Lynn Schmeidler
Walking from the parking lot to the restaurant, we passed a real estate agency, and in the window were pictures of houses for sale, and for whatever reason one photo caught my eye. I looked closer and it was our kitchen. The sign said our house was for sale. $675,000. A good price! my husband said, pleased because we'd bought it for $225,000 thirty years earlier. Still, it was disconcerting to discover my house listed for sale like that.
With the car, it was probably a case of wrong place wrong time. We came back from our lunch to find a For Sale sign on it with a phone number that my husband called. He negotiated with the guy on the other end of the line, said it was in great shape and that he'd never missed an oil change in 15 years, and got him to ask for more. It wasn't like we were going to sell, but it was nice to know it was still worth something. We left the For Sale sign on the car because it made us feel recognized when strangers stopped and asked us about the car and its history. We were thinking that way because, before the house was listed and the car had the sign on it, we'd been stopped by folks offering to buy our dog—What a treasure! How much? And friends sometimes wanted to buy our rugs: the runner got a lot of offers, as did the hand-knotted silk one on the wall. Anyway, you're only as interesting as what you've got, was the message we had received.
Of course, we'd expected the offer to buy my eggs after our kids were born all smiling and healthy. There were so many heritable conditions and to have three smart children without allergies was special. I believed in contributing to humanity's future, but my husband did the calculations and found that screenings + injections + bloating + mood swings + surgery + recovery + abstinence + risks did not equal the compensation. I'll admit, I was relieved.
No one was even supposed to know how good I was in bed. I didn't brag, and my husband knew better than to entice his friends, but somehow word got out and we ended up having to give up our landline before anyone even heard of a cellphone, because of all the calls from porn producers and casting agents and researchers. I felt bad having to say no to so many opportunities, many of which were quite remunerative. But as an introvert, I understood I'd be drained from too many extracurriculars.
And then there was that neighbor with IBS who wanted to buy my fecal material. She'd read about fecal microbial transplants and had overheard our septic guy praising the bacteria in our tank when he came to check our leach field. She'd suffered so long and was willing to pay so dearly that the whole thing left an awkwardness in our neighborhood such that I took to rolling the trash bins to the road after dark when I knew I wouldn't run into her.
It wouldn't have been so bad except a couple of weeks before I declined the poop sale, her husband had asked to buy our granddaughter. She was running around the house naked because, well, she was a little girl, and he'd gotten all eyesy with her as she stood scratching herself, and there was no way I was selling her to a dirty old man next door, but he wouldn't take no for an answer and kept pulling wads of bills from his wallet and throwing them at her, and she kept giggling and using them to wipe herself, and he'd pick up the bills and smell them and fling some more at her, and it was pretty awful, really, what you learned about your neighbors when you invited them over for a holiday brunch.
I began to think there was something about us that invited this kind of capitalist attachment, but my husband didn't think there was anything special about us that he didn't see in the world at large. "Everybody wants what everybody else has," he said, "and everybody has a price." I forgot to mention that time we were in synagogue passing around the spice jar, imbibing the end of Shabbat, when the devil walked right in with his Windsor knot and bespoke suit and planted his velvet loafers directly in front of us and held out a check for an amount we'd never get our heads around as long as we lived, which would have been, if we'd cashed it, forever. On that one, we'd both immediately agreed. I had no desire to outlive my children; and my husband felt the deal was poor, since, by the middle of the next century, there'd be no more migrating songbirds.
That afternoon we had a talk. Massaging my feet which were in his lap, my husband asked me how much I thought our life was worth. Our house and car and dog and kids and grandkids and bowel movements and orgasms and souls. I said it was hard to say. He said who did I think could put a number on it for us. I said, Nobody, I guess. What about that poet you're always sighing over, said my husband? I told him I didn't think she provided that kind of service.
I'm chilly, I said, nodding toward the fireplace.
I fear you think of me only as a fire-maker and a foot-rubber, said my husband. I said those were two very valuable qualities he'd just named. And not to forget coffee brewer and stinkbug trapper.
He smiled a smile that said yes, but how valuable?
The etymology of legal tender, I said to my husband as he lit the fire, is to stretch out one's hand in offer. Which I did.
This is a tender I cannot refuse, said my husband who took my hand and began to kiss it—first my fingertips, then my palm, then my wrist.