I nursed a lamb when I was eight or nine. Its mother had forsaken her, and Dad, sensing a good learning opportunity, tasked me with feeding her every morning. She had watery eyes with dark, horizontal irises; a wet, pink nose; and kinky, brown wool that felt fantastic against my cheek. We called her Rosie.

It didn’t take Rosie long to recognize me; she’d watch me step off the back porch and onto the path, bottle in hand, kicking stones while I ambled down the slight slope of our yard and into a copse of willows. The branches hung slack over the shed, and when I pushed through them all, there was Rosie waiting for me in the brier, face butt against the paddock fence, pink tongue wild on the peeling slats. I held her bottle in one hand while I picked the thorns from her wool with the other. Rosie always sucked her bottle with ardor, but her mother was shifty and seemed to wish me dead.

What was she suspicious of? And what sort of mother could renounce her own flesh?

Dad was savvy, though, and one misty morning, he placed his hand on my shoulder and asked if Rosie was eating well.

“Yes,” I said.

He handed me a second bottle, still warm from the stove. “She’s a thirsty one,” he said. “Maybe this one will fatten her up.”

And that’s when I realized Rosie was a runt. I asked him why she was so small, and he said that she was sick, that’s why her mother abandoned her. “She’d starve if you weren’t feeding her,” he added.

Rosie sucked the second bottle dry. I popped it from her mouth, then gave her my milk-less pinkie. I liked the feeling of her rough tongue on my skin, how the solid ridges on the roof of her mouth cradled my finger. I asked Dad if that was why Rosie’s mom hated us, because we fed her, but Dad explained that hate was a human emotion. “We don’t know if sheep feel hate,” he added. “Probably never will.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure she hates me,” I said.

“Or maybe she’s just confused why we want to keep Rosie alive.”

I told Dad that it was because we loved her—surely sheep know love!—but he said that love was also a human emotion, animals are driven by instinct, not emotion. “Yes, you feed it because you love it and want it to live,” Dad said, “but a mother acts for the good of the flock.”

Rosie died three days later. I found her deep in the paddock, my little pile of brown nesting in the lush grass. I cradled her head in my lap, but she didn’t even twitch. Oooh! Poor, poor Rosie! Dad burned her on the brush pile. She sizzled and popped a fragrant scent, her sparks jumping high into the night sky, higher even, fat fused with stars. The flock watched from a distance, flames glinting off their icy eyes.

Dad wrapped his arms around me when I stepped off the train. His lines were still solid; he wouldn’t be dissolving anytime soon.

“Good to see you,” he said, patting my back.

“You too,” I said.

We drove from Elkhart to Goshen, making chitchat, and when we pulled into the drive, he pressed the garage door opener and perfectly slipped the truck into the garage. God, it was good to be home! I stacked my luggage in the foyer, and after Mom pulled a rhubarb crunch from the oven, she hugged me, told me that she was glad I’d come to stay for a bit. And then she mentioned that she’d seen Lizzie the other day at the co-op—she was buying honey—and told her that I was coming up.

“Why’d you tell her that?” I said.

“Well, I don’t know,” Mom said. “I thought she’d want to know.”

I rolled my eyes, told Mom there was no chance of us getting back together—how many times had we had this conversation?—and, frankly, I didn’t want to see her.

Mom pushed the spatula through the hot rhubarb and plopped a big serving onto my plate. “But what if she wanted to see you?”

“Did she actually say that?”

“You want ice cream?” Mom said. “Duane, get him some coffee.”

Dad poured out some coffee, handed me a cup. “She didn’t actually say that,” Dad said. “I was there.”

Mom threw her dishrag into the sink and put her hand on her hip. “Oh, so you think you know everything?”

Dad grinned and pulled the ice cream from the freezer.

“Lizzie didn’t have to say it for me to know,” Mom explained, pushing a serving of rhubarb crunch across the table. I stabbed a chunk, brought it to my mouth, but it burnt my lips.

Dad looked at Mom. “Tell Jake what she really said.”

I scooped out a dollop of ice cream and plopped it onto the hot rhubarb. It melted, and I twirled the creamy white strands into the oatmeal and brown sugar topping until the whole thing cooled.

“Lizzie said that she hoped your train derailed,” Mom said at last.

I laughed. “She did?”

“I really don’t think she meant it, though,” Mom said. “You know how you say things when you’re angry, things you don’t mean? Things you later regret?”

I looked at the shelf above the sink; Mom still had the picture of Hannah and me there, the one Lizzie took years ago of us in the pool, Hannah triumphant, sitting on my shoulders, while I gurn at the swirling waters rising round my neck.

When Mom caught sight of me staring at the photo, she gently placed it face down. “We miss her, too,” she was saying, patting her warm hand on mine.

Lizzie had insisted we give hypnobirthing a try. I was skeptical: Just let the doctors take care of that and we’ll be fine, why mess up a tried-and-true process? But Lizzie promptly reminded me that she was the one lugging the little monster around.

“It’s my pregnancy, not yours,” she added, “and if I ever hear you utter the words We’re pregnant, I’ll rip you a cunt. How’d you like that?”

I never said it, and I still admonish the soft NPR men who do.

Freya, Lizzie’s midwife and certified hypnobirther, was a tall woman with knobby knees, lanky arms, and yellow fingernails. She had a dark mole on her sunken chin, one that seized your eyes and hijacked your stare; she said it wasn’t cancerous, but I wasn’t so sure. She draped her neck with beads—bone beads, she called them, from real bulls and painted by yours truly!—and tied her gray dreadlocks into high, tight loops, a turbulent nimbus suspended above her head. But, for all her frantic energy, her green eyes were serene. I avoided those eyes; she always seemed to be looking just a little beyond and around me, not at me, which gave me the willies. Later, she told me that my aura was tan while Lizzie’s was red. “And isn’t that an interesting combination?” she added, gazing down into my eyes. I shrugged, unsure of what to say, but I’ll give her this: It was the only time she acknowledged anything beyond my potentiality at dadness.

