Some Possible Solutions (10 page)

 

ONE OF US WILL BE HAPPY; IT'S JUST A MATTER OF WHICH ONE

Once upon a time and for all time, a Queen and King sat on twin thrones. They were beloved, this Queen and King, for she was famous across the land as a wife who valued above all else the happiness of her husband and he was famous across the land as a husband who valued above all else the happiness of his wife. A never-ending line of their devoted subjects wound through the long hallways of the castle and out onto the high road. These subjects stepped confidently into the throne room, their simple shoes softly slapping the marble floors, which were checkered like a chessboard. There was nothing servile about the behavior of the subjects; they were treated with dignity and behaved with dignity.

The subjects would place before the Queen and King the riches of their fields and streams, their forests and barns. Sunflowers would pile up, and sheaves of wheat, and the skinned bodies of small mammals. Great baskets of eggs and wooden boxes filled with honeycombs. Heaps of wool and heaps of silver fish; piles of pumpkins and piles of stones. At times these riches were accompanied by or replaced with devastating news: a fire, a flood, a drought, a debt. The lips of the Queen and the lips of the King would rise and sink accordingly, up into smiles of bounty, down into frowns of grief. The subjects well knew that joy shared is joy doubled, sorrow shared is sorrow halved, et cetera.

And thus life was good and bad, abundant and lean, ecstatic and tragic, blessed and cursed, all at once, on and on, forever and ever, until the end of time.

Sometimes young women would arrive, in pairs or in a flock; these girls danced upon the chessboard, singing folk songs at once strange and familiar, like something heard in the womb. The King did not know if it was the Queen who arranged these performances for him, or if some castle ringmaster called for the girls. They danced, flinging their scarves into the air; how exquisite the varying shades of their skin, how luminous their eyes and calves.

Yes, the King was acutely aware of them, of the heat between his legs as they threw themselves across the cool marble. And the Queen, too, was acutely aware of them, of the ways in which the shapes of their bodies aped and diverged from the shape of hers.

Did she call for them in order to bring pleasure to the King, or to taunt him, or to tempt him? The Queen herself did not know the answer to this question; indeed, had a different answer to it at each hour of the day.

Someday the King would step down from his throne, would go to one of these young women, would vanish with her down a hallway, would return to his throne sometime later, a changed man or an unchanged man. Someday the Queen would watch the King step down from his throne and go to one of the girls and take this girl to a tower in the far reaches of the castle, where he would presumably drag his finger from the center of her forehead downward, would release a cry that arced over the castle and down to the throne room where the Queen sat, listening. And when the King returned to his throne, she would love him the exact same amount as before, or would love him slightly more, or would love him quite a bit less. It was possible that when he reached for her (his palm still sweaty with another woman's sweat), his hand would feel like a knife. Or perhaps when he reached for her, his hand would feel as exuberant as fire, and the Queen would touch the joy.

Or perhaps the King would never act; perhaps that heat between his legs would cool and shrivel. Perhaps the Queen would live out all the days of her life luxuriating in the King's unmarred devotion, and would scarcely notice the moment when death arrived for her amid the blinding brightness of that devotion, which all along had kept her as close to paradise as a human woman could ever hope to dwell: safe, warm, calm.

Or perhaps the Queen would come to see herself as a jail warden, an impossibly heavy ring of keys slung around her waist, guarding the smallest, most absurd cell in the universe: a tiny barred box just big enough for an old man's penis.

The Queen and King sat on their twin thrones while the parade of subjects poured its momentary riches, its fruits, its girls, onto the chessboard before them. Once in a blue moon, you might be lucky enough to overhear him whispering to her or her whispering to him.

“One of us will be sad,” he or she would say, “it's just a matter of which one.”

And you might catch the other replying: “One of us will be happy; it's just a matter of which one.”

 

THINGS WE DO

1.

I had this joke with someone I used to love. We'd say to each other: Saying I love you, that's
our
thing, our special thing, just for the two of us. Whatever becomes of us, you can't ever say that to anyone else. Or: Having sex, that's
our
thing, our special thing, you better never do that with anyone else, not even if we split up. You can do other things with them, of course, you can do anything you want with anyone you want at any time under the sun, but never that, because that's
our
thing.

Later, I tried to reinvigorate this joke with someone I loved far more: Going to the bar, drinking gin & tonics, getting drunk and having lots to talk about, that's
our
thing. Marriage, that's
our
thing, wherever you go and whatever you do and whoever you meet, remember that. But, dismayingly, the joke was no longer hilarious; now when I said it I sounded like I meant it.

2.

Removed, the wedding ring and the engagement ring lie obediently together upon the ledge. That's the thing about objects, they're so obedient, and it's a goddamn relief if you ask me. You put them there upon the ledge and there they shall stay until someone or something comes along.

3.

We shouldn't keep drinking $3 gin & tonics, but it takes more imagination than we've got to stop doing so, plus the sunsetting light is the color of booze and outside in the yard behind the bar the wall of ivy quivers like something from a lovelier place.

4.

Recently I've developed an addiction to the word
FEROCIOUS
—I've had other addictions at other times, such as
LULLABY
,
JUBILANT
,
HOWEVER
—and have started using it too much, mainly in my head but also out loud, using it to say things like “I had to be ferocious to figure out how to put that Ikea bookshelf together; I had to be especially ferocious with the top part.”

5.

Our friends compliment the plants we have in our apartment. They say, “Wow, you have a lot of nice little plants.”

And I say, “Thank you, yes, we went to the plant nursery and that's where we got those plants. The plant nursery on Euclid Avenue, if you were wondering.”

But their eyes have already glazed over.

And you—you yawned the whole time we were selecting our plants!

6.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.

Naked, bestial, I squatted.

I have this idea that lines recalled from poems we read in English class might help. Although that second line was purely your idea—inspired by the way I was crouching on our darkly gleaming wooden floor at three in the morning. Your delivery of such an apt line, your flawless read of the situation—that's the sort of thing that gives me hope. It also gives me hope when we put on the music and dance around our apartment.

I won't deny it: I'm a sucker for hope these days.

7.

I could get pregnant, you know, from all this makeup sex we're always having.

What?

I could get pregnant from all this messing around.

What?

Maybe you should come up here from down there.

What?

Maybe we could talk. Maybe you could hear me better.

You won't get pregnant.

8.

I have this idea that I'm not going to write any untrue things anymore. I'm only going to write things that are true, true, true.

The Guy Who Yawned at the Plant Nursery says: “You've never written a word of fiction in your life.”