WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO MAKE YOU SOME TOAST?

By Ben Greenman / @2019

From forthcoming collection of stories, as yet untitled

She was getting dressed, bottomless, vest, remembering Kingsley’s hippopotamus test. “Put them in spirits,” she said. Putnam didn’t hear it. He was in the other room, sitting at the kitchen counter, drinking coffee. He was like that every morning. Similarity was the problem. She kept remembering Kingsley, and how he had observed with both mind and soul the debate over Darwin, Huxley for the defense, Owen for the prosecution. She recalled the battle over men and apes. Did one follow directly from the other? If you cut apart their brains what would you find? Kingsley, a broad church priest, had refused to duck the question, and had over time come to side with Huxley, his friend. Both felt Owen’s objections as a form of angry flailing. Owen claimed that only human brains contained a hippocampus. This briefly dampened enthusiasm for Darwin but science pushed back. Apes had them too, said science. Putnam coughed loudly, as he often did at this time. “Coming?” he said. She was not coming. She was staying where she was. Where was she? Oh, yes, the test. After witnessing the hostility between Huxley and Owen over apes and men, Kingsley had composed a bit of satire in the style of Lord Dundreary, a character known in the United States only as a result of the play that surrounded him, Our American Cousin, for it was playing in Ford’s Theater the night that Abraham Lincoln took a bullet from the gun of John Wilkes Booth, the president’s head was opened, perhaps a hippocampus was briefly glimpsed. Kingsley then reframed the debate for children in his more famous book of fairy-tales, Water Babies. He wondered if a Water Baby were to pass from life, if it was preserved in spirits and then divided, if half was sent to Huxley and half to Owen, what would they conclude? Here Kingsley changed hippocampus to hippopotamus, thinking it would better amuse young readers. He was correct. She framed the children’s tale. Did Kingsley succeed with it or fail? Did his jape protect Huxley’s position regarding Darwin’s disquisition about apes and men? And then: did Owen feel the shame of his limits? She did not know the story any further. She thought better of the vest. A white shirt would do. She knew it when she started getting dressed. She only wore the vest as a form of protest. Putnam did not like her in it. “Wait a minute,” he said whenever he saw it. He thought it made her manly. What did that make him, by extension? She ran a finger downward through her breasts, thought once more of the hippocampus test, Kingley’s fanciful embroidery, found a scarf that satisfied Putnam’s fondness for Chinoiserie, tied it round her neck, stood looking in the mirror at her body, skin and hair, thin here and fat there, places she had touched, places touched by others, knotted the scarf, discarded it, sat cross-legged atop the covers. She ran her fingers through fuzz. Her brain buzzed. She thought to touch again and then thought differently. She’d owe herself for later. Every body is a debtor and a creditor at once. “Breakfast,” Putnam called. She heard that same note of sameness, suffered it. “It’s nine,” he said. “Fine,” she said. Putnam didn’t hear her clearly. “Coming here?” he said. “It’s nine.” A second time, but louder: “Fine.” She pulled on underwear. She would eat breakfast like that. Manly? She dared him to come to that conclusion. But what if he still did? “Heaven forbid,” she said. She pulled them off, fingers twitching. In the kitchen, Putnam coughed.