The Swap - Part I

A Story by Kherry McKay

This is a serial. Check back in a week to read more of the story. A woman decides her life needs a change, and a poet becomes her change agent.

Part I

“To live is so startling it leaves

little time for anything else.”

~ Emily Dickinson

Somewhere in this world right now, there’s a bitter husband haranguing his wife that she has “let the house go to the dogs!” He yells at her and thinks she doesn’t give a damn and ought to care more about what conditions they live in. He works hard for every dollar they have. (Of course, a person who’s yelling at anybody actually hates his work and is taking it out on others. But never mind that.) He screams and flails his arms. And she’s crying because he’s partially right. She hasn’t been doing anything around the house. But she hasn’t been watching TV or surfing the Internet, either. She’s simply been “staring,” as she calls it to her best friend.

Somehow the energy that used to get her up every morning, used to make her want to keep her husband happy, has evaporated. Every day she needs long hours to simply contemplate nothingness. She pours herself tea at ten in the morning and sits on the living room sofa, looking up at the plaster designs on the ceiling. She does this until just before the kids come home from school. Every once in a while, she reads a book.

If I were a therapist, I would tell her she’s depressed and advise her to seek medical attention, get on antidepressants. I’m sure that’s what her husband thinks. But I’m not a therapist, I’m a poet and writer. As a poet, my heart reaches through the page to commiserate with her life, and this is what I do with that ability:

I reach into her world, step right off the page, and stand before her in her living room. It isn’t scary for her. She’s been waiting for something to happen. for God to become incarnate, for the seas to part. A poet stepping into her living room is almost anti-climactic.

“I was waiting for you,” she says.

Smiling, I tell her that I’m glad she hadn’t given up hope, that her not wanting to do anything is perfectly normal. A sociobiologist of some notoriety once indentified our species as the “contemplative animal.” That’s what we’re good at — contemplating. Contemplating evrerything.

“I have a husband,” she says. “He gets angry when I don’t get anything done. Our house is a boggle.”

“It’s not really that bad,” I say, meaning it. Sometimes, I don’t vacuum my little hovel for three months at a time. Once, I left dishes in the kitchen for three weeks. A tiny group of airborne gnat-like insects colonized my dishes. I became fascinated, deciding not to clean for several more weeks. Being scientifically oriented, I wanted to experiment to see if they survived. Unfortunately, they did not. There was plenty of sustenance but alas, industrial environments such as the human home are not conducive to certain types of life. Maybe they know something we don’t.

Anyway, the woman’s place is like June Cleaver’s compared to mine.

“What is it that you want to change?”

“Well, I love my husband. That’s not it.”

I nod.

“What I really want to do is write. Maybe some poetry.”

“Are you in a writing group?”

“No. There’s no time. I want to be here when my husband gets home.” This woman doesn’t exactly live in California.

“I’m sure there’s some group somewhere in town, maybe a reading group, that meets weekday mornings or afternoons.”

“The real reason I don’t go anywhere,” she says, “...is I want to think. I do my best thinking at home.”

I gesture with my eyebrow that I understand. “I’m a poet you know. Poets have always been thought of in strange ways by society: as hermits, as ascetics, as ne’er-do-wells. Generally, as antisocial misfits without money or friends.”

She doesn’t respond.

“And we’ve also been admired for having almost magical abilities when it comes to survival. A poet in China was once believed to have lived solely on air for twenty years.”

“Amazing.” But the look on her face is Who have I let into my house?

“Anyway, magic,” I resume. “I have the ability to trade places with you. You’ll have my life and I’ll have yours for a week.”

She thinks about this. “What would it be like with you, uh, and my husband?”

“Before we do this, I’ll find out every imaginable way to keep your husband’s libido in check. I’m sure you can help me there. We can talk to each other as we’re in each other’s bodies. Don’t worry.”

“Are there any catches?”

I sigh. There are always catches in a fantasy story, even one that’s poured out from the imaginative realms into the world of the real and has become flesh and blood.

“Unfortunately, there are,” I say.

“Tell me about them.”

“First, everything you accomplish in my body, I get to keep. Like if you write a great story, I get to take credit for it. And if I make. . . improvements . . . to your marriage or your home life, you get to take advantage of them. Understand?”

“What else?”

“Magic always costs something,” I reply. “Here’s the price, then for the exchange you’re agreeing to. For both of us, one person in the world that was meant to love us completely and unconditionally — a person whom we haven’t yet met — will, after we return, when it comes time for them to love us, not in fact love us. Instead, they'll love someone else.”

“I'm not sure about this. You’re saying if I live your life for a week, someone who was meant to love me will decide against it? Why would I want that?”

“It’s in the future! There’s plenty of people in the world to be friends with in place of those who will change their minds. And you may learn something from living in someone else’s life. . . .”

“What do you get out of this, I ask?”

“I’m a writer writing about a woman – and writing about her in the first person, from her point of view. That means I have to sort of become a woman. It’s a lot harder than you might think for even a sensitive man to do, not that I’m sensitive. I hope, after living in your world for a while, I’ll be able to say something brilliant about women. I’ll understand femininity, at least a little.”

“O.K.”

“You're willing to do this?”

“Sounds more interesting than looking at plaster patterns on my ceiling.”

“Then say after me: Life is so startling. . . .”

“Life is so startling.”

“. . .there’s no time for anything else.”

“There’s no time—”

Suddenly, she finds herself in a small apartment in the east end of Pittsburgh. There are books everywhere, and papers are strewn across the floor. The place is a disaster.

She feels right at home.

( Go to Part II )