Cosmogony

by Lucy Ives

  Because I am poor and essentially useless to the artist who does x’s career, what I had to give in this moment was information.

  “He didn’t,” the artist who does x wanted to know, “hit you?”

  I remember that time became slushy and dim. I looked at the artist who does x’s eyes, which were like two lacquered raisins, merciless and slightly too small for her face. I knew that if I said no, the artist who does x would turn away from me, and that this turning away would be for all time. I knew that the artist who does x did not wish to discuss with me the politics of domestic economies, various forms of entitlement. She was not interested in my identity or gender, any more than she was interested in the identity or gender of anyone else. These were mere representations, and representations were not her concern.

  The artist who does x wanted to know what had happened. And I saw that in this moment she was giving me an out. She was letting me know that if I could demonstrate to her satisfaction that my current lamentable status in the world was not a predicament of my own devising, she would be willing to withhold at least 15 percent of the judgment she was otherwise planning to level in my direction.

  Oh, how I wanted that 15 percent mercy. And oh how I wanted her to share a bit of sadness with me.

  So I paid.

  The Poisoners

  There once was a man in his thirties. In fact, he seemed younger than this. He lived in the United States of America, which was a country he preferred not to leave, if at all possible. He was married, and he and his wife rented a medium-size apartment in a major city. They paid somewhat less for their apartment than it was customary to pay because the apartment was out of the way, in an inconvenient if OK neighborhood. They had no children and kept no pets. They owned a car but had no savings.

  The man, whose name was Will, worked at a framer’s, and Will framed prints. Will’s wife, whose name was Ada, worked as a freelance fact-checker for magazines. They had fallen deeply in love, years before, in school. Every weekday morning Will rode his bicycle to the framer’s, where he had learned to mat and frame and where he now made an increasingly steady living. Ada stayed at the apartment and made use of the Internet.

  Will was good at his work at the framer’s. His job was not difficult, and he was proud of what he did. Another person might have chafed at the required tasks: collecting measurements, pointing to a wall of samples. Will celebrated his ability to remain alert.

  Will remembered that when he was very young he had often been unable to control himself and had done many stupid things. Also, in childhood there were experiences of great beauty. Will waited patiently for the life that was to come.

  The framing business, as things turned out, prospered. The owner of the business, a septuagenarian refugee of ethnic cleansing and a late adopter of capitalism, hired a second assistant. The second assistant was a woman. Her name was Jamie. She was small, and she was exactly six months younger than Will. She had grown up on a farm on the other side of the country and possessed an earnest manner.

  Jamie, like Will, was married. It was a joke and also a fact: Jamie was married to a man named Jaime. Jamie had taken Jaime’s last name, and therefore they were, at least on paper, all but identical.

  Jamie and Will joked around at the framer’s. They joked about many things. They laughed about Jamie’s name. They got to know each other.

  Life at work was good.

  But life at home was not good for Will.

  Could Will have spoken words aloud to tell another person what was wrong? It is certain that he could not; otherwise I wouldn’t be telling this story. No, for Will, as far as his wife, Ada, was concerned, there were no words to describe what was wrong. Ada worked industriously all day. I almost typed “industrially.” Yes, she worked hard. And she was successful and began to demand high hourly rates.

  This was what everyone knew of Ada and Will: they worked hard and did well in their small jobs and were beloved by those who knew them. They were, to their friends, what is termed a “good couple.”

  Ada and Will remembered the days when they had fallen in love. Those were the days when they were young. And they were still sort of young, but increasingly less so. And Ada kept house, but she did not like to cook because cooking dirtied the kitchen. In fact, Will found the house too clean. He often wished he had something to eat.

  During this time, Ada and Will were becoming, unknowingly, exactly what they believed themselves not to be. This point is very important. (If you are reading this in a print format, it is suggested you highlight or underline this paragraph. If web, it is suggested you copy and paste the text into a browser plug-in, or other, for future reference. If you are reading this story for a class, please do not email me about it. I feel uncomfortable when I get these sorts of messages and don’t know what to do. I figure, however, that I may, without veering into the territory of unfair assistance, alert you here that something significant has come up. You’ll want to use your independent powers of deduction to figure out what it means.) And so:

  At work, Will and Jamie joked a lot. Jamie told Will about the food she ate. She fed him easily, carelessly, from Tupperware she brought to the framer’s from her home. One of the things Jamie frequently did at home was to cook.

  Will ceased wishing that he had something to eat. He ate the food Jamie brought to him. He was kinder to Ada. Briefly, he felt satisfied. Will and Jamie went out to drinks after work.

  Ada, meanwhile, stopped freelancing and got an office job and was promoted. She, perhaps, was satisfied, too.

  Ada gave a great deal to her job. Perhaps, indistinctly, to her it meant freedom. The job made others aware of her existence. She used some of the money she made to purchase a more expensive phone.

  She sometimes, perhaps often, returned home late, after 9:00 p.m. She went to professional parties. She sometimes returned home after three o’clock in the morning.

