“You know,” he told me afterwards, when I introduced myself, “it isn’t true that I’m an atheist. I believe in the tsaddik. You know tsaddik? The righteous men? Sometimes, they are ladies, too. They appear, at times of great peril, and they provide just exactly what is needed, and then they vanish. Sometimes, they don’t even seem like nice people—they have to be hidden. Like a superhero. That’s the deal. Even a wealthy grandmother could be a tsaddik. Check in the mail, college tuition. I don’t believe in G-d and we’re not about the afterlife, so much. But I do think that: the perfect person for a particular moment who appears at the perfect time.”
It seemed, sitting there in that New Jersey funeral parlor, that who we were was just a function of where a spinning dial landed as any given time, and that my grandmother’s number had come up on a day when she was a Trotskyite. She had been a JCC chairwoman and a country club member and a closet red and a tsaddik. We all had them, all of us, secret identities we occupied. We could intersect any one of them at any time.
Sullivan County, New York
2010
I drive west at eighty miles per hour toward the dark spot on the field compass, the engine of Judah’s ancient car whining. Once, I pass a cop car lurking in the shadows. Its flashers signal, as I hit the curve, but when I emerge in the straightway, it does not pursue. Here, tonight, I make it through. I have had the sensation, sometimes, when I return from the sickness, that I have entered some other timeline, that I have left another version of me behind. Perhaps other Mellie gets caught in the speed trap, never makes it where she’s going. But, if so, there’s also a version of me where I arrive, where I find Emily in time. I have seen all kinds of addicts, inmates, lawyers, moms nursing their babies on junk, and I have come to believe it even of them, that there is still a possible version of them where the best outcome is possible, and so also, reluctantly, I have to believe it of myself. Even the least of me, the most weak and hungering version, she could muster herself for Emily.
And here, in the actual world, I am not alone. Emily is still out there, high maybe, wounded perhaps. But high and hurt, Emily is still stronger than anyone I know. If nothing else, this knowledge spurs me on.
Twenty-One
Santa Clara, California
July 1993
Nancy slugs on her Coke. “The thing is, I know exactly what Zarah would say. Certain trajectories, you can’t pull away from them. Certain fates call us. But then, isn’t that just a trick you play on yourself afterwards? Like, this spring, when I was in the dean’s office, I thought here is my glorious destiny, the thing I’d been moving toward all my life, but it was just like the farm, like all of Zarah’s so-called healing: everything gets fucked up in the end.” She catches my eye in the mirror, and shakes her head, as if I’ve disagreed with her. “It’s not because we were students. It’s not because we clogged the toilets of a mediocre state school in the Pioneer Valley that we failed. It’s because of who’s sick. Because it’s poor people, and junkies, and criminals, and hookers and queers. Because to them, it’s just another dead body. What I’m saying, what happened in California, same thing. Not fate, and not because we didn’t try.”
Paul looks at her. “Someone died?”
“During your protest?” I ask. “Or are we still talking about Andi?”
Nancy swerves. “Whoops! Who needs a coffee? I need like a gallon of coffee. I need to burn my tongue on a gallon of coffee.”
Nancy has always been a great driver, but a day into the trip, she’s becoming erratic. She drinks full-sugar Cokes, ripping them out of the plastic six-pack, tossing the empty cans out of the window. Periodically, she’ll swerve around nothing then be like, “Oh, shit, that was close.” The only way to make it in time is to drive straight through.
There will not be a wedding, after all.
Nancy won’t trust either of us with the driving, except for her to take brief naps. I’m trying not to be uptight about it. After all, she basically saved us, me and Paul. She swooped in and saved us.
Judah had sprung Andi from the health farm, but it hadn’t had the same outcome.
“Does anyone know how it happened?” Paul asks. “Do you know what happened to her?”
“They found her in the water,” says Nancy. “You know, Judah saved her from drowning, when they were kids? That’s how it all got started. So, I don’t know. Maybe that means something.”
Nancy fiddles with the dials until the weird Christian radio is on full blast. Nancy drinks Cokes and ashes in the empty cans.
“Look,” she says. “I’m sad as shit. OK?”
