In Universes, page 7
More than sex, I loved what came after, the lethargy of satiation, skin sweat-stuck to skin, and Kay’s smile, radiant, so the hotel room brightened and became beautiful and I felt certain I’d made the right choice coming here, that this would be the place in which I could say to Kay, I got offered a postdoc in Boston, in which I could say, tell me not to go.
But I had always been a coward where Kay was concerned. I settled for the first clause, for the facts alone, I got offered a postdoc in Boston, and I watched Kay’s face, desperate for even the slightest hint of sadness—if I saw it, I would say the rest. She looked delighted. That’s wonderful, she said, I’m so proud of you.
I don’t know if I’ll take it, I said. It was the best I could do.
Of course you will, she said, you’re too ambitious to walk away from an opportunity like that. I realized, then, something I’d known for a long time. Familiarity, history, they didn’t mean someone knew you. They could function, instead, like a scab over what was raw and real. Kay looked at me and the person she saw was a compilation of my past selves, and not only selves, but all the lies and omissions I’d ever told her. How I’d pretended the University of Montana was the only grad school I’d gotten into, rather than admit I wanted to be close to her, how I’d never said that Buck’s amused tolerance of our relationship felt more demeaning than generous. If I wanted Kay to see me, it would require violence. I would have to rip off the scab. It would be easier to be known by a stranger.
And besides, she said, why would you stay?
For you, I said; I imagined saying; I might have said. If I were a different person, a braver version of myself. If Kay’s phone hadn’t vibrated then, from the bedside table, so that she rolled away from me, the cold air tracing a map of her absence across my skin. You mind if I take this? she asked. It was the sort of question that had only one answer, but I didn’t want to give it, I knew who was on the other end of the line, knew that his presence, even at a distance, would rupture the moment’s carefully constructed intimacy, so I said, I’m going to take a shower, and waited for her to remember the water and tell me not to go, but she only nodded, still looking at her phone.
It was a relief to pull the bathroom door closed and be alone, a relief until I turned on the shower and the water spattered the linoleum with flecks of darkness before it ran clear. Fluorescent light cast hard shadows and my skin puckered into goose bumps, I wished I could open a window, let the day pour its heat and sun into the room, but there were no windows, it was only me and the water, guttering like a candle flame so that I knew it was a bad idea to step beneath it but did so anyway. I watched my body in the mirror, this body that had always felt closer to a list of inadequacies than an actual body, so that I saw not my eyes but the circles beneath them, not my hair but the way it lay lank and limp on my shoulders, breasts too small, ribs jutting, bowlegged, knobby-kneed, skin splotched with eczema, and I still don’t know why I stepped into that water, but this was a part of it and so was Kay’s laughter, barely audible through the door, and the way she’d said I’m so proud, and the fear, that was a part of it too, I wanted to refuse it, I wanted to punish the fear or Kay or Buck or the stranger I saw in the mirror. I watched as she stepped into the shower but then I wasn’t a stranger anymore, I was there, in the water, and it was on my skin, in my mouth, the fear flooded in, fear like footsteps in a dark hallway like a door slamming open in the night like a man who can hold you in place with no effort at all, fear that drowned out the sound of the water and I sank to the floor and pressed my lips together and closed my eyes, but I could still see them. The women sat beside me, one on either side, their bodies bloated, barely recognizable, their knees and hips jostling against mine.
Later, the story would make headlines: DEAD WOMEN FOUND IN UTAH HOTEL CISTERN—GUEST COMPLAINTS LEAD MAINTENANCE WORKER TO GRUESOME DISCOVERY—ROTTING BODIES FOUND IN UTAH HOTEL’S DRINKING WATER—AUTOPSY RESULTS INCONCLUSIVE IN UTAH HOTEL MYSTERY—MURDER OR MISTAKE? WHAT WE KNOW SO FAR ABOUT DEAD UTAH WOMEN—COUNTY HEALTH OFFICIALS SAY NO HEALTH RISK FROM CONTAMINATED WATER—EX-BOYFRIEND SUSPECTED—HOTEL WORKER SUSPECTED—TAXI DRIVER SUSPECTED—SEXUAL ASSAULT SUSPECTED—ACCIDENTAL DROWNING SUSPECTED—WOMAN FROM UTAH HOTEL’S SORDID PAST REVEALED—MENTAL ILLNESS CITED BY AUTHORITIES AS SIGNIFICANT FACTOR IN UTAH WOMAN’S DEATH—DISTURBING VIDEO DISCOVERED IN UTAH HOTEL MYSTERY—and on and on until the women’s names became shorthand for all the ways there are for a woman to disappear. Later, I would read the news and understand that these women carried their own histories, had their own lives, that it was a kind of solipsism to look at them and see only versions of Kay and myself.
