Nikki Stern

Remember, we were discussing predestination the other night (I almost wrote “prestidigitation,” no doubt because I’ve been ruminating on the disappearance from our union of anything remotely resembling love. Where did the magic go?) At any rate and as usual, you came down on one side of the issue and I on the other. Although that’s not fair to me. I’d merely wanted to explore the possibility of the existence of predestination, and you were having none of it.

“What, you think there’s some great sky-dwelling Decider who’s actually taken the time away from more pressing matters to assign some outcome or other to our miserable lives?” you asked.

As always, your questions weren’t really questions, but rather dismissive declarations, preemptive rejections that are designed to forestall either the possibility of a balanced discourse or any attempt at civilized conversation. Anyway, we never so much talk as we fence, parry and thrust, protect our respective flanks, while seeking out the opponent’s most vulnerable and exposed side.

Quite the pair, we two, one laboriously educated but intellectually lazy, the other an autodidact, fashioning bits of accumulated wisdom into a ladder or a rope by which she might climb to higher ground. My insecurity has never been a match for your absolute certainty. Possibly your early attempts at affection were born of pity or some sense of noblesse oblige. You were, after all, to the manor born, your choices laid out before you or within easy reach, like a sumptuous banquet or low-hanging fruit. Was marrying beneath you a way to cause a frisson of shock amongst your peers? Did they applaud you for slumming it, everyone secure in the knowledge you could bring me to heel? Or perhaps you were meeting some challenge to raise up an unfortunate or respond to some charitable requirement incumbent upon your social class. Apart from the carnal needs that conflate young lust with young love, what brought us together? Surely, we weren’t predisposed to choose each other, so perhaps our union was predestined after all.

These musings, some (but never all) of which I’ve voiced, fall into a category you gleefully term faux philosophy, so that when you’ve enjoyed two or three of your nightly Scotches, you can simply dismiss my explorations as more of the same bullshit. Sometimes you humor me (or at least that’s what I suspect you’re doing) by pretending we’re having a conversation. I imagine it’s a form of light exercise, something you might attempt before bed or with one hand tied behind your back or two Scotches under your belt.

Sometimes you toss out phrases from a long-ago undergraduate seminar: rhetorical tautologies, logical contingencies, or propositional variables. Other times you let out my leash, allowing me to speculate as you feign interest in what must seem to you to be endless ramblings about ontological mysteries.

You never let me go on for long. At some point you always reach for the metaphorical hammer or knife or chisel, or whatever instrument you’ve chosen with exquisite care so as to best cut me off, shut me down, whittle me to the bone. A well-timed correction or falsely casual observation might derail my earnest train of thought. Another weapon in your arsenal: changing the subject. How perfectly insulting. Oh yes, you may also remove your attention altogether. The net effect is always been the same: your wife, your life partner, is left disoriented, confused, and filled with shame. It’s an art and a science. And you’ve perfected it.

Why did I believe you were engaging me that night? Your opening salvo hardly created the conditions that might presage a hopeful outcome. How could I not consider you might be planning a new form of sabotage? Perhaps I thought you were tired of toying with me. Yet when I asked you whether naming a pig Bacon increased the likelihood that the pig would be slaughtered, no matter how beloved the animal or how contrary to the owner’s original intention, you actually appeared to give it some thought.

“That’s an interesting question,” you began.

I braced in anticipation of the stomach punch that was sure to come, but you continued almost placidly, “The pig is clearly a passive player in all this. Even if it had free will (and I imagine you’ll agree it does not), it can’t act on its own. It can’t change its name. It can’t declare its independence. It might try to escape, although why would it? Pigs are generally content with certain basics, which most owners are content to provide. The animal isn’t physically, mentally, or even temperamentally inclined to make a decision about whatever fate the owner has in store for it. Are you suggesting the owner’s choice of a name is somehow predestined?”

Then—wonder of wonders—you hesitated, providing an opening, an invitation to respond.

Naive believer that I was, I began, albeit carefully, “I suppose it’s really a question of cause and effect. What compels the owner to name the pig Bacon? Did he already have plans for the pig before it was born? Does the name suggest the inevitability of the slaughter? Perhaps his children, who view the pig as a sort of pet, have come up with the name? Maybe they  intend to be ironic—children have a disturbingly sophisticated view of the world—or maybe they mean it to be charming. They’re unlikely to want the name to either signal the pig’s unhappy fate as breakfast meat or to influence any decision made by their father.”

Chancing a quick look at your face, I could see your good-natured exterior begin to curdle at the edges. Too late, I realized my mistake.

“Most pigs are slaughtered, dear wife, excepting those little Vietnamese pigs some fancy as pets. The pig’s destiny, if you will, is known from the moment it is born. Even you can’t be wrong-headed enough to suggest the name alone seals the poor piglet’s fate. It’s simply not . . . kosher.”

You laughed, heartily amused by your little joke at my expense, then leaned in for the kill, eyes narrowed, lips quivering with suppressed triumph.

“Let me provide a relevant example. Your insistence on trafficking in archaic superstition marks you as a stupid twit, to be sure; but my naming you as such isn’t what makes it so. Genetics and happenstance—i.e., you being deprived of a proper education—have conspired to attract you to a variety of foolish notions that appeal to your underdeveloped sensibility. I could call you Einstein, and what difference would it make? You’d still be a stupid twit.”

I felt the sting of your words as surely as if I’d been slapped. Ah, but you were just beginning to work yourself into a righteous state, weren’t you? One that brooked no interference.

“Here’s another: Callista is from the Greek meaning ‘great beauty’ and yet you haven’t lived up to that particular promise, have you? Perhaps your mother didn’t possess the foresight to assign you a name which meant ‘she who can’t string two coherent thoughts together.’ That would have gone a long way toward proving your little theory, wouldn’t it?”

And your final coup de grace: “Callista, your attempts at intelligent conversation literally suck the air out of the room. I’m headed to the club; I need to breathe.”

“I’m pregnant. A girl.”

My words were strangled, the sentences pushed unwillingly out into the world through the constricted passageway of my throat. But you heard them well enough. Your surprise and, yes, your anger were overtaken almost immediately by calculation: What injury would this new information allow you to inflict?

You chose a bluntly cruel, if predictable path: “Shall she be called Rose, then, as if she might have the slightest chance of living up to such a name? Although it’s ordinary enough, I suppose.”

You clapped your hands like a schoolyard bully whose found another creature to torture.

“I’ve come up with a most excellent idea,” you crowed. “Let’s call her Porcus. The more common Latin word for piglet, my dear. We can see whether her name consigns her to her destiny after all. I’d wager she has an even chance of living up to her appellation either way.”

You laughed, absolutely taken with your cleverness. Pivoting on one heel, you made your grand exit, theatrically slamming the door on your way out.

Alone in the hallway, I rested my hands on my stomach and spoke aloud.

“I have another idea. What do you think of the name Nemesis? She is the Greek goddess of retribution and revenge. Shall we name you after this most fearsome female? Will your destiny be to—?”

My soliloquy was cut off by the squeal of tires, accompanied by a loud thump, and then a silence that seemed to last an eternity.

I held my breath until I heard the confirming cacophony that accompanies an unexpected tragedy: the screams, the running feet, the cries of “Call an ambulance!” “Oh my God!” and the like.

I stood stock-still, hardly daring to breath. Then I felt something move within me, although it was weeks too early. A kick or perhaps a tiny fist pressing gently against my stomach. I patted my barely perceptible bulge and smiled.

“You are your mother’s daughter, aren’t you little one? I don’t think we need to saddle you with an intimidating name, though. I believe you’ll make a perfectly exquisite Rose.”