Little Universes

by Heather Demetrios

  “I know,” he says, grinning. This boy is too smart for his own good.

  “I have to explain some things I realized, but it might sound very weird because I was having an existential psychotic break in Boston Common earlier today. Which, by the way, was Yuri Gagarin’s fault. I haven’t had time to fully process it because I wanted to make soup for you.”

  He laughs. “I am in so much trouble.”

  I wrap my arms around his neck. “Me, too.”

  “You made me soup?”

  “It’s on your desk. Hannah helped. Italian wedding.”

  “My favorite.”

  “I know.”

  Ben rests his forehead against mine. “Tell me what Yuri Gagarin did this time.”

  “I thought it was personal,” I say, straightening up. “That the universe somehow had it in for me. Taking away everyone I love. I was trying to outsmart it. I thought if I could stay two steps ahead, I would have more control over the outcomes. But trying to have control was just my version of being a hungry ghost. Hannah wanted pills, I wanted control, but it’s the same thing—we’ve both been trying to outsmart the universe. But you can’t! Mostly because the universe doesn’t have a hit list. It’s just doing its thing, and it’s not personal—or, it is because I’m a part of it. Creation, destruction. Over and over. Me, you, my parents, Nah. My dad was a human, and now he’s the ocean. BUT HE’S THE SAME THING HE WAS BEFORE. He was always the ocean, and the ocean was always him. JUST IN DIFFERENT FORMS. I can’t fight that process. I can’t be mad at the wave for being a wave, because I realized I am the wave. We share the same cosmic encoding.” I stare at him, one final thing clicking into place. “I WAS NEVER AN ORPHAN BECAUSE WE ARE ALL COSMICALLY RELATED.”

  Ben blinks. “Yuri Gagarin told you all of that.”

  “He looked and looked. But I don’t think he looked hard enough.”

  “What was he looking for?”

  “God.”

  Ben watches me for a long moment.

  “Um.” He tucks my hair behind my ear. “Are you—and I will love you no matter what your answer is—but are you saying you believe in God now? Because it sounds like that’s what—”

  “Keep up, geophysicist! I’m saying I found MYSELF.”

  He just looks at me. Honestly, sometimes I question the level of instruction at MIT.

  “Because I AM GOD. YOU ARE GOD. EVERYTHING IS GOD! Quintessence!”

  Ben’s face clears, and my wonderful atheist boy looks very relieved.

  I think I feel just like Chuck Yeager did in 1947 when he became the fastest man alive by being the first pilot to break the sound barrier, flying faster than the speed of sound at level flight. In The Right Stuff, the flying aces are always talking about chasing a demon in the sky, like the sound barrier itself was a demon—and I think I just did the same. I beat that hungry ghost by a mile.

  “Just so you know,” he says, “that quote of Yuri’s has been disputed.”

  “Really?”

  He nods, very serious, his lips twitching. “Apparently, he was a believer.”

  I stare at him. “Now he’s fucking with my serenity EVEN MORE.”

  Ben is trying hard not to laugh, I can tell. “Does that change your conclusions?”

  “Of course not. Gagarin is irrelevant to the logic of my argument, which is sound.”

  “You’re still God.”

  “Yes. And so are you. At the end of the day, the universe is clearly a proponent of equality.”

  “So, basically, you lay down on Boston Common and achieved enlightenment,” Ben says.

  “Basically.”

  He throws up his hands. “A couple visits to Dharma Bums and you’re already a Zen Master.”

  I grin. “I progress through things very quickly.”

  “Like father, like daughter.”

  Ben reaches for his copy of Dark Diving. Flips through it to a dog-eared page. Reads my dad’s words to me.

  “When his dear friend Michele Besso died, Einstein imparted his theory on death to Besso’s sister, in a letter of condolence. He writes, ‘Michele has left this strange world a little before me. This means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction made between past, present and future is nothing more than a persistent, stubborn illusion.’

