Dian Parker
They were in love and bed was their preferred destination. Work, friends, hiking, cooking had all given their life meaning and perspective but now they no longer sought meaning and perspective. They sought isolation, together, in bed. Anything else was a burden. Friends needed pacifying and work needed attendance. Cooking three meals a day was tedious and they got plenty of exercise making love.
They decided to quit their jobs and really do the work they always dreamed of, managing for a few months on savings, before figuring out what to do next. She was a graphic designer, yearning to be a painter, while he was a freelance writer for a number of scientific journals, with ambitions to write sci-fi. She would start small with watercolors and he would begin by writing without research.
The bedroom became the center of their new universe. They found some old paint cans in the garage and mixed the colors together, covering the bedroom walls cobalt blue (Oceanic Blue), and near the ceiling pale blue (Iced Aqua) for the liquid feel. On the ceiling they mixed paint to look like sand (Sahara Sandstone), later adding splashes of yellow to the ochre so the beach on the ceiling looked even more real (Sundrenched Gold). It was her idea to make up names for the colors. It was his idea to lie in bed as if underwater, looking up at the solid world above. Wanting even more lucidity, they took Live Cordyceps Extract, made from mushrooms.
They hung her grandmother's large mirror above the head of the mattress. They couldn't see themselves in the mirror when they lay in bed, but when they entered the bedroom, the reflection expanded the ocean and gave the room depth. On the wall opposite the bed was a triangular sign he'd made in bright red letters that read − I AM A LIVING FIREMASTER. It was something he said out loud every morning three times. When she asked about it, he said it was his affirmation.
The two windows in the bedroom stretched from floor to ceiling. Beyond, they owned the two acres of land that surrounded their home. Lying together they could watch the trees bud, burst, leaf, change color, and become barren—a yearlong sequence all seen from the bed.
They never wanted to go out and gave up inviting anyone over. Their friends gradually stopped calling. As there was no sense in paying for something they never used, they cut off the phone service. The car sat in the garage for weeks at a time. If they needed something, he'd dash off to the supermarket to stock up for the next few weeks. He bought cases of canned vegetables and soup. Eventually they unplugged the refrigerator because there was nothing that needed cooling anymore. He brought into the bedroom the Coleman camp stove and a pot for the soup and coffee. As long as they could have soup with a can of peas or corn thrown in, pay the few remaining bills with their savings and stay in love, everything would be all right.
Their discussions in bed revolved around the futility of art. He confessed to wanting to write a bestseller and she confessed to wanting to make oil paintings. But there was already too much art in the world and they agreed it was pointless to spend so much time, months or years creating anything new when someone might spend only moments in rejecting their work. Was it for the money? Recognition? Few artists had any. Self-expression? They had that when they made love and talked. They inevitably came to the same conclusion. If they lived passionately and deeply—keeping their brains active and staying in love—being alive would be their greatest work of art.
They soon found the best part of staying in bed for hours in succession, besides the sex, was their changing perspective. Everything could have profound meaning, just like their dreams, and at the same time could be equally absurd. Art was like that. Even his sign, I AM A LIVING FIREMASTER, was meaningful yet absurd. Lying in bed he would sternly say the words over and over, and then break down in uncontrollable laughter.
Even though he tried to keep his time away from the bed as brief as possible, sometimes he couldn't resist stopping by the library during his forays into town for food. He managed to avoid the current newspapers, but not the latest science fiction novels, and often came home with an armload. Back in bed, he'd try to figure out why some of these books were bestsellers. Often he was unable to find a reason. Finally he just sold the car.
Writing every day, he soon filled up his first notebook. He wrote about quantum foam, wormholes, dark matter, and branes separating multiple dimensions. He'd read out loud to her every day as she nuzzled against him, imagining she too was an infinitesimal superstring smaller than any perceptible mass. Reading out loud helped him to rework difficult concepts, like how to express the experience of jumping from the fourth to the fifth dimension. Listening to his words helped her to understand his mind.
Their discussions changed from the futility of art to figuring out how to propel themselves into a black hole. He told her astronomers had discovered a galaxy sixteen billion light years away, created before the earth began. They might be able to go there through a window in hyperspace. Maybe it was possible to teleport the body to a different location, using only your mind. They could go anywhere, as long as they could do it from bed.
