2014
Craig Chanin
All Rights Reserved
Arden
by
Craig Chanin
A Dissertation submitted to the
Graduate School-Newark
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing
Rutgers University – Newark MFA Program
Written under the direction of
John Keene
And approved by
Jayne Anne Phillips
________________________________
_________________________________
Newark, New Jersey
May 2014
ii
To Michelle and Azra
iii
Table of Contents
HISTORY ..............................................................................................................................................................1
THE SOLUTION................................................................................................................................................17
REVERDIE .........................................................................................................................................................34
THE MAN IN THE SHARKSKIN SUIT ........................................................................................................44
THE GREAT I ....................................................................................................................................................49
HIS WIFE’S LOVER.........................................................................................................................................59
ARDEN ................................................................................................................................................................78
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1
History
I was restless the entire summer before sixth grade. I remember it. Prior to President
Bush sending troops to the Middle East, and my even knowing there had been an
invasion that could lead to war, before all that, I felt as though I were waiting for
something to happen. I recall the moment that restless feeling seemed to culminate.
August was almost over. I was alone in my room. I was lying on my rug and
holding my two favorite action figures. The paint that detailed their uniforms was
chipped, and I had lost long ago the little plastic weapons that came with them. These
details never got in the way. I could imagine a spot of missing paint to be a wound or a
medal. I could see a gun in an empty hand and hear bullets blasting in a firefight. I could
turn the colored stripes of my rug into tunnels, trenches and territories. I always played
on my rug. I remember sitting there expecting to begin some battle, but my imagination
balked. Nothing came to me. I had no scenarios. I heard no sounds. There was just the
persistent blow of the air conditioner. Without a fantasy, I became aware of myself
clutching toys like a child. I sensed someone was looking at me, observing me from
behind or above; yet, I knew I was alone. My mother was out shopping, and my father
was downstairs watching TV. I jumped up, and I tossed the toys onto a shelf. The next
day, I threw all my action figures into a box, which I put out with the trash.
2
That winter the war, which had been building since the beginning of August,
actually happened. For the first time I watched the news. I sat with my father every
evening in the living room—where the largest of our three TVs was. My mother never
watched the war. She wouldn’t even step into the living room when the news was on. At
most, she would pop her head in and remind me about my homework. One time she said,
“Just because there’s a war going on that doesn’t mean you don’t have to study.”
The night the war started, as the first bombs were exploding and Iraq was firing
its ack-acks at American planes, a group of reporters called into one of the news stations
from some hotel room in Baghdad. The feed was strictly audio. It was the first time I’d
heard the sounds of real guns and bombs. I can’t recall the name of it, but years later I
watched a movie about those journalists. The whole film was about them held up in a
hotel room, risking their lives for the story. The night it really happened, I knew, as I
watched, that the President of the United States was doing the same thing, at the same
exact time as me; I had never been able to say that before; the moment felt historic.
In the middle of the first battle, my mother came in, and above the bombs blasting
and the guns firing and the reporters yelling, she accused me of not doing my homework.
“What are you doing?” she said. “It’s a school night.”
Her ignorance of the war, and her call to my studies tarnished the grand moment I
felt a part of. I snapped at her, “I’m not watching TV, ma. The war ‘s started.”
“I don’t care if it’s World War Three,” she said. “Do not talk to me like that.
Ever.”
She left the living room. I shook my head, trying to forget about what had just
happened between us.
3
Later on in the evening, the President addressed the nation. His speech stirred
me. My heart beat fast when he said the words history and courage. He repeated them,
and my blood rushed. The President quoted Thomas Paine: “These are the times that try
men’s souls.” I knew that saying. I was proud to know history that night. When the
President finished his speech I felt inspired. I stood up from the sofa. I knew I was
living in a moment that would be known by people not yet alive. I left the living room as
if in a trance.
I ascended the stairs. Great and timeless words crowded my mind—history,
courage, victory, bravery, truth. My surroundings seemed about to recede from me. I
walked down the hallway without seeing my father’s office, the empty guest bedroom, or
the bathroom. I didn’t even notice if the large door to my parents’ room was opened or
closed.
I found myself standing in my room. I shut my door, slowly. I pushed the lock,
carefully. I was alone. I allowed the words to touch me with their full force, and I
sighed. I began to walk the outermost stripe of color on my rug. It was blue. I clasped
my hands behind my back and took the corners in sharp turns on my heels.
I remembered my grandfather. He had stormed the beach on D-Day. I knew he
was brave in the war. I was proud of him, and I wanted to be like him. I began to wish
he were alive to tell me some of his stories. This made me miss him, but I told myself to
buck up. I owed my life to his bravery. If he had died in the war I never would have
been born. I stopped pacing. I stepped into the center of my rug and saluted.
The following day felt different from all those that had ever preceded it. I looked
forward to history class, and not because it was the last class of the day. I thought often
4
of the monument downtown, which had been erected to commemorate the men from
Englewood who served in World War One. I also wanted to call my grandmother.
Before Mr. Evers could even begin history class, James Baron asked, without
raising his hand, if we were going to talk about the war.
Alex Lyons said, “Yeah, are we?”
Then the boys began their campaign.
“It’s history.”
“It’s history happening right now.”
“How could we not talk about it?”
I did not participate, though I agreed with them. Throughout the room, the girls
spoke amongst themselves. I heard one of them say, “Typical.”
Mr. Evers held his hand up and said, “Class. Class, let’s talk about what happened
last night. I think we should. But, we still have to make it through our lesson. Now, as
always, the question in this classroom is one of chronology.” Mr. Evers paused. His
mustache stretched across his upper lip, and he showed us his yellow teeth. Mr. Evers
picked the theme back up, saying, “Shall we discuss the war before, or after our lesson?”
In unison, some of the boys nodded their heads and said, “Before. Before.”
“I promise to make time for it at the end.”
The boys said, “Before. Before.”
“Alright,” Mr. Evers said. “However, before we begin, can anyone help us to
remember where we left our discussion off yesterday?” Mr. Evers searched the room.
“Martha.”
5
“We ended with the fall of Fort Washington, and the retreat of the Continental
Army into Fort Lee.”
“Very good. Now, after we discuss last night, we will move forward to
Washington crossing the Delaware. Today, I plan to end with a discussion on the
painting that depicts the Delaware crossing. The historical inaccuracies are fascinating
and humorous.”
Baron, Lyons and the other boys began to shift in their chairs and mutter. Mr.
Evers seemed to take note, because he slowly started to introduce the topic:
“The last war America fought was Vietnam, and then before that was World War
Two, and…” Mr. Evers stopped speaking. He seemed to have interrupted himself. He
scratched his forehead. “There’s the Korean War,” he said. “I almost forgot the Korean
War.” Again his mustache stretched across his upper lip. “Isn’t that funny?” he said.
None of us laughed. Mr. Evers explained that the Korean War was also known as the
Forgotten War. I thought it absurd that a war could be forgotten.
Mr. Evers appeared to have nothing to say about the war, because he turned the
discussion over to the class. He encouraged us to share our thoughts and feelings about
what we had seen on TV. I did not speak. I knew no one wanted to hear from me. I had
no friends. I spent some time with a boy named Franklin. He had no friends either. We
were merely each other’s only option to avoid loneliness. Typically, after a few
weekends on our own, one of us would call the other. I often went to his house. His
parents had a big screen TV, and Franklin and I would play video games for hours, or
watch TV for hours, or have a movie marathon. We both liked Arnold Schwarzenegger
flicks. We sat and stared at the screen until our eyes hurt, and we watched with the
6
volume so loud that we couldn’t hear each other speak. The times Franklin came to my
house, we did the same thing, just on a smaller TV. I understood why no one wanted to
be friends with Franklin; he bragged about his dad’s money, and when he didn’t have his
way he would get spastic about it. I didn’t get why I had no friends.
As my classmates talked about their experiences watching the war on TV, I
thought about myself. I recalled how angry I’d become when my mother came into the
room to remind me about my homework during the war. I also remembered how I’d
vowed to be brave. I was happy with that memory, and I spent the entire class going over
it.
That evening, the news aired footage from an actual battle. I had never seen real
war before. It was a lot of light flying around in the night sky. I had to repeatedly
remind myself, as I stared at it, that I was watching a war. I guessed the biggest and
brightest flashes were bombs. The few hairs I had on my arms stood up when the
anchorman said, “The bombs bursting in air and the rockets red glare over Baghdad.”
My father snickered. This confused me, because I knew he was for the war.
After that a historian appeared on the news. The back of the large chair that the
historian sat in extended well above his head, and the walls around him were lined with
books. The historian wore a tweed jacket. The historian’s hands were pale and small and
still, one on top of the other, resting in his lap. The historian nodded his head as he
listened to the anchorman.
“The region is no stranger to violence,” the anchorman said.
The historian responded, “Unfortunately not.”
“Would you frame this for our viewers?”
7
The historian then listed, with marked regret, a series of wars, campaigns,
conflicts, crises, coups, rebellions, revolutions, uprisings and massacres. My mind reeled.
History seemed an impossible act of memory.
I watched the evening news every night. The war pervaded the atmosphere I
lived in. The routine of my life, school and homework, felt boring compared to the
battles and acts of bravery that were reported every night. A few times I watched the
news on the big screen at Franklin’s. Franklin would hold onto the remote the entire time
we watched, and at crucial moments, just before an F-15 was about to take off, or if a
Patriot missile were shown flying through the sky, on its way to intercept one of
Saddam’s Scud missiles, he would quickly raise the volume. Jet afterburners roared in
our ears. The sounds of missiles tore through the room, and their explosions echoed
around us. Franklin and I would high five each time we saw a Patriot missile destroy one
of Saddam’s Scuds. Throughout the war, Saddam kept launching his Scuds into Israel
and Saudi Arabia. He eventually hit both places. One time my father cursed at the TV,
after the wreckage of an Israeli home was shown. He said, “Fuck!”
I was over at Franklin’s when the videos showing American POWs came on. The
prisoners were each shown separately, standing before a bare-white wall. The camera
remained solely on them. There were numerous videos of them. Franklin raised the
volume. An unseen man asked questions of each soldier. His tongue was unaccustomed
to the words he had to pronounce. His tone was just below a yell. The unseen man was
angry. One POW’s face was flecked with red bruises.
Franklin said, “I hate Iraq.”
I said, “I wish I could go and fight.”
8
My wish was fervent and my words weren’t idle. I took to doing pushups on the
rug in my room before bed. I did them until my arms and shoulders burned, and my
wrists hurt, and the tops of my hands were flushed. Afterwards, my pink and swollen
palms looked pockmarked from pressing down on the rug. I decided I wanted my head
shaved. I told this to my parents at the dinner table.
My mother stopped eating. Holding her fork and knife poised above her plate,
she turned to me and said, “But you have such beautiful hair.”
I said I really wanted it. I said I was tired of combing my hair every morning.
My mother asked my father what he thought. My father raised his wine glass by the
stem. He smelled his red wine. He said, with his nose in the glass and his lips before the
rim, “It’s his head. Let him do what he wants with it.”
My mother called the barber. He was booked for a week. For seven days, the
only hours that weren’t infected with anticipation and impatience were the ones I spent
watching the news. At night, alone in my room, after my series of pushups, I stared at
myself in the mirror above my dresser. I would drag my hand over my head, as though it
were an actual clipper. Then, placing my hands on my scalp and holding down my hair, I
tried to imagine how I would soon look.
Finally, the day of the appointment arrived. I awoke excited. By the time my last
class came, my anticipation was at its fullest. Not one word of Mr. Evers’ history lecture
reached me. My crazed impatience reminded me of how I used to feel, sitting in the back
seat on the drive home from the toy store. The car could never move fast enough for me,
when all I wanted to do was run up the stairs to my room and tear my new toy from its
package.
9
I sat in the barber’s chair. From behind me the barber swung the black smock
over my body. The barber flicked the switch on the clippers. The instrument clicked
then hummed in his hand. I stared into the barber’s large mirror, as he drew the shear
through my hair. Black clumps fell to my shoulders and then tumbled before my eyes. I
watched my face attain the appearance I wanted.
I took to looking at myself in the mirror. Sometimes I tried to imagine my face
six years older. That was hard. The closest I came was picturing my face as it was, but
fringed with stubble. I often squinted, like I was sure I would from the sun in the desert.
Then I remembered that I would be wearing sunglasses and a helmet. One night my
mother walked in on me staring at myself in the mirror. I was wearing my sunglasses and
my bike helmet, and I was chewing gum.
“What are you doing?” she said from the doorway.
I told her I wanted to see if the helmet still fit.
“Is your homework finished?”
During the time following my haircut, I stopped passively watching the news. I
began reacting to the people on TV. My first responses were merely small gestures that
were imperceptible to my father or Franklin, like rolling my eyes at something an Iraqi
said, but it was from these initial expressions that the separation between the images and
me collapsed, and soon I started talking back to them, reminding them of the fact that
Saddam had invaded Kuwait, and then I flung questions at them: “How can you think
that?” And after that came the insults: “What, are you stupid!”
One night on the news there was a report about American planes bombing a target
that Iraqi civilians were in. Bodies were shown on TV. There were more corpses than
10
stretchers and ambulances could carry away, or blankets could cover, and the dead had
been laid out in rows, on the street, in the daylight, next to the still smoking bombed-out
building. Iraqis screamed into the camera that it was a great massacre and swore
revenge. America blamed Saddam. The White House, the Pentagon and the Army said
Hussein had put his people in a place he knew would be struck. Reporters reminded us
that in the past Hussein had threatened to use human shields. The worst were the scenes
of protests against America. A swarm of men chanted, “Go on, Saddam, the true Arabs
are with you!” I yelled at them, “You idiots! He invaded Kuwait!” I had to endure the
crazy lies of the people in the crowd. A woman said America was deliberately killing
civilians every day. I couldn’t take it. I stormed out of the living room, and I stomped up
the stairs. It was a Saturday night and my parents were out having dinner with friends. I
was alone at home and I brought my feet down hard through the hallway and yelled that I
wished Bush would just drop the big one and end it all. I slammed my bedroom door.
