Wife 22

Lucy Pevensie

Is in need of her magic cordial but seems to have misplaced it.

3 hours ago

There you are. Have you looked under the backseat of the car, Wife 22?

No, but I looked under the backseat of the White Witch’s sled.

What does the cordial do?

Heals all illnesses.

Ah-of course. Are you ill?

I have a hangover.

I’m sorry to hear that.

Are you of Swedish descent?

I can’t divulge that information.

Well, can you tell me what you like about Sweden?

Its neutrality. It’s a safe place to wait out a war, if one is in a war, that is.

Are you in a war?

Possibly.

How can somebody “possibly” be in a war? Wouldn’t it be obvious?

War is not always obvious, particularly when one is in a war with oneself.

What kind of war does one typically have with oneself?

A war in which one side of him thinks he may be crossing a line, and the other side of him thinks it’s a line that was begging to be crossed.

Researcher 101? Are you calling me a beggar?

Absolutely not, Wife 22.

Well, are you calling me a line?

Perhaps.

A line you are in the process of stepping over?

Tell me to stop.

Wife 22?

You’re Swedish.

What makes you think that?

Based on the fact that you use the word “ah” sometimes.

I’m not Swedish.

Okay, you’re Canadian.

Better.

You grew up on a cattle ranch in Southern Alberta. You learned to ride when you were three; home- schooled in the mornings with your four siblings, afternoons spent poaching cows with the Hutterite children who lived in the Colony next door.

How I miss my friends, the Hutterites.

You were the oldest, so much was expected out of you, not the least of which was to grow up and run the ranch. Instead you went to college in New York and only came home once a year to help with branding. An event to which you brought all your girlfriends to impress and shock the hell out of them. Also so they could see how good you look in chaps.

I still have those chaps.

Your wife fell in love with you when she saw you mount a horse.

Are you psychic?

You’ve been married a long time. It could be she is no longer as interested in seeing you mount a horse, although I would imagine that would never get old.

You’ll get no disagreement from me on that.

You are not: pasty, a gamer, a golfer, a dullard, somebody who corrects other people’s malapropisms, somebody who despises dogs.

No disagreement there either.

Don’t stop.

Don’t stop what, Wife 22?

Crossing my line.

63

67. To want the people you love to be happy. To look homeless people in the eye. To not want what you don’t have. What you can’t have. What you shouldn’t have. To not text while driving. To control your appetite. To want to be where you are.

68. Once I got past the morning sickness with Zoe, I loved being pregnant. It changed the dynamics between William and me utterly. I let myself be vulnerable and he let himself be the protector, and every day this stunned, primal, bumper-stickerish voice inside of me whispered this is the way it should be. This is how you were meant to live. This is what your whole life has been for. William was gallant. He opened doors and jars of spaghetti sauce. He heated up the car before I got in and held my elbow as we navigated rainy sidewalks. We were whole, the three of us, a trinity way before Zoe was born-I could have happily stayed pregnant for years.

And then Zoe arrived, a colicky, drooling, aggressively unhappy baby. William fled to the sanity of the office each day. I stayed home on maternity leave and divided hours into fifteen-minute increments: breastfeed, burp, lie on couch with screaming baby, attempt to sing screaming baby to sleep.

This was when I felt the loss of my mother most acutely. She never would have let me go through those disorienting early months alone. She would have moved right in and taught me the things a mother teaches her daughter: how to give a baby a bath, how to get rid of cradle cap, how long you should stay mad at your husband when he straps your baby into the swing haphazardly and she slides out.

And most importantly, my mother would have filled me in about time. She would have said, “Honey, it’s a paradox. For the first half of your life each minute feels like a year, but for the second half, each year feels like a minute.” She would have assured me this was normal and it would do no good to fight it. That’s the price we pay for the privilege of growing old.

My mother never got that privilege.

Eleven months later, I woke one morning and the disorientation was gone. I picked my baby up out of her crib, she made the sweetest dolphin squeal, and I fell instantly in love.

69. Dear Zoe,

Here is the story of the beginning of your life. It can be summed up in one sentence. I loved you and then I got really scared and then I loved you more than I ever thought it was possible for one person to love another. I think we are not so dissimilar, although I’m sure it feels like we are right now.

Things you may not know or remember:

1. You have always been a trendsetter. When you were two, you stood up on Santa’s lap and belted out “Do, a Deer” to the hundred irritated people who had been standing in line for an hour. Everybody started singing with you. You were flash-mobbing before anybody even knew what flash-mobbing was.

2. The first vacation your father and I took without you kids was to Costa Rica. You know how some girls go through a horse stage? Well, you were going through a primate stage. You convinced yourself I’d agreed to bring you home a white-faced capuchin. When we returned and I gave you your gift, a stuffed chimp named Milo, you said thank you very much, then went into your room, opened your window, and threw it into the branches of the redwood tree in the backyard, where to this day it still lives. Occasionally, when there’s a big storm, and the tree sways from side to side, I get a glimpse of Milo’s face, his faded red mouth smiling sadly at me.