My mother is remarrying.

My girlfriend throws her arms around me. Her eyes brim with tears.

“Why are you crying?” I ask, holding her away from me so I can see her face.

“I am happy! Marriage is happy!”

I hold her closely again while she shivers with excitement.

My eyes unfocus on the laundry hanging in the veranda.

Outside the miserable world thrums, certain of its ideals.

“Aren’t you happy?” she asks.

“Hardly.”

“Are you being sarcastic?” she asks.

They say it requires advanced fluency to hear sarcasm. She hasn’t quite got the ear for it yet, but she’s been caught taking sincerely what was meant sarcastically often enough to proactively guard against it.

“No, darling. I’m serious.”

“You don’t want your mother to get married?”

“I don’t mind if she remarries. Just, not to him.”

“He isn’t a good man?”

I don’t want to impugn him. He is a good man.

“He’s great. Just, they’re seeking strength from each other. They rely on each other. It’s to the point of codependence.”

“I think we want to be codependent.”

“I disagree. Anyway, it’s more than that. Since she’s been with him she hasn’t written.”

“Maybe she’s too busy falling in love.”

“Hardly.”

“What does it mean when you say it like that?”

“Hardly? It means, not at all.”

“She’s not at all busy falling in love?”

“Falling in love doesn’t take any time at all. She’s not writing because she believes all her problems are solved in love. She’s taken her angst and set it on his shoulders. He’s done the same.”

“It sounds beautiful. We carry each other’s burdens.”

“Except that the other person can’t possibly succeed. The issues don’t go away. It’s like watching a movie inside when there’s a famine outside.”

“Oh I see. Because they have fallen in love, they ignore the problems. So the problems get worse.”

“It’s not even that. It’s that they expect the problems have become irrelevant now, that love has solved everything. It’s just a drug. You wake up from it and realize the world’s still a shit place. So you take another hit.”

“So they’re high? But isn’t that a happy place to be?”

“Except that, all through your high, you know that the problems are waiting for you. With a high you expect to come down. You enjoy the high because it doesn’t last. It’s an escape that doesn’t amount to deriliction of duty.”

“What is deriliction?”

“I mean the escape isn’t permanent, so eventually you face your problems.”

“So love is a drug. It’s cheaper than THC.”

I chuckle at her formality. “Weed.”

“What?”

“Weed. It’s called weed. Pot, ganja, Mary Jane.”

“Who is Mary Jane?”

“Tom Petty. Never mind. Love isn’t the same sort of drug though. On weed, you know you’ll come down. Love, you expect love to last forever. Hence, when love ends, you’re crushed. Not only is the high over, but it comes with a rejection, AND you realize your problems are still waiting on the doorstep.”

“Your mother’s problems are waiting on the doorstep?”

“Yes. Still bankrupt, still overweight, still aimless and timid.”

“Maybe their love won’t die. You should give them a chance. Some loves last.”

“In Korea maybe.”

She defends love because divorce is non-existent in Korea. The cultural aversion to divorce doesn’t transfer to extra-marital affairs, which are so rampant that an entire industry of Love Hotels exists to cater to unhappy spouses risking ostracization for two hours of suspended reality.

She’s been thinking. “Just because you don’t believe in love doesn’t mean it won’t work for your mother. You should support her decision.”

“I DO believe in love. But this isn’t love. This is codependence.”

“You said they’re in love.”

“Yes, but there’s a difference between being ‘in love’ and loving someone.”

“Which are we?”

“We’re in love.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“Right now it’s good. Because we’re not codependent. I don’t need you and you don’t need me.”

“You don’t need me? Why not?”

I see she’s suddenly sensitive. Here we go again.

“I don’t need you. I’m independent. But I want you. It’s better.”

“But what if you stop wanting me? Then we won’t be in love?”

“I suppose not.”

“At least your mom needs her fiance. Then it might last.”

“It might last longer, yes. But it’s not a safe foundation. Because they expect the other person to meet their needs. And if one of them fails to meet a need, which WILL happen – it’s a heavy burden – so WHEN one of them fails, the other will feel betrayed. And they’ll resent each other, and the love collapses. Back to facing reality. It’s devestating.”

“I see. But every couple does this. You will have to look over the whole earth to find a woman who does not have a burden. Or a man.”

“It’s fine to share problems.”

“You said it was devastating.”

“Depending on someone to maintain the illusion that your problems don’t exist is a tenuous reason to love them. They’ll end up feeling used, and at some point betrayed by asymetrical disclosure.”

I can tell I am beginning to get annoyed repeating myself. I’m not sure if I’m not being clear, or if the language is distorting my argument, or if she just doesn’t get it. Or even that she doesn’t want to get it.

“So it is safe to love, so long as we are already perfect? But love is what makes us perfect. The only time we are perfect is in our lover’s eyes.”

I suppress the vomit. “Only because our lovers are willing to ignore our faults and baggage in the name of persisting a false ideal – like agreeing to say we’re safer for invading Iraq. It makes us feel better, but it isn’t true.”

Retreating to the bathroom, I study the mirror. My eyes scorn me, taking my mother’s side. Must I inflict my sobriety on her? These opiates, they’re how we bear it.

1. The first day Jane Grey’s mind went wandering, she meandered through a dry riverbed leading into brown hills.

Eventually she came to a dead wood. Leaving the riverbed, she heard a clattering and triumphant shouts.

She followed the sounds deeper into the wood, until the trees were so dense, light no longer shone through their thick branches. There she found the mouth of a cave.

Scrutinizing the entrance she ducked as an earthenware jar hurtled from the cave and crashed against a tree. Shouts resounded from the cave, then gleeful laughter, then a child’s song: “Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.”

