Some Possible Solutions Read online

  That night it seemed near tucked under my pillow, how could I have missed it, a note from she whom I had taught to write. Her handwriting still looked like that of a young child, all capitals; her spelling, abysmal.

  R—WE LUV U. HAVE FUN WHAL WE R GONE. KEEP A EYE ON THINGZ. HARVIST SQUSH/FED CHICKS. THANK U THANK U THANK U. WE LUV U—R

  I had never in my life been so enraged; I had never in my life been away from Roo. The loneliest minutes in my life must have been the six before she was born; but those were now trumped by these, as I stormed around the barnyard, crushing the intricate architectures of frosted sludge. Looking out over the strawberry fields, I saw the small plants all turned brown for winter, the snakes vanished, every last bit of redness harvested. Unlike the rooster, I could do something about my resentment. That poor rooster, he was left there in the barnyard digging through the cold mud for auburn curls that might or might not emerge.

  * * *

  Back in the city, no wind blew in the park.

  I stood in the middle, right where Roo and I had stood, and looked at the blades of grass and groves of trees. I awaited movement. But the park was still. The sky was gray and quiet, everything bathed in flat city light. The wool skirt weighed on my hips. The starched shirt gripped my throat like a pair of hands.

  Mrs. Penelope had greeted me mistrustfully. She was not used to hitchhikers showing up on her doorstep at five in the morning. She wrapped her silken peacock robe tighter around her thin, ladylike frame. “Where’s the other one?” she said. Warily, she led me to our old room. Another pair of girls was sleeping in our bed. Mrs. Penelope ordered the elderly maintenance man to bring up a cot. There was no one with whom to share the minor adventures I’d experienced on my journey back to the city, so I let those hours spent traveling slide into gray oblivion.

  * * *

  Our trick for not crying when we had to go into the freezer no longer worked. I couldn’t envision God pinching my tear ducts, and I came out crying. But not the desired kind of tearing up that makes one’s eyes incandescent; this was true crying, the kind that makes makeup and men run. I kept getting sent back to Mrs. Penelope’s with the early shift of girls, those who were less slender or more awkward or partnerless. Pairs of girls were always better off. And pairs of identical twins—well, obviously. The two girls with whom I now shared our old room were new to it, young and scared, which made them irresistible, and they’d creep in quiet, exhausted, hours after I’d settled into my flimsy cot. They were neither friendly nor unfriendly to me, as impeccably gray as the city itself, and mournfully I observed between them the desperate, joyous intimacy I’d once known.

  * * *

  Mrs. Penelope the Lady leaned against the doorframe of the kitchen, luxuriously smoking a cigarette, while I ate undercooked scrambled eggs.

  “Do I need to say it?” she said, blowing out.

  I looked up at her, terrified.

  “You ain’t no good no more.” It was always a bad sign when Mrs. Penelope slipped into trashy grammar. “Watcha thinkin, hidin in corners all night away from the guys, lettin your makeup run and wearin dirty underwear?”

  “When Roo comes back I’ll be good again.”

  “‘When Roo comes back I’ll be good again,’” she parroted. “She ain’t comin back.”

  “What do you mean?” Hope flooded me. “You know where she is?”

  Mrs. Penelope smoked.

  “She did all the work fer the both of you.”

  My fork clattered to the floor. I stood up noisily, pushing my chair back across the linoleum.

  “We worked together as identical twins,” I hissed, “which is how we brought in all that dirty slutty cash for you, Missy.” I couldn’t believe I’d called her Missy; that’s what she used to call us.

  Mrs. Penelope smoked and laughed and for half a second looked a little bit sad.

  “Sweetheart, you two ain’t identical twins. You ain’t even twins. You ain’t even sisters. Didn’tcha ever notice how you don’t look at all alike except fer your size and your hair extensions? In dim rooms men believe anything.”

