Two

Physics

It began thus: a Hershey wrapper crumpled among his shirts, twisted Pepsi caps stowed in the freezer. Then she noticed the shoe boxes full of shredded twine, orange peels, rusty washers. Fishing flies landed in the fruit bowl. She had a right to protest after all those years. He answered:

I know where I put everything. The sewing needles you drop on the floor, your loose tufts of hair.

She raised an eyebrow. Eventually, she left without slamming the front door.

He thought he would someday discover the secret of matter. But he knew nothing of bosons and quarks. Over a Coors at the corner tavern, he heard someone on TV declaim about “God’s particle.” He crushed the empty beer can and stuffed it in his pocket on the way out. God hoarded everything in Creation, he believed—that’s what keeps the Fiend at bay—God is things.

She lurched from lover to hapless lover then returned to her mother, whose brain had darkened with Alzheimer’s. Gathering soiled sheets, scrubbing the bathroom floor, she hummed half-forgotten songs. Something in each melody quickened her hands and brought a smile to her lips. Then she would recall the man and the song would freeze.

In the man’s house, the dusty floors buckled as objects—discarded rotors, cracked porcelain sinks, headless busts and broken weathervanes—began to pile up like crazed ziggurats. The bric-a-brac rose from cellar to attic, cluttering the staircase, jamming doors. But nothing the man collected was immaculate or whole. What would be the sense of that? The soul of matter lives in its warps and stains. Wasn’t his scarred body proof? Only his cornflower-blue eyes shone with an eerie gleam. Whence that light? The man believed in neither love nor charity, only in God.

When her lungs wheezed and her knees cracked as she climbed the stairs, she sat down on the steps and put her hands in her lap. Her bones and muscles ached; the stitches nearly burst her left side. Still she hummed between breaths, watching a carpenter ant drag its load toward a fissure in the wainscoted wall.

The Diner

—For Edward Hopper

The man and woman sat in a diner: sharp angles, forlorn counter, greenish light. The smell of grease and defeat clung to every corner.

Sugar, he said, looking sadly at her plate, a heap of mush floundering in chocolate sauce. She stared past him at the zinc wall.

That’s sugar, he repeated, shaking a head craggy like a dwarf’s.

It’s cheaper’n the Special, the woman snapped, cheaper’n your hash. She held back her tears, chest billowing over an arm thick as a ham.

The man bowed his head; his chin barely cleared the table. Since he had lost his job as nightwatchman, they agreed they could afford no desserts. Worse, the doctor said one of her kidneys had shriveled to a walnut. Imagine, a walnut, the man and woman cried out, laughing till their sides ached.

That doctor knew nothing about their stillborn child. They called it Sweetie, and since then her sweet tooth had become a habit.

The diner filled with swallows, swooping above the racks of dishes, between ceiling fans, skimming the neon lights. Their elegance took away the woman’s breath. She had always wanted to be a swallow—a swallow or a hummingbird.

The man ate his hash, fork scraping the plate, then cupped his chin in one hand.

Sugar! We can’t afford them kidney machines.

Tears now flowed down her cheeks, a little girl with glistening eyes. She always read the labels on the packages at Piggly Wiggly, squinting at the small print. How did they manage to sneak sugar into everything? With a Kleenex from a torn pocket, she dried her tears.

The man felt his seat sink through the linoleum floor—and where could it sink but into the past? His memories were random and dim now, blinking like fireflies in the night. But he could still sense the warmth of the woman beside him—that ancient warmth—as his hand fluttered toward...