Girls Girls Girls

Cady Vishniac
| Fiction

 
    Crystal:     I’m not ashamed. Just don’t take the kids away.
 
    Don:         What kids? Who is this?
                    Do I want to know who this is?
 
    Crystal:     You cheated on him first.
 
    Don:         I never cheated on my husband.
                    Who is this?
 
    Crystal:     Just please don’t take his kids. He loves them so much.
 
    Don:         We have no children.
                    Who is this?
                    Why don’t you understand Joe is dead?
 
That throws Elkie, the name Joe. Maybe this is all a misunderstanding, and Don had to get a new phone number. Maybe she is texting Joe’s widow while Don rides out the aftereffects of some catastrophe. This sort of thing happens to people if they forget to pay their bills for too long.
 
    Crystal:     I don’t know a Joe.
                    Maybe this is all a mistake? Did your husband
                    just get this phone?

 
    Don:         No mistake. He had this thing for years. You’re in it.
                    It says your name is C.
                    This is him.
                    Was.
 

The picture she sends is one Elkie has seen before. In it, Don wears a leather jacket and holds a little boy with blond curls. His son. They took this photo at the harvest fest in Stowe.

 
    Crystal:     I thought you said no kids?
 
    Don:         That’s my nephew’s son.
 

Cady Vishniac studies Yiddish and Hebrew at the University of Michigan. Her work has won the contests at New Letters, Mid-American Review, Greensboro Review, and Ninth Letter, and is forthcoming in Glimmer Train.

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