I paced around my rug. I clenched my fists, and I repeated the phrase, “Eighteen,
six more years. Eighteen, six more years.”
In school the following day, during lunch, I overheard Baron, Lyons, and some of
the other guys talk about seeing the dead bodies on TV. I listened to them, instead of
what Franklin was saying to me.
One boy said, “I’ve seen worse.”
“Oh yeah,” said Lyons. “When?”
“In like a Friday the Thirteenth, or something.”
“You idiot,” Lyons said. “That’s a movie.”
“So,” the boy said. “It looks real. Those people were just lying there.”
11
Another boy said that when his sister saw the dead bodies, she left the room with
her hand over her mouth. Someone asked him if she puked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I was watching TV.”
Baron said, “Whatever. All I know is they’re dead.”
Lyons caught sight of me looking at them and listening to their conversation.
“You got a staring problem?” he said.
The group of guys quit their talk and turned to me. Franklin stopped speaking.
A line from a movie came into my head. “Lyons,” I said. “You’re not pretty. So
don’t get worried.”
Everyone laughed, except Lyons. Franklin gave me a high five.
Two weeks later the war was over. Watching the end of the war was like
watching a good movie go bad at the last moment, as though the scriptwriter had grown
bored with his material and didn’t care to conceive of a worthwhile ending. There was
no great battle. The Iraqi army surrendered daily by the hundreds. They emerged from
their desert trenches, disheveled and desperately waving white cloths.
General Schwarzkopf, at a televised press conference, cracked a joke about
Saddam and his army. The press corps chuckled, and my father chuckled, but I laughed
hard and loud, slapping the armrest of the sofa. I remember my father saying,
“Humiliation is part of defeat.” I am still not sure if he said that because of the general’s
joke or my laughter.
One day after the war was over, I checked the calendar in the kitchen and counted
the number of weeks it had lasted for. It was six. I looked up from the table of dates.
12
The glossy picture for the month of March greeted my gaze. I stared at grass standing up
through a patch of snow. I said, “Shorter than a summer.”
I went to find my father. He was sitting on the sofa in his room, staring out the
window. A jazz album was playing and a soft, slow song filled the room.
“Dad.”
My father looked at me, nodding his head in time to the music.
“Dad, did you know the war wasn’t longer than a summer?”
He shook his head in time to the music.
“Six weeks, dad. This is the shortest war ever.”
My father shook his head again in time to the music. He said, “Remember, the
Six-Day War.” I nodded my head, pretending to remember.
The worst part of the war was when the reports came in that America would allow
Saddam Hussein to stay in power. I couldn’t comprehend it. I had never heard of a
dictator being kept in power. Saddam had been compared to Hitler. The reporters, the
politicians, the historians and even the president had said it. I held out hope that this was
really misinformation, meant to lure him from hiding. Saddam surfaced. Nothing
happened to him. I kept waiting and hoping to hear that he was dead. Days passed and
Saddam was still alive. I never before wished for someone to die. I felt real hatred for
the first time in my life.
I began spending my free time, after my last class let out, in the empty plot across
the street from school. I liked to go there and practice my aim. The rocks scattered about
the ground were my ammunition, and I used the old trees as my targets. One day I
proudly knocked a bird’s nest from a bough, and then on another I tried my best to hit a
13
squirrel. The animal ran along the limb as I fired stones at it. It jumped to a different tree
and then scampered behind the trunk. I stood in the cold waiting for it. I cocked my arm
and kept it ready for the throw. The squirrel waited me out. I left the field and headed
home, but every day after that, as I threw rocks at the trees, I kept an eye raised to the
branches.
One crisp March afternoon, as I listened to the barks echo back the rocks that
struck them, someone from behind me pulled my hat off. I turned around. I saw Lyons
smiling at me from under my own hat. “Hey, Baron,” he said. “What do you think of my
new hat?”
I glared at Lyons. I didn’t see Baron or any of the other guys that were there. It
was just Lyons and my anger. I wanted to hurt him. I lunged for him. Baron stepped
between us and shoved me. I stumbled backward.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Baron said. He walked over to me. “Were
you trying to steal my friend’s hat?”
I didn’t answer him.
“Huh?” Baron said, pushing me a second time, harder.
I fell down. I got back on my feet quick, before Baron could stand over me. I
stood facing Baron. He was bigger than me, and I had to look up to see his eyes. He was
staring down at me. I stepped backward, but a circle of boys had surrounded me. I
glanced around and saw everyone was smiling. I sensed this had been planned. I
couldn’t see everyone simultaneously, and voices came at me from different directions.
“Ding, ding.” someone said from behind me.
“Man,” someone else said to me. “I’d hate to be you right now.”
14
Lyons shouted, “I told you it was my hat.” I stared at him. He was standing
between two boys.
One guy said to Lyons, “Hey, it looks good on you.”
I told Lyons to give me back my hat or else….
“Or else what?” Baron interrupted.
I kept my stare on Lyons.
Baron pointed a finger hard into my chest and said, “Hey, I’m talking to you.”
That was when I clenched my fists, and I became aware of the rock that was still
in my hand. The advice my father had given me about fighting someone bigger flashed
through my mind: “Hit him in the nose hard as you can.” I thought, “Chuck the rock at
Baron’s face. Aim for his mouth. Then punch him in the nose.” I told myself, “Do it!”
My hand didn’t move. I commanded myself, “Do it, now!” I couldn’t move my hand. I
dropped the rock. I looked at Lyons. I knew I could beat him. I dared Lyons to step
inside the circle.
“Listen up,” Baron said. “I’ve got a news flash for you…”
“Hey stupid!” I said. I stared right up into Baron’s eyes. “I’m sick of you. The
only reason you’re tough is cause you’re bigger, and the only reason you’re bigger is
cause you got left back.”
The circle cracked up. I remember seeing two boys actually slap their knees as
they laughed, but after the humor wore off, it was as if the ring of boys wanted to see the
fight even more.
“I can’t believe this kid is still standing.”
15
“Are you going to let him get away with that, Baron?”
“I wouldn’t take that.”
“That was messed up, man.”
“If he said that to me…”
“I’d have already hit him.”
I looked up at Baron. His mouth was twitching. His eyes were slits through
which hatred came at me. He pushed me. I flew back and collided into someone
standing behind me. That boy shoved me back over to Baron. I stumbled forward. My
face slammed against Baron’s chest. Baron grabbed me by my lapels. He drew me up.
He held me so my eyes were level with his. I felt the tips of my shoes touching the
ground. Baron hollered at me, “You’re so dead!”
I panicked at the idea of being on the ground, against my will, suffering punches
and pain. I began spitting out words.
“Baron, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Baron. I don’t care. He can keep my hat. I swear. I
don’t care. I’m sorry. I don’t want to fight.”
The circle became hysterical. Baron drew me closer. I closed my eyes. Baron
shouted at me, “Open your eyes!” I felt his spittle hit my face. I did what he said. I saw
his hand drawn back in a fist. I flailed my body about, trying to get free from his grip.
Baron was able to hold onto me with one hand.
“Please!” I begged. “Don’t!”
“You’re pathetic!” Barron yelled. He threw me down.
My back slammed against the ground. I felt my head bounce off the turf. The
wind was nearly knocked out of me. My skull throbbed. The circle constricted around
16
me. I couldn’t see the sky. The laughing faces looking down at me blocked my view.
Baron stood at my feet. He held his arms akimbo. I closed my eyes. There was no
longer any war or history or courage to play with.
17
The Solution
I
The Coming of The Solution
We all call it The Solution, though when some of us say it, we do so with irony. The
Solution came ten years after cancer was cured. That decade, when molecular biologists
were learning about what they called “deep cellular functionality,” is referred to as The
Pathway. The discoveries made during that era were of such magnitude that they
effected a paradigm shift within the fields of genetics and molecular biology, and created
a new scientific discipline called radical biology. After the New York Times, the
Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, Popular Science, and
National Geographic all placed on their covers the captivating image of a magnified,
translucent squiggle, which was a deep-cellular structure that radical biologists had
recently discovered, and especially after CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, PBS, NPR, along
with every local news station ran reports on this new frontier science, we were all
speaking about what we had learned. It proved to be too complex for us to really
understand. So instead, we gravitated toward catch phrases that we could confidently
18
speak to one another, as we stood in an elevator with a stranger, or as we passed a person
on the street: real radical discoveries are on the horizon; groundbreaking and earth
shattering news; the crowning achievement of humanity.
Our politicians, of course, debated the issue. As we listened to them on our radios
we were glad that some group of people were actually having the discussion, and when
we saw them on TV, the tiny American flag pendants, which they all kept pinned to the
lapels of their dark blue or slate gray jackets, caught our eyes, as did their hand gestures,
always a fist, with the thumb slightly raised, which they moved in time to the rhythm of
their firm voices.
Naturally, as the debate drew on, the tone grew contentious. Members of the
opposition party began to dress in all black attire, including a black armband, and they
started referring to the radical biologists as a group suffering from Ponce De Leonism,
who were going to do nothing other than lead us to the fountain of misuse of funds.
Finally, the President stepped in. He chose a warm, spring day to speak and he decided
to do it from the White House rose garden. A bush of tall, red roses on his right, and a
bush of tall, white roses on his left. The President wore a blue suit. The President said,
“If there ever were a time for true, deep, honest, and thoughtful soul-searching, now is
that time. We do not have the luxury of the examples of the past. Humanity has not
before faced what we face here, today, now, at this very moment.” The solemnity and
wisdom of his words inspired hope in the public that our leaders would return to a proper
debate. This, however, did not happen.
19
The first day after the President gave his speech, one senator famously said,
“We’ve got the cure for cancer. I don’t understand why some people just can’t be happy
with that.”
And another senator famously responded, “Pardon me, Sir, but are you saying that
Americans aren’t happy people?”
The first senator famously tried to explain he had said the word people, not
Americans.
The second senator then famously asked the first, “Of which people were you
speaking?”
The first senator, who was an incumbent, famously lost his seat in the following
election.
And so, our politicians continued to debate the issue. Then, the announcement
came: In California, in a laboratory, in a Petri dish, human cells, after numerous tests,
demonstrated immunity to all known pathogens, as well as to deteriorations due to time.
Tests were set to begin on animals, to see if complex mammalian organisms could be
engendered to withstand disease and time. Those people against these early animal
experiments referred to the radical biologists as modern day Victor Frankensteins. At
that, Mary Shelly’s book returned to the bestseller lists. Though many mice, rats,
hamsters, guinea pigs, ferrets, squirrels, rabbits, sheep, goats, cows, horses, llamas,
whales, pigs, cats, dogs, and monkeys had successfully undergone the treatment to make
their cells impervious to all known diseases, and the deteriorations of the aging process,
our scientists and philosophers, as well as our social and cultural managers, i.e. the
editors of all the major news outlets, both print and televised, did not declare that The
20
Solution had occurred, until the first human had his cellular structure altered. While
some critics in our academies claimed we had effectively theomorphoized man, the New
York Post ran a headline that said: “Will you be like gods? Yes!”
The Night Humanity Learned
Our President, naturally, was the one to make the announcement that The Solution had
occurred, and naturally he addressed the world from behind the brown mahogany desk in
the oval office. “Death’s cold tyrannous rule is over,” he said. “Humanity is finally free
from the pain and loss and sadness that mortality had, until this very moment, subjected
us all to.” The President then called for a collective moment of silence, for all human
beings who did not live to see this great moment. The President clasped his hands
together and he bowed his head. Some of us closed our eyes and joined him, while others
of us wondered if this gesture would ever again be necessary.
That night those who remained in their homes and watched the news saw scenes
of celebration. Reporters from every news station stood on street corners in towns and
cities across the country and tried to interview our jubilant citizenry. One interviewer
stood outside a bar and spoke with people who stepped out for cigarettes, or to catch their
breath, from all the joyful hollering they had been doing. The reporter spoke with a
woman who said she had given up smoking after cancer was cured, but now, she said,
taking a deep drag and then blowing the smoke out through her nostrils, “It doesn’t
matter.” She took another drag and closed her eyes in pleasure. There was the sound of
21
someone vomiting in the background. The woman exhaled and then said, “This is the
best cigarette of my life!” Another reporter stopped a man who was wearing a red
cardigan, and carrying a small, brown paper bag. The man was alone and wandering
about wide-eyed. He began weeping into the microphone, saying that he was no longer
afraid. For the first time in his whole life, he was no longer afraid.
The next morning we learned of all the deaths. Emergency rooms across the
country had been overrun with people who had overdosed on drugs and drank too much;
there were more drunk driving accidents that night than ever before in human history, and
many people fell from rooftop bars and off terraces, and as they plummeted, they laughed
in drunken ecstasy, thinking that they had already received the treatment—but, naturally,
at that moment they were still mortal in the old way, and they died. Their skulls split
open on the sidewalk, and their eyes were open in the last stare of their lives. A journalist
joked on one of the morning talk shows that this was the best thing that could’ve
happened to the funeral business. “This is their last chance to make a buck off any of
us,” he cracked. The following morning he was found shot in the head in his apartment.
The news of all these deaths struck us differently than it ever had before. Before
The Solution, when we heard on the news that a fellow human being had died, whether it
occurred from disease, natural disaster, a plane crash, car accident, terrorism, or just plain
murder, we felt that their fate might possibly one day be our own, and so we took a
moment to mourn these strangers, but what we were really doing all along was mourning
ourselves, and our own vulnerability to chance. But the morning after The Solution,
these deaths didn’t suggest something that could possibly, or even would inevitably
happen to us, and so, as we stirred the milk we had poured into our coffee mugs, or as we
22
rubbed a sugar packet between our fingers, pouring the sweet, white granules onto the
pulp of our half cut of grapefruit, we shook our heads and thought those people who died
were fools. The world was better off without such heedless nincompoops running around
for God knows how long.
