Free Mislaid by Nell Zink Page A

just about no contact at all. She had seen black people every day of her life. She wasn’t afraid of them. More like the reverse. But they might as well have been those Indonesian shadow puppets made of parchment. Her parents hadn’t had the option of sending her to an integrated school. If you integrated your school back then, the Commonwealth would shut it down. And although Stillwater had started admitting black girls a few years before she left, none had applied for admission—at least not that anybody knew of. Of course an applicant could be black and not know it. Possibly Stillwater had been integrated from thestart. That was the standard defense of whites-only institutions: We’re not the DAR. We don’t check pedigrees.
    Once Meg even caught herself saying “nigger.” Some kid had shown up at school in a rabbit fur coat (her father was an auto mechanic notorious for payday splurges). Karen admired the coat and had been allowed to pet it. Meg shook her head. She said, “Typical nigger-rich, buying your daughter a fur coat when you can’t afford to take her to the dentist!— Oh, gosh, Karen, I didn’t mean to say that. I’m really sorry. Here, hit me on the arm. Make a fist.”
    She went on to explain at length that she had merely meant the father was not good with numbers, and that this quality had once been called shiftlessness. Such a man works hard, but he never gets ahead, because whenever he gets some money, he puts a down payment on something he can’t afford, and it is soon repossessed. This unfortunate custom had given rise to the concept, etc.
    “I think a fur coat is rich,” Karen objected.
    “Rabbit is not rich, and fur is tacky anywhere south of Vermont. Rabbit is poor tacky. Rich tacky would be fox. A girl your age could wear dyed sheared beaver, maybe, if she lived on the shores of Lake Baikal.”
    Karen frowned.
    Meg felt more strongly than usual that many thoughts life had taught her to articulate were not her own, while many of her thoughts went unexpressed for lack of a suitable audience.
    For this and other reasons, she concluded that although she desperately needed someone to talk to, she also needed a career where you work alone and don’t get roped into chatting with people on any subject whatsoever.
    She looked glumly at the typewriter and poured herself a drink.
    Her writing was going well enough. She told herself she was honing her craft and would soon be making money. But it was like honing a primitive stone tool, not a forged blade. Life with Lee had taught her to be laconic. She could quip. So her plays all ended on page two.
    Typically they were murder mysteries with no mystery. A woman sneaks across the stage and plunges a knife into the neck of a sleeping man. He says a few choice last words and dies. She expresses her ambivalence as the police come to haul her away.
    Meg’s first paycheck materialized as she drove to the grocery store early one morning. She saw a cardboard box on the shoulder. She stopped, because a box like that nearly always contains kittens. Not worth money, but tell that to Karen. Karen worshipped kittens as gods.
    Except this box was full of pornographic magazines from England. Dry, clean, and in excellent condition. What mysterious denizen of the county had felt called upon to make an obviously cherished collection vanish anonymously? Frightened of being observed at the wayside Dumpsters, hitting the brakes for a second or two to unload years of costly, intimate personal history . . . or had his wife done it? The girls were chunky, posing in what appeared to be their own backyards, private parts concealed by fluffy fur and sometimes adorned with ribbons. They were lavish, glossy mags on heavy paper. No amateurs, no swingers, no contact information, just girls next door, apparently the first to return after the neutron bomb was dropped on Folkestone, because how else could they romp naked in middle-class gardens with low hedges and sea views?
    Meg