Come on in, my mother calls. She sits at the dining room table clipping coupons in her usual spot, her back to the sliding glass patio door. My sister has not yet arrived. I take off my shoes and coat. I come in partway, leaning against the counter where she has laid a towel over the clean dishes. I cross my arms and talk about my new job, finding my footing. She talks about her prayer group. We talk about the weather. Then she stands. I was going to wait, she says, but we have time. What? I ask. A few presents, she says. It’s Thanksgiving, I remind her. For your birthdays, she says, for Easters, for Valentine’s Days, Christmases. I’ve been saving them. In the living room, a tower of boxes in blues and reds and purples. The room is nearly full. I sit on the covered couch and begin: mixed nuts, pretzels, Cheerios, Chex Mix. Box after box. I fold the colored wrapping on the coffee table, even though it won’t be saved. Socks. Underwear. I wasn’t sure what size you wear, so I kept the receipts. Jeans. Sweaters. I had gained some weight, but also lost it. Everything fit perfectly. There is one last gift. I thought it would be fun, she says. Boxed blonde. We have time. Do you want to try it? I do. A kind of thick, shampoo-like cream in my hair. Don’t forget your eyebrows, she laughs, setting her little white egg timer. I close my eyes. I lather even my lashes. We sit and wait in silence. The cat rubs against my leg. I open my mouth to say something but don’t. The timer rings. What now? I ask. Here, she says, stand up. She guides me by the shoulders to the kitchen sink. She rinses everything away: her hands on my scalp, her hands on the ridge of my brow, gently over my eyelids. She pulls a hand towel from the drawer where it has always been kept. When I open my eyes she is beaming, proud. You look so pretty blonde. She hands me a mirror, but I don’t look. I trust her sight. We have time, she says. Hands me the paper. I read without comprehending until my name catches my eye at the bottom of the front page. Some of the type is smudged away. Obituary, page 12. Was I happy, I wonder, or was I alone?

The stage was set for noticing, and I was in the wings. Far-flung chatter of white-throated sparrows, sheer-rippled curtain drawn across the gleaming gibbous moon, red embers footlighting in the firepit. Rusted typewriters, the divots of letters waiting for the playwright’s hands. I needed only remember the lines I had been given. The impulse to improvise overtook me, to teach the circled stump seats something about wonder. About burying shame like a seed in the dirt, the soft compliance of the soil to my probing finger, the soot-like stain carried always under the nail. A body beside mine, and another, encouraging. When I finally stepped forward onto the thrust, the exact diction of the silence I had rehearsed hissed out on my nervous breath. The gap between my teeth hummed. Crowns of pine and paper birch swaying in anticipation of applause.

I began to think of the end of all things, the long creak of a hinge, faster, like a pained yelp, how brief the arc of action becomes when considered in its entirety. Yet I found when counting that the numbers seemed to misplace themselves. Futile inventions, silly little rituals, I slipped the names of the digits in the stream until they came out clean, fresh. We sunned on the stony banks together, ridiculing the clouds. We were wet for a time, and then we were dry, having forgotten that this was the intention with which we sat out in the afternoon heat. The light, then, was its own end, independent of any setting. We laid out a table, feasting on the delicacy of conjecture, dabbing our lips with cocksure napkins. What if it explodes; what if it collapses; what if it snuffs out in a puff of smoke? Don’t we have this river, this sky, our names? What is the blinking of a star but a comma. I could feel the blood gripping the bone of my dropped jaw while the numbers laughed. Suddenly their values had shifted—what I thought was a reclining eight was now an upright seven. The hinge snapped shut and it was a leering line, a one, the only number, nowhere to go, no way out.