Human Sister

Stay. I’ll be right back.”
    She enters through the door and closes it behind her. The dog sits for 12 seconds, gets up, walks to a shrub nearby, sniffs, lifts its right hind leg, and urinates.
    The dog looks toward the door. The door opens. She rushes out through the door with her gloved right hand over her mouth. The dog runs in front of her, collides with her right leg, and yelps. She stumbles but catches her balance. She pulls her hand from her mouth, bends over, and regurgitates. She coughs and spits, then steps over the regurgitated material and falls, wailing, facedown onto the variegated grass.

Sara

    T he day after Elio arrived, he noticed our two-person sea kayak hanging in the garage, and the next morning he and I were on the Russian River, a river he quickly grew to love: otters playing; harbor seals basking in the sun; ospreys mounting the air with silver flesh wriggling in their talons; magnificent redwoods and Douglas firs exuding their resinous perfumes; and, protruding from the ocean near river’s end, huge sea stacks, around the craggy edges of which waves splash and swirl, pound and roil, as gulls, like sleek white kites, dive and soar in the salty air.
    The first weekend of November, when the vineyards were draped in sunlit autumn colors, we put in upstream a little before noon Saturday and pitched our tent in time for dinner on a secluded private beach that was little more than a tiny patch of sand on the river’s edge. It was my job to prepare the meal, and as I did I enjoyed watching Elio bustle about, setting up what he proudly called our home: tent, sleeping bag, air mattress, thermal unit. As we ate, the air was cool and clear; the river chuckled softly; and though our cups and plates were made of plain white paper, the sky was Wedgwood blue.
    After dinner, we sat together on the sand and watched the sun ignite a flocculent canopy of pastels as it settled behind the tops of distant trees, above which a cloud, half-bruised, half-bright, appeared impaled on a pink contrail. Later, we snuggled together in our sleeping bag and gazed out of the open tent flap at a clear night sky. Elio said the stars seemed more numerous and closer than they had appeared to him in Amsterdam, as though somehow we had been elevated into the heavens.
    In the morning, light fog muted the previous day’s bright vibrancy, but we found the misty view romantic and several times pulled our kayak up onto the shore to walk the hills and roll around in musty leaves.
    We made it to river’s end in time to watch the sun puff itself up and slide, liquefying into the sea, while pastel pink clouds floated in vaporous milky blue.
    “But I like pastels,” he objected to my sighing over a dashed wish for a wild vermilion sunset that would stun the ocean, the evening sky, and him. “My favorite picture is full of pastels.”
    “What picture is that?”
    “Pale blue eyes, white-blonde hair, rice-paper skin flushed from exercise—you know the picture.”
    We laughed and hugged, and when I next looked up, the sun was gone.

    In early December, after making plans for the upcoming winter holiday vacation, Elio and I called Mom and Dad. I planned, as had become usual over the years, to stay with them through the holidays, but Elio had a reservation to depart about three hours after our arrival in Calgary. He would be flying on to visit his mother and friends in Amsterdam.
    “Oh, no you don’t,” Mom said, looking with mock sternness at Elio. “We want more than just to see you. After all, we can see you right now. We want to get you in our arms and squeeze you and kiss you, eat meals with you, throw snowballs at you. You’re part of the family now. You have to give us two days, minimum.”
    “Yes, two days,” Dad chimed in. “It would mean a lot to Mary and me to have both of you in our home for at least a couple of days.”
    I thought I saw tears begin to well in Dad’s eyes and was surprised and pleased at the interest he and Mom were showing in Elio and me, seemingly out of the blue.
    When Elio and I arrived in Calgary midway through a bright afternoon, I again was surprised by apparent changes in both Mom and Dad. Mom’s fingers were no longer stained yellow, and her breath was fresh, not smoky and stale. She had sworn off cigarettes. Dad appeared to have shed some of his reserve, hugging both of us enthusiastically, even giving me a warm full kiss on my lips. And that night over dinner, he told stories of happy