Big Velcro

My husband wanted to go to a minor-league hockey game.

You mean, before you die? I asked.

No, he said, tonight, there’s a game tonight, I want to go to a minor- league hockey game tonight.

It seemed a dumb thing to want to do. But in our marriage vows we had sworn that we would never force our own idea of happiness on each other, and so I said, Sure, okay, go ahead, if that’s what you want to do, it’s fine with me, I support you.

No, he said, I want us to go to a minor-league hockey game. Together.

Oh, I said. My husband had a hopeful look on his face that made me want to hurt him, and so I looked away from him and at the ceiling, which is what I do when I pretend to be thinking hard about something. There was a blurry, amorphous stain up there that made me think of a country whose borders are constantly being disputed.

What are the teams? I pretended to want to know. He told me. The names of both teams made reference to each city’s former primary industry, but in a way that was supposed to make the failure of that city’s industry sound whimsical and not depressing. For instance, our city was the center of the region’s once-thriving but now-defunct gravel industry, so we were the Rock Dragons. I don’t remember what the other team’s name was. The Tool-and-Die Tornadoes. The Flour City Fury. Something of that nature.

Oh, I said again, and my husband asked that I stop saying that.

Say something else, he said.

I’m pregnant, I said.

Are you sure? my husband said, and I nodded, still staring at the ceiling. Then, quoting my gynecologist, I said, No method of birth control is 100 percent effective, and then, also quoting my gynecologist, Yes, even thirty-eight-year-old women get pregnant when they don’t want to.

Oh, my husband said, and I looked away from the ceiling and at him, expecting him to be looking at the ceiling, which I knew was the thing he did when he actually was thinking hard about something. But no, he was looking at me, with that same hopeful look on his face, and it didn’t make me want to hurt him anymore, but it did make me want to be somewhere far away. I named a place.

I’ve already been there, my husband said.

You have? I said. I found this shocking. Because we had reached a point in our life together where I’d just assumed I knew everything about him.

Yeah, he said, I was there for two weeks in the early aughts, protesting Big Velcro.

When my husband said that, I realized I had known that he’d been to that place, doing that thing, and that I’d willed myself to forget it, which was what I had to do whenever my husband talked about his time as an activist protesting the unfair labor practices and environmental atrocities perpetrated by the seven major international Velcro manufacturers, who together made up the thing my husband, and possibly no one else, referred to as “Big Velcro.” Yes, I’d willed myself to forget this, which was what I had to do to make sure my marriage survived my husband telling stories about how he’d protested Big Velcro, the way that Big Velcro itself had survived my husband protesting it.

Never mind. I named another place.

That place? Why? my husband wanted to know.

Because it seems like a good place to have a baby, I answered. I don’t know why I said that, because no place seemed like an especially good place to have a baby.

Yes, it seems like as good a place as any to have a baby, I said anyway. Well, it’s not, my husband said.

How do you know? I almost asked him, but I knew that if I did, he would tell me that he’d protested Big Velcro there too, and so I said, Fine, you name a place. He did.

No way, I said, that’s an awful place to raise a baby.

How do you know? he asked.

I’ve already been there, I said. He seemed shocked to learn this, and I could tell he’d assumed he’d known everything about me too.

Really? he said.

Yes, I said, I was there for two weeks in the early aughts.

Doing what? my husband wanted to know. In truth, I’d been there for only three days, on a post-college-graduation trip with my best friend, seeing the world, or at least parts of it, and I said I’d been there for two weeks instead of three days because it sounded better, the way saying I was pregnant sounded better than just saying Oh. Although I was in fact pregnant. But instead of saying any of that, I said I was there protesting Big Velcro.

Very funny, my husband said, and then he added, much more earnestly, You know, I think that’s the first time you’ve ever even said the words Big Velcro, and I said, I’m sure that’s not true, and he said he was sure that it was, and so I said, several more times, Big Velcro, Big Velcro, Big Velcro, Big Velcro, and then he said, still very earnestly, There’s nothing funny about Big Velcro, and then I said, You know, Big Velcro would make a good name for a minor-league hockey team.

