Creature by Amina Cain

deep snow and the darkening sky.
    I read all the time now, and the characters in the books I’m reading are clear and stark, like the one who marries because she mistakes love for study and learning, or else these things are better than love, or it is the only way she knows how to get close to the subjects she wants to know about. I know that this character is a better person than me. Though the religious scholar she marries is not as talented or charitable as she had first imagined, she remains dedicated to him regardless. I’m not religious but I want to be plain. As long as I am reading, this is true. I am austere. My husband thinks I am obsessed with myself.
    “You are … I don’t know,” he says one night after dinner. It is nine o’clock.
    “I must be hard to live with.”
    “It’s not that, but you think about yourself too much. You’re always doing self-analysis.”
    “I’m trying to figure something out.”
    There’s an excess in him. He sits in front of the fireplace—very close to it—with three shirts on. Doesn’t he get hot? His energy takes up so much room. It’s almost as if he lives in the house more than I do, and yet I am the one who is always at home.
    When we were traveling it rained constantly and he didn’t seem to mind that either. We would get out of a train and walk in a downpour for five or ten minutes to see a palace or a fort. We would look at the palace in the downpour. Now I hate palaces and I hate forts. But I can be outside for a long time in winter, the lit windows of houses guiding me along, snow under my feet to tell me I am here. I come close to knowing things; I am allowed to feel things anyone would be lucky to feel. Even this is excessive.
    At our house, large globes light the rooms. They are pleasing, their copper stems bending gracefully away from the wall. When my sister Maryrose comes to visit she polishes them. I tell her not to, but she insists. She is always trying to clean things. We are both probably too young to be married and our husbands too old. This is what my life has in common with literature.
    “I feel empty tonight.”
    “Don’t be sad,” Maryrose says.
    “Something is missing from here.” We sit in great wingback chairs, observing each other. Maryrose is wearing a harsh outfit, not meant for this time. Her cheekbones are visible.
    “You want too much.”
    “Maryrose, what do you see when you observe me?”
    “Your kidneys.”
    “That’s not fair.” I turn around, so that my back is facing my sister. “What about now?”
    “I still see them, from the front or from the back. It’s what is visible in you right now, it’s very clear.”
    When you spend your life looking at yourself in mirrors you don’t know how to stop, when your face is wet, when you wake up in the middle of the night, when you’re having a conversation with your husband.
    Especially when I wash my face do I study it. When I am washing my face I listen to one song again and again, a very simple one. Everything I love is in this song. And then when I walk through the snow, Maryrose shows up beside me. She takes me to jewelry shops, and to perfumeries.
    “Smell this one,” she will say. “And this one.”
    Near us, other people are gathered around other scents.
    The perfumer sprays a fragrance onto a small strip of paper and Maryrose bends to breathe it in. “Mmmm,” she says.
    “Let me smell it,” I say. It is sweet and warm.
    Then the perfumer walks behind the counter. On top of the counter burns a clean beeswax candle, its shadow on the wooden floor.
    At home my husband says, “What is this? You’ve never worn perfume.”
    “Now I wear it.”
    “It’s Maryrose. You spend too much time together.”
    “She’s my sister.”
    “I know she’s your sister.”
    “A sister is someone who changes you.” Maryrose, in her long-sleeved shirt puffed at the shoulders.
    “What is a husband then?” he asks angrily.
    “Of course,” I say. “A husband changes you