Maggie; Or, a Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar

by Katie Yee

A man and a woman walk into a bar. It sounds like the start of a very old joke, and it is. It is also the start of an affair.

That shine I thought my life had? Fool’s gold after all. The way you can tell the difference: when pressure is applied to the surface, real gold will indent (receptive to impression, to being sculpted), whereas fool’s gold will merely flake and crumble.

But to me, putting on something my mother had crafted was like being enshrined. Those were my best days. Yes, my mother was always good at taking the scraps of life and turning them into something worthwhile.

If I don’t go to the doctor, then we can’t know for sure if something is wrong. The not knowing I can deal with. Being in the dark is, apparently, a state I’m used to. Before I go to the specialists, it can be both biting and banal. Schrödinger’s Tumor.

When my husband proposed, he got down on one knee, as they tell you a good man should. It’s important that it’s just the one. It doesn’t allow the woman to be an object of full worship.

She shows me the dating apps: the way you can now include voice memos or have AI help you write your profile. The way you can filter by political affiliation or religion or height or astrology sign. All these safeguards in place to keep you from falling in love with the wrong person.

I practice saying them out loud: I have cancer. I have cancer. I have cancer. I write the words down, as though that would help me internalize them, like a naughty student forced to fill the blackboard, a repetitive punishment out of mythology. I contemplate the phrase, the way it gives the holder some agency that doesn’t exist. Cancer has me, caught in its clutches.

In the mirror, alone, I practiced. Mom. Mom. Mom. Not someone’s mom—which is a role, a new relationship—but a total shift in identity, the implication that you morph into this other thing. Mom. It becomes the call to which you must respond most often. And how odd it feels to suddenly go by a name you had used for someone else, like donning an old overcoat worn by every woman you know and hoping it somehow fits you, too.

At the Barnes & Noble, we are anonymous. At the Barnes & Noble, nobody cares about us.

A man and a woman and another woman walk into a bar. They all say, “Ow!”

The bar had these truly giant pretzels, and I ordered one “for the table,” which really meant for me, but sure, everyone could have some.