Sophie Hoss

Runner-up of the 2024 Contest in Prose. Read judge Jamil Jan Kochai’s blurb here.

Vagabond Cain

The man in the crematorium fishes my sister’s hipbone out of her ashes. 

“See this?” he says to Mattie. “It’s called the os coxae.”              

Mattie is unmoved. Being five, my nephew hasn’t linked the corroded skeleton bits, gnawed black by scorch marks, to his mother. He only knew her by her skin. I am not afforded the same ignorance—when I was seven and she was nine, Miriam’s left elbow snapped, and the white humerus jutted clean through her muscle like an inside-out knife. She didn’t scream, but she looked up at me with a bloodless face, her mouth caught on the edge of a terrible, noiseless sound. 

The man holds up another bone. “And this one is her Adam’s apple.” 

Mattie perks up. “I thought girls didn’t have Adam’s apples.” 

“Of course they do. Eve ate the apple first, didn’t she?”

“That’s enough,” I say. 

I’ve cancelled the lease on my sister’s apartment and gathered Mattie’s things. There isn’t much: a few tubs of clothes, a bag of plastic toys and stuffed animals, and a shoebox of mementos, mostly little postcards from Miriam’s travels—I am in Berlin missing my Mattie-Cakes! I am in Paris missing my Mattie-Pie! I am in Stockholm, I am in Moscow, I am, am, am and I miss, miss, miss! I held onto Miriam’s flute, of course, and a scrapbook of baby photos that tapers off around Mattie’s second birthday. I told the landlord I would pay for a truck to come and drop everything else at Goodwill. 

“Is this a church?” Mattie asks when we arrive at my house. 

“It used to be.” 

 “How come you live here?”

“I play the organ.” When the wrinkle in his forehead doesn’t smooth, I add, “Good acoustics.”

I won eight and a half million dollars on a scratch-off lottery ticket a few years ago and used the winnings to renovate this chapel—formerly Our Lady of the Blessed Womb—and restore the antique organ built into the wall. The pews have been entirely blown out, leaving me the bones of an airy sanctuary. Select baroque flourishes remain: the dark confession box, the marble pulpit, the stained-glass windows depicting Jesus in various states of torment and ecstasy. 

Mattie points to the confession booth. “Is that the bathroom?”

I heft the urn full of Miriam onto the pulpit. “It’s where you go to say sorry for bad things.” 

He shuffles closer to me. 

My chapel is flanked by skyscrapers. It’s one of the last remaining structures from when the city was originally built. Privately, I refer to it as The Last Organ Sanctuary. Mattie wants to call it The Big God House. 

 “This isn’t a church anymore,” I tell him over a dinner of takeout Indian food. “God doesn’t live here.”

“How come?”

 “He couldn’t afford my rent.”

I run a warm bath for Mattie and sit by the half-open door while he splashes and sings to himself. He’s pretending his shampoo bottle is a rubber duck.  

“Don’t make a mess,” I call to him. 

“I’m not,” he lies.  

The pediatrician told me to give Mattie some melatonin if he couldn’t sleep, but he hasn’t needed it. Throughout the ordeal of the past week, he only cried once: when I told him he was going to come live with me. My first thought was that I must have done something to upset him. No such luck. He didn’t like the mole on my nose, he sniffled, and if we lived together, he’d have to see it every day. I wondered whether the crematorium was having a two-for-one special. 

Mattie will not fit neatly into the mold of my life. I have to warm the solid clay of my routine, knead it until it’s stretched wide and thin enough for me to shape it around someone other than myself. Usually, I get up early to compose and record—I have nice equipment, and I’ve made four albums with just me and my organ. One of them got to #47 on the “Neoclassical Fusion” chart. I take myself out to dinner at a new restaurant every night and go on dates with people I meet on the subway. I bring them home if I like their hair. I rehearse with my quartet—we call ourselves “Thy Bounty Hunters”—and during the weekend and select weekday afternoons, we play at bars and parks and sidewalks, and I replace my organ with a lightweight keyboard  I strap to my back. On Mondays and Wednesdays, I teach an ear training class at the music school a few blocks away. None of these things can occur without three shots of whiskey as soon as I roll out of bed, and then another two around noon. I’ve never been much of a coffee drinker—caffeine gives me headaches.

