WHAT I THINK: I wish she were just screaming about the house being dirty, about the dishes in the sink and the clothes on the floor. Then I could just run outside. The kids could join me. We could run to the back field and check on the small trout as small as their hands in the stream. We could check on the brush piles we created last year and look into the dark of them to see if there are any beady pairs of black eyes staring back at us, it being a happy home to some furry creatures.
WHAT THE WIFE SAYS VERY QUIETLY: Please.
WHAT I THINK: That what I’m seeing is already in the past, she has already cried, and maybe the crying is over. Maybe now she has stood and wiped her nose and brushed her hair on the way out of the bathroom. She has made herself presentable. She has pulled down her sweater so that it lies smoothly over her pants. She has checked herself in the mirror. She has checked her eyeliner and with her fingertip she has smeared away any blurring black smudges. She has smiled into the mirror and has checked for telltale signs of food between her teeth.
WHAT THE WIFE IS STILL DOING: Sitting on the toilet with the lid down. She has not risen, she has not arranged herself. The tears still fall. Things that I’m seeing may be in the past, but the past just happened so quickly, it wasn’t long ago at all. Is there a way to make the past longer, or the present further away? I take my hand off the top of the shower wall. Sure enough, there is mucky green deodorant soap on my polar fleece cuff now. I try not to look at it for too long. If I do she will know I am not paying enough attention to her. She will think I am not taking her seriously. I cannot reach for a washcloth and wet it and try to wash the mucky green deodorant soap away now. At best, the only thing I can do is hold my arm out a little to the side, so as not to get the rest of me covered in the mess.
WHAT I SAY: It’s not the same. It won’t be the same as it was with Sam. I’m not going into a coma. Jen interrupts me. Why? Why? Why? She yells and so of course I think for a minute that she wants to know why it won’t be the same, and why I won’t be going into a coma, but I know better. I know she wants to know why I feel I have to do this for some kid who showed up at our door a week ago. I shrug my shoulders. I do this by first bringing my arms in close to myself. Now the mucky green soap is definitely smeared on my side. I shrug again and again. It doesn’t matter now, I have turned into the mucky green soap monster. When I go back down and see my children they will want to know what it is. Is it horse mucus? Is it cow cud? Is it alpaca spit? they will ask. I think I will tell them it is rearranged electrons from space-time travel, and maybe that is what it really is anyway because all of a sudden Jen is standing. She is saying, “Fine, they are your kidneys, do what you want with them,” and she is lifting the lid of the toilet and throwing wadded-up tissues she used to blow her nose into the water in the bowl.
WHAT I SAY: It’s the right thing to do. What that hunter did to Sam, that was the wrong thing to do.
WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: You don’t owe this kid anything. You didn’t shoot him.
WHAT I SAY: I gave him life.
WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: Oh, Jesus fucking Christ, you’re not fucking Jesus, you know.
WHAT I SAY: Okay, it sounded like too much, but I am part of the reason why he’s alive now.
WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: I married an egomaniac.
WHAT I SAY: I’m not. Then Jen says, Oh, sure, and she takes a washcloth and wets it and starts wiping off the mess of the green deodorant soap that is on my sleeve and on my side. She uses such strong strokes to brush the soap off that my body turns to the side with her every downward stroke. When she’s done she wads up the washcloth and throws it down onto the basin of the sink and says, Dinner is ready.
WHAT DINNER IS: Great. It’s breaded pork chops cooked to tenderness in broth and sweet potatoes mashed with butter and cream and maple syrup and green beans sautéed with oil and garlic. I want to tell her how good it is, but I can’t. She will think I am just trying to smooth the waters between us. So at first I am thankful for when Sam starts to say, Mom, this is delish-delish-delish, but I wish he didn’t have signs of slurring when he’s trying to say it because while he’s trying to spit it out the wife looks at me as if to say, And this proves my point, here is an example of how precarious life is, it has left us with our son who still slightly slurs and if you give this space kid a kidney, the aftereffects may be worse. So I say, Delicious, ending Sam’s sentence for him and noticing that the green beans may not be that good after all and they might be somewhat burned and a little bitter tasting.
WHAT VIDEO WE RENTED FROM THE LIBRARY: How we love the library and leave it with armloads of books and movies, even if the service at the library is slow, and the librarian who has been there for years always looks at the scanner gun for a few moments first before he uses it on our books’ labels as if he’s never seen the scanner gun before. And I know this librarian and he is also on the master’s swim team and I have seen him in his swim trunks, and there is a huge scar on his belly that even pulling the waistband of his trunks way up past his navel does not hide and I wondered what part of him was surgically removed or rearranged. He is a very slow swimmer, and it seems as if he goes backward instead of forward in the water, or that he goes nowhere at all. It was the librarian who recommended the video to Mia. The video was about mammals and Mia had watched it first and then wanted me to watch it with her. The cheetah, I learned, will let one of her offspring share her kill with her even years later, even when the offspring is an adult she will remember it, but she will never let any other adult share with her. Isn’t that amazing? Mia said.
WHAT I SAID: Yes, it really is amazing, and I hugged Mia on my lap while I said it and I smelled her hair that smelled faintly like our house when we walk into it after we’ve been away for a few days. It smells good, like wood smoke and meringues made with cocoa, and it smells earthy, too, maybe of the small pine needles the dogs trail in with them on their fur after hiking with us in our woods.
WHAT SAM WANTS TO KNOW: What the wife and I were fighting about.
WHAT I SAID: Fighting?
WHAT HE SAID: Yes, you know, her crying on the toilet with the lid down, the way she always does when she’s upset with you.
WHAT I TOLD HIM: Everything. How the spaceman wanted my kidney. How the spaceman knew the name of the man who shot him by accident. How I had seen the spaceman bribe my client’s son, and the son had whispered the name of the man in the spaceman’s ear. Sam looked outside when I talked. Was he looking at our pond, noticing the snow beginning to melt on the surface? When I was finished talking, he nodded his head. What if it were me, he said? Would you have given me your kidney? Of course, I said. Then you should give him yours. What happened to you while you were in a coma? I wanted to ask him. Had a part of him changed? Had he been visited by a higher being? This wasn’t the boy who called his sisters jerkface and cheesebutt. He sounded older. He cleared his throat. He’s your son, too, he said. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t raise him here with us. You can help him, that’s all that matters, he said. Besides, it’s cool. How many kids have dads that saved a man’s life?
WHAT I SAID: What about your mother?
WHAT HE SAID: She should learn how to cry sitting on the toilet seat without the lid down. At least that way she could pee and cry at the same time and be more efficient.
WHAT I SAID: What about the name of the man who shot you. Do we want to know that?