Ben Marcus - The Flame Alphabet

“I know you’ve probably thought of this,” Claire said, her words slurred, “but maybe it’s not the best thing for Essie with us taking all this new medicine, in terms of how it might make her feel.”

“It’s not for her . It’s for us.”

I knew I was missing the point, but I couldn’t tiptoe around the euphemism. Esther’s well-being had become a distant concern, like worrying about the flesh wound of a god.

“Is there something, or are we …” Claire started.

I waited, but the sentence never finished. It dug a little hole in the air between us, and the hole throbbed, until I realized it was there for me to fill.

“The busses,” I said, giving it my worst guess. There was a chance Claire wanted me to finish her sentence this way, didn’t have the heart to do it herself. Maybe I was the one who had to say it out loud.

“We could bring her down there and see,” I continued. “That would remove her from anything unpleasant at home, and then we wouldn’t need to interrupt our work. Best of both worlds, maybe.”

“Best of both worlds?” asked Claire. “Really.”

She shook her head, wouldn’t look at me.

We could, I thought. Esther would not even need to know why we were going. A field trip, a vacation, with horses certainly. I’m sure there will be horses! Just look at this picture . We could pretend Esther didn’t know what these red busses were, and it would join that larger field of perceptions, insights, and facts I also pretended Esther did not possess.

The logistics of getting Esther strapped in a bus seat evaded me, led me into thoughts and plans I did not wish to have.

Was I not meant to think the unthinkable? Hadn’t our hut training led exactly to this, courting unbearable circumstances as a matter of principle?

Claire sighed, but in such a kind, noncombative way that it disarmed me. It made me sad to think that she’d been rehearsing this conversation for days, probably, hoping to sound kind and wise and open-minded. She wanted off the medicine. I think she wanted off more than that.

“Esther’s not going anywhere, Sam. You don’t get to make that decision, and I’ll never agree to it.”

It was always awkward to hear my own name in her voice. We never did that. Never. We openly discussed that we never did that. It was somehow unbearably intimate and deeply hostile at the same time.

I nuzzled up against her. “I know. I’m just saying.”

Which wasn’t true. I wasn’t saying anything. What I particularly wasn’t saying was that I could never send Esther on a bus, either, but by taking that position I could keep Claire sympathetic to the medical trials. She’d see it as an either-or situation. I saw no other way for us to stay at home.

“I don’t think medicine is the answer anymore,” she said. “I think there is no answer. I just want to be with Esther when it happens.”

When it happens? I didn’t want to ask.

“Will you let me?” she said. “Could you arrange it?”

I squeezed her hand and she squeezed back, which once meant that things were fine between us, a language of anxious grips that we exchanged to rescue ourselves from disagreement. Now, it was code for nothing. You translated it and it yielded speech vacuumed of meaning.

“I promise you it’s not going to happen.”

“You can’t, though. You can’t promise me anything.”

Claire’s breathing changed and I felt her sobs in my body before I heard them.

I tried to stop what was coming by saying her name, but this only triggered it harder.

“This is my fault,” said Claire, shaking. She gestured at the street, as if she were taking responsibility for the whole world outside our house: the people, the trees, the weather. She’d done this.

I reached for her but she pulled away, repeated her claim. It was her fault. All of it. The entire thing. It was all her fault.

“Please, Claire.”

“I am to blame.” She raised her voice, shouted into the street. “ I did this!”

I ducked, as if I needed to show my embarrassment to any invisible person watching us from the dark exteriors of the neighborhood.

I told her it wasn’t true. I reasoned with her, asked for evidence. There was no evidence.

“Yes, but he told me it was my fault. He told me! What kind of person does that? He must have a reason. If the rabbi is not right, then I will never forgive him.”

I said, “We shouldn’t even be talking about this. We can’t be talking about this. You know that.”

“Why?” she shouted. “Why the fuck not? How can we not talk about it? How do they expect us to do that? It’s impossible.”

“The rules,” I whispered. Instantly I hated how this sounded.

“The rules? From Bauman? How do we even know who that old man was? He was no one . A fucking weirdo. He’s gone. We’ve never seen him again. We haven’t seen anyone! There’s no one to see.”

“But there doesn’t need to be,” I said. “What would that even do? It’s a distraction.”

“Speak for yourself, you bastard.”

Claire cried hard into her hands. Hoarding, monstrously, this unknowable thing all to herself.

I said, “I won’t discuss this with you, Claire. I can’t. This is a conversation you have to have with yourself. We keep our own counsel.”

“Talking to myself is not a conversation! I have no counsel to keep. I’m alone . You are, too. How can you stand it?”

“You’re upset. Let’s get you inside and maybe try a different dose. I think I know what I did wrong.”

“Oh, you have no idea what you’ve done wrong. No idea. You’ve done enough. Just keep that fucking medicine away from me.”

I stood, tried to walk it off, but it didn’t come off. I couldn’t shake it.

“So this is your fault?” I said. “You really believe that?” I asked her. “Fine, let’s fucking talk about it.”

Claire nodded up at me. “It’s the first thing that’s made sense out there for me in years. It’s the first thing I heard that felt true and real.”

The first thing? In years?

“It wasn’t true and real . It was a sermon. You’re not meant to believe it like that.”

“Oh? Then how the fuck am I supposed to believe it? If I don’t believe it, then why are we going out there? Is it a joke?”

I didn’t know what I was saying now, but I kept talking.

“The lessons are abstract, something to think about.”

She scoffed. “Maybe to you they are. If you want to escape all responsibility, that’s your business, Sam. Do that. If that’s what you call keeping your own counsel.”

“Well, if it’s your fault, if you actually believe that , then fix it,” I said.

Claire seemed confused.

“Make it better,” I shouted down at her. “Make this go away, Claire . Undo it. I’m going to fucking wait here until you do.

“You see?” I said. “It’s meaningless. Your claim is fucking meaningless. It’s the most selfish thing of all for you to take the blame, as if you had anything to do with this.”

She looked at me in high disbelief.

“Selfish?” she asked.

“I’m serious,” I yelled, and she flinched.

“If it’s your fault, do something about it, Claire . Otherwise shut up and never say that again. Never open your mouth about this again.”

This stopped the crying. I watched my wife draw in her forces, sealing herself off from not just what I said, but from me as well, from the evening, from the days that had passed. A project of wall building, face hardening, secret fortifying of everything that mattered to her. All done without moving, an inner construction project Claire seemed to command until she was, in all the ways that matter, gone. Sitting on the steps Claire receded, drifting farther and farther away from me until she looked up at me with the stare reserved for a stranger, all intimacy erased.