The Physics of Imaginary Objects (Pitt Drue Heinz Lit Prize) (10 page)

On Clear Nights, Glow Is Visible

This is the year of volcano watches. The temperature below the surface surpasses the scientists' instruments. Jake comes home on the last day of the semester and announces he has quit his job in order to play Internet poker. Mercy says, “On the computer?” Jake looks at her as if she is an idiot. He says, “Last week, I made a $700 profit.” Mercy realizes her hatmaking business is now their primary support. It seems a flimsy thing on which to base a household. The homes in the path of the lava flow have been evacuated. On the news, an orderly procession of minivans and small SUVs winds down the highway into the valley. A hard perimeter has been established, so the cameras are using hyperzoom, which causes almost invisible pixilation. Jake explains the system of Internet poker tournaments and the philosophy of gambling as a career. He outlines cutoff points and timetables and gives her a chart of the odds. She learns if you are dealt a suited king and queen you have a 7 percent chance of winning the hand. Non-suited: 6 percent. Vulcanologists have set up a live video webcam near the dome to record activity and entertain the masses. Whenever a blast of ash is released, the website goes down due to too much traffic. The movement of the ash one hundred feet straight into the air is a matter of hearsay and snapshots.

Jake's Mother Comes for Christmas, Eight Days Early

She strokes her lipstick-pink, leather-covered hip and says, “Still fits.” She says to Mercy, “You are like the niece I never had.” She puts metallic bows in the dog's hair. Brenda owns a Quick Stop in Indianapolis and can only visit for a few days at a time and never on an actual holiday. She punches Jake hard in the chest when he tells her about quitting his job and says, “All those student loans.” Mercy thaws the turkey in the sink. They mouth Christmas carols while driving around counting blow-up Santas. Brenda says, “I like those icicle lights—looks like the house is making an effort.” She works all day to paint “Joy to the World” in frosted letters on the front windows. At night, Mercy and Jake whisper in the guest room so his mother can have the firm mattress. Brenda finds the ovulation calendar with its Xs and Os in the bathroom drawer and cries. She says, “Why didn't you tell me you were trying?” She says, “All my life has been a disappointment.” On the day of the premature dinner, five inches of snow fall. A potato in the bag in the pantry has gone rotten and bled white sap over everything. Whenever Mercy goes out to the porch where Brenda stands in the cold, smoking, to ask for her opinion or help, Brenda says, “You do it. I'm sure you know best.”

In Mexico, They Are Happy

On Christmas Day, the sand burns the soles of their feet as they take turns walking up the beach to the fancy hotel for beers for Jake and virgin daiquiris for Mercy. They are staying in a hut thatched with ancient palm fronds where the ripped mosquito netting has turned sulfurous yellow. At night, large cockroaches bounce off them and roll like earrings under the bed. They kiss over whole fried snappers and raw squid while a man in the street exhorts them to buy from his box of sunglasses. “No,
gracias
, no,” Jake says. He turns up his palms when he bargains with a woman for a wooden wind chime carved with scowling missionaries and says, “That's all there is.” In the water, rust-colored jellyfish drift around them. A boy gathers newspapers and trash from the beach to make into handbags. The sun is slow to sink and the ocean stays tepid all night. They fall asleep to the clatter of dead priests.

One Month after Jake Quits His Job

They go to the Indian casino down the highway. Mercy means it as a gesture of solidarity. She counts mileposts and wreaths of roadside casualties. A shuttle painted turquoise takes them from the parking garage to the lobby. They eat overpriced lo mein and hot and sour soup in a restaurant called The Lucky Lotus. Mercy's fortune cookie says
Treasure what you have.
Jake's cookie is missing its slip. “Empty fortune,” he says and crushes the cookie onto the bill tray. He kisses her hand as they walk past the craps table. He is a like a child waking from a nap. The ringing of the slot machines sounds like a thousand barcodes being scanned. Jake pulls a baseball cap out of his coat pocket and a pair of sunglasses. “Are we in disguise?” Mercy asks. Jake pinches her neck to hush her and veers toward the poker tables. Mercy puts two dollars worth of nickels into a game modeled on
The Addams Family
before buying a magazine and licorice whips at the gift store. In the faux courtyard, she perches on the edge of a fountain spewing dyed water and watches truck drivers and widows line up for free backscratchers in the shape of tomahawks.

