Some Possible Solutions

by Helen Phillips

  * * *

  At home there truly was respite. I stood in front of the mirror, naked, breathing deeply, calmer with each second I spent gazing at a normal human being. It wasn’t that it was my body (sure, I appreciated the familiarity, the undeniable appeal of the breasts and nipples), but just that it was a body. With skin.

  I cried for joy. Up until then I’d never believed people could cry for joy.

  Then I touched myself and soon cried out for joy, bending over the dresser as I lost myself to it.

  I closed my curtains. I got out all my glossy photography books, models and famous people, and enjoyed them, their skin and facial features and the unity of their bodies.

  Did I think it would pass?

  I must have believed it would.

  Calling in to take a week off work; scuttling out to the corner store to buy provisions (pickles, bread, milk, canned peaches, peanut butter, spaghetti, tomato sauce), barely enduring the sight of the cashier’s ligaments as he handled the groceries; sending friends lilting, dodgy texts in response to their phone calls—nobody could actually plan to live this way.

  Then Mom called to say they were making the two-hour drive down to the city this weekend, wanted to whisk me away to a nearby beach for the afternoon. This was quite normal, happened every few weeks in the summertime, and was one of my life’s little delights; unlike most people, I really couldn’t think of anything fraught to say about my parents.

  I asked Mom not to make the drive this weekend, maybe next weekend or the following, but I went about it the wrong way, overly casual in a way that struck her as not casual at all. She became instantly suspicious and worried, more insistent than ever about visiting.

  “Okay,” I was finally forced to whimper, “okay, okay.”

  It would be best not to go to the beach. Too much skin, or lack thereof. Staying in the city would be better. Brunch, followed by some kind of passive activity that didn’t involve the removal of any layers of clothing. How about a dark movie theater? But I knew my parents would never agree to watch a movie when they could be spending time with me. We can go to the movies any old day! they’d say jovially, showering me with love.

  I thought hard about the ideal location for brunch. A crowded diner might be good—plenty of distractions—but could I stand a roomful of noisily eating bodies? I could make brunch at home, which would be simplest, but there were numerous problems with that—firstly, that I refused to buy food anywhere except the corner store; secondly, that being alone with my parents’ skinless bodies sounded devastating; thirdly, that the apartment was my one respite.

  Ultimately I decided on a picnic in the park. Other people, but not too many. And Mom would enjoy putting the picnic together. Indeed, when I called her back to suggest this, I could hear the muscles of her mouth pulling back into a smile. The fact that I could hear this sound did not bode well.

  I did—of course I did—entertain the hope that my parents wouldn’t appear skinless to me.

  * * *

  On Saturday, there was a fraction of an instant of optimism when I opened the front door of my building, a promising glimpse of Mom’s jeans and Dad’s baseball cap.

  Gently, I refused to let them come upstairs into the apartment, raving about the beauty of the day and how eager I was to get to the park. My mother—my dear, veiny, bony mother—had packed a splendid picnic, and we sat on an actual red-and-white checkered tablecloth by the lake. Hard-boiled eggs, grapes, seltzer, et cetera. My parents, birdwatchers, talked about the swans and the ducks and the red-winged blackbirds and even thought they glimpsed a heron; birds, as you can imagine, as elaborate and disconcerting as human hands.

  Dad! Why did he have to wear those damn khaki shorts?

  It bothered Mom that I wouldn’t eat the tuna fish salad sandwich she’d made sans mayonnaise especially for me. Sans mayonnaise, she kept repeating that, and passing me clumps of grapes gripped in the web of her finger bones. Furtively, I placed the grapes in the grass behind me. I tried to focus solely on my parents’ irises, which were less dramatically affected than everything else.

