The Best American Short Stories 2018

Rivers Solomon Whose Heart I Long to Stop with the Click of a Revolver ^{from Emrys Journal}

My kid walks down Blue Street Diner’s central aisle before slumping into a booth near the toilets. She’s on meds that make her urinate nonstop and requires round-the-clock access to the facilities. Her words.

“The name of the drug is spironolactone, if you’re wondering,” she’d said on our pre-meeting phone call. “Also, I’m trans. The name you gave me is dead and incinerated and I spread its ashes over the Hudson. Say it to my face, and you’ll meet the same fate. I’m Luciana now. Or Luz.”

“You mean trans, like, you’re transsexual?”

“Trans like gender is dead. When can we meet? Should I call you Mom or Jo?”

“Jo’s fine,” I’d said, though I find that name embarrassingly predictable in retrospect. It’s a name I picked for myself after reading Little Women, obsessed, like so many little girls, with the bookish, tomboyish heroine. I should have gone for Beth, or better yet, Amy or Meg.

“Luciana. I really like that. She’s only a minor figure in Catch-22, but something about her kind of sticks with you. Good choice,” I said.

“Whatever. I was just trying to think of a girl version of Lucifer.”

I meet her at Blue Street Diner because I’ve never been. Seemed appropriate to reunite with my stranger of a daughter on neutral ground.

An employee busses tables, pocketing pennies and dollar bills left under jars of Dijon mustard. The screams of a toddler fill the background. For my part there’s some throat clearing, a few aborted questions. Every few seconds I venture a glance in Luciana’s direction. This is the first time I’ve seen my daughter since shortly after she was born, and I am admittedly overwhelmed.

I keep one hand tucked into my handbag, palm secured around the handle of my revolver, ready to shoot if this girl, my child, has re-entered my life in order to harm me in some way, to exact vengeance because I chose to leave her in the care of the state.

Giving up on conversation, I hum the old bluegrass tune “Whiskey Before Breakfast” as I page through the menu. It’s the first song I taught myself on the fiddle, slowly and painfully, when I decided I did not belong to my parents after all and wanted to travel to the South in a caravan.

Mr. Wheelock, Luciana’s father, always wanted me to listen to blues and jazz. He said as a black girl I had no business not knowing Muddy Waters or Billie Holiday, but the fast-paced string melodies of country folk songs spoke to my youthful mania. I told him that as a white man, he had no business not knowing the Osborne Brothers or the Foggy Mountain Boys. Besides, black folks invented country and bluegrass, so I was just going back to the source.

That’s when he told me that I was the most mature young woman he’d ever met. If he’d known then that he’d be dead at my own hands, would he have introduced himself to me that first time? Or would he have gone for another girl? Prone toward awkwardness, I like to think that maybe I was too pretty to resist, that were he able to do it again, he’d choose me knowing I’d murder him.

I suppose that’s why I hated him most—that he found me pretty, and that made me want him. That he knew that and used it. The things an ugly black girl from Brooklyn will do to feel pretty. She’ll dismantle her soul, if it’s required.

“Can I get you guys started with some drinks?” a man says, holding a pen and pad of paper at me and Luz’s table.

“Coffee,” I say. “Says here you guys use a percolator, right? A stove top one?”

“Yeah, miss. And it’s fresh, too.”

“Cookies and cream milkshake, please,” says Luciana. The waiter scribbles down our order before leaving. “What’s a percolator?” Luciana asks.

“You serious?” I say.

“I mean I’m assuming it’s something that percolates, but I could do with a more precise definition.”

When Luciana first walked up the diner, I wondered how much her personality would match up with her appearance. A good deal of it, it turns out. Her hair, coarse red threads that tangle and twist in on each other, contrasts sharply against her noncommittally brown skin, and the effect is overall very striking. She’s got a wide jaw and a wide nose, big lips, like mine. Mascara and eyeliner. Rouge. She’s cute in a kind of dykey way, and I wonder if she’s gay like me. At least I passed down that gift.

The morning after meeting Luz at the diner, I notice frost for the first time on the grass. Autumn is here. The curious chortles of chirping birds are absent. They’ve gone south by now, abandoned upstate New York for Florida, like old rich white people tired of the cold. Flying to warmer climates when the weather turns foul, it’s a pleasant notion. Back in the City, I suspect, New Yorkers are holding fiercely on to the season of sun, beach, and Italian ice. Flip-flops until Halloween, at least.

I remember Mr. Wheelock at about this time of the year buying me a ham and cheese sandwich on a soft white roll at the bodega, preparing us for a picnic on the beach. We’d watch West Indian men play dominoes and backgammon, ignoring the brisk breeze, holding fast on to what was left of September.