Jane Grey picked up a shard of pottery. The outside was brown like the woods, but the inside was painted in a rich red and purple. When she looked closely she saw the shape of a windmill, depicted at sunset. Taking another shard she found a yellow knight on a green horse. She combined them to form a scene.

The song resounded from the cave again, “Ring around the rosy. Pocket full of posies.” She dropped the shards as another jar flew from the cave. The shards fell, like the jar, against rocks and crumbled into dust.

2. The second day Jane Grey’s mind went wandering, she clambered down snowy mountains into a fertile valley. There she met a farmer counting seeds. He invited her for dinner with his family. They ate rice, and fish from a frozen river.

Jane stayed to watch the snow melt in Spring. When the days warmed the farmer tilled his fields. He worked from dawn to dusk, rising early to pray to his ancestors for fertile land.

On the second day of tilling, soldiers stopped on the road in front of the farmer’s house and he departed with them. Jane Grey followed at a distance, all the way to the palace.

In an inner garden stood a potentate dressed in twenty pounds of silk robes. He sipped wine from the lips of a concubine who held the wine in her mouth until he was thirsty.

The potentate was considering a parcheesi board carved into a marble stone ten meters by ten meters. On it stood the Crown’s subjects: a priest, a merchant, a tutor and a mendicant, among others.

The potentate bade the farmer to stand on the home space. He then ordered him to move four spaces forward. The game went on and on, lasting until the end of Summer.

When the potentate bored of his game, he sent the farmer and the others home. As they crossed the river, they noted it was no longer flowing with water.

Home again, the farmer tilled his fields and planted his seeds. But it was too late for a crop to grow and that Autumn the farmer and his family starved.

Jane asked the dying farmer why he did not appeal to the potentate, who had misused him. The farmer replied, “Sometimes we flow rapidly and sometimes we rest, like the frozen river. We must be of use while we can. Remember child, though the river is dry of water now, it will flow again in another season.”

5. The fifth day Jane Grey’s mind went wandering, she criss-crossed a city full of glass buildings reaching to the clouds.

She observed each person she encountered was richly dressed, like the potentate. Each drove an elegant chariot and spent hours playing at games, drinking wine and laughing with friends.

With dusk, a deep fog descended around the buildings. Jane wandered through the glass forest, watching the citizens return home.

Five times that evening she found a person asleep in a doorway, or holding their hands out to the revelers, or twitching as if bewitched. The revelers gave these five space and were polite to them, though they offered no help.

Jane continued to traverse the darkened streets. Across an avenue, between two tall glass buildings she saw a grove of trees, and beneath the trees, a small cemetery full of gravestones.

She drew closer. Many of the headstones were old and crumbling. But many were new. On the newest gravestone she saw her name.

9. The ninth day Jane Grey’s mind went wandering, she left her room and crossed the lawn inside the Tower. She climbed six wooden steps to a platform.

She gazed out at a handful of people, all familiar to her. Then she closed her eyes.

She donned a blindfold and turned to her priest. She put out her hands to him. “Where is it?” she asked, stumbling forward.

When he did not answer, Jane grew flustered. She took two more steps and began to panic. “Where is it? What am I to do?”

Then the priest took her hand and led her to a table. Jane Grey knelt and laid her head down.

She whispered, “Into thy hands, I commend my spirit.” Then a pause, and then she hummed, “Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.”

[ flash-fiction seattle september 17]

In the mirror he could see his face was rounder. It drooped near the neck and his cheekbones no longer shone through taut skin. (Two people in one day), he thought. He saw where an eyebrow was escaping across the bridge of his nose. He felt like a transaction. Red flickering beams scanning a can of pop. (Other things to do), he thought. Easily missed. It was in the solid stream of water, the sustained note of liquid rhthym, that his mind functioned best. (There is a theme of water in my life). He lounged in the bathroom rain, massaged shampoo through his hair. (Number 3 on the top, number 2 on the sides. But I’m not paying $25 for a haircut anymore. I’ll grow it out. Need to get shampoo, and honey and peanut butter. Bread too. Mail those checks). He thought about calling the Municipal Court, telling them the check was in transit.

(Tickets aren’t penalties. They’re revenue streams), he thought. Images of the rich laughing and paying the fine. The poor fighting in court to lessen the fine. (I could get a criminal record if this doesn’t get there on time). He sneered at the moldy shower curtains. He felt mold growing on his skin, slimy. (This stream, unbroken, like consciousness. I can’t remember later. Let it go. It’s too bad the only place I think well, the paper would get wet). He saw a mirror against the tiles, and some marker that wouldn’t wash off. He’d write his thoughts on the shower wall. (Everything’s in Robert’s voice). More shampoo. He always remembered his shopping list in transit to some obligation. (Only to myself though. I don’t have to go). He felt time pinning his chest to a wall. Shallow breaths. (I need a patron. I don’t want to work in restaurants anymore). He’d tell them, “I couldn’t get tomorrow night’s shift covered at my restaurant, so I need to get my morning shift tomorrow morning covered.” (These are my last two shifts there ever. “I’d have to leave early to make it to the restaurant on time. Work till midnight. And then I’d be back at the coffee shop at 7:15 the next morning). He toweled his body. Saw a lump on his chest, between the pectoral and the shoulder. Felt it, long and sinewy like a scar. He met his confused eyes in the mirror. (You look old already). He finished drying, wrapped the towel around his waist. (Did I brush my teeth already)? Smiled in the mirror. Looked down, away from his yellowed teeth. The lump was gone. He thought of a worm. (I didn’t feel it move though. Would you feel it move)? His eyes unfocused and stared at the wall behind him in the mirror.

[New York Summer 2007]