The Box by Iris Rosewater

Lynne finished the last of the dishes alone in the kitchen. She hadn’t bothered to put on the yellow rubber gloves under the sink, and found herself regretting it as the hot water and soap burned into the cracks in her overworked hands. So happy to finally have a moment to herself, forcing no reverent smiles and accepting no more pitiful hugs, engaged in something mindless, she dove in without taking the precaution. It wasn’t working as well as she’d hoped, however. Thoughts were still creeping in. Since the dishes hadn’t done the trick, she started tidying the whole kitchen, scrubbing the crusty brown ring around the base of the faucet with an old toothbrush, sweeping, condensing into plastic containers the leftover array of casseroles and gelatin salads with bits of carrot and fruit suspended inside. The broken skin on her hands stung as she worked, asking her to stop with each forceful scrub and scrape, begging for a healing balm and some rest. She ignored it and kept on. She painstakingly picked and peeled off a grubby piece of ancient scotch tape leftover from someone’s artwork on the fridge… found her little boy’s boot, caked with mud, under some empty paper bags at the bottom of the pantry and threw it away in disgust, crushing it into the overfilled trash can.
　
　
Her hands hung at her sides, weighted down by trash bags filled with sympathy cards and used paper plates and dried up bouquets of flowers, as she walked into the mud room. Out of habit and without looking, she stuck her feet into the shoes nearest the back door. They slid on easily, loose on her feet as she shuffled into the crisp night air. Then, realizing whose shoes she wore, she stopped halfway down the driveway, dropping the bags on the frozen ground, and looked at her feet. Derrick’s favorite running shoes seemed to look up at her. Her bare feet shook them loose and she pranced inside on the balls of her feet. It was irrational, she knew, to be angry, and she was angry at herself for feeling it, but there it was, gnawing at her insides. “I’m alone, Derek. What am I supposed to do now?” She asked the empty living room. It was silent. Her children were staying at a friend’s house for the night. Why do people take away all your distractions and try to stuff you with food when someone dies? she wondered irritably, flinging off her coat. Lynne flopped onto the couch and grabbed the remote control, filling the room with the noise of tinny laughter and closed her eyes. It stopped abruptly. Her eyes opened to darkness. “Perfect…” she muttered to herself, as she got up to find a flashlight. She fiddled with some breakers for a few minutes, in vain, cursing Derek again for leaving her. This was supposed to be his job. Defeated, she rooted into the boxes in the fading light of her battery-operated torch and found a box with some candlesticks and brought it inside.
　
　
Her brother had been kind to light the fire in the woodstove before he left. Gratitude found its way into her heart as she stoked the embers and added a piece of wood to the flames. She lit a candle and set it on the kitchen table. The light revealed his handwriting on the cardboard, with their names. Somehow, in the dark, she had managed to find this of all boxes in the whole garage. She traced her finger along the blocky capitol letters and sat down, bracing herself. Carefully, Lynne sifted through the remnants of their courtship, filled with letters and photographs, matchbooks from restaurants, poems written on napkins and paper lunch sacks.
　
　
They met when she was 16 years old and Lynne couldn’t imagine herself with anyone else since. Derek was her soul’s twin. He went away to college for two years before they were married, which nearly killed her. Lynne pulled out dozens of pictures they’d taken on visits to each other, some taken by Derek with one arm around her and the other extended to snap the shutter on the disposable camera. They looked so young, smiling and bursting with happiness just to be in each other’s company - it had been so rare. The end of every letter held the same promise that it wouldn’t be much longer before there would be no more goodbyes. His devotion had filled her to brimming. She recognized the candles from a picnic he’d made the summer before graduation… when he’d asked her to marry him. Officially. Unofficially, he had asked her a thousand times. They decided on a name for their eventual first daughter before they’d been together their first year. He was her only. Only. Only.
　
　
The days after his death, Lynne pretended he was away again, just like college. She could handle that, she reasoned somehow, because she had done it before. She had gone whole months without seeing his face and feeling his arms around her. Beyond that, she did not dare try to imagine enduring. The world began to cave in when she tried to picture living without him much longer than that. To stave off the black hole of thoughts that threatened to devour, she stayed safely busy, her worn hands a blur. To stave off the pain, she had allowed anger to numb her senses, and it was rapidly wearing off. Toward the bottom of the box, the darkness began its tug at her insides. She stayed perfectly still, listening to the wood crack as the fire consumed it in the next room.
　
　
“Can you hear me, Derek?” she asked the darkness. The walls danced in the delicate glow of the candle. “You said you’d never leave me…” she whispered. Under the ragged edges of envelopes torn-open, was a book Derek had given her the day he left for college long ago. Inside it, she found a faded scrap of notebook paper, marking a poem.
　
　
The neglected wounds on her hands burned with the brine of her tears, and she thanked him for this last promise, clutching the book to her broken heart.
　
　
　
“now all the fingers of this tree(darling)have
hands,and all the hands have people;and
more each particular person is(my love)
alive than every world can understand

and now you are and I am now and we’re
a mystery which will never happen again,
a miracle which has never happened before---
and shining this our now must come to then

our then shall be some darkness during which
fingers are without hands;and I have no
you:and all trees are(any more than each
leafless)its silent in forevering snow

