He could be found living amid a thousand and one jars that caught the sun slipping through the skylight in the ceiling. Most of the jars were lidless, asking to be filled. The room that held them was small, situated oddly between the mudroom and the kitchen, with wooden floors softened by humid decades and forgotten magazine covers pinned to the walls without rhyme or reason. In the summer crickets could be heard; he made a game out of it, locating the jars from which they were singing and trying to land ping-pong balls inside, thinking they were too light to cause any harm. But when, on one muggy evening, he heard an especially nasty chirp and went to investigate, he found he’d half-smashed a cricket at the bottom of a salsa jar. He carried the jar outside, dumped the disabled bug into his hand, and enacted mercy on it with a tight fist. He gave up the game after that.
Manioc — yes, his parents had named him after their favorite tuber — had cleared enough space in that room, amid the jars, for a small dingy armchair. By now the fabric had been worn flat by a life of round buttocks, bounding dogs, heavy boxes of jars that sat in the chair for weeks waiting to be stocked on the shelves. The chair was a rocker, and it groaned with every sway. Manioc reached down to the lever on its right side to put up the recliner, forgetting per usual that the mechanism needed repaired. The footrest failed. Rather than fix it, he simply spun himself sideways to awkwardly sling his legs over an arm, twisting from the waist up to lean his weight into the chair-back.
The passage of time meant almost any kind of jar you could imagine had found a spot in Manioc’s stock. Early on he’d attempted several ways of organizing them: by height, by gram weight using a baker’s scale, by general shape (tall versus wide, generic-round versus specialty-jam-octagonal). He tried a library-like decimal system one Indian summer, writing on the jar bottoms with a chalk marker, but when his collection had passed a certain manageable size he simply started putting jars wherever he could find space for them. There were baby mustard jars — little dime-sized nuggets from holiday meat kits — tucked into jars that once held pickled jalapeños. Giant mayonnaise jars he could have sold for people to use as planters or to make terrariums. Mason jars leftover from a pandemic surge. Peanut butter jars —glass only — that still smelled faintly of roasted nuts if you brought them close to your nose and inhaled between the hours of three and six a.m. More jars than anyone could need, no matter the apocalypse.
He was half-asleep when his wife returned. She’d stepped out to get coffee and a carton of eggs; she’d been gone for 27 years, a hundred and three days, twelve hours, and a minute on the microwave. Still, he recognized her step as she entered the home — plodding, quick. The screen door, its weather-beaten frame tacked up with chicken wire, hissed shut and clicked behind her. She set her shoulder bag down on the kitchen table, sighed, and set to exploring, tracing a pair of fingers lightly along the unchanged walls and twirling like a dancer as she passed through doorways.
“Lilliana,” Manioc murmured. “In here.”
She followed the trickle of his voice until she emerged into the room of jars. The sun had intensified, pouring through the skylight so that everything around her husband glistened. Lilliana paused and took in the sight; when a cricket began chirping, she watched Manioc lean over and lift the jar from its village, put a finger to his lips, and hush the bugger with a long, breezy shhhhhh.
“You’ve changed.” She coiled her hands into a pair of fists and set them on her high hipbones that announced themselves as they always had, protruding through the oversized sea-foam tee and suspender-strapped denim shorts she wore. On her foot a pair of ankle-height socks, fuzzy and striped, were capped off by matching gold anklets. Her hair fell in gentle waves to her shoulders excepting the left side of her head, which had been buzzed to the skin. In the clearing was drawn a bouquet of flowers.
“Sure. You have, too,” Manioc replied, resetting himself against the chair back. “Is that Sharpie around your ear?”
She reached up and ran her fingers along the drawing. “My artist and I are exploring some ideas. What do you think?”
Manioc turned his head and looked toward a collection of medium-sized jars that had, he remembered, contained sun-dried tomatoes. “I think it could use some ivy in the background.” He inhaled deeply, closing his eyes and counting to six. A cloud passed in front of the sun like a fleeting thought, causing the room to blink.
