course. Maybe the pharmacy screwed up?… What?… Oh sure … Let’s see, he’s got about a dozen prescription bottles here. We’ve got Zuffixor … Romulex … Luxemprat … Zumlexitor … Praxisis—and I’m a little worried about that one, the bottle is almost empty and we just refilled it. He eats those like candy … Also there’s Volemex, Zaxivon—although I’m not sure if he still takes that one—and Amulerex. There’s more at home, I think. That’s a lot to be taking, isn’t it? We had trouble clearing customs. I mean that literally. We were brought into a back office and we had to talk to the police.”
She listens for a while longer, then says “okay” and then “uh-huh” and then “okay” a few more times, and then she hangs up the phone.
All this while I’ve been feigning absorption with my computer. Jorek has sent me the link to a YouTube video on skylight installation. He says that although he has never done one before, he has Googled around and found this demonstration, and it looks so simple he’s sure he can do it on his own. We’ve agreed to each watch this, and then to meet back at the house in the morning to get started.
After Bella gets off the phone with the doctor, I urge her to come watch the video with me. I tell her that Jorek has suggested that installing a skylight is a piece of cake, and that, with my help, we can do it in a day.
“Really, Lars? You’re going to help install a skylight?”
My wife is evidently in a bad mood.
“I’ve never seen you so much as change a lightbulb without causing some catastrophe!” (This is not true, but in a marriage one has to allow for occasional hyperbole of precisely this sort.) Also, I have just popped a Praxisis (she is right about that part—Praxisis is, hands down, my current drug of choice), and I am therefore feeling rather mellow. And one more also, and this is sad to say, but I am used to being treated like this by Bella. I know she cares about me in her way; she treats me with kindness—just not with warmth. She addresses me in a different tone than she does Elsa. With Elsa she is pure sweetness; with me it’s just duty.
This is what I think Bella thinks: because she has made this mess of me, she is obliged to take care of me. That’s my working theory most days, but, then, I have a few other theories as well. Is it possible, for example, that each individual is allotted only a certain amount of bandwidth? Like, say, perhaps, a person can be super-brilliant, but only a smidgeon warm?
I’d recently asked her, for example, if she still found me attractive, and instead of saying yes, she’d stared at me for a full minute, considering her reply. “When I look at you, beneath the flesh I still see hints of magnificent bone structure. I see a formerly handsome man who has become too round,” she said.
I had quipped that she could have just told me I was handsome, and that no one was going to call in The New Yorker ’s fact-checking department to confirm the accuracy of her reply.
But let’s not dwell on the past. That is, I assure you, a black hole, a motherfucking bottomless pit that has, for now, been covered only by leaves. The past is break-your-neck treachery. I gravitate not toward darkness but toward light.
“Of course I can help Jorek with a skylight,” I say. “And I wish you wouldn’t make such a big deal out of this. It’s perfectly normal to want a little more light in one’s house.”
“Things in our life have been so weird for so long, Lars, that our definition of normal has become frighteningly elastic.”
On this point, the fact-checking department would have to agree.
* * *
EVEN BY THE least elastic measure of the word, however, the rest of the day is pretty normal. Bella goes off to her dinner. I order room service, watch a movie, and go to sleep. I dream of animals, and there is even a rabbit, but nothing menacing occurs.
One day at a time, as they say. Two normal
She listens for a while longer, then says “okay” and then “uh-huh” and then “okay” a few more times, and then she hangs up the phone.
All this while I’ve been feigning absorption with my computer. Jorek has sent me the link to a YouTube video on skylight installation. He says that although he has never done one before, he has Googled around and found this demonstration, and it looks so simple he’s sure he can do it on his own. We’ve agreed to each watch this, and then to meet back at the house in the morning to get started.
After Bella gets off the phone with the doctor, I urge her to come watch the video with me. I tell her that Jorek has suggested that installing a skylight is a piece of cake, and that, with my help, we can do it in a day.
“Really, Lars? You’re going to help install a skylight?”
My wife is evidently in a bad mood.
“I’ve never seen you so much as change a lightbulb without causing some catastrophe!” (This is not true, but in a marriage one has to allow for occasional hyperbole of precisely this sort.) Also, I have just popped a Praxisis (she is right about that part—Praxisis is, hands down, my current drug of choice), and I am therefore feeling rather mellow. And one more also, and this is sad to say, but I am used to being treated like this by Bella. I know she cares about me in her way; she treats me with kindness—just not with warmth. She addresses me in a different tone than she does Elsa. With Elsa she is pure sweetness; with me it’s just duty.
This is what I think Bella thinks: because she has made this mess of me, she is obliged to take care of me. That’s my working theory most days, but, then, I have a few other theories as well. Is it possible, for example, that each individual is allotted only a certain amount of bandwidth? Like, say, perhaps, a person can be super-brilliant, but only a smidgeon warm?
I’d recently asked her, for example, if she still found me attractive, and instead of saying yes, she’d stared at me for a full minute, considering her reply. “When I look at you, beneath the flesh I still see hints of magnificent bone structure. I see a formerly handsome man who has become too round,” she said.
I had quipped that she could have just told me I was handsome, and that no one was going to call in The New Yorker ’s fact-checking department to confirm the accuracy of her reply.
But let’s not dwell on the past. That is, I assure you, a black hole, a motherfucking bottomless pit that has, for now, been covered only by leaves. The past is break-your-neck treachery. I gravitate not toward darkness but toward light.
“Of course I can help Jorek with a skylight,” I say. “And I wish you wouldn’t make such a big deal out of this. It’s perfectly normal to want a little more light in one’s house.”
“Things in our life have been so weird for so long, Lars, that our definition of normal has become frighteningly elastic.”
On this point, the fact-checking department would have to agree.
* * *
EVEN BY THE least elastic measure of the word, however, the rest of the day is pretty normal. Bella goes off to her dinner. I order room service, watch a movie, and go to sleep. I dream of animals, and there is even a rabbit, but nothing menacing occurs.
One day at a time, as they say. Two normal
Similar Books