The next morning the group of radical biologists who were responsible for The
Solution held a press conference. We would later learn that the government mandated
that it air simultaneously on all our radio stations and every one of our 1,000 TV
channels, so as to ensure that the entire populace heard the message. A single radical
biologist spoke, while behind her stood the rest of the team. She said that she and the
team were greatly saddened by all the deaths from the night before. They had worked for
the last ten years toward the goal of more and better life. As she expressed the teams’
heart felt condolences to the families who lost loved ones, all the radical biologists
standing behind her nodded their heads. The spokeswoman explained that the team
wanted every single human being alive today to understand that no one was immortal,
and no one would be immortal after the treatment. She said that people would have the
most powerful immune systems ever evolved by nature. She said people would no longer
suffer internal or external deterioration. We would still age, but the body wouldn’t break
down in any way. She again reiterated that all people needed to understand that after the
treatment it still would be possible to die. The treatment could not make the body
resilient to wounds.
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II
The Problem of Lifeists and Deathists
Now that three generations have been born since The Solution, our society has evolved in
response to the fact that most of us are living lives of an indefinite length. The Lifeists
and the Deathists seem a natural part of our reality. In short, the Lifeists favor The
Solution and welcome the change it has brought, while the Deathists believe that The
Solution has robbed people of what made them most human.
The oldest generation among us, those who are great-grandparents, they alone
know what it was like to live a life with the certain and unavoidable fact of death. A poll,
recently conducted by our finest universities, research institutions, think tanks, and
government agencies, revealed that an overwhelming majority of the oldest generation
are Lifeists, while the Deathists are mostly composed of people born after The Solution.
The Lifeists immediately seized upon the findings of this study to argue that the Deathists
do not and cannot understand what it is like to live knowing that you, and all the people
that you love must die. The Lifeists say that the Deathists do not know the profound
sorrow of grief. True, people still die from car accidents, plane crashes, boat crashes,
train crashes, earthquakes, tornados, flooding brought about by tsunamis or hurricanes,
and people continue to be murdered with guns, knives, box cutters, hammers, and
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baseball bats, and, naturally, there are still wars—so, our finest universities, research
institutions, think tanks, and government agencies conducted another poll, to see if those
people who had lost loved ones changed their stance from Lifeist to Deathist, or vice
versa. The results revealed a nearly equal number of conversions from one group to
another. Some Lifeists became Deathists because they could not bear to be interminably
without the person that they had lost, and some Deathists became Lifeists due to their
experience of grief, which they claimed was so painful that it necessitated total and
absolute eradication from human experience. The Deathists naturally argued that without
grief we are not human. The Lifeists countered with the claim that without grief we are
happier human beings, and they launched their “Happier Human Beings Happier Lives”
campaign.
The Lifeists often accuse the Deathists of engaging in death apologetics when the
Deathists claim that an inherent beauty and value arises from the transience of our own
lives, along with the lives of all the other people, animals, and the great panoply of
organisms on our planet. The Deathists respond to this by saying that an essential feature
of being human is having a self-conscious awareness of one’s mortality. They say that
that is the fundamental tie that binds us to our ancestors, who lived their lives knowing
that their death was a certainty. The Deathists argue that death motivated humans to
create religion, art, philosophy, and science. The Lifeists say that is true, but they insist
that The Solution, in some form or another, was always the ultimate goal of each one of
humanity’s great disciplines. The Deathists counter this claim by insisting that because of
The Solution we are now unnaturally adrift and cutoff from the universe, where even
planets, stars and galaxies are not eternally enduring, and so, they conclude, we have
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disassociated ourselves off from the most fundamental feature of everything that exists:
transience. The debate, naturally, does not end here, and naturally it continues to
continue.
The Problem of The Universe
Prior to The Solution, when a person brought up the problem of the universe for
discussion, he or she typically was about to address the strange and unexplainable fact
that the cosmos, as a plenitude of galaxies, stars, black holes, supernovas, white dwarfs,
brown dwarfs, planets, solar systems, comets, asteroids, falling stars, and shooting stars
exists at all. The problem of the universe was how and why did anything and everything
ever come into existence? (This is a macrocosmic version of the microcosmic question
of our own lives, which, simply stated, is, why do I exist?) After The Solution, the
problem of the universe primarily refers to its future state, because humanity no longer is
bound by time and disease. Cosmologists and eschatologists offer competing theories
and concerns. The latter are concerned that when Christ returns to earth He will have
fewer people to raise from the dead, and so there will be a perceived diminishment of His
great and mighty power. The former, along with astronomers, astrophysicists, string
theorists, quantum mechanics, relativists, and government officials are worried about the
possibility of the universe either undergoing a heat death, or contracting back upon itself,
into an unimaginably, infinitesimal, single, dense point. Of course the above groups of
people are aware and concerned about the ineluctable death of our sun, and planet
26
relocation is a high concern. However, in reality, it won’t matter what planet in what far
flung solar system we have relocated to if the universe itself collapses—and so this is our
biggest problem.
Some string theorists have offered, along with their theory of septidimensionality, that our universe is part of a network of universes that form a cluster,
which they refer to as the multiverse. Research is underway to see if we can relocate to
another universe. Naturally, it is quite possible that the universe we relocate to will also
suffer a heat death or retrogression into a finite point smaller than a human cell, or even
an animal cell, and so, right now, at this very moment, there are those brave minds who
have placed themselves at the vanguard of cosmological thinking, and they are in the
midst of contemplating and working out how we could transport ourselves from that
second universe to yet another, but yet that third universe might also undergo a heat death
or regression and so we must figure out….
The Problem of God
The problem of God has been with us since the time of The Pathway, when the first hints
and speculations that The Solution might actually occur, entered into the public
discourse. At first, the Catholic Church came out strongly against the research of the
radical biologists. The Church argued that if God had wanted humans to indefinitely live,
He would have engendered them that way. From pulpits across the nation, priests called
those who supported the research a pack of Cains, or we were likened to the wandering
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Jew, for our desire to live longer lives. However, after a series of revelations that
thousands of priests had taken the treatment, the Church revised its stance. The pope
released a message saying that if God created man in His image, then it follows that man
should be immortal as well. The pope said by God’s grace we helped Him complete his
work. From pulpits across the nations, priests said that Christ had spoken to the radical
biologists and showed them exactly what they would have to do to complete their
research, which was really His work.
As fascinating as this backstory is, it doesn’t get at the most profound aspect of
the problem of God since The Solution. The most radical articulation of the problem is
that if God awaits each one of us in the afterlife, than there will be many of us who will
never get to see God and have that angelic completeness. There are those among us who,
because of this, suffer such an extreme form of depression that not even the most
aggressive of our mood elevating techniques, such as pills and intensive, psychoanalytic
therapies, can free these people from their unhappiness. The complicating factor of this
story is that though these people long to see God, they cannot commit suicide, as they are
well aware that the Church has, for centuries, expressly forbidden such action, declaring
it a great offense in the Lord’s eyes. Quite recently, however, a two hundred and fifty
year old priest committed suicide. He left behind a note saying that he missed God more
than he could endure. Now, for the first time, there is hope that soon the Church might
recognize that God is beginning to call his children home. For those who hear His call,
there is only a single recourse, now that we live after The Solution.
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The Problem of Overpopulation
Overpopulation is a problem, but it is not nearly as important as the problem of the
universe and the problem of God.
It is true that our states, our cities, our towns, our country sides, our
neighborhoods, our sidewalks, our parks, and our parking lots are all the more crowded,
and it is also true that the lines at our grocery stores, movie theaters, cafes, restaurants,
public restrooms, clothing and electronics stores, bowling alleys, and the traffic in LA,
have all grown immensely, and it is true that our great-grandparents often shake their
heads and tell us, as we wait on a long line together, that “The world has changed. You
know when I was your age and I wanted to buy a toothbrush, or a sponge, or a…” but,
naturally, we, who were born after The Solution and only know this world, we roll our
eyes or sigh at the incessant need of our great-grandparents to remind us of this most
obvious and banal truth, and we stop listening to them and their stories, and we merely
stand on the line we’re in, or if we’re in our cars, we sit silently, while they prattle on
about the old days, and we look out our windshield at the line of traffic on Main Street, or
Interstate 9999, and while we, the younger generation, endure the slow pace of life,
which we can now afford to live, because for most of us death will not occur, we
fervently wish for the day to come when our great-grandparents will learn to silently
endure like us, or we wonder how many more years will they need to live until they
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realize that the only appropriate response to our world is to sometimes just silently endure
it.
The Problem of Art
The problem of art brings us back to the problem of the Lifeists and Deathists. The
Deathists claim that our lack of a traditional mortality has stripped us of our humanity,
and because of this it is impossible for those born after The Solution to truly understand
and experience the great works of art, which informed and entertained humanity for
thousands of years. The Deathists argue that even those works that don’t deal with death
are still unable to properly communicate with us, because the artists who composed them
were always aware on some level of their mortality. Some artists, it is known, or at least
assumed, created their art in response to death. The Lifeists say that not only can we use
the old works of art to sympathize with those who now are no longer, but also champion
the idea that humanity needs new art, now, more than it ever did before. We must, the
Lifeists argue, learn to express ourselves in our new human situation, through our new
human perspective. Some of the most fervent Lifeists have begun to revise older works
in an effort to accommodate them to the new state that humans find themselves in. One
of the most popular and best examples of this is the Lifests’ revised text of Hamlet.
Below is an excerpt:
“To be. There is no question.
To be: that is Nobler. To die no more.
To end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks
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That flesh was heir to—‘tis consummated;
To no more wish for it; to no more dream of it.
We have shuffled off this mortal coil. And live life so long.
To no longer bear the whips and scorns of time,
To no longer dread something after death—aye, to live
And never see the undiscovered country—
There’s the respect for our conscience.
To always have this native hue of resolution
And to never be sicklied o’er and pale—To be!”
The Problem of Necronarcotics
The first necronarcotics appeared three years after The Solution. Prior to the first
necronarcotics, people who wished to die were only able to do so violently: jumping off
the buildings and bridges in our cities, or hurling themselves from mountain tops and
waterfalls in our National Parks, while there were those who preferred to either shoot or
hang themselves, and some even drank bleach or other household cleaning substances
that were sure to poison them. These deaths were all painful. Pharmaceutical companies
perceived an unarticulated demand in the market place for a traditional human death, and
so they invented the first generation of necronarcotics. Naturally, there was a
demographic who chose to overdose on drugs and alcohol, but, the pharmaceutical
companies argued, they were deprived of a traditional human death, because their
consciousness was distorted and not present for their final moment, and it was only the
conscious experience of one’s death that could confer total and traditional humanness.
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As is the case with any product that enters the market place, there is always a
process of product refinement. The first necronarcotics killed people instantly. The
moment the drug’s chemicals passed into the bloodstream that person died. The next
generation of necronarcotics experimented with timed death. This meant that a person
could purchase pills that promised various times at which “The Final Effect,” as it came
to be called, would occur, whether it be a few hours after ingestion, or even weeks or
months; this was also known as “Delayed Final Effect,” or “D.F.E.” “D.F.E.” was
advertised as providing an even more accurate experience of the traditional human death,
because the user had to time to live knowing that he or she would die, and thus people
could experience the self-aware fact of their mortality. The improvement that next
followed was that “Delayed Final Effect” became “Projected Final Effect,” which gave
the customer a traditional human lifespan ending with a traditional human death. People
now could live up to eighty and then die. The most recent generation of necronarcotics
have further improved on the idea of a traditional human life ending in a traditional
human death, by offering pills that provide death at an undisclosed time. The customer
takes the pill and he or she may die later that evening, early on in the following week,
later on in the month, or at some point in any year to come. Thus the customer knows
that death is certain, but the moment that it will occur is unknown, and, according to the
pharmaceutical companies, it is this and only this that is the most life like experience of a
real, traditional human life and death.
Naturally, along with the legal use of necronarcotics, comes the illegal use of
necronarcotics. The law states, “Persons younger than thirty-three years of age are
prohibited from taking a necronarcotic.” However, recently and unfortunately, there has
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been an upsurge in the use of necronarcotics amongst our youngest generation. It is rare
that a week passes without news of an adolescent who has been found dead somewhere.
One curious aspect of this is that these adolescents appear to only use the first generation
necronarcotics, which provide death instantly. At first the authorities and government
officials insisted that the “first gen nec-narcs,” as they called them, are the only ones
readily available on the black market. However, just yesterday, our most esteemed social
scientist published an essay arguing:
“These adolescents could find the most recent necronarcotic, if they so wanted.
Rather, they are purposefully seeking out the first generation necronarcotic, due to a
complex set of inter-relational factors. As we all know, youth cannot help but be
impetuous, and this trend reflects an essential developmental characteristic of human
beings at this stage of their lives. Our children, at this stage and age, just as those who
were adolescents during the time before The Solution, want what they want and they want
it now. It may strike some as absurd to say that our children want death immediately, but
that is not exactly what is going on. Rather, our youth are radically dissociated from
what it means to be mortal and to be someone who can and might die. Adolescents who
lived prior to The Solution knew with utter certainty that they would one day die; yet, still
they experienced a sense that this wasn’t actually true for them. The reason for this is
that that was the person’s way of dealing with the overwhelming, uncontrollable, and
frightening fact that he or she would one day be extinguished. Now, add to this the fact
that our youth, who are the third generation to live after The Solution, feel what their
predecessors felt, but they feel it even more, because death is a thing of the past, and so
when they take the necronarcotic they in no way really believe that they are going to die.
