And Yet They Were Happy

by Helen Phillips

mother #5

  Before my mother comes to visit, I become a warrior, tracking down every molecule of imperfection in my apartment and doing away with it. I find and destroy invisible crumbs, dust, mildew, mold. I sweep. I vacuum. I mop places that don’t need mopping. I bend my back. I get down on my knees. I scrub until my wrists ache. I fill my vases with orchids I can’t afford; I fill the refrigerator with imported grapes and mineral water.

  When I was young, this is how my mother prepared for her mother. Once, as a teenager, I screamed over the roar of the vacuum: Won’t your mother be overjoyed to see you whether or not the rugs have been vacuumed? My mother grinned strangely—as I grin now, wiping nonexistent cobwebs from baseboards—and said something that could not be heard. Later, I said: When I am grown I will not do this for you when you come to visit. And she said: Yes you will.

  And I do.

  In the house where I grew up, there is a grand old mahogany clock on the mantelpiece. My mother adores this clock, which came from her mother. I always hated it; I couldn’t stand the way it pompously counted out each second, delivering me closer to death with every tock.

  When my mother comes to visit, she gives me a clock. A square clock with a round face. Silver, black, and modern, it makes almost no noise at all. It is a splendid object. My mother frets over this clock, which seems to have neglected to mark the four hours it spent airborne. She flips it over and examines the bowels of it. She twists certain knobs; and suddenly the clock reports the proper time. I wish it told the wrong time, four hours early or sixteen minutes late, or it could just sit there with its hands unmoving and I’d love it even more.

  In any case: my mother has brought me a clock, and we are overjoyed to see each other.

  the weddings

  wedding #1

  This is not story-telling, this is record-keeping: on June 21, 2007, HCP and ADT were married in Manhattan’s City Hall at 1:28 p.m. The one-minute-seventeen-second ceremony was witnessed by LMH and performed by a court clerk in a pink tracksuit by the name of JT. HCP carried a bouquet of one yellow, three red, two orange, and two pink Gerber daisies, wrapped with white ribbon by a sympathetic woman in a flower shop. There was a bureaucratic window with the word CHAPEL printed over it. HCP, ADT, and LMH waited in line for a long time before they were called. JT said will you love, honor, cherish, etc., and HCP and ADT said they would. LMH bought them lunch at a restaurant in Chinatown with images of bamboo forests and waterfalls on the walls. Afterward the newlyweds bought a cheap turtle carved from unprecious stone. Old ladies on the street said where did you get those splendid flowers and HCP said I am married now, I am married.

  In Washington Square Park the sun was too brilliant, the fountain sprayed too high, everyone got wet, too wet, too bright, there were sunburns, kids played nearly naked.

  They looked up at thousands of leaves and ADT said: As many leaves as are there, that’s probably about how many hours we’ll spend together. HCP said: Or is it as many minutes as we’ll spend together? It’s hard to do the math. Then they ate cupcakes, or maybe the cupcakes were beforehand, but it was all green and sweet and bright and the events get confused in one’s mind.

  LMH left, and in a French café HCP and ADT drank white wine. When they asked the dear waitress for the bill, she informed them that the man at table 14 paid it; the man at table 14 had already left, and they’d never noticed him.

  On the longest day of 2007, someone stalked a unicorn. The water beneath the Brooklyn Bridge turned to wine. This is not record-keeping; this is storytelling.

  wedding #2

  When my grandfather’s second wife died at the age of 93, he couldn’t put her away. She’d been so happy with him! She, a virgin when she married him at 90! He kept her there, sitting at the table in her blue silk suit. It was touching, and terrible. Meanwhile, he entertained old ladies in the parlor. Once, she moved her thumb slightly as my guy and I passed by. “Excuse me,” I said, “but aren’t you dead?” The funeral director’s makeup did wonders; still, it wasn’t pleasant. “Are you mad about the old ladies?” I said. An imperceptible nod.

  The next day, we visited my grandfather at his bead store. Whores riffled through sequins. My grandfather was kind, suggesting rhinestones to match their eyes. That place was a treasure box. We could have stayed forever, running our fingers through barrels of beads. But we had business to attend to. Knowing how Grandpa hated grammatical incorrectness, I said: “Your old lady don’t like the new old ladies. She’s dead but that don’t mean she don’t know!”

