Vanishing and Other Stories (30 page)

“Pardon?”

“Not monogamous.”

“Of course.”

“They live in schools of about ten females to one male.”

The husband pushes his wine away. “How many lovers do you have?”

“Just listen.” The wife leans across the table. “The females have a pecking order that determines breeding access to the male. If the alpha female dies, for instance, the next-biggest female takes on her role and everyone moves up a step.”

“I don't get it. Who's the male in this scenario? Who's the female?”

“Would you believe me if I said I'm torn?” She reaches for his hand but doesn't touch it. “If I said I'm crazy about him and I still want you?”

“Not really.” The husband leans away from her. “Explain this fish thing.”

“What's fascinating is what happens if the male is removed.” The wife sits on her knees. “Within an hour, the alpha female starts to court the other females. And within two weeks, she develops functional testes.”

“Your boyfriend is actually a girl?”

“I'm saying, if those fish can be functional—happy—acting one way and also acting another, oppositional way, it might be the same for us.”

“You think you're more evolved or something? Because you can switch your affections?”

“It just seems to me there must be more than one possibility. I'm not saying that justifies it.”

“None of this makes sense.”

“I'm sorry, Liam.”

“Your analogy doesn't make sense.”

 

 

MAYBE THE BOY IS HANDY:
he can fix an overheating engine, repair broken radios, explain the inside of a toaster. He collects old alarm clocks, the kind with metal bells like ears attached to their round faces. He even once took apart his camera, inspected each mechanism, then put it back together. The wife thought at first he was practical, the kind of guy who would eventually build a workshop in his garage. Now she knows better. He appreciates machines for how graceful they are, how pure: click and whir. Though he wouldn't put it that way. He would simply say that he rents his
apartment because it has an extra half bath he uses as a darkroom, and a fan from the 1940s. He likes the old copper blades, the way they cut through the kitchen air.

And he likes the wife because, when he brought her to his apartment to give her some prints, when he unlocked the door, flipped on the light, forgot to hang her coat, and showed her the fan—the wife didn't shrug, didn't laugh. She stood and looked at the ceiling for nearly a minute. This was before they had touched.

“That fan is great,” she said, and rocked from toes to heels. Then the boy took her hand, held it. She watched the fan's slow spin without coming closer, without moving away. She heard her own breath. Then, as an experiment, she pulled her hand from his and touched his lower back. Underneath his shirt, her fingers on his spine.

 

 

MAYBE THE HUSBAND
doesn't mention it, lets it go. He and the wife prepare dinner, tuck their son into bed, wash and dry the dinner plates. Half a glass each, and they sleep beside each other, their legs touching. He wakes at five a.m., and the wife hears the alarm's buzz, the water as he showers. She gets up an hour later and goes to her office until three-thirty, when she walks her son home from school. She points out birds, explains the genius of the arbutus, and lets her son hop in puddles.

When they arrive home at four-fifteen, the husband is sleeping off whatever injuries and tragedies he saw in emerg. He's on top of the blankets, in sweatpants and a T-shirt, and the wife and son crawl into bed with him. The room is cool because
the husband likes the window open, and the son burrows under the blanket, snuggles into the wife. She's between her child and her husband and she feels warm, feels held. The dog jumps onto the bed and settles against the son, who retells stories he told on the way home—about an eraser fight he started, about a pill bug his classmate brought to school. He exaggerates even more for his father, and the husband tells stories too. Makes his day sound easy.

“A woman came in who broke her ankle two weeks ago. It only occurred to her today to come to the hospital about it.”

“Didn't she know it was broken?” The son bangs his legs on the mattress, jolting the bed. “Didn't it hurt?”

“She was so cheerful. She said she just didn't think it was serious—not until her foot swelled so much she couldn't stretch her tights over it.”

The wife looks at the hair on her husband's arm, the one he has thrown over her stomach. She thinks to herself: Everything is fine. Everything will be fine.

“She sounds stupid.” The son thumps the bed.

“Ben.” The wife holds his shoulder. “Enough.”

“I don't think she was stupid,” says the husband. “Just hopeful. Optimistic.”

“What does that mean? Optimistic?” Ben pulls at the dog's ears. “Tash? Are you asleep, Tash?”