  In my search for quintessence—the meaning of existence through understanding what dark matter (and therefore the universe) is made up of—I find myself returning to this scrap of knowledge that Einstein imparted to a grieving woman and, perhaps, to his own grieving self. Is it possible that Einstein discovered true quintessence—the secret to eternal life that philosophers and alchemists have been searching for across the centuries? Perhaps the Elixir of Life isn’t a tonic at all, but the simple knowledge that time is elastic and, as such, what we would consider a life’s end—consciousness forever relegated to the past—is its beginning elsewhere.”

  “Houston, we have SCIENTIFIC PROOF OF ETERNAL LIFE!”

  Ben laughs. “Maybe. But I think he’s ultimately saying what we have to be okay with is not that we’re going to die, but that we don’t know what, exactly, or where or when we’ll be when these physical manifestations of ourselves time out. So we have to live the hell out of the atoms we are right now and be okay with letting the form they take go when the time comes. But…” He smiles. “Maybe my atoms will always find your atoms.”

  I think of our kiss: I am lost without you. Quantum love.

  “No object has a definite position except when colliding with something else,” I whisper.

  He nods. “You’re my definite position in the universe.”

  “We’re a funny pair,” I say. “You love gravity, and I’m always trying to escape it.”

  “I’m so proud of you. I can’t wait to be standing outside, looking up, and knowing you’re somewhere above me looking down.” His lips turn up. “But every astronaut needs to have her feet on the ground sometime.”

  Ben Tamura is my favorite gravitational pull.

  I take his hand and kiss the palm.

  “You hold me, too, you know,” I whisper against it, the universe of me in the palm of his hand.

  His eyes turn glassy.

  “I’m so sorry, Ben. All these months. I—”

  He stops me with a salty, sweet kiss. “Save your apologies for all the heart attacks you’re going to give me when you’re a fighter pilot, hm?”

  I squeeze him a little tighter. “Thank you for the meteorite.”

  “I promise I won’t get you rocks for every occasion. Despite being a geophysicist, I do have some self-control. But I thought you might like that one.”

  I burrow closer to him. “You know what’s strange? If the wave hadn’t happened … maybe I would never have met you.”

  He runs a hand over my head. “I don’t think anything happens for a reason. The wave being the price we pay in exchange for this. I think a part of me would have found a way to collide with you, Mae, no matter what. Even if I had to take a quantum leap to make it happen. I’d have found you.”

  Because I’m his definite position in the universe. And he’s mine.

  I kiss him. I kiss him with all the kisses I haven’t given him for over four months.

  Then I pull back, stare at him. “You bastard.”

  I can’t keep a straight face, so he just raises his eyebrows.

  “When were you going to tell me that this room is a wormhole?” I try to sound extremely angry.

  A minute out there—a whole night in here.

  Ben grins, jumps off the bed, and bolts the door, then crawls back across the mattress toward me.

  “You’re the astronaut,” he says. “Shouldn’t you have seen that one coming?”

  I rest a hand on the buttons of his shirt. “You’re right. Maybe I should correct my course.”

  “I think we’re finally on the optimal flight path,” Ben says softly, laying me down. “Don’t you?”

  Only love.

  So ma
ny ways to die. But so many ways to live. Maybe even forever. Quintessence. Always being. Never ending.

  I nod. “Second star to the right and straight on till morning.”

  Benediction

  maybe the empty places inside us

  are just homes waiting to be filled

  Table

  Basement

  Holy Cross Church

  42

  Hannah

  If addiction is genetic, I don’t know where I got it from.

  Everyone in my family seems fine. Okay, on Dad’s side, maybe Gram likes her after-dinner port a little too much, but she’s a grown-ass seventy-five-year-old woman who’s earned it. Mom’s side might be the link: I’m pretty sure Pappoús was an alcoholic—no one says it that way, but he always had a shit-ton of ouzo on hand. Still, no one ever became an outright junkie. Went to rehab. Overdosed.

  If Nate would just smoke a little too much weed or Uncle Tony hit the red wine harder. But no.

