The Knowing

She was standing outside her apartment building, waiting for her partner to go on a walk. She disliked the term partner, thought it sounded pretentious, but after they moved in together it felt inappropriate to call him anything else.

He was a careful person, which affected nearly everything he did — the way he opened the mail, the way he folded his T-shirts, the way he peeled the plastic from a package of toothpaste and placed it in the box full of pieces of plastic he said he would reuse because he could not bear to accept that their ultimate resting place was the ocean.

Normally, she thought his carefulness was admirable, exemplary even. Since moving in with him, she had left fewer ink stains on sofas, water rings on bedside tables, and shrunken wool socks in dryers. But in moments like this, when she was forced to wait while he tied and retied his shoelaces, the doubts crept in.

It was an unpleasant morning, dreary and cold. A layer of fog had swallowed the sky, though she noticed a single spot of color by the curb. A bird of paradise, with orange plumage and indigo leaves. She had never given the plant much thought, but now she wondered, how long had it been there? Was it native to the area?

Stepping toward the plant, she saw that there was a hummingbird, fluttering and iridescent, buried in one of the flowers. As she watched, the fog shifted, and a second bird appeared in the same flower.

Pulling their beaks from the plant, the hummingbirds turned to her, hovering. She stared, and they stared back.

The air was still. A tingle spread through her shins and along her spine, loosening her fingers, her shoulders, her jaw. The voice inside her head, usually so insatiable and insistent, was silent.

In that moment, she knew. She had reached her final life.

One afternoon when she was eight or nine, she had cocooned herself inside her family’s hammock, her preferred place to think. Looking up, she noticed that the holly leaves above her were carving the sunlight into perfect diamonds that glistened as she rocked. Her thoughts, absorbed in the ending of a book she had just finished, slowed to a halt. In their place emerged a clear and simple certainty that everything was right — a secret she called the knowing.

Over the years, this knowing returned to her, when she tasted the honeysuckle bush in the yard or caught sight of the moon rising from the ocean. Every time, she was desperate to prolong the feeling, but it inevitably slipped away. Looking back, she told herself that these moments meant something, were pointing her some place. Now, she knew where.

The door to the building fell shut and the birds fluttered away. She closed her eyes, her limbs still light and loose, and felt her partner wrap his long fingers around hers. She squeezed his hand, and he squeezed back.

When they returned to the apartment a half-hour later and passed the bird of paradise, she realized that she and her partner had hardly spoken a word to each other all morning. This was not uncommon, as they both tended toward introspection, but today the thought snagged.

Inside the kitchen, she switched on the tea kettle. Her partner entered a few minutes later, placing two slices of sourdough in the toaster. He was still lost in thought, she could tell. When the kettle whistled, he looked at her face, at the kettle, and back at her face. You look lovely, he said.

She smiled and switched off the kettle. What were you thinking about? she asked.

Oh, he said. Just the ethics of nuclear energy.

She nodded — that was an important thing to contemplate, perhaps more important than what she was contemplating — and asked, Have you seen the hummingbirds in the plant outside?

He considered the question, one second, two, then replied, I’m sure I have.

She was quiet. Her collection of ceramic animals, lined along the windowsill, peered up at her, offering little insight.

What’s wrong? he asked. He knew in an instant when she was upset, an intuition that both delighted and irritated her.

She shook her head, distracted, and he walked out of the kitchen, leaving the slices of bread toasted and untouched.

It was a Sunday and they had no plans, so she offered to run errands. Whenever she had a question that needed answering, she gravitated toward places where she could pace and whisper, pace and whisper, without detection — the grocery store, Home Depot, the library.

As she paced, she considered the facts. Her partner was a good person, better than anyone she knew. Kind to strangers, quick to apologize, cried without shame. He even set a heating pad out for stray cats on winter nights. Since meeting him, she had become more tolerant, more patient, more careful. If she were on her final life, then surely he deserved to be, too.

Then again, she reminded herself, there were great differences in their worldviews. He was a realist whose choices were guided by logic and morality, while hers were driven by beauty and sentimentality. He failed to notice the moon in the sky or the snails under rocks. He did not share her conviction that the world was moving toward harmony and instead dreaded an ecological, economic, and emotional collapse. She worried that her most profound experiences did not include him, that he did not see the light of the world as she did. And if he didn’t, would he hold her back?

She was at this juncture in her thoughts, absently caressing a pile of tomatoes in the grocery store, when a long arm darted into the neighboring plum patch and snatched one without hesitation. She looked and saw a tall woman holding a single lemon and, now, a single plum. The woman turned and gave her a severe look, as if condemning her uncertainty.

Chastened, she returned home. She watched as her partner prepared dinner, slicing an onion into even crescents and simmering garlic to a deep shade of brown. Before they sat down to eat, she took his hand and said, I want to try therapy.