Mattie dries off and tugs on his pajamas. He ambles around and presses a key on the organ, yelping back when he feels the resounding swell of middle C vibrate around him. 

“That’s the biggest sound I ever heard,” he says, fear giving way to what looks like mild awe. 

“Do you know how to play an instrument?” 

“Not yet.” He yawns. “Mommy’s gonna teach me her flute.” 

His eyes are sleep-glossed, and I steer him up to the choir loft where I keep a spare bed. He’s snoring before I can ask if he wants me to keep a light on. I decide to take out Oliver Twist the next time I go to the library. Mattie’s not technically an orphan—his father was a one-night-stand who got deported while my sister was still pregnant—but I imagine he’ll resonate with the plight of little Mr. Twist in a way his more fortunate peers won’t. At any rate, children should be made to read. 

My sister loved this boy more than anything. Now it’s my job to love him just as much, or at least convince him that I do. The thought propels me to the cabinet where I keep the old communion wine, cheap and aging, caressing my throat with a gelatinous tang, afternotes of post-holy dust. It’s too weak to get me drunk, but four glasses are just strong enough to put me to sleep with a pleasant simmering in my chest, like the essence of a hug extracted from the gesture itself.  

 A few days pass. In the interest of helping Mattie settle in, I cancel all my commitments except the one I can never seem to wriggle out of—playing Flanagan’s Bar on Saturday night with my band. It’s a coveted slot, and the owner doesn’t take kindly to changes in the lineup or even changes within the band itself—if another keyboardist stood in for me, it wouldn’t go over well.

Fortunately, when I ask Mattie how he feels about accompanying me to the gig, he springs up from his bed where he’s been napping and starts tugging his sneakers onto the wrong feet. 

“It’s raining out,” he says. “Can I step in the puddles?”

It doesn’t matter to me, I tell him, as long as he doesn’t splash my dress. He watches me down a generous pour of whiskey, my pre-show ritual. 

“Is that yummy?” he asks.

I shrug. “It wakes up the music.”

He frowns as if trying to remember something. “Mommy doesn’t drink it.”

        “

No,” I say, “I’m sure she doesn’t.”

Few artistic types are completely clean, and I am not among them. My mother and father—a sculptor and a photographer, respectively—tipped back thimbles of whiskey between sentences and passed their shared flask like a hot potato. My sister and I were lucky. Our amniotic fluid had been laced with booze, but our parents held down good jobs and were always high-functioning enough that their slurred words were a charming foible. Alcohol made them attentive, affectionate. More likely to buy us ice cream or hug us even when we didn’t do anything to earn it. Sometimes, I’d spike my father’s orange soda with vodka so he would smile at me with both dimples. 

On the way to Flanagan’s, we walk past a crumbling wall. It’s probably made of bricks, but it’s hard to tell because of the hundreds of “Wanted” signs plastered over it. 

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN? 

Each poster bears the same face: a man with a shaggy beard and a stain on his forehead, like a burn. Some of the flyers are so old that the words have been smudged off by rain. 

HAVE YOU MAN? 

SEEN           THIS       ?        

             YOU              ? 

Mattie digs in his heels and pulls me back to take a closer look. 

“Who is that?” he asks. 

“I don’t remember,” I say. “They’ve been looking for him for a long time.”

My three bandmates and occasional bedmates—Nixie the cellist, Lane the clarinetist, and Dylann the vocalist—greet Mattie warmly, and I set him up in a corner of the bar with a coloring book and permission to order whatever desserts he wants. It’s a good turnout, and we play a solid set. Mattie’s eyes are wide during my keyboard solos, and I find myself tossing in a few grace notes for extra flourish.

“I liked the last song,” he says on the way home. 

“Thank you,” I say. “You have a good ear.”

Maybe I can give Mattie perfect pitch. I don’t know if he has any innate skill, but I’ve learned that talent—if such a thing even exists—doesn’t really matter. My sister and I weren’t any good when we started out, but our parents didn’t want us in the house and the after-school music program offered free snacks, so we stayed the course until the director realized we were good enough to have an act all our own. We appeared on a couple daytime television shows and magazine covers, advertised as child prodigies and “wonder twins,” even though we weren’t twins. We played Carnegie Hall and some other places of comparable repute. When we eventually gained enough autonomy to explore our own creative preferences, Miriam went the classical route while I veered into the vortex of experimentalism. 

