“We need to agree on some things. You sprang Brenda on me out of the blue. That was sneaky and disrespectful, and not okay.”

“No more secrets,” Stephen agreed. “You’re right.”

“It’ll take a while before I can fully trust either of you, but Brenda’s child will be my stepchild and brother or sister to this baby.” Maggie patted her belly and took a breath.

“Brenda is in my life to stay. I’ll have to try to get to know her. Maybe I can love her too… it’ll take time.”

“We’ve got time.”

“Oh, Stephen! I’m scared…”

“Me too, Mags.”

Stephen and Maggie lay in a tangle of damp sheets, sublimely sated.

“My God,” Stephen murmured.

“Speaking,” Maggie giggled breathlessly.

“My Goddess… how could I ever want another woman?”

“I presume that was a rhetorical question, silly man.” She smiled dreamily.

He stroked her cheek and gazed into her eyes, noses touching. “Mags, right now, you are all women, so glorious and complete, I can’t imagine anybody else even exists.”

“Darling, that’s all I could ask for… thank you for saying it. Yet,” she mused, “I suppose this moment will pass…”

“Let’s not go there yet. I want to savor.”

Maggie unpacked the articles she had brought with her and joined Stephen on the couch. Awkwardness lay between them. This was the man she loved, she thought, bemused. She wanted to believe it was true, yet everything seemed unreal.

“Stephen?” she said hesitantly. “Stephen, I… oh, God.”

His eyes were hollow with anguish as he reached for her. To her utter astonishment, she fell weeping into his arms. A small detached part of her mind questioned the wisdom of opening her heart before getting her points across, but the tide of feeling overwhelmed them both. His sobs blended with hers.

I do not translate well. Some interface wiring has gone haywire. Here I am, there everything else is, and I can’t get there from here. Who do I think I am?

I suppose that can no longer be the question. I’ve been working on that one so long I’m dogtired of it, and no closer to the more fundamental Who am I? that lies beneath.

So the question then becomes, what is the question now? I ask, I answer, and the two events are not connected. I remain uncertain as to which question is being answered, and so my understanding remains incomplete.

My head spins with thoughts, images, ideas, voices speaking, whispering, shouting, taunting, accusing, encouraging. Confusing. How much of who I am and have been is a result of the hormones I am steeped in? What will change, and if it does, does that mean it was never legitimately a part of me?

Oh lord, this is what happens when I fish for questions. All sorts of nibbles by minnows too small to keep.

Why am I alive? Do I want to be? Why? Ah. That’s better.

Until I know the answer to these questions, some part of me can’t commit to actually living my life, rather than (as has been my lifelong habit) observing it from varying distances and with varying degrees of acuity.

Oh, I have moments—hours—eternities—of living my life, outside of habits and preconceptions. But the moments alone, even the eternities, cannot be enough for me, so long as they end. Moments of being alive must be followed by more moments of being alive, for the only alternative is to be dead. Being dead is a habit I wish to break.

As I grow older, it becomes increasingly difficult to recover from these bouts of being dead. The question arises, is it worth the struggle, if I’m only going to have to go through it again, and again? It must be possible to have life eternal—that must be what Jesus was talking about (not that I’m a Christian). Life eternal equals, life uninterrupted by moments of death, the state of numb distracted non-presence that has plagued me my whole life.

Another question: What is life? What is poison to me might be life-sustaining to another, and vice versa. Where objectivity fails, I resort to the subjective. Life is what it is to me. My personal point of view matters. Life recognizes my personal point of view.

For the sake of convenience, let’s call life God, and let’s call the state of being vivid and real in one’s own perception life–as contrasted with pallid, limp death, however we subjectively measure that state.

Lord let me complete a thought, from initiating spark to logical explication… let me complete one thought from its beginning to its end, and then perhaps then I will understand this thing called life, or God.

Stephen had time to think before Maggie came home, and he already regretted his willing acceptance of her conditions. He loved and missed Maggie urgently and wanted to raise a child with her. But he had his self-respect to consider. How could surrender his very soul to her selfish demands?

His backbone firmed as the clock ticked closer to Maggie’s arrival. Waiting in the car for the train, he imagined her demands. She would stand by her insistence on monogamy, of course, but what did that mean? Never an intimate moment with another human? How could he live that way?

“Maggie, telephone. It’s Stephen.” Maggie’s mother’s voice was carefully noncommittal.

“I’ll take it.” Maggie took a deep breath. “Hello, Stephen.”

“Maggie! Oh, Maggie, I… I’m so sorry. I’ve treated you abominably and you deserved better and please won’t you come home? I need you so much…” The words tumbled out in a rush. Maggie heard Stephen’s desperate, urgent love for her, and her heart softened.

“Yes, Stephen, I will come home. But we need to get some things clear between us first.”

“Yes, of course,” he agreed, relieved. “I understand, you’ll have conditions. I’ll do anything.”

“You might be surprised.”

Submerged in murky depths, Maggie felt water swirl through her gills. A transcending peace suffused her. For the first time in weeks, she felt utterly relaxed, her problems receded to the water’s surface.

She felt the infant’s fishlike fluttering in the waters of her womb. Perhaps this deep, blissful restfulness was the old fish’s gift. She knew it could not last, and at the thought, she surfaced, spluttering, to awareness.

Gasping, she opened her eyes. She sat, her clothing dry, at the roots of the ancient cottonwood. The peace was still within her, as was the answer she had sought.

Maggie wandered down to her childhood hiding place under a looming cottonwood tree, where the bend of Copper Kettle Creek created a calm eddy, perfect for contemplation.

She stared into the sun-flickered brownish depths, hoping for a glimpse of the legendary trout her brothers had spent many unsuccessful hours trying to catch. She had joined the game, claiming this spot as hers, but never baited her hook… Instead, she had long conversations with the huge fish she imagined suspended in the dark waters, ancient and wise.

She spoke, as she had so often then. “Old Fish, what should I do?”

Maggie dunked her toast in her coffee with a vehement splash. “Don’t do this, Mom! You don’t understand!”

“Then tell me more. I want to understand, Maggie.”

“I left my husband because he was in love with another woman. That’s clear enough!”

“You said your note told him to decide. If you’d already made up your mind, why put it that way?”

“That’s not fair! Stephen had his chance! It’s over!”

“You’re a grown woman about to become a mother. Think a little more about what you’re doing before you burn your bridges!”

“I hate him!” Maggie burst into tears.

When my dead dog came scratching on my door of course I let him in. Stephen King be damned, I love my dog.

When it happened I was busy crying, curled in a ball in my mom’s old chair, the floor around me littered with soggy wads of toilet paper. The chair was perfect for crying in. It was huge with wide soft arms that curled around like a grandma’s lap.

Not that my grandma had a lap like that. My only living grandmother was thin and active and lived in Vancouver. The last time I’d seen her was at my parents’ funeral. She stayed for only two days because she said she had an important charity auction to attend.

But I wasn’t crying about my parents’ deaths or about my grandmother either. I was crying for my dog. My heart, my head and my belly all hurt and my throat hurt too from crying so much but I couldn’t stop. It felt good in a way like finally going to the bathroom when you’ve been constipated for a long time.

I was bawling so hard it was a while before I noticed the familiar and strange noise coming from the kitchen door.

“Scritch-scritch, scritch-scritch.”

It was familiar because it was the same sound my dog always made when he wanted to be let in. And it was strange because the day before, I buried my dog. (more…)