There's Going to Be Trouble by Jen Silverman

Author:Jen Silverman [Silverman, Jen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2024-04-09T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

*

It was deep in the airless space between night and late night when Charles walked Minnow home. The streets were cold and empty and the city hung loose around her. She had realized a few times throughout the long day and night that she was happy, although it wasn’t a thought she was used to having, and every time she had it, she was unsure what to do with it. They walked side by side, Charles’s shoulder occasionally brushing against hers. Desire moved in her, tidal. She had to break the silence, it was becoming dangerous, a space inside which the possibility of touch increased itself.

“Are you an only child?”

“No, two brothers.” Charles smiled. “Both lawyers, like my father.”

“Very impressive.”

“Oh, completely. I am, of course, the disappointment. Perhaps you guessed.”

Minnow shook her head, surprised. “No,” she said. Nothing about Charles—the way he moved through the university, the way he was adored—smelled of disappointment.

“And you,” Charles asked. “Brothers, sisters?”

“It was always just me and my dad.”

“Did your mother pass away?”

The narrow street widened into a small plaza. A church with heavy columns sat back in an apron of shadow; Minnow caught the shapes of men sleeping on the steps.

“She left my father right after I was born. I mean, she wrote to us sometimes, but…that kind of petered out.”

“And your father, did he stay in touch with her?”

“I don’t think so, no. She was always on the move. I’m not sure he would’ve known how to reach her, even if we’d really needed to.” Minnow remembered finding a thin stack of postcards rubber-banded together, one of the summers that she was back from college. What had struck her most was how unremarkable the messages were. “Best wishes from Alaska,” her mother had written on one, and no more. On another she’d written a sentence about lying in the back of a VW bug and seeing the stars at night; the postmark on this was Montana. In the third she’d written, “Happy birthday to my big girl,” postmarked Oklahoma. In the fourth was a message to Christopher: “Keen,” she had written, “melancholy tonight. Give our girl a kiss.” The last postcard had shown a stream with salmon leaping, grizzly bears standing haunch-deep in the water, Yosemite emblazoned across the pastoral scene. On the back, she had simply signed her name.

“It’s sad,” Charles said softly. She hadn’t realized how close to her he was, but the backs of his fingers slid against hers. She didn’t pull away.

“Is it?”

“Of course it is. No?” His eyes searched her face.

“I guess it is,” Minnow said, “but I’m not sad. I mean, I didn’t know her.”

“She’s your mother,” Charles suggested delicately, not as if he were correcting her—which she would have bristled at—but as if he were offering her a claim that she wasn’t taking for herself.

“My dad—he was always…enough. He was all the parent I could want.”

“You’re very close?”

“Yes.” And then Minnow amended: “We were.” Regret rose in her as soon as she said the words, and she corrected herself, defensively, deceitfully: “We are.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.