While he wrote every day, she began to feel anxious. He could write furiously for hours and all she could do was doodle. One morning, while staring up at the imaginary beach over her head while he wrote vigorously next to her in his notebooks, she had an idea. She would paint very small. Attaching a magnifying glass to a strap around her head, she drew out possibilities for miniatures in high detail. Excitement grew as she imagined him holding her finished painting in the palm of his hand.
But all too quickly her interest faded away, leaving her with the same anxiety as before. Finally, one morning, she knew she had to tell him. He listened carefully. He told her that sometimes he too had anxiety, but that when he did he simply used his imagination to cancel it out. Just like that! She asked for examples and he told her he often pretended they were so rich they needn't be bothered with anything. Why just look at all the gold coins scattered about the bedroom. Look at his million dollar advance for his sci-fi novel. He talked about the virtues of staying in bed, about being so in love, living on next to nothing, living in the country instead of an expensive city with so many distractions, and having no friends with all their intrusive emotional and social demands. Here, they were safe in their tropical bedroom and could imagine themselves anywhere: Tahiti, Ibiza, Neptune, the Andromeda Galaxy. She wondered if he was just as worried about their future as she was but just better at covering it up. I AM A LIVING FIREMASTER.
For days on end it rained without stopping, which made it even cozier for him and scarier for her to stay tucked in bed on their little island. After one month of nearly nonstop rain, a record for their area, they broke a record of their own. He calculated that during the past month they'd stayed in bed for a total of 562 hours. While he felt triumphant at this accomplishment, her anxiety tipped over into depression. She tried to hide it by working to complete a watercolor miniature from her sketch, but it did nothing to alleviate her agitation. The only thing that seemed to lift her was making love. Even in the middle of working on his book, he'd take time to cover her with kisses, rhapsodizing about her beautiful body, her infinite patience, her unending brilliance. Afterwards she'd lay with her head on his chest and drift, thinking about how much she loved him, about the miniature painting, and always, the futility of making art.
There was really no reason now to sleep at night after she'd been dozing all day. So the nights stretched endlessly as she listened to his easy breathing and the monotony of the rain on the roof. To occupy her mind she tried imagining a hot, white sun shining on her bare stomach as she lay on a beach. She imagined painting that scene using the colors of their bedroom. She might even add a sprinkle of sand to her paint, which would lend texture to the beach. She felt a twinge of excitement. In the past, didn't she always get her best ideas in the middle of the night? But come daybreak, the hammering of the rain on the roof was alarming, like a monsoon. She woke him. He listened to the rain for a few minutes. "Biblical," was all he said. She didn't feel like painting the tropics anymore.
The next day she talked about selling the house and moving. Maybe a new place would do them a world of good. They might be able to live off the sale for the rest of their lives. And if they were going to stay in bed all the time, nothing bigger than a studio apartment was really necessary anyway. He said nothing, just kept writing.
After three months, mostly in bed, she didn't feel rested. It was the purpose-of-life issue that haunted her. Why wasn't it enough purpose just to love? Now that she had that, she didn't need to paint. With all the loving there might not be much left over to express. She really didn't believe in the power of art to uplift anymore. After they fell in love she was constantly lifted—off the earth! Couldn't love be her work of art? When she finally spoke of this to him he jumped up and straddled her on the bed, calling out, 'History is over! History is over!' She had no idea what he meant.
After thirty-six consecutive days of rain, the trees out their window were standing in water, as if sprouting from a bayou. 'Waterfront property,' he said. Every day the temperature dropped. He wore plaid, flannel pajamas and a polar fleece sweatshirt with the hood over his head, the blue of the hood haloing the blue of his eyes. She wore a raspberry polar fleece jacket, layered it over her satin chemise nightie, topping it off with a pair of his flannel pajama bottoms.
After forty-one days of rain, he ventured outdoors with a tape measure, wearing hip-high waders. In some places the water was over three feet deep. Fortunately the house sat on a slope another three feet above the level of the rising water. They watched as pairs of mallard ducks landed and glided among the trees. Soon the ducks were followed by large golden birds with aqua-blue streaks under their eyes. They looked in Audubon's Field Guide to North American Birds, but couldn't find anything even close. The temperature continued to drop. The next night the water around the trees froze.