But we hadn’t gotten to any of that yet. The women’s names still belonged to them. I sat in the shower and the women sat with me until Kay said my name from the other side of the door and then I turned the water off. I scrubbed myself with a towel until my skin glowed red, until I stopped shaking, I didn’t want Kay to know what I had seen, I wanted to be able to offer her at least this small protection, this last window of time before the news broke.
Were you going to say something before the phone rang? she asked, but the words I’d come here to say, the confession I’d wanted to make, all of it seemed irrelevant now. There, in the shower, with the women, I’d thought of my aunt, of the fight we’d had when I’d told her I wouldn’t leave for college while she was sick. I’m going to die one way or another, she’d said. People are always dying. An education, at least that you can count on. The women weren’t a revelation, only a reminder. A person is a fragile thing to build a life around. A woman even more so.
So I said to Kay, it was nothing. I did one better: I unsaid everything I’d said thus far. We like to imagine that cause and effect are linear, that while the past can affect the future, the future is powerless to change the past. But I have always believed that this—like our experience of a life that is singular, rather than infinitely branching—is a matter of perception, a limitation of our consciousness, not a reflection of reality. So I undrove the miles, unplanned the trip. What had balance bought me but mediocrity, half a relationship, half a career? I unenrolled from the University of Montana, unmade each of the small anniversaries I’d hoarded until Kay and I had never even met. Until I was a kid again, watching Britt come undone at the loss of her horse, promising myself I would find something indestructible to love. Reading books about time travel, quantum mechanics, parallel universes, each of them making the same promise: genius over fear. Until I could see it, laid out in front of me, a life where I wouldn’t have to hurt or be hurt, a life as clean and unassailable as a philosophical proof. Undoing and undoing until all that was left of the weekend were the women, who would not be undone, who would stay with me across every branch of my life.
Chapter Five
Proof
When my mentor calls to tell me he’s nominated me for the award that, each year, plucks two dozen people from the teeming masses and designates them that hallowed thing—a genius—I think, here it is. The moment I have been waiting for. Working for. Forty-some-odd years of effort was all it took. I wait for euphoria. I keep waiting. Raffi, my mentor says, are you there? I nod into the phone, then remember to say it out loud. I’m not supposed to tell you any of this, he says, so mum’s the word, eh? But I wanted to let you know so you could keep up the good work. Officially it shouldn’t matter, but, you know. I assure him I know. Stay the course, he says. Stay the course, I echo. We hang up. It’s a Friday and I’m meant to be teaching a graduate seminar on the concept of self-continuity in the multiverse. Instead of heading to the university, I email my students and instruct them to spend the class looking at themselves in the mirror.
I tell myself I’m celebrating. I tell myself I will use the free afternoon to work on my second book, a draft of which was due to my editor two months ago. I go so far as to open the document, nod approvingly at the first pages. The Fractured Self: An Exploration of Identity in the Quantum Age. The epigraph is Whitman, a little overused but still serviceable: Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.) After the first two pages, things go downhill.
I close the book, click over to my browser, which is open to the rental section of Craigslist. A new habit of mine, browsing random locations: San Antonio, Lincoln, Sacramento. Nowhere I have any connection to, no goal in mind except a direction to move that isn’t forward. I click on a listing for a room in Vermont, whose Craigslist isn’t even divvied up into cities. A few sentences, two pictures, $300/month. Four hours from where I am meant to be staying the course in Providence. I send an email, get a reply in minutes. Yes it’s still available, are you interested? I am.
