Mercury

by Amy Jo Burns

She had such sway, and she couldn’t even see it. In the last eight years, so much of their marriage had become about power—who had it, who gave it away. A

The building stood for a spark of the eternal in an ending world, though Waylon never felt his own mortality more than he did when he sat in these pews.

Shay wanted so very much to learn how to remain in the present like she did, to tie a rope around a moment and pull it tight.

What Shay meant to say, but didn’t, was that his whole boyhood had felt too

long, one with too many rules and not enough mercy.

Shay loved best when he said, Show me your worst thing. I promise I won’t look away.

because the look on his friend’s face snagged him like a fishhook.

The quiet curled around her like a stray cat.

“Those Joseph brothers,” someone in the stands muttered. “The only boys I’ve ever seen who fight when they’re on the same team.”

Her voice belted like the low notes of a bassoon.

This stoic tree trunk of a human had started to relax,

Was it the same to be desired as it was to be seen—to be wanted, and to be understood?

Ann asked, her voice like a robin’s in a birdbath.

Her mother had told her they belonged to the Church of the Holy Comforter, which meant they used their Sunday mornings to sleep in.

she felt for the first time the amnesty that religion might offer to someone with a damning secret, the respite from some constant, gnawing need.

The admission rattled him, and he stared at her, wild-eyed, like a rabid dog caught in a snare.

Marley felt streaks of red all over her skin, like rain smearing a windowpane.

Back in Ohio, when Marley had been old enough to ask her mother why she wasn’t married, Ruth had only replied, “Men do things, and women apologize for them.”

He possessed the same strength as his older brother. Baylor had the kind of muscle that intimidated; Way’s was the kind that sheltered.

Marley looked into his eyes and found such thirst there, such an empty decanter of a heart.

Marley wondered whether it was possible to love someone and not worry about them.

good to say yes,” Ruth said. “If you’re saying yes to the right things.”

want to love someone,” Marley said. “I know it’s not enough—but that’s what I see. Maybe it’s a man, maybe it’s a child. I don’t know.”

“Maybe,” Ruth spoke softly, “it’s you.”

Anger toward Waylon wailed

The smile still cracked open Waylon’s heart like an egg.

This was a reality of women’s work that Jade also faced daily in her job as a cosmetologist—it was seen as ornamental, as degraded as it was essential.

Secretarial, stenographer

Jade turned on the warm water, and it purred as it met Marley’s scalp. She closed

libertine against the flames

wasn’t disorganized, exactly, but the sheer volume was overwhelming—the story behind every scrap of paper trapped in the maze of Mick’s mind.

Mike's office

Mick looking to the right of the camera as if bracing himself for its flash.

Wendy

Mick had been treating the business funds as his individual checking account, and by the looks of the room, he’d been doing it for a long time.

Lacy and Julia

Ruth had taught Marley the importance of taking up space, of speaking her mind.

They wanted to bottle the feeling of possibility, to capture their own potential before it turned into regret.

And shouldn’t Elise be afforded

moment or two of forgetfulness without it serving as an indication that something was wrong?

The room was just like the inside of a briefcase—bland and male and stuffed with paper.

“Funny, how you’re the only one who’s noticed.” It was tragic, was what it was. Who could know what to search for in a mother? Children were trained to look at her and see their own needs instead.

Marley stared into the darkness until dawn stretched its fingers into the crevices between the blinds.

wasn’t until I failed at it that I realized what you really deserve—and what I’d give you if I could—isn’t an easy life, but a full one. And now I think that’s something you have to give yourself.” Marley stayed silent

“Head on straight, heart on straight.”

As she drove away with her mother shrinking in the rearview mirror, Marley understood a bit more of what motherhood meant, this continual opening of every door for children to pass through, stay a while, leave, and return.

Were they bound together now, more so by grief than by happiness? It was a force that could fuse two people together, as well as drive them apart. She wondered how many times Elise and Mick had weathered just such a tragedy, and how long it was possible for two people who loved each other to hold on.

marveled at his ability to start three different projects at once, spinning them like plates in the air, not caring which of them dropped:

Steve Rose system of management

It was a constant, relentless exhaustion, this fear that they were one bad accident or one failed roof away from having to declare bankruptcy. The two of them made excellent

of them felt the inevitability of loss, how it twined so tightly with life itself that there was no hope of ever pulling them apart. The notion of such holy

“Don’t be too tough on him. It’s hard, this job. It takes a whole life.”

“Sins are like butterflies.” Shay kept his cool. “They all began as something else.”

stung because Shay worked tirelessly to be easy as butter melting in a hot skillet.

Somehow, he’d been granted a second chance to get it right.