The Pisces(47)

“What if I took a shopping cart and brought it to the ocean?” I asked. “It’s Venice and there are so many people with shopping carts. We could hoist you into it and cover you up with a blanket. I could wheel you across the beach and you would be my secret. To everyone else I would look like any of the other bums who live here.”



“But are the street people allowed on the beach at night?” he asked. “The boardwalk people? It’s one thing when you come to me alone at night, looking as you do. You’re one body, a woman in a dress. Coast Guard, the police, none of them are looking for you. And even if they were to come over, when we are on the rocks I can go right back into the water. I can go under the water and they would never see me again! But if I was in a shopping cart, far from the water, and they found us, how could I get free? They would lock me up or make me into some kind of terrible show. Remember that on land I am helpless.”

“What if it wasn’t a shopping cart?” I asked. “What about…a child’s wagon? And what if it wasn’t at night but at dawn? It’s legal to be on the beach then, but no one is around except maybe a few surfers. What if we loaded you onto the wagon and covered your bottom half in a blanket? People would just think you were my child. Only grown.”

“I feel that there would still be a danger if I was seen getting into the wagon.”

“They might just think you were wearing a wet suit. Haven’t others thought it was a wet suit? I did at first.”

“Yes,” he said. “Others have.”

“See!” I said.

“I want to do it,” he said. “But I’m scared.”

“Okay, I understand.”

“But I really want to.”

“Well, then listen to my plan. Just hypothetically, this is how we would do it. I would go to the hardware store, or maybe the toy store. And buy a wagon. Something big enough that we could get most of you in there without too much dangling. I could come tomorrow morning at dawn with the wagon. Or not tomorrow, this dawn, but the next day. You could come up onto the rock as usual. And then just slide right down, right into the wagon. I would bring a blanket, maybe even a couple of them. We would make sure that you would be totally and completely covered. We wouldn’t even have to go anywhere. We could just see how you felt. See how it worked. It would be like practice.”



“Okay,” he said. “I think I could possibly do that. Just practice.”

“That’s all it would be.”





34.


Buying the wagon wasn’t sexy like shopping for makeup and clothes. I wondered if real love always devolved into this: moments of non-sexiness. Maybe the moments of non-sexiness gradually moved together to become one solid thing, like the way that Theo’s scales started as almost freckles or moles and eventually raised and congealed. I went to three hardware stores before I found a wagon that was big enough. It was tin and red and looked like an antique child’s wagon. I pretended for a moment that I had a child, and was buying the wagon as a gift for him or her. Was the child’s name Theo? I imagined myself hand-in-hand with a little brunette boy and wondered what it would be like. Would I feel as deeply for him as I did for my Theo? Maybe I was only fooling myself with my romantic adventures, looking to fill a hole that could only truly be satisfied by the love that women said they felt for their kids. If you didn’t have children, they liked to remind you that you were missing out—and that there was no greater love. No, fuck all those childbearers and their “fulfilling” lives, never getting to have adventures like mine. I was glad that this wagon wasn’t for some snot-nosed kid that I felt I had to pretend to be all excited about but secretly loathed for destroying my body, my freedom. It seemed depressing.

My romantic adventures were something to really be excited about—something that could really keep the nothingness away. As I walked home tugging the wagon, I decided not to think about anything that would happen after. I wasn’t going to think about my languishing thesis again. I wouldn’t think about Claire or her phone calls. Certainly not Jamie or Phoenix. I would think about Dominic enough to make sure that he stayed alive. But I didn’t have it in me anymore to really spend quality time, snuggling and imbibing his warmth. I had begun to feel differently about him now, not as a delight or a gift, but just another responsibility.



I decided also that I wasn’t even going to think about what would happen if Theo got frightened and refused to come with me. Instead I busied myself, cleaning the house, playing with the lighting, picking out music. Everything on Annika’s iPod seemed primed for a spontaneous bout of triangle pose, but not really for sex. I needed to get the moment just right if it was going to remain eternal, stretch over the face of the time-space continuum, and suck up all of the nothingness everywhere.





35.


Claire called, but I didn’t pick up. Then she texted:

What’s your favorite suicide method?

Where are you what are you doing?

I hate to be needy so I’m going to pretend I don’t need you but seriously where are you?

Lucy, I am so on edge and hate everything namely me

I couldn’t get out of bed to drive my kids to school do you think I am an awful person?

Don’t have children they destroy everything