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There is a profound disconnect going on here, which we all need to attend to”
(Hoffrenski, 767).
This brings us to the strangest effect that the necronarcotic industry has had on
our collective consciousness. We now no longer know who has taken a necronarcotic.
Maybe our spouse, or a child of our own, or perhaps a close friend, or even our next door
neighbor, who every fall lends us his leaf blower, maybe one of these people have
secretly taken a necronarcotic. Perhaps one of them is living a life knowing that one day
it shall end, but we who will never take a necronarcotic are living our lives, with a
certitude about our own existence, but in the background of our minds, we sense that
there are people whom we see now, whom we might not see one day. How strange.
How frightening.
Sometimes, on summer nights, while we sit next to a loved one on a porch swing, and we
see their face faintly illuminated by the tiny light above our front door, we furtively
watch them for some sign, and we think has this person, who is sitting here so alive, and
who is so contentedly looking out at the oak tree in our yard and listening to the leaves
stir ever so gently, almost imperceptibly, on the braches in the warm air, has this person
chosen to die? We cannot know, and now we are no longer certain of what we once were
most certain of.
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Reverdie
Sudden Aestivation or Protracted Vernation
Perhaps it would be best to begin by stating that our arborists still, after three years, have
yet to discover why our deciduous trees—oak, maple, sycamore, elm, aspen, birch,
larch—are no longer growing leaves. Our arborists have assured us that our trees are still
alive. They have taken samples of bark and root and analyzed their cellular structure.
Though this analysis has not led to an immediate solution, it helped create two competing
theories—sudden aestivation, and protracted vernation—from which we, the general
population, hope will emerge the resolution to this troubling phenomenon. The
difference between these two terms reflects a stark disagreement from a theoretical and
diagnostic perspective. Both groups of arborists agree that our trees are in a state that can
be likened to suspended animation, but the question that remains at the center of their
highly technical and complex debate is, when did this begin? In which season did our
trees first loose their leaves? Those who speak of sudden aestivation believe that our
trees somehow slipped into a state of interminable hibernation in the late fall, early
winter; while when you hear the phrase “protracted vernation,” what your speaker is
attempting to communicate is that the trees suffered their shut down after the winter, in
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the early springtime. Our arborists tell us that this point of debate is crucial to reversing
the problem of our trees and their lack of leaf production, and they ask us to remain
patient and keep in mind that when dealing with any disease it is important to formulate
an accurate etiology, whereby we can view and trace the narrative of causes back to their
initial movement.
A Poetic Description
April is almost over, and again our boughs are bare. Once again it is clear that our leaves
are not returning. Once again we step outside into bright, warm days, where we no
longer hear above us the susurrus of leaves flitting about on supple, green stems in the
spring breeze, but instead upon the air there is the sound of boughs creaking and bare
branches rasping against one another. This is a winter sound in spring. Once again we
walk outside and our bodies grow warm, sweat forms on our brows or on the backs of our
necks, and we cannot help but think how nice it would be to sit in one of our parks, on a
bench or blanket near a maple tree, whose many, wide, green leaves would cool the air,
but then we stop, and we look up and we see the sun shining through the bare branches,
or we look below us and see the crooked strips of shade at our feet.
A Story of Newlyweds
It was mid May during the first spring without leaves. A newly married couple was
walking through Prospect Park on a balmy day. While they were strolling through the
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Nethermead, an unexpected shower came. The wife, out of instinct, ran to the nearest
tree; she held her husband’s hand, carrying him along with her as she fled for shelter.
The water hissed in the air as it fell. The couple stood underneath the tree, and the rain
fell through the spaces of the leafless branches; the couple held hands, facing one another
and laughing as the water poured on them.
“Where are the leaves?” the wife said.
The husband said, “They should be here by now.”
The wife and the husband turned from staring at one another and looked about
them. They saw other people, drenched beneath the trees, staring up through the bare
trees at the sky.
Some Theories
Since our arborists have yet to explain the cause of what we, the general population,
simply refer to as our leaflessness, various groups and individuals have speculated as to
why our trees continue to remain bare. Perhaps the three most intriguing theories are:
1. The mysterious killer of the bees has morphed and become a multi-organism
killer. Though our apiarists suggest that perhaps there is a connection
between what has caused the extreme diminishment of the bee population and
the cessation of leaf growth, many people are skeptical because bees, after all,
have little to do with leaves. Some people accuse the apiarists of trying to
keep attention on their problem, which is, in and of itself, an important and
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frightening one. Others, however, draw attention to the fact that the apiarists’
concerns are intimately intertwined with the problem of our trees, and whether
or not the same cause is responsible for both situations, the problem with our
trees is sure to exacerbate the predicament with the bees, because those trees
that once produced fruit and flower are no longer doing so, and that means
less food and resources for the bees.
2. CERN. At first some people speculated that there may have been a leak in the
L.H.C., the 27 mile, underground particle collider, and that either antimatter,
dark matter, or some degraded particle stuff had managed to seep into the
ground and effect the generative properties of the soil. One of the arguments
used against this was that grass still grows and therefore the soil cannot be the
source. Despite this, there still remains one more possibility in relation to
CERN. The first spring without leaves actually coincided with CERN’s
announcement that it was going to begin building the infamous God Detecting
Machine. Some people have put forward that God has chosen to annihilate
human beings rather than have them detect him, and He is doing this through
diminishing a central aspect of the world’s ecosystems, our tress.
3. Our planet is dying. Though the promised lifespan of our Earth was a
minimum of 500 million more years, human beings have, in an astonishingly
brief time, managed to so thoroughly poison our planet, through toxic waste,
deforestation, detonation of nuclear bombs, along with the unintended effects
of our everyday technologies, that a group of citizens throughout the world
have joined together to initiate a lawsuit to prosecute humanity for the second-
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degree murder of our planet. When a reporter questioned one of the lawyers
representing the case, if the people who were pressing the charges planned to
exempt themselves, the lawyer replied that these honorable human beings had
decided to include themselves and that his firm would both prosecute them,
along with everyone else in the world, including the reporter, and including
the lawyer, himself, as well.
A Commercial
Your television is on. The screen turns black and you hear a rumbling. An image of the
ocean floor appears on the screen, and you see that the rumbling is the sound of a fissure
forming along it. As the seabed begins to split, bits of rock and clouds of sand float and
tumble aimlessly in the water. A wide jagged chasm breaks open and an enormous
column of fire propels upward, swirling through the water. The surrounding liquid does
not extinguish the flame, and it is the sheer unnaturalness of that image that triggers in
you another strange image: the leafless trees in spring and summer—for is that not
unnatural, too? The fire continues to spiral out in a column from the opening in the ocean
floor, a giant tower that reaches up to the surface of the water, breaks through it, and
shoots through the air and through the sky, until it is no longer visible. The screen fades
into the blank blackness. Then three sentences flash before you, in white script. Each
sentence occupies the screen by itself:
“Has God abandoned us?”
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“Can we call Him back?”
“Brought to you by the Messengers of The Church of the Name.”
A Song
The song “Broken World,” sung by the Minstrels, and written by W.B. Belkin, has risen
to number one on the hot singles chart, both nationally and internationally. The song,
despite its sorrowful title, is sung in C major, the one key that has no flats or sharps, but
is made of pure, unadulterated notes. Many critics consider this a brilliant move.
Though the lyrics are sad, the key suggests the optimism with which we must face this
situation. The lyrics themselves are:
Don’t go crossing the barren seas
In a broken world, baby
Between those shores and in that blue
There ain’t nothing for you, ou, ou.
Our oceans, thankfully, are not barren, but over-fishing is, and has been, a legitimate
concern of many; still, many people have wondered about the appropriateness of using
the seas as a metaphor for the leafless trees. While our children play hopscotch on our
tree lined sidewalks, or climb the leafless trees in our parks, and sing the lyrics, or hum
the cheerful and catchy melody of “Broken World,” their minds are diverted from the
problem of our leafless trees and to an imagined one, which though possible, has yet to
exist. One astute critic, in an attempt to account for the subject matter of the lyrics,
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questioned if W.B. Belkin “is a member of the Church of Names and a Messenger,
himself?” Belkin did not respond to this.
Seeing Waiting for Godot
The curtain rises at the start of the second act, and the prop tree, which stands upstage
right, has five cloth leaves hanging from its three branches; immediately a murmur breaks
out among the audience; it’s a susurrus, like the sound of leaves blown about on branches
in the wind, and then the first claps come, like thick drops of rain hitting the wide, flat
leaves of a maple tree. People point to the leaves. Applause engulfs the theater, loud
clapping; men draw handkerchiefs to their eyes, and women take tissues from their purse
to daub their cheeks.
An Anecdote about Godot
Albert Alquanza and Edward Germinda stand behind the stage, waiting for the clapping
to stop. Alquanza refuses to go out and sing “A Dog Came in the Kitchen” until every
last one of them stops clapping for that tree. Alquanza waits, with his hands jammed in
the pockets of Vladimir’s pants. Edward Germinda stands next to him. Germinda is
barefoot: as Estragon he gave up his shoes in the first act. Alquanza’s clenches his hands
41
into fits in Vladimir’s pockets. He turns to Germinda and says, “Worse than the
pantomime.”
Germinda reluctantly responds, “The circus.”
“The music-hall,” Alquanza rejoins, vehemently.
Germinda, again with reluctance, says, “The circus.”
Germinda regrets the night he shared a six-pack of stout with Alquanza and told
him that he suspected people were more interested in seeing the tree than in watching
either of them. He’s sick of Alquanza forcing him to run through these same lines at this
exact moment. Every night the audience claps and cries when they see the tree with its
five leaves, and Alquanza turns and mocks them to Germinda in just this way. Every
night Germinda says to himself it’s not Alquanza’s fault or the audiences’, but it’s the
actual, real trees in the word, and their leafless, lame limbs that are at the root of this
particular and individual misery of his. Alquanza blames the trees as well for his
unhappiness; he stares at the tree on the stage with hatred.
A Poet
When he first realized that the leaves were not going to grow again, he stepped out onto
his porch and sat down with a heaviness on his front steps; he first thought of the insects
that ate leaves, grasshoppers, beetles, caterpillars—if there were no more caterpillars then
there would be no more butterflies; his son had loved butterflies as a boy, and every time
he saw one he thought of his son as a little boy; the poet then thought about cicadas,
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whose chirr he had known all the summers of his life, and he thought about how the
ground would be littered with the bodies of starved cicada-killing wasps; he thought
about birds and the empty stomachs of their fledglings, starving in their nests with the sun
shining down through the leafless branches and burning their soft, pink, featherless skin.
He thought of the chirring insects and of chirping birds, how those sounds would
be cries of hunger, but the humdrum human ear would take them as the normal sounds
those things make. He thought of the passage in Darwin’s Origin of the Species that had
confirmed the deep tragedy he had sensed as a young man. The poet shook his head at
those men whom Darwin had written about: fellow sailors of the Beagle whom he saw
crush birds that hopped up on to their shoulders or boots. Darwin had said that at first the
birds were unafraid, but when the men next returned to the island the birds stayed away.
Man had trampled upon nature and nature responded in kind by withdrawing. The
tragedy, the poet thought, is that it didn’t have to be this way. The poet felt alienated not
only from nature, but from his fellow human beings.
To say those men from the Beagle were ignorant, or simply stupid didn’t satisfy
the poet. He longed to write a poem that would express his great grief at the loss of the
leaves and of man’s closeness with nature. A stanza came to him and wrote it down:
One can answer
Peripatetically
The entelechy
Of eschatology.
That stanza pleased the poet. It satisfied him in many regards. He agreed with Stevens
that the poem must resist the intelligence. The poet liked that he had turned to Aristotle
for an answer—it suggested what was worth keeping around about humanity, and also the
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poet had always admired Aristotle for being such a decidedly tellurian philosopher, as
opposed to the ethereal musings of his teacher; the poet liked that he blended Aristotle
with a bit of Christianity, not an entirely original move, thank you Aquinas, but one
worth making; it conjoins the earthbound and heavenly, but wait…The poet said aloud,
“The entelechy / of eschatology.” The poet contemplated the phrase to make sure he
wasn’t smuggling in the idea that the eschatological was a teleological necessity…. The
stanza still satisfied him. It was a good answer for why, when he looked out onto his
front lawn and onto his neighbor’s, on a warm, spring day near the end of August, he saw
trees with no leaves.
The poet now needed to only find the first stanza.
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The Man in the Sharkskin Suit
Whenever we saw the man in the sharkskin suit walking around, we knew one of us
would get fired. Our boss never fired anyone himself. That was the man in the sharkskin
suit’s job. None of us who remained employed knew what the man in the sharkskin
suit’s voice sounded like. He never spoke with us and we never spoke with him, and
when he fired someone, he did it privately, in one of the newly vacant offices.
It was a Tuesday morning and I had just pulled into a spot in the company parking
lot. I hadn’t even turned off my car when I noticed the man in the sharkskin suit sitting in
the car next to me. He was staring at himself in the rear view mirror, patting the sides of
his slicked back silver hair. Perhaps he sensed my gaze, because he turned his head to his
left and looked at me. He drew his right hand across his chest, up to his shoulder. He
pointed his forefinger at me and raised his thumb. I didn’t realize he had made a pistol
until he I saw him press his thumb down, as though on an invisible hammer. I jerked in
my seat. The man in the sharkskin suit blew on his fingertip.
He had never gestured at me before, or even acknowledged me. He ignored
everyone in the office. Except, of course, for those people whom he fired. It wasn’t just
me he ignored. My job couldn’t be in jeopardy, last year alone my numbers far exceed
the projected profit quota, and so I thought he must finally be warming up to us. I
45
decided I’d better respond to him. I turned, expecting to see the man in the sharkskin suit
sitting in his driver’s seat, but he’d already gotten out of his car. He shut the door, and I
head the muted thump through my windows.
