Dept. Of Speculation by Jenny Offill

catalog all the principal stars so as to know if any others appeared or disappeared
.
    They were in the coffee shop that day he asked her.
When were you the happiest?
Something she should have seen then, something about the look on his face, the way the air changed in that moment.
    So how come it took her a month to think of her own question? The one he answered rhetorically.
    Is that what you think this is about?
    And then there is the night that he misses putting their daughter to bed. He calls to say he is leaving work right when she thinks he will be home, something he has never done before.
    And so slowly, stupidly, she asks the question again.
    Why would you even say that?
    He falls asleep. All night, she lies there beside him, listening to him breathe. Her whole bodyis prickling. She feels hot then cold then hot again.
I noticed particularly
, she thinks. The minute it is light out she wakes him.
    That’s not what I asked you
.
    His eyes, god, his eyes, in the moment before he nodded his head.
    Thales supposed the Earth to be flat and to float upon water
.
    Anaxagoras thought the moon was an inhabited Earth
.
    Her sister drives in from Pennsylvania at five a.m. to pick up the daughter. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ll take her on an adventure. She won’t know anything. Not yet at least.”
    What Ovid said:
If you are ever caught, no matter how well you’ve concealed it / Though it is as clear as the day, swear up and down it is a lie / Don’t be too abject, and don’t be too unduly
attentive / That would establish your guilt far above anything else / Wear yourself out if you must and prove in her bed, that you could / Not / Possibly be that good, coming from some other girl
.
    Taller?
    Thinner?
    Quieter?
    Easier, he says.
    In 2159 B.C., the royal astronomers Hi and Ho were executed because they failed to predict an eclipse
.

23
    Researchers looked at magnetic resonance images of the brains of people who described themselves as newly in love. They were shown a photograph of their beloveds while their brains were scanned for activity. The scan showed the same reward systems being activated as in the brains of addicts given a drug.
    Ca-ching! Ca-ching! Ca-ching!
    For most married people, the standard pattern is a decrease of passionate love, but an increase in deep attachment. It is thought that this attachment response evolved in order to keep partners together long enough to have and raise children. Most mammals don’t raise their offspring together, but humans do.
    There is nowhere to cry in this city. But the wife has an idea one day. There is a cemetery half a mile from their apartment. Perhaps one could wander through it sobbing withoutunnerving anyone. Perhaps one could flap one’s hands even.
    In many tribal cultures children are considered self-sufficient at or near the age of six. For all practical purposes, this means if they were lost overnight in the wild they might not perish. Of course, in modern industrial societies, children tend to be protected much longer. But there’s evidence that the age six still resonates with men. Researchers say that many men have affairs around the time their oldest child turns six. Chances are their genes will still march on even without direct oversight.
    Eat the black berries! Not the red! Daddy has to go away for a little while. And don’t talk to the bears!
    “How is that even possible?” the philosopher says. “He’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever met.”
    She knows. She knows. So it begs the question, doesn’t it? Did she unkind and ungood and untrue him?

24
    The wife goes to yoga now. Just to shut everyone up. She goes to it in a neighborhood where she does not live and has never lived. She takes the class meant for old and sick people but can still hardly do any of it. Sometimes she just stands and looks out the window where the people whose lives are intact enough not to have to take yoga live. Sometimes the wife cries as she is twisting