by Lydia Peelle
Classification
Most nights, I don’t sleep. Instead I lie in bed and page through my list of dread and regret, starting with my childhood and ending with the polar ice caps. Everything in between I file into something like schoolroom cubbies, marked with labels like DISASTER and DESIRE. When my husband left, he told me he hadn’t been happy in years. Happy? I thought. We’re supposed to be happy? I was under the impression that no one was truly happy, given the raw materials we have to work with in this life. Since he’s been gone, I keep the lamp on all night. I’d rather lie awake in the light and keep an eye on his absence than reach out in the dark, thinking he’s there. The fact that I may do this for the rest of my life is unclassifiable, too much to bear. When the list comes to this I get up and sit at the kitchen table and watch the snow, the snow that seems always to be falling.
Navigation
After looming for weeks, the day of my office Christmas party arrives. Every year it is the same. We all bring our husbands and wives to a third-rate steak house and get drunk and have a gift swap. The husbands and wives stand around making awkward small talk, and we all compliment one another on how nice we look out of our office clothes, drinking swiftly and heavily, sick to death of one another. At the center of all this sits an enormous, blood-rare roast. Last year my husband stole a bottle of vodka off the bar and we snuck out to the back alley, where we wrapped up in his coat and tried to name the constellations we could see between rooftops. The thing I was most grateful for: he could look at any situation, no matter how dire, and instantly know the best way to navigate through. If I was lucky, I’d be pulled along with him. At five o’clock someone comes by my cubicle and reminds me brightly, for the third time today, about the gift swap. I can see those gifts—the scented candles, the plush toys in Santa hats—already tossed in the garbage and on their way to the landfill. I reach into my bag for an aspirin and find the herpetologist’s card. I just remembered, I say to no one in particular. I have plans this afternoon. I pull on my coat and hat and go, stumbling through the exhaust-stained snow, the wind slicing through my clothes. The university looms on a distant hill. When I finally arrive, it seems deserted, nothing but an expanse of iced-over parking lots. It takes a while to find the building whose name is printed on the herpetologist’s card, and just as I am about to give up I see it, a low industrial structure that sits on the edge of the campus like an afterthought. Inside, the halls are ill-lit and empty. I follow the signs to the herpetology department. Down one flight of stairs, then another, then another. With each flight I grow warmer, strip off a layer—coat, hat, sweater, scarf. By the time I have found the herpetologist’s office, deep in the basement, I am breathless and damp with sweat.
Anticipation
When I knock, the herpetologist flings open his door and beams at me, ushering me in. The tiny room is tropically warm, one wall lined with aquariums that glow with ultra-violet light. This is my office, he says proudly, and those are my anoles. He is wearing battered khakis and sandals with socks, as if he has just come from a jungle expedition. The anoles give the room a frantic energy. They puff and posture, do push-ups, circle one another warily. Their bodies are sharp and lizard-like, the dulled green and brown of sea glass, and fans of brightly colored skin hang from their chins: red, purple, blue. Do you want to hold one? the herpetologist asks, eyes sparkling. When I step closer, their faces seem wise and irascible, and as they swivel their eyes I get the sense that they are sizing me up. But the herpetologist has already pulled the mesh cover off one of the tanks and is watching me, expectant. I reach in and make a halfhearted show of trying to catch one, my hand sending streaks of panic through the tank. I look at him and shrug. Like this, he says, and I see his hand slip in like a stealthy animal. Suddenly, an anole is clasped in his fingers, its head between his thumb and forefinger, tongue flickering, as startling as a bright scarf conjured in a magic trick. I gasp, my lungs blooming with the warm air, and find I’ve been holding my breath. You’ve got to anticipate, he says, grinning.