As I watched him walk toward the building and then step into the revolving glass
door, which spun him into the lobby, I regretted not having immediately waved, nodded,
or shot back at him with my finger to show him that I got his joke. I sprang from my car
and hurried across the lot, hoping to ride the elevator with him.
I wasn’t quick enough to catch him, and by the time I got up to the floor, he’d
already disappeared past the cubicles and the many empty offices of employees he’d
already fired and the few occupied offices of those he might terminate one day, if not
today.
Roberta, whose desk was next to mine, always got to work before me. (She
arrived early because she was so worried about her job.) When the man in the sharkskin
suit was around, Roberta couldn’t concentrate on anything other than him. It was all
she’d talk about. “Where did you see him last?” she’d ask, or “Is it over yet, has he left?”
I’d tell her to keep her mind on her work. I’d warn her, “This worrying won’t help your
job security.”
The moment I sat down at my desk, she stood up and looked over the partition
separating our cubicles. Roberta was short, and I could only see her from the chin up.
“Sharkskin is here,” she said.
“I know. I saw him in the parking lot.”
“What was he doing?”
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“He was sitting in his car, fixing his hair, “ I said. I brought my hands up to the
sides of my head and gently pressed the hair I have there. “He was patting it like this.”
“Quit it,” Roberta said. “What if he sees you?”
“He already saw me,” I said. I then told Roberta about the gun-shooting gesture,
mostly just to see her reaction. Her eyes widened when I said, “And then he fired at me.”
“He fired you?”
“No, he fired at me.” I made a pistol with my hand and pointed it at her.
“Do you think that means he fired you?”
“Like that? While I’m in my car and he’s in his? That’s absurd.”
“If that happened to me, I’d be very nervous.”
“Of course you’d be.”
“And you’re not?”
I shook my head and told her that it was obvious to me why Doyle, Johnson,
Martinmaster, Jacobs, and Ditner had all gotten fired, and that I couldn’t understand why
some people were still here, but as far as my job was concerned, I was more in line for a
promotion, if anything.
Roberta just stared at me.
“I think you’d better get to work,” I said. “Especially since he’s here.”
Roberta’s head vanished behind the partition. I heard her begin to rapidly and
loudly tap her computer keyboard; it sounded too fast for her to be really writing
anything.
I turned on my computer and clicked on last month’s report. I read it. I opened a
new spreadsheet and wondered when I’d be getting the new data to complete this month’s
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report. The cursor blinked in the empty, first field…. I thought about this morning
between sharkskin suit and me. What really bothered me wasn’t his gesture but that he
might think he scared me. I stood up from my desk and scanned the office floor, looking
for the man in the sharkskin suit. I didn’t see him, but if I had, I wouldn’t have sat back
down to hide behind my cubical walls. I would’ve given him a salute, nodded my head,
or made my own gun to fire at him. The man in the sharkskin suit didn’t have a specific
office—had he, I would’ve gone right to it. Instead, the man in the sharkskin suit roved
from empty office to empty office, choosing whichever one he wanted for that day.
I decided to look for sharkskin and see what he’d do when he saw me. I stepped
out of my cubicle. This time I’d make sure to have a good response. I walked down the
faded, dark blue, fireproof carpet, stopping at each office door and gently knocking and
trying the knobs; the doors were locked and no one responded from within. I knew the
man in the sharkskin suit had fired many but each empty office made his work more real.
I spun around. I saw, amid the sea of cubicles in the center of the floor, Roberta’s
head—her curly black hair, forehead, and eyes—above the partition. I resumed my
search, though I was no longer sure if I wanted to find the man in the sharkskin suit or an
office with someone in it. I knocked and finally heard a voice: “Working hard. Would
love to talk, very busy and can’t.”
I stepped over to the next office and knocked. No one answered. I turned the
knob and the door opened onto an empty office. The blinds covered the windows. The
space was dim and vacant. I turned around to leave but saw the man in the sharkskin suit.
He moved toward me and I backed into the room. He stood in the doorway. I waited to
see what he’d do. The man in the sharkskin suit came into the empty office and closed
48
the door. He stood across from me. The pointed tips of our dress shoes touched. The
man in the sharkskin suit began to speak and the sky outside the windows stretched
beyond and the room began to float out into it.
49
The Great I
The Logo
The logo is seemingly simple, an upper case I. The Image Firm, which advertises
advertising companies to businesses looking to hire an advertising firm, is ever inventive
and their logo, which changes size and color, and even alters its location on the façade of
their tall, steel and glass skyscraper, serves to remind us of their ability to constantly craft
images. The Image Firm has yet, in five years, to display the same logo twice. There’s
no discernable regularity or pattern to when the logo changes; that is to say, no one has
yet discovered how to predict when any I will alter. There have been periods when the
Image Firm has renewed its logo every minute for an hour, and then there have been
months when the same I has remained on the facade. The logo, even during the longest
stretches when it remains unchanging, is always a point of interest to our city. The City
Herald, a daily newspaper, includes a description of the logo, on the upper-right corner of
the front page, where they also list the day’s forecast. One of our late-night talk show
hosts always incorporates the logo into his opening monologue; it might serve as a
passing detail, before the joke’s setup: “Earlier today, as I was driving over to the studio,
the cab driver had to point out the I to me, it was so small….” Or he might make a joke
about the logo: “Did you guys see the color of the I today? Did they let a color blind
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intern pick that color?” The logo remains a point of citywide fascination because we still,
after 5 years, don’t understand what it is made of, or how and when it will transform.
If the logo were made of a solid substance, be it fiberglass, steel, metal, plastic, or
some obscure polymer, then the removal of each I would be a routine process, with very
little merit or interest to any observer. Removing and replacing the smaller logos would
require little more than a suspended scaffold and several workers, using power tools to
unfasten the old logo and attach the newer one. For larger logos, a construction vehicle
would be used, a crane or lifter, with a long arm and pincers at the end, and whose
mechanical drone, as it worked, detaching the logo from the building, lowering it on to an
idling, empty, flatbed truck, then drawing from a second idling flatbed the new logo,
which it would raise and attach to the building, would be more nothing more than a
nuisance of noise to those quickly walking by, talking on their cell phones.
In actuality, there’s no observable human role when the logo changes. Each I
seemingly alters by itself. Suddenly and without any signs suggesting that it is about to
happen, a region of the I begins to fade, be it the horizontal crown or base, or the vertical
body. The I never fades all at once. It only and always does so in piecemeal fashion. My
favorite type of fade is when the bottom goes first, and for a moment the logo looks like a
capital T, but I also like it when the vertical body has disappeared and what remains, the
horizontal crown and base, looks remarkably like an equals sign.
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Attempts to Understand Alteration
In an effort to understand the process of logo alterations, our The Daily City Observer,
our city’s most hard-hitting newspaper, famous for uncovering numerous scams and
corruptions, conducted an investigative report. Journalists entered the buildings across
the street from the Image Firm to search for a projector. Many of us thought the
hypothesis that a projector cast an image onto the building a waste of time, because if
there were one than surely the beam would be discernable at night, while none is;
moreover, there also remained the complication of projecting a vividly colored and
starkly outlined object onto an eastward facing surface during the day. Nevertheless, we
encouraged the investigation, writing letters to the editor in support of the newspaper’s
allocation of time and funding, in the hope that we might learn some fact, or detail that
could help explain the mystery of the logo. Nothing came.
A theory that seemed more probable, and one whose results we awaited with great
anticipation, postulated that each individual window of the Firm’s building was not a
pane of glass but rather a digital panel, thus making the entire building one large screen.
Unlike the previous investigation, whose guiding idea focused on the buildings across the
street, this one centered on the Image Firm’s own building. The newspaper’s editor
printed an open letter on the front page, explaining the new theory to the Image Firm’s
CEO and board of directors. The editor asked permission to send reporters into the
building to view the insides of the office windows, while other reporters, in suspended
scaffolds, observed the window from the outside. Five days passed with no repose from
the Image Firm. During this time, we continually refreshed the newspaper’s website,
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hoping to read a report that the investigation would commence. Rather, we learned from
our mayor, in his weekend radio address, that the CEO of the Image Firm had contacted
him and expressed his desire not to have reporters running about the building,
interrupting operations. Though our mayor explained that this was all well within sate
and city laws, agitation set in.
The next day, our most widely read Op-Ed columnist compared the Image Firm to
the fabled obstinate magician, who, on his deathbed, refused to explain even to his only
begotten son the secret to his greatest and most famous trick. Thereafter, in every
column, he referred to the Image Firm as “the obstinate magician.” In one of his pieces,
the columnist reminded us that the moral of the “Obstinate Magician” was to share,
because with the magician’s death, the people of the world were forever after less
entertained. The columnist then decried the Image Firm’s secretive nature, and he asked
us to think what our cityscape would be like if every company building were to so
capture our attention with their own logos. “How splendid a place we would then live
in,” he wrote.
The Image Firm’s eventual response to these editorials ended the debate about
whether the I was an image. It occurred a month after the CEO had refused to allow
reporters to enter the building. Those who witnessed the logo change, from what until
now always appeared to be a projection, to what was clearly a solid object, widened their
eyes and lifted their heads back as they recounted the moment to us. We who listened to
them, immediately rushed out, once they had finished their story, to see the I. And
indeed, just as they had said, the logo jutted out from the center of the building and cast a
shadow on the sidewalk. It was clearly a solid object! In this regard the Image Firm
53
convinced us that its building was not a digital screen, and that no manner of projection
was necessary to create the logo.
Throughout the four days that this I remained on the building, reporters stood
outside interviewing people who never looked at them but always remained gazing up,
while speaking into the microphone thrust out before their mouths. It was on the fifth
day, a Friday, during lunch hour, when the black rectangle of shadow, cast by the base of
the I, drew back, revealing the bright, white concrete of the sidewalk. A woman gasped.
A man yelled, “What the…!” breaking off his speech and thrusting his forearm before his
eyes. My first thought was that the sun had merely shifted in the sky, but the shadow on
the sidewalk rapidly faded. I quickly stepped back and looked up and saw office
windows through that erstwhile opaque and solid I. “It looks like a T!” I heard somebody
say. Those of us who had been standing under the shadow had to step back to see where
and what kind of new I was going to materialize. The new logo appeared in the lower
right corner of the building, from base to crown it seemed fifteen feet, but more than that,
it glowed traffic light green, and what was clearly visible, as we stared directly at it, was
that that individual pixels appeared to create the color. Now the logo looked like an
image generated by a digital screen. We were wonderstruck.
The Image Firm had clearly communicated to us through the I, or, at the very least, it had
responded to the debate about what the I was and how it could be created. When we
spoke about this unexpected dialogue between the Image Firm and our city, we looked
out our office windows in the direction of the logo, and when we spoke about this at
home, over the dinner table, we all agree that the Image Firm had indeed managed to
communicate so much through a single letter.
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A Change
Since the logo’s transformations have become more extreme, moving unpredictably from
a two-dimensional image to a three-dimensional object, the I has become one of our
city’s largest tourist attractions. Prior to this, while the logo was a source of interest, the
sidewalk outside the Image Firm looked similar to any other in our city’s business
district: yellow cabs and black town cars lined the curb, waiting for a fair, while formally
dressed men and women rushed past one another on the block. The street has now
become utterly transformed. Vendors stand behind wheeled box carts with rolling grills
that roasting moist, sizzling hot dogs; cotton candy peddlers roam the sidewalk, holding
aloft wooden poles, clustered with cellophane bags; caricaturists sit on small fold-out
chairs with their easels displaying a finished drawing of a large, smiling face, gazing
upward with an I reflecting in the pupils. Naturally, the products most successful in this
open-air market are those that relate to the logo. They may be kitschy t-shirts that read in
all black, block lettering, “I saw the I with my own eyes!” or they may be earnest
paintings, done by one of the many artists, who, having made the logo the abiding subject
of their work, stand, with easel and palette, outside the Image Firm.
Despite this garish, commercial display, we, who live in the city, also find
ourselves drawn toward the I. We too gaze up at the building, looking to catch the
moment when the logo changes. Are not we, during our own visits to the logo, cast into a
similar condition as the tourist, for whom our cityscape is unknown and new? Naturally,
we who live here look at the I in a different way from our visitors; for while they stare at
55
the logo eating a pretzel or cotton candy, or wearing a logo t-shirt and point their
photographing phones or long lens cameras at the I, all in an effort to demonstrate to
themselves and others that they were here, that they saw this, we, who know and
recognize the rest of our cityscape, the streets and the buildings that line them, the
multitude of stores, restaurants, theaters, parks, museums, and monuments, be they
uptown, midtown, or downtown, and even the long, wide spanning bridges and tunnels
that connect each outer borough to the city itself, all of this is, in short, so utterly familiar
to us that our landscape, in its totality, has become but a backdrop to our business
concerns, our errands, and to our lives in general—yet when we stop to see the logo, even
if it has not changed for a week, we know that this I will not always be, and as we behold
its color reflected in the windows and steel of the buildings across the street, we
understand that at any moment this I could change and with it, our city too.
The Great I
The day before The Great I appeared, the logo was of the most pedestrian variety, in size,
location and color: “Exactly four feet tall, two feet wide, in the middle of the facade, and
yellow,” according to The City Herald. The following morning, however, the Great I
rose, immense and towering, beyond the height of all our skyscrapers. The Great I is so
wide that when one helicopter hovers behind the seemingly endless, rising, black column,
and another is on the opposite side, neither pilot can see the other. The morning of the
first news reports, two news choppers, both carrying a reporter and a camera crew, nearly
56
collided, as they turned around the enormous structure. It was awful. In one of the
helicopters the cameraperson had been so jostled that he dropped his camera on the floor.