  It’s just me who’s a loser. Jo would want me to reframe that, but that affirmation shit is just not working today.

  Tomorrow, I’ll have been sober for five months. Today doesn’t count yet. I don’t count a day until I wake up the next morning without using. Some people count it once they hit midnight, but we all know the hardest time is after midnight. In NA they give you sobriety swag in the form of chips that signify how long you’ve been clean. You can put them on a keychain or whatever. I have white, orange, green, and red. Next month, I’ll get the biggie: a six-month blue one. It’s like that time when I was collecting the Strawberry Shortcake Happy Meal toys, but not nearly as fun. I still want that blue chip, though.

  Before I lay down under the angel to die, I was waking up every night at 4:03, which is the time my parents died—8:06—divided by two.

  For the past three days I’ve been waking up at exactly that time. I’m trying not to read into it.

  Especially since today is my birthday.

  And also Mother’s Day.

  All things considered, that is some twisted shit, my birthday being on Mother’s Day.

  I read in one of the million pamphlets they gave me in rehab that suicide is the second-leading cause of death in the United States for my age group, and tenth overall.

  It’s why I decide to go to a meeting before the family celebration tonight. Before I have to pretend to be a happy birthday girl.

  I’m in a church basement near BU. This particular meeting for Young People, as they call us, could be worse. Everyone is college-aged and pretty cool. Mae came with me once and called it the Tattoo Show. There’s coffee and doughnuts from Dunkies. The speaker is this chick from New York who’s a conceptual artist, and she talks about how her art helped her stay sober. And it just reminds me that I don’t have anything like that, you know? Just my acorns. That’s it.

  Mae and I graduate next month. Somehow I’ve managed with my alternative school (not so alternative because it’s still school) to get back on track. With lots of help from Mae, of course.

  But then what?

  It’s a victory for me just to get out of bed and stay sober all day. What kind of life is that?

  Aunt Nora keeps giving me these quizzes. All kinds of quizzes from magazines and online stuff, about finding your passion. One was called What’s Your Bliss?

  None of it’s helping.

  The only thing I want is a pill. And Drew. And my parents.

  All things I can’t have.

  At least once a day, I think about calling Drew. But I know that I need to lady up, be on my own. I’m glad Mae realized Ben was good for her. She needed to be less independent. She’s on this interconnectedness kick right now, and it’s kind of funny. She really does sound like Mom. But I need to know who I am on my own, without pills or boys. I just thought after five months I’d have some idea.

  We get in our groups and everyone talks, but I don’t. My birthday gift to myself is not trying too much. For one day, I want to coast a little. I don’t feel like telling my sad stories, but I listen to everyone else’s. To the girl who fucked up last night and needed a fix so bad she stole the pain pills for her family’s dog, who has cancer, so she’s here, back at day one. To the boy who picked up a needle on Monday, then called his sponsor before he could stick it in his arm. To the insanely beautiful girl who looks like she could be in a J.Crew ad who tells us she just got out of rehab and she’s not sure if she can do this, stay clean.

  When we’re done, I head toward the coffee. Pour myself a cup. J.Crew is right behind me.

  “I like your hair,” she says.

  After I chopped it all off, Aunt Nora cried, then took me to her hair place so they could fix it. I like it. I feel stronger, in a way. More exposed, but also like there’s less weighing me down. I think about how Mom wrote in that postcard how she chopped off all her hair, too. In Malaysia. So I guess we’d look even more the same, if she were here. Mae agrees that it would have been a good look on her.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  She holds out her hand. “Jaipriya.”

  Her name brings back a memory, of Kirtan at Mom’s studio, all of us chanting the names of Hindu gods in candlelight, the musician playing the harmonium—Jaipriya—leading us through the night.

  I take her hand. “Hannah.”

  We drink our coffee. I want to tell her she can do this, but I don’t want to overstep. At meetings, it can get weird real quick when people decide to start, like, life-coaching you. So we just drink coffee and talk about everyone’s clothes and tats and wonder why all churches have this same weird, slightly musty smell, no matter the denomination.

