{"id":418,"date":"2013-09-20T12:59:11","date_gmt":"2013-09-20T12:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=418"},"modified":"2014-02-04T02:05:58","modified_gmt":"2014-02-04T02:05:58","slug":"418","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=418","title":{"rendered":"PERFORATE – Joe Vallese"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tomorrow<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i>\u201cYou stole the dog.\u201d<\/p>\n

She corrects him: \u201cI didn\u2019t steal<\/i> her. I took her. She\u2019s Boyer\u2019s dog. If Boyer had a child, we\u2019d take the child, wouldn\u2019t we?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Boyer had a child, whoever he had the child with<\/i> would have kept the child.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut she\u2019s a dog. It\u2019s not like Yiyi gave birth to her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe lived<\/i> with the dog. Helped Boyer care for it. You can\u2019t just take a dog from its home because you feel like it. I know what you\u2019re trying to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

They look away from each other now: Sarah, for not thinking he\u2019d see through and name her mistake; Rex, perhaps, for realizing he shouldn\u2019t have said it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell,\u201d she musters, \u201cshe\u2019s here now. And Yiyi hardly protested, so. That\u2019s where we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not dog people,\u201d he says, pushing his words out so softly his lips make something like a whistle.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you know that? We\u2019ve never had a dog,\u201d Sarah says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s how I know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rex returns to the table. He plucks away the loose pages of newspaper that slipped from his fingers and tented over his bowl of muesli when Carmela came unexpectedly barreling into the kitchen,\u00a0her tags and studded collar jangling like a distant wind chime. He lifts a spoonful to his lips and smirks, \u201cYou\u2019re a mess.\u201d<\/p>\n

The quickness of his words, so small and exact out of the side of his crunching mouth, steals Sarah\u2019s breath like a slap. She grabs her keys, lets them drag along the blue marble countertop he\u00a0fusses over with baking soda every Sunday, and begins a stompy exit. She considers a detour to the table to pour his cereal\u2014better yet, his coffee: he likes it black; it\u2019ll stain\u2014over his smart\u00a0morning cardigan, but pauses when she catches her warped reflection in the steel of the refrigerator. Her navy blouse is dusted with stray sprigs of Carmela\u2019s gray and auburn coat, damning\u00a0evidence of her struggle to lift that old-boned girl in and out of the car. Sarah thinks of those newspaper sidebars about the world\u2019s dumbest criminals\u2014burglar writes his own name at the\u00a0<\/i>crime scene; robber trips, stabs himself with the knives he was stealing\u2014and hurries from the kitchen to laugh where he can\u2019t hear. A furry puddle rises from the floor, shakes itself out, and\u00a0follows quickly behind her.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yesterday<\/i>
\n 
\nThe idea came to her during Boyer\u2019s memorial service. Sarah had spent most of the afternoon in the kitchen, saucing the homemade tortellini she\u2019d spent all last night filling and rolling and\u00a0buttoning with her thumbs, icing a layer cake larger than the one at her own wedding thirty-six years earlier, and artfully arranging platters of gooey imported cheeses. Every so often, one of\u00a0Boyer\u2019s friends, each dressed in something Boyer had designed\u2014the men\u2019s collars and the women\u2019s necklines bore his trademark illusion of being perforated at the seams, of being not quite\u00a0attached to anything-would shuffle into the kitchen and ask if she needed help and wouldn\u2019t she like to join them. But Sarah promised she could hear and see everyone just fine. Twice, Rex did the\u00a0same.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re missing all this,\u201d he said. She wanted to snap back something robust and melodramatic like, \u201cI\u2019m missing our son<\/i>,\u201d but that wasn\u2019t who she was, and it certainly wasn\u2019t Boyer. This\u00a0feast she\u2019d been preparing, the hundreds of dollars worth of rabbit rillettes, and bacon jams, and almond paste sculptured into fruits, was all a final bitchy joke from Boyer she promised to\u00a0deliver, a sarcastic indulgence from beyond the grave.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Three days before he passed, and one before he could no longer speak or even crack an eyelid, Sarah sat beside him, massaging his fingers, the skin so thin and blue\u2014\u201cice blue,\u201d according to<\/p>\n

