Some Possible Solutions

by Helen Phillips

  It was a merciful moment, the moment when I finally placed a tampon in her palm. The sacred white tube. I added a second, a third.

  My period had not been coming. It did not come, and it did not come, and it did not come, it did not come, it did not come. This was not due to pregnancy; if only. There were other, sadder factors at play.

  “Thank you,” she said, and then, “thank you, thank you,” as I added each additional tampon. It crossed my mind that perhaps she was just a normal girl. “I’m so desperate,” she said. “You really saved the day.” But then I became certain that she wanted to hurt me, because she kept going on about her gratitude, through her gratitude implying the richness of her flow, and surely my envy must have been there on my face, yet still she went on. The train was getting near, and I wanted—needed—it to arrive, to bear me away from this moment.

  “The zombies are playing awful hard tonight, aren’t they?” she said, pointing toward the playing field where the green grass was beginning to freeze over. They ran back and forth across it, a smear of great brightness in even greater darkness. I listened to their voices, screams of victory and screams of defeat. Even from this distance it was possible to see the blue tinge to their skin. I shivered; she could read my mind.

  The train screamed its way into the station, drowning out the sounds of the soccer-playing zombies. The bleeding girl said one last thing to me, though I will never be sure, because the train was screaming right beside us: “You always give something up to get something else.”

  When the doors of the train opened I rushed into the car ahead of the one she boarded. We could not be together for another second. Yet I knew she was there, standing at the front of her car, looking through the windows, staring at the back of my neck. I forgot to mention that I’d noticed a tattoo on her neck. A gray smear of something anatomical, an anatomical heart or plant or something.

  A train passed on the track beside us, another outbound train, going slightly faster in the same direction. The sign read OUT OF SERVICE and as the train pulled ahead of us I observed that there was nobody on it except in one car a figure in a blue uniform. This person was wearing a blue winter hat and I stared hard, trying to figure out if the hat was part of the uniform or if the employee had done a very thorough job matching the hat to the uniform. Then, as he turned his head, I saw that the figure in the uniform had the face of a wolf. The wolf gave me a glimpse of his face, not meeting my eyes, and then turned back to his original position. Did he give half a nod to someone in the car behind mine?

  But when I twisted around to check, I was shocked to discover that she wasn’t standing at the window as I had pictured.

  There were only four other passengers in my car, afloat in sleep. No one had seen what I’d seen, and I did not scream.

  * * *

  Just then a small bubble of blood emerged from deep inside me. It appeared on the cusp, beneath my underwear beneath my jeans, and quietly popped. The sound of a minuscule kiss. Followed by a brief yet definite rush. By the time I got off the train at my stop I was crying with gratitude. My face wet. I walked into November. A car that in another life would have accelerated through the yellow stoplight and killed me did not accelerate and kill me. Alive and bleeding, I arrived at my doorstep to find that his name had been rubbed off the tag beneath our doorbell.

  THE BEEKEEPER

  People and things are disappearing in the city. These people are girls between the ages of eleven and seventeen who have not yet been stiffened by life in skyscrapers, who have not yet donned the hood and trousers, who, in a different era, would have been milkmaids, weavers, beekeepers. These things are objects the aforementioned girls have used. A brush, for instance, containing loose strands of hair. Bedsheets slept between, bath towels wrapped around, slippers slid into. Pencils gnawed upon, notebooks written in, magazines flipped through. A spoon used to eat soup, a fork used to shovel food, a knife used to spread or to cut.

  This is why, notwithstanding the dangers one may encounter outside the city, Maebh’s parents are sending her to The Farm, and have ordered me to go with.

  * * *

  “If you had to choose,” Maebh says, “which would you hate least: to have spiders crawling all over you, or rats, or snakes, or frogs, or bees?”

  She sticks her skinny leg out the window of the car—yes, the car—which I am steering through the countryside—yes, the countryside—past the orchard—yes, the orchard. It is hot late afternoon and fragrant with rotting fruit. A circumstance unimaginable to anyone from the city. Unimaginable to me three days ago. I feel drunk.