There’s a quote that says something like, “Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.” In any case, children should have hobbies. Judging by his toy collection, Mattie doesn’t have much interest in anything but dinosaurs and racecars, neither of which encourage the cultivation of useful skills. 

Along with cancelling the lease on Miriam’s apartment, I also fired Elsa, Mattie’s practically-live-in-nanny. Elsa’s help would have made things easier, of course, but I already have Mattie underfoot and don’t want another near-stranger hovering in my periphery. To compensate, I enroll Mattie in a ritzy little preschool uptown that will get him nice and socialized for kindergarten next fall. It’ll be good for him to have a routine, and good for both of us to have time apart. The new teachers seem to think so, too—they smell the whiskey on me when I deposit Mattie at their doorstep, and they’re quick to take his hand and steer him away, shooting me narrow-eyed looks over their shoulders.  

I should probably be ashamed of myself. I can’t seem to drudge up the energy. 

Miriam stopped speaking to me when she got pregnant and consequently got sober. She didn’t want any drunks in her baby’s life, she told me, and she had to break our addiction for the sake of her child. I tried reminding her that Mom and Dad had never been the bad kind of drunks—none of us were—and in fact, weren’t our fondest memories from times when they were at least a little tipsy?

“That’s the whole point,” she said. “Don’t you think that’s sad?”

“Your glass is half-empty,” I said. “If they had been sober, we might not have any good memories at all.”

Miriam didn’t have much else to say. The city we live in is not a big one, but after that day, I never saw her again.

A tentative week elapses. We backslide. 

Mattie does not want to go to preschool. Mattie wants to stay in bed. Mattie wants to yell and kick over chairs in the kitchen. Mattie looks like his mother when he says “no.” Mattie looks like his mother when I look at him. Mattie does not want to be alone. Mattie only wants to eat frozen mini hotdogs. Mattie does not respond well to being sent to the corner. Mattie lies on the floor and watches dust motes sift through the air. It’s hard to break the stillness once it’s fallen. The stillness feels like something to be worshipped these days. Mattie does not want to read Oliver Twist. I want to reshape Miriam out of her ashes and return her child to her. Mattie does not like orange juice. Neither does the social worker who comes to check on us after the preschool calls and expresses concern for Mattie’s wellbeing. Apparently, he’s been drawing disturbing pictures and having nightmares during naptime. Apparently, Mattie told them I drink “music juice” with every meal.  

“I don’t understand,” I say to the social worker. “He was doing fine.”

“The human brain is the most complex thing in the universe,” she says. “It’s common for people to have delayed reactions to grief. Especially young people.” 

Young people—not children. I lean back in my seat at the kitchen table, tipping the two front legs off the ground. I can tell it makes the social worker nervous, but it makes me calm, so it evens out. 

“Do you think he understands that she died?” I ask. “He still talks about her in present tense.”

The social worker wears a poker face. It’s not a very good one. 

“Well,” she says, “have you spoken with him about what happened to her?”

“He saw her ashes.” 

“But have you told him that she’s not coming back?”

“Not in so many words,” I say.

“It might be time to start using more,” she says. “Confusion can be very distressing for young people.”

I listen to the sounds of Mattie watching cartoons in the other room. He’s singing along with the television. He’s surprisingly in-tune. 

“I don’t want him to know how she died,” I say to the social worker. “Not yet.”

She clicks her pen contemplatively. “You don’t have to go into detail—the older he gets, the more you can tell him. Just start reinforcing that this is his permanent situation now.” 

A pamphlet is slid across the table. I stop reading once I see the letters “AA.” 

“Come on,” I say. “It’s not like that.”

“I’ll be back at the end of the month,” she says. “I expect you to have gone to at least one meeting by then.”

She stands to leave. Part of me wants to tell her that I give up. I quit. I surrender. Mattie should go live with someone else, I should say, I’m not fit to do this. I imagine this scenario playing out: my nephew is no longer my responsibility. Relief floods me, and then guilt. The social worker is gone. Mattie is standing in front of me, demanding frozen mini hot dogs. He is also demanding ketchup.

