He will leave her alone for hours at a time and be surprised, when he returns, to find she has shifted skins. Which one are you now? he will say, and she will draw her blue paisley shawl tighter around her shoulders and try to remember the names he has given them, for his convenience. She doesn’t like the way they feel on her tongue—like lumps of clay, or matchsticks.

* * *

They have been married for just over a year. He is a real estate lawyer at a large firm. Their apartment looks down on the harried heart of the city he grew up in.

In the first months after the wedding, he would come home each Friday evening with a bouquet of daffodils clutched to his chest. She would let her teaching skin slip away and call another to the surface, a wide-eyed child who admired the flowers with innocent delight. She would pour water into a fluted glass vase and set it in the middle of the dining room table. While they ate, she would look up at the flowers with her chin in her hands and smile. But he would be troubled. Do you really like them? he would say. Or are you just pretending?

* * *

She teaches introductory language courses at the community college. The program is new; her classes are in great demand. She is simplifying her syllabus considerably this year. The rudiments of her language give her students more trouble than she had expected.

Sometimes, while she is teaching, a face will appear in the long wire-reinforced window in the door, then vanish when she turns to look. Her students take photos with cell phones held underneath their desks. She doesn’t understand it. As far as she can tell, she looks just like any of them.

* * *

He says he isn’t sure if all of them love him. She doesn’t know how to answer him, and because she is in the skin that likes to read dictionaries for hours at a stretch, she stares at him unblinking and without particular sympathy. Of course not all of them love him. Some of them love him enough to leap from cliffs for him. Some of them love only themselves. At least one of them would like to pluck out his ribs and use them for drumsticks. Several can’t stand the smell of his mouthwash, but so far the consensus is not to say anything about it.

* * *

Only one of them loves apples. Today for many hours she has been the one who loves apples. He is surprised and pleased by her easy smile, her languid, sprawling posture in a chair. Some of them suspect that the one who loves apples is the one he really fell in love with.

* * *

When they met, he was a tourist. She was laying the candles along the path at the Ceremony of Twining Rivers. Normally a foreigner would not have been permitted inside the temple, but he was a close personal friend of the Minister of Doors, who had invited him. The minister wore his most formal skin and kept a hand on his friend’s arm at all times.

He came up to her after the humming had ceased and they were allowed to open their eyes. A vault layered with gold leaf hung over their heads; she rested an easy hand on one of the pillars that supported it. She was in a skin of great spiritual ecstasy and bestowed upon him a smile like the beating of wings.

* * *

Sometimes he comes into the kitchen and his voice falters in midsentence. When she asks, he says, Nothing. Sorry, I just didn’t recognize you at first. This troubles her. She grows new skins like branching twigs, but she is always the same tree. She doesn’t know why it alarms him so.

* * *

They don’t look so different from each other, except for how they do. They stand differently. One of them always clasps her hands behind her back; one of them never stays still for more than a minute, her foot jiggling impatiently when she sits. They like to wear different colors. Some of them paint their faces with significant patterns or write words on their hands or hide their eyes beneath the shade of wide-brimmed hats. One of them keeps trying to dye her hair bright green, but the others can usually stop her in time.

* * *

I don’t mind at all, he said. There’s so much to learn about you. You know how many men would love to marry a bunch of different women at once? I’ll never get bored. At the time, she was the one who could swim like a seal. She nestled closer to his side and sleepily nuzzled his ear.

* * *

Something has been troubling her lately. She is finding it harder to shift out of certain skins. They aren’t the ones she likes best. They are hard and irritable and unconcerned with the feelings of others. One of them eats burnt toast. One of them almost kicks a toy poodle that a silver-haired man is taking for a walk. The poodle is the tipping point. After the man and poodle have passed, she runs back into the apartment and slams the door, leaning her back against it. She runs her fingers through her hair. This has never happened to her before. She isn’t sure what to do.

