The Physics of Imaginary Objects (Pitt Drue Heinz Lit Prize) by Tina May Hall Read Free Book Online Page B

stockbroker.” First Daughter throws her wool mitten into the fireplace to see the yellow smoke. She loves things for the colors they burn. Mother says, “What is that smell?” Grandmother's ghost flies shrieking up the chimney. Second Daughter wonders if the dead can get stuck in small places, and Only Son screams because he is growing older. Father touches the swan's wing with the brown tip of his finger and imagines holding a grape in his cheek, not biting it, just feeling its roundness.
     
    First Daughter wishes she could burn everything. First Daughter wishes she could set her whole body on fire.
     
    Mother says, “When the wind howls like that it means snow.” Father pinches the swan's beak so it opens and closes as if repeating Mother's words. Mother and Father both think of the garden and the tender asparagus, which sells for two dollars a bunch. Later, they will have to cover everything in burlap, as if pulling the covers up over their children. Mother remembers her own mother sitting by her bed on fever nights. Mother remembers planning her trousseau, remembers begging for the white silk nightgown, now yellow as an egg yolk in the upstairs closet. Second Daughter points to the window where the flashlight shines. Everyone looks at the window. Mother says, “My, the moon is bright tonight.” Only Son screams. He can't remember what moon is, but he thinks it means winter.
     
    Second Daughter imagines all the things that could be circling her house with a flashlight. She remembers stories from school of children being cut up and left in the forest. She remembers the wolves and bears and the abused boys who grow up to torture people found via classified ads. Mother says, “Nonsense, that light is too white to be the moon.” Father's brown fingers crush the swan's long throat. The grapes wither a little in their porcelain bowl, roll closer to each other for comfort.
     
    Second Daughter opens the door, and a wind rushes in that is not grandmother's ghost. The light moves away from the window and is lost in the shrubbery. Only Son screams because he knows someday he will sit alone in this same room, hungry and cold. Mother says, “Perhaps he will be a dictator.” Father feeds him a grape. First Daughter holds one finger over the fire and then her whole hand. The swan closes its one yellow eye and tries to remember life before dinner. Father sings a lullaby about three thieves and a serial killer. Mother says, “I believe I am getting a chill.” Mother says, “No one buys the cow when they can get the milk for free.” Only Son moans, and Mother gives him a knife to teethe on. Mother says, “You'll thank me for this later.”
     
    Second Daughter walks outside where everything smells like a ghost. She leaves without her red cloak, without her father's ax, without breadcrumbs for the path home. She has only her proud virginity that clangs like a bell, her will to escape like an egg slipping free, and her curiosity, that strange puss, the part of her brain that claws toward the dark. In the night, in the black fringe of the forest, she could be anyone. She could be the witch sipping boy-blood, the doctor scraping lichen for his collection, the girl who runs and runs and runs.
     

Gravetending
     
    He was a willful child, brown and plump as a loaf of bread, and was left on their doorstep in the middle of the night. When she heard the wailing, Glynnis poked Frank with the crookhandled cane she kept under the bed for burglars. Brother and sister slept in two single beds with white sheets, plain as nuns' beds, the only adornment in the room a chipped red cabinet someone had brought back from China a long time ago. “You hear that?” she asked, thinking it was probably a rabbit caught in a trap or a cat yowling. When Frank came back holding the baby wrapped in the denim workshirt, it was as if the room cracked open from the heat of the infant's angry forehead.
     
    There was no note, nothing except the