Oh, you think you’re so smart, my husband said. And I did not like the way he said that, I did not like it at all. In fact, it reminded me of why I didn’t like the place I’d just told my husband I’d visited for two weeks in the early aughts. I remembered it well. The swaying palm trees lining the streets, which would have been very pretty except for all the paper cups, the plastic bags, the diapers scattered around them. The animals—pigs, sheep, goats, dogs, cats—constantly being herded, or wandering, into traffic, where they were hit, or not, it didn’t seem to matter to anyone, not even the animals. But mostly I remembered the women: there weren’t any. Only men: men walking on the sidewalk, men in the middle of the street, men driving cars, men sitting at cafés, facing not each other but the street. One day I walked past one of those cafés, which was next to a mosque and was called Snack Islam. At Snack Islam were several youngish men wearing clothes that resembled my future husband’s: jeans, sweaters, sneakers. And there were also several older men, and most of these were wearing brown pointy-hooded full-length robes that appeared to be made of burlap. They all watched me as I walked by, and the looks on their faces—aggrieved, threatened—resembled how my husband’s face would later look when he said, Oh, you think you’re so smart, and so I knew they were saying, with their faces and minds, that one of the things that made me so smart was that I had the nerve as a woman to walk down the street in the middle of the day, and I had two not-unrelated thoughts then, which were that there were too many men in the world, and also that every good thing in the world was turning to shit. Those thoughts made me feel like crying, and I didn’t want those men to see me cry, so I turned away from them and toward the street in front of me, and saw a sign of several pigs crossing a road. Underneath the sign several sheep were crossing the road. Behind them a boy clapped his hands until all the sheep had made it to the other side and had begun eating the garbage below the palm trees.

And then I did start crying—not just in the place that would be an awful place to raise our child, but also right after telling the story about why it would be an awful place to raise our child. My husband didn’t say anything. He didn’t look aggrieved or threatened anymore. Now he looked sheepish, his eyes lowered, his chin tucked into his chest. I was glad. His sheepishness was exactly what I had hoped would come out of the story. What a gratifying thing, I thought, when a story has such a direct and immediate effect. No wonder people tell so many of them.

Are you done? my husband asked. I thought he meant, was I done crying. It seemed kind of a callous question and made me want to tell my story again but maybe weaponize it with even more feeling and righteousness this time. Although, in fact, I was done crying. This seemed obvious, so I didn’t bother to answer his question. Very funny, he said again and again, in a way that made it clear it wasn’t, and I wondered if anyone has ever used that phrase without meaning its opposite.

Clarify, I said.

That was my story, he said.

The possessiveness of the wedded! We’d had this same argument over food, books, cars, LPs, CDs, DVDs, pets, pens, kitchen utensils, travel mugs, phones, cameras, snow shovels, sweaters, pillows, current friends who also, strangely often, became former friends. I wondered if we’d have the same argument about our child.

It wasn’t your story, I said, knowing he would say it was, and also knowing that his story would have something to do with Big Velcro. It was, he said. I was there, in 2004, protesting Big Velcro. I told you about it. Remember? Big Velcro was planning to build a new factory in the city’s untaxed, unregulated international industrial zone. No environmental regulations. No tax money going to the local people. No promises that the local people would get the jobs. And then we stopped them! They didn’t end up building a factory there after all! We actually did it! I told you all about it. Remember?

I didn’t remember, because of course I never really listened to his stories about Big Velcro. But I didn’t say that. Nor did I wonder out loud whether the local people might not have been entirely happy that a factory where at least some of them might have ended up getting jobs didn’t open because of protests, by people who were not local and who then left that place after making sure the factory didn’t open there. I didn’t say these things. I want some credit for that. Why is it we don’t ever get credit for the things we don’t say? For the first time, I felt something like my husband’s nuttiness for reforming Big Velcro. How could I change the world so that by the time my child was born into it, it would be a place where people got credit for the things they didn’t say?

