A Private State: Stories by Charlotte Bacon

happily as if he'd touched me. "You know what the bones are called?" I nodded. So he was serious about this becoming conversation and in a rush as quick as the wave, I wanted Naomi there to tell me what to do. But Naomi wasn't very good with men and all their complications, either. Maybe no one was. Maybe that was part of it: you had to find the words that linked you to this new piece of life alone.
Jake held the length of the shin and said, "This one's a tibia, right?" Tapping at the thigh, he said, "And this is the femur?" And he worked slowly up the body, through the pelvic ring, the arms and ribs. I nodded each time. His fingers rested on the clavicle. We were close enough that even in the dark I could see that his nails were bitten to the quick.
Then he pulled me to my feet, fingers on my elbows, careful with me. We were the same height and as bony as the other. He'd grown over the summer and hadn't settled into his new inches yet. It would hurt if our bodies touched. My skin was scraped, his was peeling. "What's this one?" Jake asked and tapped the fragile plastic sternum, the spear-shaped plate my father said protected only one-third of the heart. The rest was exposed. There was only so much a skeleton could do. "Chloe," Jake said. "What's it called?" He tapped again.
"Sternum," I said, because breastbone, more familiar, was so naked for a first word.

 

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Safe as Houses
The bathroom walls were finally clean, except for the rusty cloud a leak had left behind. Elizabeth sat on the edge of the tub, took a bare foot in her hand and rubbed the arch. It was speckled with chips of purple enamel, paint that most likely came from the family who'd drawn the Pegasus in the attic one dreamy evening in the '60s. Damp curls of different wallpapers lay on the floor. One family had picked midget cardinals in profile. Another chose slashes of bamboo shading silver pagodas.
A year ago, Elizabeth, Andrew, and their daughter, Kate, had moved to this white house at a calm remove from New York. She was still unearthing traces of old occupants: a dog toy in the basement, mittens behind radiators. There were other, more alluring clues. A wedding album with missing pages, the groom in hornrims, the bride with pale, marcelled hair. A pair of kidskin gloves, the leather nibbled.
Her own family's things had slowly rooted in place. Andrew's clematis. Kate's dollhouse which held a plastic boy named Spot and his shelter for homeless cats. You lifted sofa cushions these days and found pencils and dimes. Elizabeth was starting to feel safe here. Her toes sank into the blue fuzz of the bathmat.
If Andrew had been in charge of this job, he would have slapped up the paint, then opened the window to let the breeze clear out the smell. He had felt at home with crisp immediacy, but

 

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Elizabeth wanted to know what happened here before her family arrived. She learned the Mercers had divorced after twenty-five years then the Cohens had another baby. A split followed by an increase; one offset the other, she supposed. Elizabeth picked up a shred of paper: blue men sat inside pagodas, fingers tangled in their beards.
"You could have used hot water and vinegar to get the paper off." An old man stood in the doorway. He was small and carried his coat in a dark oblong over his arm. His pants had perfect hems.
"Who are you?" Elizabeth said, too surprised to move. How had he gotten in? Where else had he been? She imagined the drawers of her bureau wrenched wide. But he didn't look sturdy enough to wrench drawers. She stood up. With relief, she saw she was taller.
"I'm Joseph Krystowicki. Vera's cousin. I should be on that family tree you're working on downstairs." He sketched the air, mimicking the strokes Elizabeth used to draw her genealogical charts. "Vera told me to say hello. You left the kitchen door open." He shifted his coat to the other arm.
"A cousin of Vera's? Is she all right?" Elizabeth asked. Why hadn't he called out? Or phoned?
"She's