The Ancestry of Objects

by Tatiana Ryckman

  Our grandfather would say Patience is a virtue. He would say Good things come to those who wait.

  Now, now, our grandmother would say, a mask of comfort over a plea to be quiet, to need nothing, to be more convenient. Now.

  And we fall asleep, our hair weaving itself into the fibers that hold us in place.

  When he sees us filling bags with rice and beans and grains we will forget in cupboards, dried and organized in jars more satisfying to observe than to open, he approaches, switching a gallon of milk to his left hand. He extends his right and says Hello, with a smile like he can’t believe his luck, his name is David.

  We do not reach out, and he wipes sweat from the jug on the lap of his dress pants. We wonder what day it is, if he’s coming from work. The sun is up, but at this time of year the sun is always up, it seems, and we don’t pretend to know how people pass the time.

  I’m sorry I didn’t introduce myself the other night, he reaches out again.

  We take the hand because we haven’t been trained to see an alternative. It is cool and moist and soft. It is confusing to be so close to a stranger. To anyone. To hold him. For a moment we think: This is what touch feels like.

  We let go. You seemed busy, we say by way of an excuse. We cannot muster even a polite smile but remember the paid tab and add Thank you. For the drinks, I mean. A

  concession we know to make, but we do not wonder where such a lesson comes from.

  Oh, David says, waving as if he’d made himself forget. As if he is as embarrassed of our impotence as we are.

  It is quiet. Our fingers undulate on the bottom of the thin plastic bag so the desiccated bodies of seeds surround our hand in a loose dance held back by the frailest barrier of plastic. We forget to try to make it easy; we forget that it is uncomfortable to stand with a stranger. With us. We wonder for a moment who will eat what we buy with money we shouldn’t spend as we imagine the satisfying pull of a razor across our skin.

  We drop the bag into the red basket on our arm. It was nice to meet you, David, we’ve learned to say, and Be well.

  His milk sweats onto his gray pants as he mumbles something, but we are already turning into the next aisle of cardboard boxes with cellophane windows, food looking out hungrily. Now, we whisper into their faces. Now, now.

  We stand in front of a cooler, the low refresh rate of the bulb blinding. A child is singing ninety-nine bottles of beer, and when we reach for one, he sings ninety-eight. The mother smiles apologetically without knowing who her embarrassment is for.

  Behind us, David says, That’s a good one. We turn. He nods to the bottle in our hand. Sorry, he smiles, and we think charm is something he practices in front of a mirror. That, he starts again, didn’t go as I’d intended. I don’t mean to be forward, but I’d like—he grows shy and, maybe in a hiccup of professionalism, extends his card—I was wondering if you’d like to get a drink sometime. The gesture is so cumbersome and unattractive that we recognize ourself in it, and there is the same unidentifiable current of sympathy, a nothing that pulls between us like a rope: We never expect him to die. How do the privileged suffer? Where do they learn sadness? How does such a person die?

  Our cold distance has lost its bite or its meaning, and so we capitulate. Moving from one nothing to another is made easy by the appearance of this man.

  We consider his persistence and our day and the days before this one, alone in the house, and maybe in a dare with some part of ourself we thought dead or simply without thinking or from too much day/night alone in the yellowed house, we move out of the way of the cooler and gesture to the many bottles with our own. It is a gauntlet thrown, and we do not believe he will pick it up. We are unsure if it is him or us that we are testing, and for a moment we are filled with the power we associate with sin. The incredible strength of controlling our own fall.

  The light makes him look pale and glistens off the short graying hairs on the hard edge of his wide jaw. The hand, the card, hovers between us like a lost animal, and his look is one of notunderstanding. Oh, I meant anytime. I didn’t mean tonight. I mean—he calculates and grasps—unless you’re not busy? He watches the thick paper of the card as he flips it between his fingers and into the dark of his pocket.

  We know we are inviting a man into the tight hallway of our home. We know the dry air and slick sweat of crossed thighs in the tunnel of hot rooms in July. We know the overhead kitchen light on the Formica counter and our grandmother’s recipes and measuring spoons and juice glasses and cookie jars and doilies and the detritus of generations piled across the plasticky white as if anyone might use them.

