State of Grace by Joy Williams

crouched in the dimple of her throat. It really is.
    “I have a notion that we are akin in many ways,” Cords says to me.
    “Don’t be forward.” I try to rise in one long and confident motion to my feet, but fail.
    “Where have you been?” Cords muses softly. “Canceling issue?”
    “Ahh,” breathes Doreen.
    Cords shakes her head. Her skin is eerily matte flat, lacking blemish or shadow or curve. “No, I don’t think so. You’re the one with one foot in religion. Think all the little babies are stars in heaven waiting to be plucked out to bless earth.”
    “That’s not me. I’m partial to the thinking that they’re glowing wee embers in hell.”
    “My poppa always used to tell me that I was the brightest whitest star in the Milky Way,” Doreen exclaimed sweetly.
    “It hasn’t ever been the same since and that’s a fact,” Cords says, but doesn’t take her eyes off me.
    “I thought it was a real pretty thing for Poppa to say, him being such a busy man and all,” Doreen says. “I think …”
    “Don’t try to think now, sugar,” Cords says smoothly. “It causes a hardening ‘round the mouth. Besides it’s not the time. I’m just talking to our lost Kate here.” She raises one of her gloved hands and pats Doreen’s mouth with it. “I’ll hear your thinking later, sugar.” Doreen’s mouth is generous and a little slack. She smiles again at me, faintly and dismissively, in the way that Cords has taught her.
    “I don’t know why you’re troubling yourself with me,” I say, looking over at the forestry building for Grady.
    “I take an interest in you,” Cords says. “Seeing you is useful to me. It musters out my most helpful and endearing qualities. I have seen you riding about in a discontinued but very impressive car with a blond young man. I gather that you are looking for peace and safety in his company but he looks a bit frail to me. You have a clumsy way about you, Kate. I’d be careful that I didn’t press too hard. My single memory as a child was of my own clumsiness. It all seemed collected in my hands. They continually broke or worried things. They were very strong and big as well and should have belonged to one of my brothers. But they didn’t, they belonged to me.They were my protective mantling, I believe. A tool of survival, you might say. I was the last of thirteen children. My family insisted that I was the fourteenth. There was no thirteenth. They wouldn’t think of having had a thirteenth. I have heard that they’ve done that with the floors of hotels, the knowledge of which was not a consolation to me at the time.”
    “You do go on,” I say.
    “I apologize,” Cords says airily. “I meant only to make myself conducive to your distress. And, of course, I want to welcome you back.”
    “I don’t live here any more,” I say. “I come back to classes only occasionally. We probably will never bump into each other again.”
    Cords looks amused. “But that’s just not the way the world works,” she says cheerfully. “The same people are forever cropping up in our lives. Besides, we can be of assistance to each other. I’m sure we could have some nice talks that would make you feel better. As for myself, I can be easily obliged. I’ve heard that you know that black boy that does something or other in the menagerie on the bay. We need one of their animals, a cat of some sort, for Doreen’s Queen Serenade. It will be spectacular. I have it all planned. They have a leopard there, I’m told. I would like that. That would be best.”
    “I wouldn’t be able to help you there,” I say worriedly.
Trouble
. Daddy had said,
The snare and the pit will follow all the days of man. It always will
. I see the darkness of Bryant’s Beasts. Dim. Brackish moist. The surface of the fish tanks breaks and glints and moves in silver circles across the animals. Their shadows are swollen on the walls. The leopard does not pace. He waits.
    “We’ll see,” Cords says.