Aerogrammes and Other Stories - By Tania James Page 0,58

he said.

I stood there, waiting for something to happen.

“I wet the bed, Neel.” His voice was low and stunned. “I thought I could hold it. I fell asleep, but I guess the beer …” He bent his head to his chest, his face crumpling. He began to cry without a sound.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Hold on.”

I ran back to the upstairs bathroom and found a beach towel in the closet. When I returned with the towel, Amit was defeated, yielding. He let me peel away the blanket, his bathrobe, and his T-shirt, his damp scrubs and boxers. The smell stung. His knees were bonier than I remembered, a pale sheen to his calves. I threw a towel over him.

“Ready?” I slid my arms under him and gathered him up with a small groan. His skin was clammy, his legs impossibly heavy.

Pitching forward, I staggered up the stairs. In the hallway, we passed by Amit’s old room, which gave off the neat, staid air of a museum exhibit. He swiveled his head around, hungrily absorbing all that he had missed for the past two months.

Finally, we reached the bathroom. Surprisingly, Amit didn’t make fun of the bubble bath. He only said, “I know that smell.”

Just when my arms seemed on the verge of giving out, I squatted, easing him into the water, towel and all. He held on to the sides of the tub, and I bunched two hand towels behind him so he wouldn’t slip down. I caught sight of the surgical scar on his back, raised and pinkish, like a shiny, segmented worm.

“Is it too cold?” I asked, catching my breath.

“No.” Amit lowered his head and closed his eyes. “It’s nice.”

He sighed. As his features loosened, I saw him forgetting his tears, our trek up here. “Thanks. You can go. Go do whatever you were doing.”

I hovered over my brother. If I couldn’t leave him then, I knew I never would.

I caught sight of my cloudy reflection in the mirror—a shadowy, motionless shape—and something landed heavily within me. Leaning against the tile, I listened to the gentle slosh of the water. I closed my eyes, and in an instant, we were at the pool again, Amit standing on the high dive, peering down, stiff with terror. The moment we locked eyes, his fear became my own.

Girl Marries Ghost

• • •

That year, thousands entered the lottery for only a handful of husbands. Of that handful, very few could remember what had happened after they had departed. One husband could recall only a smell: the stogie-scented leather of his father’s Lincoln. Another had been stranded in an endless bed of his ex-wife’s daffodils, and whenever he yanked a flower, two more plants unfurled in its place. Was it heaven through which they had passed, or some flavorless form of limbo? There was no one to ask, and gradually the question lost its novelty, eclipsed by the more pressing question of who among the living would land a ghost husband.

After Gina was notified over the phone that she had made it to Round Two, she filled out an online application whose seven personal essays and thirty short answers seemed a test of resolve more than anything else. She also taped the requisite Bio Video, doing the sorts of things that would set her apart from other grieving widows, like somersaulting on her backyard trampoline and baking a Kahlúa Bundt cake dusted with confectioners’ sugar.

In a more serious segment, Gina placed the camera on the kitchen counter and laid out the basics of her life. Her husband had died in a bicycling accident last year. She was a stylist at Swift Clips, but without Jeremy’s salary, she was having trouble meeting her mortgage payments. The bank guy had pitied her for a limited time and cut down her payments, but now, with the imminent rockslide of back taxes and late fees, her house, their house, would soon slip through her fingers.

Gina had to rewind and re-record the segment several times because she couldn’t leak a single tear. Never when she needed it. At one point she got up, diced an onion, and when her eyes were properly bleary, she taped the winning take.

Three months later, the matchmaker came to Gina’s house for what was termed the Final Round. Gina had expected a sage old woman with bad teeth and a soothing smile. The matchmaker’s name was Barb Spindel. She wore her hair in a tight black bob and hugged her clipboard to her