Denouement Mary Rechner (bio) On the train from Vermont to New York, Lisa watched snow-covered trees blur together. Therese’s voicemail was emphatic. It gained momentum. therese: You’re still sober, right? I want you to officiate my wedding, I mean our wedding—Jude’s and mine. You can become a minister online. Shut your eyes for a minute and visualize yourself standing in Mom and Dad’s living room in front of the television, the rest of us in a semicircle, facing you. Only the essential people will be there: you, Mom and Dad, Jude’s mother, his sister Joanna. I invited Mark’s dad, too, but he won’t come, right? That would be weird. Kevin from high school is Jude’s best man. He’s a plumber, remember? This is your chance to make amends. Don’t you have to? Isn’t it one of the steps? Don’t think I don’t miss Mark. Remember that game we played as kids, the one where you sat on my chest until I couldn’t breathe? I feel like that. And Mark doesn’t always feel gone. He feels like smoke, vanishing when you reach for it. You can wear whatever you want to the wedding. Think about Mom. No, don’t think about Mom! She’ll kill the fatted calf for you! Seriously, we’re getting a really nice caterer. Don’t judge me. Jude’s good for me. Alexei needs a father. In case you missed it, Lisa, this is life I’m talking about. You’re my sister, and I need you. For Therese, thought Lisa, Mark had been primarily a body, a tall muscular husband-body, grinning, excusing itself on mysterious errands, returning manic or subdued, while for her Mark had gone from inconsequential brother-in-law to significant disembodied other, a voice on the phone consistently wry, needy, high on one thing or another. When Mark first began to call her, she listened to his circular logic with tolerant detachment. Too soon she began to anticipate his calls like a lover. Now he was dead. He’d been dead nine months. In the past week, along with reactivating her dormant phone, e-mail, and social media accounts, Lisa had sold her truck and kicked out the subletter from her Hell’s Kitchen apartment. In addition to fear (how was she even remotely qualified to officiate a wedding?) she felt a pang of loss. She already missed the drafty A-frame she’d rented for a couple months after her residency at the Vermont Arts Center was over. She missed Vermont. Before selling the truck she’d made one final trip to Johnson Spring to fill an empty plastic gallon jug, [End Page 126] which now sloshed overhead in the luggage rack. Snow continued to fall, but the weather seemed to matter less as the train moved farther south and the cities clustered closer together. Lisa lugged the water onto the subway, and up four flights of stairs. The studio had been left surprisingly neat: French press rinsed and upside down on the dish rack, bare mattress on the bed, sheets washed and folded on top of folded wool blankets. Even the miniscule bathroom had been scrubbed. She found the silver flask in the closet. Even after washing it with hot water and soap, it smelled like gin, but she filled it with water from the spring and stashed it into her handbag; she would sip whenever tempted. Before living in the A-frame, this studio had felt cozy, not claustrophobic. After several big swigs from the flask, she realized she must ration the water, and in addition, find a meeting to attend. Meetings and water would not be enough to keep her sober, not in New York City, not when she was about to go back to work. Another ritual was necessary. The process of bundling up was the same as it had been in Vermont, but instead of stepping onto the A-frame’s porch, and through the winter bare yard to a dirt road lined with scraggly trees, there was a dim hallway, sour stairs...