  But it was exhausting, and soon enough I couldn’t help but shut my eyes, and lie down on the picnic blanket, and pretend to sleep. Resting there with my eyes closed, listening to my parents’ voices, I could almost believe they weren’t a pair of capillary-encrusted skeletons. When they were sure I was asleep, they talked about me. Nothing they said offended me. They were sad I didn’t have someone to love, they hoped I wasn’t dissatisfied with my life, they were proud of what a sensible and self-sufficient person I’d become. When I “woke up” they said they’d enjoyed watching over my sleep, just like when I was a baby. This comment would have made me feel cozy if it hadn’t been emerging from my father’s uncanny mouth.

  It took a lot out of me to muzzle my scream when Mom removed her sweatshirt, her flowered T-shirt lifting for an instant to reveal her midsection.

  It was bad enough to see strangers and acquaintances this way. But to see your own parents. To be forced to acknowledge the architecture of their bodies, the chaos of their blood vessels, the humility of their skulls. To know that this vulnerability was the place from which you arose.

  After that I was careful to avoid looking at them at all. I controlled the shiver of disgust I felt when Mom hugged me good-bye; when Dad hugged me good-bye, the disgust transformed suddenly to pity, which was, alarmingly, far worse. I implored them not to come upstairs, I’d had people over last night, the kitchen was a disaster, I was ashamed.

  Upstairs, alone in my very clean, quiet kitchen, I washed my hands and arms and neck and face, trying to scrub off every place where they’d touched me. Then I ran to the bathroom and stood under the shower and cried at the delicacy of my parents. Then I went to stand in front of the mirror and enjoy my skin. But I got distracted by the silence of my apartment. It had become the most silent place in the world.

  * * *

  There was that guy. No big deal, but we’d been on six or seven dates. It wasn’t as though I thought he was the one, but our dates had been long and rambling and funny and already it had become a little bit sad when we had to part ways after an epic twelve-hour stretch spent in each other’s company. So he’d been calling and emailing left and right this whole time and I’d been dodging him with brief, hopefully witty one-liners.

  Yet now here he is outside my door with a pair of gerbera daisies and a blue bicycle and a face of raw bone and muscle.

  “Fuck you,” he says, “here I am.”

  I’d laugh if I weren’t working so hard to not look at him.

  “Can I bring my bike in,” he states.

  I swing the door all the way open to let him pass. Unfortunately, he’s wearing shorts and flip-flops. I watch the tendons work as he walks the bike down the short hall. Actually this angle—the back of the leg, the heel—isn’t so bad.

  * * *

  The skinless cock looks strange, pale, like something from outer space. The balls are gooey and more fragile than anything. As it hardens and grows, the cock becomes even creepier, yet somehow more defenseless, too. I’m shocked to find myself going a little bit wet, but then he shoves his eerie lips at mine.

  I’m seeing parts of the human body I’ve never seen, lungs and intestines, liver and ribs, bizarre constructions.

  Yet I accept him. I twist my neck, I shut my eyes. Inside it feels the same as ever; good, present. The lack of skin doesn’t make a difference. I love it terribly much. I don’t dare open my eyes.

  But then, getting close, unable to keep them shut at a time like this (I know I should simply focus on his irises, his merciful dark brown irises), I look down upon two bodies, a pulsing beating body of linked organs versus a smooth clean body enwrapped in skin. I reach to pull him closer, harder, better—and as my hand goes out and around to grab his neck, I catch a glimpse of my fingers, the complicated muscles and tendons and bones, my hand a weird blood-colored bird.

  WHEN THE TSUNAMI CAME

 
When the tsunami came, we—my husband and I—were not among the good. We were in the street alongside all the neighbors who had for so many years remained strangers to us. The wave, it was thirty feet high, straight from Coney Island, the roller coaster in pieces.

  It was a bright day in March.

  The wave contained many things that might be listed here for poetic effect, things of the teacup-and-crib variety, but it did not look marvelous to us. It looked like garbage. The newspaper didn’t lie: You could measure the wave’s advance by the clouds of dust created by collapsing buildings.