“Tell me you’ve left.” Lilliana grabbed several jars at time between her fingers like pincers and set them aside, making space on a nightstand for her to sit. She hugged her knees against her torso. “Please tell me you’ve left at least once.”
“I’ve left,” he said, exhaling and looking at his wife with half-open eyes. “Sure I’ve left.”
“Where have you gone?”
“Oh, a little bit of everywhere.” He spun forward in the dingy armchair, reached down, and tried the lever again for the footrest. Lilliana watched as it failed to do anything. Manioc rattled it, becoming suddenly angry with the polished wood of the handle and the wiry chitter of broken springs inside. When the handle broke off, he looked at it with a long face and stuck it standing up in a tall cylindrical jar — a pickled eggs container, purchased for a dollar from a neighborhood bar in some Black Hills town a decade ago. “The grocery store. Movies. The beach.”
Lilliana arched an eyebrow. “The beach? What beach?”
“I took a road trip to the Oregon coast. It was stunning.”
“You didn’t say anything about that in your letters.”
“There are lots of thing I didn’t say in my letters.”
A breeze outside was picking up, knocking audibly against the frame of the house. Dry artifacts — leaves, uprooted tall grass, greasy napkins from a hot dog stand half a world away — skittered across the skylight, looking like cyanotypes. “What happened to our dog?” Lilliana asked. “Bongo?”
“What do you think happened, Lilly? It’s been how many years? He died.” When a look of concern crossed his wife’s face, Manioc tried to help. “Peacefully,” he added. “Overnight in sleep.”
“Did you get another dog?”
“Oh sure, sure. Brea came next. Only had her a year — she danced too close to the FedEx truck. Vinny came after that. Had him from pup to heaven above.”
“I’ve been gone that long.”
Manioc nodded, avoiding eye contact with her for the moment. “Yes. You have been.”
Lilliana grabbed a jar and turned it over in her hands, noticing an afterthought of chalk on the bottom. A resurgent sun caused her to squint. “You know, there’s lots I didn’t say in my letters as well.”
Manioc couldn’t help but grin. “I know that.” He’d seen the blots on the paper— spots in her letters where she’d set the ballpoint tip intending to write something before getting stuck, the ink seeping outward while the pen stood still and bled. “Perhaps we haven’t changed so much. Not really.”
“Don’t get any ideas.” Lilliana hopped off the nightstand and disappeared from the room, tracing her fingers again along the walls to take a reading on the home, the air. The speed at which her partner was eroding. What remained, if anything, of their affection.
When he was a younger man — a boy, really, a slick seventeen and clever — Manioc enjoyed the woods. His family lived in a modest three-room pad in the Andes mountains of Colombia, the property concealed by a thick grove of pine trees in which the colorful birds of the nation flew and bantered with their songs. In the evenings he would wander off into the trees, sometimes several kilometers. His parents were not hippies, but they were very hands-off, trusting God to deliver the children home. It was assumed He’d only ever allow their disappearance or death for good reason.
They were a ten minute walk from the locus of the village, a settlement no larger than a penny on the pavement. It was a beautiful life they led, though not easy; modern comforts such as bathroom plumbing and, later, cellular coverage, were slow to reach them. When an internet company came ambling into town, wires and modems and the like piled into the backs of three rickety maroon Land Cruisers, the whole community sat on their porches and watched the operation get underway, bobbing babies up and down on their knees while they waited patiently, sweat trickling down their foreheads. Gerardo, the de facto mayor, was the first to open a web browser; the townspeople clapped him on the back, reminding him what a leader he was. For a moment they felt seen by the world, connected to a grander scheme that included them despite its origins many mountains away.
