Mildly Joyful, with Moments of Extraordinary Unhappiness

THE MAN AND WOMAN ARE CHILDLESS AND WEALTHY AND happy. She loves him, and he loves her, in part because of affection, in part because of muscle memory, in part because of their shared personal possessions. They love each other about as much as people who adore things can love other people. She has learned to love things less the older she grows. He has come to depend on them. She is generous and quiet, and he is witty and talkative. They are a good match; all of their friends say so.

They eat out every night at loud restaurants with short menus and long waits. Occasionally, they order in. They live in a nice two-bedroom condo in the city. The master bedroom is full of paintings they’ve acquired during their travels. Their bed is hand-carved; their sheets are embroidered. The second bedroom is used as a study, and they’ve filled it with sculpture and books and other beautiful things. They both have high-paying jobs they tolerate, and they travel often, and she plays piano in the evenings while he sings along. It’s enough to remind them of their former selves, before they acquired so many things but after they acquired each other.

He is kind to her and she is kind to everybody; if pressed he would say it’s the only thing he doesn’t like about her. This, he knows, sounds monstrous, but he understands he’s borrowed so many better traits from her. He would not use the word jealous, but resentment, yes, perhaps. He only has enough kindness for one person. He supposes that’s what love means to him. If he were a good person, he supposes, it would be a trait he would love, this boundless heart. But he isn’t a better person. He knows this about himself. She knows this, too, and because she is kind, loves him even more for it.

One day she goes for a walk and she doesn’t come back. He assumes she’s left, probably with one of the many men she spends her kindness on. Or maybe one of the women. He does not call Missing Persons. He calls her parents and tells them she’s run off with a lover. Her parents are horrified; her mother offers to fly into town with a tuna casserole. He will be fine, he assures them; he expected something like this. He has prepared. He hangs up the phone and feels his good bits breaking off, bitterness growing in like brittle new limbs.

Later in the evening, a phone call from the hospital: she’s been hit by a car and would he come quickly please to say his goodbyes? He does not dare to come, not now. He does not tell her parents. He hides in his apartment and orders Chinese from their favorite place. The delivery guy inquires after his wife and the man does not answer, instead hands him a ten. Inside his fortune cookie: “What you deserve will find you.” He swallows the paper, black ink smeared across the tip of his tongue. His wife dies alone in the early morning.

After the funeral, he buys more things. Anyone would. There is now so much more space to fill. He fills, and fills, with boxes he’ll never open, crates he’ll never unpack. He buys twenty identical sweaters from Barneys and never picks up the box from the front stoop. The same gray wool cardigan shows up on men and boys throughout the neighborhood that winter.

Eventually, he decides it will be easier to erase her, to undo her. He gives away her things and he tells their friends she was having affairs. He throws away their photo albums. He sells her piano but the movers can’t get it out of the window; they shake their heads and depart, sweaty and disappointed. He becomes fixated on the notion of getting the piano gone, any way that he can. He measures it obsessively, plans to chisel wider doorways, break windowpanes. He sketches plans that rival Wile E. Coyote’s, all when he’s supposed to be working.

Finally, he buys a small ax from the neighborhood hardware store. The young woman working there makes a joke about the frozen sea within us, and he smiles wanly because his wife once bought a throw pillow embroidered with that quote and it had given him some small pleasure then to prove she didn’t know where it came from, and that it was a stupid thing to sew onto a pillow. He marches home with purpose, ax very much in hand, and of course no one stops him because he is white and middle-aged and wearing an expensive parka. He proceeds to chop the piano up, no method, just one thunderous chord at a time.

When the police finally force the door, he’s sitting in a pile of broken keys and lacquered wood. Someone called about a domestic disturbance, they say, and he shrugs and says, Yes. His wife’s ghost hovers just overhead, and she smiles as if in apology, as if to say, This is all my fault, I deserved it, I asked for it. But no one is fooled. The room vibrates with something much the opposite of kindness.

The officers flee as the piano keys start to fly, broken bars whirling across the living room. From outside, they see the window darken; the man and his things are obscured by the blizzard of silent notes.