  * * *

  In the park there was a stone bridge built before the climate was controlled. Orange lichen grew on it and beneath it there were places where one could sleep. I thought I was alone but when I woke there were people squeezed in beside me. They had bad breath, it smelled like Coca-Cola and dead squirrels, but they were friendly and didn’t mind being held too tightly at night. Soon enough I could out-collect them when it came to five-cent bottles. I found a lighter in a sidewalk grate; we used it to roast the softening eggplants someone discovered behind the grocery. I avoided the other associations I had with eggplant, the darkness of its skin against the tan skin of its harvester. I shat in the pleasant autumnal groves of the park. There was never any wind. My hair became matted, my woolen skirt lighter as its fibers wore away. I tried to pump my heart full of joy. I thought sex under these circumstances was supposed to be wonderful. I tried to develop a particular affinity for one of them, the kind of thing where we might say, The two of us, we’re a team, this is our life and we’re making it together. We did special things, shared tips about where to find glass bottles and split a candy bar found on the sidewalk and went on nighttime walks not to scavenge but just for fun. We whooped and joked and taunted and smoked discarded cigarettes. But that person disappointed me again and again. In all honesty, this new team didn’t hold a candle to the one I’d been on my whole life. I did push-ups and my muscles grew. You’re depressed, the vagrants told me. Seriously depressed.

  * * *

  When I rang Mrs. Penelope’s doorbell, she refused to let me enter and instead called the fat policeman, as I’d known she would. I didn’t protest when he arrived and handcuffed me to myself. Once again we traveled the endless windless city blocks. This time I refused to talk. I refused his peanut M&Ms. “Are you a fucking deaf-mute?” he said.

  * * *

  At sundown, a pregnant woman stood in the barnyard. She wore a white apron and from it she grabbed seed to toss to the chickens clustering around her. In the hut behind her a candle gleamed in a foggy window. This woman was composed of many kinds of roundness: her cheeks, her shoulders, her tits, her belly, her bum. She looked soft to the touch, lovely. The mother everyone yearns for. In the window where the candle glowed a thin man was stirring something in an enormous black pot. I stumbled out of the police car, still handcuffed to myself.

  “Why didn’t you tell me!” I shrieked.

  She looked up and smiled, her eyes drugged with tranquillity. She tried to hurry to me but her body was slow.

  “Dearest,” she said. Her voice was low and warm, in an unfamiliar register. She had never before called me “Dearest.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me,” I squeaked again.

  She gestured with her head to the policeman, who strolled over and unlocked the handcuffs and got back in the police car and went back to the city. Then she held me.

  “Where did you go?” I moaned into her soft shoulder. “Why did you leave me?”

  “Dearest,” she said in that odd adult voice. “All those nights we stayed up, playing cards and banjo and everything. You know how Alex and I talked.”

  “Alex? Who’s Alex?” I said.

  “How we made plans. The three of us right there at the table.”

  I remembered myself drifting, not listening, carried upward and away by the warmth of food and fire.

  “We knew the baby was coming. We were so eager to get married. We were so grateful to you. How calmly you took it. How generous you were with us, with me. With your love. We were horrified when we got back and you weren’t here. We asked the policeman to track you down. And here you are, back at home, dearest, Aunt Rose—”

  I stiffened, pulled myself away from her soft, soft body.

  “We aren’t twins,” I said. “We aren’t even fucking sisters. We’re not related.”

  In the abandoned bunkhouse the callous wind blew between the cra
cks. I shared the building with thirty-nine invisible farmhands. In the morning my brain was cold and clear, calm with hatred.

  * * *

  Every time she said “Alex” I couldn’t help thinking, “Who’s Alex?” She brought me porridge in a wooden bowl, carrying it with both hands like something precious, the bowl an extension of her roundness. Sitting beside the fire, she massaged my hands, as though I was the one about to undergo intolerable physical pain. The warmth of her fingers on mine soothed me into a rare benevolent mood, and I told her she had healing hands; she exchanged a private look with the thin man and I curled my fingers and pulled them away. She asked if I wished to name the baby and I told her I did not. When she questioned me about my time in the city, I overemphasized the loveliness and wildness of the people I’d known in the park, and my tenderness toward them; I enjoyed searching her face for hints of envy. When the baby was ugly and newborn, I heard her fighting with the thin man in the hut. After suppressing my instinct to barge through the door, I couldn’t suppress a grin. Once, when she was so exhausted from the baby she went to bed before sundown, I came into the hut and sat beside the fire with the thin man. I wasn’t wearing a bra. He played the banjo softly. Slowly I unbuttoned my shirt. My breasts, small and flawless, no crust of dried milk, no distended nipples. He looked up from the banjo and saw what I was showing him. He shut his eyes, but not before I could see disgust and fascination mingling in them; not before the bedroom door cracked open a sliver and then slammed shut. He and I twisted our necks, looking over at the door. I buttoned my shirt and left the hut and went to the windy bunkhouse.

