Dept. Of Speculation

39

Once ether was everywhere. The crook of an arm, say. (Also the heavens.) It slowed the movement of the stars, told the left hand where the right hand went. Then it was gone, like hysteria, like the hollow earth. The news came over the radio. There is only air now. Abandon your experiments.

The wife wants to go to the hospital. But she does not want to have gone to the hospital. If she goes, she might not come back. If she goes, he might use it against her. But when she is alone, the objects around her bristle with intent. This is fascinating to her but it must remain a secret. She packs her daughter’s lunches and reads her to sleep. On the playground, she impersonates a reasonable mother watching her child play in a reasonable way. She goes to work, hovers above herself as she speaks about all manner of things. She is as canny as an addict. She covers up when she misspeaks. She goes to the Little Theater of Hurt Feelings once a week and talks reasonably about the future, but secretly she is squirreling away money in books and journals. She stays up half the night, her brain whirring and whirring. She looks up school calendars in other cities. She investigates the cost of cars, of heat, of health insurance. She makes a plan a, a plan b, a plan c and d and e. Of these, only one involves the husband.

Her sister listens to the story about the coffin. “Okay, remind me again why you never went out with him?” she asks.

“I thought you wanted to be an art monster,” the husband says.

The philosopher’s sister-in-law ordered a piece of antique mourning jewelry to wear. A gold locket with a place inside to put a picture of the one who died. On the outside there is a small etched rose. But Prepare to follow is engraved on the inside of it. The nineteenth century. Jesus. Those people did not mess around.

How was the bake sale?

She sends her best friend a text. “11pm. Husband still playing video games.” There is a little ping. The husband looks at her. “You sent that to me.”

Her sister is the one who comes up with the winning plan. They should move to her ramshackle house in Pennsylvania and live there for next to nothing. The wife checks the schools. She checks the car insurance. She checks the cost of firewood. She orders beekeeping and chicken-tending books for him and starts filling out forms so they can adopt a puppy when they get there. She fact-checks an eight-hundred-page book about space aviation, then finishes all her grading for school in one fourteen-hour session.

Any flight of ideas?

Any pressured speech?

Any grandiose plans?

Nope.

People who have already moved to the country give warnings: Beware fracking. Check for ticks. Don’t get goats.

Prepare to follow, the wife thinks. The husband is hardly talking, but he packs the car to the roof and gets in.

They have told the daughter it will take four hours to get there. Every five minutes, she leans forward and asks them again. “Is it an hour? Is it an hour? Is it an hour?” And then they are there.