Freya went over the basics during our first appointment. Did we know how lambs were made?

I took a swift glance at Lizzie’s swollen abdomen. Yes, in fact, we did.

Are you planning to share the bed with your little lamb?

“Yes, I am,” Lizzie said.

Freya gave Lizzie a gentle smile, patting her belly, then told me not to worry about my incompetence.

“I think I’m very capable,” I said.

“Because that’s a normal feeling when you’re the lesser parent,” Freya said.

Lizzie, God bless her, assured Freya that I’d a be good father, that she wouldn’t have married me if she hadn’t been sure.

Freya turned her gaze to Lizzie. “But you’re the greater,” Freya said, “and when your little lamb nurses, you might flush and tingle with delight.”

Oh, holy hell! Was she ever full of shit.

“It’s called orgasm,” Freya said, smiling at me, the failed mailman of orgasm delivery, “and it’s a wonderful thing.” She added that orgasmic responses to nursing were quite natural, happens to lots of women, actually. “Especially when their sacral chakras are as physically attuned as mine,” she said, adjusting her dreads. “It’s nothing to be frightened of.”

I assured her that I was not frightened.

*

At our next meeting, Freya explained the progression of hypnobirthing. You start at ten, she told us, tightening all your muscles, and then, counting backwards, relax yourself in increments:

Nine, eight, seven.

You feel the relaxation overcoming you?

Six. Five.

That’s it, I see it; you’re getting calmer. It’s there, evident in your face. In your eyelids, too, which want to close. Go ahead now. Close them, that’s right.

Four, three, two, one.

Don’t forget the centering breaths, those nice deep breaths, that’s right. Let your breathing bring you back.

And zero.

Now you’re completely calm, in a state of total relaxation. Notice your thoughts, then watch them pass. They’re not you, and you’re not them. You’ve got nothing to do with them. They arise and then they fall. Focus on your breath. That’s right, good. Good breath. And when the oceanic contractions come, stay at zero. That’s it. That’s good, you’re getting the hang of it.

Freya said that my job was helping Mommy with her visioning. “Imagine water, the source of all life, as blue satin ribbons,” she said.

Christ. Such bullshit.

“Stroking her arm will help her stay focused during her travails,” Freya added, brushing her cool fingers up and down my forearm. “But remember, contractions are tidal, like your breath.”

But how, exactly, would caressing Lizzie’s arm help her expel our child in a less painful and even joyous manner? This coming from a woman who casually mentioned that she orgasmed often when she nursed her own wee bairn.

And that was precisely my problem, Lizzie told me later, I was only thinking of me.

I put the kettle on, and when the water boiled, I turned off the gas and poured the hot water over Lizzie’s chamomile tea bag. I plopped in an ice cube, just like she liked it, then stirred in a bit of honey and put the cup on a saucer. I made myself some Nescafé.

Lizzie sipped her tea, then smoothed her hair. “I need complete buy-in,” she said finally.

I held the coffee to my mouth, letting the hot liquid wash over my dry lips before taking a sip. I told her that I’d bought in, bought in completely, in fact; hypnobirthing is a fantastic idea, anything for you, my love.

“I want to believe you,” she said, “but your eyes are dim.” And there it was, that favorite phrase of hers—your eyes are dim, she’d say, open them until I see your insides.

But that was when we thought it possible to see inside someone in a meaningful way. I stared at the ceiling; there was a crack in the plaster, and it seemed to be growing longer, a flatlined cardiogram. The foundation must be settling, I thought, maybe I should call the landlord. Or maybe I could fix it myself.

Lizzie followed my gaze, then put her hand on mine, warm from her tea. I liked her toasty skin on mine, but she removed it quickly, and where it had been just moments before was cold as a shadow. “The ceiling won’t fall in,” she said at last. “You worry too much.”

I took a few swallows of coffee, then put my mug on the side table. “I want to keep you safe.”

Lizzie placed my hand just below her waistband. “Then I need buy in.” And there it was, a wriggling foot pressed hard against her abdomen. I wanted to squeeze the little toes one by one, but Lizzie’s skin was in the way. My eyes filled with tears, and I lifted my head to keep them from surging down my cheek. I stared at the crack, and I knew that I’d never be able to fix a crack like that, no way in hell. I’d have to call a professional.

*

Lizzie fired me as her hypnobirthing coach soon after she went into labor. We’d set up a birthing space below our faulty ceiling, and when Freya arrived, Lizzie was at eight centimeters.

“Is Mama doing well?” she asked.

I said that she was.

“And is Daddy helping her stay at zero?”

I pushed my hypnobirthing guide under the birthing blanket and said that I was.

“Don’t believe him,” Lizzie said.

“You need to do your job,” Freya chided. “I’ll be back.”

Where the hell was she going? She’d just arrived, and we were paying her a shitload of money. I thought about grabbing the hypnobirthing manual, but I left it where it was—it was too late for the book, I hadn’t done my homework, and now it would be painfully clear. But I did remember the blue satin ribbons—there was that!—so I leaned close to Lizzie’s ear and helped her count down.

Ten. Nine.

Lizzie clenched, then relaxed. I took her hand.

Eight. Seven.

You feel the relaxation coming over you?

Six. Five.

Now close your eyelids.

Four and three. Two.

Don’t forget to center your breath. And when I got to zero, I stroked her arm and told her to imagine watery ribbons lifting her from all of this, keeping the pain far away. I stroked up toward her elbow with the pads of my fingers, then down to her wrist with my fingernails. You’re floating, I told her, floating away. Thank God I’d remembered to trim my nails. Lizzie clenched again. I stroked faster, a bit panicked. The blue satin ribbons are here for you, I told her, trying to cover my unbelief. Imagine the blue satin ribbons. Float away, float far away. Float away on the water.

Lizzie dug her fingernails into my arm. “I’m picturing that blue ribbon wrapped around your neck.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what to say.”

She clenched her teeth. “Say something you mean.”

I reached under the blanket, but where was the manual? It was there just a moment ago. Lizzie grunted.

