. She feels like she's falling. She takes a breath. She writes a sentence, crosses it out. Her mind's just something else in the world. Like a wolf, like an ocean. It twitches and unlocks. She thinks about the film she plans to make, how it will come together. She thinks about how it will embody what an amazing writer Margaret was. She thinks it will be like a memorial or whatever.
She hears the door to the garage open. Her mom calls her name. She walks downstairs, hugs her.
I bought groceries, do you want to eat?
They're sitting at the table.
Salad, cool.
She reaches for a piece of bread. Her mom asks her what she's doing.
Um, writing.
She asks what it's about. Her voice is crunchy and muffled.
Uh, I dunno, it's kinda complicated.
Wrapped In Plastic are practicing in Peter's garage. J paces in front of the garage door. Peter zones out on his synthesizer. J sings. Declan breaks a drumstick. He stops playing his hi-hat. That fucks Peter up. He falls out of time with the sequencer. J tosses his notebook down. He heads out the side door. Peter hears the phone ringing. He runs inside to get it. It's Beth. She sounds like she just swallowed something. Peter guesses grapefruit juice. She asks him if he wants to get something to eat. There's something in her voice. She says she'll pick him up. She asks him if he could drive. Her eyes are acting weird again. He lets her go. He thinks whatever about the band. He walks back into the garage. Declan's wrapping his hand in an Ace bandage. He's duct taping the toe of his sneaker. Peter finds J outside smoking Drum. J throws a rock at some birds on the fence. He misses by three feet. Peter says he'll have to get going soon. He says J and Declan could stay and play if they want. J says that Declan only has one drumstick. He says that it's not worth it. He doesn't say everything. Peter doesn't say anything.
The lights reflect in Beth's glasses. They dive and blur. Peter sees something there, then nothing. A strand of Beth's hair falls forward. She smooths it back. She says something. He giggles, she smiles. He looks into her eyes. They finish the pot of tea. They make out in the car. It's colder than they realized. They wipe off the windows. As he drives he puts his arm around her. She kisses his fingers and presses her face against them. He yawns. She rests her head on his shoulder. He pulls in front of his house and kills the engine. The rain on the windshield gives the streetlights halos. A car drives slowly past them. He plays with her ponytail. The moon's low in the sky. The cloud next to it lends it gravity. Beth closes her eyes. Only she and Peter exist.
J walks up to Peter's locker. He hands him a couple pages ripped out of a notebook.
Don't lose these.
Peter looks through them in History class. They're J's plans for Wrapped In Plastic's live show. In the line drawing he's studying, Declan's drum kit is set up perpendicular to the audience. They're just a wash of pencil lead. The lines aimed at them are spotlights. Peter turns the page. He reads a list of song titles, then lyrics. He grabs a pen out of his pocket. He draws a cube. It's three-dimensional, a dumb trick he learned. After school he hangs out in J's bedroom. He coughs, asks J to roll him a cigarette. Peter says he likes the lyrics. J says thanks, he says they're horrible. J sips his cup of coffee. Peter closes his eyes and buzzes. He's so dizzy. He holds the cigarette up to the window. J's in the corner. His desk is a piece of plywood on saw-horses. He's drawing a pentagram on a scan of a Beatrix Potter drawing. He's trying to make a poster. The sharpie's running out of ink. The scribble looks like a rainy sky.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Late Work of Margaret Kroftis"
by .
Copyright © 2010 Mark Gluth.
Excerpted by permission of Akashic Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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