  There was that elderly couple from Apartment 1B. Campbell was their last name, or Winslow. I’d sometimes worried they could hear us when we had sex. They didn’t look rich but they did have a Jaguar, and early on Saturday mornings while I was outside waiting for the Laundromat to open, they’d walk slowly past on the way to their Jaguar. They wore nice clothes, lavender and brown, and seemed to be going somewhere halfway fun and halfway not, like the cemetery followed by the pancake house. “That Laundromat won’t open till after eight,” the Mrs. once warned me. Old people: they want things to work out. “You should go to the Laundromat down the street,” she insisted. “Thank you,” I said, politely; I’d always believed myself to be kinder than average. “Thank you,” I repeated, filled with gratitude, though of course I stayed right where I was. I’ve now shared with you everything I knew about the inhabitants of Apartment 1B.

  It’s impossible to know, until you’re in a situation, whether you’re good or bad. I saw the ugly side of people, and then I saw the good side. Some people only thought of themselves. They were shoving old people out of the way.

  Yet think of the punishment: for the rest of your life, you’re not worthy of a glass of water, even though you know the young are right to save themselves.

  GAME

  ONE OF US WILL BE HAPPY; IT’S JUST A MATTER OF WHICH ONE

  Once upon a time and for all time, a Queen and King sat on twin thrones. They were beloved, this Queen and King, for she was famous across the land as a wife who valued above all else the happiness of her husband and he was famous across the land as a husband who valued above all else the happiness of his wife. A never-ending line of their devoted subjects wound through the long hallways of the castle and out onto the high road. These subjects stepped confidently into the throne room, their simple shoes softly slapping the marble floors, which were checkered like a chessboard. There was nothing servile about the behavior of the subjects; they were treated with dignity and behaved with dignity.

  The subjects would place before the Queen and King the riches of their fields and streams, their forests and barns. Sunflowers would pile up, and sheaves of wheat, and the skinned bodies of small mammals. Great baskets of eggs and wooden boxes filled with honeycombs. Heaps of wool and heaps of silver fish; piles of pumpkins and piles of stones. At times these riches were accompanied by or replaced with devastating news: a fire, a flood, a drought, a debt. The lips of the Queen and the lips of the King would rise and sink accordingly, up into smiles of bounty, down into frowns of grief. The subjects well knew that joy shared is joy doubled, sorrow shared is sorrow halved, et cetera.

  And thus life was good and bad, abundant and lean, ecstatic and tragic, blessed and cursed, all at once, on and on, forever and ever, until the end of time.

  Sometimes young women would arrive, in pairs or in a flock; these girls danced upon the chessboard, singing folk songs at once strange and familiar, like something heard in the womb. The King did not know if it was the Queen who arranged these performances for him, or if some castle ringmaster called for the girls. They danced, flinging their scarves into the air; how exquisite the varying shades of their skin, how luminous their eyes and calves.

  Yes, the King was acutely aware of them, of the heat between his legs as they threw themselves across the cool marble. And the Queen, too, was acutely aware of them, of the ways in which the shapes of their bodies aped and diverged from the shape of hers.

  Did she call for them in order to bring pleasure to the King, or to taunt him, or to tempt him? The Queen herself did not know the answer to this question; indeed, had a different answer to it at each hour of the day.

  Someday the King would step down from his throne, would go to one of these young women, would vanish with her down a hallway, would return to his throne sometime later, a changed man or an unchanged man. Someday the Queen would watch the King step down from his throne and go to one of the girls and take this girl to a tower in the far reaches of the castle, where he would presumably drag his finger from the center of her forehead downward, would release a cry that arced over the castle and down to the throne room where the Queen sat, listening. And when the King returned to his throne, she would love him the exact same amount as before, or would love him slightly more, or would love him quite a bit less. It was possible that when he reached for her (his palm still sweaty with another woman’s sweat), his hand would feel like a knife. Or perhaps when he reached for her, his hand would feel as exuberant as fire, and the Queen would touch the joy.