  Late at night, more screaming from the hut. A baby screaming, joined by a woman screaming and a man too. In the morning, they were all three exhausted and united. Soon the first snowflake would fall. They came out into the barnyard, the small family, and stood there together huddling under the great heavy sky. A gray wool blanket wrapped around them. They looked at me. Not with hatred but with something else. How humble they were, she and her husband and her child, peasants on the first day of snow. Now she and I looked nothing alike.

  * * *

  Everything I owned could be folded into a single bandanna and so it was. I strode through the barnyard, past the peasants cowering beneath the wool blanket, though I had no idea where I was headed. I set out across the strawberry field, so glaringly empty of snakes, if only she and I were still there, picking strawberries and stroking snakes. I walked for over an hour, my tear ducts out of control and my fingers freezing. Then, miraculously, moments after the snow thickened, I came upon a hut in a grove. It was unlocked, vacant, provisioned with canned foods, dried meat, raisins, oatmeal. There was an indoor pump for water and an outhouse back behind. There was a shovel and an ax and a gun. My loneliness made me brave and mean. This was my place now. I had no qualms about killing its rightful owner. There was a full bookshelf and a bed with a gray blanket. Blue flannel pajamas and a large bag of coffee beans. To my surprise—to my disappointment—no one came to kick me out. All winter I read. I read and I practiced saying “I” rather than “we.” Sometimes, in a moment of strength, fortified by beef jerky and canned peaches, I wondered if I might come to love her again. Other times I would lie there whimpering. All the while, the wind blew. I did not look forward to spring.

  * * *

  In spring, when the thaw came, I stepped outside and noticed above the door of the hut a wooden sign: R’S HIDEAWAY. It was obvious that the blanket I’d slept under all winter matched their gray peasant blanket exactly. Enraged, exhausted, I leaned against the dripping hut: I’d never been alone, never been free.

  * * *

  In the strawberry field the plants were coming up bright green. Slim snakes practiced gliding on the cool dirt. I set out across it, preparing for a confrontation.

  * * *

  Please tell me where else I might have gone, what else I might have done.

  * * *

  She stood in the doorway, her face less full of love than it used to be. But still full of love. What she said was, “We need to plant the peas today,” and what I said was, “Okay.”

  * * *

  Sometimes her daughter can’t tell us apart. She comes rushing up the row behind me yelling, “Momma! Momma!” Sometimes she keeps calling me “Momma” even after I twist fiercely around and she sees my eyes, my ferocious mouth, my hair blowing across my face.

  CHILDREN

  How can I talk about them. The form they chose to take. The pinafore, the suspenders. The broad white collars and the big black buttons.

  “You’re the one who dresses them that way,” Thomas would say irritably. “Those are the clothes you made. And you are their human mother. So enough, okay.”

  Thomas doesn’t believe, and I don’t blame him. It isn’t easy to believe that when I was sewing those clothes there was something else guiding my fingers, something outside of me, something green and glowing.

  I have two of them, a boy and a girl, and they’re always looking upward, or almost always, always pointing up, up, branches, birds, planes, moon, stars, planets, and there’s no way I can keep them inside now that the tornado is here. Their sticky feet rush them down the stairs, out the front door, across the porch, down the steps, across the yard.

  I stand in the doorway screeching their names, the human names we gave them when they arrived half a decade ago—Bill! Lill!—but they’re already past the gate, bound for the road. They look back at me kindly (pityingly?) but continue onward, fast, their bare feet unstopped by the gravel, the lost nails. See, it’s just small hints, the toughness of their soft feet, miniature clues—but that’s how we know. Or rather, how I know, since Thomas doesn’t believe, nuzzling their damp heads on watermelon nights in August as though they’re children like any others. In the summertime they sweat and glow all night long, those two, and that’s another clue right there.

