Josh Krigman: ENOUGH FISH • Cleaver Magazine

Josh Krigman
ENOUGH FISH

The important thing was whether she had enough fish. Rose stared at the open refrigerator, its fluorescent-lit innards threatening to overflow. Stacks of plastic containers and tinfoil-covered dishes formed a towering puzzle without a single piece missing. It was a familiar dance, this waltz between the shame of waste and the pride of excess, all in search of that elusive pleasure of accurately anticipating the precise depth and breadth of her guests’ needs. But she hadn’t been eating and worried that along with her own appetite she’d lost her eye for everyone else’s. It was just after eleven. People would begin arriving within the hour. Yes, she might have enough. It was possible.

She began unloading, opening lids and inspecting contents as she made a mental inventory. There were gold cardboard plates of pre-packaged lox, two unopened, one rewrapped in cellophane, another bound in wax paper and taped shut, the good stuff, hand-cut; two tubs of whitefish salad, one fresh, the other (Rose, checking) half-full, its smoke and oil rising like a fog; a single jar of pickled herring, the grey-blue hunks of it, light winking on the scales; also kippered salmon, a wedge of sable, chopped liver in a shallow metal tin. She looked at the food on the counter and the food in the fridge and arranged the table in her mind.

Outside, dull blue clouds continued to threaten rain. It had been like this for days, since before Howard died, the heavy sky always about to let go and never letting go. At the funeral, they stood dressed in dry rain jackets, umbrellas closed at their sides. It’d been the same on Saturday, Rose remembered, the day Sarah found him, collapsed at his desk in the back of the store, a heart attack, instant according to the doctor, dead before his head hit the table. A bruise had still developed and formed a blue blur under the skin above his right eye, like deep water darkened in the night, the way its depth suggests movement beneath the surface. Rose touched it with her hand, touched him there on his face, the dark skin above his eye. The mortician had tried to cover the bruise, but she could tell, could see it there beneath the powder. She’d touched the bruise, the dense blue of it, broken, and then she touched his cheek, felt his skin give, touched him one more time, the last time anyone would ever touch him—his skin, the bruise, the blue dark like the day had been and still was, the depth a sign of something more but still not rain, not yet.

She sliced tomatoes and arranged them on a plate. Cut pickles lengthwise into quarters. There had been at least thirty people after the funeral, funneling through her kitchen and living room. Impossible to know who’d come today. Visiting hours were twelve to five, but other than Sarah and Allie, she didn’t care to see anyone. Still, they would come; some with platters of store-bought goods, others a home-cooked meal. For all the kindness, she preferred the platters. It was as though the ones who cooked were saying here, can you wash this later? though she was appreciative all the same. Her sister would arrive at precisely eleven-fifty-five with her specialty: a foot-wide plastic-domed dish of pastrami, roast beef, and corned beef laid out in a pinwheel of rolled reds, pinks, and dark, well-done slices. All Rose needed was everything else.

Josh Krigman is a writer and teacher in New York City. His work has appeared in Necessary Fiction, Akashic Books, The Summerset Review, and elsewhere. He received his MFA in fiction from Hunter College. Josh Krigman is also the co-founder and New York host of Club Motte, an international storytelling series that holds events in New York, Oakland, and Berlin.