She did not think that it was a radical suggestion. They knew so many couples who had dabbled in counseling that it had almost become a rite of passage. But she could see, in the way his eyes turned desperate, that he did not feel the same. Looking at the floor, he mumbled an apology, for not paying close enough attention to her unhappiness and her doubts.

She assured him that she was happy, which was true, and that she had no doubts, which was untrue. Therapy was a preventive measure, a way to ensure that the foundation they had built, as healthy as it was, stayed healthy. She reminded him that the therapist from the television series they liked said that most couples sought help after it was too late. Did he want to be too late?

This was exactly the right thing to say. He hated to be late.

The sessions were held in person, on the second floor of a stucco building in a strip mall. Their therapist was a slight man dressed in pale linen. Before every session, he handed them a clipboard with a sheet of paper, and they were instructed to circle a number, one through seven, that reflected their mood. Her partner invariably circled the three or the four, and she circled the six but never the seven.

At the start of their first session, she presented a proposal. They could build a database of both their sets of memories, detecting any and all points from which their indefatigable shame, fear, and mistrust may have sprouted, then recount every step of their relationship and the relationships that preceded it, starting with the romantic ones, of course, but also the platonic, the familial, professional, and parasocial. No rock would be left unturned.

The therapist listened to her proposal with patience, then asked what she was seeking. She plucked a peppermint from the bowl beside her chair and unwrapped it. Answers, she said.

At this, the therapist smiled and wondered, What is behind this need for answers?

Twisting the plastic wrapper around her finger, she considered the question but found she could not answer. This impressed her greatly.

Over the coming sessions, she became convinced that the therapist possessed a profound and mysterious gift. He somehow seduced her partner into sharing the bottomless dread that had haunted him since childhood. The kinship he had felt for the family dog, because they both feared that the rest of the family would leave and never return. The worry that lurked inside every moment of happiness, waiting for the dark future where friends broke promises, partners fell out of love, and societies collapsed. The suspicion that this ceaseless worry would drive everyone away.

With every new revelation, she began to see how her partner’s insecurities were inseparable from the qualities she so deeply admired: his carefulness, his tenderness, his sharp perception of the world. She longed to free him from his cruel thoughts, reassure him that his worry came from the same place as her hope. Even as he continued to circle the three and sometimes the four on the clipboard, she told herself that he would soon see the light.

Affirming this conviction, the knowing returned to her, first in moments alone — as she stretched across the bedroom floor and stared at the shadows the fan blades cut across the ceiling, or when she watched the wind dance through blades of grass in the park. Then, in moments with him. As he gripped her waist and waltzed her across the kitchen, or whispered in her ear when a fox scurried past them on the road. And so when he asked her to marry him above a field of yellow grass, her soul assured her — at last, everything was right.

* * *

They moved into a tiny house at the bottom of a steep hill, next to a cluster of birch trees. Their first morning, she woke at dawn to find the yard blanketed in white. She tugged her husband awake, and they pulled on their new winter boots in the dim light. At the top of the hill, they took a rest to catch their breath, listening to birdsong as light peeked through snow-laden branches. He took her mittened hand in his and squeezed. She thought to herself, We have finally arrived.

After that, their life fell into a natural rhythm. She washed the laundry and he washed the dishes. She brought him coffee in the morning and he brought her chocolate before bed. They spent evenings and weekends discussing politics and spirituality with silliness and solemnity. Sometimes, he frightened her with his worries about the land they lived on, the air they breathed, and the water they drank, but she learned to validate without indulging, and he learned to believe in her hope. It was the happiest she had ever been.

By the time the snow thawed, she was pregnant. She had long known that she was meant to be a mother, to pass along the delights of the world. But as her belly swelled, she felt a strange sense of grief, similar to the one she had when she first fell in love. Grief for the girl she had once been and the woman she might have become with different choices.

They had twin girls, born with wide, unknowing eyes. He was an excellent father. He grasped, immediately, what they needed from the world. Though he still despaired over the chemicals inside their food and the scorched landscape they would inherit, a new softness radiated from him.

For her, though, life turned precarious. There was no time, anymore, for walks at dawn or philosophical discussions. Instead, she was swallowed into a relentless stream of fears from the moment she woke up — that the girls would roll off the changing table or swallow her jewelry or develop a deadly allergy. That she held their hands too tightly, and then not tightly enough. That her husband’s past worries would all come true. That they would lose their jobs, lose their house, lose the trees and the sky and the water. That her daughters would never experience the transcendence of knowing. That there were no answers.

She never told her husband the extent of her worries, frightened that speaking them aloud would reveal something too ugly to confront. He grew frustrated at her silence, which she was certain meant one of two horrible truths: that he was not right for her, or that no one was.

As the girls’ first birthday approached, she hoped that it would shepherd her back to the woman she had once been. She had always loved birthdays, the way the rules of the universe bent to transform an ordinary person into a beloved hero.