  Ada, Ada, blah, blah, blah. Other people, at the place where Ada worked and at other adjacent places, were interested in Ada. Ada this, Ada that. “Ada,” they said, “it’s you!” They said, “Your name is a palindrome, how funny!” They were hard to ignore, even in their senseless interest. They were interested, too, that Ada was so young yet had been married for so long. Ada attempted to smile with a certain mystery when she was asked about being a very young married person, who had for so long been married. “Sometimes you just meet the right person,” I believe she said, cultivating a kind of haze.

  Will, meanwhile, was miserable but savvy. He stayed out late with Jamie, who had been married to Jaime at an even younger age than Will had been married to Ada. There was no question, between them, which is to say, between Will and Jamie, two colleagues at a framer’s, of the worth and normalcy of marriage, even in this city—where so many people had been married and divorced, or refused to marry at all.

  In the day, the sunlight sifted attractively through the barred windows of the former knitting factory in which the framer’s business was located. Dust sparkled. It seemed to carry a promise of truth. It was pure and relevant.

  Jamie told Will the story of how Jaime’s real first name wasn’t really “Jaime.” It was Ted. He had changed his name to “Jaime” in marriage.

  “Legally?” Will asked.

  “Definitely.” Jamie laughed.

  Will contemplated her word. Perhaps he saw something there, I don’t know.

  It’s hard to tell this story without feeling that every person included in it is incredibly, painfully simple. And yet, these are their real thoughts and actions, insofar as it is given to me to know them. Please don’t get on my case about it. These aren’t real people, and yet these really are the things they really say and think and do. All these things did happen somewhere. Amazingly, miraculously, the people to whom the things did happen barely thought about the things.

  And do I even have to spell it out? Will and Jamie have fallen in love.

  Here, a strange thing occurs, because there is a lot that you don’t k
now about Will. Allow me to explain:

  Will was, of course, a kind of artist. He just didn’t know what kind. He believed that he did not know what kind of artist he was yet, but things were more complicated since they were not entirely narrative, in his mind.

  Will might never know what kind of artist he was. This was something he allowed himself. He told himself that he was an artist, even if he never managed to make anything. He was an artist, he told himself, of life.

  Still, Will was working on it. Will was living. He was constructing something.

  The framer’s business was located in a rapidly gentrifying industrial area.

  The other thing to know about Jamie was that her partner was not well. Jaime was ill. He suffered from a condition doctors had given up trying to diagnose. He was told to maintain a restful lifestyle. He had a temperamental heart. Or maybe it was an autoimmune disorder. I don’t mean to seem callous; I’m just not sure.

  Anyway, Jamie cooked for Jaime. And there were many plants in their apartment. And Jamie cooked so much for Jaime that there was often extra food. And now when she came to work she brought with her two lunches, one for herself and one for Will.

  It was easy to hide this from Jaime, who never went into the kitchen and busied himself with his record collection most of the time, whenever he was not lying down.

  Ada did not feed Will. In fact, all pretense of cooking had ceased with her. She purchased meals at overpriced locations near her office. And sometimes she did not eat at all. Thinness was valued in her industry.

  Jamie told Will that she wished that Jaime were not sick. It was unfair, she knew, but she could not help feeling that his refusal to become well reflected poorly on her efforts. Jaime meanwhile did go to work and did know other people. His was not the life of an invalid.

  And yet, said Jamie (if not in quite so many words), I heal him just enough that he maintains some modicum of independence. I do not heal him enough that he becomes truly well. I cannot heal him into a state of equity with me; I cannot create in him an equal partner.

  I have, Jamie said, known Ted for too long.

  Will was not sure what Jamie was trying to say.

  Will was generally uncertain.

  And now Ada traveled for work. She left for three or four days at a time. She did not think very much about her marriage. Ada was working.

  So this is a pretty good summary of the lives and probable sentiments of these two women. Will was somebody who knew them both. He knew them both and felt a great number of powerful things where both of them were concerned! It’s so hard to say, at this moment, what exactly was happening!

  And now at work, Will and Jamie ate. They sat down to lunch together. From her bag, Jamie brought forth small bluish containers. In the containers were carefully composed salads including grains and proteins. There was a set of four mini-scones baked without the use of dairy products. There was a vegan pudding and a lentil-based pasta dish.

  They ate at first in silence. Elsewhere at the framer’s, others did not yet break for lunch. Still other workers were relatives of the owner.

  Will and Jamie observed these people where they moved.

  Will and Jamie had lived through numerous points in time and each had grown up in a family, but they felt unprepared for what was occurring at this moment.

  The world was attempting to recompose itself. It was no longer a scene. Now it had grown soft. It was a blanket. It rushed toward them, plush and ready to conform.

  They were observing a slowly coalescing geometric shape.

  Will and Jamie could barely look at each other.

  Will took out one of his notebooks. Hey there Pony, he wrote at the top of a blank page.

  Hi, wrote Jamie, circling the word. She must have been able to feel her heart floating in her neck like a pickled cherry.

  No one around Will and Jamie knew anything about what they said. They spoke without speaking and the world, the phenomenal world and time and chance, permitted this to happen. Nothing stood in their way. This was how they knew that they were doing the right thing.

