Elsewhere

by Alexis Schaitkin

A mother was a chance to hate someone as much as you loved them, caring and wounding, a push and pull that only tightened the knot that bound you.

‘Seagulls live by the sea and eagles live by the eag,’ she said flatly.

I thought that I should want what Peter and Iris had, a simpler, less turbulent love, parent and child instead of the two-bodied creature Iris and I became together. But I could not make myself want it. I couldn’t get enough of our push and pull, the spell we cast upon one another, our love like a secret chamber we shared, and always, no matter where we were or what we were doing, we were also there in that chamber together. I loved to love her this way, even as I worried that this love might not be what a child needs, that it might also be a kind of harm.

We had known about seasons in our town, but I hadn’t understood: How a place can become something else, how it is always both what it appears to be and the negative of what appears, that other state which hovers behind the scene like a ghost.

I would close my eyes and try to feel just the tiniest ember of what it had once felt like to lie awake in our quiet house while they slept, nothing sweeter in the world.

‘They’re twins,’ I tried one day. In the photograph were two children, a boy and a girl. ‘They bicker constantly, and their parents are at their wits’ end.’ Gabi scooted herself closer to me on the bench and settled her body against mine. This was what she had wanted, a story, even if she couldn’t understand it. ‘When they are twenty their parents will die in an accident and they will never speak to each other again. They will travel to opposite ends of the earth and live separate lives, but they will both live tormented by the same problem: The love they feel for other people will never compare to the hate they felt for each other.’

‘She loves horses. She lives in the city, but when she grows up she will move to the country and fall in love with a woman who trains horses. She will get everything she ever wanted, and best of all she will not question it. She will simply feel lucky and be happy.’