“Ten,” I said, commencing another countdown. We should have done this in the hospital, this was a dumb idea. I should have insisted, should have trusted my instincts. We can’t do this, we simply can’t. We’re not professionals, can’t you see?

Lizzie groaned.

“Nine,” I said, wiping her forehead. Ice! Why didn’t we have ice? Freya said ice was nice. Chipped ice, very good. That was it! We needed ice, a whole garbage bag of it.

“Ohmygod,” Lizzie said.

“Eight,” I said. “Let the tension go.”

Freya bounded into the room, smelling like cannabis but holding a bag of ice, which she shoved into my arms. “She’s coming fast!” She nudged me aside with her thigh. “Move it, Daddy.”

I stood there, the idiot with the sad sack of melting ice, and watched a head emerge from the swollen gap between Lizzie’s thighs. And then a face, shoulders, and legs. Little perfect toes. It happened so quickly. I dropped the ice, and suddenly my blue girl lay there, her furry legs twitching, her arms flailing for the water she’d swam in for months. I severed her from Lizzie, and out came the placenta. Hannah took her first breath, and her blue skin turned pink. It was all downhill from here, though, every breath closer to our last, every heartbeat heaving us to our final port of call. And behind all our bluster and big ideas is the simple fear of return, so we fill our time with nothing and try to sculpt it into sense and significance, to make the long lies worth living. But my throat tightened when I touched the soft webbing between Hannah’s thumb and forefinger, the spot I kissed every night. I tried to swallow the lump, but the sob was quick from my mouth. Lizzie asked if I wanted to hold her, and suddenly Hannah’s head was resting in the crook of my elbow, her weight all on me. I was a dad now, this defenseless little creature mine. What was I supposed to feel? Hannah’s lips pursed, then flattened, her chest rising up and down, and I found myself synching my breath with hers. She was warm, a portable heater, better than a cat. I looked at Lizzie, and she smiled at me and said here’s your girl, Daddy, don’t cry, here she is, and I saw something fantastic in Lizzie’s eyes, something I’d never seen before, an unexpected awareness that we were capable of such beautiful acts. Of creating life. Of sucking in the vapor through which we live and move and find our being. Lizzie’s eyes acknowledged love.

But heaven only makes sense with hell, and beautiful acts are littered with pitfalls. How had we become so selfish? Your child is colicky, her mother prone to mastitis. And you, trying to write a paper on Proust but in charge of walking the beast till she calms, you wonder if she’s returnable, if there’s a depository of some sort for buyer’s remorse.

“It’s called an orphanage,” Lizzie said from the couch. She was drinking tea with an ice pack on her swollen breast, her nipple a red floret of cauliflower. I asked her if she wanted something to eat, a sandwich, maybe? A bowl of fruit? We have some fresh strawberries. Maybe some sliced peaches?

She peered above her book. “I’ve got to study while she sleeps, or this won’t ever get done.”

I had to study, too, but first I made myself a sandwich, brewed some coffee, then sat at the wooden table we purchased for eight dollars at a garage sale. The soft pine top had deep grooves in its surface, ghostly impressions from previous owners. There was rigid cursive and an outline of a house with what looked like a boulder crashing through its roof. There was a smiley face, a frowny face, and, when the morning sun hit the table, a long division problem with the wrong answer and block print letters underneath: WHY AM I ALWAYS WRONG? I nibbled at my sandwich and flipped through Swann’s Way until Hannah started screaming.

“Your turn,” Lizzie said. “There’s milk in the fridge, just warm it up, okay?”

I shoved the rest of my sandwich into my mouth, pushed my chair out, and poured out some coffee.

“Are you going to get her?”

I swallowed, but the bread stuck in my throat. I coughed it into the sink. “Got it,” I said. I took the glass bottle from the fridge and stuck it in the microwave.

“Don’t overheat it,” she said.

I told her that I wouldn’t and pulled it out after fifteen seconds.

“Be sure to test it.”

“I thought you needed to study,” I said.

“You’ll burn Hannah’s mouth if you’re not careful.”

I told her that I wasn’t an idiot, then splashed a few drops of milk on my wrist. It was tepid, ten more seconds. I licked the drops off my wrist. Lizzie’s milk was sweet; I’d tasted it fresh from the source, of course, and Hannah was lucky that her every meal was what Moses only dreamed of. The microwave beeped and the milk was perfect, perfect enough for my coffee, so I poured out a tablespoon and stirred, cafe au lait. Certainly didn’t need sugar.

“Are you going?”

“Don’t get up,” I said. “It’s ready.” I took the bottle back to our room, picked up the rascal, and shoved the nipple into her mouth. She was blissfully quiet, sucked once, twice, three times, then grimaced and started crying again. Milk dribbled onto her onesie.

Holy hell, why won’t you take a bottle from me? Is it that hard, you sweet little rascal? Oh now, don’t be so stubborn. I pressed the nipple against her closed lips. “It’s mama milk, only the best,” I whispered. “Trust me.” But Hannah wasn’t having me.

“You burned her,” Lizzie called out from the couch.

“I didn’t,” I said. “She simply won’t take the bottle.”

“Make it your tit,” Lizzie said. “Hold it at your chest and make it your tit.”

“That’s not going to work.”

“Do it,” Lizzie said. “I swear she’ll take it.”

I ripped off my shirt and adjusted the bottle, and Hannah drank as if she’d never drunk before. I stared at the threadbare carpet, at the worn and crumpled sheets on our bed, then sat down. Hannah’s perfect lips sucked Lizzie down and I wasn’t a part of it, not at all. I was simply a conjunction, the big and connecting these two girls. I tried to hold in my tears so Lizzie wouldn’t hear me, but my muffled, pathetic grunts came anyway. Why the failed start-ups on my chest? What’s with that?

“Are you having an orgasm?” Lizzie called out.

