by Weike Wang
What do we think? We think that you are both out of your minds confused.
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The official song of Ohio is a rock song called “Hang On Sloopy.” I listen to it and find it catchy. But what kind of name is Sloopy?
In the center of the state is a field of eight-foot-tall cement corns.
In another part of the state is the world’s biggest basket.
And somewhere, I read, there is a museum for all things swallowed that have been retrieved by the swallowers’ doctors.
What I like about Boston is its closeness to the sea, but momentarily, I can see myself calling that strange state home.
I pose a hypothetical to Eric. If I go with you, will you take that other question off the table?
Until when?
Until forever?
He doesn’t think so.
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What the shrink says about hobbies: You should find some. Do you have any? You should find some.
What the lab mate says about hobbies: You can never do science as a hobby. Once you give up science, you give it up completely.
What my father says about hobbies: Growing a seasonal vegetable garden is essential.
I decide to follow an online fitness guru. It can’t hurt, I think. Until it does, a lot.
She has this move called the burpee, which is a jumping jack that goes into a push-up that goes into a plank that goes into another jumping jack. I do just one of these and collapse on the floor.
Then I watch her do the rest for fifty more minutes. But this guru is great at pep talk.
The body achieves what the mind believes.
Sweat is fat crying.
You’re a diamond, darling, they can’t break you.
After every video, she reminds us that abs are made in the gym but revealed in the kitchen. I then go into the kitchen and pull up my shirt. They must be in there somewhere.
The shrink looks over my new hobbies. No to ab finding. No to vase making. No to— What is this? She squints to read my writing. Does this say seek out the homeless and provide them with lemonade?
Let me explain. There is this homeless man who digs through my recycling for cans. I know when he comes and offer him a beverage. If I don’t have lemonade, it will at least be a cold glass of beer.
You give him beer?
Just one glass. Then I give him the can to exchange.
That’s not a hobby. None of these are hobbies.
They could be. They’re my hobbies.
Some people garden.
Plants hate me.
Or travel.
Where would I go?
Or photograph things.
What things?
Anything you want.
I don’t know what I want. Isn’t that why I’m here?
Commit to something, she says.
But what about the people outside of people?
Meaning what?
Every second, 4.3 babies are born.
The shrink excuses herself to get water. I see her shadow return but linger a few seconds outside the door. Eric has said that I carry close to my chest a ball of barbed wire that I sometimes throw at other people.
When I ride the train home, I miss my stop and must ride the train back. I calculate that in the time I have been in commute, fifteen thousand babies were born.
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Our upstairs neighbors have gone on their honeymoon. They married a week ago on a beautiful spring day that initially showed signs of rain. And then it rained.
We call them Mr. and Mrs. Stomp in addition to their real names. She is a tiny girl with small feet and he is a burly man with monster ones. We can’t figure out how they have sex comfortably, or look each other in the eye.
They have left their mail with us and gone to Santorini.
I have seen pictures of Santorini and don’t believe that it actually looks the way it does. No place is really that beautiful. It is just a tourist trap. Once they arrive, I imagine a scenic cardboard cutout greeting them, behind which is a landfill of feta cheese.
It could be that beautiful, Eric says. How do you know it isn’t? You haven’t been there.
I’m extrapolating.
What arrives in the mail for the Stomps are packages. A box that says VACUUM CLEANER, FRAGILE. Another box that says VACUUM CLEANER, FRAGILE. A third box. It becomes quite comical actually; we didn’t know about their vacuum cleaner fetish. Maybe this is how they have sex.
We pile all of these gifts outside their door. After a while, we can no longer see the door. In the same week, we discover that their apartment is leaking water into ours. A small brown stain appears on our kitchen ceiling and grows into a continent.
Does that look like Australia? I ask Eric, who says nothing, is very solemn. We can’t confront the neighbors about this, because they are still living the island life. But in their haste to leave, they must have left their kitchen faucet on.
I find that hard to believe. Wouldn’t they have heard it, so loud, the sound of a running faucet begging to be shut off? Think of all the fish they are killing.
But you do things like this all the time, Eric says.
No, never. I have never left a faucet on. I would have cried afterward, thinking of all the fish I had killed.
We tell the landlord about the continent.
Is it a very big leak? he asks.
Yes, huge.
Okay, I’ll find someone to fix it.
But our landlord is neither punctual nor hardworking. And for many days, no one comes to fix it.
Maybe the Stomps mistook the sound of a running faucet for the one in their heads of them jumping from jagged cliffs into the Mediterranean Sea. Or maybe they did it on purpose, as a parting gift for us. If so, then they are terrible people, I say to Eric, and we should rename them the Shits.
Don’t swear so much, Eric says. He finds this trait of mine unappealing, so unladylike.
There is swearing, I say, and then there is saying shit.