* * *

Don’t go, her sisters told her. They were reclining on couches that smelled of freshly mown grass, eating the first berries of the summer. You deserve more than a man with just one face. There are plenty of good men here, and women too. The one who laughs loudly at rude jokes stuffed her mouth with berries and ignored them. The juice stained her lips purple, and she licked it off. I like him, she said with a coy smile. I like his one face.

* * *

She has never mentioned the one who once ate a raw squirrel to him. That one hasn’t been out in a long time, anyway. She isn’t sure, but she thinks it might upset him.

* * *

Today she has failed at social niceties. Their next-door neighbor is an old man and lives alone; she was not supposed to stare coolly at the door to their apartment and then disappear inside without speaking to him. She was supposed to smile and offer to help carry groceries.

Her husband will not let it go. I can’t believe you did that, he keeps saying. She turns her back to him and clenches her fists before the squirrel-eater can leap out and knock him to the ground. It wants very badly to gnaw on his neck. The others pacify it by smashing a lamp on the floor. He backs away from her with an affronted look. Where I come from, he says, adults don’t do things like that.

She turns her face away to hide her laughter. Some of her are not adults.

* * *

She remembers the first time she left the apartment alone to buy eggs at the market. People stared at her strange eyes, her strange clothes. The long draperies of patterned silk stood out like a beacon in the crowd. The hems trail in the dirt, here. She scrubs the mud out every night by hand. But the attention doesn’t bother her as much as it used to. When she goes out now, she wears a skin of icy, exalted indifference.

* * *

Her back is against the bedroom door, her face wet. She reaches for the comforting skin that makes her think of sinking into down pillows, but it isn’t there. It’s like leaning on a wall that’s farther away than she expects. She gropes around and finds two more blank spots, gaping holes with ragged edges, like moth-eaten fabric.

* * *

He is always wanting something. But some of them have more important things on their minds. Some of them have to protect themselves. Why can’t you just, he says.

* * *

He took her hand and kissed it. He asked her to come with him, and she said, Yes, I will. At the time, she was the one who could diagram the flights of birds, but that wasn’t the only one who wanted to see more of the world. She felt large inside, like a milkweed pod before it scatters its seeds.

* * *

Now she is full of empty places. She has to splinter her existing skins to fill them. The skins become more specific but less nuanced, narrower in scope. The one who likes to read dictionaries used to enjoy crocheting as well, but now she has forgotten how.

* * *

He goes straight into the bedroom without speaking to her. If she follows him and asks, he will be angry with her; can’t she see that he wants to be left alone? He will slam his briefcase down on the dresser, scattering her perfume bottles. Why doesn’t she understand? If she doesn’t ask, she will be self-absorbed and cruel; he should have known better than to marry her in the first place. Did she ever care about him at all? She tries to shift to the one who laughs at rude jokes, but she isn’t there. She gropes through emptiness and feels herself falling.

* * *

Everything is vertigo. She is shedding skins like ash. She wakes up and stares at the sun rising over the grubby rooftops and can’t remember who she is. She doesn’t know who she wants to be. She tries to be someone else, but she can’t find her when she looks. Finally she puts someone on like a mask and goes about her daily routine. He doesn’t notice the difference.

* * *

She has even lost the one who loves apples.

* * *

He is not home. He will be home soon. Roast lamb is in the oven. She is tired of fighting. It is as good a time as any. She closes the oven door. She shuts her eyes and takes a deep breath, then drops her shoulders and releases it. A tide has been battering at her and now all she has to do is let go, and the water comes flooding in. In the water all the colors bleed, diluted, red and orange and purple and blue all swirling together until there’s nothing left but a murky grayish brown. But it isn’t so bad, really. She doesn’t know why she fought it for so long. She lets the water close over her head.

* * *

She sits patiently on the sofa with her hands clasped in her lap. He comes in with his briefcase and a bouquet of daffodils. He lays the flowers on the coffee table. Their cellophane wrapper rustles, and she smiles. When he asks her if she loves him, she looks up at him in perfect contentment. Yes, she says, completely.

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