On the Way Home

“You need new wiper blades,” Mercy says. Jake doesn't say anything. He has lost twenty dollars at the casino. She has lost six hours of her life and two rolls of nickels. Sleet smears the windshield, obscuring the dark road. When they meet another car, the water glows on the glass. The wipers click along at the lowest setting. “You might need to turn those up.” Mercy feels mean and just wants to be in bed. Fog snakes off the pavement. Jake closes his eyes, and she flicks him on the shoulder. He opens his eyes but doesn't look at her. He closes his eyes again. This is a game they used to play when they were dating. She would reach over and steer. Now, she clicks the lighter into its socket and imagines the faint hiss of it heating. The patches of clear glass are growing briefer. They hit the dog going around a curve. Its body flies up onto the hood and into the windshield in front of Mercy's face. A maze of cracks blossoms. She hears it hit the roof, and then they are slowing, pulling to the side of the road. It is Jake who gets out of the car and walks back. She sees him in the side mirror, crouched on the shoulder, a pinpoint of blue from his keychain LED. A car swerves around the curve and he is caught in the glare, head ducked, almost unrecognizable.

The Dog's Tags and Rabies Vaccination Number Are Small Tin Hearts

Jake holds the dog wrapped in his parka; Mercy rings the doorbell. It is four o'clock in the morning and there are two lights on. From their right comes the rattle of a garage door opening. The dog's owner is a large man with creases like cuts in the flesh of his neck. The garage is cluttered with half-folded newspapers. “For my son's route,” the man explains, before they can say anything. He has been stuffing the papers into plastic sacks to protect them from the weather. Jake holds the dog out to him and tells him the story, too quickly. The man doesn't take the dog but wraps one of the bags around his knuckles saying, “Wait, slow down.” Jake thrusts the dog at him, and the man backs into a column of papers. As Mercy restacks them, the man starts crying. “It's too much,” he says, as though they have brought him an expensive gift. Jake lays the blue nylon bundle on the only empty chair; one sleeve slithers loose and makes them all start. The smell of wood pulp and wet ink fills the garage. There is nothing to do now but leave. In the car, backing down the long driveway, Mercy says, “You just bought that jacket,” as she searches between the seats for a napkin, afraid to look at Jake, her fingertips silky with plane crashes and robberies, drug busts and congressional panels, all the day's sad stories.

In February, Mercy Imagines Summer

They have a terrific fight over mail-order seedlings. Mercy fingers the manila catalog as if it is a letter from her long-dead grandmother, thinking of fat peppers and corn and cucumbers, all in a row. “Don't we have enough problems?” Jake yells. He invokes weeding and borers and hungry deer. He is furious at the asking price for flats of early-producing tomatoes. They rapidly move on to his mother, the times Mercy forgot to mail the gas bill, the number of instances they've washed each other's laundry or had to repark the other's car. Indifferent winter binds the house. To annoy her, Jake goes ice-climbing in a snowstorm. What he doesn't know is how her relief at his coming home safely will be mixed with regret that no terrible thing happened to punish him. To escape her own pettiness, she goes snowshoeing in the same storm, taking the dog with her for company. The ice packs into the dog's paws until trickles of blood dot its footprints, and she pretends not to notice. In the snow, she could be anyone, a different person entirely.
Shush, shush
go the snowshoes until she is lost in the woods, the storm blown up into a near blizzard, and she finds a felled tree to sit down on, tucks the shivering dog behind her knees, waits for it to pass.

After the Storm

Thighs pink and prickled with the change from blowing snow to gusting central heat, Mercy sips cocoa in her rabbit-embroidered robe. Jake drops tiny marshmallows one by one into her mug. When they kiss, everything gets warmer. There is a slightly moldy leftover loveseat in the kitchen, too big to fit through the back door, and they end up there, sweaty, laughing, and underneath a sort of relief, an unexpected thaw. In the corner, the dog snuffles for crumbs. Outside, everything is frozen, muffled, the beautiful blue of midwinter. Inside, their cramped lovemaking beats like a pulse, the stutter of blood under skin. Mercy feels it when she touches him, the hundreds of other times they've done this. Suddenly, in the midst of the sweating and panting and giggling, the small jokes and sighs and misplaced elbows, she knows, feels the child locking into place inside her, glowing, a minute combustion spreading light. The snow continues to fall, completing its slow refiguring, the swells and drifts that make the world strange.