On our TV screens, we saw an inverted image of the news reporter clutching the armrest
of her seat, and we watched her breath quickly in and out of her mouth, while in the
background we heard cursing, screaming, pleading, and weeping, amid the sound of
engines and blades working to the full. The cameraperson in the other helicopter had
managed to hold onto the camera and continue filming from the window; those watching
that channel saw building tops swirl vertiginously on their screen. Viewers watching any
of the other news stations saw nothing of this, as the helicopters delivering those
broadcasts were flying at a different altitude, along the giant I. Thankfully the pilots
flying the endangered crafts were skilled and lucky enough to right their choppers.
Such horrifying excitement, which served as our introduction to The Great I,
seems to well characterize our first reactions to the enormous logo in the sky. Some city
residents rushed to the nearest train station, or ferry port for an outer borough; while
many living in the outer boroughs refused to commute into the city, no matter what the
consequences, be it loss of job, or even missing a scheduled surgery. Others of us,
however, quickly dressed for the day.
Despite the clear, warm, summer day, the city had an unexpected chill, as the sun,
blocked out by The Great I, had not burnt off the cool, early morning air. On corners
facing south, east, north, and west, people, waiting to cross, stood looking up and leaning
back. In the middle of our sidewalks, men in expensive, slim suits and women in tight
dresses and high heels knelt and held their phones up to take pictures of the I, and we,
who passed them, saw the enormous logo framed in the small rectangle of those screens.
57
But to finally to turn the corner and stand before The Great I was to wonder whether the
logo was actually levitating, because what else could explain the fact that the building
hadn’t fallen under the weight of the nearly endless letter in the sky.
Later that evening, we learned from the news that The Great I stood on a small
pedestal atop the Image Firm’s roof. Pictures, taken from helicopters, filled our TV
screens, showing us a small square, beneath the base of The Great I. Our anchormen
explained that this demonstrated that the Image Firm wanted to cast a perfect I shaped
shadow over the city. We were then shown a second photograph. It was black-andwhite, and as though to anticipate the public’s disappointment in the anachronism of the
two-toned palette, our anchormen explained that the news’ photographer had chosen to
shoot in black-and-white, because she believed it better captured the reality of the
shadow. We then saw what we had walked through; what had hung above us; what had
kept that summer day cool; we that a perfect I shaped shadow covered our city.
The news showed us time-lapsed videos documenting the shadow’s eastward
movement over the city, and always, even at noon, did the letter-shaped shade cover all
the numbered streets, the twenty-six alphabetized streets following those, as well as the
streets of Old City. The shadow even covered half of the Hugh River. We watched
newsmen and women standing next to enlarged pictures showing our darkened city. We
learned which parts of the city were covered at what point in the day, so, as one reporter
put it, “All you sun seekers can know which restaurants at what time of the day to dine
alfresco at.” The news stations rebroadcast the mayor’s press conference. The chief of
police and the fire commissioner stood behind him. Each man stepped up to the
microphone at the mayor’s behest. They both assured us, in measured tones, that the city
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was safe. They both reiterated that they had been in close contact with the Image Firm
and that they would continue to be. When the mayor spoke, he referred to the Great I as
“the logo.” He did not once say “the Great I.” The mayor told us that the logo posed no
threat to public safety and he asked that we all go about our business. He strongly urged
those who fled the city to return and those who were scared to leave their apartments to
go into work tomorrow. He said that we could not afford to allow a logo to bring the
city’s economy and life to a halt.
The mayor’s exhortation, and the chief of police and fire commissioner’s
assurances did little to clam us. Who slept well that night? Who did not press down their
plastic, slatted blinds, and peer out to see if The Great I was still standing? Who did not
imagine the sound of the fantastic and devastating crash, and then the smoldering, capital
I shaped hole where our city once had been.
The following morning, the news stations again sent helicopters to The Great I.
This time, the pilots communicated with each other to coordinate their locations. One of
the well-funded, international cable-news stations hired a famous stuntman to lower onto
the crown of The Great I. He wore a helmet and a full-body harness, with many thick
cables crisscrossing through numerous loops on his waist, chest, and shoulders. A
bearded man, wearing aviator sunglasses and bright red headphones, leaned precariously
out of the helicopter, holding onto the cable connected to the stuntman, helping to guide
his landing. As the stuntman swayed above the top of The Great I, the voice of the
reporter in the studio came over the air, saying, “Will his feet merely go through an
image, or will they come to rest on a surface?” Perhaps we should’ve all considered the
possibility that The Great I wasn’t solid. The idea that it might be a projection seemed
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well within the possibilities of what the Image Firm could do, and yet, until now, no one
had said that. Such a lapse in reasoning often occurs when one is presented with a
powerful image. This idea relaxed us. We admitted the Image Firm’s superior ability to
create a spectacle. The stuntman’s boots hovered over the top of the I. We accused
ourselves of being thoughtless, of getting duped, and we shook our heads for allowing
ourselves to become so worried over a giant I that wasn’t real. The stuntman’s feet
lowered onto the wide, black surface of the I. He stood there. The Great I was solid.
The stuntman walked back-and-forth across the horizontal crown. We waited for the
reporter’s voice to return and give us a new way to understand this. We heard him clear
his throat and cough, but he said nothing.
The fact that The Great I was solid perplexed our architects and engineers. We
watched them hold up their hands, or shake their heads during TV interviews, and on
radio shows we heard them cough or clear their throats before saying that The Great I
was simply inexplicable to them. It was beyond them how the building was able to hold
up such an enormous structure, and because of that they were in no position to predict if
the I might topple.
What We Tell Others and Ourselves
Whenever we speak with anyone who lives in another state, be they family, friends, or
business associates, we begrudgingly answer their questions about The Great I:
“Is that I thing still standing?”
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Yup.
“Must be depressing always walking around in some giant shadow.”
You get used to it.
But that is a lie. When walking about our streets we see those around us stooped
and rushing, and when we happen to catch our own reflection in a store window and see
ourselves hunched over, we contemplate our panicked state and our worry about an
impending toppling immensity. It is then that we begin to recite the names of our tallest
buildings and longest bridges, reminding ourselves of how many years they have held up,
and that our city will endure.
The Lamp on My Desk
The window in my office is a large rectangle and on sunny days before The Great I, I had
no need to use my desk lamp. Now, I always keep it on. During the moments of my
work day when I’m not absorbed by a task, its electric light reminds me that the shadow
still covers the city and how if the I fell it would…McAlester Building, 1930; City
Bridge, 1894; Beauford Borough Bridge, 1914; Shuttle-Wickmar Tower, 1968… The last
day that I worked in my office with the blinds open, I was preparing a report and I had set
it down, because my desk lamp kept reminding me that…Airington Building, 1984;
Ellison Building, 1993; Neupor Observational Tower, 2001….
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Waterside Park
Each stop along the way to Waterside Park, more people step onto the subway, while
those of us already on remain. No one gets off. We are not even halfway to the park
when the train becomes so crowded that those who wish to get on cannot. They stand
with one foot in the entryway of the train and their other on the station platform. The
subway operator’s voice comes through the speakers in each car, saying, “Step in and
stand clear of the closing doors!”
We arrive at the Waterside Park station. The subway doors are open and we all
stand together in the car, waiting for the movement at the front of the crowd to trickle
down from one body to the next, until it reaches us. Finally and slowly we shuffle out of
the subway and onto the platform, where we stop and start on our way toward the
escalator. Stepping out into the darkened daytime we make our way, still slowly, toward
the park. We head east down Water Street. We fill the sidewalk entirely on both sides of
the street, leaving no room for any person who might want to walk in the opposite
direction. Together we turn south onto River Street, and up ahead is the park’s entrance,
but as the two crowded streams of people from opposite sides of the street merge at the
drawn back, double iron gates, those of us behind them begin to slacken our pace, and
then, after a few more feet, we come to a stop. We wait together in the shade of The
Great I.
We walk slowly through the park, for it is small and we are of large number. The
smell of hot dogs mingles with the waterside air, and I notice, along with the vending
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carts scattered about the grounds, painters standing before easels, with their thumbs
hooked through the hole in their oval palettes. Our pace hasn’t quickened, and I can look
at each piece that I pass. The paintings are all images of the river, just beyond the
shadow of The Great I, where the tops of tiny wavelets sparkle with sunlight.
One artist, who is sitting on a plastic, slatted, foldout chair, has a finished canvas
leaning against his shins. He is eating a hot dog. As we pass him, he says, with a
mouthful of food, “It’s the last of today’s afternoon series. The rest were sold. Tonight’s
sunset, you can get it tomorrow morning.”
I pat my pockets, though I’m not sure if I’m searching for my wallet to buy the
painting, or for my phone, so I can take a picture when I get to end of the park and press
my body against the railing and stare out at the water beyond the shadow.
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His Wife’s Lover
One Wednesday evening, Mr. MacFarquhar arrived home after work. He opened the
door to his apartment and heard Glen Gould’s Goldberg Variations and smelled steak,
again. Ever since the obstetrician had told his wife, on her fifteen-week checkup, that
she was slightly anemic and should eat more iron-rich foods, every meal for the last fourand-a-half weeks, or at least it seemed so to MacFarquhar, had been steak, lamb, or veal.
Mr. MacFarquhar, still holding his briefcase, stepped down the hallway and into the
kitchen. His wife stood at the stove, her back to him. She wore black stockings, a black,
pleated, loose-fitting skirt, and a gray blouse. The oval collar revealed the nape of her
neck. Usually Wendy changed into her comfortable clothes, plaid pajama-bottoms and
the old, flannel shirt she’d had since college, after she got home.
“How was your day?” she said, still facing the stove.
“Steak, huh?”
“Did you have a good day, James?”
“Fine.”
Mr. MacFarquhar stepped through the kitchen and out into the living room but
stopped. The slightly raised points of his brown, leather wingtips were all that breached
the boundary between the hallway and the living room. A well-built man sat on the
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couch holding a thick, squat paperback book before his face. The man wore a black
button up shirt, dark-blue jeans, and black loafers.
Mr. MacFarquhar looked over his shoulder and said, in the direction of the
kitchen, “I didn’t know we were having company.”
His wife didn’t respond.
Mr. MacFarquhar looked squarely at the book and said, “Hello.”
The man continued reading.
Mr. MacFarquhar, waiting and expecting a reply, stared at the book the man held
before his face. A red colored crosshairs decorated the cover; it overlaid large silver
capital letters, which looked embossed; MacFarquhar read the title, IN CLOSE RANGE.
He noted the author’s name below the title, also spelled in capital, silver, embossed
letters, BRAD CRAFT.
“James,” his wife called from the kitchen.
His wife still faced the stove. “That’s my lover,” she said. “Please don’t speak
with him. “
“Excuse me?” MacFarquhar said.
“James,” his wife said. “Did you hear what I said?”
“What?”
“Are you even listening to me?”
“Is this a joke?”
“I’m not going to repeat myself,” his wife said.
Mr. MacFarquhar turned quickly around on the heels of his fine leather shoes.
His briefcase, which he’d yet to put down, rocked back and forth in his hand. The man
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on the couch continued reading. Had he even lifted his head when MacFarquhar’s wife
explained who he was? Mr. MacFarquhar dropped his briefcase. “She’s pregnant you,
know!”
The man turned a page.
“James,” his wife called out. “What did I just say?”
Dinner that night was strained, at least for Mr. MacFarquhar. His wife seemed at
ease. She sat at the head of the table between her lover and her husband. Mr.
MacFarquhar stared at his wife, noticing that she’d put on a fresh layer of makeup. Her
lips were dark cherry and her eyelids a deep, accentuated black.
Perhaps it was the oddity of the situation that stopped MacFarquhar from
screaming, crying, packing his own bag and leaving the apartment, or telling his wife to
get out. “And take your damn lover with you, too!” he imagined saying, arm
outstretched, finger pointing at the door. All the affairs he’d ever heard of, or read about,
were conducted in secret, and when the spouse found out, there was always some loud
and destructive confrontation, curses and dishes or lamps thrown. Tonight, he’d come
home and simply met his wife’s lover. She’d introduced him. Mr. MacFarquhar was
sitting across from his wife’s lover, eating dinner. His wife had cooked enough food for
three.
The meal went on in silence. MacFarquhar had yet to hear his wife or her lover
even speak to one another. Her lover ate with his head down. Mr. MacFarquhar stared at
the head of thick, black, slicked back hair across from him. What kind of man has an
affair with a pregnant woman?
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“Hang your head in shame,” Mr. MacFarquhar said, suddenly breaking the
silence.
His wife’s lover didn’t respond. The man merely continued cutting his steak.
MacFarquhar sensed his wife staring at him. He knew that if he turned his gaze, he’d see
his wife’s fierce stare. He continued to look at the man.
“My appetite would be ruined if I weren’t pregnant,” his wife said.
That she would speak to him like that in front of her lover, offended
MacFarquhar. He considered asking his wife for how long she’d been keeping her lover,
but the bizarre nature of the evening made it impossible to predict where that comment
could lead. Her lover might be offended, and he, to be absolutely frank, was burly.
MacFarquhar thought it better to consider more immediate details, such as who would
clear the dinner table. He’d been taking care of that chore since he found out his wife
was pregnant. If her lover decided to do this that would suggest his feelings were more
than mere passion, and that he actually considered her.
When the end of the meal came, his wife and her lover remained in their chairs,
gazing at one another. This satisfied MacFarquhar and he got up and began stacking the
plates.
Mr. MacFarquhar and his wife sat on the couch after dinner and watched TV as
they would any night. She sat at her end, and he at his. His wife’s lover began doing
pushups on the rug in front of them. His wife had tucked her stockinged legs up under
her and she began turning the pages of a large, glossy, fashion magazine, while Mr.