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A running faucet is how I explain fluid dynamics to students. Put your hand here and feel it being drawn into the current. Moving fluids create low pressure, a vacuum, and suck everything around them in. See how thin the stream gets at the bottom, how skinny it is compared with the top? This is air pushing the water in.
A fluid by definition is any substance that has no fixed shape. Gas is a fluid, air is a fluid, which is why airplane wings are curved the way that they are. The top part allows air to move faster, creating low pressure and the lift that you call flight.
I wait for the aha moment that never comes.
Students also don’t say aha anymore.
Eric goes to work. Eric comes back from work. What did I do in between? Laundry? No, the pile is still there. At night, before bed, he still lets me lean into his arm. But there are some nights when he leans into mine. Work is still tiring and then there is the added stress of waiting for schools to give him a job.
Drowsily, he says to me, Why are you doing this?
Doing what?
This. Us. Kangaroos.
He is in that almost asleep state.
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The ceiling caves in and thirty pounds of moldy insulation come with it. Our food is buried underneath, our water, our alcohol—all the things that could help us get through this crisis are taken from us. The kitchen smells like a cave, sulfurous and damp, Pompeiian.
Should we call 911? I ask Eric, who is staring up at the hole in shock. I am holding back the dog. He thinks the wet insulation is rain and wants to roll around in it. But this I cannot allow.
In the end, we decide that it is not a 911 type of problem and call the landlord.
On a scale of one to ten, he asks, how bad is it? Eric takes the phone from my hand and starts shouting.
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We go to stay at a dog-friendly inn for free. A village is hired to fix our ceiling. One week tops, we are told.
The inn has things like doilies on other t
hings like tea tables.
At breakfast, Eric fills my coffee mug and then refills it when I shake my empty mug at him. Like a homeless person, he says.
But we are homeless. Get it?
The mark of a poor comedian is not making the other person laugh. The mark of a worse comedian is asking if the other person got it.
Then him to lab and me to tutor, while the dog stays in the inn with fresh water and food. These amenities are not enough, it seems. He scratches up the bottom half of every door.
I scold him when I return but am secretly pleased that he has left the same kind of markings on every door. In science, perfect reproducibility is the highest form of praise.
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The village turns out to be an incredibly slow and ill-run village.
After one week, we are told, Another week, tops. Give or take a week.
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It could be worse, you know, I tell the best friend, and she says, Really? How so?
The optimist sees the glass half full. The pessimist sees the glass half empty. The chemist sees the glass completely full, half in liquid state and half in gaseous, both of which are probably poisonous.
At the start of grad school, the safety officer warns us that working in a chemistry lab can shave five years off your life. Some things will never leave your lungs, he says. Silica, for instance.
Oh, well. Who needs to live that long anyway?
Because the inn has no kitchen, we have been eating a lot of granola bars.
I don’t understand when I read on food packages that something is chemical-free. I immediately take offense. Everything is made up of chemicals. To say that something is chemical-free is to say that inside this package is an absolute vacuum.
Why would I pay this much for a vacuum?
Also, how much granola is too much?
The only difference between a poison and a cure is dosage. Drink too much water and you will die. Inhale water and you will die as well.
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In the inn with the doilies, we are not always ourselves. One night, Eric leans over in bed and says, I want you. His voice cracks a little. He gets on top and the dog jumps on the bed and licks him from behind. We laugh about it, how rusty we are. To make things easier, we escort the dog into the bathroom and ask him to wait.
It comes back to me hurriedly. What Eric likes about “Dear Prudence.”
The way it builds, throughout the song.
The guitar part is really pretty, and the bass part.
Paul McCartney killed it on the bass.
Pretty unconventional.
Pretty baller.
An intangible emotional reaction from the start.
And the beat, very simple at first but then surprisingly wild at the end.
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Afterward, I let him play me the entire White Album with the lights off.
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Chemists, long ago, used to stir their reactions by hand. I am being quite literal. They used to check for doneness with one finger in the pot. The mark of a good chemist used to be the number of fingers you had—the fewer, the better. It showed more experience in the lab.
Eric has all ten fingers and all ten toes. I joke that he must not be a very good chemist and he gives me a genuine laugh. But then the job offers come in. Including Oberlin, Ohio. He puts a doily on my head and dances me around the room.
The moment we’re back in our old apartment, he asks the first question again. Say yes.
I want to.
He asks the second question. Come with me.
I want to.
Then say yes.
Isn’t it enough that I want to?
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I am twelve and unhappy. I am perpetually unhappy that year because for eight months, my mother hides knives under my father’s pillow and I must put them back.
Often she pushes a blank piece of paper toward him asking for a divorce. He crumples the paper and throws it at her head.
Sitting in the backseat, I am terrified when he floors it to 110. We are on our way to a barbecue. We are on the highway. The argument beforehand:
You are a fool. You are a crazy person. You think you got here all by yourself? Who pays the bills, the rent? Who bought this car?
A decade-long argument.
