Visible Empire by Hannah Pittard

Author:Hannah Pittard [Hannah Pittard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780544748989
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2018-06-05T04:00:00+00:00

Lily

When the phone rang on the morning of June 23, which was a Saturday, Lily Tucker was already awake but still in bed. She’d been talking aloud again.

Lately, at odd moments, as if coming to from a stupor, she found herself addressing the baby. She would stop herself immediately, midsentence if necessary, troubled by her motivation to converse with an unborn child. More disconcerting still was the fact that what she invariably discovered herself talking about—who she discovered herself talking about—was Robert. Just now, for instance, with the phone’s initial ring, she’d been describing to the baby—unwittingly!—Robert’s face, its high cheekbones, the devilish hints of a smile that seemed always to lurk in their steep shadows. “It is a fine jawline,” she had been saying. “A very fine jawline and you’ll see—” But here the phone had rung and she’d caught herself—she’d come to, as it were—and she’d stopped before she could embarrass herself by saying more.

The ringing was coming from the kitchen; she’d had every other extension in the house disconnected. Lily rubbed her belly and listened. After ten rings it went silent.

Not even eight in the morning, and already the sun hit the windows above her bed with a bright orange glare. Birds somewhere high were chirp-chirp-chirping their approval of the day’s beginning. She felt immediately lonely. She rolled onto her side. The baby kicked; the phone rang again. She made no fast move to answer it. In her condition, there were no fast moves. Instead there existed slow, decisive gestures that occurred only after she’d thought them through ahead of time, which was what she did now, just as the phone stopped ringing for a second time: And now I will roll onto my back. And after that I will bend my knees as best I can. And after that I will slide my bare feet across the sheet ever so slowly until my toes have reached the edge of the bed. And after that I will sigh. And after that I will inch my lower back toward my heels. And after that I will push up onto my forearms and, first left foot and then right, I will make contact with the floor and—finally—I will stand.

On her feet at last, with one hand under her stomach and the other on the arm of the sofa for stability, the phone began ringing for a third time.

As she made her way to the kitchen, she tried to recall the loneliness she’d experienced only seconds before, but already its intensity was floating away because already she was thinking about Piedmont, the young Negro who had been staying in her guesthouse for nearly one week now.

By the time the phone started ringing for a fourth time, she was standing in front of the icebox feeling queasy. She’d nearly forgotten about the telephone and that its high-pitch cry was what had called her to the kitchen in the first place.

There were a million pieces of news she might have been prepared for or could have guessed at, if she’d wanted, as she picked up the receiver.

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