Free The Sweet Relief of Missing Children by Sarah Braunstein Page B

flashed his orangey teeth.
    â€œNo girl,” said Sam.
    â€œSorry. A woman ? You got your hands on one of those, I bet.”
    â€œI don’t think there’s anything here,” Sam said. “But thanks for letting me look.”
    â€œYou know who’s one swank doll? Mrs. Marcusi, that’s who. She’s a tall drinka.”
    Mrs. Marcusi, in kilts and flesh-colored knee-highs, shelved books at the library.
    Sam moved for the door.
    Marco called, “Hey! Hold on. You own the world and have no idea. I know what you want. You want a present for a real woman, right? I envy you. Come back here a second. I have the perfect thing.”
    Marco fumbled below the counter, lifted a small bundle wrapped in brown paper. Slowly, tenderly, as one removes the dressing from an injury, he peeled back the paper. It was not what Sam expected to see. A mug. A large, beige coffee mug encircled by a ring of giraffes. These giraffes were engaged in an act of—well, it was intercourse.
    â€œOrgy,” Marco declared. “Orgy of the animal kingdom.” Giraffe heads in giraffe crotches and rears and ears. They were linked, lapping and caressing and humping, tails entwined, necks and ears and hooves and tongues.
    â€œErotic safari,” Marco said. “Shows a wild side. Women want that, trust me.”
    A wild side? They were children. They needed a pass to use the bathroom. They drank milk from tiny cartons. He couldn’t give that mug to Helen. It was disgusting. He would never give it to Helen.
    He paid.
    He was supposed to be dead, was supposed to feel that he deserved nothing, not happiness or home or peace or Helen. He was supposed to feel that his life was borrowed. He was an orphan and therefore his life was not the puzzle everyone else’s was. It was just a clean, flat surface, and he would one day slide off. His death would be a kind of catching up. He had to remember that. He ran home, holding the paper bag to his chest. He would keep the mug in the back of his sock drawer. His Aunt Constance could never see it; she would have cried at a mug like that. But he had to have it. It was the first disgusting thing he owned, and it felt like a start.

2
    C onstance’s life began with another woman’s death. That was its true start. It began not when she was born, or finished school, or left her mother’s home. Her life began, finally, when Louise packed her family into their station wagon, put on her sunglasses, turned the ignition, and drove into a train.
    At the time, Constance was secretly pregnant by Louise’s brother. Their wedding was the last time Constance saw Louise. A wedding! With guests and an organ player and a minister whose habit of rubbing his paunch made Constance sure he knew her secret condition and was taunting her. She could hardly believe it was happening to her, so resigned had she been to a life in her mother’s house, to growing old alone. Yet here she was, in this awkward dress, wearing mascara for the first time. After the ceremony, they descended into the church basement. The windows were high, small, and covered with ochre linen that muddied the light.
    Constance’s mother pulled her aside, hugged her shoulders, and said, “I hope I’ve prepared you.” They stood in the alcove that held the coatrack and the framed picture of Jesus with a shag haircut. “I mean for tonight. I mean for”—she waved her hands—“for the rigmarole.”
    â€œI’m prepared, yes,” said Constance.
    â€œI wasn’t,” her mother said. “I was not at all prepared. Oh, but I’m afraid I was supposed to give you more advice. Did I give you enough advice? Is there anything you want to know? Ask me! It will hurt some. What else?”
    Constance was the only daughter, the youngest. Her father, her three brothers, were long gone. She looked at her mother, saw her mother’s mouth moving, heard her mother’s