35: Double

I saw her once in National Geographic, a child growing up amidst the civil war of Eastern Europe, her straggly brown hair and round eyes the mirror of my own. I didn’t show anyone, knowing how my brother sneered at my seriousness, knowing this girl was one of the sacred sufferers for whom my mother prayed. Any comparison to me invited scorn. Instead I stared until the afternoon light faded. I was not transformed, didn’t suddenly recognize myself as one of a human tribe, but, instead, understood our separation, my unrecorded unreality, the sheer randomness of my birth. I could be anyone.

34: How To Be With Someone

Let go of superstition. Don’t look for signs in fortune cookies or count steps to his apartment. Become a literalist. Stay says only be here now. Remember the meaning of any phrase expires the moment after he utters it. Leave no evidence—not hair in the tub nor perfume in the sheets—so that you can disappear as easily as he would. When you walk, swing your arms like it doesn’t matter if he takes your hand. Live as he does, as though no bird were trapped in your rib cage, as though you didn’t cough and lose feathers to the air.

33: Carlos Rio Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Joe and Melanie move into the apartment, but the mail for Carlos Rio never stops. How strange to meet a man through his bills and catalogues, she thinks. “Who moves and doesn’t change his address?” Joe says. At first they leave the mail on the ledge. After weeks, Joe tapes a note to the mailbox. Melanie hopes it doesn’t work. She can’t help but read the postcard with the photo of a San Juan statue. Carlos, Lo Siento. Donde estas? Melanie buys a Spanish dictionary. River, she thinks, tracing a line across the mirror steamed with Joe’s shower. She will find him.

32: The Accident

Bonnie escapes outside to smoke, to forget he’s leaving her, bit by bit. She hears a thump, a man’s startled grunt, and turns to see a car angled, a man lying in the street, struggling, an insect on its back. The woman driver is screaming. People on the sidewalk shout, “don’t get up!” as if eager for injury. But he picks up his bike and limps away. The woman yells, “Don’t go!” Bonnie remembers when they met it felt like a collision, sudden and dangerous. The crowd on the sidewalk scatters, disappointed, expecting tragedy but left with the rest of the day.

31: Baby Thief

No balloons outside houses or newspaper announcements. Parents dress infants like dogs to fool the casual glance. MISSING posters line subway stations. The law allows a woman just one pregnancy. They told me I’m too sick. After my operation, I answered a private investigator's ad promising to find your child. “Your child?” he said from behind his cluttered desk. “All babies look alike.” “How much?” I asked. “For you?” He looked me up and down. The baby arrived at night. I told my neighbors my sister was killed. “So sad,” they said. I clung to the infant. “Tragedy can bring good fortune.”

30: How to Be Alone

First, tell him it’s over. Tell your friends you’re satisfied. Take yourself to movies. Read books in bed. When eating, hide the sound of your chewing with talk radio. For momentum, ride the subway. Spend time with a man who doesn’t look at you that way. When the thought of him threatens to turn you into a shiny penny, resist. Live as the addicts do, one day at a time. Give yourself something to anticipate: take up smoking. Commit. Alone is not lonely. Alone is you asleep. Lonely is you at the hands of a mugger, the victim of someone else’s need.

29: The Moon, the Moon

Again, I’m fretting, plucking at my gloves while we walk, wind flung like needles against my skin. On one side, the dark curtain of the park, on the other, stoic townhouses where we’ll never live. “Lovely,” you say. What you admire, I scorn. An old man totters past. “Look at the moon,” he says, eager, gesturing with his cane. A nub of light, not full, not a delicate sliver. “It’s something,” you agree, always so good-natured with strangers. I take your arm without knowing why. The way I can’t say what’s wrong. The way I can’t say why this moon is beautiful.