Winner of the 2010 Bishop Prize in Fiction

For Ariel, On Her Birthday

by Brett Kessler

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In the evening, Ariel makes tea and shows me books about Fascism. We sit together on a thin mat at the foot of her bed, the day’s dying light floating softly through the naked window. There’s a small teak bookcase against the wall, and she pulls out paperbacks, yellowed and worn from age, the covers illustrated with Blackshirts and starving children and colossal architecture. One bears Mussolini, adorned in military garb, saluting a crowd. The spine is creased. Ariel brews the tea and pours it from a china pot inscribed with Hindi characters. I hold the teacup in my hand for a while, absorbing the warmth and admiring the gold filament around the rim.

Ariel’s mother yells up in the stairs in Hindi, calling her by her real name, and I try to imagine what she is saying. Ariel yells back in English.

After a moment like this she will usually say something, complain again about her mother’s humorless nature, her silence, but Ariel doesn’t say anything today. I wait to hear something—I’m so tired of her rules, she should let me out of the house once in a while—but Ariel just sits quietly and stares at her toes. The book about Mussolini is folded open, balanced on her head, her dark hair splayed across her face.

I’m tempted to pull the book down. It’s open to the middle, where the glossy inserts are, and part of me wants to know why the pictures are so fascinating to her. They’re just old photos: faces in crowds, billowing flags, skies bruised with bursts of light.

The book starts to slide off Ariel’s head and she catches it and folds it shut. She leans toward me, the beads around her neck like droplets of honey.

You’re being quiet, she says.

I stare back at her. I’m fine.

Fuck, you always say that, all the time, she laughs. You always say I’m fine, I’m fine.

I don’t know. I’m sad again.

Why?

I don’t like what I do with my time. I don’t like my friends.

People rarely do. They’re just people to sit and talk with to not be alone.

But that’s sad.

No, no, no. Don’t be sad. Don’t be sad!

I try not to worry about the way her voice has changed. It’s one of those things, like when you know something terrible is going to happen, so you push all your thoughts about it into the back of your mind and pray they will disappear. The way she speaks, each word is compressed, deflated, each phrase separated by an unbearable breath, the words cluttered together in odd ways—an erratic rhythm.

Ariel straightens out the wrinkles in her shirt and refills my cup. On the other side of the room, on her desk, is a set of figurines, little porcelain creatures lined up in a row behind pencils and sheaves of paper. One of them has wings. She sees me looking at them, so she brings them over, cradled in her arms, and sets each one down gently on the mat.

But there are some people you care about? I ask her.

She stops playing with the figurines and looks up at me. She thinks for a second.

There are people I appreciate, she says. I appreciate you. I would still, even if I stopped talking to you.

She smiles and brings her knees up against her chest, hugging them tightly. Her bare toes curl back and forth.

Do you want to go outside now? I ask her.

Without answering, she leads me down the stairs and we grab our shoes by the door. There is still some light left.

On days like this, when the weather is right, the sky turns a certain blue and the façade of Ariel’s house disappears, leaving behind only two tinted windows and a door floating in the sky. You can see the lawn rising up from the edge of the sidewalk, immaculately green as if painted on with a single stroke, and above it, where the clapboard of the house should be, there is only sky, a soft, azure expanse occasionally interrupted by the silhouettes of trees. Ariel tells me to look closer, and I watch her rise up on the tips of her toes like a dancer. She squints into the distance, her nose wrinkling slightly as the features of her face tense together.

Do you see the eyes? she asks me. I tilt my head and focus on her house, which is shrinking along the horizon with the rest of the neighborhood. I draw my eyelids together, noticing how my lashes create a shadow that envelops the frame, then all the hard edges give way, the thinnest tree branches melt into the sky, and the contours of Ariel’s house disappear altogether. Now the two round windows burn through the sky like eyes, and the top of the arched doorway, with a little imagination, looks like a mauve lip. I sigh. The ghost of my breath twists through the air.

