CONJUNCTIONS:24 Spring 1995

Five Stories
Lydia Davis

THE MICE
MICE LIVE IN OUR WALLS but do not trouble our kitchen. We are pleased but cannot understand
why they do not come into our kitchen where we have traps set, as they come into the kitchens of our
neighbors. Although we are pleased, we are also upset, because the mice behave as though there were
something wrong with our kitchen. What makes this even more puzzling is that our house is much
less tidy than the houses of our neighbors. There is more food lying about in our kitchen, more
crumbs on the counters and filthy scraps of onion kicked against the base of the cabinets. In fact,
there is so much loose food in the kitchen I can only think the mice themselves are defeated by it. In a
tidy kitchen, it is a challenge for them to find enough food night after night to survive until spring.
They patiently hunt and nibble hour after hour until they are satisfied. In our kitchen, however, they
are faced with something so out of proportion to their experience that they cannot deal with it. They
might venture out a few steps, but soon the overwhelming sights and smells drive them back into
their holes, uncomfortable and embarrassed at not being able to scavenge as they should.

THE OUTING
An outburst of anger near the road, a refusal to speak on the path, a silence in the pine woods, a
silence across the old railroad bridge, an attempt to be friendly in the water, a refusal to end the
argument on the flat stones, a cry of anger on the steep bank of dirt, a weeping among the bushes.

ODD BEHAVIOR
You see how circumstances are to blame. I am not really an odd person if I put more and more small
pieces of shredded kleenex in my ears and tie a scarf around my head: when I lived alone I had all the
silence I needed.

FEAR
Nearly every morning, a certain woman in our community comes running out of her house with her
face white and her overcoat flapping wildly. She cries out, "Emergency, emergency," and one of us
runs to her and holds her until her fears are calmed. We know she is making it up; nothing has really
happened to her. But we understand, because there is hardly one of us who has not been moved at
some time to do just what she has done, and every time, it has taken all our strength, and even the
strength of our friends and families too, to quiet us.

LOST THINGS
They are lost, but also not lost but somewhere in the world. Most of them are small, though two are
larger, one a coat and one a dog. Of the small things, one is a certain ring, one a certain button. They
are lost from me and where I am, but they are also not gone. They are somewhere else, and they are
there to someone else, it may be. But if not there to someone else, the ring is, still, not lost to itself,
but there, only not where I am, and the button, too, there, still, only not where I am.

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About the Author:

Lydia Davis is a French translator, and has produced several new translations of French literary
classics, including Proust's Swann’s Way and Flaubert's Madame Bovary.
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis was published as a single volume in 2010.
Lydia Davis is regarded as a prose stylist of distinction, originality, and enormous promise. For
example, in Break It Down (1986) she writes with a restraint and irony comparable to that of the so-
called minimalist writers of her generation. Davis often designates the time and place of her
narratives obliquely or not at all, while limiting the psychological dimension of her characters in a
way that recalls the works of Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka rather than those of Donald Barthelme
or Raymond Carver. This approach has doubtless been fostered by the other literary activity for
which Davis is well known -- her extensive translations of such twentieth-century French authors as
Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leiris, and Michel Butor.
The daughter of writers, both of whom have published stories in the New Yorker, Davis was born in
1947 in Northampton, Massachusetts, where her father, Robert Gorham Davis, was then a professor
of modern literature at Smith College; in addition to teaching at creative-writing workshops and
doing reviews, he was also the editor of a once widely used anthology of short stories, Ten Modern
Masters.

