poop Cranberries Returning from her after-dinner walk to the drug store, a video of Lethal Weapon IV tucked under her arm, Aurora stepped into her living room to find her sister Lilith sitting in the wing back chair by the window, reading the newspaper. Half-glasses rode low on Lilith's nose, and a pillbox hat perched high on her head. Aurora glanced at the newspaper headline: Victory in Pacific. Truman declares national day of celebration. "What are you doing here?" Aurora asked. "You don't belong here anymore. You're dead." Lilith dropped the newspaper onto her lap and stared at Aurora. Lilith's shoulders vibrated as though with palsy. Then Aurora realized her sister was laughing, silently, as she had so many times in their youth, at her own practical joke. Turning to the window, Lilith rose and looked out into the darkened neighborhood, seeking out some ineffable presence beyond the glass. Aurora stepped toward Lilith. "If you can speak, tell me why you're here." Nothing. She remembered Lilith laughing like this on Armistice Day of the Great War, when they were small children. That day, Lilith reported seeing a white rabbit hopping through the backyard. Aurora quickly built a trap out of a soda water case and a windfall maple branch, then waited in the honeysuckle bushes for the rabbit to come by again. Lilith sat on the porch in Dad's rocking chair, laughing the silent snicker that now contorted her face. Fanciful Aurora, Lilith had called her, a nickname that stuck like oatmeal to the bottom of the bowl.
Aurora went to the door, stepped out into the hallway, and counted to ten. I am here in the new millennium, she said to herself. Lilith has been in the ground for eight years. This is not real. When she returned to the room, her sister was gone. Aurora fixed herself a bowl of microwave popcorn and settled in to watch her movie, but not even Mel Gibson and Danny Glover could erase the distraction of her sister's visit. Am I losing my marbles at long last? she asked herself. On the screen, Riggs and Jack drove through the offices of an architect firm in the most hair-raising automobile chase yet. If that couldn't put Lilith out of her mind, nothing could. That night's dreams alternated between scenes of Aurora's youth and images of Lilith lying on the floor of their back hallway, lifeless. Lilith lived with her in the house on Elm Street after Aurora lost Aran in a B-17 mission over the Alps in 1943, and was left to fend