In the morning they sat up in bed, stared out the windows, and saw all the lonely trees surrounded by icy glass. He talked in a whisper of the beauty outside their window. She thought the trees growing out of the ice would make a striking painting, but couldn't do anything about it.
For six days the temperature continued to plummet and the ice grew thicker. They were running low on propane for the bedroom heater. He told her that staying in bed was the best thing they could do to conserve their meager resources. She felt sluggish and tried to imagine herself into being cold-blooded, like he suggested, but failed. He, on the other hand, continued to be rosy-cheeked and undaunted.
On the seventh day of ice they were blasted with high winds. They watched as trees crashed through the ice, sending up great sprays of water. The freezing temperatures and the powerful gusts of wind were too much for the waterlogged trees, and the saturated earth released its hold. A cottonwood tree came slashing down, felling two huge alders along with it. The following morning three pines and two aspens had fallen into the ice of the new lake.
The rain, then the winds, then the cold and now the falling trees made her bury even deeper into the bed. She stopped even trying to paint.
In the middle of the night, wrapped in his arms, she lay listening to the screeching wind. To her continued amazement he slept peacefully. She could hear branches crashing on the roof and was afraid the house would be the next thing to fall. But suddenly, in one startling moment, everything was still. There was no wind. There was no sound. She couldn't even hear his breathing. Frightened, she sat up in bed. There, through the window, in the black night, she saw something unfamiliar and spectacular. She saw stars.
She gasped and shook him awake. After staring out the window he looked at her and she looked back at him, speechless. It had stopped raining and the sky was clear! He laughed and urged her to quickly put on her boots. Taking her hand, they rushed outside together for the first time since the rains began. The ice crackled around the trees and the skies sparkled with bright crystal stars. He pointed out Cassiopeia, Hydrus, Andromeda, Microscopium, Orion, and Betelgeuse, sharp and clear in the washed cold. They cautiously tiptoed out onto the ice and lay down. Still holding hands, they looked up through the trees at the star-studded sky. He talked about the abundance of life out in the cosmos and the vast mystery of it all. Their stunning view only verified how unfathomable life really was and they could never hope to figure it out. This excited him, but only made her want to go back to bed.
Safely back under the covers, he said they really didn't need to sell the house and move. They could stay right where they were and travel anywhere they liked with their minds. Then he immediately fell asleep.
She lay awake looking out at the stars. She felt she knew less at that moment than at any other point in her life. There was no reason to get out of bed any longer and decided definitively that making art was utterly pointless.
In the morning, he rolled over on top of her and looked deeply into her eyes for a long time. He looked intent and serious, which made her nervous. He told her he thought she might be in trouble. It scared her. She depended on his levity and optimism. It was all right for her to give up, but not him.
He told her that the only thing important was to be the reference point for everything. Come to your own conclusions and forget the world all together. They were the center and the reason for everything. The world didn't really exist anyway. It only existed in their minds. If she wanted to make art, fine. If not, then don't do it. There was nothing to consider further than that. Being an artist was an illusion anyway. It was an image, a faint echo of reality, like a tree reflected in the ice. It wasn't the actual living tree with sap and seasons. It was just a hologram. She could paint with love, but the painting wasn't love. She was trying to understand something that wasn't alive to begin with.
She stared at his directive on the opposite wall. I AM A LIVING FIREMASTER. She'd read that statement on the wall every day, all day, for the last four months and had never known what that meant. But who was she to argue?
Maybe he was purposefully being vague.
She felt like she was under water.
The temperature continued to drop.
He tried to make her laugh. He stood on his head in bed and made up limericks about the meaning of existence. He talked to her pillow, saying that purpose was for pillows and not people. He said he was going to stock their iced-over lake with trout for brain food, then carve a hole and go ice fishing. "Besides," he said, "nothing is true and nothing is false and because of that, nothing is."
He explained to her Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle which corroborated uncertainty in observation. There was also Schrödinger's cat. It could be dead or alive! All those paradoxes. Anything could be true, or not. He told her that everything was only personal perception, even purpose in life. "Being sucked into a wormhole would be nice," he said. "Either instant annihilation or you'd pop into a parallel universe." She couldn't agree or disagree with anything he said. Everything blurred. She shivered all over. "We should do jumping jacks to keep warm," he decided, pulling her up off the mattress. He did fifty while she stood watching.