Yeah, my husband said, I told you all about it. Not just the protest, but what I saw on the way to and from the industrial zone. The animals. The palm trees. The garbage. The guys. My husband sat back in his chair—we were sitting at opposite ends of our kitchen table, which is where we seemed to have most of our arguments, as though our arguments were meals, although in fact we tended to eat in the TV room, plates on our laps—and crossed his arms over his chest, a move that must be a survival technique among the smugly self-assured, and he said, I know you remember this.

You know I don’t listen to your stories about Big Velcro, I said, finally, after years of wanting to say it. I saw from the ruined look on his face that the remark had landed, like a punch. My husband opened his mouth, ready to say more, but I didn’t stick around to hear it. Instead, I walked into the TV room and called Liz, who lived the next state over. Liz! College roommate, forever best friend, platonic soulmate, reliable reassurer, trusted sharer of the heart’s secrets and longings! We’d lived together for four years, traveled together to parts of the world for four months, and since then we’d been promising and failing to visit each other for sixteen years. She picked up the phone and didn’t interrupt and just listened as I told her everything. This was her job as my friend: to listen to my story and then, at the end of it, to tell me the thing I needed to hear, which was the thing I wanted to hear, which was, in this case, that my story was mine and not my husband’s. Liz had always been excellent at her job—that is, at her job as a friend and, by extension, I assumed, at her real job as a child psychologist. I thought I’d certainly send my child to her when the time came for it to need a child psychologist, which it certainly would.

You expected hugs from the natives, Liz said when she was done listening. The hostility in her voice was unignorable, and once again I wondered if every good thing in the world was going to shit.

I didn’t expect hugs from anyone.

You expected opulence.

I don’t know what I expected.

You expected there to be villas. And in one of those villas you expected to be reclining on enormous cushions while someone dusky fed you dates.

I didn’t expect that. But it’s true that I didn’t expect it to be so seedy, I admitted.

It’s the second world, she said.

I thought it was the third world.

It’s the second world, Liz said, and then she named another place, a place she and I had also visited, which she said was the third world.

The third world is dangerous, she said.

I didn’t say the place was dangerous. I said it was seedy.

That’s because that place is in the second world. The second world is seedy. The third world is dangerous. Jesus, everyone knows that.

Are you mad at me? I asked her.

Yes, she said.

I paused to consider why. What I had done to Liz recently? Nothing that I could think of. But then again, I couldn’t think of anything I’d done for her recently either.

I’m sorry, I said, which I hoped would pretty much cover it. There are no other women, Liz said.

In your life? I said.

In your story, Liz said.

Yes, that’s right, I said. It was a lonely feeling.

Liz sighed. I knew that sigh. It was the noise she made when she couldn’t believe she was going to have to slowly lead me to the answer that should have been obvious to anyone, even my unborn child, who I made a mental note to tell Liz about just as soon she was done leading me to the obvious answer.

Why are you calling me? she asked.

To confirm that yes, the story I told my husband was my story, not his. And why are you asking me to do that?

Because you were with me, I said.

Correct, Liz said. She paused, I suppose to let this sink in, but there was something nonporous in me. Yes, I was a blacktop driveway of a friend, a human, and no doubt, thinking into the future, a mother. Nothing ever sunk in. Liz sighed again. I was with you in real life, she said, but in your story you say you were the only woman in that place. So which is it? Was I there, or wasn’t I there?

Both, I wanted to say, but didn’t. Because I kind of remembered this about Liz now: she had always been a little sensitive. And one of the things she was a little sensitive about was that I was so selfish and took her for granted, that as a friend I took, but I never gave. I’m not your friend, she once said to me, and in fact she had said this more than once, and in fact she had said this more than once during our four-month trip around the world, and in fact I was pretty sure she’d said it to me in that place about which I’d told a story that my husband insisted was his.

You are my friend, I’d said back to her, those many times.

I’m not, she’d insisted.

Then what are you? I wanted to know.

I’m like a giant ear that you just keep around so you have something to complain into, she complained.

God, Liz could be touchy, which was maybe why we hadn’t seen each other in sixteen years, and also why it had been sometimes difficult to travel with her. Which was maybe why I’d sometimes left the hotel while she was in the bathroom, without telling her, so I could walk the city alone. I’d apologized for doing this at the time, I remembered that now too, after I got back to the hotel and complained about the men and the animals, and she complained about being a giant ear. Well, I wasn’t going to apologize again. Not because I wasn’t sorry, but because you can only say sorry so many times before even the people who feel like believing you stop believing you.

