whom I can share my most intimate moments. I am not naive . You are a captive audience; I want that, too. In exchange, I will be your messenger reporter eyes from to the world outside. And your captive audience, if you so desire. Here on earth our punishment seeks us out eventually.
Yours?
Lily
9
It was one of those rare afternoons. Patty had gotten up early—3:00 p.m.—to run a series of errands before going off to work. I walked around the house, checked my email (spam), caught up on some bills. The phone did not ring. I sat down again with my work and shuffled words around, making middling progress. Later I lost my temper, throwing papers from my desk onto the floor, generally feeling angry at something indefinable and feeling sorry for myself.
I went to the bedroom—where on most days I would have found a Sleeping Beauty to comfort me—and face-planted onto the duvet. In so doing, I managed to eradicate from my senses all external stimuli but the feel of cool sheets and the sound of my own breathing. With this fetal isolation came just enough mental clarity to help me recognize why I had become so impatient: I was failing. I had barely begun and already I was failing. Patty was slipping away, and Raven’s letter had been little more than a “What do you want from me?” I could take solace in thefact that he had written back, that some correspondence had been established, but was I any closer to my goal? My last drafts were no good. I hadn’t sent anything out. They seemed so stilted. Where was any sense of femininity, of Lilyness, on that page? It was all
You ask what I want
and
I tell what I want
. Where was the seduction in that? Where was Lily’s voice in all that Owen falsetto?
I had hatched a perfect plan and yet could not execute it. I was not going to give up easily. Lily would be more of a stretch than Lysander, but now I had one advantage: revision. No need to learn how to mimic surprise at a sound behind me. There were no sounds. Only words. I could rely on my strengths with Lily, I could research, then apply my findings. I could write and rewrite my Lily until she was ready for Raven. By the time I rose from the bed I realized I had failed at only one thing: taking seriously the difficulty of my plan. Lily would have to be more than a computerized image, and she would have to be more than a set of cursory answers to Raven’s questions. If he was going to fall in love with her, she would have to be lovable, seductive even, and the letters would have to seem not like some artificial and stiff charade of femininity, but like the by-product of a larger life.
I stood in the middle of our bedroom. The curtains were closed and the late afternoon sunshine had slipped under the hedge outside—the room was suffused with a dim orange glow. It was now a womb in which Lily was gestating. I pulled open the top drawer of the dresser in front of me. Folded and stacked in neat rows, Patty’s panties—lacy or silky or cotton—sang a song of innocence and order, of cleanliness and intimacy. Comparedto my boxers-and-socks drawer, Patty’s underwear drawer was a museum display. I had pictured myself pawing through a mess of her underthings and pulling up from the bottom, by chance, the perfect pair of Lily-panties, but now I could see that pawing would never work—I would never be able to restore this kind of order. I brought my head closer and perused the sides of every stack, looking for a pair that seemed, upon visual inspection, both sufficiently elastic and sufficiently “Lily.” I saw a candidate, stretchy-looking but feminine lavender, a bit older. It was the second from the bottom, and the stack to which it belonged had to be extracted carefully, as to not disturb adjacent stacks. I was not at the mall, after all, where some high school Sisyphus would come by after I was done destroying a perfectly folded pile of jeans to fold them all over again. I left the bottom pair of panties in the drawer
Yours?
Lily
9
It was one of those rare afternoons. Patty had gotten up early—3:00 p.m.—to run a series of errands before going off to work. I walked around the house, checked my email (spam), caught up on some bills. The phone did not ring. I sat down again with my work and shuffled words around, making middling progress. Later I lost my temper, throwing papers from my desk onto the floor, generally feeling angry at something indefinable and feeling sorry for myself.
I went to the bedroom—where on most days I would have found a Sleeping Beauty to comfort me—and face-planted onto the duvet. In so doing, I managed to eradicate from my senses all external stimuli but the feel of cool sheets and the sound of my own breathing. With this fetal isolation came just enough mental clarity to help me recognize why I had become so impatient: I was failing. I had barely begun and already I was failing. Patty was slipping away, and Raven’s letter had been little more than a “What do you want from me?” I could take solace in thefact that he had written back, that some correspondence had been established, but was I any closer to my goal? My last drafts were no good. I hadn’t sent anything out. They seemed so stilted. Where was any sense of femininity, of Lilyness, on that page? It was all
You ask what I want
and
I tell what I want
. Where was the seduction in that? Where was Lily’s voice in all that Owen falsetto?
I had hatched a perfect plan and yet could not execute it. I was not going to give up easily. Lily would be more of a stretch than Lysander, but now I had one advantage: revision. No need to learn how to mimic surprise at a sound behind me. There were no sounds. Only words. I could rely on my strengths with Lily, I could research, then apply my findings. I could write and rewrite my Lily until she was ready for Raven. By the time I rose from the bed I realized I had failed at only one thing: taking seriously the difficulty of my plan. Lily would have to be more than a computerized image, and she would have to be more than a set of cursory answers to Raven’s questions. If he was going to fall in love with her, she would have to be lovable, seductive even, and the letters would have to seem not like some artificial and stiff charade of femininity, but like the by-product of a larger life.
I stood in the middle of our bedroom. The curtains were closed and the late afternoon sunshine had slipped under the hedge outside—the room was suffused with a dim orange glow. It was now a womb in which Lily was gestating. I pulled open the top drawer of the dresser in front of me. Folded and stacked in neat rows, Patty’s panties—lacy or silky or cotton—sang a song of innocence and order, of cleanliness and intimacy. Comparedto my boxers-and-socks drawer, Patty’s underwear drawer was a museum display. I had pictured myself pawing through a mess of her underthings and pulling up from the bottom, by chance, the perfect pair of Lily-panties, but now I could see that pawing would never work—I would never be able to restore this kind of order. I brought my head closer and perused the sides of every stack, looking for a pair that seemed, upon visual inspection, both sufficiently elastic and sufficiently “Lily.” I saw a candidate, stretchy-looking but feminine lavender, a bit older. It was the second from the bottom, and the stack to which it belonged had to be extracted carefully, as to not disturb adjacent stacks. I was not at the mall, after all, where some high school Sisyphus would come by after I was done destroying a perfectly folded pile of jeans to fold them all over again. I left the bottom pair of panties in the drawer
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