  In their writing, Jamie and Will recognized something. What they recognized was not a thing that could, per se, be seen. It was a feeling, and it was impersonal. It was a knowing that you had to choose.

  Just as, before a line was drawn in black ballpoint on a page, there was no line; just as, at first there was nothing and later something did occur and in this event things were no longer the same; just so, Jamie and Will perceived that they no longer inhabited the worlds they had inhabited when first they met. They inhabited a single world, and it was new.

  They were very, very much in love.

  On the one hand, this was for them a beautiful and graceful thing. On the other, this meant that they had broken promises once central to their lives. And it was for this reason, the “other hand,” that they for many months did nothing.

  They did nothing, that is, except that they began to make love. I’m saying, they had coitus, and really quite a lot of it, which they in turn documented for the usual reasons, using their phones.

  On some level, it’s hard for anyone to say how it is, precisely, that sex changes things. It’s fun, and it reminds us that someday we will die, and it can make us inclined to feel more tenderly toward a given person—and, perhaps, more and more inclined to return to that person’s physical proximity.

  Will and Jamie noticed what was beginning to occur. They wanted to be together all the time. For this reason, they decided to perform an experiment.

  Will and Jamie resolved that they would spend more time alone together, as well as more time together with their spouses, alone. And they would also cause their spouses to meet, and all four of them would spend more time together.

  It was an experiment. It was an experiment to see if Will and Jamie could understand their feelings for each other. Maybe these feelings, while strong, didn’t matter and weren’t significant. If so, they needed to know.

  Will and Jamie were good people. They were people who were willing to find out if what they were doing was not good and therefore wrong. They were decent, thoughtful people and you could not fault them for not being thorough. They were performing an experiment so that they could be sure. They were hardworking. They wanted what was best.

  And so Will and Jamie and Ada and Jaime, or, rather, Will and Ada and Jaime and Jamie, went out to a bar. It was a bar in a relatively remote part of the city, and it was also a bar Will and Jamie had visited together. Ada drove the four of them, in the car she owned with Will.

  They all drank several beers together. They talked about the city and the choice all four had made to move to it. It was a choice that defined their lives and it was something they had in common.

  For Ada and Jaime, this was an unremarkable night. They were with their spouses and spoke with their spouses’ unremarkable coworkers. Ada did not find Jaime, or Jamie, for that matter, particularly interesting. Jaime thought Ada was cagey, if tall. Who knows what Jaime thought of Will. Will and Jamie silently loved each other and did not let on. They did not so much as permit their eyes to meet. You could see this as a kind of comedy of errors, but in fact matters had already swerved a rather fateful swerve. Will and Jamie watched as their partners blindly took part. For it was far, far easier to do all this than they had imagined. Ada and Jaime trusted Will and Jamie. Ada and Jaime lived in the past. Only Will and Jamie knew this. Only Will and Jamie had managed to move on, to enter the present. God bless America.

  But it wasn’t really so simple. Will and Jamie could not go directly on to triumph in their love and shared sense of justice, because Jaime was always slightly ill, and this summoned Jamie back to him. He needed someone to offer him soups and compresses, to listen to his complaints. Jamie went to him freely. Jamie didn’t seem to mind.

  Jamie sometimes left work directly, in order to tend to Jaime.

  Jamie is a saint, thought Will. She understands need. She does not ignore the real, true need of others. She is
a good person in this uneven world and an authentic person, and this is why I love her.

  Ada was not a good person. She wasn’t a bad person, either. She was just neutral. She wasn’t authentic. She went to her job.

  On some level, Ada must have understood this about herself. Everything she did now appeared to be about working. Everything in the world appeared to feel so neutral to her.

  Will wondered how he could love someone so beset by neutrality.

  Will saw that without Jamie, he was completely alone.

  By this time a year had passed. It was even more than a year. No, by now two years had passed, and Will and Jamie had spent a great deal of time alone, together with their spouses, and with their spouses, together. They had also spent a great deal of time together, alone. They were also in possession of an extensive photographic archive of their love.

  In some ways, it was a functional arrangement. Yet, both Will and Jamie had to wonder, was (is) it possible to live without lies?

  They each, separately, thumbed through their digital images. They sent old images to each other, growing nostalgic, growing aroused. Things entered other things. Stuff was offered, held. They even created new images, in their joy. They wanted to be free.

  It was for this reason, this desire on their part to learn if it might be possible to live without lying, that Will and Jamie decided to make a change. Believe me, by the way, that their confidants on both sides warned against it. Will and Jamie had told some people what was going on, of course, and those people, the aware people, the trusted ones, were warning them against this step. These people were warning them because these people saw that the current arrangement was a livable one. These people were realists. Some of them were even married. Don’t fix what isn’t broken, these sage people said, usually employing profanity.

  It might seem remarkable that anyone would consider Will and Jamie’s situation a happy compromise, but there were actual people living on the planet who felt this way. Perhaps it says something about the sort of people Will and Jamie chose as friends, I don’t really know.