  He said, “‘Doesn’t,’ child.”

  “Grandpa, you’re breaking her poor old broke-down heart!”

  “Child, you don’t know nothin’ about nothin’.’”

  It was frightening when he talked wrong. It meant he meant what he said. My guy and I looked at each other and announced: “We swear we’ll never do to each other what Grandpa’s doing to her. If you or I die, I won’t entertain ladies or men. I’ll notice when you move your thumb. This we swear, so help us.”

  My grandfather smiled. He told us to go where the skyscrapers end. Told us about a rock there by the ocean. Said we’d find a “T” written in chalk. Said we should stand on either side, should look out at the ocean, should say some words, and then would be married. We did as he instructed; there, on that rock, one could forget the whole damn city. The wilderness of the ocean overcame us, stretching out and away like a metaphor for something.

  wedding #3

  I think of the letters that compose the syllables that compose your names: the A’s! the B’s! the C’s! the D’s! the E’s! the F’s! the G’s! the H’s! the I’s! the J’s! the K’s! the L’s! the M’s! the N’s! the O’s! the P’s! the Q’s! the R’s! the S’s! the T’s! the U’s! the V’s! the W’s! the X’s! the Y’s! the Z’s! Dear wedding guests: I think of you in planes and buses, in cars and trains, on fast ferries and slow, smiling or not smiling, your eyes open or not open; however ancestral you may be, today you seem to me like the sleepy children I’ll someday bear. I believe you’ll find the rosehips on this island larger and more monstrous than any you have ever seen; I believe you’ll find the spiderwebs shinier and more alluring. Forgive the bride and groom if they giggle at the altar; they are giggling for grief, just as you are crying for joy. Everything is chaos. Down by the sea, you’ll discover a small man and a small woman living in a small house, and they are happy. Oh—did we forget to mention?—the water served at our wedding—it’s stolen water—it will make you immortal for the time being—and perhaps for much longer—Drink! Your head should be spinning and spinning. You should have forgotten your own name by now. This is it!—the party of which I always dreamed so desperately. I thought only flood or fire would bring us together—but here we are. Your faces should be dripping with sweat. Your skirts should be pulled up high to reveal your fat or skinny legs beneath. Your buttons should be popping off your shirts. When I come round to dance with you, you should make me dizzy. (If/When) I die, I shall be glad to have been near you for these few hours; I shall be glad to have had the letters of your wonderful, fragile names swirling around in my brain. Goodbye, dear ghosts! Hello, dear ghosts!

  wedding #4

  I swear to you: we were all there! Light from lanterns made of colored paper fell across our faces as darkness came. Listen: we all sat on the front porch, those of us too young to walk in the laps of those of us too old to walk. There were three guitars and twelve men who could play guitar, and one boy who remembered the melodies and another boy who remembered the lyrics. There were girls with large green joyous earrings, and girls whose skirts kept getting lifted by the breeze, and girls with gleaming hair. There were men with large red joyous faces, and men drinking wine, and men drinking beer. Oh! It was too much, I’m telling you, too much: our bodies are not capable of containing such happiness. Family-and-friends. There was no rain. There was no threat of flood. The candles did not get out of hand; no fire raged. For a matter of hours, it was as though we all lived in a vil
lage with cobblestone streets. It was as though my mother was the town baker, and my father was the lamplighter, and my cousin was the fishmonger, and my sister sold peaches, and my friends sold flowers, and my uncle built doors. It was as though we all owned small houses and grew lavender in our window boxes. It was as though we all had porches with rocking chairs and honeysuckle. The aeroplane had not yet been invented, nor the steam engine, nor the automobile. Our clocks had to be wound by hand and were always inaccurate. We measured time by the slow ripening of the grapes in our arbors. Our cradles were made of pine; our wheelbarrows were heavy with tomatoes; our brides wore daisies around their heads; our church needed no decoration beyond sunbeams; our grooms weren’t nervous. We were all there, I swear we were! I swear that for a matter of hours the world was the way it ought to be; and I refuse to mention what happened next.

