The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel

Author:Ramona Ausubel [Ausubel, Ramona]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-04-18T00:00:00+00:00

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In the first shop Vera found only a few dusty bottles of formula and no coconut milk and Eve bought bread to eat while they drove on. In the next shop there was a whole case of formula but still no coconut milk and they got a piece of Parmesan cheese, rough and crumbly. They bought up all the formula everyone had. All the shopkeepers smiled new-baby smiles and Vera said, “For our sister,” which was almost true, and the shopkeepers said, “Bella bambina,” and took the money.

After two hours they found a large market, fluorescent-lit aisles of cheese, a hundred kinds of jarred tomatoes, pasta in the shape of a tied knot, a boat and a shelf full of coconut milk. Eve put all the jars in their cart and had no explanation for the old women who eyed them, found a worker and said, “Molto?” pointing at the cans and it took some more gestures but eventually the man went to the back and returned with a cardboard box with Thai writing on the outside.

“Allora,” he said, and carried it to the register.

“Tuti?” Eve asked, and he brought out three more boxes. Eve picked out a chocolate bar with hazelnut cream in its center and Vera chose a bag of soft gummy fruit candies coated with crystal sugar. “Big Frut,” she said, rolling the r. Vera complimented her sister’s effective use of single-word Italian sentences. “We got it done, right? I feel good. We are VIPs in this fucked-up mission.” Eve said, “I’ll meet you in the car. I need to do one quick thing.”

“Okay?”

Leaning against the car, Vera closed her eyes. All the movement of the last two days still hummed in her body and she felt spun around, as if she had been blindfolded and twisted for pin-the-tail. On the plane Jane had looked out her window and said, “I think that’s Brussels. Your dad would have known. You could put him over the nighttime lights of any city and he would recognize it.” Vera had wondered whether she would still have been familiar to her dad this same way, or if she had changed enough in the last three years that Sal would have found her strange or hard to see.

Vera imagined the world from above. A body with its veins lit, carrying life to the dark edge.

“Are you asleep?” Eve asked, appearing beside the car.

“What did you get?”

“Girl stuff.”

“I have lots,” Vera said. “You should have asked.”

They wound and twisted the lake road onward, the castle once again in front of them instead of behind, the car full of the milks that might save the baby. Their mother texted, wondering if they had found anything yet, when they would be home. Are you close? she kept asking. They had the car and the milk. No one was more powerful than they were.

“For our sister,” Eve joked, and they laughed hard, their hands coated in sugar, their mouths sticky.

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