Tina Hal - The Physics of Imaginary Objects

They have a terrific fight over mail-order seedlings. Mercy fingers the manila catalog as if it is a letter from her long-dead grandmother, thinking of fat peppers and corn and cucumbers, all in a row. “Don't we have enough problems?” Jake yells. He invokes weeding and borers and hungry deer. He is furious at the asking price for flats of early-producing tomatoes. They rapidly move on to his mother, the times Mercy forgot to mail the gas bill, the number of instances they've washed each other's laundry or had to repark the other's car. Indifferent winter binds the house. To annoy her, Jake goes ice-climbing in a snowstorm. What he doesn't know is how her relief at his coming home safely will be mixed with regret that no terrible thing happened to punish him. To escape her own pettiness, she goes snowshoeing in the same storm, taking the dog with her for company. The ice packs into the dog's paws until trickles of blood dot its footprints, and she pretends not to notice. In the snow, she could be anyone, a different person entirely. Shush, shush go the snowshoes until she is lost in the woods, the storm blown up into a near blizzard, and she finds a felled tree to sit down on, tucks the shivering dog behind her knees, waits for it to pass.

Thighs pink and prickled with the change from blowing snow to gusting central heat, Mercy sips cocoa in her rabbit-embroidered robe. Jake drops tiny marshmallows one by one into her mug. When they kiss, everything gets warmer. There is a slightly moldy leftover loveseat in the kitchen, too big to fit through the back door, and they end up there, sweaty, laughing, and underneath a sort of relief, an unexpected thaw. In the corner, the dog snuffles for crumbs. Outside, everything is frozen, muffled, the beautiful blue of midwinter. Inside, their cramped lovemaking beats like a pulse, the stutter of blood under skin. Mercy feels it when she touches him, the hundreds of other times they've done this. Suddenly, in the midst of the sweating and panting and giggling, the small jokes and sighs and misplaced elbows, she knows, feels the child locking into place inside her, glowing, a minute combustion spreading light. The snow continues to fall, completing its slow refiguring, the swells and drifts that make the world strange.

The host tells them about his research on the mating rituals of fireflies. The male and female flash precisely timed patterns as courtship. Under the table their legs bump, Morse-code via knee-caps. After dinner, the hostess opens the fireplace flue and a dead bird drops out. Jake cradles it in paper towels and takes it to the outside trash. Returning, he trips and puts his hand through the door-side window. Blood drips across new carpet, and Jake catches it in the cup of his hand. A bird, a cut, the night is over before a match is struck. Days later, Mercy kisses the rind of scab that bisects his palm. She blows his hair out of his eyes. Frost limes the windows. Ice slides down the roof. Tree branches crack where they touch.

She watches two blue lines snake up in the plastic window, charmed by her urine. Seven weeks late, because seven is a magic number, the blood seeps out of her and stains the mattress. She dreams of jars filled with ruby red marmalade. She dreams lids sterilizing, flat brass disks, so pleasing with their crimson rubber rings. She dreams her grandmother peeling oranges in one long strip, a sun shedding its skin. The next morning she reads about a man who saw Jesus in a fishstick just as he was about to feed it to his dog, auctioned it on EBay, and made $200,000. Her high-school friend's father told her naked women were everywhere, and then he pointed one out on the macaroni and cheese box and in the Bailey's ad and on the kitchen windowpane. The cinnamon toast burned as he ran his hand under her blouse, and her friend sang from the basement, “Where have you gone?”

This is the year of beheadings, garage sales, rising gas prices. At the Italian market, Mercy says, “How are we going to afford a child if we can't afford olive oil?” The old men owners tsk over the fresh pasta cooler. To mollify them, she buys two pounds of whole wheat linguine, the least popular noodle. The old men take turns easing the nests of pasta into a recycled bread bag. They tell her not to refrigerate it, to leave it in the dark pantry. “Let it rest,” they repeat. Mercy and Jake argue over the cost of haircuts, video memberships, bottles of wine for friends' parties, plain black T-shirts, camping equipment, and photo developing. He keeps adjusting the setting on the hot water heater so the shower runs cold just as she starts shaving her left leg. She never says the phrase, “If you hadn't quit your job,” but she holds it there in the space between them, like any one of the objects that cause them such unhappiness.

Mercy finds a white X chalked next to the hose holder. She crouches to touch it and the lines smear into the slate-colored siding. It took months to decide on the color, and then they painted the house themselves, in dribs and drabs over two weeks last summer. Sometimes still, pulling into the driveway at dusk, one of them will say, “Is it too dark?” Now, wrapping the hose around the metal bracket, she wonders how the X got there. A survey crew of some sort recording a gas line or a water main? Perhaps a child playing a skewed game of tic-tac-toe? The yard is heavy with melted snow; crusts of ice crackle in the shade. Mercy thinks of Xs painted onto trees in the forest, marking them for removal. She thinks of a tangle of pipes stretching like roots through the neighborhood. She imagines her neighbors all showering at once, chorus of waters underfoot.

The little yellow house is dark, always dark. Oboes and clarinets hang in rows on the living room wall, moaning in the draft. Her niece puts two sticks of gum in her mouth the minute they get in the car. She is fifteen and collects antique birdwatching guides. They pick up her friend and head downtown. The girls huddle in the back seat whispering about sloe gin fizzes. “I could only drink a sip,” her niece says. Streetlights trill in the increasing rain. “He has a bad-ass tattoo of Andy Warhol,” the friend says. The girls pull on their work clothes in the backseat. The tax-prep franchise hires them to stand on the street corner and wave at cars. Her niece is the Statue of Liberty with a turquoise nylon poncho and a rubber torch. The friend is Uncle Sam with a tall striped hat and a moustache that is already peeling. They tumble out of the car singing thank yous and start dancing in what Mercy assumes is a patriotic manner under the Don't Walk sign. Uncle Sam snaps her suspenders at two paramedics stalled at the red light. The Statue of Liberty grins despite the green run-off from her foam spikes that patinas her face. Under the front seat, the clarinet rattles in its plastic case, forgotten again.

This is the year of recalled vaccines and hoarding and old people fainting in line. He tells her he is learning to speak French to impress women. “Potential dates,” Mercy says. Morris nods and says, “From a set of tapes for the car — French for Commuters.” The river is fat from the spring melt, and sticks and strange objects hurtle by the boulder where they are perched. “Au voleur,” Morris says, “Stop thief.” A sour cream container rushes past them. “Je suis de passage , I'm just passing through, Je suis célibataire , I'm single, Il pleut , it's raining.” “Impressive,” says Mercy. By midwinter, the rationing and panicked purchases from Canada resulted in doctors' refrigerators filled with rapidly expiring vials. Morris takes Mercy's hand and announces, “Avec des glaçons , on the rocks.” “Different rocks,” she says. “Je ne peux pas bouger la jambe , I can't move my leg, Il manque un couteau , there is a knife missing.” Caught in an eddy are a pink dishwashing glove and a bunch of dead leaves. “Je crois que je sui perdu , I think I'm lost.” Mercy kisses Morris on the mouth, grabbing the back of his head so hard that he grunts. Their teeth touch and she tastes the rough sugar from the donuts, grainy and brittle at the edges of their lips. Then she is facing the river again, panting, feeling a pain in her throat. Something that might be a dead animal floats by, a mass of hair and skin. Morris is grinning, and she says, “Stop it; it's not a good thing.” She says, “This doesn't change anything.” He says, “Je comprends un peu.”