Eggshell
"Will you ever write about me?"
[A bit of dreamy short fiction. On first pass, I thought Lucy’s racketing almost silenced the unnamed interlocutor but on second pass, I think the story takes shape around his silence—he’s giving her the structure she needs and she just hasn’t seen it yet. What do you think?]
You wanted a story so I wanted to write you one.
I’m not sure you know what you’re asking for.
We’re inside an egg, let’s say, a translucent lopsided egg. Here in the egg lots of things happen but they all happen as isolated moments, or tableaux, maybe, like in a snow globe. Let’s call this a snow globe, it’s not an egg, it’s a snow globe.
I look around at our snow-globe habitat and here we are, kneeling together on cool concrete, holding the most beautiful negotiation. You will tell me what to do, I say, asking for, conjuring paradise, and wonder of wonders you say yes.
The next moment someone’s shaken the snow globe and when the plastic flecks settle here I am, groveling, I forget about what, begging pleading with you please don’t leave me please —
I don’t know what changed, one day I could ask and receive, the next day I must grovel and walk back my asks it doesn’t matter, I can give myself my own commands, I don’t need you I apologize for giving you the illusion that I needed you or anyone or anything ever should I suck your cock would you like that?
But I do need you, I need your command to string the moments together.
I need you to tell earth stop shaking and the stars stay put up there and these demon voices be still. And while you’re at it maybe have a word with the other boy-people: How about you leave Lucy alone for the rest of the year; two assaults before August is a little much, don’t you think?
You won’t budge an inch so when I’m free of the snow globe again I cry myself to sleep over your indifference which probably I’m imagining how the hell would I know and I wake myself crying and I’ve done this so many times, 30 years now, maybe 35 years and then after a while I dry my tears and I comfort myself by writing a list of commands.
I have five rules for myself in my list so far. I’m going to keep adding to it as long as I know you, every time I discover something you like or want or need I’ll add it to my rules and that way maybe I’ll make you happy so you won’t leave. I’ll put in things my honor demands, too, any rule that seems right.
But some of the rules you wouldn’t like, I can promise you that, I’m a real bastard to myself, and wouldn’t you prefer to give me your command instead maybe it would be gentler, kinder?
You have a cat, a cat colored like orange marmalade and burnt pine bark. You command your cat, sure enough, and she doesn’t listen so much but it doesn’t matter, you enforce your word, you catch her and bring her inside.
You aren’t even mad.
You will never release her from your command: stay with me. Be safe. Be loved. Be whole.
I am sick with envy of your cat.
I lie on my bed and cry with envy. Why does it have to hurt so much why? and even Why am I so much less worthy than a sweet little girl-cat why? I cry myself to sleep and I wake myself crying it always hurts as much as the first time why?
The snow globe, the egg, that’s our home, that place where we’re together, fragile and beautiful as Narnia when Lucy first left her tracks in the snow.
But, you know, my love is large as the whole world, endless, and this was always going to happen, love was always going to pour in like water over the biggest waterfall you can imagine, Niagara in winter with icy fog half-hiding the torrent, 3,160 tons every second, and crack that egg wide open.
No one wants to be cracked open like an egg.
But you do, maybe.
I lie on my bed and I imagine the egg has cracked and we’re floating on it as if we’re on a boat on the icy torrent.
I pretend I’m your cat — you remember, the Owl and the Pussycat went to sea — and I try to comfort myself by imagining more commands. But I’m too tired.
We drift out away from the falls. The clouds part and the stars glitter. They’re large, out here on the chill lake that spans horizon to horizon, but they’re also ice-cold. I lie on our shard of eggshell and wrap my hand around the ankle of your boot — what nice boots, what pretty feet — and try to conjure your voice.
Be loved, I imagine you saying, be whole.
The boat rocks. There’s only silence, only the water and stars singing to each other.
You have given your voice to the stars.
Be, they say to us, be be be be be