Better Times Read online

  “Sara Batkie is a writer for our times: lyrical and smart, clear-eyed and true. Better Times may portend just that—better times, at least for literature, in these dark hours.”

  —Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award

  “With a controlled ferocity of perception, Sara Batkie lays bare a world in which all of us are spies and strangers, both to one another and ourselves. She’s a kind of Jean Rhys for our time, and this is a haunting first collection.”

  —Brian Morton, author of Florence Gordon and Starting Out in the Evening

  “Better Times is a book of quiet passions, narrated with grace. In these nine finely observed stories Batkie explores with empathy the impolite agonies that change the gravity of her characters’ worlds.”

  —Tracy O’Neill, author of The Hopeful

  Better Times

  Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction

  Kwame Dawes, editor

  Better Times

  Short Stories

  Sara Batkie

  University of Nebraska Press | Lincoln and London

  © 2018 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska

  Cover designed by University of Nebraska Press; cover image: forest by Robert Gilka / National Geographic Creative; collage by Eugenia Loli

  Author photo © Roque Nonini

  All rights reserved

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Batkie, Sara, author.

  Title: Better times: short stories / Sara Batkie.

  Description: Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, [2018] | Series: Prairie

  Schooner book prize in fiction

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018014270

  ISBN 9781496207876 (pbk.: alk. paper)

  ISBN 9781496211958 (epub)

  ISBN 9781496211965 (mobi)

  ISBN 9781496211972 (pdf)

  Classification: LCC PS3602.A8935 A6 2018DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018014270.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  For Adina

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  The Recent Past

  When Her Father Was an Island

  Laika

  Foreigners

  No Man’s Land

  The Modern Age

  Cleavage

  North Country, Early Morning

  Departures

  Lookaftering

  The World to Come

  Those Who Left and Those Who Stayed

  Acknowledgments

  Some stories in this book were over ten years in the writing and many people helped make them better along the way.

  First I must thank the teachers without whose wisdom and encouragement I would not still be writing. Thanks to Katie Chase at the University of Iowa, for being the first to make me take myself seriously. To the amazing New York University brain trust of Brian Morton, Jonathan Lethem, Darin Strauss, and the dearly missed E. L. Doctorow: it was an honor beyond belief to be in your classrooms. To my fellow NYU students in the trenches, especially Tusia, Kimberly, and Dave: thank you for the late nights after workshop, when the A Train had already started going local but we needed to get in one more round of cheap beers at Treehouse. To Tanya, Miranda, and Caedra: my membership in our writing group was short-lived but your perceptiveness made me feel instantly welcomed and challenged.

  To my UI Currier 04–05 crew, especially Alyssa, Molly, Danny, Tara, and honorary members Beth, Peter, and JJ: you were some of the first people I shared serious work with and you continue to inspire me daily. May our future hold more cakes and trips to Hoboken for cookie decorating and holiday brunches. Thanks also to Thais, for your early reads and remarkable insight. If page counts were medals I’d owe you several display cases worth.

  To the incredible staff at One Story, who were the first to bring me into the fold of New York’s big, scary literary world and show me how kind and generous it could be. Maribeth Batcha, Hannah Tinti, Patrick Ryan, Marie-Helene Bertino, Karen Friedman: I’d stuff envelopes for you anytime. To Amanda, Jesse, and Jenni: we waded through slush together and found lasting friendships. To Emily, Christine, Julia, and Seth: thank you for keeping the kindness and generosity train of NYC going. To my dearest Adina: I was so lucky to know you and will do my best to keep your singular brightness burning every day.

  To my Center for Fiction people, who have become so much more than coworkers over our years together: Noreen Tomassi and Cal Morgan, it’s an inspiration to see what you do every day for the literary world and I’m still awed I get to be even a small part of it. Kristin, Gwen, Elise, Rosie, Matt, Chris, Kris, Meghan, Jon, Amanda, and Sugar: when is that next happy hour meet-up? To all the immensely talented Emerging Writers I’ve had the privilege of meeting and working with through the Center’s fellowship program: you’re a big part of the reason I keep punching the clock.

  To Kwame Dawes and Ashley Strosnider of Prairie Schooner and judges Christine Sneed and Chigozie Obioma: thank you for selecting this manuscript. To Courtney Ochsner and the rest of the staff at the University of Nebraska Press: thanks for helping usher it into the world. To Pat Friedli and everyone at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center: thank you for offering such a serene space for artists. To Bill Henderson: thanks for seeing fit to honor “Laika” with a Pushcart Prize in 2017. And to the journals that first published the following stories:

  Bellevue Literary Review, for “When Her Father Was an Island”

  Epiphany, for “Those Who Left and Those Who Stayed”

  Gulf Coast, for “Cleavage”

  Michigan Quarterly Review, for “Foreigners”

  New Orleans Review, for “Laika”

  One Story, for “Departures”

  Salt Hill, for “No Man’s Land”

  Last, but never, ever least: to my parents, Steve and Cathy Batkie, my earliest and most steadfast supporters; to my sister, Emily, my brother-in-law, Andrew, and their atomically adorable son, Teddy; and to my grandparents, Ed, Marilyn, Frank, and Carolyn, some of whom are no longer with us but are missed every day: I love you all. There would be no book without you. There would be no words without you.