  “I hate Mother’s Day,” Jaipriya says, out of the blue.

  “Me, too.” I glance at her. “Why do you hate it?”

  “I have a daughter. But my sister’s raising her because … well. She’s only two. But she calls her Mom.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, soft.

  This. This is why I made the choice I made. Imagine me right now, with a year-old baby. I can’t even get out of bed before ten. I think about killing myself every day. What if my baby had to call Mae Mom and Mae had to give up Annapolis to raise her?

  Jesus fuck, man.

  Jaipriya shrugs. “You’d think it’d be motivation enough to stay clean.” She takes a sip of coffee, adds more sugar. “Why do you hate it? Mother’s Day.”

  “My mom died last year.”

  “Oh, wow. I’d hate it, too, if I were you.”

  “It’s also my birthday.” I set down my coffee because my hand has started to shake.

  She smiles. “‘What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?’”

  The words sink into me. I like them.

  “Did you make that up?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “Another poet—Valarie Kaur.”

  “Another? You’re a poet?”

  I didn’t know a poet could wear a sweater set and khakis.

  “Yeah.”

  My heart speeds up a little, like it does when I open Acorn.

  “You have books out and stuff? Or poems in a magazine?”

  Jaipriya shakes her head. “You don’t need to be published to be a poet.”

  “Then how do you know you’re a poet?”

  She sets her coffee down. “I guess I knew for sure, started calling myself one, when I realized that writing was like breathing. There was no choice for me. I had to. My poems are the best part of me, the part the drugs don’t get to lay their hands on.” She cocks her head to the side. “Are you a poet?”

  Even though we’re in the basement of the church, I swear the sun bursts through the stained glass windows above and streams down, right into me, a rainbow of light. This is an outright benediction, and also you can’t lie in church—it’s really fucking bad luck.

  “Yes.”

  “Half the romantic poets were opium or heroin addicts, so I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. You’re in good company, Hannah. Wel
come to the club.” She grabs her purse and slides it onto her shoulder. “And Happy Birthday.”

  I reach out, rest a hand on her arm. “Happy Mother’s Day.”

  Her eyes widen, then she nods and hurries away, toward the exit. When she gets to the door, Jaipriya turns around.

  “You want to hang out sometime?” she says. “Write or … something?”

  My chest fills with sparkling sea foam. “Yeah. Yes. I’d love to.”

  We exchange numbers, and hers is now included in the small handful in my phone—Mae, Jo, Drew, and the few remaining family members I have left. When she leaves, I finish my own coffee then get on the train, walk home, all in a daze.

  I’m a poet.

  I miss my mom.

  I’m a poet.

  This is my first birthday without them.

  I’m a poet.

  And even though the truth of this shines a little light into the darkness—tomb/womb—I’m still left with the fact that my future is as uncertain as ever.

  What am I going to do after graduation?

  You can’t write poetry all day, I don’t think. How am I going to stay sober when I don’t even have homework or the goal of graduating to keep me busy, focus me even a little bit? And poetry doesn’t pay the bills.

  I need a job.

  But who would hire an addict who’s graduating by the skin of her teeth? What would I say in an interview when they ask about my interests, my plans? How could I prove that I am responsible in any way, for anything?

  When I get to our walkway, there’s a woman standing in front of the house, writing in a notebook. As I get closer, she looks up.

  “Oh, hello,” she says. “Do you live here?”

  When did it start to feel normal, having my own room in this house?

  “I guess I do.” She gives me a weird look. “Yes?”

  She reaches out a hand. “Lisa Cole—Realtor. You must be one of the nieces.”

  “Realtor?”

  She nods. “For the sale. It’s a beautiful house. It’ll go like this.” She snaps her fingers. “I hear you’re going to Annapolis. That’s wonderful!”

  “That’s my sister,” I say.

  They’re selling the house. Why are they selling the house? Why haven’t they told us?