Fates and Furies

by Lauren Groff

He woke in the morning with the conviction that he was being watched, judged at all times. Church all day long. He made innocent faces when he thought bad thoughts. Even when he was alone, he performed.

THE WORLD REVEALED ITSELF AS IT WAS. Threatened from below with darkness. Lotto had once watched a sinkhole open suddenly and swallow the old family outhouse. Everywhere: sinkholes.

For many months up there he had looked down and considered how the lifespan of a sunflower reflected the lifespan of man: hopeful, beautiful, brightly shooting out of the ground; broad and strong, with a face turned full and dutiful toward the sun; head so heavy with ripe thoughts it bowed toward the ground, turned brown, lost its bright hair, grew weak on its stalk; mowed down for the long winter.

There was vodka chilled in the stream in back and a sort of seething music, all electric spikes.

She said nothing, eloquently.

[The noble feel the same strong feelings as the rest of us; the difference is in how they choose to act.]

Paradox of marriage: you can never know someone entirely; you do know someone entirely.

She was grateful to the sand that eked its way into the naughty bits and stung; she couldn’t trust pleasure in its pure form.

That was when she knew, with existential bitterness, that her husband had understood nothing of her. Somehow, despite her politics and smarts, she had become a wife, and wives, as we all know, are invisible. The midnight elves of marriage.