A bald president is on the stamp. The paper smells like paper, nothing more. Tom runs a finger beneath every word, sounding them out. Making sure he hasn’t missed anything.
—
I know your married and I dont want anything but happyness for you but maybe I can see you one time? We could meet at the acquareyem. If you dont rite back thats okay I no why.
Two more weeks. Dear Tom, I don’t want anything but happiness for you, too. How about next Tuesday? I’ll bring the baby, okay?
—
The next Tuesday, the first one in May, Tom leaves the hospital after his shift. His vision flickers at the edges, and he hears Mother’s voice: Be careful, Tomcat. It’s not worth the risk. He walks slowly to the end of the block and catches the first trolley to Belle Isle, where he steps off into a golden dawn.
There are few cars about, all parked, one a Ford with a huge present wrapped in yellow ribbon on the backseat. An old man with a crumpled face rakes the gravel paths. The sunlight hits the dew and sets the lawns aflame.
The face of the aquarium is Gothic and wrapped in vines. Tom finds a bench outside and waits for his pulse to steady. The reticulated glass roofs of the flower conservatory reflect a passing cloud. Eventually a man in overalls opens the gate, and Tom buys two tickets, then thinks about the baby and buys a third. He returns to the bench with the three tickets in his trembling fingers.
By eleven the sky is filled with a platinum haze and the island is busy. Men on bicycles crackle along the paths. A girl flies a yellow kite.
Tom?
Ruby Hornaday materializes before him — shoulders erect, hair newly short, pushing a chrome-and-canvas baby buggy. He stands quickly, and the park bleeds away and then restores itself.
Sorry I’m late, she says.
She’s dignified, slim. Two quick strokes for eyebrows, the same narrow nose. No makeup. No jewelry. Those pale blue eyes and that hair.
She cocks her head slightly. Look at you. All grown up.
I got tickets, he says.
How’s Mr. Weems?
Oh, he’s made of salt, he’ll live forever.
They start down the path between the rows of benches and the shining trees. Occasionally she takes his arm to steady him, though her touch only disorients him more.
I thought maybe you were far away, he says. I thought maybe you went to sea.
Ruby parks the buggy and lifts the baby to her chest — he’s wrapped in a blue afghan — and then they’re through the turnstile.
The aquarium is dim and damp and lined on both sides with glass-fronted tanks. Ferns hang from the ceiling, and little boys lean across the brass railings and press their noses to the glass. I think he likes it, Ruby says. Don’t you, baby? The boy’s eyes are wide open. Fish swim slow ellipses behind the glass.
They see translucent squid with corkscrew tails, sparkling pink octopi like floating lanterns, cowfish in blue and violet and gold. Iridescent green tiles gleam on the domed ceiling and throw wavering patterns of light across the floor.
In a circular pool at the very center of the building, dark shapes race back and forth in coordination. Jacks, Ruby murmurs. Aren’t they?
Tom blinks.
You’re pale, she says.
Tom shakes his head.
She helps him back out into the daylight, beneath the sky and the trees. The baby lies in the buggy sucking his fist, examining the clouds with great intensity, and Ruby guides Tom to a bench.
Cars and trucks and a white limousine pass slowly along the white bridge, high over the river. The city glitters in the distance.
Thank you, says Tom.
For what?
For this.
How old are you now, Tom?
Twenty-one. Same as you. A breeze stirs the trees, and the leaves vibrate with light. Everything is radiant.
World goes to Hades but babies still get born, whispers Tom.
Ruby peers into the buggy and adjusts something, and for a moment the back of her neck shows between her hair and collar. The sight of those two knobs of vertebrae, sheathed in her pale skin, fills Tom with a longing that cracks the lawns open. For a moment it seems Ruby is being slowly dragged away from him, as if he is a swimmer caught in a rip, and with every stroke the back of her neck recedes farther into the distance. Then she sits back, and the park heals over, and he can feel the bench become solid beneath him once more.
I used to think, Tom says, that I had to be careful with how much I lived. As if life was a pocketful of coins. You only got so much and you didn’t want to spend it all in one place.
Ruby looks at him. Her eyelashes whisk up and down.
But now I know life is the one thing in the world that never runs out. I might run out of mine, and you might run out of yours, but the world will never run out of life. And we’re all very lucky to be part of something like that.
She holds his gaze. Some deserve more luck than they’ve gotten.
Tom shakes his head. He closes his eyes. I’ve been lucky, too. I’ve been absolutely lucky.
The baby begins to fuss, a whine building to a cry. Ruby says, Hungry.
A trapdoor opens in the gravel between Tom’s feet, black as a keyhole, and he glances down.
You’ll be OK?
I’ll be OK.
Good-bye, Tom. She touches his forearm once, and then goes, pushing the buggy through the crowds. He watches her disappear in pieces: first her legs, then her hips, then her shoulders, and finally the back of her bright head.
And then Tom sits, hands in his lap, alive for one more day.
A MAN LIKE HIM by Yiyun Li
The girl, unlike most people photographed for fashion magazines, was not beautiful. Moreover, she had no desire to appear beautiful, as anyone looking at her could tell, and for that reason Teacher Fei stopped turning the pages and studied her. She had short, unruly hair and wide-set eyes that glared at the camera in a close-up shot. In another photo, she stood in front of a bedroom door, her back to the camera, her hand pushing the door ajar. A bed and its pink sheet were artfully blurred. Her black T-shirt, in sharp focus, displayed a line of white printed characters: MY FATHER IS LESS OF A CREATURE THAN A PIG OR A DOG BECAUSE HE IS AN ADULTERER.
The girl was nineteen, Teacher Fei learned from the article. Her parents had divorced three years earlier, and she suspected that another woman, a second cousin of her father’s, had seduced him. On her eighteenth birthday, the first day permitted by law, the daughter had filed a lawsuit against him. As she explained to the reporter, he was a member of the Communist Party, and he should be punished for abandoning his family, and for the immoral act of having taken a mistress in the first place. When the effort to imprison her father failed, the girl started a blog and called it A Declaration of War on Unfaithful Husbands.
“What is it that this crazy girl wants?” Teacher Fei asked out loud before reaching the girl’s answer. She wanted her “I know,” Teacher Fei said. He bent down and placed her hands back in her lap. “Should I warm some milk?” he asked, though he could see that already she was slipping away into her usual reverie, one that would momentarily wash her mind clean. Sometimes he made an effort, coaxing her to walk with father to lose his job, she told the reporter, along with his social status, his freedom, if possible, and his mistress for sure; she wanted him to beg her and her mother to take him back. She would support him for the rest of his life as the most filial daughter, but he had to repent — and, before that, to suffer as much as she and her mother had.