  And always in the other room our grandfather sits, reading seed catalogs, and our grandmother is sponging herself in the bath, and from our back on the thick rug, we listen to the whispered tick of the dying clock above our grandfather’s fake leather chair, greenish and hard, and it would mean everything if he saw us, just over the fine print of catalog pages. Just once.

  Now, we think and wait, watching his concentration so deep it seems a willful refusal to see us. Now, we think, as he turns a page. Now—but he never looks. Now, we wonder if we are really there. Now, now.

  Even in that place, designed as if to quell sexual appetite, we expect David to expect sex because we have learned that this is a way to be seen. And in the white light of the grocery cooler there is a golden glint on his ring finger, and we expect him to absorb the mess he makes into the lap of his own life without yet knowing if we want him to.

  If you want, we say. Already it is easier to defer to the desires of another. Already we are ready to disappear. It is familiar.

  The child is bored and kicking at his mother’s cart. She begins to roll away through a shiny spill, the wheel of the cart making an erratic pink trail across the tiles, flecked to disguise filth, and the woman is too distracted by the long list of her family’s needs to see this other small mess. David smiles in a way that looks like laughing and opens the cooler door. David selects the same beer we are holding. The mother pushes the child away as he sings willfully and she gives in.

  At the register, we become acutely aware of our purchases next to his. Of our prospective totals, the numbers like some evaluation of our worth rather than the cost of our groceries.

  After paying, we wait just beyond the bagger as David’s items are scanned. We look out the large windows onto the grocery store parking lot. We wonder if it looks like we’re waiting for him. If we look like we’re together. If we want it to.

  How does one develop a taste for desire?

  On our way out, we are confronted with the inelegant matter of transportation.

  We had walked the three miles and intended to take a bus home, an attempt to fill the day. I could take you, David offers, and senses the new gravity of the situation. No longer a beer with someone new, but a young woman getting in the car of a stranger, the many possible outcomes, the worst of which always seems the most probable.

  We remember that we want to die and think perhaps this will save us the trouble of doing it ourself.

  Perfect, we say without the appearance of hesitation. He raises an eyebrow in surprise and leads the way to his car.

  The radio is on at a low hum. Indecipherable murmuring accentuates the silence. We give directions. A left, a right. We look out the window at rubbish collecting by the curb and think Now. Now he will turn down that alley. Now he will reveal a gun and force our mouth over his cock. Now we will feel the swift slide of a bag over our head, a knife in our side. Now, now.

  In any stretch of silence, David attempts conversation with So … , and ends his statements with an inflection to make it seem like a question: So. This is quite a walk to the grocery store?

  We do not say we have nothing else to do. We do not say we find comfort in the deliberate organizational scheme of the grocery store’s long aisles; we do not say that the familiar packaging ameliorates our anxiety, that commerce is a convenient stand-in for purpose. We say, It’s a nice day for a walk. And
eventually, This is it, here. The white one. We pull to the curb and get out of the car, noticing two ovals of moisture where our thighs have sweat onto the leather seat, and remember that we are not dead, but also that it’s not too late.

  The first thing we regret about bringing him to the washed-out yellow of the kitchen is the casual way he moves things—blue tin cups, duck-shaped salt and pepper shakers, napkin holder with three folded napkins—and puts them down somewhere else. We resent the rings his drink leaves on the wood of the kitchen table before he takes it up for security or courage, while a cardboard square printed with poppies sits embarrassed by its uselessness beside the wet circles.

  This feels so impulsive, he says with a note of boyish adventure that surprises us.

  We agree, turning to hide our irritation among the groceries as we put them away—we no longer remember why this man is in the house. He looks at the things, touches, picks up, moves, looks; always touching, like a child. To tend to his expectations now seems like an extraordinary amount of work.

  We want only to lie on the floor, to stare at the familiar peaks of the ceiling’s plaster, to take our place among the useless objects, and we notice only then that David has not approached us, has not authoritatively taken our body in his hands. David differentiates between us and the plastic napkin holder or the 1972 regional fishing guide. We are not an abandoned thing baking in the house as we so often feel. He steps a few feet to the counter, and when we face him again he smiles, happy to be seen. It is a feeling we immediately recognize and long for.

