Museum of Stones. Lynn Lurie

       www.etruscanpress.org

      Published 2019 by Etruscan Press

      Printed in the United States of America

      Cover design by Lisa Reynolds

      Cover image © The Estate of Ralph Eugene Meatyard, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

      Interior design and typesetting by Julianne Popovec

      The text of this book is set in Adobe Caslon.

      First Edition

      17 18 19 20 5 4 3 2 1

      Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

      Names: Lurie, Lynn, 1958- author.

      Title: Museum of stones / Lynn Lurie.

      Description: First edition. | Wilkes-Barre, PA : Etruscan Press, [2019]

      Identifiers: LCCN 2018008124 | ISBN 9780998750873

      Classification: LCC PS3612.U774 M87 2019 | DDC 813/.6--dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018008124

      Please turn to the back of this book for a list of the sustaining funders of Etruscan Press.

      The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

      This book is printed on recycled, acid-free paper.

       For Andrew

      Thank you:

      Terese Svoboda

      Noy Holland

      Phil Brady

      Andrew Koven

      Barnett Koven

      Franny Koven

      Museum of Stones

      I ASK THE NURSE to count his toes and then to count again. She holds a crumpled form in front of me covered in fine film, more embryo-like than human. I count five toes, then, five more.

      Off to the side in a stainless-steel basin is the bloody cord, a red veined mass, oblong.

      Someone says his nail beds are turning blue. Two nurses rush in and wheel him away. The masked doctor sewing me together tells me not to move. Already I can’t remember the color of his hair or the shape of his forehead, and when I close my eyes, I see his face suctioned beneath transparent wrap, like meat.

      Mother-in-law knows I do not eat meat, yet brings me chicken broth and saltine crackers. In her house each egg is cracked separately and inspected to see if there is a fleck of blood in the yolk or plasma. If any abnormality is detected the egg must be thrown out.

      Returning to my village I crossed by bus from Ecuador into Peru. Seated beside me was an Indian who spoke little Spanish. He wore no shoes and his homemade crates stuffed with chickens blocked the aisle, while others strapped to the roof with twined rope shifted with each bump, the sound echoing inside the bus. He was unable to sell the chickens in Ecuador, where he had hoped they would bring a higher price.

      It was midnight when the bus reached the town underlined on my pencildrawn map. A man from Florida answered the door. He showed me how to light the stove and offered me leftover chicken. I prefer eggs, I said. He sold me three for one hundred soles.

      I had to walk across a central courtyard to get to the bathroom and when I woke up feeling ill I darted across the cold stones half-dressed, my hair knotted in a bun. I was sure someone was watching from a half-drawn blind. The rest of my stay I slept in my clothing and kept my shoes and toilet paper in front of the door.

      The hostel had been connected to the neighboring church and once served as the nunnery. Now the wall between the two was cemented on both sides, making it impossible to move from one to the other. A brass plate screwed into the stone at the entryway says that for five decades the nuns cared for sick children at this very place.

      Draped in yellow disposable paper my husband stoops over a rectangular Lucite box. A bonnet covers his hair and blue booties are snapped over his shoes. We take turns reaching inside.

      He lets me go first. I am sure it is because he is afraid. What if after touching the tiny body with the tips of his fingers he was to find the skin had gone cold?

      Neither of us mentions the chapel on the other side of the hall, although it is impossible to block the wooden cross from view. Initially I do not understand the volume of people coming and going throughout the day. Yet, after a week in that windowless room, where night and day are no different, I too am drawn to its upholstered pews. What holds me back is I would have to explain I was hoping, just maybe, I could believe.

      With my fist clenched I wind my forearm sideways through a heavy sleeve of plastic. My hand, smelling of rubber and disinfectant is all he knows of me.

      He does not yet have a name. My last name is sealed inside a plastic band fastened to his ankle. I would have preferred the wrist, but it is no wider than a straw.

      Lights hum. Equipment starts and stops. Across his chest is a tiny tower of gauze. Our eyes travel box to box but do not focus on any one station. Neither of us has room for more sadness.

      I am afraid that by the time the nurses and doctors arrive to our pink-railthin baby wearing a pale blue hat they will have no empathy left, certain there is only a finite amount.

      The mother of box number three taped pictures of family members to the far side of her baby’s cubicle. Even if he or she could open its eyes it could not see that far.

      The photograph facing me is of a cat curled on a window ledge. Sun streams through the Venetian blinds, stenciling a striped pattern over the orangematted fur. Nearly hidden in shadow and off to the corner, a young boy wearing a bright red shirt is reaching.

      As soon as they were born, the women in the village drowned the baby kittens in the irrigation canal. Otherwise they became a nuisance, carrying fleas and ticks, which spread diseases the children were especially susceptible to. Since the time of the Incas they raised large rodents as a source of protein, but no matter how hungry they might be, they had no interest in eating cat.

      My husband perspires. Beads of condensation form above his upper lip and dot the length of his forehead, his face grey-hued. He helps me onto the three-legged stool we have been allotted. As I shift across its hard surface, my skin, at the place of the sutures, throbs. I imagine the edges pulling apart, a crooked path of blood etched into my underwear.

      My eyes are fixed on the monitors. I know the range of acceptable numbers. The way the graph should read, the feared colors, the ominous flat line.

      Mother said,