All Hallows Eve and our first year of middle school. Moms picked out our costumes and coats the same as always, shocked when we fought them for costume freedoms. Two of us won our tantrums, and one of us lost. Regardless, the night’s prospects excited us: cold breeze, black cats, early dinner, boys, trick-or-treaters, witches, princesses, splattered eggs, pumpkin guts, dead leaves.

Presence is the number one thing I need.

I imagine my grief to be a little kid. We go for a walk together, me careful to slow my pace so that the child’s short legs don’t get tired. Or I pick her up, carry her, rock her, if the walk goes long. Sitting on the coast alone, imagining that I am holding this child, my grief, cradling her with both arms.

William sat next to Penelope while the newborn baby slept in his arms. The hibiscus blossoms danced as Penelope worked to transfer the plants from the ground to large pots. William thought about asking her why she was moving them from their home in the ground, but the baby shifted in his arms and he remembered.

Penelope was dead.

There was a time when the mother stayed at home with the kids and the dog and got wrapped up in the yard. Pruning and tending, raking and mowing. It didn’t take long before she was reckoning with weeds. Crabgrass was the worst offender. It grew in patches and wasn’t uniform. Then there was goosegrass which was almost as bad as the crabgrass and stood out in the sod, a twisted pinwheel of green tendrils. She battled hairy bittercress because it was everywhere and grew higher in the sod, waving its spindly arms. Dandelions reminded her of unwieldy lawns with chain-linked fences, but she gave up on them after her son accused her of robbing his happiness.

“I need my wishes mom. Have a heart,” he said, blowing tiny domes of seed all over. She also left the bluegrass, the nimblewill, dead nettle, oxalis, and spurge. Certain herbage mowed down nicely, or fanned out discreetly with dark, delicate arms. The clover she left for her golden retriever, since he liked the taste.

They grew wild that summer, the children, their limbs lengthening and minds expanding. They wanted her for hugs, entertainment and snacks. Her son couldn’t resist pouncing on her lap, like an oversized cat, elbows pressing into her as if her body were a springboard, and her daughter liked to roar like a dragon, turn on her belly and log-roll over her. The retriever dug into the grass, forming craters of dirt, then went to her, stretching a muddy paw on her knee, desperate for belly rubs. The kids were debasing and commanding. They said things like, “God, Mom, everybody knows badgers are nocturnal,” or “We should be composting and you knew it all along.”

The dog was a competitive barker.

It would surprise people who know me now that I once wanted—desperately—to be a cheerleader. They’d have pegged me for the girl mocking such unflagging and misdirected enthusiasm from the stands (assuming you’d find me in any kind of stands); or more likely, just reading a book someplace. But most school-age girls, or the honest ones, anyway, would admit to the same desire. And why not? cheerleaders are chosen. Popular. Pretty. Watched and admired by crowds of people. Desired by boys. If you are none of those things, cheerleading’s promise is that you will be all those things. Of course I wanted to be a cheerleader. Specifically, I craved admission to the rarified peppy enclave of the Wilshire Junior High School Cheer Squad.

Iron Mountain, MI ― 1886

You have kissed lots of different women in your life.

You’ve kissed preachers’ daughters with golden curls, kissed schoolteachers in dimly lit living rooms. You’ve kissed people with all your clothes on and without a stitch on either of you. You’ve kissed chastely outside of doors and heated beside windows with curtains drawn.

You figure you’ve got enough experience kissing you can say with certainty: people make too big a deal out of it.

It’s nice enough, you guess. Smooth, warm lips are pleasant but hands on hips or in hair are even better.

After a while, you decide you like what comes with kissing better than the kissing itself. The closeness and another person’s heat. Touching the place ribs give way to waist. The sound of breathing against your ear. Those are the good parts.

But the kissing itself? You don’t see what all the fuss is about.

In the fall of 1952, when I was eight years old, my mother lay down on the couch in the living room. For the next six months, she rarely got up again.

I was able to keep this secret for a long time because no one was around to notice. Although my parents had never formally divorced, my father rented a two-room apartment in a nearby town. He owned a furniture store there, and he told me that he liked to keep tabs on it. When I asked him what he did every night, he said that he ate at the diner nearby or swam laps in the community pool.

In order to become closer to my older brother, who understands much of this world but not much of me, I have signed up for a ride along with him. It is the end of spring term at the University of Washington. I haven’t seen Jacob in three years, and the distance shows up as painfully long silences in forced telephone conversations. I get a B- on my Human Systems and Social Policy final, pack a duffel, kiss my girlfriend goodbye, and fly down to Orange County, a place I have never seen oranges.

Ben and I waited until after dark, which in mid-December arrived by late afternoon. It’s not like we were habitual thieves, but we knew what we were doing was wrong. Stealing. Still, it was fun, in a way—the two of us having this thing to do, just my brother and me. There was a grimness to our task, too, because of why we were driving around the countryside looking for a Christmas tree to chop down and bring home.

Ben drove the pickup, Dad’s turquoise GMC, which I guessed was Ben’s truck now, by default. He was the only person who drove it, anyway. At fifteen, Ben just had a learner’s permit, but since I was seventeen and a licensed driver riding with him, that part of it was legal, at least. Ben and I had never gotten along; the middle two kids of four siblings, always bickering, pushing off each other, sometimes out-and-out fighting. After the accident, everything else had changed. Maybe things could change between my brother and me too.