Wife 22

Something is nearly over. I put my hand over my heart as if I can keep its contents from spilling out.

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Lucy Pevensie added her profile picture

Nice dress, Wife 22.

You think so? I’m wearing it for my coronation. The rumor floating around here is that soon I’m to be crowned Queen Lucy the Valiant.

Will I be invited to your coronation?

That depends.

On what?

Do you have the proper coronation attire? A velvet cape, preferably royal blue?

I have a velvet cape, but it’s puce. Will that do?

I suppose. My best friend wants me to be her maid of honor.

Ah-so this is a maid of honor dress.

Well, this is what she’d like me to wear. Well, not exactly this dress, but something similar.

Is it possible you’re exaggerating a bit?

Has it ever occurred to you that marriage is a sort of Catch-22? The very things that you first found so attractive in your spouse-his darkness, his brooding, his lack of communication, his silence-those things that you found so charming in the beginning are the very things that twenty years later drive you mad?

I’ve heard similar sentiments from other subjects.

Have you ever felt this way?

I can’t divulge that information.

Please. Divulge something, Researcher 101. Anything.

I can’t stop thinking about you, Wife 22.

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77. A dictatorship where the dictator changes every day. Not sure if democracy is possible.

78. Well, many people here on earth in the twenty-first century believe in the concept of the one true love, and when they believe in the one true love this often leads to marriage. It may seem to you like a silly institution. Your species might be so advanced you have different partners for different stages of your life: first crush, marriage, breeding, child-raising, empty nest, and slow, but hopefully not painful, death. If that’s the case, maybe the one true love doesn’t enter into it-but I doubt it. You probably just call it something else.

79. It seems to me that everyone takes their turn: behind the curtain managing props, being a bit player, then in the chorus, then center stage, then, at last, all of us end up in the audience, watching, one of the faceless appreciators in the dark.

80. Days and weeks and months of glances, of unrequited lust.

81. Living on the top of a mountain in a house with a quilt on the bed and fresh flowers on the table every day. I would wear long white lace dresses and Stevie Nicks-style boots. He would play the guitar. We would have a garden, a dog, and four lovely kids who built towers out of blocks on the floor while I made chicken in a pot.

82. You need it, like air.

83. Kids. Companionship. Can’t imagine life without them.

84. Can imagine life without them.

85. You know the answer to that.

86. Yes.

87. Of course!

88. In some ways, yes. Other ways, no.

89. Cheat. Lie. Forget about me.

90. Dear William,

Do you remember that time we went camping in the White Mountains? We did most of the hike the first day. Our plan was to spend the night and then get up early and climb to the top of Tuckerman Ravine. But you drank too much and the next morning you had a killer hangover, the kind of hangover one can only sleep off. So you crawled back inside your sleeping bag and I went up Tuckerman without you.

You didn’t wake until late afternoon. You looked at your watch and knew immediately something was very wrong; it was a hike that should have taken me two hours, but I had been gone close to six and you had a pretty good idea why-I had gone off trail. I was always going off trail. You, on the other hand always stayed on the trail, but without you there walking beside me, I drifted, and became helplessly lost.

Now, this was a long time ago. Before AOL. Before cellphones. We were still years away from searching and clicking and browsing and friending. So you came after me the old-fashioned way. You rang your bear bell, you called out my name, and you ran. And at dusk, when you finally found me, sobbing at the base of a pine tree, you made me a promise I’ll never forget. No matter where I went, no matter how far I drifted, no matter how long I was gone, you would come after me and bring me home. It was the most romantic thing a man had ever said to me. Which makes it all the more difficult for me to come to terms with the fact that twenty years later we’ve drifted from one another again. Profligate drifting. Senseless drifting. As if we had all the daylight left in the world to make it to the top of Tuckerman.

If this sounds like a goodbye letter, I’m sorry. I’m not sure it’s goodbye. It’s more of a warning. You should probably look at your watch. You should probably say to yourself, Alice has been gone a very long time. You should probably come and find me. AB

74

I wake to the clatter of aluminum tent poles skittering over the hardwood floor.

“Where the hell is your mother?” I hear William shout from downstairs.

I just want to stay in bed. However, thanks to me, sleep will have to be shelved because we’re going camping in the Sierras. I made the reservation a few months ago. It sounded so idyllic then: sleeping under the stars surrounded by sugar pines and firs-a little family bonding. Caroline and Jampo will have the house to themselves for a few days.

“Goddammit!” William shouts. “Is there anybody here capable of packing a tent properly?”

I climb out of bed. Not nearly so idyllic a vision now.

An hour later we are on the road and our family bonding looks like this: William listening to the latest John le Carre novel on his iPhone (which, by the way, is exactly what I’m listening to on the car’s CD player, but William says he’s unable to concentrate unless he’s read to privately), Peter playing Angry Birds on his phone, every so often shouting bananas and dang it, and Zoe furiously texting- God knows to whom. It’s like this for two and a half hours until we begin driving over the pass and cell reception cuts out. Then it’s like they’ve awoken from a dream.

“Whoa, trees,” says Peter.

“Is that where those people ate those people?” asks Zoe, peering down at the lake.