Health + Youth

“Could there have been a worse signal to the evil eye? Baby Alive? And what now? She could not take it home but she could not leave it here. She couldn’t turn it off but she couldn’t bear to see its empty mouth move and move. Maybe the TSA would find it in her suitcase and blow it up. She got to take her darling home all those years ago, and yes, she would dote on the new baby but only because the baby would be a pinhole camera through which to look at her love for her daughter, the near total eclipse, the blinding event. She wanted to buy everything, the jelly jars and the Pez dispensers, the never-played-with board games with the clicking spinners that told you how far to go and the cards that told you what you had to give up.

“‘I’ll take her,” Thea said. “Who else have you got?’”
—Elizabeth McCracken, “A Walk-Through Human Heart”

“He hears Cassandra’s breath, her creaking harness. The primitive croaking of a moorland bird that has never apprehended music. Water seeping from every surface, oozing and dripping and trickling, and a gurgling like the laughter of small children setting nutshells to sail and watching them bob and founder. Grasses sighing, and beetles and worms crawling among the stems and burrowing down between them. Roots pushing into the thin soil and sliding around pebbles and rocks and seams and veins, knotting them in place, hoarding them, hiding them.”
—Jo Lloyd, “The Earth, Thy Great Exchequer, Ready Lies”

“Bren pulled away. ‘Who do you think she’s talking to?’ She was rubbing Reuben through his gray wool trousers the same slow way she’d been kissing him.

“His hands were under her skirt, rubbing her through her underwear, which felt like lacy Braille stretched over warm moss. ‘I think they have check-in policies. Like, I’m here. If you don’t hear from me again in an hour, call the cops.’

“Bren inhaled sharply; he was touching her just right. ‘Probably not the cops.’

“‘Okay, not the cops.’”
—Tom Bissel, “Creative Types”

“NELL DUVALL: She says, ‘Mr. Duvall, one thing I’ve learned in this world is that some folks make the mess and some folks clean it.’”
—Lucas Schaefer, “An Oral History of the Next Battle of the Sexes”

“Juan Martín said, ‘Your cousin is irresponsible, bringing us all the way out here where no cars ever pass, without even making sure this wreck ran well.’

“’How do you know she hasn’t had the car serviced?’ I asked him, furious, and it occurred to me that it would be easy to kill him right there; I could get a screwdriver from the trunk and stab it into his neck. I knew that he didn’t want to kill me—he just wanted to treat me badly and break me so that I’d hate my life and wouldn’t even have the guts to change it. He started to turn on the radio, and I almost stopped him because we had to conserve the battery, but then I let him do it. I was enjoying his ignorance; how I was going to relish it when the tow truck came and he had to explain that he’d used up the battery looking for who knows what on the radio around there at night? Chamamé and more chamamé, and some lonely people who called in and cried, remembering their children who had died in the Malvinas.

“The rescue mechanics arrived an hour later. As I’d predicted, they chastened Juan Martín for having the radio on. He sputtered excuses. The mechanics got to work, and Juan Martín acted like he was supervising them. I got out and took Natalia’s hand.”
—Mariana Enríquez

“Bridget was stunned and a little irritated. She was used to a constant exchange of friends and lovers, and the idea that one of these relationships might be considered permanent struck her as inconsiderate. It went against the way they were all trying to live: stepping lightly on this earth, skirting the folly of human certainty. That night, she and Angela went out for drinks. They sat in an outdoor courtyard eating tiny meatballs and cockles in tomato sauce. Angela’s blond brain nestled against her neck. She and Bridget had once showered together, had swum naked together at a beach in Stiges. Angela’s flesh was so pale that if you pressed a finger to her thigh the skin blushed dark pink, as if embarrassed by the touch. Now she was drinking cheap Rioja, her teeth turning purple. ‘I’m going to enroll in an education program and get certified to teach kindergarten,’ she was saying. ‘Hans will work with my father once his paperwork is settled. The business is very secure. Like my father always says, empires may rise and fall but people still need lightbulbs.’”
—Alix Ohlin