A True History

My address was early on the mailman’s route. Some days it was just after I drank my second or third decaf that between houses I espied him delivering the next block’s mail. His appearance signaled the end of lazy morning. When I saw him, I called the time and temperature, took a shower, dressed, fetched the bills and coupons and envelops of pictures of me as a baby my mother had begun to send, and then depending on the day of the week either caught the shuttle to campus, or sat in bed and tried to keep warm while I read.

The cherries were blooming in Nashville, my mother bragged. In Ithaca the third week of March lifted the sky’s gray lid and let in a little light. A threadbare robin joined the winter birds at the feeder. Soon tulips would groan in their beds and the gothic trees would bud.

Six mailboxes hung in a row beside what was once a farmhouse’s front door. The house had been split into apartments and Farm Street’s name was all that remained of the farm. My box was last in line. A rolled manila envelope was jammed into it, and I worried Mom had sent 8×10s now surely bent and creased. When I pulled it from the box, I recognized Frank’s handwriting. The envelope was addressed to a scholarly journal at Eastern Washington University and had been returned because of insufficient postage. It was a relief to find Frank was submitting articles, but I felt a little guilty he was sending them on the sly—I worried he felt the need to hide even potential failures.

Our unspoken agreement not to discuss his problems at school limited conversation, and because I didn’t want to bug him or seem trivial, I kept to myself a lot of what I thought about the baby. I hadn’t told him I’d decided our little girl’s name would be Ava. Zöe had to tell me about the poetry Frank wrote. I pulled the rest of the mail from the box and vowed to be less critical so he would be more forthcoming with his emotions and thoughts and poems. Even if I didn’t say anything, surely he could tell I was disappointed he’d nearly been expelled.

There was also a business-sized envelope for Frank with a University of Nebraska return address. The baby kicked and I remembered I hadn’t yet eaten breakfast.

I fixed a bowl of instant oatmeal and opened a bottle of Gatorade and examined the returned envelope. I decided it would be best to put it back in the box and ask Frank to check the mail when he got home. He hadn’t licked the glue on the flap, and only the metal clasp held the envelope closed. I’d read hardly anything he’d written. Daily I resisted the urge to open his files on the Mac because I worried his rushed work wouldn’t warrant the A-minus he always managed, or it would be better than the work I dutifully labored over for weeks. If he felt this was good enough to send out—or if a professor told him it was that good—I wanted to see it, at least to find out what it was about. Silence? Jung? The James brothers? I could peek before I put it back in the mailbox and he’d never know.

Beneath a letter asking the editors to find enclosed his article, which Frank wished to submit for their review and for possible publication, was the essay I’d written and hidden and told no one about.

I opened the envelope from Nebraska, hoping whatever was inside might explain what was happening, and it did. A congratulatory note on UN-L letterhead informed Frank he’d been awarded the two-year post-doctoral teaching and research fellowship for Native Americans for which he’d applied—and in so doing informed me my husband had progressed from loophole-exploiter to flat-out liar.

The baby kicked hard, and when I pressed my hand to my belly, I felt through my shirt the imprint of Ava’s tiny foot. I wanted to cry. I felt stupid for not leaving Frank when I had the chance, before I was married and pregnant and before I loved him as much as I did. I tried to calm down by remembering why I loved him: his grin, the way he knew to back me up when I needed support and tell me I was full of shit when I was full of shit, twisting Todd’s arm until he apologized, the poems Zöe told me about, the silent movie he’d made of me asleep, the scarf he’d knit, the way he folded my clothes and cooked for me.

No one had seen the essay. Frank wasn’t Native American and wouldn’t have a Ph.D. by August, two requirements the letter reminded him he’d need to fulfill. In a way all this trouble was moot. I wanted apologies, however. I’d forgotten what day it was already, so I dialed time and temperature. Tuesday—he’d be home for lunch soon.

I filled the teakettle with milk, lit the eye under it, and spun the knob until the burner roared. I sat down at the table and waited.

