CREATIVE NONFICTION 33
each stage by dropping them into a clear glass
column filled with stratified saltwater. I discarded
each larva after testing it, something I regretted.
Living larvae are beautiful creatures: fragile,
shimmering, blue-green ornaments.
ix. love
David’s ninth birthday fell between urchin spawn
and metamorphosis.
My brother Tim, a magician, came to visit. We
planned a party, and David groomed his invitee
list: Wayne, Becca, Ryan; maybe Michael; some
Sunday school friends. Lenore.
I hadn’t heard her name since show-and-tell.
“Lenore?” I asked.
Yes, he said, that girl from school.
On party day, he dressed carefully and fluffed
mousse into his radiation-burned hair while his
bachelor uncle whispered sotto voce, “The Lovely
Miss Lenore.”
The party was his best ever: presents, bakery
cake, and Uncle Tim’s mesmerizing gaze, wild
stories, and colorful flourishes of balls, bright
scarves, and silver rings pulled from thin air. The
kids squealed with every flash of his imaginary
wifflebane dust.
Lenore and David grazed arms and stole shy
smiles from each other. As the party wound
down, our son suddenly turned and lightly kissed
the Lovely Lenore. A blush of longing passed
between them. His father and I exchanged sur-
prised smiles. Then, just as suddenly, the children
snapped back to ordinary lives, ice-cream-sodden
cake, and crumpled gift wrap. As far as I know,
David never fell in love again.
What we couldn’t know then was that his body
was slowly coming undone by radiation damage.
This process was as invisible to us then as the
tiniest slice of DNA gone wrong had been the
day he was born.
x. metamorphosis
The summer wound to a close, school started,
and David began second grade. Lenore returned
to her school in another part of the county. Their
summer romance faded away.
By September, most of the larvae had been
outcompeted by siblings, wasted in experiments,
or had otherwise perished. One day, I drew a
sample that produced a single, perfect miniature
Echinometra with microscopic spikes peppering its
legless round body. Metamorphosis left it unable
to swim. My research was over.
I showed the juvenile urchin to David after
school. We talked about metamorphosis. “Great
change,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, remembering his birthday party,
the kiss, and the transformative power of life
longing for itself.xi. sex and death
After graduate school, I thought David’s dad and
I might try to have another child. My husband
was less enthusiastic. A soft autumn light filtered
through the pine trees beyond our kitchen window
the morning our subtle struggle came to a head.
David was already on the school bus, and I would
be leaving shortly to teach biology to tenth graders.
I said we should try again.
Without rancor my husband replied that he
found it hard to think about doing that when one
of our kids had died and the other one might.
His words were a belly punch that sent tears
into my eyes. “Isn’t that the point?” I asked.
What were the odds we would produce a third
unhealthy child?
But my logic did not sway him, and soon, we
stopped having sex altogether, although I believe
our love remained.
We divorced a year later. Neither of us would
have more children. He, David, and I remained
close-knit for the rest of David’s life, which ended
the summer he would have turned thirteen.
Much later, I realized that David died at the
same age I had been when I gave my grandmother
a photo of her stair-stepped grandchildren with
Gibran’s words printed alongside. The prophet
also says, Your pain is the breaking of the shell that
encloses your understanding.xii. sand dollars
I spawned sea urchins again ten years after
David’s death, for a college intro to biology class.
The students had mostly grown up fast in tough
neighborhoods. There wasn’t much they didn’t
know about sex.
The night before lab, I collected keyhole sand
dollars from the nearby Gulf of Mexico. They