I don’t know why I think that Vermont will have the thing I cannot name but must find if I am going to continue doing the activities that together constitute life: brushing my teeth, writing papers that no one will read, greeting my colleagues when we pass in the halls. It is true that I have sometimes wished not to exist (il n’y a qu’un problème philosophique vraiment sérieux: c’est le suicide, etc., etc.), but always if some other human asked how’s it going I would reply good, thanks, how about you. This is how I knew I was fine—I could pretend to be fine. Not even could—had to, the way your knee jerks when the doctor demands it, regardless of your wishes. But all my reflexes had gone dormant. When a student asked whether branching universes meant that his dead mother was still alive somewhere, I asked if it made a difference. When one of my TAs walked into my office and found me holding my penknife up like a question, I didn’t joke about contemplating Occam’s razor. This apathy frightened me—not the knife, but the way I couldn’t make myself care about the person I’d spent my whole life trying to be.
I sublet my attic loft with its sloping ceilings and bountiful sunlight at a discounted rate to the first person I can find. He’s a student at a nearby art school—a puppet artist, he tells me unprompted, and I don’t ask what that means, only picture the apartment filled with dancing Pinocchios. I leave everything as is—mugs of coffee blooming into mold terrariums, books crumpled next to the walls they were thrown at. On my desk, an old paper titled “Quantum Immortality: A New Framework for the Ethics of Suicide in the Multiverse,” across which my mentor had scrawled, Let’s talk. (Look Raffi, the arguments are compelling and not something I’ve seen before, he said, but I don’t know . . . do you think it’ll look good in your tenure dossier?)
Driving away from fourteen years of relentless effort feels like driving to the store. It feels like sleeping, or what I have been calling sleep: hours unhinged from time, when I am neither conscious nor unconscious. A text pops up—where the hell are you?—but I swipe it away. I’m nowhere, I could say, but I let my absence say it for me. Snowflakes fall onto my windshield, tiny crystalline architectures that melt into fat drops of water and roll down the glass. The other cars on the road are a mirage of blinking yellow lights. I put my hazards on too, out of solidarity. We are all moving through the hazard together. How nice it is, to have company and still be perfectly alone.
When I arrive at the house, hours later, I knock on the door gently. It opens the smallest crack, revealing a sliver of a woman’s face. I have a lot of dogs in here, she says. Great, I say, and it’s like a password, she opens the door wide enough for me to slip in. The hallway is thick with huskies. The woman tells me her name is Alice and this is her dogsledding team. They all want to press their bodies against mine. Back, Alice says, get back, all of you! They don’t listen to her, they’re overwhelmed by their desire to meet me, and I’m gratified. I kneel down. Hello, I say, hi, hello, hello. They throw themselves into my greeting, and I let them topple me so that I’m lying on the carpet looking up at a tangle of dogs. They shove the cold of their noses into my neck, they lick my face.
Alice shows me the room I have rented. It is small and square. It has a bed, a closet, a lamp. The kind of minimalism that manages to look like style rather than mere emptiness. Great, I say, perfect. Alice tilts her head. What did you say you do? I hadn’t, and I feel reluctant to, as though acknowledging my real life will invite it to accompany me, but I need time to prepare lies, so I tell the truth: I’m a professor, I say. Isn’t it the middle of the semester? she asks. Well, yes. We both pause. My phone buzzes as if to make Alice’s point. Snitch, I think, and power it down with one hand. I’m on sabbatical, I say. I have not prepared, the lie won’t hold up to interrogation. A ski sabbatical, I add, though I don’t know how to ski. Alice doesn’t interrogate. We’ll have to go out together sometime, she says. She’s maybe ten years older than me, in her early fifties I’d guess, and something about her feels familiar, comforting. I’d like to be one of her sled dogs. I’d give you a key, Alice says, but there isn’t one.
In my new bedroom, I turn out the lamp and am astonished by the darkness. I wave my hand in front of my face—it’s invisible. A kind of nonexistence; a perfect lack of observation. There was a time when darkness like this terrified me, but now I feel a rush of relief. I climb into bed with my clothes on, pull the comforter up to my chin. For the first time in a long time, I close my eyes and sleep like a normal person.