Give Me Back My Heart Please

By Liz Haigh 
. . . Steven! Steven it's me, Carla. I am not sure if you can even hear me but I am asking you, I
am begging you. Can I have my heart back please?
Do you remember the night before you left? You took me to La Tasca, which had tables
overlooking the Thames. We sat at a table outside and shared a large jug of Sangria. You were so
attentive to everything I said, and you looked so handsome in the moonlight with your golden
blonde hair and your piercing blue eyes.
We were one of the last to leave the bar. You took me back to your place and I followed you
without hesitation as you led me upstairs. What a night we had, what a wild and wonderful
night.
I was still sleeping when you got up to take a shower the next morning. I knew you had to
leave early for the airport. When I did wake up I saw your suitcase, packed and in the corner of
the bedroom all ready for your business trip. It was then that I did the deed.
While you were busy washing off the scent of me I removed my heart and placed it
carefully in your suitcase. I put it at the back amongst your soft socks and smooth cotton boxer
shorts. I should have told you, explained things to you but after last night, I assumed you already
knew. Anyway, you said you were only going away for a few days, a week at the most. I thought I
could live without my heart till then.
You kissed me so tenderly before you left, I felt sure my heart would be in safe hands.
It's been over two weeks now. You still have not returned from your business trip. Your
office tells me that you have been appointed head of operations in the Far East and will be
staying out there indefinitely. Now my body is stuck here in London and my heart is stuck over
in Shanghai. At first, I could still feel it thumping strongly but as each day passes the beat gets
weaker.
Steven can you hear me? Please, bring me back my heart, or very soon I will die.
—Liz Haigh
Copyright © 2009 http:www.stwa.net and Contributors
About the Author: Liz Haigh lives in Cheshire in the UK. She works at a university library,
which is her dream job because she loves books. Most of her published work so far has been in
the form of book reviews which have appeared in Red, Prima, Woman and Home and regularly in
Women's Weekly (UK print editions). She recently had a very interesting article published in
Gardening Magazine all about English men and their garden sheds.
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Haircut 
--Lydia Copeland

                                               

SHE IS CUTTING HIS HAIR. The wind is in her curls. She rises and falls like a sleeping
animal. He has removed his shirt. There is a towel around his neck, the smell of spice and banana, the
scent of vacations. You are reminded of the time in the beach house in Florida when you told your
brother there was no Santa Claus and no Easter Bunny and no tooth fairy. These three blows in one
sentence. The two of you were sharing a bed, supposed long asleep. Your brother ran crying into the
living room. They asked, how could you? You said it was the truth, and, in truth, they couldn't deny it.
The edge of her dress bells out in the breeze. She wears Baby's Breath all over. You see how his
mustache needs trimming, how her fingers are fast with the shears. You see these things from above,
on the roof outside your bedroom. The shingles are black with flecks of glitter in the light. You want
to be higher than the house, want to float up, like in your flying dreams, over the tree limbs, the
weather vanes, the seams of countryside. You want to slowly lift like a transparent body, like an
outline of yourself, like you imagine your brother had lifted from his head and out of his bedroom and
into the attic. In the attic there is old baby furniture and your mother's high school annuals and in a
wooden jewelry box—your father's baby teeth. You imagine your brother must have lingered there
awhile and then floated out of the house, and into the nimbus of space. That day he bled through the
carpet and into the basement. Everyone had gone to the carnival to eat ice cream. He had come home
to an empty house. You can hear the neighbor's fireworks, can see a trail of smoke, but there is no
silver light ferning across the sky, no bloom of gun powder. It is not quite afternoon. She peels the
burnt skin from his shoulders. Last week she peeled the plastic coating from the new microwave and
the polish from her nails. For days you found red crescents mixed with the dirt on the kitchen floor.
She dips an edge of blue soap into a glass of water, and rubs over the back of his neck. You know it is
warm on his skin. You've seen her heat the water to a simmer. She will shape his hairline with her leg
razor, just as she used to shape yours when you had a pixie haircut, and she told you to sit still while
she palmed the top of your head and bowed you and tickled you with water, ever so gentle. She shakes
the towel. He thanks her. Then he stands, lifts the shirt over his head, smoothes the wrinkles from his
pants. You watch as the nests of hair are swept from the porch, as they drift into the yard. There are
shapes of needles in the air. Everything is light as a thread.