*

Little by little, Hannah’s colic metastasized in her heart and turned her into a monster. And though she was cute, we had no choice but to offer her up to the Gypsies. She was three, and we had just moved into a little ground floor apartment in Carmel. Lizzie had just started working at a law office on 7th Avenue, and I was doing some editing. Hannah was petulant, not letting Lizzie out the door, throwing a fit when Mama had to leave. She threw her plastic Winnie-the-Pooh plate of scrambled eggs onto the tile floor, and when the plate rolled to my foot, I kicked it under the table. Lizzie promised Hannah that she’d be back, that they’d go to the park when she got home, just the two of them, you’ll like that.

Hannah was grumpy. “No park!”

I laughed, because it was better than screaming, but then she pitched her Eeyore cup, splashing juice all over the table and bloodying Lizzie’s lip. Lizzie wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then dabbed her lip with a napkin. She was surprisingly calm, but I was getting angry. Instead of grabbing her arm, I put my coffee cup down, pushed my chair back, and retrieved the cordless phone from the coffee table in the living room. I asked Hannah if she’d ever heard of Gypsies.

“No,” she said.

“Gypsies are nice people with candy who travel around in fancy vans looking for children,” I said. “And do you know why they want little kids like you?”

Her eyes were hard, gray stones.

“Because they need helpers,” I said. I glanced at Lizzie, and she smiled at me, a good sign that I was doing the right thing.

“Helpers?”

“You know how I help Mama?”

Hannah nodded.

“Well, gypsies have big families and need extra helpers,” I said. “They go around looking for children to help them.”

“They take you, Papa,” she said. “You like helping.” She put her fork in her hair and twirled it. Christ. Another bath.

I told her that they wouldn’t come for me because they’d have to pay me.

“Money?”

“Yep,” I said, “but they don’t pay kids money.”

“It’s cheaper,” Lizzie said. I glanced at her—her lip had swollen.

“So, guess what?” I said.

Hannah dropped her fork, a lonely clatter on the floor.

“They’re coming by today, and Mama and I thought you’d be a good helper for them.”

Hannah tried to slink under the tray of her high chair, but the blue nylon strap held her in place.

“All I have to do is call them,” Lizzie said, grabbing the phone from my hand and punching in some numbers.

Hannah reached for the phone, but Lizzie twisted away.

“Hello? Is this the Gypsies?”

“No, Mama,” Hannah said, reaching for the phone.

“We have a little girl here who loves to work.”

Hannah began to cry. “No, Mama!” she wailed. “Nooo!”

“She’s strong and capable,” Lizzie said, “and yes, she picks up her toys.” Lizzie put the phone on the table and announced that they’d be here to pick her up in ten minutes. “And anyway, you’ll like them better than us.”

Hannah stretched her arms toward Lizzie. “Mama!” she said.

And then I broke and said that we’d never give you away, not in a thousand years, we love you too much, Missy. And when I unstrapped her, she went straight for the dish and the cup and held them up in her sticky fists.

“All better,” she said.

I swept her up and nuzzled my stubbled chin in her neck until she giggled. She was an elixir, all sour milk and flowers, a tonic from the gods, and her soggy kiss left a sparkling stripe of snot across my cheek.

They said the mycelium binds the forest into one. They said it’s like the Web, a whole network of interconnections, that each thread relays sustenance, in sickness and in health, to every tree. To every potential tree. They said the parent trees give themselves up for the greater good of the forest—altruism—and isn’t that interesting? They said the mycelial mat is everywhere, you’re standing on it now, and it’s holding you in place. And all those mushrooms? Consider them memorials.

That’s what I read on a wooden information plaque posted near the entry to Forestis Natura Burial Grounds and Crematorium, just a mile or so east of Goshen. I pushed the iron gate open and stepped into the woods. It was cool in the marbled shade, and as I went from tree to tree—mostly gnarled and holey oaks, but also stately maples and young cottonwoods—a crow flapped its way across the canopy, leaping from stark snags and leafy limbs, tracking my course, until I found Hannah’s stone under a dying ash. I read her dates—such a short and fleeting span—and stood there waiting to feel something, a tourist, perhaps, anticipating spectacle. The crow tucked its wings and dropped onto a low branch. It cawed, the corners of its gape pink, then tilted its head, gouging its blue eyes into mine. I quickly rubbed my thumb against the smooth surface of my locket before tucking it back into my T-shirt, Hannah’s toenails safe against my warm skin. The crow glided onto Hannah’s stone. Maybe we’d acted too hastily, I thought, the divorce merely the culmination of grief. Maybe we could have had another. But what use is conjecture? You can’t erase lousy parenting when your girl is dead. The crow hopped into the colony of mushrooms growing near Hannah’s stone. It picked a fat one with its skewbald beak, then threshed away, not quite hopping, not quite flying. I kicked the remaining mushrooms, a shrine to our ineptness, but they burst into thousands.

A chainsaw roared to life and echoed through the grove. I turned; in the distance, a shirtless guy in overalls was tidying up limbs hanging too close to stones and markers. The branches fell, one by one, and he nudged them with his boot into neat piles. He worked methodically, a no-nonsense type of guy who had a job to do, not missing a single unsightly branch. He came closer, cigarette between his lips, blond hair pulled into a tight ponytail. He seemed settled in his calling, happy even, and I envied him. He jumped when he saw me, suprised, I was sure, by his sudden guest.

He tossed his cigarette in the grass and killed the saw. “Sorry about the noise,” he said. A lazy draft of smoke lifted and disappeared. He had a stray eye. “Cemetery work’s usually pretty quiet.”

“It’s okay,” I said.

“If I’d seen you, I’d have used my handsaw,” he added.

“It’s really okay,” I said again.

He glanced at Hannah’s stone. “She a relative?”

“Daughter.”

He winced, then lit another cigarette. Took a big drag and exhaled slowly. Held his cigarette at his side. “I can’t even imagine,” he said at last. And then he began to cry, the smoke snaking up his tattooed arm. I glanced around; there was no one but us, yet I was embarrassed for this guy, what was I supposed to do? I reached for his shoulder, and he leaned into me, his shiny hair brushing against the useless pocket sewn into my T-shirt. I told him that he’d be okay, did he want some water? He sniffed and said no, thanks for the offer, which was good because I didn’t have any water. He straightened himself up and apologized for making an ass of himself.