I’m pregnant, I said instead.

Oh, Liz said.

Oh? I said.

Should I have said something different? Liz said.

Like congratulations? I suggested.

God, what do you want? Liz said, and then she hung up.

Well! It’s not often that someone asks you a question worth answering. I sat down on the couch to think of how I might do that, and as I did I happened to look out the bay window, and through the window I saw my husband, pants down by his ankles, taking a shit right on the driveway.

Oh my god! I said and ran outside. Although I didn’t run directly outside. First I had to put on my shoes because it was cold out, with snow covering the ground and the driveway my husband was just shitting on. Then, my hand on the doorknob, I remembered that I’d left my phone on the couch, and though I didn’t know why I’d want or need the phone, it was often the case that you discovered that you wanted or needed your phone only when you didn’t have it. So I went to the couch and dug around the cushions. I pocketed the phone, then finally left the house and found that my husband was not anywhere to be seen, nor was our car, but there was the pile of shit, looking black and dense and so hot it was steaming, an actual steaming pile of shit on our unshoveled, snow-covered driveway. I stood over it, considered it as a detective would a clue, and a minute later our neighbor, a bald, gray-bearded man named John, joined me. He didn’t say anything for a while, just stood there scratching his beard thoughtfully, as though this were one of life’s mysteries and we should take our time contemplating it. I didn’t know John well, but at this point I was happy for his company and had nothing against him.

It’s not mine, I finally said about the shit, just to get that out of the way.

John nodded. We watched the shit steam less and less and then stop altogether, and then John said, I’ve noticed that you don’t really shovel your driveway.

What?

I said I’ve noticed that you don’t really shovel your driveway.

I heard what you said, I said.

Then why did you say what? John wanted to know.

Because I was confused, I said.

Why do people say what when they mean why or when or how? John asked, sounding suddenly not like whatever kind of professional he was but instead like the community-college lecturer in writing and rhetoric and public speaking that I was.

That’s an excellent question, I said. Thank you, John said.

Meanwhile, I said, and gestured toward my husband’s pile of shit, which was easily the most interesting thing he’d ever made or done (he was also a lecturer, in industrial relations, at the community college). Yes, it was definitely first place, had won the blue ribbon, and I thought what a great thing it would be to actually have a blue ribbon to place on my husband’s pile of shit. Though, on second thought, maybe John could do the placing, since he was wearing gloves and I wasn’t.

My husband did this, I said, still gesturing at the shit. John continued to nod and scratch his beard, and then he said, Because once you drive over the snow, it’s pretty much impossible to shovel off, and then it’s just a mess for the rest of the winter.

I confess that even I, a lecturer in writing and rhetoric and public speaking at the community college, didn’t know what to say to this. I pointed at my husband’s now-cold-but-still-mysterious deposit, the best and most miraculous thing he had ever made, definitely better and more miraculous than helping make our baby, which frankly pretty much anyone could have done and pretty much anyone has done. Whereas shitting on your own driveway was something that, in my experience and to my knowledge, no one had ever done except for my husband. This, I wanted to say, this is what we should be talking about. But somehow, when it came time for me to speak, it was as though the words were John’s or at least the subject was, and I was now speaking his concerns and not mine.

We don’t have to shovel it if we don’t want, I said. It’s our driveway. For the first time since we’d gotten together to stand over my husband’s shit, John seemed surprised. I knew this because he finally stopped scratching his beard and nodding.

These things matter, he said. At least, they matter to us.

Which was exactly what my husband had always said about protesting Big Velcro—These things matter—and in fact his voice, when he would say that, sounded like John’s when he discovered that I didn’t feel as he did about driveway clearance: surprised, and a little superior, and a lot hurt. Which had always made me want to hurt my husband, and now it made me want to hurt John too. I just had one question before I tried to do that.

Us? I said, because we’d lived in our house for seven years, and in all that time I was pretty sure I’d only ever seen John.