Manioc watched all these happenings from afar — first, through his father’s legs as a toddler, his arms gripped around the knees as if to steady himself, and then always from a distance as he grew older. He’d perch upon a roof fifty yards off or find a window in an abandoned home on the main strip of the village — the closest thing to an urban center they’d known — quietly eating an arepa while he watched the town enter a frenzy about the latest cultural or technological arrival from afar. On the rarest occasions a politician would pass through, or at least a vehicle representing them. The candidate’s face beamed from a cloth banner strung along its sides, and diesel fumes curled in the air with the megaphone promises. Manioc learned early on to shake his head and ignore the displays, sensing an inherent emptiness in it. He didn’t hold the village accountable for the attention they paid; they knew their trades and their worth, and they knew their own hope. They certainly knew joy. Manioc kept himself aloof so as not to take that from them, consciously or not.
He didn’t know the aloofness would follow him so closely. When he emigrated to the States, he promised his family he’d return on the gold-crested waves of a medical degree, either with wealth to transform their home or to retrieve them and bring them back to the States to live with him. He had anticipated missing them more dearly. The distance, though, bred a newfound selfishness in him. Friends at school — especially the Americans, but also Yu Hwe, from Beijing, and Islam from Marrakech— told him it was a righteous kind of selfishness. “You cannot give your family what you want to give them until you’ve established yourself,” they urged. “It’s okay to worry about you for a while.”
At first, he couldn’t buy into the argument. Despite his misgivings about home, Manioc liked the gluey adherence to family, the unabashed commitment. It made sense the way having all your questions answered would make sense, so long as you could accept you wouldn’t like all the answers. After a few months, though, he found himself going out for drinks more, traveling out of town. He bought a bunch of camping gear so he, Yu Hwe, and Islam could spend time in the Catskills. He bought a cheap car, and then a slightly nicer car to replace the cheap one. Piece by piece he built a life, and each piece was a wedge between here and there. He wrote letters home — twice a month to start, then monthly, and then on the change of seasons. In their responses his family never asked for an update on his plans to repatriate money or come get them, though Manioc could hear the wondering in their arrangements of words. Tu vida en Nueva York está bonita, sí? Estamos un poco celosos. Jaja. Te amamos.
He met Lilliana just after an autumn camping trip. He, Yu Hwe, and Islam had come back into town and pulled over to grab dinner at a pub. They walked in with the smell of campfire baked into their jackets and pants and sat down at the bar. The bartender raised his eyebrows, acknowledging the potent scent, then pried caps off their bottles of beer. To Manioc’s left, a glass of beer sat bubbling, a coaster set across the top to save the spot.
“Good lord,” said Lilliana as she returned from the bathroom. “I hope you’ve been camping. Otherwise I’ll assume you’ve just escaped a cult and their weekly bonfire.” She had on a pair high Red Wing leather boots, navy corduroy overalls, long gold earrings brushing her neckline with a kind of chainmail. She spread her elbows wide and leaned into the curvature of the bar, removing the coaster from her beer and taking a long drink. “Where’d you guys go?”
“Woodland Valley,” replied Manioc, pausing to smile at her before sipping his own beer. “Near Slide Mountain.”
“Beautiful.” She nodded her head and leaned over to look down the bar past him. “These your friends?”
He introduced Yu Hwe and Islam, who raised their beers and tilted their chins before turning their attention back to a soccer game on the TV. “We’re in school up here.”
“Precious. Hey, don’t you think we’re always in school?” Lilliana had a tendency to turn philosophical on a dime. It caught Manioc off guard. “I dropped out, but I’m learning plenty. More than ever.”
“Hm. Say more.” He would play along with this while he thought more about overalls — or rather, what it said about a person who dared to wear them for fashion. The toes of her boots were scuffed. What from? And she had on cologne, not perfume — something spicy with cloves and pepper.
“In the last year I’ve landscaped, sewn sails, held flowers for a short film in which you only ever saw my hands. Just the other week my sister taught me to drive stick.” She cleaned off her beer and signaled the bartender to pour another. “I crushed grapes at a winery for a while, but admittedly that just made me sick of wine.”
“You’re a — what do they say in English — jack of trades?”
