Free Babylon and Other Stories by Alix Ohlin Page B

She grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled.
    “Ow!” Wade sat back, rubbing his head and looking puzzled. “You hurt me. What are you, crazy?”
    Izabel, gulping air, began to laugh.
    “I'm leaving,” he said. “I can't handle this. I love you, Izabel, but you're crazy, I mean, seriously, I don't want to sit in judgment of you or anything, that's the last thing I'd want to do, and I know some people think there's a correlation between artistic genius and mental illness. But seriously, you might want to consider getting some help.”
    “Okay,” she said. “Maybe you should go.”
    “Maybe I should. I'm sorry, Izabel. I really am.” His hand reached up to stroke her hair gently, twice, then he got up and left, closing the door behind him with a quiet, considerate click.
    Shirelle invited Izabel home for Christmas. Her family lived in the country on a ranch, and she promised hay rides and dances. She had four older brothers and made life at her house sound like an episode of
The Waltons.
    “It'll be a nice, traditional American Christmas,” she said. “We leave milk and cookies out for Santa.”
    “Really?” said Izabel in her French accent. “Are zey not wasted? Santa does not eat zem, does he?”
    “Izabel,” Shirelle said patiently, “Santa is my dad.”
    “
Ah, mais non
! Zen you are very lucky. You must get zee most presents of anyone in zee world.”
    “Girl,” said Shirelle, “sometimes I think you're putting me on.”
    But Izabel did not go to Texas for Christmas. Her mother called, her voice trembling with the accomplishment, to say that she had brokered a peace with Iz's father, who had agreed to a double major of economics and art, so Iz could continue her classes. Shedidn't mention to her mother that she hadn't yet finished the first semester. There were presents waiting for her under the tree, if she would only come home to claim them.
    “I went to the mall, Izzy,” said her mother, “and it was so beautiful!” Her voice was firm and happy. “All the decorations and the music, you just have to see it.”
    Izabel could see it. She could see her mother moving alone through their house like some sad, ancient heroine, Demeter in Newton, decorating the tree, wrapping gifts. She could see her calling her daughter on the phone, picking out a tie for her husband at the mall, each day an act of small bravery. Izabel could see everything. She could see it because it was all inside her, hanging on to her like snow dissolving over their roof into a border of icicles. She could see it as clearly as she could see the children of the neighborhood bringing their toboggans to the park, where Iz would paint them over the holidays, watching from her bedroom window as they climbed through the snow, spots of color bundled thickly by their mothers into snowsuits, dragging their heavy loads behind them.

A Theory of Entropy
    What could reach them here was the mail, and Claire took the boat across the lake to Bob's store to pick it up. The first of the summer people were in, browsing through the aisles, stocking up on canned goods and batteries. From behind the counter Bob nodded and passed her a rubberbanded stack, her bills and Car-son's heavy magazines—
Science, Journal of Organic Chemistry
— saying, as he did each time, “A little light reading for you, Claire?”
    “Puts me to sleep,” she said. Around her children tugged their parents' sleeves, begging for candy and to be taken fishing.
    “Hold on a minute. Something for you in the back,” Bob said. He came back with a bundle in his arms, a padded envelope nearly as square as a box. She didn't have to look at the return address to know that it was Carson's book.
    She piled the bills and magazines on top, then slid it off the counter and pressed it to her chest for balance. Bob was frowning at a boy handling a box of fishing lures with larcenous fingers; when she left, he raised his hand briefly without looking away from the boy.
    The dock was