* * *
…
I don’t know how Ben did it. I have to call and get instructions about how to get all the mouse shit off the spice rack and the shelf beneath it, because it’s been an hour already with the yellow gloves and the disinfectant and the wet paper towels and so much throwing away of paper that I’ve already undone all the good I’d done in the world until now. But then I have to put everything back—does that mean I have to wash each spice, each bottle, individually too? “I did,” he says sweetly, “but no, I don’t think you have to, just getting rid of the shit is great.” He laughs when I tell him how long I’ve been working on it and says, “It’s a new day.”
I’m starting to miss him. The warm hum of his body next to me in bed. Certain little jokes and kindnesses. A kind of credit or goodwill, extended and extended again and again whether or not you deserve it.
Funny how when you’re married all you want is to be anonymous to each other again, but when you’re anonymous all you want is to be married and reading together in bed.
* * *
…
The email keeps coming. And people have ideas. Don’t engineer the sun or the ocean, engineer us.
Smaller people tend to live longer, one scientist says. They use less fabric for their clothes, less rubber for their shoes and they fit into airplanes better.
Q: What would it mean to bioengineer humans to be more efficient?
A: One thing they looked into were cat eyes, the technique of giving humans cat eyes or of making their eyes more catlike. The reason is that cat eyes see nearly as well as human eyes during the day, but much better at night. The researchers figured that if everyone had cat eyes, you wouldn’t need so much lighting, and so you could reduce global energy usage considerably.
I read about all of this in the periodicals room. Other stuff too. There’s one journal that’s filled with studies about loneliness and how to combat it.
Hunt et al. (1992) found that a woman sitting in a park received significantly more social approaches from passersby whenever she was accompanied by a rabbit or turtle, than when she sat alone with a television set or blowing bubbles.
The adjunct seems paler than usual. He isn’t speaking in complete sentences. Would it be possible to…? Do you mind if…?
They say when you’re lonely you start to lose words.
* * *
…
Later, in the middle of the night, I start worrying about him. Thinking about things I should have said. I know the things you are supposed to look for. I grew up with the list in my head. Do you have a plan? I’d ask Henry when he called late at night, trying to give away something he no longer needed.
I’d talk and talk, but when he wanted to get off the phone, I’d claim that I had one more thing to say, something I’d forgotten, something important. I need to talk to you in the morning, I’d say. You have to call me back so I can remember. A simple trick, but it worked. Get them to commit to the next day, the next hour, the next minute even.
* * *
…
Scientists say that the theory of everything is a technical expression, not a metaphysical one.
But a lot of people who hang out at this bar seem to have grand unifying theories. I heard a lot of them back when I used to bartend here. For a long time, what I picked up on were the grief ones. The way they’d wince if you made a small domestic complaint; the way they radiated anger at your belief the ground was solid beneath your feet.
Lately, I’ve been noticing the sex ones, the people who’ve been all the way down the line and back again. They know every way a person can be broken or break; they know how to be the hammer and the nail. “Can I ask you something?” Will says and I say “Sure, ask me something.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I’m a fucking librarian.”
…
People Also Ask
What will disappear from stores first?
Why do humans need myths?
Do we live in the Anthropocene?
What is the cultural trance?
Is it wrong to eat meat?
What is surveillance capitalism?
How can we save the bees?
What is the internet of things?
When will humans go extinct?
* * *
…
Sylvia decides to stop recording interviews. She tells me to go through the archive and pick which ones to air.
I played the one by that disaster psychologist again. He explains that in times of emergency the brain can get stuck on a loop, trying to find a similar situation for comparison.
This is why you must make a plan before disaster strikes. In a hotel, study the fire exits. On a ferry, look for the life jackets. On a plane, read the card they tell you to read.
Without such a plan, people quickly lose their bearings. Husbands leave behind their wives. Parents flee without their children. You might even repeat to yourself, like a mantra, I have children! I have children!
* * *
…
One weekend my brother and I house-sit for Sylvia. I’m edgy, restless, thinking of things I shouldn’t be. There are so many mice in the walls it is impossible to sleep. They make that noise that is somewhere between a skittering and a whirring. And some animal gnawed through the protective casing on the propane tank. Henry’s eyes look bad. This morning we got up very early to look at a rare and particular kind of moon.
And I need to get my mother’s teeth fixed. A wisdom one’s infected, another is crumbling. She told me her plan is to drive to the clinic at the university four hours away. People come from much farther, from miles and miles away, so many that when you get there, there is a lottery system to see who gets to have their pain taken away. America is the name of this place where you can win big.
* * *
…
Do you want to hang out in the daylight? Will texts me when I get back. I wait until my brother has a friend over and then I go out for a cheat walk with him. We go to a little park I’ve never been to before. Maybe it’s near where he lives. We never talk about where we live.
There’s a little pond in the middle of it. We wonder how deep it is. I find a stick, hand it to him. “Women are equal now,” he says, but he throws it just to humor me.