She crawled back in bed and told him she was tired. His optimism had lost its potency and she felt unhinged. Soon, she imagined, he'd find her outside lying on the ice, gone insane.
She tried to think it through. It was love that started them off. Their love was deep and gratifying. She'd stopped thinking about herself, which was a relief. They were we, not two separate individuals. It was the two of them together making the one person she'd always dreamed of—a person impervious to society's whims and the supposed laws of reality like time, distance and space. In bed with him everything was overridden; what time or season it was, the town they lived in, other people, money concerns, fear of time passing, and the worst—the deadly need for acknowledgement.
That was before everything froze, including herself.
She lay next to him looking through the window at the icy sea of static life. Nothing moved. After the roaring winds and constant beating rain, everything was still, as though the world was in a coma.
He asked if she wanted some soup. She heard his voice but couldn't move her mouth to reply. She concentrated on her breathing. She felt like she was inverting and would end up on the ceiling. She avoided looking into his deep blue eyes.
He sat up and stared at her, perfectly still. She watched as he snaked his way out of bed on his belly. He stood and pulled on his jeans over his pajamas, then his big boots, a wool hat and leather work gloves. He left the bedroom and went outside.
There was the creak of the shed door opening. She calmed herself by looking up at the sandy ceiling. Then she heard him clomping across the deck and down the steps. She lay as still as possible. Maybe he really was going to cut a hole in the ice to fish through.
There was a sound like the shattering of glass.
Sitting up, she looked out.
He was in the trees about thirty feet from the house. Standing on the ice, he was bracing himself against a tall alder. In his left hand hung the axe he used for splitting wood. She watched as he pushed away from the tree. She held her breath. Using the momentum of his slide, he swung the axe high into the air over his shoulder and brought it crashing down onto the frozen water. The ice shattered with the impact, but before it gave way under him he skated away to another tree and wrapped his arms around the trunk. He stood still and waited. When the ice settled, he pushed away again. She inhaled sharply. He skated out of view and once again she heard the axe hit the ice.
Because she could no longer see him from the bed, she stood up. In the distance she could see his blue sweatshirt moving farther and farther away. She went outside onto the deck. In the sharp cold air she found it hard to breathe. He had disappeared into the forest and all he'd left behind were multiple starbursts in the ice.
She walked down to the edge of the ice and cautiously stepped out. Immediately her feet slid out from under her and she landed hard on her back. Stunned, she tried to catch her breath, gasping in the frigid air. When she was able to finally quiet herself, she listened. The world was so still. He was nowhere to be seen. There was no sound.
She pressed her ear to the ice.
She no longer felt the cold. Instead, in her mind, she pictured all the molecules of water binding together to make the ice strong enough to support her. Each molecule was doing its part and therefore important. The ice was supporting her. The ice was supporting him. He was out there, somewhere, skating and cracking the ice. She imagined the long handle of the axe moving like an extension of his arm. He had so much power in that arm. It could shatter the frozen water. It could shatter all her doubts and fears. And because she loved him so much, her love would keep him safe.
She went back inside and crawled into bed. There, staring at the ceiling with its flecks of yellow, she saw the endless sand. In between each grain were luminous, shimmering threads, just like the neurological network in her brain. There were as many connections in the brain as atoms in the universe. There were so many atoms, and so many stars, so many paintings, so many books, so many grains of sand and so many molecules of water. She imagined herself on the ceiling, lying on the beach. Then she imagined lying back on the ice again. She imagined seeing him, gliding between the frozen trees. She sat up and looked out the window but he was nowhere to be seen.
There was a sound of cracking and then she heard a moan—like a fox or maybe an owl. She didn't know. She listened hard but there was only silence again, along with her brain burning, reaching for more realizations.
Lying back down, she felt a flush of contentment. So this was how he did it! Stay in the brain, use it, work it, run around in its infinite universe where everything existed anyway—her art, the beach, his love. It was all right here, inside, available at every minute. The ice, the frozen trees, the warm bed, his hand in her hair, his hand holding the axe. His long arm. The arms that held her.
This was reality, as real as anything she'd ever known. She was alive and imagining. It was what she'd always wanted—to be at peace in her own mind. Sovereign. Just as he was now, out on the ice, swinging his long arm. And with the other, holding her fragile miniature in the palm of his hand.