Boiling milk was bubbling from the spout and scorching on the side of the kettle when he opened the door. “What the hell?” he yelped, rushing to wrap his hand in a dishtowel and lift the stinking, smoking thing from the stovetop. He set it in the sink and it hissed when he ran water over it. “You ruined this.”

“It’s mine,” I repeated, this time not so calmly. “And so is this table and so are these chairs and so is that futon and so is the computer and so are the forks and knives and spoons and so are the washrags and the bookshelves and the books and the lamps and the measuring cups and the motherfucking cookie sheets.”

“Nothing is yours, Frank. I was thinking about it, and it occurred to me nothing in this apartment is yours.”

“No, Frank, this is some kind of nothing-is-yours thing.” I stood up and threw the manila envelope at him. It slapped against his chest and he caught it. “Get it?” I yelled. “Nothing is yours, Frank, but you act like everything is yours.”

He drew and released a breath through lips pursed as if to kiss. I waited for him to speak and grew angrier and angrier when he didn’t.

“Say something, Big Chief Writing Tablet.” I wadded the Nebraska letter and threw it at him. “One, you’re not a Native American; two, unless you’ve found the mother of all loopholes, there’s no way you’ll have a degree by August; and three, since when did you care about Native American studies?”

If he’d punched my nose I would’ve been less flabbergasted. “You stole my essay and lied to the fucking University of Nebraska: How the fuck is it my fault?”

He bellowed, “How’s a roofer going to buy Nikes?” and then made a noise between sobbing and retching.

“I don’t want to be a loser. I took that essay and applied for that fellowship because I want our daughter to have Nikes—or whatever—and I want to be a professor, not a construction worker, and I want to be a good husband like my dad was for my mom and a good father like he was for me and Harmon.”

My righteous indignation left me like a fart. I picked up the letter from Nebraska and smoothed it out on the table, then went to Frank and hugged him over the globe of my belly.

No one had seen my essay with his name on it. There was no way he could pass himself off as Native American, no way he’d have a Ph.D. by August, and therefore no way he could accept the fellowship. The trouble was abstract but his contrition appeared real.

Frank pulled away and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “They almost kicked me out.”

I shrugged. “I just started talking to Joanie again, and all she and I talk about is the baby.”

My emotions were spinning so quickly—pity to guilt to anger to pity—that I felt nauseated. “Zöe says you write poems about me. Is that true?”

“I’m going to read this.” He picked up my battered yard sale copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting from the kitchen table. “And this.” From beside the bed he fetched What to Expect the First Year. “I swear to God I’m going to read every page.”

Frank tucked the guides under his arm and woke up the Mac. He pushed in a floppy disk and after a few mouse clicks, the printer hemmed and hawed. He handed the poem to me and walked outside.

Lamplight, hair aflame, in dark Tennessee
Moths and tiny flies, glittering flecks of silver,
Haloed your brow.
The soft noise of powdered wings sounded in your ears.
Cicadas ratcheted in the trees.
Ithaca’s air lacks Nashville’s liquid waver:
Objects hold their quiet shape.
The moths and flies have been transported
To the night sky where they shine in patterns
Invisible to all but schoolchildren
Who see geometry wherever they look.
No longer haloed by bugs, stars follow you.
You hide your burning hair, but it’s no use:
The stars love you too much.

Out the window over the kitchen sink I saw Frank shivering on the top step of the porch stairs, reading dutifully the guide to pregnancy and childbirth. He flipped a page and studied a line drawing of a fetus in its mother’s womb and I wondered if he was scamming me when he claimed he’d stolen my essay because he wanted to be a good father and husband. I hoped not. I hoped when he said he did what he did so Ava could have Nikes it was because I’d forced him to admit something important, that he’d offered a deep truth about why he was who he was. I hoped the poem was a secret he’d shared with me, not a trick—surely he hadn’t written untruthful poems about how he much loved me because he knew someone would tell me about them? He thumbed through the thick book to the index and I realized I might never know. Perhaps I was foolish to trust him, but I wanted to trust him, and so I decided to trust him. I wanted to believe his woes were simple—dead mother, dead father, dead brother—so I could soothe him.