Settlement

Valentine’s Day

An advertisement depicting a woman who scorns traditional Valentine’s Day gifts favors a sixfoot tall ruxpin teddy bear.

The roses go in the trash. A box of chocolates upended. 

Does she want those things? 

She does not. She wants the ruxpin teddy. 

Pirouetting in stilettos, cheeks flushed from hefting teddy’s weight. 

This is the man. This is the man for me.

Teddy in the car, teddy at the office, teddy on the bed. Look at her face. Look how she bounds. Look how she leaps. 

Always a surprise. Always an affirmation.

Nested on the couch, snuggled between teddy’s stuffed legs. A bowl of synthetic corn, toenails drying. 

Come teddy, let us watch a movie film. The Gosling actor is on the television set. What is he doing teddy? He is doing that thing with the woman in the rain. They are together, they are apart, they are together again. Look at his beard teddy. You can’t tell the rain from his tears.

Oh teddy he loves her. Oh teddy he can’t live without her. Isn’t that just like us teddy? Isn’t she just like me?

Absolution from pain. The woman goes to sleep on teddy’s broad shoulders. She dreams of the Pattinson actor in a hotel in Los Angeles. The Pattinson actor is standing in hallway wearing a baseball cap with his face pressed into the wall. He is trying to hide from the photographers but they have found him and now he just stands with his face pushed into the wall, the brim of the cap mashed down over his eyes. Also he is wearing a jacket that he got before anyone took pictures of him. It is his favorite jacket. Also his heart is broken. 

The woman wakes up and sees her fiancee come into the room. He wipes his mouth and goes into the bathroom. She can hear him grunting. She hugs teddy close and shuts her eyes. 

In the next dream she is sitting with her mother and father and sister in their old home in the suburbs. Her father says he is going to take her sister out into the snow. He says this sitting in a chair and he does not move. 

I’m going to take your sister out into the snow now. 

Mother comes from the kitchen drying her hands on a towel. 

Don’t take her out into the snow yet, she says. Wait a while. 

No, says father. I’m going to take her now. 

In the dream the windows are open but it’s dark outside. The woman tries to see if it’s snowing but she can’t tell. Her father and sister have boots on but they don’t get up. Everyone sits still.