Dept. Of Speculation

31

In Epirus, there is a kind of spider called “the sunless one.” The Cypriots called the viper “the deaf one.” The idea was to give such dangerous creatures a sort of code name, one that is calculated to leave them unaware that they have been mentioned. The fear was that to mention such a creature was to cause it to appear.

Her sister has a deal with her husband. Whatever happens, keep it like in the fifties. Not one word ever. Make sure she’s a nobody.

Towards the end, the baby hadn’t been growing quite as she should be and so once a week the doctors had the wife come in to be tested. She’d sit in a recliner, hooked up to the machines, waiting to hear the heartbeat. Each time, the wife feared she wouldn’t hear it, but then there it would be, a sound like horses galloping. The way he looked at her when they heard it. It seemed impossible to feel more than they did.

Always always, he wrote in the book he gave the wife last Christmas.

The sunless one? The deaf one? The cubicled one?

The wife gets an expensive haircut. She shops for something to wear to the husband’s office. She is going to meet him there for lunch; they have decided to try this. This civilized French-seeming thing. In the end, the wife buys only a pair of boots and takes them home without even trying them on. Later, she opens the box and looks at them. The heels are higher than she usually wears. They look uncomfortable. So why does she want to wear uncomfortable shoes on this the most uncomfortable of all days?

Oh, right, she thinks. Evolution.

BECAUSE I AM A BIGGER BIRD THAN YOU!

She wears her black sneakers and jeans and a shirt someone cool once said was cool.