  I step out, away from the doorway and onto the porch. The row of trees Thomas planted soon after they arrived is flattening in the wind, I mean flattening, and then a handful of tin cans shoots past the house like birds of the future, and my dress is alive with a will of its own, and I cling to the railing and scream for them, but they’ve already scooted under the barbed wire.

  Thomas is yelling something, hanging on to the stone foundation, coming around from the backyard, where he was checking on things. I can’t hear him but I know he wants to know where the kids are.

  I don’t answer him, I keep shrieking their names. They’re still within sight, but barely, dark figures on the far side of Field 1. The air is green and the wind is clever.

  Thomas curses when he spots them. “You couldn’t keep them inside.”

  He’s just stating it, he’s not accusing me. He knows better than anyone how they are, always talking to each other in a language we don’t understand, always putting jam on their hot dogs. They’ve never belonged to us, not even for a second.

  Thomas lets go of the stonework and takes a wind-bashed step across the front yard toward the garage.

  “The county said no motor vehicles on the roads,” I say, coming down the steps and across the yard behind him. My dress blows up into my face, smothering me.

  Thomas yanks me into the cab of the truck. The wind slams the door. I pull my dress away from my face and look at him. He’s got a big head, my husband, big like the head of a Saint Bernard, and my head is nothing to sneeze at either. While Bill and Lill have small shapely heads.

  “Center Road to Field 5?”

  I nod. It’s as good a plan as any. They’ve got to be halfway through Field 3 by now. Thomas puts the truck into reverse.

  “This is dangerous,” I say.

  “Oh yeah,” Thomas says. I can’t tell if he’s agreeing or being sarcastic or what. Isn’t it weird how you can be married to someone for eleven years and still not know.

  “But maybe not for aliens,” I add.

  “Spare me,” he says.

  We’ve been through this a million times. He r
efuses to admit what they are. Though they never bleed, not even when they get their vaccination shots or skin their knees. A puncture dot, a raw spot, but never a drop of blood. “Why do they never bleed?” I’ll ask him, and he’ll say, “They never bleed because they’re our kids and they’re tough as nails.”

  But the reason they never bleed is because of their skin. Sure, it’s a subtle enough thing, it’s not like you’d pick them out of a crowd of kids, but when you’re the one who bathes them and lotions them and scratches their backs as they fall asleep, you know these things, and I know that their skin has a plastic quality, a durability far greater than mine.

  I’ve overheard Thomas telling the guys that I’m crazy, on that front at least. I love her to death, but. She thinks the kids are aliens.

  Aw, hell, Mark or Matthew or Tim or whoever says, putting his feet up on the porch railing. Yeah. My kids are aliens too. God, they’re monsters. They’re zombies. Hell, I don’t know what they are. Trolls.

  And I go silently about my planting or weeding or whatever while my aliens do somersaults on the grass around me like any other kids. His ability to deny them is a testament to their artful, maybe even desperate, efforts to blend in.

  “You know,” Thomas says now, making the sharp right onto Center Road, “if you keep talking this way about the kids, one of these days I’m going to have to leave you.”

  Thomas will never leave me, but before I get the chance to say it, a raccoon flies across the road. The creature seems surprisingly calm, soaring alongside a cluster of dirty napkins. I look at Thomas and Thomas looks at me. If this tornado can lift a twenty-pound mammal off the ground, what does that mean for our two forty-pounders?

  Their slender skeletons, their halos of wild hair. Their oversized eyes.

  Because let me be clear: them being different doesn’t mean a thing. It’s just a funny little fact about them, a little secret I know, the way you’d know if your kid still wet the bed or sucked her thumb in third grade. Do I worry sometimes that it’ll become a problem someday, that their nature will make itself known at the wrong times, that they’ll be filled with cosmic longings impossible to satisfy? Well, yes, of course. But for now it’s harmless enough.