Author: themdq

The Sinking of Stones.

He could but wouldn’t shift into fifth gear on the motorway. They sat in a tiny rental, driving on the wrong side of the road, at least to her mind, the radio tuned to BBC1 or 2 or 3 or 4, she was never sure.

She knew he was driving, not her.  Fourth or fifth gear wasn’t her business. The counselor had only recently reminded her of the difference between her business and his. Only recently she said she would try not to comment on everything all the time, and he said he would try to say Fuck You at least once.

She noticed how he gripped the wheel with both hands, white knuckled.  She watched the tachometer reaching for the red, heard the rpms whining, the pitch growing, the tightening sound of the engine winding up, strained and reeling.

She clutched the book that sat on her lap, turned to him, and asked how it was he could continue in fourth gear, and under all these circumstances. How was it he could be so content just staying there? This was, of course, nothing new for either of them and so, having failed to hold herself together, she did not wait for an answer, which was irrelevant anyway, and asked why he wouldn’t shift.

She wished he would say Fuck You. That he would stop her sometimes.  She had such trouble stopping herself.  But that seemed just as hopeful, just as hard, as him reaching for the final shift.  And so he said nothing.

She uncrossed her ankles, let her temple rest on the window, felt the curve of the seatbelt across her collarbone, looked out at a dull sky and flat horizon.

• • •

It was foggy and moist miles later when they walked down the steep, muddy path into the cove. She wore ill-fitting Wellies borrowed from the beach house, which provided very little traction.

She apologized. How he chose to drive was not her business and she should not have said anything at all, she told him. He must not have felt supported, he must have felt alone. Or wished he were.

“It isn’t really about fifth gear.”

Mark picked up a flat grey skipping stone and turned it over in his fingers.

“I know,” he said, before skipping it across the salty water, “It’s because you’re terrified.”

She felt colder and warmer at the same time, as she stood next to him on the bank, looking to where the stones sink.

He was much better than the man before.

Over the years Mark had become friends with all of her friends. Unlike the-man-before, everyone liked him. Recently he even began to play the bass in her best friend, Jake’s, band. Jake liked him. And because Jake held a certain deference for authority of all kinds, most especially academic things, Jake asked Mark many questions about Literature and Shakespeare and teaching. Aida, her best girlfriend, thought Mark was lovely and very kind — if perhaps a bit repressed. Aida believed all people were repressed, of course, the classic psychoanalyst.

A good person, all her friends said, which she knew.

Her family loved him, too. Her father, who must have seen a lot of himself in Mark—the two of them professors, both thoughtful and generally content, if anxious and sometimes awkward and misunderstood—  and loved him a great deal, always hunting Mark down to ask very specific questions regarding 17th and 18th Century Literature and to talk in general about how Mark’s courses were going at the college. More than once her father and stepmother brought home United Kingdom-themed gifts: t-shirts with slogans about Cake or Shakespeare, or spatulas decorated with British flags. Not that Mark baked or cooked. They just enjoyed thinking of him and picking up thematic items at various stores throughout whatever journey they had embarked upon.

Her sister and mother enjoyed Mark’s tendency to pose dramatically for photographs and insisted he had the cutest dimples, an attribute she stubbornly refused to acknowledge, calling them wrinkles instead, inspiring the playful and patient rolling of Mark’s eyes and a barrage of counter-arguments from her female family members.

Her mother asked Mark how to brew the perfect cup of tea, the order in which milk and tea and sugar should be combined. Her stepfather never missed an opportunity to take Mark out for a hike, not that Mark was a physical man or particularly liked hiking, at least not the uphill sort, but Mark always went along, knowing her stepfather enjoyed the time, and her stepfather always took her aside afterwards to tell her what a decent person Mark seemed to be.

The family loved his accent, and when visiting, they wandered around the apartment repeating unfamiliar sounding words and phrases amongst each other: bAHsil and toMAHto; Would-do and Jolly-good.