  The warm yellow glow of the hanging light paints him as a piece of furniture. Like the only thing that’s been dusted. For a moment he takes on the golden sandy color of the brocade couch and curiosity stops us from resenting the time he is taking from us. We do not think about the other things we would not be doing if he were not protecting that small piece of counter, bit of floor. We feel nothing in the air. We are home comma and David is with us period

  David grows uneasy in the silence and immediately fills it. I don’t normally do things like this, he says to the gold flecks in the linoleum at his feet. He wants us to say Me too. He wants his presence to have meaning and for us to say You are special.

  What do you do? we ask instead to force him to be a real thing. A thing that exists outside this New Life he is allowing himself to imagine. To separate himself from the dream of us in our house with the yellow light.

  What do you mean? he asks, punctuating his question with a sip. For work?

  For work, we say, to make it easy.

  Finance, he replies as if unsure of the answer; not saying so proudly the thing we imagine he is trained to say proudly. What is credible in this strange environment, what would win our affection? Even we don’t know.

  Our response is a thought made from a feeling. Something as satisfying as Oh.

  David’s life becomes the puzzle of assumptions we’ve pinched together by frail nubs to explain the bright ironed blue of his shirt and careful haircut. In one seamless reversal of thought, we see ourself in his eyes. We see flesh in a loose lid of cotton, easy to open. We believe in that image instantly. When we are the man with money in our thirsty kitchen, we know we are clearing a path through the clutter of our life. Only a part of us grows sad with this inevitability because now we are that man too, and the power is intoxicating. As the powerful man, we see David, the salt and pepper, and the softness where his beer is going in that very moment. We feel the coarse hair growing on his shoulders moving all day against fabric, we make the muscles in his arms slack from disuse. When we are him, he is just David, and this makes him tangible, possible, bearable.

  You know, personal finance. Retirement, things like that, he adds. And maybe it is our lack of understanding that tricks us into thinking this means anything. That he is accustomed to long days of wading through thick curtains of paperwork, of numbers, of solitary work, something familiar. A rare wisp of wind blows through gauzy curtains. We lean against the counter, facing him.

  What else? we ask in the way people say For pleasure? We want him to wrap his damp fingers around the hot cords of our throat, to make the end easy for us. Now.

  He says, I keep busy. His smile is knowing or suggestive, and though the comment seems vapid and empty, our rumpled dress heats translucent.

  He is a stranger who looks at us from one eye to the next, and out of fear or pride we meet each gaze. His jaw softens out of a rehearsed, winsome smile and he reaches out a hand, moist with condensation, to run fingertips down the hot, dry skin of our arm.

  And your wife? we ask. We are not satisfied to be the dust that covers everything. We must also be the termites and endless, exhausting summer days that make the dust. His hand falls to his side. The corners of his mouth move up, but he is not smiling.

  I told you, I don’t do this often.

  How often is not often?

  Never.

  What is this that you never do?

  Going home with a woman—we study the clouds of emotion as they move across his face and are edited—I didn’t mean to imply … He watches the empty bottle as he taps it on the counter.

  What does she do? we ask.

  Lara? She’s nice. And as if he doesn’t remember saying it, or maybe for effect, he repeats: She keeps busy. When there is no reply, he explains: She’s a therapist. He looks beyond us and bites the skin just inside his lower lip. He has withdrawn already into silence, somehow less arduous than it was moments ago when he still sought approval.

  We reach out, imitating certainty. We rest a hand on his shoulder.

  He draws us to him like a buoy to a man at sea, and we rest our head against him. It is both terrifying and nothing. We wonder only: Who is this?

  For the time we stand this way, we think we could have fallen on the dull sword of a butter knife, or died even more slowly in countless other ways: organizing the bookshelf by color, rearranging magnets painted to look like ladybugs on the freezer. We could have moved the to-do list of pills our grandmother tucked under the magnets’ red wooden bodies three years ago to a less prominent place, could have watched our face grow sleepy in the matte reflection of the rusting bathroom mirror.

