Penguin on 34th Street

It was going to be hard to explain the penguin walking around their living room dressed as a pirate, but Marco decided he’d give it a shot.

“It’s a Christmas miracle,” he started calmly.

SQUAWK

“WHAT?” She was livid, and understandably so. Cap’n Jack Sparrow, or Penguin, was currently plundering their snack pantry and making a terrible mess.

“A miracle, on Christmas, a Christmas miracle.” 

SQUAWK

“I swear if you don’t start making sense, I’m going to—” Claudia was at a loss for an appropriate threat, given the situation.

“Let’s go into the other room where it’s calmer,” he offered.

“WHAT ABOUT HIM?” she yelled, gesturing with an outstretched arm toward the penguin, which turned toward her and made her jump back, startled. The penguin went back to rooting through a box of Cheez-Its it had managed to tear open with its beak.

“I know you are upset.” He turned her towards himself, placing his hands comfortingly on her shoulders and looking her in the eye. “I can explain. I think I can explain. I’ll try to explain.”

SQUAWK

“He’s eating my Cheez-Its,” she said disconsolately. She was upset, not only because of the penguin, but because of the violation of the house rule: no one touches her Cheez-Its. She got really upset when she’d go for her snack and they were unexpectedly gone because someone had pilfered a bowl to nosh on during a Netflix binge. It had been the source of several riotous fights early in their relationship. But he'd learned to live with her eccentricities and she had—for the most part— learned to live with his.

“I know, and I’m sorry. No one could have seen this coming,” he said honestly.

“Marco, what is going on?”

“The other room, it’ll be easier,” he cajoled.

SQUAWK

He ushered her haltingly into the living room and they sat down. Persistent rustling and clatter from the kitchen aside, it was much calmer.

“I can see you are upset about the penguin,” he said.

“And the Cheez-Its.”

“And the Cheez-Its, but—”

“They can’t even be good for him.”

SQUAWK

“You keep saying him. What makes you so sure it’s a male?” At this she gave him a dead eyed glare, like a shark. “I’m just saying we shouldn’t misgender the penguin.”

“Marco, there is a PENGUIN dressed like a PIRATE in OUR KITCHEN. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? I was upstairs for, like, five minutes wrapping presents.” Her nostrils were flaring widely. Marco's keen intuition told him that was a bad sign.

“As I said, it’s a Christmas miracle—”

“It’s not a Christmas miracle. MIRACLES are good. There’s nothing good about a penguin eating my Cheez-its.”

“That’s fair.”

“You’re damned right, that’s fair.” There was a particularly loud bang in the kitchen and they both turned towards the door.

SQUAWK

“Okay,” Marco said, turning back to Claudia. “It’s not a miracle exactly, but a highly improbable Christmas event.”

“Uh-huh, and how did it happen? That’s what I want to know.” Her head was still turned to the door and the sounds of her treasured snacks being eaten, scattered, and otherwise destroyed by the pirate penguin emanated from the kitchen.

“Well, I was thinking about probability.”

“The penguin, Marco.” She turned and gave him a steely look. “Get to the penguin.”

“I’m getting there.”

“Get there faster.”

“I can’t. Probability is complicated.”

SQUAWK

Claudia took a deep breath and closed her eyes, restraining herself from smacking Marco. She exhaled slowly and said through gritted teeth: “Fair enough, please continue.”

“Okay, so for continuous things, like…say my height. The probability of being any particular height is zero.”

“Marco, you’re five-ten. Do you know how many men are five-ten? It’s super common.”

“But that’s just it. I’m not five-ten, not exactly.”

“Close enough.”

SQUAWK

“No, not close enough. When you measure, like really measure, the available possible heights for me to end up are infinite. It isn’t five-nine, five-ten, five-eleven, you can break it down further to millimeters, then further still. Every time you break it down a little more, people that seem the same height are actually slightly different heights. Do you get it?”

“This? Yes. The penguin? No.”

“Okay, so no matter how far you break it down, it’s never exact, you can always measure more finely.”

“Uh huh.”

“So it is continuous. Infinite.”

“Uh huh.”

“And that means the probability of being any particular height is one over infinity, zero.”

“But you are one particular height, Marco, we all are.”

“Exactly!” he said excitedly.

“Exactly what?”

“We’re all impossible. Every minute of every day, each of us is a miracle.”

“You’re not a miracle, Marco, you’re an annoying boyfriend.”

“Exactly!”

“Exactly, what?”

“We're two impossible people that impossibly found each other. Any two people finding each other is a miracle. We are a miracle.”

“But we aren't a miracle.”

“EXACTLY.”

“STOP. SAYING. EXACTLY.”

“Okay, we are all miracles, we’re all impossible. But miracles are so common, we can't even recognize them. Each of us is so unlikely in so many ways that we are literally, probabilistically, impossible.”

“But we are here.”

“EXACTLY!”

SQUAWK

“Marco…”

“You’re not getting it.”

“You think?”

