1. Fog - to become indistinct

Norm Prebble’s call confirmed my destiny.

"Is Lois Anne there?"

"What’s left of her after the surgery is." I gave Norm a moment to clue in, but dead air followed my hysterectomy joke. A Clouded Sulphur butterfly, colias philodice, beat its yellow wings against my kitchen window.

"My dad died, Lois Anne. Can I come live with you?"

This despite a decade apart from the narrow-headed friend my peers had called Squirrel. I removed a peach from the bowl of fruit that the insect desired. "Geez, Norm," I said. "You know I married Dan Crant. You know he doesn’t…Oh, damn. I’m going to need time. This is unexpected. Look, I’m hanging up now, but I’ll call you, okay? What’s your number?" Norm’s nose whistled on the intake. "Fine. Be that way. If you haven’t moved, I probably have it here somewhere."

After he ended the call, I downed half a bottle of Bacchus Dry and ate a bowl of Honey-Nut Cheerios, also dry and didn’t bother to feel guilty about doing either.

***

During dinner at Western Wok and Ribs that night, I ran Norm’s request past my husband. Ginger-beef went down the wrong pipe, when Dan gasped, "No frigging way!"

"He’s harmless," I said, as if harmlessness was Norm Prebble’s greatest selling point.

"No one is harmless, Lois." Dan pounded his own back. "Who will support him? It takes hard cash to survive in this world. Hard cash!" He banged the table and made my plate jump. "I didn’t hang with the retard when we were kids and I’m sure not going to start now."

"You didn’t hang with me either, honey." I searched my place mat calendar for wisdom and found that I was born in the Year of the Ox. Oxen, I read, can be remarkably stubborn and are capable of fearsome rages. They are most compatible with Snake, Rooster, and Rat people. Dan, I noticed, was born in the year of the Pig. A waiter deposited a platter of curried fish on our table and Dan served himself first.

"I think Sardjit Palmer would want me to do this for Norm."

Dan fished a crescent shaped sugar pea out of the black bean sauce. He licked it off and then plastered it onto his right cheek. "Do you mean scar face Sardjit?"

"He got his injuries protecting underdogs from people like you."

"I remember getting your boot in my balls. You didn’t need protection."

"Not after he taught me how to fight."

Dan jabbed at the food on my plate with his chopsticks. "Interesting, but what I really want to know is if you’re going to eat this coconut prawn. Because, if you’re not…"

"Can you guess how Sardjit made me feel?"

"I’ll assume butch."

"Loved," I said.

***

"Guess what this is!" Dan waved a white envelope in my face as I hung up my coat, exhausted from my job as secretary for the West Fenny Naturalist Society. His euphoric mood made me wary.

"Divorce papers?"

He frowned as he whisked the envelope away. "Very funny, but wrong. It’s the receipt for a one way ticket to paradise. Bought expressly for our pal, Norm Prebble."

"Norm is my pal, not yours. Where’s he going?"

"Coming," Dan said. "Here. It turns out, Daddy Prebble was Mr. Moneybags and little Normy is his only heir. It’s a rich man’s world, babe. If Moneybags Junior wants to live in the safety and comfort of our home, I’m not the man to stop him."

"Maybe I am."

"Too late: We cut ourselves a long-distance deal."

A male robin, Turdus Migratorius, mistook its reflection for a rival and attacked our living-room window. The bird plummeted to the ground. A cat’s bell tinkled as I went to close the drapes. "I love you, baby," Dan said. He blocked my way and tried to make me dance.

2. Fogbound - unable to move

Dan drove me to meet Norm’s flight, but refused to come in. Alone in the waiting room, I watched as a displaced dragonfly, lestes rectangularis, crawled along the tinted window’s ledge. I was wondering how it felt to be so far from water, so close to death by civilization when a windblown dust-ball scooped the dragonfly up. Both the dustball and insect vanished into the periwinkle sky as it expelled Norm’s plane. I rose, straightened my wedding rings and then breathed deeply.

Norm found me first. "Lois Anne!" He hadn’t changed much since high school and that made me smile. He waved with both arms as we hustled towards each other, eager to close the gap. When we hugged, I had to stoop.

"Norm Prebble," I said. "How are you?"

"I’m good," he promised.

I patted his back and steered him towards the luggage carousals. "Did you bring a lot of baggage?"

"Tons," he said.

Later, as we waited to retrieve Norm’s suitcase, he suddenly pushed me into a turbaned man. "Remember Lois Anne?" He tugged on the sleeve of the man’s jacket. "Remember her!" Norm then turned to me. "It’s Sardjit, Lois Anne!"

I looked at the stranger’s face and felt my heart stall.

The man who looked like Sardjit broke free of Norm’s grasp. "So sorry. But the name does not ring a bell." He tapped his temple as if offering us proof.

"Remember the day you left?" I said. "Remember how thick the fog was? I thought we had lost you forever."