MacFarquhar searched the channels for something to watch. It was just like any other
night, except for the man doing pushups on the rug. MacFarquhar skimmed through the
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channels, unable to find a show, and his wife, who wasn’t even watching, began to sigh,
then to sharply turn the pages of her magazine. “You know I can’t stand it when you
skim,” his wife said. “Just pick something.”
MacFarquhar had actually been watching his wife’s lover from the corner of his
eye. He noticed the strange man’s triceps bulge beneath the high-cuffed sleeves of his
black button-up shirt, each time he did a pushup. He took note of his wife’s lover’s
silence. He didn’t grunt, snort, or breathe a single belabored breath. Even when his head
began to shake as he forced himself through his final sequence, he remained silent.
Later that night, as Mr. MacFarquhar was standing in the hallway adjusting the
thermostat, his wife’s lover stepped out from the bathroom, wearing only a terry-cloth
towel around his waist. MacFarquhar noted his wide, brawny back and his tanned skin,
and then he saw his wife, still dressed in her stockings, skirt and blouse follow quickly
after the half naked man into the bedroom.
Mr. MacFarquhar went back into the living room. He sat down on the couch.
The TV was on. He began to hear his wife’s voice. He couldn’t hear exactly what she
was saying; nor could he hear her lover’s voice. He was thankful that at least this was the
case. The rhythm of her voice increased. MacFarquhar told himself to get up from the
couch, throw the door open and yell, “What the fuck is going on here?” That seemed
ridiculous; he knew what was going on, and they knew he knew. He imagined his wife
on top of her lover, looking over her shoulder at him, her cheeks flushed, saying, “James,
sometimes I really don’t think you’re hearing me.” He heard her. Her voice had gotten
louder, and whatever she was saying, she was saying faster. Mr. MacFarquhar raised the
TV volume.
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MacFarquhar hadn’t always gone to bed after his wife, but now that she was
pregnant, he found himself wanting to relax just a bit longer before going to sleep. That
night, after MacFarquhar showered, put on his terrycloth robe and stepped out from the
bathroom into his quiet apartment, all seemed normal; he enjoyed his vodka nightcap,
and the quietness and solitude of his apartment, when only he remained awake.
MacFarquhar nearly forgot about his wife’s lover.
When he opened his bedroom door, he saw, however, by the glow of the hallway
light, his wife lying in the middle of the bed. Her lover slept in her spot, the left side of
the bed. Mr. MacFarquhar saw his wife’s arm draped across her lover’s shirtless, chest;
her hand gently cupped his broad, bare shoulder. Mr. MacFarquhar stood in his bedroom
doorway, staring at the empty space where he’d always slept. Had his wife’s lover been
sleeping in MacFarquhar’s spot, the message would’ve been clear: sleep in the guest
room or on the couch. MacFarquhar, still standing in the doorway, considered the
intimacy of marriage and how spouses came to know one another so well that they could
communicate without words: a look; a change in posture; a gesture. MacFarquhar had by
now come to know his wife’s silent language well, but what he saw at that moment, his
wife lying against her lover, yet leaving him his spot, was something, he assured himself,
that not even the most intimate of husbands could interpret. A sudden and unexpected
sense of deep estrangement from his wife overtook him.
Mr. MacFarquhar stared at his bed. That’s my spot, he thought. It’s mine.
Mr. MacFarquhar flicked the hallway switch. His room went dark. He stepped
in, making his way through the bedroom with the ease and confidence of intimate
familiarity. He avoided the wire wastepaper basket next to the loveseat; he draped his
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robe over the curved back along his side of the loveseat; he made his way toward his side
of the bed without knocking his leg against the wooden corner jutting out from the bed
frame. Mr. MacFarquhar was a man who slept naked, and just as he wouldn’t relinquish
his bed to his wife and her lover, neither would he relinquish his usual habits. Mr.
MacFarquhar drew back the cover and lay down in his bed.
The next morning, the clock radio turned on, as usual, at 7:05 and Mr.
MacFarquhar awoke to the sound of classical music on WQXR. MacFarquhar made
loose fists with his hands and rubbed the corners of his eyes with the middle knuckle of
each index finger. He got out of bed and stood facing the wall, as he always did,
stretching his arms toward the ceiling, lifting his head and taking a deep breath. Mr.
MacFarquhar suddenly realized that he was standing naked in his room, before a strange
man. Mr. MacFarquhar stepped quickly over to the loveseat to get his robe and knocked
over the wire wastepaper basket. Balls of tissue paper and crumpled receipts spilled onto
the floor. Mr. MacFarquhar punched one hand through a terrycloth sleeve and then the
other, and he tied the terrycloth belt tightly around his waist.
Mr. MacFarquhar looked over his shoulder and saw his wife’s lover lying in bed.
The man had his hands beneath his head. His arms formed two triangles. MacFarquhar
thought the man was staring up contentedly at the light fixture; his wife had once pointed
out, after they had made love, that it looked like a breast. The fixture was a frosted half
globe with a small wooden knob in the center. Mr. MacFarquhar turned to leave the
room.
“James,” his wife said. “Will you put the water to boil for me?”
Mr. MacFarquhar, without turning around, said he would.
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The strange man stayed in bed, while Mr. MacFarquhar and his wife went through
their morning routines, quietly reading the news on their phones while they ate their
bowls of yogurt and granola.
MacFarquhar finished his breakfast. He stood up and went over to the coffee
table. He checked his briefcase to make sure all the necessary documents, as well as the
notes he had made last night, where there.
“Isn’t it early yet?” his wife said.
Mr. MacFarquhar flicked his wrist and looked at his watch. “Today I need to get
in early.”
“Wait,” his wife said. “I’ll come with.”
They were standing in the foyer. Mr. MacFarquhar held his wife’s jacket out for
her. He smelled his wife’s perfume, honeysuckle-cinnamon-melon, as she placed her
arms in the sleeves and he lifted her coat onto her shoulders. She turned around and
faced him. MacFarquhar looked into her eyes. He saw, suddenly, over his wife’s
shoulder, her lover open the bedroom door and walk down the hallway toward them. The
strange man wore only gray boxer-briefs. His abdomen was a series of muscular ridges
one on top of the other. Mr. MacFarquhar said to his wife, as though they were both in
trouble and trying to evade imminent capture, “Come on, let’s go.”
MacFarquhar opened the front door, and whether feeling embarrassed or rushed,
he stepped out, instead of first allowing his wife. MacFarquhar stood on the welcome
mat. His wife stood in the doorway. She craned her neck around the open door, looking
into the apartment.
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MacFarquhar found himself staring at the welcome mat his wife had bought,
contemplating if it were proper to consider it penmanship if a machine stitches the letters.
“All Are Welcome,” it said. MacFarquhar heard a thud. His wife’s purse had fallen on
the mat next to him. He looked up and saw a thick, brawny, tanned forearm emerge from
behind the door and wrap around his wife’s waist, just below her pregnant bulge. The
arm then drew his wife back into their apartment. The door slammed shut. A faint pulse
of air puffed against Mr. MacFarquhar’s face.
Mr. MacFarquhar looked down at his wife’s purse. One looped handle stood
straight up and the other drooped down over the bag’s side. He made a fist and rapped
his knuckles on the door. “You left your purse out here.”
MacFarquhar waited, staring at his door. His wife didn’t come. He drew his fist
over his shoulder. He banged it against the door. “Your wallet!”
The door remained closed. He held his arms at his sides. His made his hands
fists and glared at the closed door. “Your phone!”
MacFarquhar heard a bolt draw back from one of the other doors in the hallway.
He instantly thought of how loud he’d yelled. He was certain that any one of his
neighbors, or all of them, might’ve heard him. He snatched the upright handle of his
wife’s bag and walked briskly down the hall, carrying the purse in one hand and his
briefcase in his other. He saw the elevator and instantly didn’t want to ride in it; the
small enclosed spaced seemed cramped and invasive. MacFarquhar pushed open the
heavy fire-escape door. The heels of Mr. MacFarquhar’s fine, pointed, brown wingtips
clacked on each concrete step and echoed throughout the stairwell. The sound of his
footsteps punctuated the emptiness of the space, and when he reached the bottom he
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flung open the door and stumbled into the back of the lobby. Nobody was there.
Classical music faintly played from the speakers on the ceiling. Mr. MacFarquhar drew
the silk kerchief from his sport-coat pocket. He mopped his brow, telling himself he was
sweating from the exertion of talking the stairs.
MacFarquhar, feeling that he had righted himself, walked over to the doorman
and greeted him.
“Mr. MacFarquhar,” the doorman said. “How can I help you?’
Mr. MacFarquhar explained that he wanted him to hold his wife’s purse. “She is
without it and might come looking for it,” he said.
“Certainly, Mr. MacFarquhar. Certainly.”
MacFarquhar reassured himself, during his commute, as he stood between the
bodies of strangers in the packed subway car, that leaving the purse with the doorman
was really the best thing to have done. He reasoned that this way he could call her.
When she picked up her phone, then he’d at least know that she had gotten out of the
apartment.
Mr. MacFarquhar stepped quickly into his office and shut the door. He
immediately, without taking off his coat, setting down his briefcase, or even sitting down
in his desk chair, reached for the phone on his desk. MacFarquhar held the receiver
between his ear and shoulder and listened to the line ring. His wife’s phone went to
voicemail; a robotic female voice recited ten digits and then a beep followed. Mr.
MacFarquhar didn’t leave a message. He flicked his wrist and looked at his watch. He
decided he’d wait a half hour to try again.
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Thirteen minutes latter, MacFarquhar listened to the robotic voice. He hung up
and dialed his home number. The phone rang six times and then he heard a man’s voice.
“Hello,” the voice said.
“You!” Mr. MacFarquhar said.
“You‘ve reached the MacFarquhars,” a recording of his own voice said. “We’re
not home right now…”
MacFarquhar, surprised at not recognizing his own voice, hung up the phone
before the answering machine message finished. MacFarquhar spoke aloud, to hear
himself. He flicked his wrist and looked at his watch. “It’s still early.” He nodded his
head. “Good, good, good.”
MacFarquhar wasn’t sufficiently convinced that he recognized his own voice. He
quickly turned round and stared out his office window. The sky was overcast. He then
turned back and looked at the two umbrellas he always kept in the tin container near his
door. “Good thing I always keep at least one umbrella in my office,“ he said. That
sounded like him.
Mr. MacFarquhar laughed out loud. He recognized his laugh and laughed at that
too, and then he laughed even more for entertaining the idea that a strange voice might
suddenly come from him. MacFarquhar now laughed for not recognizing his own voice
on his and Wendy’s answering machine and mistaking it for his wife’s…. His laughter
stopped. He drew his hand up to his forehead. This morning’s and last night’s events
seemed so absurd and surprising. He couldn’t understand what reasoning had allowed
him to sleep in bed with his wife and her lover….
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MacFarquhar, throughout the rest of his day, would suddenly think about his wife,
and by the time he was heading home on the subway, he had thought about the prior
evening so many times that, like repeating a word until it becomes a meaningless sound,
he no longer believed any of it had happened.
Mr. MacFarquhar opened the door to his apartment and saw his wife, stepping out
from their bedroom, in her loose fitting plaid-pajama bottoms and her old plaid shirt.
MacFarquhar chuckled.
“Hello to you, too,” his wife said.
“No,” Mr. MacFarquhar said. “It’s not that.”
He followed his wife into the kitchen. Mr. MacFarquhar stood on the threshold
and watched his wife walk over to the stove. She lifted a lid from a pot. “Don’t forget,”
she said peering into the steam that drifted up. “Three thirty tomorrow, twenty-week
check up.”
“Did you think I might forget?” MacFarquhar said.
“I didn’t say that, James.” His wife placed the lid back on the pot; it clanged.
“You said, Don’t forget.”
“It’s just an expression.”
MacFarquhar watched his wife walk across the kitchen and into the living room.
He stepped after her, quickly through the kitchen. MacFarquhar, not being sure what he
wanted to say to his wife, stopped at the stove and lifted the lid. He stared at the long
strings of pasta twirling in boiling water, hoping that words would come to him. Not one
did.
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MacFarquhar gently covered the pot and went into the living room. There, on the
couch, sitting next to his wife, was her lover. Again, the paperback book covered his face
and again he had on a black, button-up shirt, dark blue jeans. This time, he had no shoes.
Mr. MacFarquhar stared at his wife’s lover’s bare feet. They were crossed at the ankles.
“Three-thirty tomorrow, right, Wendy?” Mr. MacFarquhar said.
His wife stared at the TV.
Mr. MacFarquhar again ate dinner with his wife and her lover. As the night
before, his wife sat at the head of the table. MacFarquhar saw the pattern of the previous
night’s sleeping arrangement mirrored before him: as in bed, his wife was between he
and her lover, while her lover occupied what had been, until just two nights ago, her
usual place, and MacFarquhar remained in the same position. No one spoke.
MacFarquhar wondered if sitting in the same chairs and eating silently two nights in a
row constituted a routine; if it didn’t, than how many nights had to pass until this would
be considered one? MacFarquhar wished to speak to his wife. He searched for
something to share about his day but found nothing. He searched for some bit of news,
good or bad, about a friend of theirs, but again found nothing; and now, into his blank
state came the image of his wife’s lover choking on food: he was gesturing at his throat
and opening his mouth but unable to yell or cry. That seemed the easiest solution.
After dinner, Mr. MacFarquhar sat down on his side of the couch and his wife sat
on hers. She spread a large glossy, fashion magazine out on her thighs. His wife’s lover
began doing pushups where he had done them last night. Mr. MacFarquhar leaned
forward and took the remote from the coffee table his grandmother had bought for him
and Wendy, as an engagement gift. He turned on his TV and immediately began
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skimming through the channels. He listened to his wife sharply turn the pages of her
magazine, each time he changed the channel, and even though he faced the TV, he
watched, from the sides of his eyes, his wife’s lover rise and drop, rise and drop. It was
just like last night, except now it seemed familiar.
