‘I’m sorry,’ says Varya, tightly.
‘Don’t you want to know how? Or do you only care about your own tragedies?’
The truth is that she does not want to know; the truth is that she has no room for anyone else’s pain. But Luke, framed in the arched doorway between the living room and the kitchen, has already begun to speak.
‘The thing you have to know about my brother is that he looked out for me. My parents had always wanted another child, but they couldn’t have one, and so they got me. Asher was ten when I was adopted. He could have been jealous. But he wasn’t jealous: he was kind, and generous, and he took care of me. We lived in New York at the time, upstate. When we moved to Wisconsin we had more land but a smaller house, and we had to share a room. Asher was thirteen; I was a toddler. What middle schooler wants to share a room with a three-year-old? But he never complained.
‘I was the difficult one. I was the brat. I wanted to see how far I could push them: Are you still glad you got me? If I do this, will you want to send me back? Once I ran out of the house and wriggled under the porch and stayed there for hours, because I wanted to hear them looking for me. Another time I went with Asher to the trees and hid right when it was time to leave with the harvester. This became a game we did, me hiding at exactly the wrong time, the most annoying time, and Asher always put down what he was doing and looked for me and then when he found me we’d start working.’
She puts a hand out, as if to stop him. She does not want to hear what comes next, she can’t stand it – her body is already crawling with dread – but Luke ignores her, continuing on.
‘One day we went to the grain bins. At that time we had chickens and cows, and in April, the grain had to be checked for clumps. Asher lowered himself into the bin. I was supposed to stand on a platform at the top and watch him so I could call for help if anything went wrong. Once he was inside he looked up at me and smiled. He was crouched on the top of the crust; it was yellow, it looked like sand. “Don’t you dare,” he said. And I smiled back at him and climbed down the ladder and ran.
‘I hid between the tractors, because that’s where he knew to come looking for me. But he didn’t come. After a couple of minutes I knew there was something wrong, that I’d done something bad, but I was scared. So I stayed there. Asher had brought two picks into the grain bin; he used them to break up the clumps. When I left he’d tried to use them to climb out. But they made too many holes. He sank within the first five minutes. But it took longer for him to be crushed, and then suffocated. They found pieces of corn in his lungs.’
For seconds, Varya is silent. She stares at Luke and he at her. The air feels charged and weighty, as though only the force of their gaze is keeping something aloft between them. Then Varya falters.
‘Please go,’ she says. Her hand on the door is slick; she’ll have to wipe it down when he leaves.
‘Are you kidding me? That’s all you have to say?’ he asks, his voice cracking. ‘Unbelievable.’ He walks to the couch and retrieves his shoes, shoving his feet – his floppy-eared, gray-toed socks – inside them. Varya opens the door. It’s all she can do not to scream at him, scream after him, when he shoves past her and down the stairs.
She watches from the window as he walks to his car and speeds out of the lot with a jolt. Then she grabs her keys and does the same. She tracks him for two lights before she loses her nerve. What could she possibly say? At the next stop sign, she does a U-turn and goes the opposite way, to the lab.
Annie isn’t there. Neither is Johanna, or any of the other techs. Even Clyde has left for the night. Varya walks to the vivarium – indignant screeching from the monkeys, who are frightened by the suddenness of her entrance – and finds Frida’s cage.
She thinks Frida is sleeping before she sees that the monkey’s eyes are open. She lies on her side with her left forearm in her mouth.
Frida has engaged in self-mutilation before – the bite on her thigh, for example – but she has always hidden the behavior. Now she scrabbles shamelessly at her own bone, the flesh around it a mangled gash of blood and tissue.
‘Come on,’ barks Varya, ‘come here,’ and opens the door of the cage. Frida looks up but does not move, so Varya crosses to the opposite wall and retrieves a leash, which she hooks around Frida’s neck and uses to pull the monkey out onto the floor. The other animals scream, and Frida turns to look at them, wild with sudden awareness. She sits and hugs her arms around her knees, rocking, so Varya has no choice but to tug and tug until she is dragging Frida’s body across the floor. She is nauseated by Frida’s frailty. Formerly eleven pounds, the monkey is now only seven and barely able to hold herself erect. At the next yank, she keels over, onto her back, and the leash begins to choke her. The other monkeys increase their pitch – they sense Frida’s weakness, they are excited by it – and Varya, frenzied, reaches down to lift the creature in her arms.
Frida drops her head to Varya’s shoulder and rests her arm on Varya’s breast. Varya gasps. She wears no protective gear, and the wound, which releases a foul odor of decay, sticks to her sweater. She begins to jog, Frida’s forehead bouncing into her clavicle, and enters the kitchen. The puzzle feeders are stacked against the wall, but Varya wants the loose pellets, the huge bins of open food, and the treats that are given to the unrestricted monkeys: apples and bananas and oranges, grapes, raisins, peanuts, broccoli, shaved coconut, each in their own bucket. She pulls out the buckets and bins and sets them on the floor with Frida on her waist. Then she puts Frida down before the troughs.
‘Go,’ she snaps. ‘Eat!’ but Frida stares blankly at the feast. Varya urges more loudly, pointing, and Frida unfurls her left hand. Her legs are splayed on the floor like a toddler’s, her knees bent; the soles of her feet are soft and gray. Varya watches greedily as Frida reaches for the raisins, but before her hand enters the bin, she changes course and brings her forearm to her face. She opens her mouth, finds the wound, and chews.
Varya reaches down to pull Frida’s hand away and sobs. The wound is matted with hair but very deep. Frida may have cracked the bone.