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darkness created when he turned on the camera and she closed her eyes—was it the same element that she’s standing in now, listening to him say good night to their child? She likes to think that it is, the dark being the only thing large, comfortable, and cluttered enough to contain all the various bits and pieces of their life together. So many years between them, and from where exactly does one begin to count? The first day of ninth grade, or the short, rainy summer after graduation? The moment they signed a lease and became residents of the basement apartment? There is no single starting point, only the density and shapelessness of experience held in common, the meals prepared and eaten, the assorted haircuts and injuries, elations and malaises, car leases and checking accounts, friends made, trips taken, a pregnancy that failed and two that didn’t. She remembers: the shock of a baby’s cold mouth on her nipple after he spat out an ice pop and chose her breast instead. He remembers: her shout of laughter. Now their younger child kicks experimentally at the comforter, unwilling to go to sleep, while the older one makes his way up the stairs, halting at irregular intervals, absorbed no doubt by the game in his hand, lighting his face from below as he moves slowly toward them.

“Pick up the pace, kid.” Ezra casts his voice toward the door. “We’re all waiting.”

It is the same voice, and also the same darkness: the darkness out of which this voice once floated, low-pitched and warm, patiently unfolding and finding her on the bed, the bed seeming to lift imperceptibly off the floor, set aloft yet lightly tethered, his voice telling her what he saw, what he liked, the things he wished to see more of. At the sound of his voice, she relaxed into the pleasure of being instructed, and then more deeply into the pleasure of being seen, and running beneath it all was a bright, nearly invisible current of thankfulness. To be called such things. In words far worse, or far better, than whatever had been said in high school. Tipping back her head and closing her eyes, she felt capable of doing anything he asked. She saw pictures: a bar of sunlight flaring on a mirror; the square, golden windows of a long motel at night. His steady voice spoke to her in the dark. “Wider,” he said, and she opened farther than she had thought possible.

ALSO BY SARAH SHUN-LIEN BYNUM

Madeleine Is Sleeping

Ms. Hempel Chronicles

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sarah Shun-lien Bynum is the author of the novels Ms. Hempel Chronicles, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and Madeleine Is Sleeping, a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. Her fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Tin House, and The Best American Short Stories. The recipient of an O. Henry Prize, a Whiting Award, and an NEA Fellowship, she was named one of “20 Under 40” fiction writers by The New Yorker. She lives in Los Angeles. You can sign up for email updates here.

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CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

DEDICATION

THE ERLKING

TELL ME MY NAME

THE YOUNG WIFE’S TALE

THE BEARS

MANY A LITTLE MAKES

THE BURGLAR

JULIA AND SUNNY

LIKES

BEDTIME STORY

ALSO BY SARAH SHUN-LIEN BYNUM

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

COPYRIGHT

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

120 Broadway, New York 10271

Copyright © 2020 by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

All rights reserved

First edition, 2020

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the publications in which some of these stories originally appeared, in slightly different form: Tin House (“The Young Wife’s Tale”); Ploughshares (“Tell Me My Name” and “Julia and Sunny”); The New Yorker (“The Erlking,” “Many a Little Makes,” “The Burglar,” “Likes,” and “Bedtime Story”); and Glimmer Train (“The Bears”).

E-book ISBN: 978-0-374-72230-2

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