C4 antho - Chamber Four

Peacocks ~99~
then I saw Eric kneel down and rest his hands on Vera’s
shoulders. I caught the terror in his eyes. “I’ll be back in one
hour. The big hand will make one circle around the clock.
Not too long, right?” He spoke quickly, as if he could build
with his words a fort no grief could enter. But children always
know. Vera clung to him and sobbed. Even Joel and
Peter came over to stare with alarmed curiosity.
* * * *
Over coffee in one other’s kitchens, we floated theories
about Rebecca’s disappearance. Most of these centered on a
secret lover. Didn’t we all dream of sitting in a Left Bank café
with some dapper Jean-Pierre? About this we agreed: she
was a terrible mother to have done such a thing.
* * * *
I probably would have left it alone, chalked it up to the
unfathomable mysteries of the human heart and forgotten
her entirely. But one afternoon, while the boys were napping,
I went out to the common storage space beneath the stairs to
look for the gifts I had previously hidden for Peter’s birthday.
Crouching there, I retrieved the items I had stashed in a
shopping bag―a toy truck, a picture book, a rubber ball―but
I couldn’t find the clown doll I had also purchased. When I
looked in a second bag, stuffed behind our neighbors’ box of
Passover dishes, I found not the doll but a stack of ten or
more composition books. I believed at first the books were
mine. I had filled dozens of such books for my college
courses, transcribing my professors’ every word about the
Krebs cycle or the atrocities of Robespierre. By doing so, I