“Did you read my post?”
Mark is grinding the coffee beans for the next morning’s coffee, and he is about to head upstairs to bed. As the noise of the grinder fades, he turns to me, “What?”
“Did you read the piece I put up? The one called Beliance?”
“No. Let me do that now.” He pulls out his iPhone and taps a few times to pull my website up on the screen.
“Aw, babe . . . don’t read it now. It’s not a funny one, and you’re tired. It can wait.”
He starts reading, “What? I am wide awake. Give me a minute.”
I walk into the other room and check my email a final time, turn out the lights, “I am really proud of that story, but I’m not sure everybody understood it. Which is fine, because I am not inclined to Cliff-Note my writing, but I am curious to know what you . . .”
Mark walks into the room and kisses the top of my head, “It’s a great post.”
“Thank you for that . . . I always feel more vulnerable when I write fiction, but I was proud of that story. I didn’t want to come right out and say . . . ”
“Everything you write is wonderful.”
Hmmm.
I stare at him for a minute, “So what would you say the story was about, then?”
“What?”
“Well, since you liked it so much and all . . . what was it about?”
“Ummm . . . it was about a woman.”
“Seriously, babe?”
He speaks slowly, as though plucking the words one by one from the space just above and to the right of my head, “It was about a woman who . . . walked out on her husband. Yeah, that was a good part.”
“Huh. Guess what?”
Mark is nervous, “What?”
“That is the exact opposite of what happens in that story. The exact opposite.”
“OK, but there were levels of meaning. I love how your writing has levels of meaning.”
“Don’t try to kiss my ass with your levels of meaning. None of the levels of meaning allows for getting the story completely ass-backward.”
He pulls his phone out again, taps the screen, “Let me just read it again.”
“Augh. You should see your face. You look like a kid who has just been told there is a pop quiz on the material he forgot to read.”
Mark laughs guiltily, “OK, so just tell me what the story is about.”
“No, because now I am all annoyed. I was thinking people maybe didn’t catch the significance of a phrase I used, but now thanks to you I can think that I didn’t make any fucking sense at all.”
Mark puts on his best soothing tone, “I’m sure you made sense. You sure she didn’t leave him?”
I stare at him, “Babe, I am the woman who wrote the story. I KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN THE STORY.”
“Just seems like maybe she left him because she was pissed about the affair he had.”
“AUGH! Stop talking! Nowhere in the story was she pissed about the woman he was fucking. NOWHERE.”
“The woman down the street, I mean,” Mark offers helpfully.
“Listen. I said in the story that there had been a series of people who had filled the space between them and that it didn’t matter.”
“So wait . . . She left because she was having an affair?”
“She was not having an affair! Just shut up. Stop talking to me about this.”
We walk upstairs and undress, brush our teeth, climb into bed. I am still cranky, and so Mark tries to fix it, “What does bellyants mean, anyway?”
“I . . . am . . . going . . . to . . . kill . . . you.”
“Why? I really don’t know what that word means.”
“That’s because it’s not a word. I made it up; I mentioned that in the tags.”
“Just seems weird to call the story Bellyants.”
“BE-LIE-ANTS . . . from the word belie, which means a mismatch of appearance and the truth.”
“That’s not a word either.”
“What . . . belie? YES IT IS AND HOW ARE WE MARRIED?”
“Huh.”
“Oh my god.”
“Use it in a sentence.”
“Her seething anger was belied by the smile she held carefully in place.”
“Wait, I guess I have heard that word before. I didn’t recognize it when it was bellyants.”
“I need to stop talking to you now.”
“No, come on . . . explain the story to me.”
“No, because at this point, I would have to read the whole story to you and explain it to you piece by piece.”
“You wouldn’t have to read the whole thing. Just the parts I didn’t understand.”
“Fine. Where did she get his ring?”
“From the nightstand drawer.”
“That is just so wrong I would like to smack you.”
“Ask me another question . . . I’ll get this one right.”
“The last line about synchronized heartbeats . . . what did that mean?”
“That they were going to get back together? That this was all a dream and he’s dead? That this was all a dream and they are happily married? That she is a ghost? That he had a heart attack? That they are both calm now? It’s the dream thing, isn’t it? That’s very clever.”
I reach to switch my bedside light on, and I turn to stare at Mark, “Every single one of those guesses is wrong, babe. Incredibly and completely wrong. Every one.”
“So there was no dream?”
“No.”
“Oh. Fine . . . go ahead and read it to me.”
I pull out my own iPhone and tap to the story. I read the first paragraph to Mark, and as soon as I finish, Mark is triumphant, “She’s a prostitute! I missed that the first time through. That changes everything!”
I glare at him, “She is not a prostitute.”
“Oh. This isn’t going very well for me, is it?”
“No. No babe . . . no, it is not.”
I keep reading, and when I get to the phrase confiding intimacy, Mark interrupts me, “There. That’s why I thought she had an affair.”
I am confused, “What are you talking about?”
“She wants to confide an intimacy. She wants to confess to having had an affair.”
“Have you perhaps had a stroke when I was not paying attention? You cannot possibly be this dense. I said that she sought a moment of confiding intimacy . . . that does not mean she wants to confide an intimacy.”
“Never mind that . . . get to the sex part. I understood that part. In fact? That may be the whole problem . . . I was so distracted by the sex that I lost track of the rest of the story. Pretty sure that’s what happened.”
“That’s very lame, babe.”
“Read that masturbation part again.”
So I do, and as I finish I ask, “You know what fecund means, right?”
“Not a clue.”
“So the sentence in which I describe her slipping her fingers through her own moisture as well as his semen, where I say . . . Fingers danced within their intermingled moisture; the fecund taste of redundant possibility traced upon her lips . . . that meant nothing to you?”
Mark is silent for a moment, “Any way I could somehow transition this conversation into us having sex?”
“Not so much.”
“So what does fecund mean?”
“It means fertile or productive or suggestive of reproduction.”
“OH! So he got her pregnant in the story?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No . . . the fecund taste of redundant possibility . . . a possibility is redundant if it has already been accomplished.”
“So wait . . . you mean she’s pregnant?”
“I seriously may cry that it has taken you this long to get this, babe.”
“Read me the rest of the story, Kris.”
So I do. Mark listens, and as I finish the last line, he says, “So the synchronized heartbeats are the woman and her unborn baby.”
I sigh, “Yes.”
“Probably wasn’t the wisest plan to have the whole story turn on the understanding of a big vocabulary word.”
“But I gave other hints, babe. The fact that she wants to tell him something, the mention of his semen, the mention of redundancy, the statement that she would fill the space within her all by herself, the mention of the perfectly synchronized heartbeats as she looked into the mirror at her nude body . . .”
Mark is thoughtful, “Yeah, I guess you did.”
“I seriously may cry.”
“Don’t cry.”
“Hmmph.”
Mark plumps his pillow, “That’s ridiculous . . . if everyone who wrote things that I don’t understand were to cry, the world would be filled with weeping authors.”
Snort!