  wedding #5

  Something is happening at the altar: first, the bride’s veil begins to tremble, and the groom buries his chin in his bowtie. Her veil trembles until it’s downright shaking. He buries his chin deeper into his bowtie. His face has become as red as her bouquet; weak-kneed, she reaches out to support herself against his tuxedoed chest, though the ceremony has not yet arrived at the moment when it’s appropriate for her to touch him. The wedding guests shift uneasily in the pews. Everything was fine, everything was normal, until the priest asked the bride to make her most solemn vow—and now, this! This odd, even rude, behavior, the shaking of the veil and the burying of the chin and the reddening of the face and the reaching for the chest, all of which is now accompanied by a—sound! A rather recognizable sound . . . can it—can it be? Are these two young people—this handsome groom, this beautiful bride—are they—are they—giggling at the altar?

  Indeed they are! Giggling like kids hiding under a blanket in the basement during a thunderstorm! The bride so overwhelmed by peals of laughter that she’s incapable of answering the question put her by the priest! Right before their very eyes, the guests watch this shameful laughter evolve into guffaws. The bride drops her bouquet. The ring tumbles unnoticed from the groom’s palm. The bride leans forward in a most unladylike position, slapping her thigh through layers of satin. The groom leans backward, throwing his chin up toward the cross where Christ hangs. A button pops off his starched shirt and hits her square on the nose, which sends them—can you imagine?—even further into their glee.

  One of the guests decides to leave, and then another, and another, tiptoeing down the aisle, all of them slowly fleeing, passing through the doors with barely controlled indignation, followed soon by the priest, everyone abandoning the so-called bride and the so-called groom there at the altar, where they howl with laughter, dissolve into laughter.

  wedding #6

  Because the wedding was a failure, rows upon rows of empty pews filling the cathedral, we headed into the wilderness. We were certain that somewhere in this vast green country we’d find someone willing to serve as witness to our marriage. At night, we snuck through suburbs, darting between manicured bushes beneath orange streetlights. Finally we reached the endless green meadows of which we’d heard rumors. Not yet man and wife, we held hands like Adam and Eve as we walked through the thick miraculous grass, breathless with awe; for once, reality exceeded our imaginations.

  Then. We saw them. There were two of them. They were enormous. They were like the elephants in the zoo times ten. They were covered in fur. They had long tusks and mean black eyes. They were far grander and more dangerous than anything we’d ever seen. Peacefully, they grazed in the meadows. They plucked the grass with their incredible trunks. We could hear the rhythm of their jaws as they chewed.

  This is a true story! It is not a story from any era but our own! In the infinite green meadows of America, we hid behind a small boulder. But unfortunately, that small boulder turned out to be the infant of the beasts. The infant stirred as we leaned against it, and the parents rushed toward us, trumpeting with a sound that was like all the orchestras in the world playing one note at the same time. The infant mewled; the parents trumpeted. With the odd calm that arises from inevitability, we prepared to die. Each of them grabbed one of us in its trunk, each coiled and squeezed; later, comparing notes, we would agree that their fur smelled simultaneously of lavender and snot. We were tossed several miles, back into the suburbs, where we landed on two adjacent lawns in the broad light of day; housewives emerged at doorways to see what horror was disrupting the perfection of the afternoon; we came toward each other, and realized that now we were married.

  the wives

  wife #1

  Today being married to you makes my heart feel like a cucumber, long and cold and awkwardly shaped for the cavity in which it belongs. The new brides are not interested in my advice. They tell me to buzz off. Their nails are encrusted with diamonds that will be thrown away at the end of the day. If I knew where they’d be washing their hands, I’d follow them and gather those diamonds. They’re tiny, indeed, and yellowish in color, but nonetheless.

  Because I am so difficult, we go to a motel. In the motel, there you feel free. Yet I and my cucumber fail you again. We leave at 5:17 a.m. after a few hours of terrifying sleep, during which your limbs strewn over me felt like a hot, fleshy web. (In the past, your arms and legs always served as a shield of blood and bone, defending me from nightmares.) I gasped, got thirsty. My eyes so dry they felt like knives.

