Trina spoke very slowly. “Without me, you mean.”
“Well,” said Deeba carefully, “you would make a very good mother.”
Trina’s eyes grew wide. “Are you joking, Deeba? Wait.” She grabbed the medicine bag she kept by the door and took out her flashlight. “Are you still high? Let me see your pupils.”
“I was afraid of this. I’m not high. Get that thing out of my face.”
“Who would understand this? You want me to be your mother? I’m your wife!”
Deeba tossed her head. “But we’ve all been everything to each other—mother, father, lover, sister, brother, endless lifetimes of cycling through roles and reversals.”
“That’s philosophy, that’s spirituality—”
Deeba’s face was sad. “That’s the truth, Trina, and you know it. Through The Seep.”
Trina held up her hands. “Fine. Yes, if you think about it, we’ve all been everything, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to go become an earthworm, does it? Of course not! I’m a human being!”
When Deeba spoke next, her voice was low and serious. “We have a choice about when and how we move on to the next lifetime. That’s so amazing! I don’t see why you wouldn’t want to be connected to me, to love me in a new way. I think it’s sort of romantic.”
Trina shook her head hard. “I can’t believe this. You’re talking about leaving me.”
“No!” said Deeba sharply. “You’re not listening. I’m talking about becoming a child again. And I would do that with you, if you’re open to it. You’re the one talking about leaving me, Trina. Not the other way around.”
Trina felt like screaming, felt like ripping out her own hair, like punching a wall, but she just sat on the kitchen floor and cried. She didn’t get up for almost a day. For a while, Deeba sat next to her and held her, when Trina would allow herself to be touched. But eventually, Deeba got tired of sitting on the floor. Deeba got up. She came back periodically to ask if Trina wanted tea or anything to eat. In their wedding vows, they had made no promises about forever. It was bad luck to make promises you were unable to keep, and forever was a long time, especially now that death was an opt-in procedure. Trina had imagined they might grow apart in all their years together, or take other lovers who filled them with more passion, or perhaps melt into a kind of friendship, as so many other couples did. But none of those things had happened. Trina loved Deeba now more than ever. She loved her more than on their wedding day. She loved her even more than at that dinner party so many years ago, when she looked across the table and realized that if the sky were to turn green and fish to walk on land, the only thing she needed to make sense about life was being with Deeba. And through The Seep, that wonderful, terrible Seep, Trina knew that Deeba felt that deepest love for her, too. Through The Seep, Deeba understood that Trina would stay with her for another lifetime or maybe more, as wives and roommates, lovers and best friends, through cooking and dinner parties and career shifts, through the boredom and the freedom of unexpected immortality. Through The Seep, Trina knew that Deeba would cherish being connected to Trina for another lifetime or more, but in another role, if only Trina would let her. They could cycle through together endlessly, learning how to love each other in different permutations of being, in something bigger and grander and stranger than pure romance. Love as a verb, an action, an adventure in knowing. But Trina just couldn’t hack it. She was old-fashioned that way. Simultaneously, this broke both of their hearts.
One night during all of this, Trina dreamt that Deeba was on a floating island, and Trina was on a separate floating island, and it was nighttime. The water around them was very dark. Deeba and Trina looked at each other while they floated slowly yet steadily apart. It was a stupid and obvious dream, and Trina was angry at herself for having it.
Trina and Deeba enacted the same circular argument until it felt like they were actors in a play going through the same performance night after night, their words hollow, their crying choreographed. There was nothing more to say, and they still couldn’t see each other’s perspective. Neither would bend or budge, and they both felt horribly wronged.
Deeba went to a healer. She made it clear that she did not just want to look like a child; she wanted to actually be a child, with a child’s sense of wonder and capacity for growth. She wanted to learn how to speak again, perhaps in another language, in a land far away from the wounds of her past. She wanted to dream in another language, to grow a new mother tongue. She would become a perfect little baby. Deeba contacted a party planner who specialized in these kinds of events. The party planner helped her pick a venue, a theme, a motif. Deeba would have her transformation at the beach, near her favorite part of Golden Gate Park. The theme would be the Transformational Nature of Water, with an ice feature and a fog machine. The colorscape would be blue and gold.
“Please don’t do this,” said Trina on the morning of her wife’s transformation. “Please, please, please reconsider.” She laughed from pain, a terrible, broken sound. “I’m literally begging you. Stay with me, Deeba. I know you still love me.”
Deeba shook her head. “I really thought that you would do this with me.” She had found a nice Persian couple living in the South of France. They were very excited to parent her when she was ready. “There’s still time to change your mind—”
“Please, not another word. I can’t even hear you say it again.”
“Listen to yourself! You can’t even hear it? How is that remotely helpful?” Deeba’s eyes filled with tears. “I don’t want to leave you either! Don’t you see how sad this makes me?”
Trina made an ugly sound from the back of her throat. “Then don’t do it! It’s so fucking simple.”
Deeba looked at the floor. “Will you come to the ceremony, at least? Will you hold my hand as I move on?” Trina watched as the tears streaked her wife’s soft, beautiful face. “I’m scared.”
Trina turned away. “Will I go to your funeral, you mean?”
“It isn’t like that! You’re looking at this all wrong!”
Trina stared at her hands. The thin gold wedding band glinted back at her. “I can’t see it any other way. I’m sorry.”
Deeba looked at her in disbelief. “I am standing here asking you to love me in every way possible. I am asking you to walk through life with me in whatever form I take. I’m asking you to be my everything, Trina!” She squeezed her hand. “Isn’t that worth considering?”
Trina crossed her arms. “You’re holding my life hostage.”
“That may be so.” Deeba brushed the tears away from her face. “You think you’d be happy with another thirty years of watching old movies and eating ice cream with me, but you can’t fool me. You aren’t happy, Trina. You haven’t been happy for a long time.”