  “I do not know,” I say. She has been asking me these kinds of questions throughout the entire journey; I do not think she is cruel, and I do not think she intends to highlight the vast differences between us, but still she is constantly doing so. Unlike her, I have not been to The Zoological. I do not know what a spider is, not really, nor a rat, nor a snake, nor a frog, nor a bee. In the city we do not have such exotic creatures. I have only seen moving pictures of these animals.

  “Come on,” she says, flicking her pearly toenails against the side-view mirror. “You gotta pick one. Spiders, rats, snakes, frogs, or bees?”

  “Rats,” I say. “Because they are mammals.” This, at least, is a fact I have learned.

  “Hm,” she says. “Good point.”

  At times, she sounds nearly thoughtful. She brings her leg back into the car, wraps her arms around her knees, and crouches on the seat. I have already told her to buckle up; she has already refused.

  “I’d choose bees,” she says. “Definitely bees. Easy.”

  “But they sting,” I say. Again, a fact I have learned.

  “They make honey,” she says. A fact I once knew but forgot; upon being reminded of it, I wish I too had chosen bees over rats, but this is not the sort of thing one confesses to a girl like Maebh.

  * * *

  At The Farm, there are many bees. They are large and fuzzy. They wander dazed among the wild grapevines that have netted Main House, among the waist-high grasses in the yard (well, waist-high for me and thigh-high for Maebh), among the unknown fruits that dangle off the trees with bronze bark. Maebh tells me these are called plums and laughs at me for not recognizing them.

  “They’re what prunes come from! You didn’t know that?”

  The sun itself is like honey here, thicker and more orange as the August afternoon matures. I am surprised to find that I can sit on the porch in a rocking chair, relaxing into the heat and the smell of orchards, without fear. I would not have guessed that I would be capable of forgetting about the dangers; I have never before left the city. I have never before encountered “pollen” (the word Maebh uses for the soft dust), nor a stream of water like the one that runs behind Main House. I have seen streams of hot chocolate in the grand supermarkets, and streams of beer in the pubs, but never this, clear and lazy, with small colorful stones on the bottom.

  Maebh lies down on the sun-soaked floorboards of the porch. She tells me she is filled with nostalgia. I am not surprised—I am only surprised that she has such a word in her vocabulary—because as we were leaving the city this morning her parents told me they used to bring her here every summer when she was a very young child, in the years before the dangers.

  Suddenly she jumps up and steps through the tall grass toward the stream. I watch from the porch. She kneels and slaps water all over her face, shrieking with the cold of it. Then she starts to unbutton her blouse and wiggle out of her jeans. Is she going to—bathe?—swim?—dive? Showering, that’s how I’ve encountered water.

  Maebh turns back to look at me. I am trying to not look at her. She re-buttons her blouse and re-zips her jeans.

  “Later,” she says. “I’m hungry now. I’m thirsty. Wanna drink milk?”

  The house has been provisioned by an old farmer and his wife. Maebh’s parents deposited an unnecessarily large sum into this farmer’s bank account and told him to make sure we have food until the disappearances cease,
or until Maebh heads back to boarding school in Japan come September.

  There is milk in the refrigerator—yes, a real refrigerator, pale green with rounded edges, which wheezes and thunks all day long—and a huge circular loaf of bread on the table, and four jars of preserves. I read the labels: apple, okay, pear, okay, plum again, the source of prunes, apparently, and gooseberry. Gooseberry! Well, I can at least guess what that is; I am familiar with strawberries and blueberries. Maebh finds two old jam jars in the cupboard and pours milk into them. It is pleasant to watch her pouring it. I ought to be pouring milk for her. She hands me my milk and we carry everything out to the porch.