She bounces up and down with delight on her toes while I gaze at this face in the sky and imagine that the features are animated, that the pursed lips might relax and offer me a smile, that the eyes might roll back and the pupils dance, as in the old Disney cartoons with rubbery, ink-drawn animals moving jubilantly to the sound of a full orchestra.

A car horn stops us. Ariel twirls around with the lights in her eyes. It’s only dusk, but dark enough that I can’t discern the driver, and the car speeds by as soon as Ariel and I step out of the road.

Fuck, she says, in that light voice of hers. She laughs a little and smiles at me. Fucking car.

In the hazy glow of the streetlights, Ariel begins to run, and I chase after her, following her laughter and the sound of her tiny feet prancing through the grass. I feel a chill against my neck, something moist, a pinprick: snow. The flakes drift through the air like fireflies, catching the light in playful ways. This is strange, that it should be snowing in November. It doesn’t even seem that cold.

Where are we going? Ariel asks, turning suddenly. Behind her, cars’ headlights grease the dark. I just smile back at her, and she knows. When she turns, she tosses her hair over her shoulder and it falls against her flannel shirt.

You’re not going to tell me, she says. She’s excited, laughing. She draws the words out like a series of musical notes. When Ariel is like this, language is a game to her. All of her words are like part of a song.

They’re playing Frank Sinatra in the coffee shop. Ariel brushes some of the wet snow from her forehead and runs her fingers across her moist eyelashes. Sinatra is singing Cole Porter.

We choose one of those tables with the checkerboard pattern across the top. I go up to the counter, order drinks, and make a special request, speaking in a hushed tone so Ariel won’t hear. I watch my reflection in the frosty window as I go back to our table.

I will ask her about her name, how an Indian girl acquired the name Ariel. Maybe I will ask her about her father, because he is never around, or at least I’ve never seen him. Her mother is always there, like God. There’s a picture her mother keeps in the hallway, behind a narrow steel frame, of Lakshmi seated on a bed of lotus flowers, her garments traced with gold lamé. Maybe it’s because the ink has faded, but the eyes look empty, the arms weak. It always seems strange to me, because Lakshmi should be smiling.

Ariel asks me if I like Edith Piaf, and I’m not sure what to say.

I don’t know.

Do you think the snow is pretty? she asks.

Her voice is jittery again. It’s too dark now; I can’t see the snow outside the window. I say yes anyway. She starts to clap slowly, says, Yay, me too, and leans her head to the side, toward the window.

I wish it had snowed last night, she says. I stayed up all night.

Why?

I wasn’t tired.

You just stayed up all night?

Yeah.

Ariel’s eyes start blinking, fluttering as if she is about to cry. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep.

I’ve been feeling really good this week, she says.

She lights up suddenly, erect in her seat.

Okay, okay, she says. I had this dream a few days ago. I think it’s a dream, anyway. I think it’s a dream. It’s night. It’s dark outside and I’m running. I’m on one of my runs through the neighborhood, and I’m coming down the block. And around the corner there’s all this traffic stopped at the end of the street, just a bunch of cars sitting still. So when I turn the corner, the lights from all these cars are shining into my face, lights everywhere, and I can’t see anything. It’s all white. And I’m not sure if this happens in the dream, but I imagine that I start floating up, just drifting up into the lights—like an angel.

Ariel relaxes in her seat. I should say something, but there isn’t anything to say.

The woman from the counter walks out, balancing a Sachertorte pierced with a single candle in one hand, two forks clasped in the other. She puts the cake down in front of Ariel, and for a second it’s as if the windows aren’t there, and the only thing keeping the snow from us is the little flickering flame at the top of the candle. Everything starts to disappear.

She laughs out loud, and then looks up at me, confused. She doesn’t remember.

Today is her birthday.

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Read about the winners of the 2010 Bishop Prizes here.