“Okay, so we are constantly and inevitably surrounded by impossibilities, miracles, and otherwise inconceivable events.”

“Okay, I get that, but the penguin—”

“When you look at it this way, impossible events are more common than those that are likely. And so, a penguin.”

“A penguin?”

“EXACTLY! In a pirate outfit!” He laughed and leaned back on the sofa. “It’s a miracle. I think it's amazing.”

“Marco. Where did the penguin come from?”

“Well, I was sitting here, waiting for you to come down—”

“Yes?”

“And I figured this out. The impossible stuff.”

“Yes?”

“And I was thinking that impossible stuff was all around us.”

“Uh huh.”

“And that impossible things are bound to happen constantly—”

SQUAWK

“And then that door appeared.” He pointed to a door that she hadn’t noticed on the wall behind her. It looked like the door to a hobbit-hole, circular and roughly three feet in diameter.

“Where did that come from?”

“EXACTLY!”

“MARCO!” She screamed at her breaking point.

“So I opened the door.”

“WHY?”

“HOW COULD I NOT?”

“JUST DON’T!”

SQUAWK

“And out came the penguin!”

Her jaw clenched.

“You aren’t as excited as I am.”

“NO. I AM NOT.”

Marco reached out for her hand with his and she pulled back. A tear was rolling down her cheek. She got up and straightened out her clothes.

“I can’t do this anymore, Marco. It’s too weird. You’re too weird.”

“Are you—”

SQUAWK

“Are you leaving me?”

“With a probability of one hundred percent.”

“But it’s Christmas." He pointed at the tree and the stockings. Claudia walked upstairs without a word. 

Exactly ten minutes later, Claudia came back downstairs with a bag in her hand. She stood at the foot of the stairs for a minute, but not exactly a minute, and looked at Marco who still sat slumped over with his head in his hands on the couch.

“I’m leaving,” she announced.

Marco got up and walked across the room taking her free hand in both of his. “Is there any chance that we could work things out?”

“No.”

SQUAWK

“At least let me give you your present?” he asked.

She didn’t answer, but didn’t move either. 

“I want to make this better.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Exactly,” he said hopefully. She cocked her head in anger.

Marco put out his hands in a plea for her to stay still a moment and walked to the hobbit door.

“Marco, do not open that door.”

SQUAWK

“Just…” Marco pleaded for patience with his eyes and turned to open the door slightly. 

Claudia watched, fuming, as he reached in the door and pulled out a present. The gift was wrapped in paper that was made from paper grocery bags turned inside out and decorated with drawings and words reminiscent of their relationship together. It was tied closed with twine, rustically beautiful.

“Marco, I swear if something weird is in there—”

SQUAWK

“Just...just open it.” 

She walked hesitantly over and knelt on the ground next to the package, which was roughly a one foot cube. Warily she set her hands on the top of the box and stopped to look at Marco. He looked back with hope in his eyes.

She poked at the box, jostling it in the hopes that anything alive would respond and she’d know not to open it. The last thing she wanted was to find a badger dressed as an astronaut or some nonsense. Nothing happened. Her hands crept slowly to the twine bow and pulled the ends, letting it come unraveled. She paused for a moment, gazing at the wrapping paper and taking it in. A tear came to her eye.

“Marco, I can’t.”

“Please, we can’t wonder.”

Her hands caressed the box, searching softly for a seam to pull apart and leave the paper intact. 

SQUAWK

Claudia stood up. “Marco, I can’t with the penguin.”

“Just, wait,” Marco said and cautiously pushed the door open to the kitchen. She heard him talking and the penguin shuffling around the kitchen.

A moment later, the penguin waddled through the kitchen door and over to the hobbit-hole, which it pulled open with its orange, Cheez-it dust covered beak. Claudia looked on, astonished, as it went past her.

“Sorry, about all this,” the penguin said in a delicate feminine voice. She tipped her tri-fold hat back as a courtesy and then hopped through the doorway, which closed behind her.

Marco poked his head back into the living room and looked around, clearly relieved that Claudia was still there and that the penguin was not. He walked over to Claudia and checked that the hobbit door was completely closed. 

“The penguin was a girl,” she said, lost in a haze.

“Yeah,” he said without a trace of told-you-so. He nodded toward the gift in front of her. “So?”

Claudia was at a loss for what to do except for opening the gift. She found a seam and slipped her finger delicately underneath to separate the paper without tearing it. The wrapping fell away from the box.

“It doesn’t matter what it is. It can’t make up for this insanity.”

“I know,” he said apologetically.

 She lifted the lid and looked in.

Immediately tears ran down her cheeks and she sat looking into the box in complete disbelief. Marco knelt down beside her and gently put his arm over her shoulders and pulled her to his chest where she sobbed onto his shirt.

“It’s beautiful,” she managed.

“Stay with me?” he asked.

“How can I live with this? How do people make it together? We're too different...it’s impossible.”

“Exactly. That’s the thing about impossible. It happens every day.”