Soon, my mother unclips her seat belt and tells me to do the same.
We’re getting out, she says. You heard your father. He doesn’t need us anymore. He pays for everything now.
When I don’t say anything, she begins to count.
I think I know what resentment sounds like. It sounds like my mother clicking the car door handle while counting to three.
But how did that make you feel, asks the shrink, and how do you feel about it now?
In times of extreme, extreme fear, the brain is awash in adrenaline and does not feel anything except for the fear. Then the fight-or-flight response kicks in. But where could I have gone? Stepping out of a moving car will first snap the neck. Then the body is pulled under the wheels.
How I feel about it now is the same as I did then. Not great. Pretty awful.
Studies have shown that in times of intense duress humans can develop superhuman strength and lift cars.
I report no such abilities.
Before she finishes counting, my father slows down. A police car is chasing us.
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Eric has never jogged until now. I think it is to minimize his time at home with me. Outside, it is warm and joggers are rampant along the river. But Eric is the only one doing it in jeans and waterproof boots.
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Would you rather spend eternity exploring the oceans or space? A question I ask after he has a bad day in lab. He comes home exhausted. He slumps into his chair. He sighs when I ask him anything, so I come up with silly questions to get him to talk.
He says space, because it is far away from planet Earth.
I say ocean, because at least it is still planet Earth. And think of all the sea animals. We could track down Nessie or Moby-Dick and then get rich.
Also, I remind him, being in space probably feels a lot like being in lab. For miles and miles, there is no one. The atmosphere is completely sterile.
But then I add, If you went into space, I would too. Space, the final frontier, I say in my best Spock voice.
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I have been expecting this moment, haven’t I? And yet why is the wind still knocked out of me?
He has said, just now, Some time apart wouldn’t be the worst.
Perhaps I had never thought he would say it so casually, so word for word, and in the produce department of a grocery store.
Was that a question? I ask him.
But he refuses to look me in the eye.
He turns.
He throws a dozen apples in a bag.
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Deer arrows are engineered to not go cleanly through, but to penetrate a few inches and lodge. Initially the deer does not feel excessive pain. Then the razor-sharp edges slice through the surrounding tissue as the deer runs. This causes hemorrhaging and the deer eventually bleeds out.
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A quote: Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
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I did. I did say that I would follow him to space and that offer stills stands. But I did not say Ohio.
Fear of following the other person despite that person being good and reasonable and kind? What phobia is that? Stupidity?
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Before he leaves the city, he wants to go to a jazz club.
Which one?
Ryles.
But that’s just two blocks away.
He says he likes it anyway.
We walk toward a glowing neon sign. He is in a gray blazer that is slim fit and I am in a black dress that is too tight. All the eating, drinking. But I tell myself, Weight is just an artifact of gravity. If this were a jazz club on the moon, I would weigh less.
On this date, there is no kissing
or hand holding or mentioning that this is a date. He calls it an expedition to tease me. He wonders why we haven’t come to Ryles before.
Probably because it’s just two blocks away.
I know nothing about jazz except Louis Armstrong.
That is a start, he says. Now what instrument did he play?
I guess trumpet and am rewarded with a smile.
We sit on plush velvet chairs. I see a bass, a trumpet, a drum set, a group dressed in all black swaying in the center of the room. I sit up straight, my back a plank of wood. If I don’t focus, I will instead fall asleep, like I have many times at the symphony and woken up to find that I have missed everything. The applause for the encore. The encore.
Right now it is “What a Wonderful World.” And next it will be “Caravan,” but soon the band plays something that has no name and goes on for a long time. The crowd is drawn up to their feet and so is Eric. But what are they playing? What is this song? I applaud but think sooner or later someone is going to fumble.
Miles Davis: Do not fear the mistakes, there are none.
Louis Armstrong: Man, if you gotta ask, you’ll never know.
Later that evening, Eric shares a neat fact with me. He has had a few drinks. He brings his face closer to mine. The neat fact: drummers will bury new cymbals to speed up the aging process that gives the metal an earthy sound. A tah instead of a ping.
I giggle when he says the word earthy.
Your puns, I say.
What puns? he says.
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The breaking of bonds requires energy. This is a fundamental law of thermodynamics.
We walk along the river, arms crossed (me), hands in pocket (him).
The river is very polluted, I say.
Take care of yourself, he says.
College kids jump in there all the time.
It’s three meals a day, and the occasional glass of wine.
One in ten succeed. The other nine swim to shore terrified.
Did you hear what I said?
Yes. Three meals a day taken with wine.
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Packing commences. If he is to start in the fall, he must leave in early summer to set up his lab. The dog is frantic but strategic. He sits on shoes so Eric won’t pack them. He sits on clothes so Eric won’t fold them. He sits inside luggage bags so Eric won’t close them. I try to lure him away with treats—big juicy marrowbones, beef jerky, two scoops of vanilla ice cream—but he doesn’t come.