See, Coney Island is in decline, preparing for hibernation, and we enjoy a final day. He buys me hot dogs and funnel cakes and cotton candy. I tell him about my dreams, and he tells me I can do anything. He kisses me here, for the first time, a tentative thing that still manages to be sloppy, intrusive. I wonder if this is how it’s supposed to feel. I wonder if I’m supposed to gag, to want to run to the bin and hurl. People stare, but no one says anything because people are people. I see their faces. I know their thoughts. “She can’t be more than fourteen.” I was twelve.

Mr. Wheelock tells me, “Don’t you worry. I’ll take care of you,” after he finishes the kiss. He smiles smugly to anyone who tries to look down on him.

This is how I always remember him.

“It’s cold,” says Luz. She’s moved in. That’s why she got in touch. Eighteen years old, she’s been coughed out the throat of social services onto the street.

“Knock much?” I ask.

“Sorry, I was bored. And I’m cold. Can you turn the heat up or something?”

“If you got turn-the-heat-up money,” I say. “Here, wear that.” There’s a sweatshirt from my college hanging from one of the knobs on my dresser. Fleece-lined. Real thick.

She pulls it on over her chubby body, but it still hangs nice and loose. “Put on some socks or something,” I say.

“I don’t have any.”

“What?”

“It was literally just summer, I don’t know,” she tells me, pouting. All her bravado from our pre-meeting is gone. She looks like a little girl with her arms crossed over her chest.

“We should go shopping,” I say.

“Oh. So you got shopping money?” Luciana shoots back.

“Ok, a pack of socks is cheaper than heating this drafty-ass Victorian, smartass. Go clean yourself up so we can get out of here. We can even see a movie or whatever if you want.”

Luciana shrugs and leaves, then I remove a gun from my bedside table. When I go to the city, I always take her with me. She’s a brass and steel Smith and Wesson that clicks soothingly when cocked. A metal machine. A perfect contraption.

I’ve had this thing since I was fourteen. The wooden handle, simultaneously slick with polish and rough with overuse, contains my initials. Mr. Wheelock etched them with his carving knife, giving me the relic on my birthday. Intricate engravings, curls and loops like flowering vines, cover the barrel, cylinder, and frame.

Over two pounds she weighs. It felt like rocking an infant child when I first held the revolver in my hands. There’s weight to it.

“Is that real?” Luciana asks. She’s burst into my room without invitation again. If she’s going to stay here, I need to get locks. This is one of Wheelock’s old places, left to me in a trust, and it’s nice but needs modernizing.

“Old as hell but works just the same. I practice with her every week at the range. She never fails me.”

“Why do you have it out?” she asks. “Shouldn’t that be behind lock and key? Or some glass display case? Are you an assassin?”

“I carry her with me whenever I go into the City. Just in case.”

“Just in case what?” she says. She crosses her hands across her chest in a way that reminds me so much of my indignant, younger self, I almost cry on the spot.

“Just in case I need to kill someone,” I say. “You should get a piece, too. I have eleven, most of them antiques, but a few modern enough for a kid like you. You can try one out. Revolvers are best because they don’t jam, but a baby Glock will serve you well as long as you practice.”

“I don’t want to kill anyone,” she says, and I tell her that she’ll change her mind about that. “You don’t know shit about me. You don’t know what’s been done to me. You don’t think I ain’t been through some shit? Doesn’t change the fact that I don’t want to kill.”

“Even if it’s you or them? You’d spare their life even if it was certain you’d lose your own?” I ask.

“Shut up!” she shouts, and walks out the room, slams the door. Gentle, tender, baby thing. My fledgling. Softer than me but just as bitter.

I want to tell her—know this:

The world plays out as games of power, who has it, who doesn’t. An invisible puppeteer pulls the strings of each person’s life, determining her fate based on race, gender, religion. Luz got a particularly unfortunate set of strings.

Imagine a large man gifted with athleticism and strength, favored in life because of his class and wealth and color. Now imagine a child, young and poor and thoroughly pathetic. See the two of them together, in a room, butting heads.

Now imagine the scene again, but this time the child has a gun, and the man does not. He steps back, suddenly fearful of her scrawny figure, her shaking frame, her tearing eyes. Everyone fears the bullet, no matter what gift the invisible puppeteer has bestowed upon him.

Something with that much weight in this world is to be saved and savored, so even though I was an anti-gun progressive when Mr. Wheelock handed me my gift, I could not say no to the revolver when I felt its heaviness in my hand.

He never knew the exact date on it, but said that it no doubt dated to the Civil War era and was likely used for an elite officer on the side of the Union. “Of course, you’ll never shoot anyone with it,” he said.

The wind sweeps through the valley quiet-like and unassuming, animating the leaves and branches of the trees. The maples and the birches dance with soul. Like the women in Baptist churches who holler and scream ’cause they think they are filled with the Holy Ghost.

I go here before every trip into New York, even in winter. It’s my portal. My wardrobe.

I like to watch the trees shimmy as I sit on the edge of the river bank, feet in the water, butt in the wet clay, wishing for a water moccasin to come my way so I can shoot the creature dead. I’ll watch it wiggle. Watch it convulse and carry on after I put bullets into its spiraling body.

I’ll step back then, keep up my aim, and carefully unlock the barrel from my revolver before inserting fresh bullets. Laws of the universe don’t fool me. I’ve always known that snakes live a long time after they die, battling on all warrior-like even once unhinged from this here mortal coil. Decapitated, the snake will still try to plunge its teeth into an unsuspecting person’s flesh.

Snakes are even more dangerous when they’re dead. Without any control over the chemical impulses in their bodies, they’ll release all their venom into a piece of prey, not having the sense or ability to conserve for later attacks.

I stand up and remove my jeans, letting the evening chill trickle down my thighs to my ankles as I shuck off the denim. Next comes my sweater. Finally my shirt. Looking over each of my shoulders first, I rid myself of my underwear. My body shivers and shakes as I submerge myself into the river.

On the train with Luz, I almost remember what it’s like to be a kid. The picture renders itself a little blurry, but I can just make out a creamy coffee drink in one hand and a book of Emily Dickinson’s poetry in the other.

I take my thumb and smudge it along Luciana’s cheeks. “You went a bit overboard with the blush.”

“I always do,” she says. “That’s how I like it. I’m not tryna pretend like I’m some blushing virginal swan. I like the color, so I put it on heavy. If you have a problem with that, go sit somewhere else on the train.”

She checks her makeup in a small mirror that she pulls from her handbag. “Besides, we’re looking for clothes for me. Practical. Functional. It’s not like I want anybody to fall in love with me tonight or ever,” Luciana says, placing the mirror back into her bag. She crosses her legs and leans back into the cushioned seat of the Amtrak train.

“Sorry. I was just trying to be motherly, I guess,” I say.

She shrugs, rolls her eyes, and puts her headphones back on. The teenage trifecta.

That night, after we return home with eight shopping bags, high off the spell of Manhattan, I dream about him. It’s the day we met, and I’ve run away from home to see an exhibit on Dadaism at the MoMA. Saw an ad for it on the 2 train, and it’s the summer between seventh and eighth grade. The art presents itself as an indistinct mist, and only the sharp angles of the walls and room edges are clear to me in the dream. The dress I’m wearing is short, too short, but I’ve grown a lot in the last year, and I was never one to be too concerned about the latest fashions.

“Big Francis Bacon fan?” he asks. He’s wearing dark green khakis, a button-up shirt, and a skinny tie.

I’ve forgotten his voice by now, but in the dream I think it sounds just like him.

“I think it’s so funny that there are two Francis Bacons,” I say, a precocious little shit, looking at the painting before me. My voice doesn’t quite make it out my throat, though, and it’s like one of those nightmares when you need to scream for help, but no matter how much you want it your voice isn’t going to come.

I can’t speak, so I take the gun in my hand and point it to the world. “Here I am,” I say. “And yes, I am a big Francis Bacon fan.” The blast from the revolver says what I can’t.

I awake to the sound of Luz loudly watching cartoons. Sunday mornings should be easier than this. They tend to wait patiently.

“Sorry if I woke you,” she says, looking up from her cartoon. “How come you don’t work?”

“What?”

“How come you don’t work?” she asks again, crossing her legs together. She’s got on the polka dot knee socks we bought yesterday.

“I live off of an inheritance,” I say.

“Whoa,” she says. “Bourgie. Shit. So I had rich grandparents? Were they like, those W.E.B. DuBois black assimilationist intellectuals? Did they pressure you to have someone else raise me?”

“No,” I say. “Daddy was a bus driver. My mama was in medical billing. When was the last time you combed that head?” I ask. Her long strands are starting to mat together. “Looks like a bird’s nest.”

“I like my hair how it is,” she says. “One of my foster mothers said she thought I had Irish in me. Do I?”

I walk to the kitchen, flummoxed by the question. I set my percolator on the stove.

“What does it even mean to have Irish in you?” I ask. “That’s a child’s question and not worthy of an answer. Do you think there’s a piece of a country inside your bones? Or in your belly? Floating around? Making tea?”

“You know what I mean. Is my father Irish?” she asks. “Or part Irish?”

“I don’t know. He had red hair, yes, if that’s what you want to know.”

“Is he how you got all the money?” she asks, standing up to join me in the question. It’s not an accusation, but I take it that way, so defensive.

“I didn’t ask for it,” I say, remembering being contacted by police and lawyers.

“Was he a good man?” she asks. “Did he play music at all? I can play the violin, you know. I don’t see any instruments around here. Maybe it comes from him?”

“Maybe it comes from you,” I say, not wanting to think any part of her is from me, ruined, pathetic woman.

“I thought you’d have answers for me.” Her breath comes out in a loud huff as she curls up next to the arm of the sofa. “I want to know everything, and you don’t know anything.”

I take a seat next to her, making sure a foot of distance remains between us. “Not even Sir Isaac Newton knew everything,” I say.

“Who is that?”

Luciana decides to go for a walk, and she wears the brown leather jacket I got her over the sweatshirt from my alma mater. She stops at the door, resting her shoulder against the frame. “Do you hate me?” she asks.

“No,” I say. “Don’t catch cold out there. The weather’s getting bad.”

I wave at her retreating form until she disappears around the block.

Before I had Luz, Wheelock asked me, “What are you going to do?”

“Adoption, I think,” I said. “I’m not ready to be a mother and I don’t know. I’m too far along to do the other thing. I can’t provide a good home. I just can’t.”

He said, “I’ll provide you a home. It’s ours to raise.” He was always like this, so sure that his way was the right away. “If you try to give my child away,” he went on, “I’ll have no choice but to claim my rights as father.”

“They’re not going to make me give my baby to a sick pervert,” I said, meaning every word. I knew what he was. I knew that I was nothing to him but my youth.

“You really think they’re going to believe the word of some slut black girl over me? Who would want you?”

And it’s wrong and a lie, but I’m sixteen and don’t know any better. His words sound like truth to me, like something to be afraid of, and all my life he has only ever given me what at the time felt like honesty.

I turned from him, stomping toward the door in a fit of adolescent theatrics. He snatched me by the wrist and twisted me backwards, pulling me close against his body. I’m trapped in his embrace, and a looker-on might think that the whole thing was affectionate, but there is vomit in my throat. Mr. Wheelock pushes me against the wall with enough force to snap my head back against the exposed brick. He steps back, then, taking in the sight of me, a desperate apology on his lips.

I shoot him in the chest three times, and it isn’t even hard.

“The Tell-Tale Heart” is all lies.

I hear a crack of thunder and worry after Luciana. She’s been gone for half an hour now, and the storm’s picking up.

Like a high schooler, I recite one of my favorite poems. “Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain… / Remembering again that I shall die / And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks / For washing me cleaner than I have been / Since I was born into this solitude.” Edward Thomas.

Mr. Wheelock introduced me to war poetry.

Sometimes I think he left me all this stuff to keep his hold on me. To strangle me. As I look out the window out into the gray, I think it’s worked. Jobless, damaged, friendless, I do not feel like a full-grown adult. Luciana will tire of me when she realizes I have nothing to offer beyond shopping trips and random historical and literary trivia.

I walk barefoot to my room, feeling the texture change from hardwood to soft carpet. A draft is coming through, and thinking of Luz, I turn up the thermostat.

I write my girl—yes, my girl, mine—a note:

I cannot talk to the girl directly about so many things, not yet, but I leave her this small piece of myself on the coffee table so that she’ll see it when she comes home.

Or perhaps she’ll stay out, walk along the street until the paved road meets the dirt road and eventually the small wood by the river. Maybe she’ll jump in, lose herself in the current, and find she doesn’t need me at all. Part of me wishes for that to happen, so that I do not have to see her face again. There’s too much feeling going on here lately.

Mr. Wheelock used to read me the letters of James Joyce while I lounged at his breakfast nook eating Lucky Charms. I would memorize the lines, recite passages to my English teachers in order to prove to them that I was worldly and experienced. One in particular I said aloud many an evening but never shared with another, holding it close to me like a twisted secret: “When that person… whose heart I long to stop with the click of a revolver, put his hand or hands under your skirts[,] did he only tickle you outside or did he put his finger or fingers up into you?… Did you feel it?”

I felt it, yes. I felt everything.

Sometimes, you hope for the viper to come, and it does, but you can’t get off your shot fast enough. When that happens you squeeze your eyes shut and just endure the bite, let the venom rush through you, allow your blood to slow and clog, and wait for the toxin to invade every part of you.