He was not like the-man-before. Not at all. Unlike the-man-before, who was dapper, in fitted suit and tie, Mark sometimes wore cheap H&M ugly-colored sweaters that did not go well with his shoes. Bald at 33 and professorially soft, Mark had very different qualities. For instance, she loved that you would never know how much Mark knew about a topic, how long he might have studied it. He never needed to make a point of things like that.

Discerning and opinionated about the music he bought, the movies and plays he watched, Mark did not particularly need to impose his views on others. He wasn’t one to focus on the discord. No matter how misinformed, herself included, no matter how much Mark knew better and otherwise, he never made a person feel small. It wasn’t his constitution. He was generous. Inherently curious. She wished she was naturally that way, too.

The-man-before flaunted measurable indicators of success and prowess, all easily identifiable, serving to distract her from less visible, but more significant, characteristics. A bright young litigator, partner-track at a respected firm, Thomas was crafty with his tongue. He was handsome, athletic, and rented a lovely apartment in Old City before buying a gorgeous Twin Victorian on a nice block near the university. There, he lived with his young daughter and two cats, one named Pants and one named Guido, names she would have chosen herself, had she been creative enough to have thought of them. Thomas, the-man-before, was full of surprise and energy. He was clever and often made her laugh. She liked watching him work on his motorcycle and loved that he could build things with his hands.

She realized only later that she had failed to see what was important. It was her own vanity that blinded her to it. She felt too good taking him to the office holiday party or to a friend’s birthday engagement. She felt too much pride sharing photos of household improvements. She enjoyed too much creating holiday cards displaying photo collages of their handsome lives.

What was important, she realized much too late, was what surfaced only when they were alone. Always percolating, it seemed, but concealed behind these handsome, observable things — at least to her. Or by her. She’s never been quite sure.

What was important was that in the end there was nothing she could do to satisfy him. Nothing she could do to make him stop. What was important was that each day, as she worked too hard to understand it all, to do and change what she could, becoming all the more entangled until she forgot herself.

As it happened, walls and doors shut so slowly she didn’t notice until she was breathless, until she became too tired and too small in that Twin Victorian that had become her home.

“Congratulations,” or whatever.

She felt happy one evening walking home.

She held a large paper bag in her arms and thought: This is what it feels like to do something for someone else. This is what it feels like to love them.

She stopped at the store to get India Pale Ale because earlier that day Mark forwarded an email to her that contained his annual professional review along with a note he wrote specifically to her. The review was very positive and was written by the senior professor who observed Mark’s class a few weeks before. His note said: I am not the worst person in the world. She knew he was relieved and happy.

She knew, also, that he loved India Pale Ale. She spoke to the attractive shopkeeper who was a hipster well versed on topics such as novelty beer and who suggested a variety of specialty IPAs. She asked a lot of questions because she did not drink beer and when she chose a particular assortment, the shopkeeper told her it was a good gift. If someone got me this, he said, I’d be very happy. She was inexplicably proud to have this stranger’s approval and happily walked home with a six-pack of unusual and fancy IPAs, including a seasonal, two locals and three with different types of hops to compare.

As she walked through the park she thought about the note she would write for the beer and also the note she would write for the front door.

A few months before Mark’s positive review, she received her own critique in class. It was her first critique ever as a writing student and she had been very anxious. Every Monday night from 7:00-10:00 p.m. over the course of ten weeks, she’d had flu symptoms.

Her skin all blotchy-red, sticky, was embarrassed to exist or be associated with her. Her brain was distracted with worry that her mouth would say something ridiculous, give the rest of her away so everyone would realize how not-talented, how not-smart she actually was, meaning she would have to finally accept it was actually, really true.

Mark, who had encouraged her to take the course in the first place. He’d said: You should keep at this. Truly. after he read a few pages of something or other. It made her feel lighter. She thought: this is what ‘Possibility’ must feel like. It was a good feeling. Like love.

Mark sat in the living room on the orange puffy chair with blue diamond shapes late that night, reading the New Yorker, waiting to hear how it went. Filled with such an enormous relief, she was compelled to dance from their entryway into and through the living room to Mark, making up some moves, which ended up being some combination of the running man and ninja-like kicks. And to answer the unspoken question hovering in the air between them, she sang the first thing that came to her:

I’m not
the worst person
in the world.

