by Jenny Offill
She is younger than I am, I think, but her hair has gone completely gray. I complimented her on it once. It happened the year I was widowed, she said.
* * *
…
The due date is almost here and Henry is texting me every hour he is awake. I send him little things to distract him, like this article I read about how the superrich are buying doomsteads in New Zealand. There was a surge of interest after that report came out saying that the world’s eight richest men have the same wealth as half of humanity combined.
The pros of New Zealand are that it’s beautiful, politically stable, and moderate in climate. The cons are the government has restrictions about what you can name your kid. Sex Fruit and Fat Boy are forbidden. Violence and Number 16 Bus Shelter are okay.
I’m going to name the baby Fat Sex Bus, he tells me.
* * *
…
The last supper. We are served a boring, vitamin-filled meal that befits the expecting parents to be. I ask Catherine if she is scared. “Sometimes,” she says. “Sometimes a little.” The baby is due in two days, a girl, but they are keeping the name a secret. We spend a while trying to guess it.
Anna?
Emma?
Ella?
Lily?
“You’re getting warm,” she says.
* * *
…
It’s the night of the back-to-school concert. Before we can walk into the auditorium, we have to show our IDs and the ticket his teacher sent us last week. On the corner of the ticket there is a number that shows how many people are in your family. There is a warning not to bring any extra guests to the performance because SAFETY FIRST!
Eli stands in the front row of the bleachers next to Amira. He is wearing his lucky pants and his lucky shirt, but he looks nervous. The last song is his favorite one, he has told me. I can see him gathering confidence as they move through the other, lesser numbers. Then all at once the kids close their eyes and begin to sway. Everyone leans forward, trying to see. They sing that their lives are like a drop of water, no more, in an endless sea. Whatever they make will not stand; it will crumble to the ground before their very eyes. And all the money in the world could not buy them a moment more.
Nothing lasts forever is the conclusion reached. An exception is made for the earth and the sky.
* * *
…
The baby is here! She arrived last night at 3:04 a.m. Her name is Iris and everyone thinks it’s a good name.
They got a private room, thank God, but Catherine is still wild-eyed. Nothing went according to plan. There was no calming music, no birthing ball, no soft socks, no warm compresses. They gave her an enema, an epidural, and Pitocin. The baby came so fast that Catherine’s doctor didn’t make it there in time. She arrived an hour late, dressed for an evening out, and delivered the placenta.
All this I get in whispers from Henry. “There was so much blood! They were mopping it up with towels! You wouldn’t believe it, Lizzie,” he says.
But I would. I had a baby in this shitty hospital too. There’s that ding, ding, ding as you go down the hallways, all those machines conducting their business. Even the buzzing of these awful lights is stored somewhere deep in my body. As soon as I walked through the door, it rose to the surface.
* * *
…
On the last night that she’s in town, my mother comes over for dinner. She has been helping Henry and Catherine with the baby. She is thrilled by all the hard work. She says she can’t remember the last time Henry paid so much attention to her. She talks about the goodness of God. She cooks us spaghetti carbonara.
Later, she plays an endless game of War with Eli and expresses concern about how closely Ben follows the political news. “You should pace yourself,” she tells him. “We’re only about twenty minutes into this.”
In the morning, I drive her to the airport. She is sorry to go. “Don’t you think I could be more helpful if I lived here?” I don’t know what to say. Yes, of course, but she lives on a fixed income, has no savings. Where could she afford to live? She gives me a tentative smile. “I don’t take up much space.” I squeeze her hand, then turn on the radio. I flip until I find an easy listening station. But then I realize it’s God radio. A question is posed to us.
The critical question for our generation—and for every generation—is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ was not there?
Yup.
I kiss her goodbye, make her promise to call me later. She insisted I not go to short-term parking, just drop her at the curb, but from my rearview mirror I see my mistake as she struggles through the revolving door. Ten minutes after I drop her off, Henry texts me. The mothers are gone! The mothers are gone! When are you coming over?
* * *
…
I spend a morning trying to find my old nursing pump for Catherine. Here it is, finally, in the back of a closet. Odd to see it again. I remember the weekend I weaned Eli, I drove up to visit an old friend, one of the few left who is married without children. She and her husband live in an old Victorian house and everything in it is carefully chosen and beautiful. She made me a fancy dinner—rack of lamb, mint jelly, chocolate soufflé—and I tried to act like a human being, not like someone on the lam from her kid.
But then in the middle of the night the milk started coming in, and my shirt got so wet that I sat on the toilet and squeezed it into a towel, worrying about what to say, where to put it, would it smell sour?
