Our Happiness
Our happiness was gone. Poof, just like that. One day
it was there and the next it was not.
He kept saying it was not gone forever, that it would come back. I knew
better. It had not simply taken a vacation, was not sunning itself on
a coconut-scented beach.
We had sucked out all the juice. Every last drop. And what we had on
our hands now was a husk. We batted this rind back and forth between
us, halfheartedly, like a bored cat playing with a toy. Or like the
polar cub I had seen at the zoo a few years back. When I arrived, the
cub was engaged in a lively game of Tag with its mother. But soon, in
the unbearable desert heat of July, the mother tired. She stretched
out in a patch of shade for a nap. The cub tried vainly to rekindle
her interest in the game, but she wouldn’t budge. With a sigh,
the cub settled down with a pebble, batting it sadly between his paws.
We went to the zoo. What else was there to do? I wore a dress, a gift
from his mother. The dress was too large and hung in bunches. As we
walked around, it seemed unbearably heavy. I gathered up handfuls to
distribute the weight, aware of how ridiculous I sounded, whining about
my heavy dress.
The lions drowsed in the sun. He told me about visiting them with his
previous girlfriend. She’d grown up here, knew some little secrets
about the zoo. Where the catnip grew. They’d pick handfuls and
thrust them through the
bars.
Previously, any mention of this prior girlfriend had me squirming with
jealousy. Now I listened in an indifferent haze, clutching fistfuls
of broom skirt.
We continued into the Cat House, where the other cats had smaller cages,
away from the sun. I looked for Shasta but she was gone. She had always
been there since my first visit. When I too had come to the zoo with
someone else. A bear-like man with a spine that curved surprisingly
out of his back.
Shasta died when I was still a little girl, living in a town thousands
of miles away. Then they stuffed her and put her on display. She'd been
the product of an experiment in cross-breeding, the sterile daughter
of a lion and a tiger. A Liger. The plaque over the stuffed Shasta described
her as having “the appearance of a Lioness but the mannerisms
of a Tigress.” I thought I should strive to emulate Shasta, her
appearance and mannerisms.
But instead of a Liger Woman, here I was moping around in a ridiculous
dress.
I turned from the corner where Shasta used to be to see what he was
up to. He stood before the machine where you could make a mold of one
of the zoo animals for a dollar. The eerie machine lit up and whirred
into motion. Then it settled back into silence and calm. He came toward
me, the still hot, yellow creature balanced gingerly on his outthrust
palm.
Dawn Corrigan lives in Salt Lake City with her wonderful husband and astonishing dog. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Hat, and elsewhere. Her nonfiction can be seen regularly at The Nervous Breakdown.