  I have never tasted anything like this milk. It is better than beer, better than margarine, better than orange juice. Maebh says it comes from cows that were probably milked this morning, or maybe last night. This milk has never been powdered; there are no soybeans involved. Between the two of us we drink half a gallon. We rip hunks off the loaf of bread and dip them into the preserves. The plum and gooseberry are too rich for my taste, but I am fond of the pear. Maebh does not like pears, so I get it all. I shove bread deep into the jar to reach the last bit. When I look up, I see that she is watching me.

  “I didn’t know you were fun,” she says.

  * * *

  There are many bedrooms at The Farm. It seems I ought to stay in one of the outlying buildings, where the family’s servants have historically slept. But the farmer’s wife prepared two bedrooms side by side in Main House. I do not know if Maebh’s parents requested this arrangement, or if the farmer’s wife decided on her own, but we shall go along with it because everywhere else is covered in pollen. The farmer’s wife made the beds with white wool blankets, and put jugs of daisies on the bureaus, and spread rag rugs on the floors. All of this makes Maebh gasp with delight. If I ever expressed myself in gasps, I am sure I would gasp too.

  “Night-night,” Maebh says, lolling against the doorjamb for an instant before slipping into her dark bedroom.

  “Good night,” I say, before retiring into mine.

  We had no proper dinner, but are still overfull with bread and milk. It is uncannily easy to fall asleep.

  * * *

  It is barely light when Maebh wakes me, stomping her foot outside my door. I understand more than ever why Maebh’s parents believe she is a prime target for these odd disappearances, even though she is nearly eighteen and thus almost out of danger, on the verge of donning her hood and trousers. It is always the wildest girls, the most vigorous and lean, those who enjoy stretching on the roofs of the skyscrapers, those who behave as though they are immune to the dangers.

  I get out of bed and start to put on my hood and trousers, my fingers stumbling over the buttons and snaps. Maebh stomps her foot a second time, a third. When I finally emerge, Maebh grabs my hand. We have never before touched. I am aware of this. Maebh is not. Her blinding yellow sundress. She leads me down the stairs and out into the grass, which is wet.

  “Did it rain last night?” I say, unable to control the thrill in my voice. It has been so long since there was rain in the city. I was only a child then.

  “No,” she says. “That’s dew. It happens every night in the countryside. You hardly know anything, do you?”

  She really is a little bitch but it is not her fault.

  When we get to the stream she slips out of her sundress. I avoid looking at her body. This is just my job. I will stand here to make sure she does not drown. Not that I could help her if she did, since I have never swum, nor taken a bath. In any case.

  “You too!” she commands, up to her ankles in water so cold she cannot breathe.

  It takes me much longer to undress than it took Maebh. There are so many buttons and snaps on my trousers, and my hood is tightly laced. She has gotten in all the way by the time I join her. The frigid water on my shins makes me feel as though I have drunk ten cups of coffee. Yet somehow I am not frightened. Maebh’s curly blond hair has become brown and straight now that it is wet. This makes her appear more solemn, which I appreciate.

  “Get in all the way,” Maebh instructs.

  “No,” I say, “thank you.”

  “I command you to get in all the way,” she says.

  I try to maintain my impassive face, straight mouth and neutral eyes, but it is not easy. An unpleasant sensation swells inside me at the sight of her mouth, left open after she spoke the word “way,” her lower lip hanging down, her jaw loose in the casual manner of those accustomed to power.

  “Just kidding!” she yelps, plunging her head underwater. She clings to handfuls of pebbles in the streambed and lets the water wash over her. She wriggles in the current. She splashes and surfaces. I am careful to keep my eyes off her body. It is not hard to imagine, after all: narrow hips and thighs, hard dark nipples and a rib cage like old architecture.

  “I can look at you but you can’t look at me!” Maebh says.

  I cannot tell if I am more startled by her jubilant rudeness or by the conviction that she has perceived my thoughts. I feel her staring, and long for my hood and trousers.

  “God,” she says, “you’re so smooth everywhere.”

  Maebh’s parents thought it wisest to send a person of unspecified gender along to keep an eye on their daughter. It is widely believed that we are asexual.

