Monica
29 Monica She came down the hill, cutting through the backyards of lighted houses, a bag of apples clutched in her arms, her sneakers slipping on the wet grass. The dusk was smoke-colored, purple chrysanthemums and yellow leaves subsiding to drab, and already the moon rising full and transparent, behind the brick houses. She wanted to give me the apples: “We have so many!” and I took them and stood talking, wondering what to do. I was home before midterms, my bag heavy with books, ponderous chronicles of the wreck of the century: Warsaw, Paris, St. Petersburg, Berlin. . . . Her daughter, who had been my friend, and the baby, and Jerry, were living in the next town. Jerry was going to school nights. I should go see them—she said it without reproach, wanting to make things right. I had three days and I would go back on the bus. I said yes, thinking no, and stood there holding the brown paper sack on my hip, bulging, bumpy, hard. The apples smelled only cold, the way the air smelled, and the night coming up behind us, empty and hard, cold water and rock. She turned and went back up the hill. Back inside, I set the apples on the table, letting them spill out, and I sat down with my books under a bright overhead light 30 as night closed over the house where I sat and read, not comprehending the wreck of that century, ending, helpless before all I did not know. Turning pages in the kitchen, the empty house creaked and settled as the scent of the apples lifted, warming, their skins glaring deep red with brown patches and spots of yellow, the cider tang wakening in them as I read, unaware of the night closing over me, the year ending, stars pulling back into deep space and the planet tipping toward dark, the earth’s last gifts. ...
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