Mercy and Jake Go to a Dinner Party

The host tells them about his research on the mating rituals of fireflies. The male and female flash precisely timed patterns as courtship. Under the table their legs bump, Morse-code via knee-caps. After dinner, the hostess opens the fireplace flue and a dead bird drops out. Jake cradles it in paper towels and takes it to the outside trash. Returning, he trips and puts his hand through the door-side window. Blood drips across new carpet, and Jake catches it in the cup of his hand. A bird, a cut, the night is over before a match is struck. Days later, Mercy kisses the rind of scab that bisects his palm. She blows his hair out of his eyes. Frost limes the windows. Ice slides down the roof. Tree branches crack where they touch.

Three Weeks Late, Because Three Is a Lucky Number

She watches two blue lines snake up in the plastic window, charmed by her urine. Seven weeks late, because seven is a magic number, the blood seeps out of her and stains the mattress. She dreams of jars filled with ruby red marmalade. She dreams lids sterilizing, flat brass disks, so pleasing with their crimson rubber rings. She dreams her grandmother peeling oranges in one long strip, a sun shedding its skin. The next morning she reads about a man who saw Jesus in a fishstick just as he was about to feed it to his dog, auctioned it on EBay, and made $200,000. Her high-school friend's father told her naked women were everywhere, and then he pointed one out on the macaroni and cheese box and in the Bailey's ad and on the kitchen windowpane. The cinnamon toast burned as he ran his hand under her blouse, and her friend sang from the basement,
“Where have you gone?”

Jake Remarks that Saffron Costs More per Ounce than Gold

This is the year of beheadings, garage sales, rising gas prices. At the Italian market, Mercy says, “How are we going to afford a child if we can't afford olive oil?” The old men owners tsk over the fresh pasta cooler. To mollify them, she buys two pounds of whole wheat linguine, the least popular noodle. The old men take turns easing the nests of pasta into a recycled bread bag. They tell her not to refrigerate it, to leave it in the dark pantry. “Let it rest,” they repeat. Mercy and Jake argue over the cost of haircuts, video memberships, bottles of wine for friends' parties, plain black T-shirts, camping equipment, and photo developing. He keeps adjusting the setting on the hot water heater so the shower runs cold just as she starts shaving her left leg. She never says the phrase, “If you hadn't quit your job,” but she holds it there in the space between them, like any one of the objects that cause them such unhappiness.

One Morning, while Scrubbing the Rust from Her Gardening Tools in Preparation for Spring

Mercy finds a white X chalked next to the hose holder. She crouches to touch it and the lines smear into the slate-colored siding. It took months to decide on the color, and then they painted the house themselves, in dribs and drabs over two weeks last summer. Sometimes still, pulling into the driveway at dusk, one of them will say, “Is it too dark?” Now, wrapping the hose around the metal bracket, she wonders how the X got there. A survey crew of some sort recording a gas line or a water main? Perhaps a child playing a skewed game of tic-tac-toe? The yard is heavy with melted snow; crusts of ice crackle in the shade. Mercy thinks of Xs painted onto trees in the forest, marking them for removal. She thinks of a tangle of pipes stretching like roots through the neighborhood. She imagines her neighbors all showering at once, chorus of waters underfoot.

Mercy Picks Up Her Niece from Music Lessons

The little yellow house is dark, always dark. Oboes and clarinets hang in rows on the living room wall, moaning in the draft. Her niece puts two sticks of gum in her mouth the minute they get in the car. She is fifteen and collects antique birdwatching guides. They pick up her friend and head downtown. The girls huddle in the back seat whispering about sloe gin fizzes. “I could only drink a sip,” her niece says. Streetlights trill in the increasing rain. “He has a bad-ass tattoo of Andy Warhol,” the friend says. The girls pull on their work clothes in the backseat. The tax-prep franchise hires them to stand on the street corner and wave at cars. Her niece is the Statue of Liberty with a turquoise nylon poncho and a rubber torch. The friend is Uncle Sam with a tall striped hat and a moustache that is already peeling. They tumble out of the car singing thank yous and start dancing in what Mercy assumes is a patriotic manner under the Don't Walk sign. Uncle Sam snaps her suspenders at two paramedics stalled at the red light. The Statue of Liberty grins despite the green run-off from her foam spikes that patinas her face. Under the front seat, the clarinet rattles in its plastic case, forgotten again.