Raft
I come home to a red light flashing in the dark of the living room: a message on the machine from my husband. I have to play it twice—his voice is slurred and halting. This is how it has been for several months: when he gets drunk, he wants to work it out. I call him back and tell him to come over, willing to take him any way I can get him. He arrives already bristling with defenses, a cape of snow on his shoulders. As we stand there in the living room, hashing it all out, I try to keep it together by fixing my eyes on the snow, watching the flakes turn to drops of water and then disappear into the fabric of his coat. A brand-new coat, I notice, and I am side-swiped by an image of his new apartment, where I’ve never been, all the furniture I know he has treated himself to—top of the line, paid on credit, same-day delivery, as if he can buy his way back to a beginning. Exhausted, I collapse into him, and he pilots me towards the bed, but when we make love I feel as if I am struggling for a grip on a slippery raft, trying in vain to pull myself up. Afterwards, we are lying side by side, not touching, when he turns to me and flexes the mattress with his fingers. I know why you can’t sleep, he says. It’s obvious. What you need are individually wrapped coils. When he falls asleep I turn on the light and watch his eyes flutter in a dream. I imagine all his women, in there with him. I close my eyes and picture them, one by one, lingering on the torturous details: their optimism, their young skin, their white teeth flashing as they smile at him across his expensive new bed. But in between, I find I keep seeing the herpetologist’s office. Familiar, like an illused back room of my mind: the glow of the lamps, the dust-cloaked bookshelves, the anoles—a many-colored bouquet.
Adaptation
On the coldest day of December, the heat goes out at work. I sit hunched at my desk, freezing, my hands pulled up into my sleeves, dreaming about the tropical warmth of the lamps in the herpetologist’s office. I get up, switch off the computer, and go. Outside, a thick sleet is falling, turning the city the color of asphalt. The cold air slices through my clothes. When I arrive I try to think up a reason for why I’ve returned, but the herpetologist takes my coat without question and in fact seems overjoyed to see me. Let me show you the lab, he says, clasping my arm. Is it as warm as your office? I ask sheepishly. Warmer! he says. Come on. Our shoes squeak on the linoleum as we walk down the long hall. No one else seems to be around. He opens the door of the lab with a key on his crowded ring. At first, the room seems full of empty aquariums. Then, slowly, as the herpetologist leads me from one to the next, the animals reveal themselves. There is a sidewinder and a hellbender. There is a chuckwalla from Texas that, when it sees us, rushes between two rocks in its habitat and puffs itself up until it is wedged tightly in. There is a nightmarish creature from Australia called a thorny devil, with spines that have spines. Its Latin name, typed on a card taped to its aquarium, is Moloch horridus. In the next cage, a giant Gila monster sleeps under a heat lamp, its sides pooled out around it, POISONOUS! written in red on its card. A brilliant green gecko uses its tongue to wipe its eyes. The herpetologist’s face is shining. All these diverse adaptations, with one common goal, he says. To live to see tomorrow. He turns abruptly towards the back of the room, tripping over a cardboard box full of crickets. Come here, he says, motioning, and I go to him and watch a barking tree frog, an impossible, unnatural yellow, delicately eat a fly out of his hand.
Natural History
My husband and I sit side by side on the couch in the light of one lamp. We say the same things we always do, slicing back through the scar tissue in one another’s heart. I’ve always felt, he says, that you never had any hope for us. I stare at the puddle of melted snow around his boots by the front door, no idea where to begin. My hopelessness extends to include the entire human race. We’ve mortgaged our lives, ruined the planet, and with modern technology rendered ourselves nearly obsolete. What is there to hope for? Who is equipped to take on what’s to come? I saw our love as a fallout shelter for the future, and t
hought he did too. But all along he’d been with other women, with whom, he told me, he could have fun. Fun. When we make love I stare up at the ceiling, already imagining him pulling his pants back on, sliding into those boots, sneaking out soundlessly in the morning while I squeeze my eyes shut, feigning sleep.
Night Vision
I come home the next evening to find a dark snake draped across the foot of the bed. Motionless, waiting for my next move. I freeze, thrilled to the sheer shock of it. My pulse rips with terror and delight. Fingers quivering, I switch on the light. But it is only my husband’s limp black sock, left from last night. Caught where it landed when we pulled off our clothes once words had failed us, as they always have.
