Table Of ContentCopyright © 2012 Kathleen Alcott
eISBN: 978-1-59051530-3
Production Editor: Yvonne E. Cárdenas
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Alcott, Kathleen.
The dangers of proximal alphabets / Kathleen Alcott.
p. cm.
1. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 2. Childhood—Fiction. 3. Art—Fiction. 4. Domestic
fiction. I. Title.
PS3601.L344 D36 2012
813′.6—dc23
2011050300
Publisher’s Note:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
v3.1
This book is dedicated with manifold variants of love
to Casey Cripe, a brilliant narrator.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
First Page
Acknowledgments
About the Author
“if there is a place further from me I beg you do not go”
— ’ , “Morning”
FRANK O HARA
Our parents liked to say that the first time Jackson and I met, we
concentrated our focus so intently, grew so still, that they worried
our little bodies might have forgotten we’d exited our watery
beginnings, neglected the duty to breathe in and out. On the floor of the
living room we turned our still-soft skin toward each other and blinked
before demonstrating our talents in gripping and releasing: my five
fingers around his chubby wrist, then his in embrace of mine. They say
that the cat, our relative equal in size but a fascinating stranger in
composition, strolled up to sniff the crowns of our heads, our full cheeks,
but we offered him no attention. My mother and father and Julia, sitting
on the couch, all happy with disbelief at the way their endlessly curious
infants had quickly adopted such content with a tiny corner of the
universe.
The next part of the story, the one that would echo for decades
afterward: Julia moved to scoop Jackson from the floor. I left my quiet
behind and howled with such force that the cat, still skirting the carpet,
panicked and ran. My mother came to me and attempted comfort; my
father, at the door with Julia, shrugged and offered a comment about the
volatile nature of young love. They laughed, of course, and agreed to
bring us together again very soon. Jackson did not cry, but squirmed
from Julia’s restraint and tried to get a clearer vision of me. My wailing
gained confidence and rhythm. I refused, even, the draw of my mother’s
breast, as if I knew that she would not be my family much longer, that I
would find that elsewhere.
That night my parents broke their oath to leave me in the crib, no
matter how upset, and brought me into their bed. They wondered at me
where I lay between them, linked their fingers over the heaving
abdomen they’d created together, sang me folk songs about low roads
and high roads, told me the word for each part of my body, whispered
secrets about the ocean and the brain and the patterns of the earth until
I finally calmed enough to listen.
Jackson has one green eye and one brown, though each is dotted with
bits of the other color, as if hesitant to vehemently commit. He has a
mole on his left hip (noncancerous, last time he checked) and half a BB
bullet permanently lodged in his right shoulder blade (I put it there). His
cheeks are wide and globular, as if they were hiding apples for later
consumption, and give him the appearance of someone instantly
trustworthy and kind. He is uncircumcised, but his foreskin is unusually
taut and so this isn’t obvious. The hair on his chest issues forth in small
tight curls, and halfway across the spirals change their direction. He
pronounces “often” with a harsh “t.” When he picks up the phone he
goes, “ ’Lo?!” in mock surprise to be hearing a voice from the magic box
in his hand. He is a master with chopsticks. He is endlessly polite to the
men at corner stores, taxi drivers, weary all-night-diner waitresses. He
once dove into the polluted river in our hometown to retrieve a necklace
of my mother’s after the well-used clasp broke, and contracted a rash
that lasted two weeks (he wasn’t embarrassed). He talks in his sleep,
among other things. He has a tattoo of my name on his chest that he
insisted on during the throes of a melodramatic fugue (which is rare for
his character) when we were seventeen. A mutual friend in a motel room
(where his brother James worked the front desk) administered the ink at
four a.m. with a questionable needle. He is incredibly gifted with
children, though he always refused to discuss the possibility of having
any. He is left-handed and secretly proud of the fact, the implication of
genius. He once rode a shopping cart down one of the steepest hills in
our city just for the hell of it; in addition to the half BB pellet, there is a
bit of gravel, resulting from the inevitable crash at the bottom, that is
also permanently part of his body. He is not traditionally handsome but
most are tricked into thinking so. There are many items of clothing he
has owned for more than ten years and still wears. His second toe is
longer than his big toe. He goes through phases of intense love, then
hatred for Indian food (it gives him explosive diarrhea). He is
endearingly cranky in the mornings but inherently an early riser, and he
gives up coffee every six months, swearing this time it’s for good. He
likes to wear a mustache, but only when accompanied by a beard. If you
go to a museum with him, he will unfailingly wander off by himself. He
is a talented drinker but rarely seems drunk. He is a library of facts
about the ocean. His body temperature is always one to two degrees
higher than the average 98.6 and so sleeping with him feels like being in
an intimate position with a furnace. He has a way of narrowing his eyes
when he is annoyed or suspicious, and a way of ridiculing someone
without their noticing until it’s too late. He absolutely spurns astrology;
his handwriting has a way of changing to suit the occasion. He can roll
his r’s quite well and, if he chooses to, speaks pretty decent Spanish. He
whistles while he urinates. He always carries a knife and uses it (in
handy versus violent ways) every chance he gets.
He cries infrequently, and when he does it is silent with a great deal of
shoulder shaking. He does his best thinking in the ten minutes after a
visit to a planetarium. He can curl his tongue into a U and also a
“clover,” and is a talented eyebrow raiser. There is a spot with a half-
inch circumference below his left jaw where hair does not grow; he has
bizarre theories about why. Most of the time he has illicit fireworks
purchased in Chinatown on his person. He adores Burnese mountain
dogs and lights up at a sighting of one.
I use the present tense here, but it is possible that Jackson actually has
given up coffee, that he has covered the tattoo of my name with
something else, that he cries openly in front of this new woman. It has
been a year, two months, and six days since we spoke. It has been four
months since, in a moment of loneliness that came not late at night but
early on a sunny morning, I called him and left a message he didn’t
return. The last of his belongings and mementos of Us sit in a box in the
back of my bedroom closet; though I resist the urge to take it down and
finger the black-and-white photo booth strips, the silly tin science-fiction
lunch box I bought him that he loved fiercely, the only remaining piece
of art he made in his sleep, I know the objects so well that I’m not sure
what difference it actually makes.
