Helpmeet

by Naben Ruthnum

Edward only knew the deep complaints of his entire dying body, an intermittent throbbing beacon calling death. It wasn’t pain as he had conceived of it in his career, Edward told Louise: not pain as a warning, but pain as a lament.

When we met she told me her name didn’t matter, and I laughed. I told her that many of the women in places like this started out saying so, used that same tired phrase, until they had a proper employer who explained to them that men didn’t like it. That men liked to test a name on the tongue and use and own it first, that it was an important première étape, and she explained that she wasn’t employed and never intended to be but that her name was Jean. The name was a lie, but it was acceptable, because it marked a compromise. She was doing what I had described, testing and owning the name, when she used it for the first time. This meant that it was always hers, would never be mine to have, only to borrow. You’ve never had these kinds of transactions, Louise, but you know what taking my name was for you: you have a sense, a notion of the degraded play on proper love and commitment that exists in these conversations. A word can have such force, and a name is an entire incantation.