The Estrangement Effect

By Rebecca Andem

Wordrunner eChapbooks' summer 2020 fiction issue: Five stories by Rebecca Andem explore the startling, disconcerting, unsatisfying, and liberating moments in which we understand that the most central relationships in our lives are inhabited by strangers, strangers we are deeply connected to, be they lovers, spouses, parents, siblings or children.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wordrunner eChapbooks
• Release date: Aug 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005632649

Rebecca Andem

Rebecca Andem earned an MFA from the Stonecoast program at the University of Southern Maine. Her short stories have appeared in literary journals such as Upstreet, Hamilton Stone Review, Burrow Press Review, Petrichor Review, and Wilde Magazine. For many years she was a traveling English teacher in China, Vietnam, Thailand, and Russia. Currently, she lives in Tucson, Arizona, where she’s an active member of the Writers Studio and Old Pueblo Playwrights.

Book preview

The Estrangement Effect

Stories by Rebecca Andem

Published by Wordrunner eChapbooks

(an imprint of Wordrunner Press)

Smashwords Edition

ISBN: 978-1005632649

Copyright 2020 Rebecca Andem

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Contents

They Were Strangers

The Forgetting Bone

Inside the Lines

Adults Made the Rules

Sheltering

About Rebecca Andem

About Wordrunner eChapbooks

They Were Strangers

Elephants topped her list for soulful eyes. Elise didn’t understand how anyone could look into the eye of an elephant and not see intelligence and feeling. It was the same with dolphins, the awareness in their gazes. Or wolves. She loved the calculation in their icy blue stares. And the big cats. One of her favorite photos portrayed a lioness walking away but glancing back over her shoulder. She must have paused at some sound from the photographer, and in that second the camera captured an entire relationship in her face. There was a recognition in her amber eyes, perhaps a desire to trust, but also a wariness. Elise could imagine the patience that earned that gaze.

I think in another life I would have been a wildlife photographer, she said.

Why not this one? Yuri asked.

They were waiting for the show to start. Young elephants were lined up behind a split rail fence. A few were sleepy and unenthused, but most of them were fidgety, their trunks greedy and groping for treats. The tourists were lined up on the other side of the fence. It looked like a mating dance, the way the tourists stepped in and out of reach, teasing like young girls who are scared of what they want. Elise accepted a banana from Yuri and held it up for the elephant she was stroking. She wished she had thought to bring a camera.

I’m not the artistic one. She glanced down the line at Sam. He was standing at the end, several feet back from the fence, lobbing bananas for two competing calves to catch. Already he was moving more easily. Young people healed so quickly. Only a week ago he’d stepped off the plane with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up over a baseball cap worn low. Hiding. From the other end of the arrivals hall, Elise had sensed the pain in the careful way he carried himself. He’d walked towards her with his head down and his shoulders curled, no trace of his usual cocky stride. At a loss, she’d teased him, but he didn’t volley back. Black-eyed and swollen, he’d squinted at her.

Yuri slipped his hand under her hair. Does he draw animals?

He draws anything. Elise gave the elephant one last banana and stepped away.

Any of you?

Elise flinched against the lewdness in his tone, but the more she resisted, the worse it got. In the presence of her son, her boyfriend had somehow morphed into a letch. He was staking his territory. Elise knew that. The constant petting and private glances, the show of paying for everything – Yuri was letting Sam know that he had a place in Elise’s life. She should have been flattered. It was almost sweet, his vulnerability, but it was also annoying. He pulled her under his arm and kissed her cheek. If they had been alone, she would have been melting into him, but she knew his caresses weren’t for her. When his grip tightened, Elise didn’t have to look up to know Sam was standing beside them.

Your mother told me you like to draw elephants?

She did?

Yuri nuzzled Elise’s hair, and Sam pressed his lips together. Elise shook her head in warning. She didn’t want to hear the comment he was biting back. Luckily, a garbled voice over the loudspeaker announced the beginning of the show.

Shall we? Yuri asked.

We shall, Sam answered.

Elise glared at him.

The park wasn’t what she expected. After almost a year teaching English in Thailand, she still hadn’t done the tourist beat, but if the park was any indication of the rest, she had no regrets. It looked like it had been flung together out of scraps. The tourists piled onto rough wooden benches lined up under a thatched roof. Behind another rail fence, the