Mermaids in Paradise by Lydia Millet (debian ebook reader .txt) 📕

sure, technically I had to admit, happiness is an emotion isn’t a groundbreaking discovery. And yet: knowing this and knowing this are not the same.

I wasn’t willing to let go of the moment right away; I was determined to show Chip that the clarity meant something. At times, when it comes to telling my thoughts to Chip, I’m like a dog with a bone. Chip’s more than a sounding board to me; Chip is the universal ear. That’s the job of a spouse, isn’t it? You find someone to be your universal ear. So I’m a dog with a bone when I have an idea, a dog that keeps on gnawing/talking until Chip accepts the bone/thought as the big gift that it clearly is.

“See, Chip,” I said, “this matters, because, Chip, people are out there thinking they have to pursue the happiness, like it says in the Declaration of Independence or whatever, they think it’s not only their right but like their job, Chip. See? They think it’s their job. Those poor fools think they have to be constantly pursuing it! Of course they fail constantly, too, because the problem is it can’t be caught, you have to make it yourself! You have to just fabricate that feeling out of thin air! You get it, Chip? You have to conjure it like a white rabbit!”

“Uh-huh,” said Chip. “Definitely.”

“So the pursuit thing is a fool’s errand! A fool’s errand, Chip! The rat race! The push for richness! The pressure for success!”

“No, yeah,” said Chip, but he was fumbling with the strap on the back of my camisole, mistaking it no doubt for something else.

“You make it, Chip! You make it!”

“Come on, let’s get you up against that tree,” said Chip. “The bark’s not too rough, is it, honey?”

“You decide to feel happy. Sure it’s fleeting, but you can do it whenever you want to! Joy, Chip! You make it up out of thin air!”

“I’ll make something up,” muttered Chip.

And so forth.

Well, the particular, perfect angle of my clarity slipped away, as clarity tends to. You know the rest. But it was enough that I’d had it. I would remember, I promised myself. Out of thin air, I whispered, in my mind. Out of thin air.

PARTY AFTERMATHS HAVE never sat well with me. At least in this case we didn’t have to do the cleanup ourselves, plus we were leaving two days later on our honeymoon, so we had that to look forward to. Still, waking up the morning after the wedding, hungover, with the task of saying goodbye to out-of-town guests hanging above our heads—I didn’t love it. I fortified myself with aspirin and water chased by a nice, fresh bagel and coffee; Chip elevated his mood with a brief voyage to some pseudo-Celtic kingdom populated by slutty forest nymphs strumming on dulcimers.

They lived in treehouses, with wooden footbridges swaying between them. Impractical, you may say, but nymphs don’t give a shit about practicality. Chip defended the slut-nymphs, if I’m not mistaken, with his bow and arrow as they came under attack from swarthy brigands.

After that, we hauled ourselves reluctantly into day. Soon we were driving, making the round of the hotels.

This was how it would be, I figured, from now on—the two of us side by side, discharging obligations. I considered asking Chip if he was disappointed, this next morning, if he’d thought being married would be more like the half-naked wood nymph community, more like the piercing of brigands’ hearts, less like just being in the car, sitting there, seeing the other cars, passing buildings.

Next I thought: Well, sure, but no need to force the issue.

It struck me that we’d probably never see some of these out-of-towners again, since families meet for weddings and then the next time, after the wedding get-together, memorial services. I wondered which of our friends would fall by the wayside, about which of them we would find ourselves saying, ten years down the road, When did we last see Kevin/Dave/Krishnamurti? Wait—no way—was it at our wedding?

Hard to tell who would fade out of sight. But odds were that someone would. Perhaps many.

We left my great-aunt for last on the list of stops, since I didn’t want to go. I was ashamed of whatever I might have said to her in my drunken confession. I didn’t know her, and I was ashamed of that too, though I couldn’t say why—it wasn’t like she’d ever reached out to me either, except for the surprising move of coming to my wedding. Her name was Gloria; she lived in a city. Or town or state. Lewiston, possibly. She’d been married to my mother’s uncle. He’d been in commodities—seeds. Maybe feeds. Something with sacks of grain, but where you never see or touch them. She had a skin tag on her neck the size and hue of a purple grape.

I preferred to call in an excuse and let her slip quietly away to LAX, but Chip is annoyingly decent about appointments: he has an “honor code.” To Chip, blowing off a great-aunt from Louisville was a failure of ethics; to me, not blowing her off was a failure of intelligence.

Sober, it was going to be hard to think of conversation topics.

“It’s really too bad,” I said to Chip, “that you can’t just be honest about this stuff. Like, why can’t I say to her: Aunt Gloria, we don’t know each other from Adam, and chances are you’ll die soon, right? What are you, ninety-one? Eighty-three?”

I’m not that good with ages, once there’s a critical mass of wrinkles on a face it’s all the same to me.

“And even if you don’t die shortly, we’re not going to see each other again because I’m not flying to Louisiana unless someone hijacks my plane. So let’s cut to the chase. What does it mean, really? This extended family thing? I mean why did you come? Why are you even here talking to me?”

“Maybe if you don’t say that about her death