On the afternoon of his fourteenth birthday, when Dan’s womanizing father arrived for a connubial visit, his mother barred Sardjit from their home. He landed at my door with Norm at his side. After scooping a fistful of junk from his pocket, he extracted a palm-sized photograph. A turbaned man glared at me with sepia eyes. "This man is my father," he said. "I’m going to go find him."

"Where is he?"

"Somewhere in Surrey," he said. "With his new family."

Against our wills, Norm and I walked Sardjit to the bus stop. The flats were cold with fog that rose from the potato fields. It wet our clothes and hair and dripped from our noses as we slogged single file along the road’s narrow shoulder.

When I slowed for a moment, Sardjit disappeared from view. "Slow down," I said. "Sardjit?"

He appeared, slouched beside a bus stop. Removing a hand from a pocket, he said, "Don’t tell anyone. Not ever."

I linked my baby finger with his. "I swear secrecy on pain of death."

Norm arrived out of breath. He copied my action, but got the wording wrong. "I swear pain of death."

"Take care of each other," Sardjit said.

Yellow lights that stained the fog like pee on snow preceded the number twelve bus. The bus ground to a stop. Its hydraulic doors folded open. "Don’t go," I said, but Sardjit stepped in. I heard his fare fall. "Don’t go," I repeated. The door heaved shut, the bus rolled away and then he was gone.

As we watched the vanishing tail lights, Norm swiped at his snotty nose with a sleeve. The action made my stomach churn. "There’s no place like home." Norm tried to click his heels.

"Jeez, Norm. Grow up." A pack rat shot over my toes. When I screamed, the wall of fog rang with it. "Darn it! You’re so stupid, Norm Prebble!"

"It’s not my fault."

"Yes, it is. Everything’s your fault because you’re a freaking retard." And then, I ran, not caring if Norm could keep up. I ran not caring if he wound up as road-kill on highway thirteen.

"Lois Anne," he cried. "Wait."

"No!" I ran until my lungs were sodden. When I stopped to gasp for air, the road beneath my feet looked bleak. "Norm?" I held my breath as willows wept his answer.

"I am hurried to catch a plane with my group." The man’s profuse apology brought me back to arrivals. "Today we fly to Delhi. From there we travel to the Valley of Flowers where we will climb to Guru Granth Sahib and bathe in the holy lake."

Desperate not to lose him again, I jotted down my phone number and held it out. "Call me."

The man offered a business card stapled to a glossy brochure. The card advertised Jack Dahliwell - Pilgrimage Guide - reasonable services provided. He broke away and disappeared into the crowd.

Only then did I remember Sardjit’s scar. The scar that Jack Dahliwell, pilgrimage guide, did not have.

3. Fogbow - a nebulous arc or circle of white or yellowish light sometimes seen in a fog

While Norm hid in our only bathroom and Dan paced the hallway, grumbling, I lounged on the living room sofa with the brochure pressed against my breasts. My eyes closed and I ascended Jack’s Dahliwell’s mountain. Cool, fine earth lifted beneath my feet as I walked. The air was thin and stretched out forever. Sardjit trekked on and up and I followed. We came to an alpine meadow dappled with flowers and bordered by a pristine lake. A fog descended from the backing peaks as Sardjit approached the outer edge of the lake. He unfurled his turban and then laid it on an outcrop of rock.

"Wait," I pleaded. "I can’t go in there!" Somehow I knew that women were forbidden. Sardjit dove into the lake. Stricken, I ran to the edge. "Sardjit. Not again!" With one toe, I tested the forbidden waters. Fog rolled down. It pushed me back, away from the lake’s edge. It rolled over, around and through me. It soothed my skin and made me golden and glorious. I laughed and my body twirled in a wild dance. I sang my delight. I was clean, unsullied and innocent.

"Lois," Dan said as he slapped my arm. "Stop that damned dancing. I need the can and Norm’s in there blubbering. Get him out."

I whirled around my husband. "Norm needs to cry," I said. "We thought we found Sardjit Palmer at the airport."

Dan crumpled onto an ottoman. "You’re a sick bitch, Lois. You know he’s got to be dead."

I twirled and my foot sent a potted palm crashing. "No, I don’t!"

"You’ve just got to torture me, don’t you?" he shouted. "I only locked the kid out of his house. You wouldn’t tell the police where he went. Pin the blame where fucking it belongs." Dan jumped to his feet with his fists clenched.

"Dan," I said.

"Lois?"

"I need to see you bleed."

***

"Lois Anne?" Norm stood in the living room doorway. His red eyes flickered at Dan’s prone body.

"Uh huh?" I settled onto the sofa with Jack Dahliwell’s brochure.

"I’m not the retard here," he said.

Dan moaned, but his eyes remained shut.

"No, Norm," I said. "Of course, you’re not."

"Lois Anne Crant?"

"Yes, Norm Prebble?"

"You are," he said.