9. Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, Type T92.1, The triangle plot and its solutions.
She and Val need to go house hunting in Bloomington, and they want you to come along.
A few days before you leave Iowa, you find a vintage photograph for sale, black-and-white with three women laughing, one of them holding a baby. From the forties, maybe, but you’re just guessing. You buy a frame at a thrift store and take the picture with you.
In Indiana you go from house to house together. You drive; your girlfriend is in the passenger seat; Val is in the back. The loose explanation is that they are the couple and you are the friend with wheels, but in every place you are all thinking about bedrooms. Do you need two, one for you and her, one for her and Val? What about a futon in the office? You all laugh, crowd into rooms. If the landlords have questions, they don’t verbalize them. You think, They can’t even imagine it, the perfection and lushness of this arrangement.
One house is magical—tucked into a deep pocket of trees, all wood and rustic, with more rooms than you could fill if you tried. You remember a puzzling set of indoor windows, as if the house had swallowed a second, tiny house. Another is hilariously dilapidated, and every surface of the kitchen is covered in clean, drying shot glasses; a party house with at least one curiously conscientious resident. It smells like teenage boys: sweat and scented sprays and Doritos.
During a long interval between appointments, you visit a pet store and see a tiny pile of ferrets, nestled together in their enclosure. You give them all funny voices; tell a story about the boss you had at a summer job who asked if she could show you a photo of her kids and then showed you a picture of her ferrets. By the time you’re back outside in the sunlight, you’re all laughing.
The last house—the most perfect—is owned by a beautiful young couple, both redheads, whose children come to the door clutching their mother’s skirt while she stirs a bowl of batter. It is like a fairy tale. Chickens peck in the yard; a beautiful, lanky dog sleeps on the porch. The house is heated by a wood stove. You know the place is impractical—too far from town—but you love it so much your heart aches. It is here—standing under a canopy of trees, watching your girlfriend talk to the husband—that you first admit the fantasy to yourself: that one day the V structure of your relationship will collapse into a heap, and the three of you will be together.9
You put Val on a plane, and then the two of you drive back to Iowa. As farmland scrolls past you, you find yourself imagining a whole new life, a perfect intersection of hedonism and wholesomeness: canning and pickling, writing in front of a fireplace, the three of you tangled in a bed. Fighting with your kids’ guidance counselor. Explaining to your children that other families may not look like yours, but that doesn’t mean something is wrong. Most kids would give anything to have three moms.
You catch yourself mourning already. You look over at her. “Let’s take one more road trip together,” she says.
9. Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, Type T92.1, The triangle plot and its solutions.