  * * *

  Our days are characterized by bees, by sunlight, by pollen, by water, by overripe fruit, by Maebh teaching me things she assumes someone eight years older ought to know. That’s just a spiderweb! Mud won’t make your toenails rot. Outside the city the temperature can vary more than twenty degrees. Hear the frogs?

  The farmer and his wife are frightened of people from the city, and leave provisions in the earliest hours of the morning while we are still asleep. We wake to find milk and yogurt and cheese and nuts and bread and preserves and honey on the heavy wooden table in the kitchen.

  Sometimes Maebh goes hours without looking directly at me; other times she stares at me so intently that I feel as though her eyes are penetrating through to the inside.

  The Farm is two hundred acres. A barbed wire fence encircles all its overgrown orchards and neglected fields. I hold in my palm animals I have only ever seen on a computer screen. Ladybugs are the most charming example, but also snails, daddy longlegs, dung beetles.

  I do not live in the state of terror I anticipated when Maebh’s parents proposed that, for a sum equivalent to five years’ wages in my position as head window-washer of their skyscraper, I accompany their daughter out of the city, beyond the dome, to the ancestral farm where, in a different era, their grandparents lived the good honest life of the earth.

  It is possible—in fact, it is impossible not—to forget about the dangerous times in which we live.

  Meanwhile, the disappearances continue in the city, and are occurring ever more frequently. Maebh’s parents command us to stay in the countryside and to enjoy The Farm. They thank me profusely, and apologize for the fact that this is lasting longer than expected.

  Eventually, I—even I, who have always been careful of the days, who have kept a weekly calendar, who have measured out the hours with three clocks in a one-room apartment on the lowest level of an unclean skyscraper—lose track of time. I ask myself, is today the 11th? 15th? the 17th? the 22nd? the 29th?, grateful that I do not know.

  We suck on blades of grass. We let our feet harden and get muddy. We find strawberries growing in glens. We notice ornate tapestries of moss and lichen on the rocks at the westernmost edge of the property. We see the clouds puffing themselves up into creatures that fill half the sky. We lie on the porch watching the bees weave through the late afternoon. Only rarely do they sting us, and when they do we do not mind. Some days I am more of a boy and some days I am more of a girl. We hardly talk, and then sometimes we do.

  “I should’ve been born in a different time,” Maebh says, grinding a blade of grass between her molars, reclining on the hot wooden floorboards of the porch, her breasts flattening
beneath her sundress as she stretches her arms above her head.

  This is how Maebh is, I know that now. She frequently says this kind of thing. The kind of thing that is full of longing. She is thoughtful, nostalgic, and melancholy, all the traits I have valued most in my twenty-five years. She is not flippant (though every morning at the stream she sprays me with frigid droplets from her hair and grins when I wince) nor foolish (though whenever she starts dancing to the music inside her head I wonder if she has filled too much of her brain with those shows teenage girls watch) nor spoiled (though she does get angry whenever she is hungry), nor immature, nor unkind, nor any of the things I anticipated.

  “We both should have,” I say eventually.

  “Both should have what?” she says. Maebh is not accustomed to me saying anything that goes beyond the obligations of my job.

  “We both should have been born in a different time,” I say.

  “Oh, yeah.” She shuts her eyes and smiles. “Tha’s right,” she coos. “We both shoulda been born in a different time. I coulda been a milkmaid. You coulda been a beekeeper.”

  “I could have been a farmer,” I say, wishing to keep up. “You could have been a weaver.”

  “Oh yeah,” Maebh says.

  The next morning, we wake to find on the kitchen table a message from Maebh’s parents, which requests that we return to the city six days from now so Maebh can pack for boarding school, as August has almost come to an end.

  * * *

  On our fourth-to-last day, the bees disappear. There are only a few left, buzzing weakly above the long grasses, barely clearing the surface of the stream. Maebh is upset.

  “Well damn,” she says, stomping through fields that have not been cultivated in half a century.