Mr. MacFarquhar’s wife’s lover finished exercising. He rose. He unbuttoned his
shirt and then drew it across his forehead. He undid his belt and took off his pants. Mr.
MacFarquhar stopped changing the channels and watched his wife’s lover, who was only
wearing gray boxer briefs, step into their kitchen. He watched him open the refrigerator
and take an apple from the fruit drawer. He watched him turn the switch on the faucet to
wash his apple under filtered water. MacFarquhar heard the crisp apple snap from the
bite his wife’s lover took. He watched his wife’s lover come into the living room. The
stranger sat down in the middle of the couch, between Mr. MacFarquhar and his wife.
MacFarquhar felt his wife’s lover’s leg touch his own. It was warm. He couldn’t tell if
his wife’s lover had pushed against him when he sat down, or if he were simply and
naturally taking up the space that his body commanded.
Mr. MacFarquhar pointed his remote at his TV and changed the channel. He
moved from sitcom, to cable news round table discussion, to music video and each time
his wife sharply turned her magazine pages. Mr. MacFarquhar found a sports talk show.
Two broad men wearing blazers sat behind a desk, talking about a basketball game. He
paused here, but then he thought that his wife’s lover might enjoy watching this, and he
changed the channel. His wife sighed and seemed to fling a magazine page. Mr.
MacFarquhar looked over in his wife’s direction, but he couldn’t see her; her lover’s
broad, bare chest blocked his view. There was something MacFarquhar wished to say to
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his wife and her lover, but instead he turned the channel back to sports. A basketball
player was running down the court, dribbling the ball; Mr. MacFarquhar waited until the
athlete jumped in the air and held the ball out toward the hoop, before he changed the
channel.
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Arden
Snow is falling in our bedroom and Arden is crying. I’m kneeling naked at the foot of
the mattress, pointing a flashlight at the ceiling. “Well?” my wife says. She’s sitting up
in bed, propped with pillows, cradling our month-old daughter, who won’t stop crying.
“I’ll get up,” I say. I stand on the bed with my head bent back and my arm extended,
holding the flashlight as close to the ceiling as I can; the snow is coming down in front of
our bed; the flakes are many and thick and I cannot clearly see the ceiling, or even the
rest of my bedroom, beyond them. The kind of hole that would let this much snow in
should easily be found. My body shivers and I cough. “Don’t get sick,” my wife says.
“Maybe you should put some clothes on?” “I just want to find where it’s coming in.” I
raise myself on the tips of my toes to look more closely at the ceiling; it makes no
difference. “Well?” my wife says. “Maybe call the neighbors?” I say. We live in the
middle apartment of a three-floor building. “Maybe they have a leak and can stop it?” I
say. “That man upstairs stomps his feet whenever he hears the baby cry, and I think his
wife does too,” my wife says, and then she begins shushing Arden. It’s useless to wish
we had a second bedroom but I can’t help imagining how easy it’d be if I could just close
the door to this room and step into another with my family. I cannot conceive how we’ll
ever afford to rent a two bedroom, when I keep getting lost in the station and missing my
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train to work; I don’t think I can miss another day and keep my job and the prospect of
that happening, in a few hours, causes me to cry out to my wife, “Help me in the station.
Come with me.” ”Yes,” she says; and she sustains the “s” in yes and turns it into “Shh,
shh, shh.”
The snow drops through the flashlight’s beam. I extend my hand. Flakes, cold,
fall on my palm. I draw it back. Arden is crying and I must do something…. “Keep her
warm,” I say and jump off the bed; my bare soles land in a thin layer of snow and I draw
in a quick breath. I run through the falling snow on my way out of the bedroom and
down the hall. Snow is in the kitchen. I turn on the light, look up and see that’s there’s
no hole here. I have to do something. I grab three garbage bags from under the sink, dart
to the linen closet and grab two towels, then back to the kitchen to get the masking tape
from the cluttered catch-all-drawer. I nearly cut my hand on a pair of scissors as I reach
for the roll of tape beneath them. I stuff everything into a single garbage bag and run
back to the bedroom, the bulging bag bounces against my back. I jump onto our bed and
land on my knees; I don’t want to touch the mattress with my wet feet. The orange glow
from the streetlight outside our window shines through the thin, white, plastic blinds. My
wife is sitting up and our down blanket covers all but her head. I can’t see Arden and I
don’t hear her. My wife whispers, “I’m breast feeding her under the blanket. She’s not
crying. Maybe she’ll go back to sleep?” Her cries had woken us and when we opened
our eyes, there was the snow falling in our room. I take the garbage bag from over my
shoulder and turn it upside down, dumping everything out before me. It is only then, as
I’m staring at the tape, towels, and garbage bags that I realize I forgot a chair. Again I
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run through the falling snow. I dash into our small living room, snow crunches beneath
my feet, and I take a chair from the dining room table.
I put the chair directly beneath the falling snow, step onto it, shine the flashlight,
and stare up. Now as close to the ceiling as possible, I see that it’s absolutely solid; the
paint on it isn’t even chipped. “Well?” my wife says. I ignore her question and start
taping a garbage bag to the ceiling where a leak, a hole, a crack, a tear, a split should be,
because I don’t know else to do. Snow falls on my face as I look up. Flakes drop into
my mouth and melt on my tongue and I squint to keep them from getting in my eyes; I
hold the garbage bag with one hand and tape it to the ceiling with the other. I tape a
towel over that; I’m working as fast as I can. I’ve fixed to the ceiling and then begin
taping a second garbage bag over that; Arden begins to cry and the flakes grow larger and
I can hardly see my hands in the falling snow overhead, as I tape second towel above me;
my shoulders ache from keeping my arms raised. I force myself to finish this job and I
tape the last garbage bag to the ceiling. The snow has stopped and I’m not sure when.
I’m standing on the chair, hugging myself, rubbing my hands up and down my arms,
staring at the patch I’ve put on the ceiling; I cannot make sense of the snow falling or
stopping. “She was alright until a moment ago,” my wife says. She’s rocking Arden in
her arms. A thump booms above us and I crouch on the chair, covering my head with my
hands. Pounding begins on the ceiling and there’s a muffled, deep-voiced, angry yell.
“Did you understand that?” I ask my wife. “It didn’t even sound like words,” she says.
The balding, bearded, heavyset man upstairs must be lying on his stomach, kicking his
legs and arms, hitting the floor with his fists and feet, yelling. Arden was crying under
the blanket; I don’t understand how a person in the apartment above us could’ve even
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heard her. I step down from the chair; there’s snow on the floor and the bottoms of my
bare feet sting from the cold. “Maybe she’s cold?” I say. "Maybe she's scared?" my wife
says, looking up at the ceiling and shaking her head. "Maybe she's tired," I say. "Maybe
she needs to be burped," my wife says. "Maybe her diaper is dirty?” I say. “How are we
going to change her?” my wife says. “It’s freezing in here,” she says. “I think my feet
might be frostbitten from standing in the snow on the floor,” I say. “Please don’t get
sick,” my wife says. “There’ll be ice on our floor, if I don’t clean it up,” I say. Arden
begins to cry louder and the neighbor starts pounding harder on our ceiling. I stand in the
snow and look up at the patch; he could bring it down with his pounding and then the
snow will start falling again. “Please,” my wife says. “Help us.” My wife holds Arden
up against her chest, shushing and patting her back, trying to burp her. But this doesn’t
calm her. I go to my side of the bed, take the pillowcase off my pillow and begin using it
as a towel to dry my body.
We decide to check the diaper. My wife and I crouch under the blanket and I’ve
got the flashlight; Arden lies between us, crying and kicking her legs; her tiny hands
clenched; she thrusts them out, one after the other; I’m shushing her while my wife
calmly repeats her name, but she won’t stop crying; my wife takes off the diaper and it’s
completely dry; my wife holds Arden’s two feet in one hand and lifts her up and says,
“Shine the flashlight on her. Maybe she has diaper rash?” Her skin is perfect; there’s no
patch, blemish, bumps, or irritation. “Maybe that diaper was bothering her somehow?”
my wife says. My wife puts a new diaper on Arden. We wait to see if she’ll stop crying;
she doesn’t. “Maybe she’s sick?” I say. “Maybe her stomach hurts?” my wife says.
“Maybe she has gas?” I say. “Maybe she’s constipated?” my wife says. “Maybe she’s
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still hungry?” I say. “Maybe she didn’t have a good latch?” my wife says. “Maybe she’s
thirsty? I read somewhere that babies get thirsty from crying,” I say. “Maybe I ate
something I shouldn’t have, and it’s going into her through the breast milk?” my wife
says. “Maybe?” I say. “Maybe she’s cold?” my wife says. She touches two fingers to
Arden’s cheek. She places a finger on Arden’s fist. “Her skin isn’t cold, “ my wife says.
“Maybe the best place is under the blanket?” I say. Arden cries louder and my wife picks
her up, cradles her, and gently sways her. This doesn’t help. The neighbor stops
pounding and starts yelling again. I peek my head out from the blanket and check to see
that the patch is still attached. It is. I cannot make out what the man upstairs is
screaming; I stand up, bend my head to one side and point my ear at the ceiling; I even
cup my hands around my ear to try and better hear, but I can’t decipher a word. I glance
at the patch one more time, before hurrying back under the blanket. My wife is hunched
over, sitting cross-legged, holding Arden and shushing her; she cries with her mouth wide
open and her tongue drawn back and quivering behind her toothless gums. "I felt the
cold air when you picked up the blanket," my wife says. "I should get rid of the snow on
our floor,” I say. “Before it freezes and one of us slips on it, while holding the baby…”
“Stop, please,” my wife says. “You’ll give me a nightmare, if I ever get to sleep.”
“Sorry,” I say. “We’re still coming to the station with you in the morning.” “Maybe
you’ll be able to help me?” I say. I turn around under the blanket and begin crawling
toward the foot of the bed, thinking about how I used to be able to walk through the
station and onto the train without once looking up from my phone. Now, I can’t even
find the platform. Everything changes after you have a child. Who said that to me?
How many people said that to me? I stick my head out of the blanket and peer over the
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edge of the mattress at the floor. A single track of footprints leads from the chair to the
bed. The snowfall must’ve covered up the tracks I had cut when I ran in and out of the
room. My footprints remind me of the circles I’ve run around the station, searching for
the train, and once I begin thinking about my trouble at the station, I cannot help but
think about how I’ve missed nearly a month of work, and once I think about that I cannot
help but think that Mr. Wellman has been generous with me, giving me one week paid
parental leave, counting my first two weeks missed after that as vacation, and considering
the most recent week I missed as sick leave, but once I think about that I cannot help but
think that there are no other ways that my absence can be excused and that I somehow
must manage to get on the train in a few hours. The last time I rode the train was coming
home from work and later that evening my wife’s water broke. We were sleeping. She
said the warm liquid leaking out of her woke her. We covered the spot on the sheet with
a towel. Arden is still crying; the neighbor has again begun pounding. I watch the patch,
expecting it to fall from the ceiling and for the snow to return…. It’s still holding up. I
pull the blanket over my head and crawl beneath it, toward my wife. She’s sitting
crossed legged, hunched over, shushing and swaying Arden. “I don’t know how to help
her,” my wife says. She passes Arden to me. “I’m afraid I don’t either,” I say. I cradle
Arden in my arms; she cries and cries and cries; I speak into her ear, so she can hear me
above her crying; “It’s all right. Shh, shh. Arden. Arden. Everything is okay,” I say.
“Arden, Arden, everything is okay,” I say. “Everything is okay.” I keep repeating that
everything is okay, because those words help me speak calmly and I don’t know what
else to say to my baby daughter, but then, in the midst of repeating it, I realize that what
I’m saying has lost meaning and become a mere sound that seems no different to me than
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my daughter’s cry; I pass Arden back to my wife. She begins rocking and shushing
her…. Arden cries; the neighbor pounds…. Light spreads beneath the blanket, turning
the air gray and then light blue. It’s morning; already I hear the train leaving the station;
the whistle cries; Arden is crying; the engine chugs; the neighbor is pounding. “She’s
crying in her sleep?” my wife says. She stops swaying her. Arden’s eyes are closed.
“Maybe she’s having a bad dream? If that’s possible?” I say. “Maybe we should wake
her?” my wife says. “Maybe it’ll just make her more upset to get woken?” I say.
“Maybe she’s hungry,” my wife says. “Maybe the snow froze and the floor is under
ice?” I say. “She hasn’t eaten in a while,” my wife says. “Maybe the patch came undone
from the ceiling and it’s snowing again?” “What if all this time she was hungry and I
didn’t feed her?” my wife says. “No, no you tried to feed her remember?” I say. “But if
she’s starving?” my wife says. “Maybe I won’t catch the train today?" I say. “And this
whole time she was crying because of that?” my wife says. “Everything changes when
you have a child,” I say. My wife rubs her finger on Arden’s cheek and calls her name.
Arden opens her eyes and keeps crying. I tell myself, get out from under the blanket,
check the patch and the floor, get dressed and go to the station. My wife loops her thumb
under her bra strap and pulls down one side of the bra; she places Arden’s mouth near her
nipple. Arden begins feeding but whimpers while she eats and starts choking; my wife
pulls her off her breast. Arden’s mouth is open but no sound comes out…. in that quiet
yet frightful second, before my wife pats Arden’s back and helps her breath again,
without my daughter crying, my worries about the train that I’ve no doubt I’ll miss and
my job that I’ll lose because of that and the patch and the inexplicable snow it holds back
slacken.