The wife runs her fingers along her husband's forearm.

“Optimistic?” He pulls his hand away and rolls from the bed. “I guess it means she's stupid.”

 

 

MAYBE THE BOY
arrives at the wife's office the following Tuesday, as he always does. He walks in and shuts the door with his boot. “So. He's not a bad-looking guy.”

“You probably shouldn't be here.”

“And he's very tall.” The boy points to a framed photograph of the wife, the husband, and the son that hangs on the wall. “That picture doesn't do him justice.”

“Stop looking at that.” The wife is embarrassed by the quality of the photo: the sun glares in the three faces and they squint into it, watery-eyed, overexposed. “You shouldn't be here. What if he stops by again?”

“You don't often see forty-something guys who are that athletic.”

“He rides his bike to work every day, and works in the yard on weekends.” The wife covers her face. “He's so—maybe ‘upstanding' is the word. This kind of thing—”

“This sordid affair?”

“It would be so foreign to him.”

“I hate to admit it, but I think the guy could beat me up. I think he's stronger than me.”

She can't help but smile. “You'd make up for it in speed.”

“Is that a comment on my lovemaking?” The boy drops to his knees in front of her. “I'm already feeling young, inexperienced.”

“I mean it. You can't be here.”

“Hey.” The boy kisses her wrist. “Don't say that.”

“I'm sorry, Jamie.” Out the window, students weave through the stand of sequoia, going from class to class, requirement to requirement.

“You're serious.” He turns her to face him. “I'll leave if you want me to. If that's what you really want.”

The wife studies his eyes—lichen green. She touches his hair. His face. “You know, I bet you're right. I bet he could beat you up.”

The boy kisses under her eyes. “He's practically Harrison Ford.”

She undoes the top button of his shirt and he slides his hand along the seam of her pants.

“I must have a death wish,” he says, and her zipper is undone.

“Seems reasonable.” Her hand against his chest. “Perfectly natural.”

 

 

MAYBE THE WIFE
continues to meet the boy in her office every Tuesday afternoon and continues to sleep beside her husband every night. And in between she marks lab exams, teaches classes. Classes on the Caribbean bluehead, for example. They begin life as small yellow fish with short fins. But at any time they can trade their shimmering yellow scales for the more threatening blue head, black and white mid-body, and green posterior. This way the fish can spawn up to a hundred times per day and defend their territory. It sounds impossible, but it's simple. They're just like us, she explains to her students, and wipes chalk from her hands. They just do what they have to do.

 

 

MAYBE THE WIFE
starts to imagine a life with this boy. She imagines living in his apartment: low ceilings, little daylight, photographs
hung like laundry from a string in the bathroom. She imagines being there when he comes home from art school, his eyes tired, his black bookbag cutting into his shoulder. She imagines it as a quiet existence, disordered but also precise, like the boy's experiments in the darkroom.

In her real life, the wife and the husband alternate making dinner and doing dishes each night. They hire a young woman—one of the wife's students—to dust their furniture, scrub their bathroom, and vacuum their floors once a week. Ben is allowed to watch half an hour of television every evening. At night the wife and the husband share a drink and whisper to each other across the table. In bed, the husband's breath tastes of red wine and toothpaste.

It's nothing like the boy's chaos. The first time the wife walked into his apartment, there were days of dishes hardened in the sink. Egg yolk stuck to a pan, ketchup skin on a plate. The bathroom: towels on the floor, mildew along the tub. And what does it matter? thought the wife, as the boy kissed her that first time. Let the dishes sit on the counter. Let the bacteria flourish. She ran her hands tentatively up his arms. She hadn't forgotten about her husband, not at all. She could hear his voice: You're being ridiculous, Wendy, idiotic. But the boy had one hand on her back, one in her hair, and he pulled her against his mouth. This boy who smelled like sand and something else, something chemical. This boy who had stood in the kitchen and listened to her talk nervously about birds—the difference between a Pelagic and a Double-Crested Cormorant—then kissed her, stopped her mid-sentence. This boy who made her feel like she was twenty again. Made her feel ridiculous, yes, idiotic. Made her feel crazy and awkward and wild.