The doctor says I'm getting better but I don't even know what that means. I don't feel any better. I told him that and he told me I was being negative. I asked him if he would say that a coyote gnawing off its foot to get out of a trap was being negative and he said I was being morbid. Then he told me I was getting better.

I always think of you when he tells me I'm getting better. You're better. And I think about all the times we had. They were better. And I think how whenever fucked up shit happened to us growing up, you actually took it a whole lot better than I did and then you actually got better afterwards. I never get better and that's the truth. Shut up, too, cause I can already hear you telling me I am getting better and not to be negative. That's one thing that's better about you not being here. When I tell you to shut up, it actually happens, and I can picture you without us talking at all, and believe it or not I get a lot of warmth and hope just from looking at you. I always did.

I was thinking I would tell you about this apple war I was in when I was younger. I have way too much time to think. That's the one thing about this fucking place-the only option you really have to turn your fucking brain off is to pretend you're getting really depressed and then they give you some more drugs. The pain medicine doesn't work anymore but the lithium eventually succeeds in making me vague. Nothing really works. Only morning. When no one else is up and it's a sunny day and the light comes in across the blanket over my legs and I can picture you at the end of my bed. Quiet. Not fucking talking, just standing there, smiling at me. I never realized your upper arms were so pretty until you were imaginary. Now I wish I could touch them.

It was 6pm and the sun had gone yellow and soft. We were standing on a street corner under a live oak tree in Uptown New Orleans. A second line band was playing, the bass drum beating the dum, dum, dum. I had only slept three hours in three days and I had a constant high whine in my ear from standing too close to the speakers. I felt like my whole fucking brain was made of glass, cracking imperceptibly. It would shatter if things lined up the right way, the way a whole bridge can fall apart under the ordinary stress of a thousand marching feet in step.

Annie Quinn woke up angry for the second time in the same week. She was so angry she picked up the Winchester .30-.30 that slept next to her and looked out the hay loft window at the rooster, his head tilted back and crowing at the top of his lungs, and she thought about taking him out. The second her hand touched the cool silver plate on the gun’s stock, she calmed some, and realized it wasn’t the rooster she was mad at. It wasn’t anything in particular at all, and that was the problem. She was tight in the neck and shoulders, her brain felt pinched, and she was already thinking up ways of picking a fight with Noreen. Annie pulled her boots on, grabbed the gun up, and climbed down from the loft. She walked out of the barn, took a deep breath of the dawn air, rested her gun against the wall, and walked over to feed the chickens and pigs.

Ellie, eight years old and the youngest of the O'Connor family, had just recently discovered the word "delicious" and she took every opportunity to craft sentences that included it. She stood by the counter in the kitchen with the oversized box tucked under her undersized arm, plucking pieces of cereal out between two fingers, examining them closely, and placing them on her tongue before crunching.

 

"Nobody cares about your cereal, squirt," Peter grumbled sleepily. Peter, fourteen and oldest, his eyes puffy from new hormonal sleep, sat on the counter drumming his heels against the cabinet and sipping a glass of orange juice.

 

"Each piece is crunchous and cinnamony scrumptuous," Ellie said.

 

Ellie had bright blue eyes and her cheeks and forehead had browned in the sun. She had memorized many advertisements and judged their quality by how difficult they were to memorize. Cinnamon Crunch cereal was too easy to memorize and therefore sub-standard, but it was providing her the perfect vehicle to irritate Peter. All things served their purpose in Ellie's world.

"Be careful up there, sweetheart," Estelle said. "Nothing like the last day of the year for bad luck."

 

Roger looked at Estelle's sagging painted face and saw the wet twinkle of real worry underneath the gobs of eye make-up in her gypsy mask. In spite of her warning, he had a good feeling about the day. It had been a bad week and a worse night and today the sun was up high and warm. It was the first Saturday in October, the Scarapelli Circus' last show of the year, and the weather was going to be perfect.

 

"It's alright," Roger said, giving her the thumbs up.
"You're a sweetheart," Estelle said, pinching his cheek. "I think we'll keep you around."