I wake that night to someone playing Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. 

Even in the right hands, it’s a terribly contrived tune, and these are not the right hands. I slide out of bed and cross the shadowed tiles, trying to remember whether I locked the door. It’s most likely one of my students—they’re enamored with my organ and always rap on the window and beg me to let them come inside and touch it and play their original compositions on it. Why they would break in hours after midnight to play the Dracula jingle is beyond me; I suspect that drugs are involved.   

I flick on the nearest lamp, and the music stops. The organ’s echo shudders like a force field.

A slouched figure hunches over the keys. “I thought I was alone.”

“This is private property.” 

He turns, and I recognize him instantly. 

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN? 

There is very little that scares me. I’ve been a woman in a city all my life—I can reflexively calculate six escape routes from any remotely threatening scenario. But the first line of defense is negotiation.  

“You have ten seconds to leave,” I say. 

“And go where?” He presses his thumb onto the lowest A. The sound pulses and simmers, seeping up from the pipes like gravity-repellent molasses. “The only place I can rest is in a house of my Father.” 

“This isn’t a church,” I repeat. 

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“It was a church,” I qualify. “And now it’s nobody’s house but mine.”

“I’m not sure it works like that,” says the trespasser. “What belongs to God will always be His.”

Quiet snores drift down from the rafters, and I’m reminded that Mattie is upstairs. 

Now I’m afraid. 

“Your son?” asks the trespasser. 

I scowl. “Nephew.” 

“His mother?”

I point to the urn. 

The man stands. I lurch backwards and raise my fists. His feet remain planted to the same square tile, and he lifts his palms face-up so I can see they’re empty. His right arm is slightly crooked, as if he injured it at a strange angle and it never fully healed.

“I am grieving, too,” he says.  

“I can’t harbor a fugitive.” 

“Not a fugitive—a wanderer.” His eyes are mournful, ancient. 

I glance at the window closest to me. Spikes of frost outline Jesus’ thorny crown. “Is it very cold out?”

He nods.     

“If you don’t leave by morning, I’ll turn you in.” 

“Thank you,” he says, and then, hesitantly: “Might I make a confession?” 

“I’m not a priest.”

He drops his gaze to the floor. I know that if I refuse him, he won’t ask again. I think that’s why I say yes. 

The confession booth is made up of two identical compartments divided by a wall and a thin metal grate. I don’t know which side the priest usually sits on. I suppose it’s in the eye of the beholder.

The man tells me that he’s still angry. I’m unimpressed. 

“That’s your confession?”

He says something about his brother, something about a knife, about jealousy, or love, but I’m eyeing the communion wine through a gap in the door. I left it on the table, and I’m watching the thick purple meniscus tremble with each slight stirring of air. 

The old wood creaks as the man shifts in his seat. “Your sister. What was she like?” 

I tell him Miriam was a few years older than me, a musician, a remarkable flautist with a seat in a prestigious travelling orchestra. I tell him that a few weeks ago, Miriam got so drunk that she had a seizure and died choking on her own vomit.  

“A terrible loss,” he says. 

Something unpleasant needles my throat. I swallow hard, and it goes away. 

“She called me the night she died. She left me a voicemail, but I haven’t listened to it.” I lean forward onto my knees, resting my forehead against the wall. 

“Why did you not answer?”

“She was the one who had stopped talking to me,” I say. 

Then, I ask him a question. “Why do you repent if it won’t change anything?” 

Before he can answer, thin wailing echoes from the choir loft. I take the stairs two at a time and find Mattie sitting up in bed: hair rumpled, eyes runny. 

“I’m awake,” he says, as if surprised by this.

“Did you have a bad dream?”  

“I don’t remember.” 

I give him a tissue, and he blows his nose with a snuffling honk. 

“I can sing to you,” I say.  

His mumbles something. When I glance down, I see he’s fallen asleep again. Down below, I hear the soft, muffled clinking of glass. When I go downstairs, the communion wine will have disappeared along with my visitor. Everything else will remain: the organ, the urn, the booth, my anger. Something else will be there, too, waiting, in the dark—something new, something timid, something like a sprout forcing itself through sidewalk cracks or a sliver of sun that casts a long, unbroken line through the window across the floor.