“We all do it,” I said, not sure which eye to look at. “I am, in fact, a professional.”

He wiped his face on his sleeve and laughed. “Man, these stones eat at you after a while, especially the ones with the narrow dates,” he said. He blew snot rockets onto the grass. “That’s not fair at all.”

I agreed, it wasn’t fair at all. He dropped his chainsaw and extended his hand. He was Theo, twenty-seven years old and married to his middle school sweetheart—Lisa was her name. He had a girl going on first grade, a six-year-old named Lily, and he’d been working at the cemetery since he graduated from Goshen High, and aren’t little girls the best? I said that yes, they were, even when they’re brats. He slapped my back. “Don’t I know it,” he said, and I asked him if they planned on having more kids. He looked away.

“No,” he finally said. “She got the cancer, and the doctors took the uterus right out, wasn’t able to have kids no more, so they just had to spoil the God-sent one, our Lily angel.” And he was fine with that, he really was. “But my mom? Now she’s another story,” Theo added. “She’s always pushing us to adopt, but I honestly don’t know if there’s room enough in my heart for another one.” He laughed. “A heart can only handle so much love, you know?”

He asked if I had more kids, and I blinked away the unwelcome tears, swallowed the suckers down. “We never got around to it,” I said. Hannah’s toenails grew heavy around my neck, dowsing for home.

“Divorced?”

“She thought it was my fault.”

He shook his head and stared at his chainsaw with his good eye, though I felt his stray eye on my shoe. “Nothing like death to kill the love,” he said at last. The wind picked up and tousled his bangs, and the sun slipped behind a cloud, reappearing moments later. We watched the cloud shadow race across the cemetery sward.

Theo put his hand on the chainsaw’s pull. “Got to get to work,” he said, tapping his saw on Hannah’s stone. “But don’t you worry, I’ll keep my good eye on her.”

I found Anna floating on her back in the shallow fountain in front of the Ad building at the college. The water was green, and Anna was streaked with mud. She sat up and told me that she never enjoyed coming out of that drain, those old pipes are too narrow for this old Weibsbild. I peered at the drain; it didn’t look any different than any other drain. The fountain—“Presented by the Adelphian Literary Society May 16, 1904,” according to the engraving—looked like a three-tiered birdbath, and around the lower basin were three bronze birds, sculpted in an Arts and Crafts manner, standing in reeds and cattails. I couldn’t tell if the birds were herons, cranes, or something else altogether.

Anna stood and wrung out her shirt, then added fresh saline to her Vanquishers. “You ready?”

“More ready than you,” I said. “You smell like a sewer.”

Anna pulled a bundle from her cape, and I helped her out of the fountain. “Dry clothes,” she said. “Just need a place to change, I’ll meet you over there.” She walked off, leaving a trail of wet footprints, but they quickly dissolved into the hot sidewalk as if she never existed.

Anna wanted me to hear Milton Lapp read—it will get you out of your head, she told me—but I regretted saying yes. It’s not that I’m against readings, per se; I simply don’t have the fortitude to deal with the inevitable bouts of jealousy that pummel me during particularly good readings. One moment you’re enjoying yourself, and then—what was that?—you lean forward, intrigued with a perfectly timed phrase. The bile begins its tidal push into your throat, but you try to ignore it because you’re happy for the writer, simply delighted to bask in his warm glow. And then you hear his confident word play. Oooh! How did he do that? And then you’re drowning, and you look for something, anything, to make the writer human again, to bring him down to your level. Maybe you think he should have crafted another scene, which would have made the whole denouement earned. Or dialogue: Why so much of it? Couldn’t you simply summarize most of it? Or how about that theme, buddy? You really want to write about loss, that derivative crap of fiction workshops everywhere? Besides, do we really need another story about suffering? Probably not. But then you realize that your criticisms are stupid nitpicks and you’re just an envious fool. Christ! Shame is exponential and you’re humiliated. You should accept your lowly position on the ladder with gratitude and thanksgiving. Because at least you’re on the ladder—you have an M.A. in English. So, you take a different tact and tell yourself that a reading doesn’t have to fill you with envy, that perhaps this sheep farmer named Milton Lapp is a great guy, that he simply wants what we all want, a hearty well done and a side shoulder hug, anything to let him know that the hours and years he spent honing his story was worth it. Yes, I would be fine; I could do his reading, even be happy for him. I simply had to feel someone else for a change. After all, why not support a fellow writer? Maybe we become friends and drink some beers? Maybe he teaches me how to shear sheep? Maybe I meet his wife, share a cup of tea with her? Maybe sneak a smoke behind the barn with her, then make love to her in the bean field under the summer milkweed while the evening swifts twist above us? I wonder if she’s hot.

Readings are exhausting.

Anna was waiting at the Umble Center in a red dirndl—no mossy cape or T-shirt tonight—her hair pulled back into a tight, single braid that she’d knotted with a blue ribbon. She picked at the loose material covering her chest. “Agnes filled this out quite nicely,” Anna said, opening the door and motioning me in. “And Bung eyed her tits the whole time he held her under in the River Lech.”

The theater was full, but we found a few empty seats in the back, which was perfect: If the reading sucked, I could escape without making a scene. The house lights dimmed, and a spotlight illuminated a music stand and a wooden stool. There were movements from behind the curtains, and then a woman came out, introduced herself as the chair of the English department. We were in for a real treat, she told us. She had known Milt for quite a long time, ten years at least, and had seen his work take off after his stint at Warren Wilson in North Carolina. Milt, apparently, had published in The New England Review, Harper’s, Ploughshares, The New York Times (he wrote a “Modern Love” column I later discovered after a flurry of internet searches), and Image, among other places. “Milt has won a Bread Loaf fellowship and numerous awards, including a Pushcart,” the department chair added, “and his first book of stories, Lux Aeterna, won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize. Copies will be on sale in the back after the reading. His second book, an ethnographic novel-in-stories called Sheep in Heaven, explores”—and here the department chair referred to her notes and used air quotes—“the appearance of love on, of all the strange places, a Mennonite sheep farm, according to one New Yorker reviewer.” The department chair smiled broadly and welcomed Milton Lapp to the stage. People clapped heartily, and Milton beat his way through the heavy drapes. He was an impressively scrawny fellow sporting a scraggy beard and loose, khaki pants cinched tight with a hemp belt. He looked homeless, really, like a shunned Amish farmer the department chair found digging through a trash bin behind the cafeteria. Maybe she bribed him with a free dinner in exchange for a reading—here, we need someone to read this—and now here he was, in front of us all, blinking his heavy eyelids against the severe light.

