The Storyteller Read Free

her. While Marge reminds Jocelyn about the rules of this group, kindly but firmly, I head for the bathroom down the hall.
    I grew up thinking of loss as a positive outcome. My mother used to say it was the reason she met the love of her life. She’d left her purse at a restaurant and a sous-chef found it and tracked her down. When he called her, she wasn’t home and her roommate took the message. A woman answered when my mom called back, and put my father on the phone. When they met so that he could give my mother back her purse, she realized he was everything she’d ever wanted . . . but she also knew, from her initial phone call, that he lived with a woman.
    Who just happened to be his sister.
    My dad died of a heart attack when I was nineteen, and the only way I can even make sense of losing my mother three years later is by telling myself now she’s with him again.
    In the bathroom, I pull my hair back from my face.
    The scar is silver now, ruched, rippling my cheek and my brow like the neck of a silk purse. Except for the fact that my eyelid droops, skin pulled too tight, you might not realize at first glance that there’s something wrong with me—at least that’s what my friend Mary says. But people notice. They’re just too polite to say something, unless they are under the age of four and still brutally honest, pointing and asking their moms what’s wrong with that lady’s face.
    Even though the injury has faded, I still see it the way it was right after the accident: raw and red, a jagged lightning bolt splitting the symmetry of my face. In this, I suppose I’m like a girl with an eating disorder, who weighs ninety-eight pounds but sees a fat person staring back at her from the mirror. It isn’t even a scar to me, really. It’s a map of where my life went wrong.
    As I leave the bathroom, I nearly mow down an old man. I am tall enough to see the pink of his scalp through the hurricane whorl of his white hair. “I am late again,” he says, his English accented. “I was lost.”
    We all are, I suppose. It’s why we come here: to stay tethered to what’s missing.
    This man is a new member of the grief group; he’s only been coming for two weeks. He has yet to say a single word during a session. Yet the first time I saw him, I recognized him; I just couldn’t remember why.
    Now, I do. The bakery. He comes in often with his dog, a little dachshund, and he orders a fresh roll with butter and a black coffee. He spends hours writing in a little black notebook, while his dog sleeps at his feet.
    As we enter the room, Jocelyn is sharing her memento: something that looks like a mangled, twisted femur. “This was Lola’s,” she says, gently turning the rawhide bone over in her hands. “I found it under the couch after we put her down.”
    “Why are you even here?” Stuart says. “It was just a damn dog!”
    Jocelyn narrows her eyes. “At least I didn’t bronze her.”
    They start arguing as the old man and I get settled in the circle. Marge uses this as a distraction. “Mr. Weber,” she says, “welcome. Jocelyn was just telling us how much her pet meant to her. Have you ever had a pet you loved?”
    I think of the little dog he brings to the bakery. He shares the roll with her, fifty-fifty.
    But the man is silent. He bows his head, as if he is being pressed down in his seat. I recognize that stance, that wish to disappear.
    “You can love a pet more than you love some people,” I say suddenly, surprising even myself. Everyone turns, because unlike the others, I hardly ever draw attention to myself by volunteering information. “It doesn’t matter what it is that leaves a hole inside you. It just matters that it’s there.”
    The old man slowly glances up. I can feel the heat of his gaze through the curtain of my hair.
    “Mr. Weber,” Marge says, noticing. “Maybe you brought a memento to share with us today . . . ?”
    He shakes his head, his blue eyes flat and without