Spadefoot Toad
Walking home from work, I go far out of my way to pass the university. I descend the steps to the herpetologist’s office with as much sense of purpose as if I have been given my own key. He is at his desk when I arrive, and he looks up from his papers and tells me about the spadefoot toad. You’re lucky to see one in the wild, he says. They burrow deep, deep in the ground. They’ve been found, unharmed, among the embers of brushfires. And, he says, dropping his voice, leaning in close, they freeze solid in winter. Solid. Like an ice cube. You could actually pick one up and throw it against a wall, and it would shatter. As he says this, he makes the motion one would make to dash a frog against a wall, as if sidearming a tennis ball. His glasses slip off with the effort, and he fumbles for them with both hands. The silence that follows is intimate and close. Startled by this, I search his face, wondering if he notices it too. His gray beard is etched in red, annals of his younger self. Suddenly I want to tell him everything, things I have been afraid even to tell my husband. I tried to kill myself once, I say. When I was young. I jumped off a bridge into a half-frozen river. The herpetologist is quiet for so long that I wonder if I shouldn’t have said it, then wish I could take it back. Finally he says, And were you shivering, when they pulled you out? Of course I was shivering, I say, confused. He nods. Trust the body, not the mind, he says, smiling. The body loves itself.
Habitat
On Christmas Eve, I end up at another party. Every instinct says not to go, but it’s no time to be alone, I keep telling myself, and there’s a possibility my husband may be there. I manage to get myself into a dress and a pair of panty hose and go. By the time I arrive, tight packs of people are already impenetrably formed around the room, plates expertly balanced, voices tinkling. I find a drink and arrange myself near the hors d’oeuvres, where I keep an eye on the door and stab my drink with its tiny straw. As time wears on, my panty hose sag around my thighs, hobbling me there. I watch the faces around the room, wondering how everyone can be having such a good time, given the devastating stories I’m sure that they too all saw on the six o’clock news. The only thing keeping me going is the Christmas tree, which smells like bracing outdoor work, well-being, and fulfillment. The hostess comes over and offers me another drink. The tree smells lovely, I say, motioning to it across the room. Oh! she says gaily. It’s a spray! and sweeps away to fill my drink. I carry myself like a broken glass to the dark of the corner, where at least I can yank up my sagging panty hose. Sliding behind the tree, I see the holes in the plastic trunk where the wire branches screw in. A new low, to be failed by a tree. I grasp a bough between my thumb and forefinger for balance and find that I am nonetheless searching its needles for any sign of life, hoping for anything, the blink of an eye, a flash of a disappearing tail.
A Gift
On Christmas morning I step out onto the stoop and find the herpetologist’s book, laid carefully on a patch of white ice. A bright green chameleon is staring up at me from the dust jacket, its eye following my every move. When I pick it up I open to a mimeographed list of errata pasted to the flyleaf. The copyright date is thirty years ago. I turn to the back flap, hoping to see a photograph of the herpetologist as a young man, but there is only a list of his degrees and credentials. On the inside front cover, there is an inscription made out to me: With warmest regards. Only then do I wonder how he found my apartment. I stay home all day and read it cover to cover. I read that, at six weeks, a human embryo is nearly identical to a salamander’s—gill slits, webbed hands, tail bud. I read that snakes have two hundred pairs of ribs and tiny, vestigial leg bones. I read all about hibernation and estivation. In the section on evolution, I find a chapter titled “Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing.”