Which she later realized was likely inspired by a lyric her good friend Jake wrote:

I’m the
greatest singer
in the world.

The line felt so beautiful, so sad. Lonely, she thought. And she loved it.

To say she was an awful singer would give her too much credit. She could not be called a singer at all. Nor a dancer. Perhaps because of this, the extemporaneous song and dance made Mark laugh.

He knew she was relieved and happy. It seemed her classmates did not hate what she made, she told him. And from then on whenever either one of them was relieved and happy or had accomplished anything of any sort, one or the other of them said: I’m not the worst person in the world.

Now, there she was, walking through the trees on the winding paths through their park, the dappled sunlight coating the late afternoon, thinking about what she should write. On the front door she thought she might post a notice of eviction:

EVICTION NOTICE:

To: The worst person in the world.


(All those who are not the worst person in the world may enter).

As for a note on the beer—it’d be scrawled in black marker on plain white paper, she thought, hastily taped to the six-pack, as if one could scarcely bother to take the time to congratulate him. That would be funny.

“Congratulations,”
Or Whatever.

It would say.

And so, on the day Mark received a good review, she grabbed two sheets of plain paper from the printer’s tray and rummaged through the kitchen drawer to find a large black Sharpie. She felt good and purposeful and thought: This is what it feels like to love someone.

On the first sheet of plain paper, she wrote her “Congratulations.” On the second she scrawled out an eviction notice that would not evict either of them.

Later that night when he got home she would hear the silence as he paused outside the front door, his keys settling in the doorknob for a moment, and his familiar “Ha!”

She would almost hear his smile.

Heartpartment.

Mark gave her cards. 

All the time for every occasion from every conceivable source. 

For instance, once after getting over a cold, Mark gave her a card signed by his “Throat, Nose and Chest,” thanking her for taking care of them the weekend before. 

On another occasion, because she had bought him a vintage 1940’s messenger bag— one much nicer than his, six years old and falling to pieces—she received a thank you card signed “Regards, the 1940s.” 

Once Mark left a card on her pillow: “On behalf of all trees everywhere, can you stop doing such wonderful things?” 

On the week of her 34th birthday, “Entertainment TM” sent her a series of seven cards, one each day, all outlining parts of “The 7 Wonders of Erin’s Birthday,” (Tagline: The pyramids ain’t got shit on this TM). 

Each card was typographically decorated by him, because at some point she happened to take a typography course. She learned things, but Mark always picked up on things so easily. And from mere end-of-day, how-was-your-day conversations.  It did frustrate her slightly. She often sat at her desk paralyzed, unable to put what she learned into action, yet here were Mark’s cards. They were pretty remarkable. Especially for a Literature Professor.

The first Christmas they shared at his family’s home in London, Mark assembled a dossier outlining the Characters, Scenes, and Acts she should expect upon arrival.  He drafted ten pages of detailed information regarding familial structure, potential inter-familial intrigue and drama, and probable events. All this because she was so nervous to meet everyone-at-once, while staying in such close, unknown quarters. The document was sent to her from “The M.H. Festive Consortium in partnership with EAD Foundation for the Entertainment of EAD.”  MH and EAD of course being their initials. 

Much earlier, before they lived together, he once slipped her a card with keys to his “heartpartment.” 

He was very creative, very funny.

Sometimes when she received these notes and novels, she thought he must love her very, very much.

It wasn’t until much later, sitting on the sofa, reading through stacks of cards and notes, that she realized how little she had actually appreciated them back then. She hadn’t appreciated them enough, not as much as she should have, at all. 

The Curtain.

She agreed to refrain from commenting on everything he did all the time and he agreed to try and say Fuck You. The counselor said it was interesting. She was a person who liked to disagree—yet tended to make it difficult for others to disagree with her. Meanwhile, he was a person that wanted most desperately to avoid any disagreement whatsoever.

That Saturday when he was installing the new curtain hardware, she decided to leave the apartment. It was a preventive measure so he would not feel be so anxious about his performance, and also so she did not direct his every movement — a measure to contain herself.

She went to the local coffee shop, returning to the living room several hours later to find one curtain rod hanging askew from the side of the window frame, the other not installed at all. He sat on the new speckled couch with a computer on his lap.

She shouldn’t have asked him about the status of things or what he was doing on the computer while installing curtains, but when she did, he said he was researching how to mount this or that piece, which was giving him trouble. At which point she looked at the rods and suggested doing x, which seemed an obvious solution, although she didn’t say so.

She knew it was obvious to her only because her father taught her things like how to use a hammer and nail, how to spackle and paint, how to change oil or a flat tire on the highway. She was lucky. His father had not taught him these things. She wasn’t sure if his father never tried or if his father tried in a way that made it very unpleasant to learn. Likely both, she concluded. It was also true he was not so interested in learning these kinds of things, the kinds of things he was not immediately good at. That was also part of it, she thought, and she imagined him, sometimes at least, pouting during his father’s lessons because Mark very much liked to know things, be the boss of things, just like his father.

She also didn’t like to admit certain things, of course. Like the fact she was at times just like her mother, sharing an overwhelming need to control everything and be correct. She, like her mother, preferred everything aligned.

In any case, she didn’t actually say her solution was obvious, but it was likely her tone gave her away. She often said things without words at all. In fact, despite disliking dramatics, she could be quite theatrical. It was true she had very little control over her facial expressions or tones or body language. She was not a good actor at all. She was communicative whether she intended or not. It was also likely she intended it more often than she understood.

Nonetheless, when she suggested he do x, he said her idea was good. She wanted to leave the living room again, give him space to work, but she couldn’t stay out of the apartment forever so she sat in the orange puffy chair to work on her computer as he resumed. This, his project to complete, for once, so she didn’t have to. Allow him to contribute to their home, she thought, when she initially conceived of the task. Now, in the midst of it all, it did not even occur to her to get up and help him.

It was then she noticed he was using the yellow kitchen stool, which was too short. She suggested he use the small ladder the landlord had conveniently left in the hallway so he might gain some leverage, and he said yes that was a good idea, which she already knew.

It was the way in which he moved in space trying not to take up any, adjusting to things he shouldn’t adjust to, moving himself around objects that ought to instead move around him. It was the way he let things govern him. It was the way he didn’t move the world.

She watched from the puffy chair as he stood in the small area between the planter and the end table and the couch and the radiator, trying to fit the ladder and himself in that tiny, empty space. She watched him bang around and turn in circles until she couldn’t stand it. It was hilarious and disturbing and much too symbolic even if the counselor had said directly she shouldn’t catastrophize things by generalizing them unnecessarily. Like the way she thought his particular method of using the ladder in the living room illustrated something about his personhood and made her wonder how they would ever raise children or decide where to live, how they’d accomplish anything really, if they just stood in one spot turning in circles, banging into things, adjusting to spaces that were too small, not moving the world.

What worried her was that she was the only one who worried.

Despite her agreement to refrain from commenting on everything he did all the time, she proposed he move the end table, planter, and couch to make enough room for himself so that he might accomplish the task. Why don’t you move the furniture, Mark? You can just move it. She said. She laughed only because it helped quell her ever-increasing anxiety.

And so, discouraged and having broken her part of the agreement at this point anyway, she added that, for reasons beyond just being able to move about, in the future he might consider moving things before starting projects like this, thereby preventing other items from being damaged. For instance, the brand-new couch, which, she noted, he kept slamming with the ladder.

He did not say Fuck You.

She had a way of bringing things up.

She realized much too late: She had a way of bringing things up.

For instance: She noticed the questions and commentary she sprung on Mark often materialized in morning hours.

She’d likely been up too long the night before, in bed and thinking, conducting conversations with the version of Mark she carried in her mind, ruminating about their predicament, the desirelessness, the inability to move forward. Mark-in-her-mind was crueler than actual-Mark — self-serving, quick to prioritize himself, full of terrible intentions.

She often laid in bed, arguing with Mark-in-her-mind, while actual-Mark slept next to her, unsuspecting and defenseless to the arguments occurring with/out him late into the night.

When she brought it up —  with actual-Mark —  she was often standing. Staying on her toes as it were, as if at any moment she might decide to escape the very thing she began. It was usually without preface or context and often in the midst of something else

— watching TV, eating breakfast, washing dishes, steeping tea, another conversation about something innocuous —

that’s where she’d unfurl whatever-was-upsetting-her.

It was as if placing it in the middle, she might keep open the possibility that it might be absorbed by those other things — evaporate and resolve itself there. Perhaps everything would turn back to whatever way it was, whatever they were doing or saying just a moment before, without consequence.

Early morning, standing up, in the middle of other things. Half-way, with exits fashioned all around.

It was true she was quite afraid; fear guided most everything she did. For instance: If she opened the door, she thought, he might be standing there on the other side of it, ready to meet her, which was of course terrifying.Yet it was also possible he wouldn’t be there at all. Or worse (or better, who knew?) — there, while she remained invisible.

She wished he would be absent so it was impossible for her to fail; and wished he’d be there to notice the faintest dislodging of things when she turned the knob. That slight tuft of air, the inaudible click. She hoped he would seize the moment, bursting everything open for her, so she wouldn’t have to. She wanted him there on the other side of things, in wait, all five senses straining to receive the message.

Entirely comfortable being confrontational, it seemed she was entirely uncomfortable with actual confrontations.

She had a way.

So when she mentioned that they’d have to drink a lot of champagne to get something going again, and said people have to have sex to have children it was in their tiny kitchen some morning, likely slipped into some other conversation about something else that had nothing to do with the topic of children and birthing them. Perhaps she mentioned an interesting conversation she’d had with someone else, which had made her think…

She was standing, most likely, and putting food in her mouth. It was probable she didn’t allow much time to speak. Perhaps she asked and answered her own questions, assuming this or that. Getting on a roll.

Odds were he let her speak, listening intensely, trying to understand what she really meant, what she really wanted, while trying to determine what on earth he felt about it all. Most likely he let her speak with herself, uncertain what to say more than he was curious about how the conversation with herself would go. Mark, also avoidant, like her, if differently so.

Did she recall he was washing the dishes at the time, his back to her?

She remembered him. Putting away dry dishes quietly while she leaned on the tall yellow kitchen chair, listing out all the things between them and sex. Champagne, chocolate, hotel rooms, fancy dinners. Cereal conveniently stuffed in her mouth, because this was the last thing she wanted to talk about. She’d rather talk about anything but this.

a tendency to talk into the spaces

Sometimes, she thought she didn’t know what he felt because he didn’t know. Sometimes she thought he was horribly unable to explain it to her. But other times she thought she was the one inept at putting two and two together for herself, let alone putting together things that were complex and foreign to her. Things outside herself. She worried she was unable to infer anything, to puzzle anything out.

Then she thought: She didn’t even know how she felt. How could she know him?

She hadn’t realized yet that she had a tendency to talk into the spaces where someone else might speak, spaces in which they may tell her something, maybe what she didn’t want to hear. How she filled things out so that she could continue along as she wished.

So, she didn’t wonder, for instance, if perhaps it wasn’t the silence that left her lonely, but her own sound. If perhaps it was her own voice that fenced her in, alone, without him.

Why?

“It wasn’t always like this, was it?,” Aida said, “Not this bad. Right? Something happened. So: What happened?”

“If I could lay it all out,” she said. “I would love to be able to lay it all out.” She palmed the glass of iced tea, drew a line in the condensation. “There are only gaps and points of confusion and missed moments and opportunities and I can’t identify them all. What is important, what doesn’t matter? What have I confused as being one when it is the other?,” she said, “I don’t know.”

She was grateful Aida was an analyst. In comparison to some of Aida’s clients —  the schizophrenics maybe?— she might even reside on the spectrum of well-adjusted. Also: Aida was content with confusion and shades of black. The tints. Something she very much admired.

“If only I knew.” She continued. “I don’t know which things fall into which category; what is cause, what is effect, what just happens. It isn’t so clear. Honestly, I wonder if there is any ‘Why’ at all. Do you think there is always a ‘Why’?” She asked Aida. “Because if there isn’t a Why, she worried: How will I ever know what to do?”

Aida laughed, shifted in her patio chair. “As an analyst, I believe there’s a ‘Why.’ Or a possibility for one, at least.”

Aida motioned for her cat, Elektra, who was rolling on the grass in the sun. “Gaps and points of confusion and missed moments and opportunities — It’s all ‘Why’ Right?” Aida said, picking up Elektra’s toy from the ground. “But yeah, identifying the parts of ‘Why?’  Rough.”

“I wonder how Mark feels,” Aida added, swinging the feather-on-a-string in front of Elektra, so she would bat at it.

He suggested they pick a day.

 What happened was Mark suggested they pick a day, which was the worst idea ever, but she was trying not to micromanage and honestly she didn’t know what to do either, so she said fine. He picked Sunday—the Lord’s Day—which was funny, although she didn’t think he meant it to be. Neither of them was religious anyway.

It would all be too much pressure she thought, and too mechanical, and when Sunday came around, she was standing in the kitchen eating a banana when he said he was looking forward to tonight. She cringed.  “Are you talking about sex?,” she said. She is not sure why she asked. She knew he was talking about sex. It was probably because his circumspect way of putting it made her feel all the more detached. “Why did it have to be tonight?,” she didn’t ask, “Why not this afternoon, why not now?” The fact that Mark was taking some initiative, while she took absolutely none, did not even cross her mind. He was still standing in the hall when he said “yes, I was talking about sex” and asked if she was also looking forward to it tonight, to which she could only reply that this all felt very strange and alienating. Wasn’t this supposed to be fun, she thought.

What happened was later that same afternoon Mark came home with tulips. Which of course were lovely and she loved them. He had remembered she liked tulips specifically. He had gotten orange ones, and while they were not the white ones she would have chosen, she noticed how well they matched the puffy diamond chair and the planter. They would look beautiful on the dining room table. The tulips were closed, chilled from the florist’s shop, so she decided she would place them in warm water. She was cutting the stems at an angle in the kitchen sink and placing the tulips in a vase when she asked Mark why he had gotten them. He so rarely brought flowers home.

In retrospect, she supposed the answer was somewhat obvious, it being the Sabbath and therefore the Day of Sex, but for some reason she did not connect those things. For some reason she thought perhaps he had gotten them because everything was such a mess, the flowers some sort of acknowledgment. At least they could agree they were in this mess together.

He stood at the counter near the doorway when he answered, suggesting that perhaps, they could go into the bedroom now.

“Well. I thought. Perhaps. We could go… into the bedroom, now,” he said. At which point her heart dropped down through the floor, and through her landlord’s apartment below, the second and the first floors, and through the basement until it landed in the earth and hid itself there. Without her heart she felt empty and completely alone and absolutely desireless. Her body seized and shut. She took the warm vase into the dining room purely to have a few steps to herself in which she could think and returned to the kitchen.

She knew how hard he was trying. This wasn’t his fault, not all of it anyway, it was also hers of course, and regardless: she didn’t want him to feel rejected, however fumbling and awkward it all was. She felt horrible feeling what she felt. She wished she still had her heart. She wished she could feel what she didn’t.

But it killed her, the idea of going into the bedroom like robots, and so she told him how much she appreciated his effort and how sorry she was: She just couldn’t join him. She felt something inside her break. She told him she would be back soon and went for a walk through the winding pathways of their neighborhood park and she cried. When she returned to the apartment, she hugged him and said thank you for the flowers and for the trying, she knew he was doing it for her, or for both of them, but also very much for her.

Later that night they returned from seeing the play. She sat down on the couch with a glass of wine. He stood in the living room’s large double doorway and asked if she wanted champagne. She should have just said yes, she knew that and later wondered why she couldn’t just go along with things. She made things difficult, she knew. But to the offer of champagne she said maybe a bit later, she already had wine. At which point, he left the room and after a few minutes returned, joining her on the couch, all jitters and nerves. He turned to her and said: “I don’t know how to do this.”

