If a Stranger Approaches You: Stories by Laura Kasischke Read Free Book Online

hellish box of it into their faces. But, with the window open onto that first and only humid winter they’d ever had, the moisture of hot and cool was just right. The union of institutional swelter with the off-kilternature of that year’s winter was exactly like falling in love in college. Three quarters of your life ahead of you and nothing but the moment to worry about. A botanical garden. A glass box full of jungle vines and butterlies. The climate of the heart and the mind at the same time. No one, it seemed, had ever experienced anything quite like this before.
    Apparently after hotdogs there had to be games before cake. So Tony found himself following his wife and the girls into the backyard, where he stood just as stiffly as he had in the dining room until Melody turned and handed him a paper donkey’s tail. “Here,” she said, “I’ll blindfold one of the girls and you spin her around and hand her this tail.”
    He held the paper tail and stared at her. Was she joking?
    She was not joking.
    “Me first!” his daughter screamed, grabbing at the tail, which Tony instinctively snapped out of her reach.
    “No,” Melody said to her. “Let one of the guests go first.”
    At this their daughter stamped her feet and scrunched up her features into a parody of childish rage. Tony thought of Rumplestiltskin stomping straight through the floor and tearing himself in half. Had she always been such a brat?
    Tony looked away from her, afraid the expression on his face might betray the disgust he felt toward his daughter, the truly ugly face she was making, and that Melody would call him on it right then and there as he guarded the ass-tail she’d given him.
    The backyard was neatly mown.
    Had Melody done it herself? He had to admit that if she’d done it herself, she’d done a pretty good job. Tended, the yard looked pleasant. When he was younger he’d imagined himself with an ocean view, or a Manhattan penthouse, but in reality this little yard was not so bad. It looked green and even. He was glad she wasn’t letting it go to hell without him here.
    But, of course, that wouldn’t be like Melody.
    And was it really any better that here was this proof that the onething he’d felt sure she’d need him for—starting the goddamned lawn mower—was another thing she did not need him for? He thought about all the Sundays he’d been out here shirtless, sweating, bending over their shitty lawn mower, yanking and yanking as it sputtered and died, and how, infuriatingly, Melody would sometimes come out and ask him if he needed any help.
    He had not needed any fucking help.
    And, apparently, neither had she.
    Beside him, his daughter stood stiffly now, fuming, her hands in small balled fists at her sides as Melody blindfolded someone else’s daughter—a girl both more delicate and polite than his own—and started to spin her around. The girl groped the air in Tony’s direction for the donkey’s tail, which he pressed into her hand. Then he stepped back to watch as she walked in the opposite direction of the tree, where the donkey itself was tacked up and waiting.
    Like a drunk, the little girl took tentative stumbling steps while the others laughed at her, and he thought what kind of stupid and sadistic game is this. Why was the world full of games like this? Soccer, hockey, Jeopardy: Match your wits and strength, and fail. Publicly. He remembered a game they’d played in gym class in elementary school when he was a kid. In his memory, they’d played it every day. Scramble. A line was drawn in the middle of the gym floor—half the class on one side, half the class on the other, half a dozen basketballs tossed around randomly—and the children on one side of the line were instructed to throw the balls at the children on the other side of the line. When you were hit, you were out. You went to sit on the bench.
    As a child, Tony had been strong and quick, but not the strongest and quickest. Although he was often one