I was up most of the night. My body hurt; my brain did too. I thought I might hide the towel under the bed or pack it in with my things to get rid of at home. I couldn’t tell which plan was best, but in the morning when I saw my friend, I said, That beautiful towel you gave me, I’ve ruined it, so sorry, I can pay you for it, and driving home alone, radio on, everything was so green—you wouldn’t believe how green it was—and alongside the road there were flowers and vegetables, but no one there minding the stand, just a box to leave money in, and even that not locked.
I should have taken it.
* * *
…
I get a series of ecstatic texts from a newly divorced friend who has met someone. “I can only imagine what it would be like to be this age and then suddenly fall in love,” I tell Ben. “You are in love,” he corrects me.
Later, he runs his hand along my leg in the dark then stops. “Are you wearing my long johns?” “I was cold,” I tell him. We make up a proverb (Married sex is like taking off your own pants), fool around, go to sleep happy.
* * *
…
Hippie test, courtesy of a book Sylvia gave me. I’m hoping there’s some kind of extra credit or else I really bombed it.
Where You At?
Trace the water you drink from precipitation to tap. How many days till the moon is full?…From what direction do winter storms generally come in your region? Name five grasses in your area. Name five resident and five migratory birds…Were the stars out last night?
From where you are reading this, point north.
* * *
…
For some reason, where I am at is in front of this mirror, pressing my gums to see if they’ll bleed again. No. Good. I should get back to work, but instead I stand there making faces until someone comes in. It’s the blond girl with the bitten nails. She used to do a lot of crank, I remember. She had this story about how she was in a bathroom the first time it hit. The buzz of the party grew louder and louder, and she thought she’d return to find locusts had descended.
* * *
…<
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I had that thought again. The one with numbers in it. It bent the light.
Eli is at the kitchen table, trying all his markers one by one to see which still work. Ben brings him a bowl of water so he can dip them in to test. According to the current trajectory, New York City will begin to experience dramatic, life-altering temperatures by 2047.
* * *
…
My friend who works in hospice says don’t tell dying people they won’t be around for the beach trip, apples in fall, etc. No more do that than knock a crutch out from under a person with a broken leg.
No more apples soon; apples need frost.
I decide to reshelve by the big window. It’s beautiful out. There’s a group of students with linked arms, chanting something in the quad. I follow a trail of candy wrappers that are lined up along the sill. The top of that tree is on fire. Or else it’s fall again.
* * *
…
“Did you look at the river, Lizzie?” Sylvia asks me when she picks me up from the train. I lie and say yes. It pains her the way everyone goes around with their heads down these days.
The leaves are nearly gone. We pass one apple orchard then another. “People only want the perfect ones,” she says, “especially when they pick them themselves, so all the bruised or split or wormy ones get left on the ground for the deer.” There are thousands and thousands of deer here. Soon it will be hunting season. “At least most people who hunt up here hunt for food, not sport,” she says. I watch them bound away as we turn down her dirt road. “Why don’t they farm deer?” I wonder. “Is it because they are too pretty?” She shakes her head. “It’s because they panic when penned.”
On the way home, the train stops for a long time outside the city. I look at the trees along the river. There are still a few leaves on them. Some people at the water’s edge. But hasn’t the world always been going to hell in a handbasket? I asked her. Parts of the world, yes, but not the world entire, she said.
It’s pouring when I come out of the subway station. There’s a low hum in my head. “Boohoo,” says the friendly-looking white man who passes me on the street. “Boohoo!”
Am I crying?
I pass by the bodega. “We have garlic now,” Mohan calls out to me. I pay with pennies, but he is nice about it. “Pennies are money too,” he says.
There is a miniature American flag by the register now, right beside the postcard of Ganesh. But Mohan is not worried. “Even if this man wins, he will not stay,” he tells me. “Now he has money, planes, beautiful things. He is a bird. Why be a bird in a cage?”
THREE
After the election, Ben makes many small wooden things. One to organize our utensils, one to keep the trash can from wobbling. He spends hours on them. “There, I fixed it,” he says.
A turtle was mugged by a gang of snails. The police came to take a report, but he couldn’t help them. “It all happened so fast,” he said.
And in the ether, people asking the same question again and again. To the yours-to-losers, to the both-the-samers, to the wreck-it-allers.
Happy now?
The path is getting…narrower. That’s how Ben told me. He was doing the math in his head.
But it could still…?
It’s not impossible.
And so we stayed up and watched until the end.
At school, Eli’s friend boasts that he will kill the president using a lightsaber. Then he says no, a throwing star is better. My son comes home upset. His friend is going about things the wrong way, he thinks. “What is the right way?” I ask him.