  The streets are murky. You could have picked a different bride. Yet here we are, burdened with luggage, limping, and I am insisting that I need a notebook, a pencil, a table, in order to record phrases such as “Today being married to you makes my heart feel like X.”

  At sunup, we find ourselves alongside a wide black river where a boat bearing a bridal party moves eastward, gleaming. You take me to an old library with a heavy wooden desk. The ghost of our future daughter runs naughtily down the stone hallway. You chase her, feeding her bits of banana. I try to write: “during which your limbs strewn over me felt like X X, X X.” But I cannot recall! “My X so X they felt like X.” I’d had something to say about the sound of many doors slamming. I’d wanted to attack you with sharp questions. I’d wanted to know precisely why you hadn’t selected one of the other, better brides. Our nonexistent daughter! She’s so noisy, playing hide-and-go-seek with you.

  wife #2

  The men who killed unicorns were men no different from us. Some of them had narrow, lazy eyes with which they looked back toward the castle where the nude queen was just now pulling open her curtains; some of them had wide, stupid faces and oversized thumbs and awaited bloodshed; some of them were intelligent, and enjoyed making pronouncements with their index fingers pointed upward. The men who killed unicorns—they too had trouble waking in the morning. They too got tired of their wives. They too masturbated in the dark as teenagers. Their anatomical hearts functioned just as ours do. Like us, they were uncomfortable walking through the forest, sometimes hot and sometimes cold, sometimes scratched by thorns and sometimes sinking in mud. Like us, they had trouble believing in the existence of unicorns. And yet they proceeded, crushing thousands of flowers.

  Some facts about unicorns: (1) If a unicorn does not wish hunters to find him, they will not find him. (2) The eyes of a unicorn are identical to the eyes of a human being. (3) Unicorns are wilder and crueler than anyone would have imagined. (4) Unicorns can impale three dogs at once on their horns. (5) Unicorns mate for life.

  Listen: A peasant girl comes upon a unicorn drinking at the brook. Startled, he impales her on his horn. The town witch heals her. The peasant girl can’t help but go looking for the unicorn. A bluebird takes flight above the fruits of the forest. The unicorn follows her home. She builds a fence around him. There are many droplets of red on his white back. Do not mistake them for blood! They are the juice of pomegranate seeds fallen from the pomegranate tree above his enclosure. Happily married, the unicorn and the girl sleep entwined like one strange creature. She clenches her toes, squeezing his haunch. In captivit
y, the unicorn smiles.

  In other words: I am sorry, young husband, for the mistakes I made last week. Our ancestors were unicorn-hunters, and so are we.

  wife #3

  Bob Dylan is happy today, thank God! He says he likes October in Brooklyn. Astonishingly, he shows up at our place before noon. He’s wearing those tight black jeans that make his legs look like crows, but get this—he asks to borrow my husband’s most cheerful winter sweater. My husband has things to do and can’t join us. Bob Dylan stares and glares as we peck goodbye in the doorway.

  In the park, Bob Dylan wants to watch the swans. They’re regal, bitchy swans. He says swans are descended from snakes; he says their long, creepy necks prove it. The swans glide like queens and narrow their eyes at us. He’s in such a good mood! He lifts his sunglasses and asks questions about the pregnancy, even reaches over to touch my stomach. It’s never like this when we see each other. Usually he stalks along silent at my side, grimly remembering the seven nicknames he once had for me.

  At the farmers’ market, Bob Dylan helps me choose apples, though he’s not careful about avoiding those that are less than firm. After exchanging the ones he threw into the bag, I turn around to discover a crowd of kids gathered around him, watching him juggle apples. Because of the reindeer sweater, no one recognizes him; Bob Dylan would never wear such a garment.

  On the way home I carry apples, bread, yogurt, honey, eggs, squash, onions. Bob Dylan doesn’t offer to help. He’s not the type to notice when a pregnant woman is overburdened. He didn’t make it to our wedding, and now he asks about it. I don’t know what to tell him. I tell him I wore a crown of small daisies. “Of course you did!” he says joyously, if I dare use that word in conjunction with him. What I don’t mention is the night a month after the wedding when I stayed up secretly with the old tapes, listened to him sing about all the vanished girls, began to wonder if I was already dead.