When I wake, the sun is shining. The dogs are draped across the couch, sprawled on the floor. Alice is cooking in the little kitchen. Hash browns? she asks, and I sit with the dogs and listen to the snick and sizzle of oil. Alice moves about the kitchen with the economy of motion that implies expertise. Don’t get used to it, she says, handing me a plate of perfectly crisped potatoes. I cook all day, so I’m usually too lazy to bother at home. She’s a chef at one of the local ski resorts, the kind of place that charges twenty-five dollars for a burger, she says, rich people love it. You hitting the slopes today? I nod, trying to infuse the gesture with enthusiasm, authenticity, as if I am someone who often hits slopes. A husky wanders over, and I’m relieved to have an excuse to stop nodding. His eyes are a warm, soulful yellow, and his ears are tufty, like an old man’s. Ishmael is a rescue, Alice says, he had a rough life when he was younger, so he’s a bit of an introvert, but he seems to like you. I pet him between the ears. I like you too, I say to Ishmael. He licks my arm once, then lifts his leg and pees on my foot. Um, I say to Alice. Oh Ish, no! she says, and he scuttles away, tail between his legs. I’m sorry, she says, I guess he really does like you. He’s marking his territory. As I peel off my damp sock, I say, I’m flattered. I feel it too.
After Alice leaves for work, I lie on the floor with the dogs again. I tell myself I will stand up when the slant of sun through the window touches me. I tell myself the mountain is mandatory, that I need to have an answer when Alice asks me later how it was. My left elbow lights up, and I tell myself I will move when the sun touches my ribs. Before it can, Aros, the lead dog, walks over and stares down at me. He has the same eyes as my second grade teacher. Okay, Mrs. Greenfield, I say. When I’ve pushed myself to my feet, Aros nods approvingly and then drops onto the ground in the patch of sun, resting his head on his paws. Hypocrite.
By the time I put on every piece of clothing I brought, it’s snowing again, lazy drifting flakes. They’ve figured out the secret to lightness, but they won’t tell me what it is. I haul my heavy body toward the car and turn my phone on for directions. The rattlesnake buzz of it goes on and on, notifications filling the screen. When it stops, the message on top says not sure what’s happening, but we’ll figure it out, just give me a call. To restore my life: a phone call, a depressive episode, a few apologies. My brain offers: a car going sixty, a brief jerk of the wheel, the screech of metal.
I turn the phone off, back away from the car like it’s a viper, hissing, lethal. My feet tangle with a buried branch and I half sit, half fall into the snow. I grab the branch, try to break it between my hands, but it’s too thick, so I stand and hold it at an angle, slam my boot into it, stomp on it again and again until my hand is throbbing and it gives way with a loud crack. Satisfying, but only for an instant. I stomp the pieces into smaller pieces until all that’s left are fragments, my hands bright red and splintered. I’m breathing hard, my eyes sting. I see the dogs watching me from a window, so I bury what’s left of the branch in the snow and get back in the car. Easy, I say to it, imagining I’m talking to a spooked horse, easy now.
Leaving the phone off, I drive at random until I come across a used sporting goods store. Skis lean up against every wall, racks of winter coats look like huddles of strangers. I run my fingers down the skis’ sharp edges, read the names and numbers written on them, as if this is a language I speak. Parlez-vous ski? I ask them. (If anything exists and is comprehended, it is incommunicable, my brain quotes at me, helpful as ever.) I buy a battered old snowboard for seventy-five dollars, a single object seeming more manageable than two.
I get back in the car and keep driving until I see a ski resort, which takes less time than one might think. At the ticket window, I purchase a season pass. It is stunningly expensive. I stand in the bustle at the base of the mountain and don’t think about student loans or unpaid rent. People walk past me talking loudly, shouting to friends, skis propped over their shoulders. Chairlifts carry people up and away, new people speed down the slopes to replace them. My snowboard is camouflage, a passport granting me access to another universe. In that universe, surely I already know how to ski. But this is the problem with all my research into branching universes: real or not, they remain unreachable. I turn around and walk back to the ticket window. I need a lesson, I say. What level? the man behind the glass asks, gesturing to a laminated sheet that depicts levels zero (never-ever!) through five (ripper!). Minus two, I say. He looks at me and I look back. Zero? he says. Sure.
