Asylum, MI
by Liza Stewart
Watch Liza read “Asylum, MI”
“Big day for the loons,” I text Bridget.
At 11:30 they line up in a patch of sun on the bank to preen their feathers. Out of water they look ridiculous.
*
I planned to leave Eli before my trip to California. I rehearsed my words each night in the dark. “It feels like we are just going through the motions.”
Instead, I packed emergency supplies, asked Eli if flying was irresponsible. In the Headlands, I considered a month-to-month lease. Bridget said I should explain myself over the phone. I flew back to New York the next day.
Eli and I rented a car and left the city. Our neighbor offered to water our plants while we were away. He collected the keys and wiped his eyes. “You’re so lucky to have each other,” he said.
*
This house isn’t a family house. I mean it’s not a house my family owns. There are pictures of the family who lives in this house during the summer stuck to the fridge with magnets. But I’m not one of those landed writers.
*
My brother phones from prison. We are all in solitary confinement now, I tell him, and he laughs.
*
It isn’t like New York here. I have an office. We moved the ping pong table out of the sunroom and into the hallway we don’t use, shifted a couch from the living room. My desk is a painted table with matching chairs, the upholstery a cheery floral print, pushed next to a window that looks out over the lake. I found binoculars in the drawer I claimed for underwear and set them on the windowsill.
*
The loons do everything together. They arrive early to hunt, trawl the waters with their auburn tufted heads below the surface. Is this what writing is? They toss silver minnows back in narrow beaks and swallow.
*
Bridget adopted a dog named Piper. The theory is that dogs are an effective shield for loneliness. I think maybe I should get a dog.
*
I buy a case of wine. The next time I spend $100 on wine, I decide it will be the boxed kind. Quantity over quality, I say. This is practical in other ways, too: boxes can be broken down.
*
Aaron, my ex, calls every day, sometimes twice. The second time he is weeping drunk. “I am not a professional,” I say. “Until you are honest about your feelings—guilt, shame, rejection, inadequacy — you won’t be able to quit.”
“The last time we slept together, was that pity?” he asks.
*
It snows all month. Usually it doesn’t stick. Today, the sandy patch past the grass is white. No loons, just me at the window, the frozen landscape, the hard gray lake.
*
Bridget texts photos of the bruises on her arm, her thigh, her calf. There is a bloody puncture wound on her forearm. She calls me, sobbing.
After an eight day observation period, it is decided that Piper must be put down.
*
The cans and glass bottles have begun to pile up. I organize them like with like, filling paper bags and stuffing them, overflowing, into the mudroom closet. I wonder how we will transport them when we finally dispose of them.
*
“You exhaust yourself taking care of everyone else. There’s nothing left for me,” Eli says.
“I need to feel connected,” I tell him. But I take care of him, too.
*
I always knew I’d never kill myself because dusk comes once a day. I prefer the long summer twilight. In winter the time is short, bare trees black against the savage blue. Even this is worthy.
*
Things left behind I wish for: Vibrator. Nail polish. A bra that doesn’t look like maternity wear.
*
Loons have four types of calls: the wail, the hoot, the yodel, the tremolo. Eli set his phone face-down on the quilt and we stared up at the ceiling, listening. Outside the bedroom window, the cry came again and again. “Think they’ll stay?”
*
“It doesn’t feel like a love story.” The professor speaks to us from the screen. “What does connection look like when the bar is survival?”
I watch the loons. The mated pairs are temporary.
“Metaphors lay bare the facts of our lives. So do ruptures—upending expectations of normalcy and ordinary desires—anxiety with instead of without precarity. How broken things were before, how it feels to have the last thread snapped.”
A flock is called an asylum.
“The characters intersect in the search for safety and identity, their struggle to endure. What are the consequences?”
*
“I’m going out for cigarettes.” In an apocalypse, I would die early. I have no desire to survive deprivation.
“And he never saw her again,” Eli said.
*
Two swans bathed in the shallow waters beside a road I hadn’t meant to take. One laid its elegant neck over its back. The other stretched a charcoal leg out, out, and tucked it under its body, propped up by a single stilt as it arranged its snowy plumage.
I got lost and was gone a long while.
*
Whole days pass in unbroken silence until Hobbes joins us in exile. Hobbes explains that God was bored and sent Jesus to earth so he could learn empathy. His suffering was either a failed expedition or a smashing success. God hasn’t been back since.
*
Fog veils the lake. The water is calm, reflecting the shrouded trees on the opposite shore. The loons emerge from the mist. I think about the time Eli spotted the deer, high up on a ridge, the trees scarlet and ochre and saffron. We watched its progress along the slate outcropping before it disappeared. There was graffiti on the dam.
*
I remember other times, too. They land and drift and return to shore before lighting off. That’s how I know I can’t leave him. Where would the memories go to rest?
*
The loons inch back into the shallows. They float and bob in a line, paddling out. One lone loon is left on the wooden dock. Hours later, when I go outside to smoke, it is still alone. It begins to wail–a hollow, solitary sound. The half-note of longing echoes across the lake.
Liza Stewart is a fiction writer, essayist, writing instructor, and consultant. She holds a BA in Philosophy from DePaul University and an MA in Urban Leadership from the University of Colorado. Her work has appeared in Winning Writers, No Contact Magazine. Her writing was nominated for Best of the Net 2020 and was a 2019 finalist for The Pinch Literary Award. She is an MFA candidate and writing instructor at Columbia University. Since 2009, she has taught composition courses in Chicago, Paris, Denver, Quito, and New York. Liza is the recipient of two fellowships for her work in community outreach and advocacy.
