The Hypothetical Girl (22 page)

Deer fell even further into her depression. She was thinking about polar bear all the time, she realized, and it was really affecting her ability to feed, move around the forest, and keep up. She became even thinner and weaker—not good. Not good at all. But from the point of view of one young buck in her herd, she was looking very svelte. He was developing quite a crush on her, and even feeling protective. He reached out.

“Little friend,” he said one afternoon, “come over here, there is some very fresh sod to be had.”

Deer ambled over and partook, hardly looking at the buck. Which made her all the more enticing, of course.

“Honey, what’s the matter?” the buck asked. “You look so frail and weak.”

“Oh, nothing,” she replied, but she did notice the way he was looking at her. She could tell he was interested. If polar bear was dating around, she thought, she might as well engage in a bit of light flirtation as well.

She batted those long lashes that polar bear had found so delightful.

“Thanks for caring,” she said.

“Oh, I care a lot,” the buck said. “I really care about you.”

Deer liked the attention but had to notice she did not blush all over or feel trembly.

Now, what deer did not know was that polar bear had fallen on severely hard times. The sea ice had all
but disappeared and there was no way to fish from the steep sides of glaciers; he was in danger of starving. The time when he had gone on the dating site was pure accident. He had simply hit a wrong key and up it popped. Some kind of online snafu. It is a little bit hard for polar bears to hit the right keys sometimes, with those big paws. The rest of the time he was completely engaged in pure survival. Several young polar bears in his cohort had actually drowned for the lack of sea ice to rest upon while feeding. It was a gigantic tragedy; everyone was very anxious and panicky. On one occasion when he noticed he had a text from deer, he realized he didn’t even have the energy to type back a reply.

Survival trumps flirtation pretty much all the time in this world, and this has been the undoing of many a long-distance dalliance. But deer didn’t know what polar bear was going through, and she took it quite personally, this sort of game in a relationship. Or did they even have a relationship? Deer wasn’t sure; the word had never been uttered. She certainly wasn’t going to bring it up. That was the male’s job, she thought. She was not a feminist sort of deer. And what was the future, anyway, for such a love pairing? The odds were certainly against them in the long run. But then deer was a magical thinker; she truly believed love could conquer all sorts of barriers. Look at eagle and sea bass, ant and sparrow! Love could be had in all sorts of ways, in myriad conditions, with all sorts of beings.
Love was bigger than clan, region, or species. Bigger than weather, or tides, or the politics of herd and gender. She felt a deep and pure love for polar bear, a real connection. This she knew. It was chemistry. It was kismet. It had felt determined to her by large forces in the universe, the pull of stars, the trending of seasons, the shared experience of the wrap and tangle of rain, snow, sleet. She really loved polar bear.

But buck had the home court advantage. He sensed that something was up with deer and asked: “Are you involved with someone? I want to know, because I am feeling a lot of feelings for you, deer. And I just need to know what I am up against.”

Deer felt pretty much nothing for buck, and found him quite unattractive, with his bulbous nose and big big teeth. “I am quite besotted with someone else, I am afraid, and it is making me anxious all the time,” she said.

“Who is the guy,” asked buck. “Do I know him? It’s an online thing, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said deer. “It is.”

“I knew it,” said buck.

That fall the forest grew cold very quickly and there was not enough food to go around, but buck made sure deer got her share of feeding in and could stay alive. In his own habitat, polar bear was no longer struggling. He was a hardy, large bear with plenty of fat to keep him going, which helped him survive through the lean spell
and gave him the strength to cling to the sides of certain craggy glaciers until the sea ice returned. As soon as he had a chance, he wrote to deer.

“My dear, my dear deer,” he typed, “how are you?”

Alas, by this time, deer had decided not to reply. Polar bear had let an entire season go by, probably smitten with some young female bear, or someone he met online. She was not going to play this game. He had used silence strategically, to feel powerful and in control. And she had turned her attention to buck, with a heavy heart. At least he didn’t play games. These online things were too confusing, she thought. Crushing, really.

Then, when hunting season came around, deer, besotted with disappointment and still very weak, was shot in the leg and again in the side by the hunter. She stumbled once and then fell down in a ravine, her gut filling with blood. She was dying.

Cowardly in the end, buck ran frantically away. She couldn’t blame him. It was survival instinct, she knew it, and she was glad anyway, because it gave her an opportunity to text polar bear one last time. “I am shot,” she texted. “And I want to say I have missed you.”

“Oh my God, my love, my love,” he texted back.

“I am shot. I am dying,” she wrote. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he texted, “I always have. It was a hard season, there was no ice around and many of us died out, too.”

“Stupid humans,” she texted.

“Stupid, stupid humans!” he texted back.

Then the forest rose up around deer in a green sigh, the trees bent over her and their branches waved to her in the breeze. And she saw the hunter approaching, a blur of color and a flash of light, from the sharp, serrated side of his knife.

I offer thanks to my friend Ruth Lopez, for her availability to consume these stories fresh from the oven of my imagination, to my cousin Stuey Cohen, who had no problem telling me when they sucked, and to my best friends David Margolick and Julie Eisenberg, for their unwavering belief in me.

To the gifted Jenny Lyn Bader, who will always read a rough draft and offer a smidgen of wisdom and humor (or a literary credo, for that matter), I offer my eternal thanks.

I must also thank my daughter, Ava, a girl who is patient, loving, and many other good things.

Lastly, I thank Judith Gurewich and Sulay Hernandez, my publisher and editor. Your enthusiasm for these stories will be ever appreciated.

Elizabeth Cohen is an assistant professor of English at Plattsburgh State University in Plattsburgh, New York, where she lives with her daughter, Ava, their dog, Samo, and their many wonderful cats.