Awayland by Ramona Ausubel

Author:Ramona Ausubel
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-03-06T05:00:00+00:00

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EACH MORNING of that week, Kit gets up before it is light and makes eggs. He puts plenty of butter on his toast and he looks out the window at the place where the neighbor man slipped off the earth. If only that hadn’t happened, he thinks, his girl would not have begun to die. As if death were pollen, airborne. He disagrees with her diagnosis, with the idea that she can suddenly be dying of nothing in particular, but Kit believes Summer. That’s the whole thing of it—believing each other is what makes living feel real. If he were to question it, to question her—he can’t even think down that perilous path before his valves tighten.

He goes upstairs where his love sleeps on, the blanket pulled up to her chin, hair reaching out like sun-seeking vines. If the neighbor man had stayed on his roof, finished his beer, mended the hole he’d climbed there for, maybe the trillions of cells in Summer’s young body would have continued their perfect, coordinated churn. Blood rivering through her, oxygen. The papery folds of lungs, globes of organs. “Forget everything you’ve seen,” Kit whispers to his sleeping love. “You are perfect.”

It becomes the method. Tell Summer’s body over and again how good it is, how healthy, how undying. Summer thinks it’s sweet, how her boy lies to her guts, her thrumming heart. As if lying can make it true. Summer gets in the shower and Kit pulls the curtain back to watch, says, “God, you are beautiful. And so healthy right now.” She makes a pot of beans and Kit says, “Look at that strong body of yours. Keep cooking.” He buys her lots of ingredients and makes requests for complicated dishes, which she executes perfectly. Evidence of how strong she must be, how present tense, how very here. It feels good. It’s a help. But they can only eat so much, and soon, when Kit comes home from work and stands in the refrigerator’s glow, he is looking at a wall of leftovers. Half a cake, half a pie, half a roast duck, a leg of lamb, homemade cheeses. Ants have discovered the bread loaves on the counter, poured their thankful black bodies across the crust.

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