  Or perhaps the King would never act; perhaps that heat between his legs would cool and shrivel. Perhaps the Queen would live out all the days of her life luxuriating in the King’s unmarred devotion, and would scarcely notice the moment when death arrived for her amid the blinding brightness of that devotion, which all along had kept her as close to paradise as a human woman could ever hope to dwell: safe, warm, calm.

  Or perhaps the Queen would come to see herself as a jail warden, an impossibly heavy ring of keys slung around her waist, guarding the smallest, most absurd cell in the universe: a tiny barred box just big enough for an old man’s penis.

  The Queen and King sat on their twin thrones while the parade of subjects poured its momentary riches, its fruits, its girls, onto the chessboard before them. Once in a blue moon, you might be lucky enough to overhear him whispering to her or her whispering to him.

  “One of us will be sad,” he or she would say, “it’s just a matter of which one.”

  And you might catch the other replying: “One of us will be happy; it’s just a matter of which one.”

  THINGS WE DO

  1.

  I had this joke with someone I used to love. We’d say to each other: Saying I love you, that’s our thing, our special thing, just for the two of us. Whatever becomes of us, you can’t ever say that to anyone else. Or: Having sex, that’s our thing, our special thing, you better never do that with anyone else, not even if we split up. You can do other things with them, of course, you can do anything you want with anyone you want at any time under the sun, but never that, because that’s our thing.

  Later, I tried to reinvigorate this joke with someone I loved far more: Going to the bar, drinking gin & tonics, getting drunk and having lots to talk about, that’s our thing. Marriage, that’s our thing, wherever you go and whatever you do and whoever you meet, remember that. But, dismayingly, the joke was no longer hilarious; now when I said it I sounded like I meant it.

  2.

  Removed, the wedding ring and the engagement ring lie obediently together upon the ledge. That’s the thing about objects, they’re so obedient, and it’s a goddamn relief if you ask me. You put them there upon the ledge and there they shall stay until someone or something comes along.

  3.

  We shouldn’t keep drinking $3 gin & tonics, but it takes more imagination than we’ve got to stop doing so, plus the sunsetting light is the color of booze and outside in the yard behind the bar the wall of ivy quivers like something from a lovelier place.

  4.

  Recently I’ve developed an addiction to the word FEROCIOUS—I’ve had other addictions at other times, such as LULLABY, JUBILANT, HOWEVER—and have started using it too much, mainly in my head but also out loud, using it to say things like “I had to be ferocious to figure out how to put that Ikea bookshelf together; I had to be especially ferocious with the top part.”

  5.


  Our friends compliment the plants we have in our apartment. They say, “Wow, you have a lot of nice little plants.”

  And I say, “Thank you, yes, we went to the plant nursery and that’s where we got those plants. The plant nursery on Euclid Avenue, if you were wondering.”

  But their eyes have already glazed over.

  And you—you yawned the whole time we were selecting our plants!

  6.

  The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.

  Naked, bestial, I squatted.

  I have this idea that lines recalled from poems we read in English class might help. Although that second line was purely your idea—inspired by the way I was crouching on our darkly gleaming wooden floor at three in the morning. Your delivery of such an apt line, your flawless read of the situation—that’s the sort of thing that gives me hope. It also gives me hope when we put on the music and dance around our apartment.

  I won’t deny it: I’m a sucker for hope these days.

  7.

  I could get pregnant, you know, from all this makeup sex we’re always having.

  What?

  I could get pregnant from all this messing around.

  What?

  Maybe you should come up here from down there.

  What?

  Maybe we could talk. Maybe you could hear me better.

  You won’t get pregnant.

  8.

  I have this idea that I’m not going to write any untrue things anymore. I’m only going to write things that are true, true, true.

  The Guy Who Yawned at the Plant Nursery says: “You’ve never written a word of fiction in your life.”

  9.

  Say I am pregnant. How do you think it feels about all this poison?

  $3 gin & tonic, lime on lips, meditating on the word tonic.

  Surely to my great-grandmother that meant something different, something with herbs that would fix all sorts of problems.