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 The Glass Wife

I had a wife who was made of glass-glass bones, glass lips, glass all over. She was a marvel in the truest sense
of the word. She was my second wife and had a pretty child's nose, which was my favorite kind of nose and one
of the reasons I took her for my wife in the first place. She was so dainty that on first encounter people often
mistook her for a doll, one of those stiff porcelain dolls with the startled expressions. When she walked she
clicked across the floor because she was made of glass and glass is not quiet, though it may sound beautiful and
fragile.

When we met she was a living, breathing history book full of treaties and names of ships. She loved to quote
famous authors. It was always Twain this, or Eliot that. Some people found this trait annoying, but when your
wife is made of glass and has a precious tiny nose, it can be quite cute. She claimed to have aunts and uncles
from Alsace-Lorraine. Her own parents-she told me- were Alsacian, which made her unique among American
citizens. 

After we married, we talked about what our children might look like. We worried over whose genes would win
out, she being a glass-marvel and all. Would our babies be wholly glass and too fragile for dancing or would
they made of soft skin and cartilage? In the end curiosity won out and we decided to give it a go. We had three
boys, identical triplets but the doctors told us that all of her future pregnancies would most likely be multiples
since she was made of glass through and through with glass ovaries that produced only highly fragile glass
eggs.

Our triplets were a natural phenomenon-all flesh and bone except for their fingernails and toenails, which were
glass, and made for a difficult childhood. Sports of any kind were out of the question. This was a great
disappointment for me since I had always wanted to father a whole team of child athletes, or at least enough for
an outfield. Instead, our boys read books and learned second languages like Norwegian and Portuguese. They
inherited their mother's knack for historical information and memorized the Magna Carta and the Beatles
songbooks in their entirety. One of our boys grew up to be a sign language interpreter-the finest in his field-
which was lovely because of his beautiful fingernails that sparkled as he signed the alphabet. All the deaf
schools said they wanted him for a representative but most of the time he ended up being a hand model for their
brochures. Our other two boys also acquired a sort of local notoriety, one as a musical conductor, the other as a
jeweler crafting knock-offs of famous pieces like Mary-Lou Retton's engagement ring.

When our children left the house and went out into the world to enjoy vacations and successful careers, my wife
and I began what I refer to as the Great Decline of Our Marriage. We no longer knew how to be with each other
and were shy in our own home. She stayed in the bedroom watching talk shows and music videos throughout
the day while I mowed the lawn or polished the silverware. We had several years of such discomfort, of rarely
speaking to one another unless one of us needed the salt at dinner or wanted to know the whereabouts of some
household item like the phone book or the extra pillowcases. And then one day my glass wife told me that she
was in-love with our cable man, who was the reason she stayed in the bedroom with the television on. I was
astonished at this news. I thought I was the only man who loved her in a sexual way. We were in the kitchen
when she broke it to me. I was heartbroken, naturally, but I was also angry and in my rage I pushed my glass
wife into the refrigerator, at which point she broke her tailbone and the thing just fell off, like a real tail, and
shattered on the kitchen floor.

I felt pretty bad about what I had done to her, but her reaction was completely unwarranted. It was only a
tailbone after all and people break those everyday all over the world. Besides, she was always breaking things
like my expensive stereo tuner and my ceramic flowerpots. This tailbone was just another in a long list. After
beating me with a dishtowel, she locked herself in the bedroom where I imagined she packed a suitcase and
maybe starred at the wallpaper for a while before climbing out the window and clicking down the driveway.

It has been years since she left me and I haven't seen her in all that time. Though she does occasionally call me
to discuss the children's latest achievements. I have since married a very unremarkable woman, who, aside from
her stunning knowledge of tree species, shall remain unremarked upon. The triplets are the only children I have
and they each look exactly like me, except in the hands-which remind me how much I miss my old wife and our
life together.

