Vital Signs Read Online Free PDF Page A

know.” She turned away from her brother and composed herself by smoothing down the cropped black suit jacket that gathered at the waist to accentuate her slim figure. Carefully picking her way up the remaining stairs in her delicate-heeled shoes, she walked with dignity into the chapel. Her hair was now cut to just below her chin, but the life-long habit of swingingit over her shoulders and pinning it behind her ear was still a tic, like the itching of a phantom limb. When I asked her, later, what had happened between her and Joe, she shook her head and brushed the air with her long thin fingers to dismiss the question, but then she began to cry. She buried her head in my shoulder, sobbing, saying, only, “my mom.”
    When our children were growing up, Anna didn’t dramatize her family for them the way I did, telling my grandfather’s stories, recounting traditions and farmers’ superstitions. It wasn’t as though she was embarrassed about who she was or where she came from; it was more that her family was then, and our family was now. This was her accomplishment—a single-mindedness of purpose that has by association shaped my life. I resented her for it for many years. And yet, all along, it has also been that humility that I am fatally attracted to.
    By the time she finally agreed to marry me—”Okay,” she said, a tear sliding from the outer corner of her eye towards her ear, her breath hot, chest heaving, her sex still spasming, holding me inside her—I felt disarmed. From that day on, I believed that one day Anna would out me, and I would be seen for the fraud I was, and she, she would … what? Rule the world, no doubt. I’d let her, I’d decided, and would be content that if I had to lose her I would lose her to her own, bashful power. I still can make no sense of why that hasn’t happened.
    “Did you know that, Dad?” Fred says, touching my shoulder. I look up and realize he has been standing therewithout my noticing. “You didn’t hear me. Never mind. I’ll call you with the details later.” What details? I have been far away, staring out at the horizon, not hearing a word he has said. He returns inside.
    The day is overcast and the air sticky; finally some of the summer heat is arriving. I raise my hand to my neck and squash at least three blackflies with my fingers, wiping them off my skin. There’s a hum that is much bigger than insects, but I can’t trace it. Sasha comes onto the porch, and I look down at her as she stands beside me, gazing out towards the asparagus ferns as though she’s spotted something. I notice she’s holding a digital camera the size of a business card. I look over to where she is gazing, but don’t see anything particularly scenic, then my eyes return to the camera. Suddenly I am struck by its size, and I try to decipher how it can hold my image, or hers, or that of the landscape before us. How are such things possible? For the first time in years, I am in awe.

    “What’s that sound?” I ask, now more bothered by the humming noise from out in the field.
    “They’re fertilizing,” Sasha says, as she slips the camera into the back pocket of her jeans. She looks up at me. “Look, Dad, I think Mom wants to talk to all of us. We just have to let her take the time she needs.” She holds the top of my arm as if about to squeeze my bicep, the way she did when she was a child, but she and I both know how my flexing now would fail that habit of love. I look at her face and think of pickles. Sasha suffered with terrible acne as a teen and a few scars remain. Her eyes are pale green like blanched cucumbers. She is not beautiful, not the way Charlotte is, but she is so much more attractive. Her face is concerned and yet confident. Nothing daunts her.
    “I catch her sometimes,” I start, thinking it’s only to Sasha that I might be able to say these things, “watching her reflection in a glass window or public mirror, and she’ll do a kind of ‘Boo!’ and pull