And he had a tenor saxophone around his neck. I double-checked the exit.

“Hey,” he said. “I’m Milton Lapp, thanks for coming.”

“You’re welcome,” someone hollered out.

Milton laughed nervously, and I felt embarrassed for him; Lord knows I have enough shame of my own. “Where did they find this guy?” I whispered to Anna.

She adjusted her googles and told me to give him a chance.

“You might be wondering why I have this,” Milton said, tapping his sax, “that you didn’t come here for a sax concert or whatever.” He paused, and the room was silent. Had he hoped for a laugh? Well, this was one stingy crowd.

“But don’t worry,” he said, “you won’t hear much, just some phrases at the appointed time.” He smiled, and then someone laughed. I settled back into my chair and glanced down my row. People were rapt and at the edge of their seats. I sat up a bit: Maybe this Milton was someone special. The woman on the end of my row, though, with the sketchbook—she looked familiar. Where did I know her from? I looked again. Ah! My face flushed. It was Diana from Chicago. What was she doing here? I glanced at her again. Her curly hair sparkled in the light. She was watching Milton and moving her pencil across her sketchbook, no doubt creating a blind contour drawing, maybe something she’d later flesh with coffee grounds.

Milton took a drink of water and began reading. His prose was unadorned, in service to the story, a fable of a boy and the flock of sheep he had to take up to the fields behind the barn. It was a small flock, twenty sheep or so, but they were brutes to the shepherd boy. They kicked him and rammed him, they knocked him over and stomped his back. They ate his lunches and spilled his milk. And that was how the boy spent his days, in fear of sheep. Until the girl showed up. She set him straight, taught him how to keep his flock. Even after the shepherd boy lost six sheep—the wolves ate three, two ran into the forest, and one was butchered after it broke its leg in a cattle grate—the girl had faith in him, turned him into a man. The story went on and on. I glanced at Diana; she was still drawing, though she had slouched into her chair. I wished I could see her eyes. I checked my watch: twenty minutes left, but nobody else seemed antsy. My nails were chipped and grimy and my jeans were threadbare, soon I’d have a hole in the knee, where can I buy jeans here? Probably at the second-hand store downtown, which I should really check out. Not that it could compare to By-the-Sea Thrift.

I nearly flew out of my seat when Milton blew into his horn. His sound was big and brassy, like Coltrane, but as he began weaving notes together, a breathiness came through, light infused with air. He closed his eyes, and his playing gave me chills. I was ashamed that I had doubted him.

Anna leaned in and told me the tune was the Agnus Dei, from Fauré.

Diana closed her drawing pad and wiped her eyes, cheeks shining in the light. I leaned back in my seat, shut my eyes, and let the warmth of Milton’s saxophone wash over me. He was gifted. And then a new voice, a woman’s, rose through the music, softly at first, until Milton suddenly stopped, and I heard the woman sing alone: Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi dona eis requiem.

It was Lizzie’s voice, it had to be.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi dona eis requiem, the voice sang, sempiternam requiem. And then Lizzie walked onto the stage, held Milton’s hand, and finished singing the movement: Lux aeterna luceat eis, Domine cum sanctis tuis in aeternum, quia pius es. Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. The air left my lungs, and I slunk into my seat. What the hell was she doing here? Milton began to cry—wailed, in fact—weeping like he was the one who’d lost a child. Lizzie had to finish his reading, which didn’t take much longer, and then the audience stood and clapped. Lizzie kissed Milton’s mouth, and I left, crossed Main Street, and headed back to Mom and Dad’s. The night was cool. How did Milton end up with her? Probably her boobs, tits that inspired substandard Amish haiku:

                                                         green summer rainfall—

                                                               black sad sheep are uplifted

                                                               by your mighty breasts

Or this:

                                                      pert summertime tits

                                                     shelter sheep in sad shadows

                                                               —then am I at rest.

How would those sound in Latin, you jerk? Whatever, not my business.

I heard footsteps behind me, probably Anna’s. I wasn’t in the mood, not tonight, but thanks for dragging me here, you omniscient freak, you did this intentionally, knew that she’d be here, but I was better than that guy, most certainly did I have better qualities than him. And Hannah would agree! She would have laughed at this guy’s sax shtick, too, I’m positive of it. Memory was on my side. But I wasn’t really better than him, not at all. It was he who was the better writer, a good man who’d published widely, while I was the fraud, more in love with the idea of being a writer than actually sitting down to write. Christ, I hadn’t even written since leaving Santa Fe, and even there I really hadn't written much, just nitpicked sentences. That’s called editing, not writing. To write, I needed to tap into the generative green sap just under my bark, where Hannah resided. And that was the problem: I could write or honor Hannah, but I couldn’t make space for both: There just wasn’t room.

The footsteps sped up. “Jake, right?”

I stopped and turned to find Diana smiling at me. She was dressed in black yoga pants with a loose top embroidered in silver vines. She’d sewn tiny mirrors into the embroidery, and after a moment, I realized that the shirt resembled her coffee drawings. She flashed and flickered under the streetlight.

“Amazing reading, huh?”

“The sax was certainly a surprise.”

“He always does something artsy like that.” She fluffed her tight curls. “What are you doing here?”

I put my hand on my head, a nervous habit from my elementary school days, when the girls made fun of my cowlick. “My parents live here.”