  The Recent Past

  When Her Father Was an Island

  In his dreams it was always a child who told him about the end of the war. From his perch high above the fields Father would watch as the figure approached, grass bending beneath its feet. A light mist would be falling and, as the child reached the guard tower, Father would turn his face up to the sky, close his eyes, and thank the emperor for allowing him to serve. He would awaken feeling refreshed, happy. If nobody came he was happier still. It meant he had not failed the emperor and the emperor had not failed the world. “Stay and fight,” the emperor had told him, and that was what Father would do.

  Maemi was two years old and being held in her mother’s arms when she first heard her father was missing. Missing in action, she would learn. Presumed dead, she would learn even later. At the time she did not know any of this. She just felt her mother’s heart breaking. The war had been over for six months by then. She did not know this either. But, it seemed, neither did he.

  When Father signed up for the war, Mother was five-and-a-half months pregnant, their child roughly the size of a ripe pomegranate. She did not beg him not to go and he did not wish her to. They had the same understanding of duty. In those early days of the fighting, everyone did.

  Father had always been a quiet man, but this did not make him a simple one, and during his intelligence training he was routinely singled out by his superiors as an exemplary officer. They called him “the Ghost” for his ability t
o sneak up on others. He was rumored to walk through walls. His was a country of mountains and valleys, all of them being ravaged. After a month of combat on the laced edges of the land, after grappling with attackers that came by sea, he was sent to an island jungle outpost with two others, a private and a lieutenant, where his quietness could be weaponized into stealth. Their operation was simple: ward off invaders in any way they could. The airstrip had been destroyed, the pier blasted into the sea. The isolation of the mission matched the strangeness of their surroundings. All civilians had been evacuated long ago. Only the rubber trees, weeping their gluey tears, remained while the soldiers waited for the emperor’s divine word.

  Maemi was growing up in a sorrowful house. Her mother wore her grief like a new skin. When she bathed Maemi she would often weep silently, a condition that terrified the girl. But it was also the only time her mother touched her, so she would dirty herself unnecessarily by making mudcakes in the yard or rolling about in the fireplace soot. “Worse than a mutt,” her mother would say, but she would be tender with her, rubbing a soft cloth under her fingernails, dabbing at the shallow webs between her toes.

  Once a week they would visit the temple in Nagoya and pray for her father’s safe return. It was not a ritual that Maemi enjoyed. She hated the way their shoes clacked against the floor, signaling their arrival even if no one else was there. The silence was heavy enough to force them to their knees if they were not already on their way there. She tented her hands as her mother did, but thoughts floated through her head like clouds. Her father was a photograph to her, a family legend, a hoax. Or perhaps he was a ghost now, a vengeful spirit. When her mother lit the candle for the shrine, dragging a match along the wood until it sparked, Maemi imagined her father dancing in the flame, spinning and coiling until it built and billowed and swallowed whole the room around them. The first time she was allowed to light a candle by herself she cried.

  Father had fallen in love with Mother’s legs first. One day while walking past the pear tree fields he spotted a ladder and two long tapering limbs dangling under wispy ends of a skirt, the rest of the body lost among the leaves. The skirt was thin and yellow, as if the sun had been caught in its net. He watched a hand reach down and drop a piece of the fruit into a basket below. He moved to her side without her hearing and the next time the gesture was made he was there to take hold of her fingers. The air around them had the rumor of bees.

  Father thought of her often while out in the bush. There was plenty of time. In the mornings he kept watch while his two men went into the wilderness to gather bananas and coconuts or to steal rice from the abandoned fields. Once a week they would sneak further out and kill any cattle that could be found, butchering and roasting the meat over a fire. They shied from the bramble of mosquitoes, patched their uniforms, and cleaned their rifles. At night, while the stars strung themselves together above, he lay down and lifted himself back into that tree, tasting the nectar that lived in the hollows of his beloved’s skin.

  When Maemi was eleven her mother found her a new father. One morning he was sitting at the kitchen table, sipping a cup of black tea, and then he never left. She was told to call him “Uncle,” but that felt false on her tongue. He had no look of anyone she’d ever known. His hair was dark and tied in a long braid down his back. When he walked the braid swung like a metronome, keeping the music of time. One day, two days, one month, a year. She sat across from him and watched as he grew fat on their food. He called her “Mutton Chop” while wiping crumbs from his beard.

  “Did you stop loving Father?” Maemi asked her mother.

  “Of course not,” Mother said. “But I cannot stay dutiful to a dead man.”

  When her mother and Uncle had been married a year, Maemi took down the only photograph of her father still remaining in the house. She slid it out from under the glass and moved her fingers over the glossy surface. His face was tinted green, his uniform pressed and snug. He held a rifle over his shoulder, like a soldier in a school textbook. He had no wrinkles, like her new father did, so she took a charcoal pencil and drew some in. Then she smudged hair onto his chin. From beneath his cap she snaked out a braid that fell over his left breast.

