Young Jane Young(45)

The plane’s about to take off, so I actually do have to shut off my phone.

Don’t worry if you don’t hear from me for a while.

Thank you for trying to help me and for listening to me. I’ve learned so much about Muslim people from Indonesia, and I hope you’ve learned something about nonpracticing Jewish people from Maine. Actually, I don’t know that I would make a good “sample.” Maybe you’re not a good “sample” either. Maybe it is silly to try to learn about cultures from “pen pals.” All you can really learn about is the specific person you’re writing to. I don’t mean to sound down on the “pen pal” program. I’ve loved having you as my pen pal! I couldn’t have asked for a better pen pal than You.



Love,

Your Meaning Twin,

Ruby



P.S. If you give me your address, I will send you an ACTUAL PAPER postcard from Miami Beach.





IV





Angel in the House





EMBETH





I

t had been folly to have an anniversary party a week before Aaron’s reelection. When Aaron had suggested it a year earlier on their twenty-ninth wedding anniversary, Embeth had been in the middle of her second round of chemo and had spent most of the evening with her head over a toilet. “Next year will be different,” Aaron said, lingering in the doorway, trying not to breathe too deeply. He was not the type of man to hold back your hair, but by God, he would bear witness to your suffering. He would try to cheer you, with promises of a party for you and not for donors. Had she ever once said she craved such an event? Her cancer had made him sentimental. That was the only explanation. No, he had always been sentimental. She had known well before she married him that sentimentality was his weakness. “Come on, Em. We deserve a bash for our thirtieth,” he said. “We’ll do it at the Breakers. We’ll invite people we actually like for once. We won’t give a darn who we offend.”

I’m not going to be alive next year, Embeth thought. “We can’t have a party in November,” she said. “You’ll be campaigning.” Embeth retched over the toilet and nothing came out. Worse than throwing up was not throwing up.

“I won’t be,” Aaron said. “I mean, I will be, but who cares? I’ve been a congressman for ten terms. If they don’t want to reelect me because I take a night off for our thirtieth anniversary, screw the goddamn people. I’m going to do this, Em. I don’t care what you say. I’m texting Jorge right now to clear the schedule.”

He must have really thought she was going to die.

But here she was, a year later, alive. Frizzy hair, fuzzy brain, scarred chest, beating, beating, dumbly animal beating heart, alive, alive.

It was 4:55 a.m., and Aaron was wearing a suit and no tie. He had to fly to D.C. for the day. He would be back for the party at 8:00 p.m. The trip could not be avoided. His opponent, Marta Villanueva – blond, boobs, Republican – was putting up a bigger fight than anyone had anticipated based on the size of her coffers (not a euphemism for those boobs), and he couldn’t afford to miss the vote that was happening in the House. Why in God’s name the House had scheduled such an important vote days before an election he did not know. The optics were impossible. Not just for him, but for everyone who was up for reelection. What an altogether, unprecedentedly lousy year this had been. He was sorry to leave the last minute preparations to Embeth. He was sorry to leave her, on this, their thirtieth anniversary. Thirty years! Can you imagine? They must have been babies. They must have not even been born yet. He kissed her on the head.

“Go,” she said. “Godspeed. Everything’s planned. There’s not much to do anyway. Nothing I can’t easily do myself.”

“You’re an angel,” he said. “I’m so lucky,” he said. “I love you,” he said. “Happy anniversary,” he said.

She offered to drive him to the airport, but he said she should stay in bed. He had already called a car anyway.

Embeth rolled over in bed and she tried to go back to sleep, but sleep would not come.

If he was going to wake her, she might as well have driven him to the airport. She did not sleep well since the cancer. She was lucky to get three hours a night. In the daytime, she was exhausted.

Embeth closed her eyes.

She had almost drifted off to somewhere near sleep when she heard the flutter of wings, like cards being shuffled.

She opened her eyes.

An emerald parrot with a crimson head flew straight at her and just as its hooked beak was about to hit her in the forehead, the bird alighted on the pasture where her breasts used to be.

“Se?ora, se?ora,” the parrot said. “Wake up, wake up.”

Embeth said she needed to sleep, but the parrot knew she wasn’t sleeping. She rolled onto her side and the parrot repositioned himself so that he was sitting on her waist.

“Much to do, much to do,” the parrot said.

“Scat, El Meté,” Embeth said. She did not know how the parrot had gotten this name or what it even meant. Was it Spanish? Why hadn’t she ever learned Spanish? God knows, it would have come in handier as a politician’s wife in Florida than three years of bloody high school Latin had. She was not even sure that El Meté was a he. Her eyes still closed, Embeth swatted at the air, making a windmill with her arm. The parrot flew to the windowsill. “If I don’t get some sleep, I’ll be useless today. And I need to be sharp.”