Dig a trap, cover it with leaves.
There is advice everywhere, some grand, some practical. The practical advice spreads quickly and creates consequences.
Women of reproductive age are being urged to get IUDs. They can last six to twelve years and so might outlast the shuttering of the clinics. But it’s suddenly hard to get in to see a doctor; the appointments are all booked for months and the waiting rooms at the walk-in clinics are full of nervous white women.
Q: Do angels need sleep?
A: It is unlikely, though we cannot be completely sure.
“Should we get a gun?” Ben asks. But it’s America. You don’t even get on the news if you shoot less than three people. I mean, isn’t that the last right they’ll take away? He looks at me. His grandfather’s last name was twice as long as his. They shortened it at Ellis Island.
It was the same after 9/11, there was that hum in the air. Everyone everywhere talking about the same thing. In stores, in restaurants, on the subway. My friend met me at the diner for coffee. His family fled Iran one week before the Shah fell. He didn’t want to talk about the hum. I pressed him though. Your people have finally fallen into history, he said. The rest of us are already here.
* * *
…
Everything is better in the quiet car. In the quiet car, everyone is calm. Ben presses his leg against mine. We read side by side as Eli builds many-roomed mansions. A person across the aisle who is chatting with his friend in Spanish is asked to leave by the conductor. “Right now?” he says. “While the train is moving?”
In the hotel room, there are many hotel channels, but all disappoint.
* * *
…
We go to the Smithsonian. They want to see the space stuff. I want to see the hominids. In the afternoon, we tour the monuments, speak solemnly about democracy. Coming to D.C. was Ben’s idea. It’s creepier than I imagined to be here. Soon, soon, soon, is the loop in my head. Ben has this plan to spend the next few months visiting historical things with Eli. I want to lay a foundation, he told me, but for what exactly he doesn’t say.
Our very last stop is the Spy Museum. Ben grumbles because I seem to have picked the only museum in the city that is not free. He says he’ll wait in the lobby. I’m happy though because we narrowly missed having to go to the Holocaust Museum.
Eli is excited about this place. We are given a cover story, must memorize it quickly, then answer a series of questions. There is a hidden passageway that kids can crawl through. I limp around, looking at the exhibits. There are lipstick guns. Camera guns.
But the best thing is an ordinary-looking pair of glasses. Cyanide tipped. To be used if you are caught by the enemy so you don’t betray anyone.
* * *
…
It’s going to be too much, Sylvia said. People who do this kind of work will break down, people will get sick and die. I remember what she said when I called her the day after. Up in smoke! Up in smoke!
She predicted all of this before it happened. In chaotic times, people long for a strongman, she said. But I didn’t believe her. Hardly anyone did.
But now there’s a woman in the bathroom and there’s shit all over the floor. I hand paper towels under the door. Expensive-looking boots, I note. We don’t speak and later I am careful not to look at the shoes of anyone.
At the circulation desk, Lorraine is being shown the X-rays again. Patiently, she nods her head. She used to sing in a club, someone told me. She has grown children and a husband who is dying of some slow, awful thing. I don’t get into people’s business, she told me once. The only piece of advice she’s ever given me was: Take care of your teeth.
But later, I see her in the break room yelling at our coworker. “You are a child! You have acted like a child!” she tells the one who decided not to vote.
Ben’s sister told him there is a sign now on the door of the fancy grocery store in her town. NO POLITICS, PLEASE, it reads.
Q: How can I tell if those around me would become good Germans?
A: There is a historian named Timothy Snyder who has studied in great detail how past societies have descended into fascism. In his book On Tyranny, he made the following suggestions:
Make ey
e contact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down unnecessary social barriers, and come to understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life.
My book-ordering history is definitely going to get me flagged by some evil government algorithm. Lots and lots of books about Vichy France and the French Resistance and more books than any civilian could possibly need about spy craft and fascism. Luckily, there is a Jean Rhys novel in there and a book for Eli called How to Draw Robots. That’ll throw them off the scent.
There is a period after every disaster in which people wander around trying to figure out if it is truly a disaster. Disaster psychologists use the term “milling” to describe most people’s default actions when they find themselves in a frightening new situation.
That’s the name for what we’re doing, Sylvia says.
* * *
…
“Get everything done now,” Ben insists. He is worried one or both of us will lose our jobs. But I don’t like to go to the dentist. Won’t he just have bad news for me? “Please, Lizzie,” he says. “You’ve had that temporary crown for years.”
* * *
…
A woman walks into a dentist’s office and says, “I think I’m a moth.”
The dentist tells her, “You shouldn’t be here. You should be seeing a psychiatrist…”
