David James Poissant
the honeymooners
Conflict is the essence of drama, and all literary fiction requires drama to please the reader and to succeed as a story. –William H. Coles, “Conflict in Literary Fiction”
The couple becomes husband and wife.
The couple honeymoons, and the honeymoon goes well.
The husband and wife buy a house they’ll spend thirty years paying off. The price is fair. The interest rate is good. At closing, there are no surprises.
The couple fights, occasionally, the way couples do, but there is little yelling, no cursing, no pushing, no fists. Sometimes she cries. Sometimes the tears are his. Misunderstandings lead, in time, to understanding, disagreements to compromise.
The couple does not fight about money. Banks accounts are merged. Spending is controlled. The credit card is paid, each month, in full.
The couple does not fight about in-laws. Their families get along fine. The couple does not fight about sex. Before marriage, the sex was good, and after marriage the sex is good. The couple does not fight about frequen- cy or style of lovemaking, as they have similar sexual appetites and drives. This is one reason, among many, that the couple married in the first place.
The husband and wife drink, but not to excess.
The husband and wife get high, but they do so responsibly.
No one passes out or throws up in the bed.
For her birthday, the husband buys the wife a rack on which to store wine. The rack is never used, and the husband, who might have resented this, does not.
For his birthday, the wife buys the husband a gym membership. The gift is not meant passive aggressively, nor does the husband receive it that way.
The wife does not ask the husband if this dress makes her look fat.
The husband does not ask the wife if he could stand to lose a few.
The wife does not feel compelled to wear makeup to leave the house.
The husband does not feel compelled to dye his graying hair.
The wife does not have trouble swinging a hammer.
The husband does not have trouble baking a pie.
Neither the husband nor the wife, when lost, has trouble asking for directions.
The husband keeps old t-shirts in a drawer, and the wife does not throw them out.
The husband keeps old comic books in the attic, and the wife does not throw them out.
The husband owns a rare and valuable baseball card, and the wife does not throw it out.
The wife spends time with her girlfriends, and the husband is not jealous.
The wife talks for hours on the phone with her mother, and the husband is not jealous.
The wife masturbates with a vibrator, and the husband is not jealous.
Neither husband nor wife, intentionally or accidentally, mishears the other and, in error, makes some kind of huge, irreconcilable mistake. “Oh, you wanted a new pool table,” is not a sentence that would ever be spoken in the husband and wife’s house.
The husband does not record over their wedding video.
The wife does not lose her wedding ring.
The husband does not bet their lifesavings on red at roulette.
The wife does not forget to renew the homeowner’s insurance when the tornado is on the way.
The tornado is never on the way.
The husband’s grandfather dies, the way grandfathers do, but he was very old and the death was expected. Everyone is respectfully sad without giving in to insurmountable grief.
The husband inherits the grandfather’s gun. The gun is kept in a lockbox beneath the bed.
The rest of the couple’s grandparents die off in short order, the way grandparents do. This is a thing that happens. The husband accepts this. The wife accepts this.
The husband gets a new job, and the wife gets a better one. The husband does not resent that the wife’s job pays more. The wife does not resent that the husband’s pays less. Their money comingles in the joint account, the checkbook balanced together by both.
The husband and wife discuss having a baby.
The husband and wife have a baby girl.
The husband, now a father, does not regret that the girl is not a boy.
The wife, now a mother, does not resent the father’s not wanting another.
The father is a good father.
The mother is a good mother.
The father is not hapless. He cooks and cleans. He changes diapers well. When the daughter has a fever, he can tell by the daughter’s skin with the kiss of a wrist.
The mother is not controlling. She does not treat the father like a second child. She loves both father and daughter in a way that says she doesn’t have to choose who to love more.
The father is not bellicose.
The mother is not shrill.
The father is not irresponsible with the child.
The mother is not overprotective.
The father does not withhold affection.
The mother does not smother.
The daughter is neither suffocated by Disney movies and trans fats, nor are said movies and fats withheld entirely.
The daughter plays an instrument.
The daughter plays sports.
Sometimes the daughter wears a tutu. Sometimes she wears a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle mask. Sometimes the daughter lies awake in the night, dreaming of the universe, of her infinitesimal smallness in it, and of the bigness of its mysteries.
The daughter grows up happy, well-adjusted, loved.
The daughter dates boys.
The daughter dates girls.
The mother and father are happy with whomever the daughter chooses to love, so long as she’s careful, responsible, safe.
The father does not see the daughter as his property to protect.
The mother does not see the daughter as an extension of herself.
The daughter goes to college, and the mother and father cry, but, more than they are sad, they are proud. They adjust well to their newly-empty nest.
The mother and father do not buy a dog to replace their child.
The mother and father take turns getting thin and fat and thin again. The father does not resent the mother’s widening thighs. The mother does not resent the flap that hangs over the father’s belt.
The mother and father notice other people, but they do not act on their attractions to others, nor are they particularly tempted to.
No one has an affair.
The father does not have a midlife crisis.
The mother does not have a miscarriage.
The mother and father do not get in a car accident.
The mother and father do not get cancer.
The mother’s best friend gets cancer.
The friend dies, and, uncharacteristically, the mother gets a tattoo.
The father’s parents die, and, uncharacteristically, the father donates an exorbitant sum to charities in their honor.
The mother’s parents die, and the mother and father cry, they remember, they live, they move on.
The daughter announces that she is no longer a daughter, but a son, and the mother and father are supportive.
The son marries and divorces, and the mother and father are supportive.
The son adopts a son of his own, and the mother and father, now grandparents, are supportive.
Because conflict is real, but some conflicts are only conflicts if you ask them to be.
In time, the adopted son has a daughter of his own, and the grandparents become great-grandparents.
In time, the great-grandmother dies, followed, not long after, by the great-grandfather.
In his will, the great-grandfather leaves the grandson his gun.
One morning, the great-granddaughter finds the gun. She plays with the gun.
The gun does not go off.
David James Poissant is the author of The Heaven of Animals: Stories, winner of the GLCA New Writers Award and a Florida Book Award, longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, and a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize. Poissant’s stories and essays have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Glimmer Train, The New York Times, One Story, Playboy, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. He teaches in the MFA program at the University of Central Florida.