  When Maemi was finished she hid the photograph under her bed. At night she whispered her secrets to it, recounted the events of her day. She kept waiting for her mother to ask where it had gone, but she never did.

  The years were beginning to weigh the soldiers down like stones in a pocket. They had grown ragged and wild. Hair that once crept close to their scalps now brushed at their shoulders. Their clothes drooped from their bodies. But they built themselves huts and taught themselves songs and prayed for the safety and wisdom of the emperor.

  One day the private and lieutenant returned from scavenging with a leaflet. Worn and sweat-stained, with frayed edges, it declared in bold red text the end of the war. A picture of the emperor was printed on it, his face hidden in his hands but recognizable nonetheless. “Where did you get this?” Father wanted to know, but they just shrugged and buried themselves in the crypts of their coats. “The enemy,” he said, “is everywhere and can take many forms. We must be prepared. They wish to weaken our resolve. We must not let them.”

  But he, too, was shaken by the news. His mind passed over his wife and child, girl or boy he did not know. Were there invaders among them? Corrupting them? What would home look like now? Was there even any home to return to? That night Father tore the leaflet up and watched it dance upon the fire, the smoke rising to linger above the trees. Let them find us, he thought, so we may know them.

  Maemi had trouble making friends at school. She had a reserved and forlorn nature that the other children had no patience to test. Her hair fell over her face in a black curtain and, when meeting the eyes of others, she had a tendency to blink rapidly until they looked away. She played solitary games in the courtyard; she made the television her confidant. She dreamed herself into worlds ruled by her words. At the dinner table her mother and Uncle talked around her. The fading photograph beneath her bed no longer seemed to be listening either.

  She was sixteen before she knew the touch of a boy. He had a gentle but curious soul and was able to coax things from her that others couldn’t. He would bring her pears from his parents’ farm and cut them in halves to share, the insides of the fruit grainy and sweet. The first time he kissed her his spit melted on her tongue like sugar.

  “What is your deepest fear?” he asked her one August evening. The sun was bowing over the horizon. She looked down at how her fingers laced through his, a cat’s cradle of skin, and said, “That my father is still alive somewhere and has forgotten about me.”

  In the fall the boy left for college and she did not see him again for many years.

  Father was finding it difficult to make his bones work. They creaked and moaned at the slightest provocation. The skin between his fingers was loosening, going rubbery. He was slipping away from himself. There were things out in the jungle he had seen but didn’t quite believe. Shadows that shifted their shapes when he looked at them. Forms that danced at the edges of his vision. Once, when he was awakened in the night by the sound of heavy rain on his tent, he opened the flap and swore he saw pears falling from the sky.

  One morning he spotted a rustling in the leaves at the edge of the fields. He crouched down low and sighted through his rifle the flashing black blur of a figure. He felt a nick in his heart and a charley horse in his chest. He waited for its next move and hoped it would not make one. Then it darted forward and he could make out the ruined tan of a man’s face, a sneer worming over his lips. “Stop!” Father shouted. “In the name of the emperor!” There was a pause, and then the man moved nearer again, the green grass blades bending and waving to Father now like hands with broken fingers. “Stop at once!” he repeated, “or I’ll shoot!” If the man heard him he did not seem to care.

  When he ran to make sure the figure was dead, Father was horrified to turn the body over and find the face of t
he private. He buried him quickly, without ceremony, and washed his hands with canteen water until the container was empty. After returning to camp he was shocked anew: both men were there to greet him, intact and concrete. There were demons about this place, Father thought. He would have to be more careful.

  Maemi decided to study genetics at Kyoto University. She spent many evenings in the lab, building rungs of DNA into a ladder of inheritance. Her hair still fell over her face and her eyes still strained to focus on others, but many men in the science department took an interest in her. During her first semester she lost her virginity to an entomology professor, pinned beneath him like one of his beetles. At the annual faculty party he introduced her to his wife. Maemi smiled as they shook hands, then locked herself in the coatroom and hit herself on the upper thigh until the tears retreated. There would be other men after him and each one would hurt a little bit less.

  In her second year at school she got a phone call from Uncle. Her mother had not been feeling well the previous few weeks. When she went to see a doctor, they discovered cancer rooting in her stomach, spreading its poison limbs through her body. “She wants you to come home to see her, Mutton Chop,” Uncle said. The line crackled between them. Anger writhed in Maemi like blood. How could her mother leave her? How much more grief must she gather? How much more family could she forge? “I don’t know when I can get away,” she said, unwept tears braiding in her throat.

  At the funeral the next month Uncle wrapped two limp arms around her and told her she was welcome to stay with him whenever she liked. But without her mother there it didn’t feel right. He had never been her father and he certainly couldn’t be so now. During the holidays and summers she went to live with boyfriends instead.

  The private and lieutenant were restless. They paced in their huts day and night. Voices swirled around but none belonged to the emperor. The jungle whispered secrets to itself. The stars snickered at them from above. “Why is there no word from him?” they asked. But their doubting only strengthened Father’s resolve. Their mission was a sacred one and it required an obedience that not every man was capable of. He would stay until the end, no matter how it came.