“Of all trades. Maybe I am, at least a little bit. That’s fair.” She exhaled a long, pondering breath. “I wondered about your hint of an accent,” she said, smiling. “Sorry, I didn’t want to assume. How long have you been here?”
“Three years. My name is Manioc. From Colombia originally.”
Lilliana stretched out a hand lined with the cool sweat of her freshly filled beer. Her grip, though, Manioc found, was as warm as last night’s fire. “Lilliana. From Iowa originally.”
“Iowa? Where is that?”
She rolled her eyes and turned back toward her beer. “In the middle of the country. It’s alright — no one ever knows. It doesn’t matter much.” She leaned back in her barstool and crossed her legs, playing her fingers against her thigh like a piano. “We’re here now, aren’t we?”
As she wandered into the other rooms, Lilliana noted the condition of things. The bed looked laundered but wasn’t made, the sheets bunched up on one side like a tumbleweed. A flush of the bathroom toilet caused the exposed plumbing to shutter. Manioc had converted the small second bedroom from a guest room to an office, replacing the twin bed with a long, beautiful walnut desk on which sat a few legal pads, some pens, and a coffee-stained copy of The Count of Monte Cristo. She ran her fingers along the desk, admiring the finish. With a puff of air she blew the dust from beneath her nails.
What to make of clues such as these, she wondered to herself.
When she returned to the jar room, Manioc was up and moving jars aimlessly between shelves, trading their spots to no apparent advantage. The skylight darkened; like threshed wool, clouds were gathering for evening rain.
“I’m not sure whey they came from.” Manioc spun a jar so that the embossed company logo faced outward.
Lilliana plucked her suspenders with her thumbs and thrust her hands in the pockets of her shorts. “You mean the jars?”
“No, goose. The clouds.” He pointed toward the ceiling, then wagged his finger at random around the room. “I know where every one of these came from, down to the jam jars by your feet.” They looked together at an old fruit crate on the floor, packed to the brim with jars that still had their decals on. Boysenberry, Capriot Farms, strawberry preserves no sugar added, Welch’s, mango chili surprise.
“I saw the picture hanging in your bedroom — the one of the ocean. Was that Oregon?”
“It was, yes.”
“Who was waving at you?
Manioc wrinkled his brow and turned, at last, to make eye contact with her. “Waving at me?”
“They were standing a few yards into the water, getting their legs wet above the knees. They had a baggy t-shirt on and had big, dark hair. They were turned around and waving at you, like they knew you.”
Manioc shook his head. “Photobomber.” He bit his lower lip and walked toward his wife until they stood just a foot apart, facing each other. Lilliana gripped the inside of her pockets into tight fists; slowly, gently, Manioc set his hands against her fists from the outside so that her bony knuckles prodded his palms. He inhaled, then inhaled again, then gagged and chirped — the beginnings of a good, heavy cry. The wooly clouds continued gathering above and began sprinkling the skylight, the drops inaudible on the domed plastic.
“What have you been up to?” Manioc managed to ask. “Where have you been?”
“Lots of places, Manny.” Lilliana was darkly calm. Stoic, even. She looked directly at her partner. “Now listen, hubs. Listen to what I am about to say to you.
“I’ve been gone a very long time. Whatever it’s been plus that minute I left on the microwave after heating up my dinner. I’ve seen a lot. Too many things, probably — canyons, cheaters, pine groves on fire. Death. Newborns at their mothers’ tits.” Her breathing picked up pace. “Our child died via lightning strike and I pretty much broke after that. Three years later I sold a painting about it that wasn’t any good to a woman who was very mean. I’ve done everything I told you I would do. But I came home because in all of that I was missing something — not you only, but something. Lord knows it wasn’t these jars. I didn’t know you had so many goddamned jars.”
Manioc winced. He clenched his jaw, trying to steady himself. “You visited my family.”
“I did.” She smiled faintly. “You never wanted to go.”
“That’s not true. Haven’t you ever gotten stuck scaling a wall that isn’t really there?”
