At the end of December, with a cold Brooklyn wind blowing and snow plowed into steep banks on the curbs, Marvin Zwillig, sweating in his puffy down jacket, loaded the rented E-Z-load U-Haul rollup rear-door van double-parked on Thirteenth street. Eleven cardboard cartons filled with dishes, silverware, books, scarfs, mittens, his computers, chargers, notebooks, pens, shirts, pants, earmuffs, overcoats, his bicycle, and snowshoes.
Thirteenth is a narrow one-way street heading west, downslope toward the harbor. Toward the Statue of Liberty. Marvin, too, is determined to head west. Toward liberty. That’s the plan.
“Marvin?” Lee Ann, his wife of thirty-five years, wrapped in a wool coat, arms across her chest, asks. “You think they don’t have pots and pans in Wyoming? Believe me, they do. Maybe even Cuisinarts. You don’t have to pack everything you own. This isn’t a Wagon Train episode. They might even have running water, buckwheat, and flannel shirts.
The Marvin Zwilling is the fourth person from his block about to leave Thirteenth Street for Laramie, Wyoming. The thirty-fourth if you count along all of Thirteenth, from Prospect Park West down to the Gowanus Canal.
Marvin had told her, back in the spring, well over a year ago, “Get ready, Lee Ann, if we lose the house in in November, we’re moving. We’re going to Wyoming.”
“What are you talking about?” she had said then.
“The world is changing, LeeAnn. The country is falling apart. It’s time we stop complaining and do something. Someone has to. Tariffs. School shootings. Climate. Pop-up wars. Shrinkflation. Abortion. Vaccines. Epstein. The filibuster. Gerrymandering. Crypto. The Court. The country is splitting apart under us like we’re all standing spread-legged with one foot on either side of the San Andreas fault, wondering dumfounded which way should we go?
“So that means we have to move?”
“So, we just have to stop talking about everything, as if it is the new normal. We’ve got to take it seriously. Do something. Make difference”
“I am taking things seriously, but how does that have anything to do with Wyoming? Where’d you get that idea?
“Melanson.”
“Melanson?”
“He figured it out. If we don’t win the House back, that’s bad, but then we absolutely can’t lose the senate. If we do, it’s all over.”
“But… Wyoming?”
“Wyoming is the key, Lee Ann. It’s simple math. Listen, do you know which is the least populated and, coincidently, the most solidly red state in the nation?
“Let me guess… Wyoming.”
“Right. Wyoming! And, do you know how many people live in Brooklyn? I’ll tell you. Two-point-five-seven-seven million.”
“And, let me guess, Wyoming has…?”
“Bingo. Wyoming has precisely five hundred seventy-eight thousand, eight hundred and three. Total. The whole entire state. And seventy-three percent voted for Trump. That’s four hundred and six thousand, seven hundred and fifty-two votes and he won the state. And, how many senators does Wyoming have? And how many does New York have?”
“Two. I get it, Marvin, and two. The same.”
“So, Melanson says, New York doesn’t need our votes. Park Slope definitely doesn’t need us. And so, if we can just get eighty-seven thousand people to move from Brooklyn to Laramie, we can flip the state. Eighty-seven thousand and we flip the whole state and we’re up two senators. Lee Ann, we can be the flapping seagull whose wings divert the tornado, the leaf falling from a tree in the forest that troubles the distant star. We can do that. It makes the greatest sense.”
“No, Marvin. It does not. His numbers don’t sound right to me. They may to you and Melanson, and maybe to someone who wants to ride horses to work, but not me. I can’t do that. I can’t leave here. My work. Our friends. Our apartment. Our healthcare. This is our home. Our city. We’re here and not in Laramie for a good reason. A lot of good reasons.”
“But please think about it. We rent our apartment for a few years. You can write anywhere.”
“You know that’s not true. I can’t work just anywhere. I need people. Vibrancy. Face-to-face with the soul of a live, changing, self-critical, city. The dogs and babies in the park. Whole Foods. Essa Bagel’s steamy windows. Ray’s pizza. The commotion. The variety. Excess and access. The song someone is humming on the F train. All of that. No. I can’t go. I won’t go. I can’t live any place else.”
In late November, as Marvin was packing his boxes, Lee Ann raised her objections again. again.
“And, besides Marvin” she said, “this scheme of yours is totally dishonest. It’s false and illegitimate. Something you’d be enraged at if they did it to you. You’d be nothing more than rustlers there. Vote rustlers. And you know what they do to rustlers. My god, all I can think of is Matthew Shepard and he was only gay and no rustler. What do you think they’ll do when they get wind of what you’re up to? Don’t you think they don’t already know?”
“What can they do?”
“What can they do? Were you sleeping through January 6 and the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti? They’ll pull you out of your car, break down your door, gas you, handcuff you and deport you to Abu Ghraib or some equally horrific dark place. You think your life, our life, is worth giving up for a couple of senate seats?”
Marvin, now waiting for Melanson to show up, is sweating and shivering. His feet are cold. A key in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. The boxes are in the double-parked U-Haul.
“One last time, Marvin, I am here, your kids are here, your mother is here, your cardiologist and allergist and all the other ‘ologists’ you see are here. But most of all I am here and I don’t want you to leave me. I am afraid for you and every day without you will be miserable. I am frightened and miserable now. Unload the truck. Please. I can’t let you go. I thought I could but now I know I was kidding myself thinking you would change your mind.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. The thought of her feeling afraid and miserable shook him. He too felt miserable. Heartsick. Afraid.
The winter sun was setting below grey clouds. The lights of the city were coming on. Snow was soon to fall. The torch of the Liberty statue was lit and Melanson was late. And when he failed to come Lee Ann went up the stairs to their apartment and Marvin went to find to find a space to park the U-Haul.
The Catfish Review 