---but never fear(my own,my beautiful
my blossoming)for also then’s until”

The Audition by Iris Rosewater

The sun burned wickedly into the fabric Evelyn’s black dress as she walked up the familiar steps of the concert hall. Heat burrowed into her shoulders and the back of her neck, releasing a trickle of sweat and sending it down her well-postured vertebrae. Her mother’s shoes clicked an embarrassing staccato along the corridor, which was much too cold to compensate for the oppressive heat outside. The damp spots beneath Evelyn’s arms had gone cold, and her teeth began to clatter. She held the leather handle of her case like the hand of a dear friend, and followed obediently the metronome of the shiny bronze shoes that led the way. The matching purse swung on her mother’s elbow as she signed forms, the smell of stale cinnamon polluting the air around her every time she opened her mouth to give Evelyn a direction. “Sit here.” “You better start warming up. You only have half an hour.” “Go to the ladies room and freshen up - you look like you’ve just been jogging!”


The bathroom was full of women in black dresses. They chatted around the mirrors. Some fiddled with their hair and make up. Evelyn tried not to see them as she entered the room, gazing instead at the intricate pattern of black and white tiles that swirled on the floor beneath her black flats and the puddles of water on the marble counter tops. She was still nervous, she was surprised to discover, sorting through the layers of emotions and shivering in front of a basin. Her hands had lost all blood flow and were white, webbed with purple from her chill. She went through her routine, turning the silver knobs of the faucet and letting the hot water spill over her wrists, inviting the blood back into her hands. It flowed gently over her delicate palms and agile fingers, slipping over their calloused tips. Twenty five more minutes, she thought to herself, splashing a handful of water on her pale face. Her insides danced with excitement.
　

The first time Evelyn touched a violin, she was four years old. She would always remember the way it felt - running her finger around the curled maple scroll, down its neck and glossy spruce belly. Learning to play came as naturally as running or laughing. She worked through Suzuki Book One in the first three weeks, and then her teacher referred her to one of the members of the Santa Fe symphony, who she loved dearly. Ms. Bell had red hair so curly Evelyn was strongly tempted to pull down a lock and watch it bounce at every lesson. She was patient and nurturing, fostering her tiny student‘s fledgling gift. Evelyn’s Mother, however, was not so patient. By eight years old, Mother had pulled her out of school and hired a private tutor so that more of Evelyn’s waking hours could be spent practicing. By ten, she was the youngest concert master in the Santa Fe Youth Philharmonic’s history. At age twelve, she began to notice things. Once the other members of the orchestra got over her astounding musical ability, they largely ignored her. And, she discovered, when a person is quiet, they are assumed to be deaf as well. She listened the girls talk about boys and dances and their friends at school, pointing at the faces smiling through the clear vinyl on the fronts of their notebooks. Evelyn’s notebook stared up at her, vacant. Her schedule had been tightened the older she got, rigidly enforced by Mother. Wake up, get dressed, eat, practice, study, eat, practice, study, eat, practice, go to sleep - not to mention orchestra rehearsals and performances… and, the compliant soul that she was, she got up and executed Mother’s will every day. The music was good, and she did love it, but she began to wonder if there wasn’t more to life than just music? Wasn’t music an expression of experience? Once, she tried to compose something of her own, but kept finding that she only mimicked someone else’s song… someone who had felt something real, be it joy or pain. At age fourteen, she had been concert master of the Santa Fe Youth Philharmonic for four years and Mother had decided it was time that she moved up in the music world. Today, she would audition for the Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra.



The fear began to creep in again as Evelyn walked in the green room to warm up. Her mother shot her an exasperated look and glanced at her watch as she opened her case. Expectations were everywhere. They were on the faces of the other violinists in the room, in Mother’s impatient foot, fidgeting away in its tacky shoe, in Ms. Bell’s proud smile. It was loud in the green room. Fellow musicians tuned and plucked, playing simultaneously in discordant swells, every neck marked red with devotion from the push of rosewood and ebony. Her violin seemed happy to see her as she unsheathed its sweet face, tenderly cleaning white rosin dust from its strings and belly before bringing it under her chin. It was easy to choose her solo. It was the first song she heard and asked what made such a sound… the music that made her heart full to bursting. Nonchalantly, the other violinists grew quiet as Evelyn drew the first long, gushing note of The Young Prince and the Young Princess. She forgot there were any witnesses after the first phrase and played the story as innocently as only an innocent could, weaving into every cadence her own longing for life. When she finished, the room kept still for several moments, before bursting with applause. “Rimsky Korsakov would have wept,” Mrs. Bell whispered at her side. Evelyn bowed deeply as the musicians stood cheering. Her heart cheered, too. There would be no audition. She had played the final performance of her young years, played as proof to her comrades that it was a choice… and her life would begin today.