Boyer, \u201cvery next season, you\u2019ll see\u201d\u2014his knuckles looked bulbous, vulgar. Rex was there too, but he paced the halls, making himself endlessly needed and tasked, seeking out nurses, visiting the\u00a0snack machines even though he never ate anything in a wrapper, and bringing back schmaltzy greeting cards from the gift shop to mock with Boyer since they both detested sentiment. What they\u00a0shared most, apart from their potato chins, was an insistence on not sharing at all\u2014Rex holed away in a campus lab scraping petri dishes and making slides, Boyer sketching alone for days and\u00a0draping fabrics over limbless busts\u2014until they could share their discoveries en masse, with authority, without the need to explain themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet them eat cake,\u201d Boyer said, his scabbed lips parting across his teeth, now mossy and brown because brushing pained him, seemed pointless.<\/p>\n

The doctors had warned of morphine and non-sequiturs. Sarah pushed a hand to Boyer\u2019s forehead, at once slick and terribly dry. \u201cHoney?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the service. Make a big, big cake.\u201d Boyer moved his mouth as though chewing the food he went on to describe. \u201cFood scares them. They\u2019ll die<\/i>.\u201d Boyer smiled, but there was meanness in\u00a0his crackling voice.<\/p>\n

Rex returned just as Boyer was dozing off again. \u201cIt smells in here.\u201d Rex heaved, put a hand to his mouth and stepped back into the hall.<\/p>\n

Sarah looked down and saw the sheets beneath Boyer\u2019s back were soaked in a color she couldn\u2019t quite describe, hoped he\u2019d wake up and name it for her.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When it was Yiyi\u2019s turn to speak, Sarah poured herself a glass of Malbec and moved to the living room. Yiyi slipped out of her heels, lifting herself up on her toes every time she began a\u00a0sentence. She recounted how she\u2019d met Boyer, answering an online ad for \u201ca seamstress with small hands and a small voice\u2014mute preferable,\u201d which made even Sarah chuckle. Yiyi spoke of Boyer\u2019s\u00a0impeccable vision and taste, and how she\u2019d do her best to carry out his legacy. Spare us<\/i>, Sarah thought, taking a big angry gulp of wine, you just fucking cut and paste.<\/i> The others\u00a0applauded Yiyi, who was sobbing now, as though she\u2019d won an award or courageously risen during an AA meeting. Rex politely tapped his palms together too but Sarah felt her face go slack. Yiyi\u00a0rejoined the group of men Sarah couldn\u2019t tell apart, accepting their shoulder rubs and forehead kisses with gratitude. One of the men handed Yiyi his barely disturbed slice of cake and she pushed\u00a0it around with her fork, mindlessly breaking apart the layers Sarah had so carefully stacked, before tossing the plate onto the coffee table without even a taste. Carmela, who\u2019d fallen asleep on\u00a0the bathroom tiles after moping about the house, pattered into the living room and dropped down beside Yiyi\u2019s feet. Her long tongue circled Yiyi\u2019s bare ankle; Yiyi rubbed furiously at it with the\u00a0opposite heel. Sarah watched as Carmela waited for Yiyi\u2019s touch, neck craned patiently until she lowered her head to the ground and closed her eyes. She considered simply telling Yiyi to leave\u00a0the dog that night, but the thought of a confused Yiyi in early morning, draped in the same ruby kimono Boyer had made and gifted them both, silently watching Carmela be marched away filled Sarah\u00a0with delight, though she couldn\u2019t quite say why.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"headshot,<\/a>Joe Vallese’s writing has appeared has appeared in Southeast Review, North American Review, VIA: Voices in Italian-Americana, Backstage, among other journals. He is editor of What’s Your Exit? A Literary Detour Through New Jersey (Word Riot, 2010), a recent Pushcart Prize nominee, and was named a Notable in the 2012 Best American Essays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tomorrow   \u00a0\u201cYou stole the dog.\u201d She corrects him: \u201cI didn\u2019t steal her. I took her. She\u2019s Boyer\u2019s dog. If Boyer had a child, we\u2019d take the child, wouldn\u2019t we?\u201d \u201cIf Boyer had a child, whoever he had the child with would have kept the child.\u201d \u201cBut she\u2019s a dog. It\u2019s not like Yiyi gave [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-prose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1803,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions\/1803"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}