When the day came, the sky was a perfect blue, the wind a perfect breeze, the music a perfect volume. Everyone beamed and admired the daughters she loved so much. She beamed back, her eyes burning from the brightness of the sky. For the next four hours, she waited through crown-making and face-painting and gift-giving for the moment to come, the moment when she would be freed from the churning inside of her. But the thoughts — the girls would get sunburned, the gifts would spoil them, she had not done enough — persisted.

Near the end of the party, she went into the kitchen to fetch the cake and saw that the roses she had drawn with icing had melted from the sunshine. She left the cake on the counter to keep melting.

Her husband found her huddled on the floor of the shower. She did not know how long she had been there. He cleared his throat and asked what was going on. In a very small voice, she said what had been on her mind for a very long time: Something is wrong with my life and I don’t know how to fix it.

He did not take her hand or crouch beside her or bring her a glass of water. He stayed standing above her, staring at the bathroom floor. Our life, he said, then drew the curtain over her and left.

* * *

From then on, he took the girls to and from daycare, doctors’ appointments, and playdates. She left the house only for the girls’ musical performances or holiday events, for groceries or diapers or vacuum bags.

Sometimes, when she caught sight of a hummingbird or smelled honeysuckle, she remembered the knowing. She understood, now, what the therapist had tried to tell her. That her search for transcendence was juvenile. How foolish she had been, clinging to mere mirages. She could not know, had never known.

One morning — it was a weekend morning, she knew, because the dread felt deeper without the distraction of work — one of the girls, her mouth full of waffles, asked to go on a walk. She had never used that phrase before, had only ever expressed interest in playing outside or going someplace in particular. Her father offered to take them, and the girls smiled and peered up to ask if mama was coming, too. She shook her head with a smile and said that they should have an adventure with their father, certain she would only ruin it.

The next morning, the other girl requested another walk. She asked if mama was coming, and she told them no, again.

For four mornings, the exchange was repeated. On the fifth day, the girls asked for the walk and their father agreed to take them, and they all headed to the door to put on their shoes.

Left alone, she returned to her coffee and contemplated the day ahead, the dishes and the dust and the dread, before realizing that they had not asked her if she was coming.

She rushed to the front door and they turned to face her. She was self-conscious about the surprise in their eyes, but then they all went back to getting ready.

She saw, then, that their father was lacing up their sneakers the same way that he tied his own. She watched as he tugged one lace through an eyelet and pulled as tightly as he could, before moving on to the next. The girls were watching him, too, and she understood that they were learning to tie their shoes as he did.

She followed them outside, as if it were perfectly normal for her to join them. The girls toddled ahead, and she worried that they would dart into the street. She said nothing, though, and they stuck safely to the grass.

Trailing behind with their father, she thought of the conversations they used to have, the ones that started with simple observations about the sky and transformed into sweeping discussions about the mechanisms of fate. She wondered if the gulf between them had grown too wide to bridge. But before the worry could find its feet, the twang of green frogs rose from the nearby stream to fill the silence. It must have rained the night before, she thought, and she looked down at the ground, noticing now that it was wet. There were snails sliding through the blades of grass, and up above, the leaves were bright against the darkened bark of the birch trees.

Ahead of them, the girls zigzagged uphill, chattering incomprehensibly and summoning each other to examine one thing and then the next. When they reached the top of the hill, she started to call out to them. Before she could, they both stopped and pointed at something in the distance.

Can you see her today? their father shouted, and the girls turned to face him, nodding with delight. She frowned — what could it be? — and quickened her pace.

When she reached the top of the hill, she looked around, perplexed, seeing nothing. Then, he took her hand and pointed to the sky, where a sliver of white was hanging beside a cloud. The morning moon.

Her husband looked at her, uncertainty in his eyes. She squeezed his hand.

* * *

They are sitting in matching armchairs, not doing much of anything, when he mentions the paradox of the heap. She says she doesn’t know what that is. He explained it many, many years ago, he says, and she insists that she would have remembered. They bicker over whose memory is more reliable — she is four years younger but he has always had the sharper mind — and then she asks him to explain it once more.

He leans back, his joints creaking with the armchair. The paradox, he says, centers around a question: How many grains of sand can be removed from a heap before it stops being a heap? People debated this question for centuries, he says, and then one philosopher set forth a hypothesis: There is an answer, but the answer is unknowable. In fact, there is an answer to every question we ask, even if it is unknowable.

She is delighted, both by the paradox and the reminder that he can still surprise her. Looking out at the slender buds on the birch tree beside the window, she asks for an unknowable answer — what percentage of him believes in an afterlife?

He considers it a second, before deciding that his best guess is approximately 32 percent. She smiles at his precision, and gives her own: I can’t help but think that it is all of me.

She tells him that she does not know, though, what to expect when it ends. Will she cling or will she understand, by then, how to let go?

Will she end up like the hummingbirds, experiencing sunshine and fear and craving for what they really are?

If they ask her what the lesson was, what will she say?

I think I know, but I can’t be sure.

Or, rather, I can’t be sure, but I think I know.