Perpetuation
A bullfrog in a corner aquarium has laid her eggs. They float in a raft of jelly on the surface of the water, knocking against the glass. The big green frog courses around, kicking her thick thighs, oblivious to them. In the wild, she’d be long gone by now, the herpetologist says. Her existence is a perpetual struggle. She can’t be burdened by babies. But still, she must replace herself. I think of all of us, people racing around trying to leave something to the world as we put the world itself at stake in the process. What’s the point? I don’t realize I’ve said it aloud. Who knows? the herpetologist says. He taps the glass. Ask her. I turn towards him. Did you ever have children? He shakes his head. Always been married to my work. We never did, I say. My husband wanted to. But I just couldn’t bring a child into this world. I don’t know. Do you think I should have? He shakes his head. Should have, should have, he says. Look at her. He taps the glass again. She knows no such word as “should.” She knows only “can” and “do.” I look down at the eggs. There must be thousands of them, each with a dark spot at the center like the pupil of an eye, and I am suddenly dismayed by the thought of the mother kicking away from them without leaving behind so much as a promise. How many will make it? I ask. The herpetologist ticks off the hazards that would face the eggs in the wild: flood, drought, pollution, construction, snakes, fish, turtles, toads, raccoons, other frogs. The tadpole stage is even chancier, he says, and you can just about forget it when you’re a froglet. Then he says, But at least one. One? I think, looking at the mass of eggs with a sinking sense of despair. Which one? The lucky one?
Locomotion
On a day with little else to justify my getting out of bed in the morning, the herpetologist gives me a turtle skeleton. A turtle’s backbone is fused to its carapace, he chants, an arching armature for its armor. The neck and leg bones are impossibly frail, fine as pebbles. They seem far too delicate to support the heavy awning of the shell. Yes, the herpetologist says, seeing me looking, poorly designed for locomotion on land. No lateral possibility, with those bones. He takes the skeleton from me and shows me how a turtle moves: lifting two legs, deliberately throwing itself off balance until it falls forward. Lifting the other two legs and falling forward again. Falling, picking itself up, falling. Like this, the turtle has lurched its way through two hundred million years. Through all kinds of weather. This strikes me as the most remarkable thing I’ve heard in months. Humbling, I say. Yes! But think of your own skeleton, he tells me. The bipedal frame is a triumph of design. Thirty-three articulated vertebrae, all in a line. And at the tip, the unparalleled mass of electricity that is your mind. And you didn’t even have to ask for it.
Range
As I walk through the frozen city, I do think of it, my skeleton hanging in perfect balance. The bones of my toes and feet, flexing inside my shoes. I trace them up my shinbones, the long bones of my thighs, up the ladder of my spine. All the way up to the thought that I could walk for miles, hundreds of miles if I so chose, clear out of the city to a warmer place.
Company
On New Year’s Eve I go out for a walk, surprised by a sudden desire to breathe the sharp night air. People scurry through the street two by two, heads bent against the cold, wearing their best clothes. The men check their watches as if there is a train to catch, headed for a fabulous destination. A man and a woman are leaning close to a shop window, their voices filled with delight. It is my husband with a much younger woman, both dressed for a party. When he looks up and sees me, a strangled noise escapes his throat. I don’t wan
t to see you anymore, I say, because it’s all I’ve got. Okay, he says, all right, not even pretending to put up a fight. As they walk away and join the throng on the street, I get the sense that the train is departing imminently, and that there’s no chance that I will be on it. I look in the window at what they had been examining. It is a glittering diamond and emerald brooch, something I myself have admired in the past. But now it seems gaudy and crude, and I realize I was expecting something infinitely more beguiling to be crouched behind the glass. I hear a noise behind me and wheel around, thinking that maybe he’s come back, but it is just a lone crow, picking delicately through an overturned trash can. It feels as if we’re the last two creatures left in the abandoned city, just me and this crow. Grateful for the company, I raise my hand. Oh, hello, I say.
Las Vegas Leopard Frog
There is a grainy black-and-white photograph of a frog taped above the herpetologist’s desk. It is an ordinary-looking frog. Beneath the photo hangs a narrow page torn from a field guide. I read it so many times I am able to repeat it from memory, or almost. It reassembles itself in my mind as a sort of a poem: