ANY HUMAN HEART

Rossi's Auto Repair and Full Service Gas had been there for as long as Maureen had been a resident of this New Jersey town.

- Yiyun Li

It was the last business along the only thoroughfare. Past it, the street shed its name and was called a highway, even though it was the same street, now lined with residential blocks. On the curb near the gas station was a bench, installed by whom Maureen did not know, and she seemed to be the only beneficiary. A green metal statue of Bruce Springsteen, a tribute by a local artist to one of the greatest New Jerseyans, had been a recent addition, and it stood next to the bench.

Maureen remembered the years before Bruce's arrival more clearly than the time after. She was eighty-eight, though this she did not advertise. She resented the way the receptionists and the nurses at every medical facility would start a conversation by asking her to confirm her birthday. Saying the date made her feel old, more so if someone marvelled—at how well she looked, or at her self-deprecating humor, which she felt obliged to offer lest sharper words slip out. At her age, being prickly was neither enchanting nor gainful.

Only when she was sitting beside Bruce, who had been sculpted wearing a cloak of seashells and ocean foam, did she allow her feelings to be more candidly expressed—spoken as an internal dialogue, of course, since she did not want to be caught saying things aloud. “Look at that blockhead,” she would observe, directing Bruce’s attention to a jaywalker who had bullied a car into braking abruptly. “Some people can't even wait to meet their own demise.” Or else, about a man and a woman entering the coffee shop across the street: “Married, but not to each other. A stale situation, and neither of them has any flair.”