“There must be something in the way. Something must have happened. They’re lovely. They’re confused about you, and worried sick.”
“They named me after cassava,” he said.
“Don’t be childish.” The sprinkles turned to rain. Lilliana took Manioc’s head in her hands and clutched his ears while she looked up at the skylight. “All this time and you’ve only been to Oregon. How are Yu Hwe and Islam?”
“Fine, I think. Haven’t heard from them in a while.” Manioc kept choking as he cried and blushing with embarrassment.
“You’re a fool, you know that? What is up with you?” She let go of her husband’s head, spun around, went and stood in the frame of the passage between the jar room and the kitchen and raised her arms, clutching the trim as if preparing to tear it off and remodel. “I also came back to check on you.”
Manioc became grim. “You always have had a conscience.”
“It’s the dream I keep having. I think it’s about you. I see a little kid and woods; he says the same thing every time he gets ready to run into them, and when he says it he has the same slight accent you had when we met.”
“What does he say?”
“He doesn’t say it, he hollers. ‘WE ARE INFINITE AND WE KNOW THE DIRT IN OUR TOES.’ And then he sprints into the forest laughing. And then everything turns white and green and orange. Your family’s home — it’s those colors. The whole facade and the woodwork and everything.” The trim groaned under the pressure of her grip. “And then it starts to rain and I wake up.”
“Like it’s raining now.”
“Like it’s raining now.”
Manioc, his fit beginning to subside, walked over to a tall and slim Mission-style cabinet. He clicked open the door and reached in, withdrawing a plain, pint-sized mason jar filled with dirt. He walked over and swung around his wife’s protruding hips and outstretched arms, veins bulging through the skin with the strain of her grip. Manioc opened the jar and smelled the dirt, then held it up to Lilliana’s nose.
“Strange how it smells like that — like mushrooms and wild mint.”
“From a patch of wild mint in the woods behind my house,” said Manioc, his shoulders sinking into his body.
Lilliana let her arms drop from the trim. A flood, pent up in the sky, unleashed a sheet of rain that wet the house in a low, endless thrum. “It smells lovely.”
“The dirt, or the rain?”
“You can smell the rain from inside?”
“There is a hint of petrichor everywhere I go.” He managed to wink; Lilliana shook her head and smirked. “Anyway, this is the only jar I keep full. I empty all the others. I’m sure you noticed.”
“It’s not healthy, Manny — avoiding things.” She turned him around by the shoulders and wrapped her arms around him from behind. She could smell the must on his scalp, the musk of years-old aftershave; she felt the leathery resistance of the skin on his torso.
“I always thought we’d find a way to pickle ourselves,” said Manioc, responding to a question in her grip. “Me and you especially — I thought we’d hack the whole thing. I thought we’d preserve what always goes sour.” He waited for his partner to respond. Several minutes went by, the rain thrumming against the walls and the roof and the skylight. “Wait — Lilly? Are you — you’re not sniffling?”
“You always change the subject, hubs.” She pulled back an arm and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Every goddamned time. You’ve got me thinking nothing changes.”
Manioc pulled the jar to his nose and sniffed again. He lowered it and reached in to take a little dirt between his fingers, rubbing it as if it might speak or summon revelation. “I repeat what I said earlier: Perhaps we haven’t changed so much. Not really.”
“I miss your family.” Lilliana laced her fingers together below Manioc’s chest. “I really liked them. Why have I been to see them and you haven’t? I miss them.”
“Sure. And I miss you.” Manioc screwed the lid back on the jar and clutched it in his hands, rapping the side in rhythm with the rain on the skylight. “You miss them and I miss you. What to make of that?”
Lilliana burst out laughing — a brash, boundless laugh with a wet grit like soil. A host of crickets hidden among the jars began chirping, cued by her cackle; the house was awash in wild noises.
“Not enough clues, Manny.” She couldn’t stop laughing. The crickets and the rain intensified. “All those jars and nowhere near enough clues.”