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Lydia Copeland lives in New Jersey with her husband and son. She is a recent graduate of the Center
for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi and is the first place recipient of Glimmer Train's
award for new writers. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Product, Reed Magazine,
Eyeshot, Monkey Bicycle, JobStories, and one of her stories was nominated for the Best New
American Voices Anthology. She is the occasional Fiction Editor for Dicey Brown Magazine and
teaches English part time at Northeast State Community College. She also works in a very beautiful
public library.

Kelly Wright
October 2011

All Mimsy
Mimsy peered into the dark chamber. One hand daintily held her skirts up off the dirty floor. The other
gripped a curved, snarled, shining blade.
“Hello? Anyone in there?” Her melodious voice infiltrated every cranny and nook, dank corner and dusty
crevice. At the sound of her chiming query, darkness bulged and strained against the walls. The ceiling groaned
in protest. Unable to escape, the suffocating dark retreated on itself and huddled at the margins of the room.
Mimsy gave a curt nod and entered. Tiny Mimsy: no more than a child, a wisp, a gumdrop. A puff of
wind would carry her away like a dandelion seed, were she not weighted down by the blade.
A new light entered the room with Mimsy. It came from nowhere, but if an observer were forced to name
a source for the glow, one might, with much hesitation and hemming and hawing and a protestation or two,
suggest that perhaps the luminescence came from Mimsy’s gaze.
She picked her way across littered floorboards. As she walked, dust puffed up at her feet and then
scattered, scuttling away from her satin-clad heels. She stood in the center of the room in a perfectly dust-free
circle and rested the tip of the blade on the floor before her. “Come now,” she cooed, and her words sang
through the air. The darkness trembled. The walls creaked. “No need to put this off. Come out where I can see
you.”
A shuffling, a shifting, a capitulation. Something that had not been hiding in the room nonetheless
slithered out of concealment and into the shimmering light that did not come from Mimsy. Its hulking mass
towered to the very top of the room and stretched from wall to wall. There was no space left for anything but the
fleshy mass, and yet Mimsy stood unperturbed in her glittering circle, amused.
It tried to huddle before her. Snaking tentacles with bloodshot eyeballs on their thick stalks trembled and
hunched down, reaching for the distant floor. Trunklike limbs quivered and bowed.
Mimsy giggled — bells chimed and the darkness retreated farther, abandoning its former cohort. Scimitar
claws tapped against the ceiling, perhaps seeking an escape. The room was near to bursting; very few structures
can withstand fleeing darkness and a cowering room-sized nightmare at the same time, let alone Mimsy, who
pushed all before her.
“Have you anything to say for yourself?” Mimsy asked in a kindly tone. Motes of dark paused in their
flight to listen. A thread of hope wound its way among the forest of tentacle-eyes. Time paused.
An observer might have reported that, while silence strained against the confines of the room and pushed
into every surface (save an unmolested circle where Mimsy tinkled), there may have been a vocalization far
beneath the room, miles below the surface of the Earth. It is possible that it rumbled among magma pools that
have never seen the sun, and, burning with the heat of their shame, it might have mumbled, “I’m sorry.”
Mimsy beamed. Her glorious smile reached out to the fleeing darkness and coaxed it back, warming it
into a lustrous, sliver-gray glow. The tentacle-eyes twisted and weaved around themselves nervously, and their
shared body held its breath. They blinked in unison, and it was clear that they hoped, perhaps even believed,
that Mimsy had been appeased.
But the shining darkness knew better. It wanted to look away, to flee once more before her, but her smile,
now a tight grin that hooked up on one side, held each mote pinned to its spot. And the truth slowly dawned on
the quivering creature, rippling realization across its wrinkled flesh. The tentacle-eyes learned last — they tried
to run, but were alas too firmly attached.
Mimsy raised the blade high and whispered, “Apology accepted.”
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About the Author

Kelly Wright

Kelly Wright lives in Chicago. When she isn’t busy earning a paycheck by editing anything and
everything sent her way, she splits her time between parenting, writing, music making, reading good
(and not-so-good) books, and — whenever possible — lounging on a Lake Michigan beach. This is
her first published work of fiction. Her photo is by her friend Chad Leverenz.