She punched my arm. “You didn’t tell me you were from Goshen!”

I thought about explaining that I wasn’t really from here, that I grew up in a small farm town in Porter County, that Mom and Dad moved here right before I left for college, but I didn’t feel like talking, so I simply nodded. Diana told me that she taught at the college, studio art, drawing and painting mostly, but sometimes courses in environmental art. “That’s how I get by,” she added with a wink. “Let’s go out tonight.”

I told her that I was too tired—Maybe tomorrow? Sometime next week?—I really need to get some sleep, but she kicked a stone across the pavement. “It’ll be fun!” she said.

The Corn Crib, a bar on Main Street, was crammed with people. The space was airy and industrial—exposed brick walls missing lots of mortar; ductwork and rafters visible on the ceiling; polished concrete floor—and behind the stone bar was a wall of art, mostly color fields on big canvases. Opposite the wall of art were three big garage doors that opened to a large, side patio cordoned off with green bamboo growing in steel stock tanks. Candles flickered in the cool breeze on the metal tables, and a long-haired dj worked a mix behind his laptop, a Smiths song mashed with Radiohead, his face wan in the computer’s blue light.

We found an empty table outside and sat facing the opened doors.

“God, I hate those paintings,” Diana said, nodding at the canvases.

A waitress brought water and took our order.

“Why?”

“My ex made them.”

I looked at the bright paintings. I sort of liked them; they were vivid and had some depth, yet super smooth, almost glassy.

“They’re too impregnable, too hard,” she said. “And he used a roller! What sort of hack uses a roller on a canvas?”

“I probably would have,” I said.

The waitress brought Diana a flight of tequilas and a bowl of lime wedges. I sipped my beer, and Diana downed a shot and chomped a lime. She puckered and shook her head. “He even got a show in Chicago out of it.” She did another shot.

“Sounds like jealousy,” I said.

She slammed her glass on the table. “Ha!” she said, leaning across the table to tap my nose. “That’s where you’re wrong. He didn’t even try to get a show. Simple beginner’s luck.”

Diana got handsy the more she drank, not in an obscene way, but hangy, as if she were a painting in search of a sturdy wall. Her bronze cheeks turned red, and so did her ears. She pressed her ice water against her ear. “Hot ears are the worst,” she said, leaning into her chair and kicking off her sandal. She put her foot in my lap and wiggled her toes. “Do you think it’s hot out here?”

I was going to remind her that it was August, but then I saw Lizzie and Milton walk onto the patio. Milton looked directly at us then gave Diana a limp wave before heading to the bar. Lizzie hadn’t seen us, thank God.

“Weren’t they great?” Diana sat up and slipped on her sandal. “I know Milton from way back, went to Waterford Elementary with him. We both had the same second grade teacher, Mrs. Miller.” Diana threw back another tequila. “God, she was a meanie! Stood me in the hall for kicking a boy.”

“Sounds like you deserved it.”

“But I liked him,” she said. “How else was I to prove my love?”

I drank my beer and watched Milton and Lizzie work the crowd. They were celebrities here, offering hugs and signing books. Lizzie laughed loudly and drank her wine while Milton finished his cosmopolitan. God.

“But I don’t know much about his new girlfriend,” Diana added, watching Lizzie. “She’s from California but acts so Midwestern.”

“What do you mean?”

“Down to earth,” Diana said. “Know what I mean? Not your typical white girl.”

Milton returned to our table with a beer, hugged Diana, asked how she was doing, and Diana described an idea she had for a new impermanence series, portraits painted in sugar and coffee grounds, wouldn’t that be great? Milton nodded seriously. I wanted to crawl under the table. Diana introduced me, and I shook his hand—a surprisingly firm handshake—and told him how much I enjoyed his reading. He bowed, Japanese style, then thanked me, and Diana told him that I was a writer, too, that I had just come from a workshop for writers. Milton raised his eyebrows.

“It’s true,” I said, “but it will be some time before I’m anywhere near your abilities.”

And then Lizzie slipped her toned arm around Milton. She looked at Diana, said hello, then glanced at me, throwing me that charming smile from college. But, in an instant, the moment passed, and she dropped her arm and covered her mouth. “What the hell?”

“Hello, Lizzie,” I said. “It’s been a while.”

She fled through the bamboo.

Milton was bewildered.

“I assume she never mentioned me,” I said.

“And you are?” Milton said.

“Lizzie’s ex.”

Milton’s lip trembled, then he turned and followed Lizzie.

Diana sobered up. “You didn’t tell me.”

“Why would it matter?”

She studied me silently, and after a moment, I stood, tossed a ten on the table, then left the bar.

*

“You look like shit,” Anna said.

My eyes were dozy, but I forced them open, and the morning light speared my brain. Anna was sitting at the foot of my bed, shaking me awake; Dad must have let her in. I pulled the duvet over my head.

Anna patted my leg, then yanked the duvet to the floor. “Cried yourself to sleep?”

I sat up, ashamed that I’d fallen asleep naked, but Anna didn’t seem concerned with any part of my nudity. I took a sip of stale water from my cup on the nightstand. My ductile penis was torqued like a Möbius strip between my thighs, and my tongue felt full, like it hadn’t yet allotted my words from the previous evening. I managed to ask her the time.

“Smoke time,” she said. “Walk with me, and maybe you’ll get a coffee while we’re at it.”

I rolled off the bed and pulled on my clothes, and we were soon along the millrace, passing through larkspur and chokeberry.