Yes, John said. Us. Me and John.

Oh my god, I said, I thought your name was John.

It is, he said, in that same surprised, superior, hurt way, and then he went back inside his house.

And how had we gotten here? This was something I asked my students when one of their speeches went off track, which they inevitably did. So, moving backward, there was John, who apparently lived with another John, and my husband shitting on the driveway, and there was that upsetting conversation with Liz, and before that was that upsetting conversation with my husband, and before that was Big Velcro, and all during this time I was pregnant, and at the very beginning my husband wanted to go to the minor-league hockey game, and I assumed that’s where he was right now.

I started walking toward the civic center. The streets were empty, as seemed appropriate for the center of the region’s once-thriving but now-defunct gravel industry. The houses needed painting, except those that had already been covered with vinyl siding, and on those the siding needed washing. I noticed that most of the driveways hadn’t been shoveled, and most of the driveways that hadn’t been shoveled had been driven on and were messy with crusted-over tracks. The miracle of my husband’s shit seemed like it had happened a long time ago. I felt tired, and my thoughts wandered, as they tend to when I’m tired, until they landed on Liz’s question: What did I want? I didn’t know, and it seemed that I had never known, but I did know what I didn’t want: I didn’t want to have a baby—not there, not anywhere, not with anyone, and certainly not with my husband, because I didn’t really love him, didn’t even really care enough to hate him the way he hated Big Velcro, and of course I didn’t care about going to see the Rock Dragons play either, but went inside the civic center only to tell my husband all these things before I left him.

It seemed like the entire city was inside the civic center, every single citizen yelling and striking the plexiglass with open hands and screaming at team employees wearing khaki pants to fire T-shirts at them out of their T-shirt cannons. Then there was the game itself, the sounds of blades scraping the ice and sticks slapping against sticks, and once in a while fists against faces and helmets. I was entranced, I was mesmerized, and in that state I wandered the place, looking for my husband, but I couldn’t find him, so I took the phone out of my pocket and texted him, and when he didn’t text back I called him.

We live next to two Johns, I said when he picked up.

I know, my husband said. His voice sounded dead, exactly the opposite of how it sounded when he talked about his fight against Big Velcro.

Who is the other John? I said, and I could hear my husband sigh, and I realized that this—the identity of the other John—was something I should have known, something my husband had probably talked about many times, and I would have known about the other John had I listened, had I paid attention to the world around me.

His differently abled son, my husband said, and it’s true, that’s something you’d think I would have known.

How differently abled is he? I said, and I didn’t know why I said that.

Mildly.

Oh good, I said, and I didn’t know why I said that, either. Where are you?

At the airport, my husband said.

Oh, I said, for the last time in this story. Because I knew what being at the airport meant: it meant that he was leaving me before I left him. And it also meant that he wasn’t in the civic center, and so I no longer had any reason to be there either. I left the building and began to walk home, my phone still pressed against my ear.

Where are you going? I asked, and he told me: it was someplace far away, someplace I’d never been, and I didn’t need to ask what he’d be protesting there.

It really was my story, my husband said.

I don’t really love you, I said back, because that was the truth, and there was no reason not to tell it anymore.

I know, he said, and his voice sounded so tired, because he must have known it for a long time.

And I’m not really pregnant, I said, even though that was not the truth, because I knew it would make it easier for him to leave me, completely and forever—not that I wanted to make things easier for him, but I did want him gone.

I didn’t think so, he said, suddenly sounding a lot less tired. God, he

said, really fired up now, God, you’re a selfish asshole.

Good-bye, I said, and then hung up. As I walked I thought vaguely hopeful thoughts about my future—sure, my husband would no longer be in it, and maybe Liz wouldn’t either, but that was okay, because things hadn’t been so fantastic with them in my life anyway, and besides, I’d have a baby (I hadn’t wanted the baby, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to have the baby), and we’d make a life together, a life in which I’d be a happier, more generous, less selfish person—until I got to my house. There, in front of me, was our driveway. It had been shoveled, and my husband’s shit was gone, and even though I knew this was all for the best, still, I was so fucking sad.

Read more from Issue 16.2.