  We feel him lift his head to look around, as if for the first time, because he needs something to fill the space between where he is and where he should be. This is an interesting place, he says. We nod into his chest and wonder if the grease from our face is soaking into his shirt. A lot of unusual stuff, he adds, looking for the answer to a question he doesn’t know how to ask.

  My great-grandparents built it, we say to the floor, our eyes open and comparing the slick black of his shoes to the pale toes of our feet, and below us the dark wet of an empty basement, blue-black and faraway in our mind from the pale gold of the house. And, we know, in that dark, a smaller house. The perfect size for a family of mice. The rooms built from scraps of the house that is its home. A house that dreamed itself. A small cardboard fantasy, forgotten and hidden out of view.

  Looks like you haven’t changed a thing. He says. Looks like my parents’ house.

  We are notlistening and distracted by the smell of his laundry detergent and we press ourself against him. He is a piece of furniture with a pulse. He is the bed we turn into a nest every night. We wonder if he can feel the prick of our nipples through his shirt. We suspect ourself of enjoying the company.

  When he straightens, our hands drop to our sides as if they’d expected to be left empty all along.

  His hands are warm and dry and hold each side of our face while his lips linger just at our hairline. His fingers slide back, behind our neck and into our hair; the hands hold the whole weight of our head, and he kisses our cheek. We want to be near the man we saw when we were the man with money, easy and confident and uncomplicated, because we are that man, or understand him best, or want to. We rest against his chest and he strokes our hair as it falls down our back. A finger is caught in a tangle for a moment and instantly we are angry for bringin
g him here, bored with the man who should be home, fucking the woman he loves. Or doesn’t.

  We pull away, say, Do you need to go? For a moment we believe the concern in our voice.

  He looks at the oven clock, unoffended, and says, Yes/He should get going/Here is his number/Call anytime. We have provided the excuse for him to undo his mistake, and we stop listening. We make it easy for him to leave us—easy for him and us. We walk with him to the front door, and he brushes our cheek with his thumb, kisses the top of our head.

  Goodnight, David, we say. And he is gone. His body vanishes into the hazy, lingering light of summer. The house sighs with relief, and the air hangs itself in the still kitchen.

  We sweep everything from the evening, bottles and David’s number, off the counter and into the trash with a smooth and cathartic motion we wish to repeat over and over again. We move to the living room to be held up by the floor, suspended in the room as if adrift on a flimsy raft. We think only of David’s faraway, milky dissatisfaction, of his eyes when he remembers that the man in the book will always die.

  We neglect to lock the door behind us, and in the morning the house aches on our skin. We step outside to feel the cool sandiness of cement under our feet, and a thin trail like saliva catches our eye, shining in the morning sun, streaked across the stubbled surface of the ground toward the spines of dry grass. We wish for the snail’s trick, to carry the house on our back, to be Atlas, glittering linoleum, the puzzles with missing pieces and bars of old soap, the rusted razors dropped into the wall behind the medicine cabinet and decades of dust woven into the thinning thread of the curtains—everything in our life in a constant state of rot—perched delicately behind us. The crisp air makes our hair stand on end, something in the day is clean and bright, the dark hallway stretches open behind us, the house, resting on a gentle slope, pulls us back like a lover, arms around the waist as if Come back to bed and Don’t leave yet, and we think lips, we think David’s lips on our neck, we think them moving from the tip of a shoulder to the back of an ear, we think lips and David could be there, we think about calling to him, the ten digits of him under new coffee grounds in the wastebasket. We think his mouth, we believe fully in the muted reds of that mouth, the washed away pink of his lips and the deep red flesh of his tongue, like a cunt, and in our mind we kneel over him, our cunt pressed to his mouth like offering communion, but we do not pull the soggy, thick card from the garbage: we want him to be easy, suddenly there. The door behind us sways in the morning’s breath. Come, it says. Go, it says. We toe the dried trail of slime, arms crossed. The door sways. Come, it says, and we go inside. We turn the doorknob in our hand and return to the desert of the inside, the ocean of the day lapping always at the painted, flaking stoop behind us. The hollow wood of the door has a terrible new weight like a body, and we press against it, tired but warm in the residual heat of yesterday’s sun.