Anna’s stride was practically indistinguishable from Lizzie’s absorbed and distressed pace, and her overstated movements evoked the evening walks we took the summer we married. Memory says we moved together, hand in hand, down long, county roads, watching bats spiral and sate their edacious appetites. But reality knows she was always four or five steps ahead of me. Our lack of touch, though, didn’t mean we were unhappy; in fact, I wore it as a badge of pride: our relationship went beyond the physical—it was intellectual, too, maybe even spiritual—and you didn’t need to fawn over your spouse to feel as though your marriage was in good shape. We lived near Bristol then, close to the Michigan line, in a little two-bedroom rental surrounded by cornfields and a strand of evergreens on the western edge of the lawn. I could sometimes hear the traffic on US 20, but it was usually quiet, just the crunch of our footsteps on the gravel and the buzz of crickets in the ditches. Lizzie tended to stare at her feet while she walked—I don’t want to trip, she was always saying—but I looked out over the corn fields. And sometimes, if Lizzie got too far ahead, I’d stop and listen to the squeaky stalks push against the purple sky, watch the lightning bugs blink from tassel to golden tassel. And when, at least, I’d catch up, she’d tell me our plans: First the LSAT, then law school choices, of course. But which one? Have you any idea? I didn’t. And what about letters of recommendation? “And no kids, not yet,” she said. “We certainly can’t afford them now.”

I agreed, of course; it’d be stupid to have kids now—we’re mere children ourselves.

She wiped her forehead and nodded. “Especially while I’m in school.”

A deep violet sky crowned the orange horizon. “You think we could both manage grad school?” I said.

Lizzie was in front of me soon enough, so she addressed me with her head turned to the side. “Grad school for you, too, of course,” she said. “Now try to keep up.” And when she was far enough ahead, I slackened my pace, stopping, finally, at a pasture full of sheep. They were silent and still, dim ghosts floating above the misty ground, and their black eyes burrowed into mine.

Lizzie was on the front porch eating ice cream when I got home, a bare foot planted on the porch planks, the other tucked underneath her butt, swaying back and forth on the rickety glider. The radio was tuned to jazz, and a flickering candle burned on the half-cut, upturned whiskey barrel in front of her. Her lips flashed in the blinking light, though her eyes were dim.

“Want some?” She offered me her spoon.

I leaned against the porch railing, felt it give a little. “No thanks.”

She scooped another bite. “Suit yourself.” She let the spoon linger on her bottom lip, then quickly scraped the rest of the ice cream from the red poppy bowl we’d gotten as a wedding gift from my Aunt Emily. It was a single bowl, not part of a set. Aunt Emily was thrifty like that.

“I sense you’re upset having married a woman stronger than you,” she said finally.

“What makes you say that?”

“Then tell me you don’t get moody when I talk about going to school.”

“I’m not feeling moody,” I said. “In fact, it’s a lovely evening. Did you notice the sunset?”

“Don’t equivocate,” she said. “You’d rather be the one in school.”

“I don’t think it’s an either-or situation.”

“I don’t need a husband with an English degree.”

“And I need a spouse with a law degree?”

“Will English pay the bills?”

“Maybe editing will,” I said. “Or at least help.”

“What? Thirty thousand a year?” Lizzie said. “Or forty if you’re really good?”

“A decent start.”

“If I work hard, well over a hundred thousand,” she said. “Do the math.”

The glider squeaked as Lizzie pushed herself; I’d have to squirt some WD-40 on it.

“Well?” Lizzie said at last.

“A good girl lost to affluence,” I said.

Lizzie jumped up, and her spoon clanked on the peeling planks. “Get your useless English degree,” she said, “but I’ll rule the checkbook.” She kicked the spoon across the porch, sailing it into the yew. I’d find it in the morning. The screen door bounced twice behind her, and I heard our red poppy bowl shatter.

I’d find that in the morning, too.

Anna and I soon passed the credit union and the brewery, then crossed the Elkhart River into Roger’s Park, stopping in front of a discount tobacco store in a strip mall just past the skate park. Anna took off her Vanquishers and hauled her cane from her cape, and—like magic—she was a helpless old lady in search of cigarettes. She even donned a pair of black shades. They looked ridiculous on her.

“Trust me,” she said. “I’ll even get you a pack.”

“Okay, then American Spirits,” I said, “yellow box.”

She pushed open the heavy glass door and walked in, tapping her way through the aisles and feeling around the shelves. The twitchy man behind the counter seemed to ask if he could help her, and after a moment I saw him turn and grab two packs of cigarettes from the wall behind him, a pack of Marlboros and American Spirits, but as he handed them to Anna, she promptly dropped her cane and fell onto her hands and knees, patting around the floor, until the clerk came around the counter and picked up Anna and her cane. She hugged him tightly, pilfering the lighter from his back pocket, then kissed his cheek. The clerk grinned and shooed her out of the store, and Anna tapped her way out with two packs on the house.

“What a softie,” she said.

We smoked in silence on the bridge, my one cigarette for her two. It always bothered Lizzie when I smoked, though I didn’t do it much, maybe a couple or three cigarettes a week, all smoked on our front porch, none snuck behind the shed. They’re not healthy, she’d say, but I’d tell her that we all have to die eventually, why not enjoy the fleeting, God-given breaths we’re allotted? And then I’d go months without a smoke, not thinking about it at all, until one day I’d be gripped with the compulsion to buy a fresh pack. It wasn’t the smoke in my lungs that I enjoyed; it was, rather, that smoking was something to do, a pleasurable practice that enhanced my equanimity and heightened my staring skills, both necessary for good writing. Lizzie never noticed my long periods of non-smoking—she was too busy with herself—so I’d quietly resume until she’d catch me again. And that was how we moved about our days, in and out, over and again, tyrannized by what God had willed for us, Mennonites behaving like Calvinists.

Anna flicked her cigarette into the current and filled her goggles with saline. The butt spun on frantic eddies until a leafy branch, half submerged, snagged it under. Anna lit another cigarette. “You’d drown instantly in that water,” she said, patting my arm and bustling her way down to the river. At the water’s edge, she slipped off her Birkenstocks, tucked them into the pleats of her cape, then waded into the current.

Hannah’s toenails pulled against my neck. I gripped the railing. “Why?”

“Because you only dwell in the undercurrents of ending and death,” she said.

“And you thought dragging me to a reading by a sheep farmer might help?”

“You seem to have forgotten that an Anabaptist never forces,” she said. “And besides, endings are beginnings, so keep your nose in the water.”

And before I could get a word in, she slipped underwater.