A sound escaped her mouth. It was a sound of judgment. She wished immediately she could take it back. He was a grown man and she a grown woman, both approaching forty. And wasn’t this supposed to be something they wanted, not something they had to do like grocery shopping or mopping the floor. Which is exactly what she told him. Perhaps they should forget about all this, at least for the night, take the pressure off, she added, it was all turning out to be so stressful, which was not at all the point.

Now, at home, just as before, she knew she should have just gotten on with it, said yes to the champagne and joined him in the bedroom. Of the two of them, she was the one to get things done, after all. Or so she had always believed. But the thought of it made her feel even more separate from everything.

She wished she were able to connect things, her feelings, her body, herself and him. She wished she could go along with it, and trust that her heart would find its way back, if only a little later than she’d hoped, a little worse for the wear. Perhaps she could dust it off.

Later that night, after Mark said he didn’t know what to do and she said they should leave it alone for now, they sat on the new, speckled couch holding hands and watched a movie. He drank a beer, she a glass of wine, and when the movie was over they went to the bed that she knew he would take if they got a divorce, and they fell asleep.

The next day, when it was bright and warm, sun streaming in through the windows, she noticed the orange tulips resting in the vase on the dining room table. They had not opened. Not at all. Not one.

Desirous of Desire

That she could not make a decision was upsetting—not even a decision about her own desires, arguably something that should not take deciding at all.

It was true she had chosen the rug and the couch, she had united the room herself. Still, it was in moments like this that she worried she was just like him.

She was often frustrated that Mark had so little to say, that he was so uncertain about things. For instance, whether to have children or not, or whether or not he should leave. Like her, always able to parse things out one way, then the other, unable to come down on anything firm.

He seemed to like everything about his life, which to her was unthinkable. His job, the band, his friends, of course, their apartment, the city, even his own family—he seemed to be happy with all of it just as it was. He did not worry much, at least not aloud. He never spoke about change or the future.

Mark seemed to have even fewer desires than she did.

Which incensed her. He ought to be more ambitious, she thought, he ought not to be so content. He ought to desire something outside of what already was, or what was the point of anything, at all? She wished he would worry or say Fuck You.

Fuck That or Fuck This. Fuck something.

She knew she wanted him to want things so that she might know what to want.

It was entirely unfair, she knew. She knew she ought to have her own desires, regardless of him and his, she ought not look to others to define things for her, to tell her who she was.

Who was she after all if she didn’t even know her own desires? Where was the center of things, the center of her?

She knew she was angry with him only for being like her.

When she needed to, she could still trace examples to demonstrate it was not a proper comparison at all, that she was in fact very decisive, unlike him. Decisions being reflective of some sort of desire, she reasoned. She had moved to New York City on her own, for instance, gone to graduate school, gotten a variety of good jobs with respectable employers. She had traveled. She had lived with men. Sometimes she had left, or chosen to stay. Although choosing to stay never felt like a decision, did it, having no clear marker to point to. Either way, she was not incapable of decisions, she told herself.

And still, she wondered why it was she had done any of these things. Had she desired them? She wondered what that had felt like. She could not remember.

She did not think about the obvious, equivalent examples in his life, not then. For instance, how he had moved from London to Michigan to New York City on his own, earned a doctorate, or how he had written so many articles. Had she forgotten his book was slotted to be published by Oxford University Press? Instead, she saw only his contentment; she heard only a silence where the sound of a future might have been.

•

What did it feel like? Desire. Was it something you carried always, but noticed rarely? Finger and toe? Breath and heartbeat? Was it conscious? Did it rise like hunger—all full of biology and

Was it something you carried always, but noticed rarely? Finger and toe? Breath and heartbeat? Was it conscious? Did it rise like hunger—all full of biology and present-tense. Or was it subtle, easily mistaken. Tugging, like thirst? Or sleep?

What was it, exactly? How could you recognize it when it was there?