My Husband’s Car

It’s getting to be that time of day when one part of the apartment looks like it’s three hours darker than the other part. Summer rain clouds thicken out the window, transmitting humidity to the apartment, which is doing a good job of sealing in the wet air. The sky is beginning to blue down for the evening and my husband must be walking home from work.

My husband is an architect. He stays late at the desk, approving plans for office buildings and parking lots. He is working on a design for a consulting firm. The design is inspired by the architecture of Seon Buddhist mountain temples. He does not yet know how to suspend fresh vines in circular arrangements from an aerated concrete ceiling and this is troubling him. Probably he is thinking about vines and impermanence as he walks home.

My husband walks to work and he walks home from work and he keeps his car parked in the automated parking garage ten stories beneath our apartment complex. Each evening, when he returns from work, my husband retrieves his car in order to turn the ignition and shift the gears. When you type a code into a keypad, a conveyor lifts your car from deep under the ground and brings it to the surface. This is how the toenail-sized country makes space. While you wait for the car, you stand above ground and look down and it is dizzying seeing the metal beams and the cars glinting like beetles.

I knew a house-husband when I was little, the father of my best friend, who loved talking about his wife to other women. When my mother dropped me off at this house, the house-husband would entangle my mother in conversation. The house-husband talked about his wife and he showed my mother the wooden figurines his wife had made. Although my mother thought the figurines were ugly, she couldn’t help but blush at how warm and lightheaded the house-husband was getting, talking about his wife chipping and sanding in the basement.

Now that I’ve got myself one of these dog-like American husbands that talk like they’re licking your face, my mother falls over with embarrassment for me. She stands by and watches as my husband takes one long sweet potato from the oven and slots it in a glass of ice water while wondering aloud about the scaffolding of his vines and how to ensure his structure remains well-sutured. She listens to his large American vowels and makes polite sounds that press her face into lines. She brushes at her face with ringed fingers. She’s never gotten this kind of attention from my father.

When my husband is at work, I retrieve his car. I turn the ignition and shift the gears. In these arrogant, aired-out streets, everything is designed according to a plan that no one follows, and I get distracted. I get hungry for living squashed up next to other people. If all the people of the world were contained in one Seon Buddhist consulting firm with one beautiful mountain next to it, I would not have to drive my husband’s car.

The interstate lights blink against the pink undersides of flat grey clouds. The road rears like an angry wave, slapping the dash. The interstates rise and lace and take lone cars elsewhere. Out the window the mountain is a smear of dark on the grey sky.

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Iris Lee lives in Baltimore, MD.