If a Stranger Approaches You: Stories (21 page)

She got down on her knees and pulled the bag to her, and removed the umbrella, and the pink makeup bag, and the folded black sweater, the brother’s name,
Mack Kaloustian
(but hadn’t the stranger said he was his mother’s only son?), and saw it there, the box, in its gold paper, and recognized it only vaguely, as neither a gift nor a recrimination, a threat or a blessing.

She didn’t open it, but imagined herself opening it. Imagined herself as a passenger on that plane, unable to resist it. Holding it to her ear. Shaking it, maybe. Lifting the edge of the gold paper, tearing it away from the box. And then, the certain, brilliant cataclysm that would follow. The lurching of unsteady weight in the sky, and then the inertia, followed by tumbling. The numbing sensation of great speed and realization in your face. She’d been a fool to take it with her onto the plane. It could have killed them all.

Or, the simple gold braid of it.

Tasteful. Elegant. A thoughtful gift chosen by a devoted son for his beloved mother. And she imagined taking the necklace out of the box, holding it up to her own neck at the mirror, admiring the glint of it around her neck—this bit of love and brevity snatched from the throat of a stranger—wearing it with an evening gown, passing it down as an heirloom to her children.

Who was to say, she thought to herself as she began to peel the gold paper away, that something stolen, without malice or intent, is any less yours than something you’ve been given?

Some of these stories have been previously published in
Ploughshares
(“If a Stranger Approaches You about Carrying a Foreign Object with You onto the Plane”),
Epoch
(“Mona,” “Our Father”),
The Michigan Quarterly Review
(“Joyride”),
The Florida Review
(“The Barge”),
Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine
(“Search Continues for Elderly Man”). “Melody,” was first published by
Five Chapters
under the title “The Amicable Divorce.” “If a Stranger Approaches You about Carrying a Foreign Object with You onto the Plane” was reprinted in
The Pushcart Anthology.
It also received the Cohen Award for Fiction from
Ploughshares
, 2007. “The Barge” was reprinted in The Pushcart Anthology, 2013. “Search Continues for Elderly Man” was reprinted in
Real Unreal: Best American Fantasy 3.

LAURA KASISCHKE

has published eight collections of poetry and eight novels. This is her first story collection. She has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, several Pushcart Prizes, and the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry for
Space in Chains
. She lives in Chelsea, Michigan, with her husband and son, and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Michigan.

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