When did they first sleep together? Say, she was sixteen and he was twenty-four. Say, it wasn’t sex, but just moving together on the sofa, bodies warming, until one of them pulled back, dismayed. Say it was he who pulled back. Say that happened twice. Five times. Twenty. What if she desired him, but was also scared by him? What do we ask of him, then? Say she was thirteen. What parameters make us comfortable? Is there some point at which we give him a pass? Or do we determine culpability based on the outcome? Does it only matter where she washed up in the end? At what age do we confer on a girl her own autonomous desire?
She is eighteen when she calls him in the middle of the night. She is thinner than he remembers, gaunt even. She wears a nightgown, is barefoot in the grass. Her one eye twitches.
“I can’t do it,” she says. “I tried, but I can’t.”
“It’s OK,” he tells her. Finally, she looks like a woman. “It’s OK. I’ll get you through this.”
He puts her on a train. He is going to follow her, right behind her. They might be married.
We’re putting states between us and New York, but I don’t feel like we’ve really left until we reach the edge of the American West. Colorado. The earth reddens as we approach the sunset. The mountains dwarf the modest peaks (Monadnock, Moriah, Katahdin) of our childhoods. Nancy’s engine grinds as we slope up in first gear on the interminable forty-five-degree angle at the boundary between the green, flat world and the water-starved land of our future. There is an animal we cannot identify, large, rangy, deer-like. None of us has ever been this far from home. Naming the animals: we had presumed our knowledge of the world was fixed, that new things would no longer open to us, but here it is, the weird, shaggy beast, chewing cud in a field of tiny white flowers beneath a glacial white peak.
A set of train tracks climb up the mountain at a distance.
“Maybe she went right past here,” says Nancy.
It isn’t only the terrible things which can surprise you.
We skirt Nevada, defunct vastness with out-of-order signs affixed to peeling paint truck stops, and enter the weird outlands of California. Everything about the Inland Empire says not California: not water. Not bikinis. Not blond. Not movies. It is dry, and hot and brown, or irrigated into flat green squares.
Now that we’re nearing our destination, Nancy has become concerned about the dress code. She pulls off the highway into a ditch and begins tossing items from the hatchback into the passenger seat. Sitting next to me in the backseat, her rear facing forward while she strips to her bra and some kind of black girdle thing, she tries to squeeze into a satin cocktail dress.
“It’s so fucking cold where we’re from. Seriously. After this fuckstorm, I need to be at the edge of the continent. I’m going to dangle my feet off the Santa Monica pier, and eat a skein of cotton candy and roast in the sun until I blister.”
“No,” I say.
“Yes,” says Paul.
“I need everything to be shallow, and warm, and I need to stuff my face with spun sugar,” she says.
Nancy is, I notice, thinner. Much thinner. She has almost the same tits and ass as in high school but her waist is cinched in, and her cheekbones have sharpened. She’s suffered defeat, I think, but it hasn’t broken her. Also, she looks hot in the dress. She slides back into the driver’s seat.
“I’m going to sit on the pier, and then I’m going to get rich. Either ric
h people have to start dying, or people like us have to get rich. That’s the only way.”
“Yes,” says Paul.
“No,” I say.
“What is with you guys, anyway?” says Nancy. “Are you guys like sleeping together?”
There is a silence, which we blurt into nonsensically as we exit, follow the ramp, U on the divided boulevard, and then pull into the parking lot of a funeral parlor. Nancy lets us babble all the way through it, expressionless, eyes on the road until eventually we both peter out. Then she half turns so she’s facing Paul in the back and me in the front at the same time, just exactly like a mother dealing with squabbling children.
“From my perspective,” she says, “it’s basically gross. You guys, to me, are basically siblings. But if you can get past the genetic-level physical revulsion each of you must inspire in the other, I offer my blessing.” She pulls the key from the ignition, shrugs back into her parka, and steps out of the car.
I go, “Are you sure we should go in? We weren’t that close.”
Nancy slams the door hard. “We all knew her.” Then she looks at me. “We’re not going for Andi, Mellie. We’re going for the mom.”
The mother is in the front row, seated next to Judah. Everyone else sits a few rows back. Nancy makes a beeline for the empty chair beside her, and takes the mother’s hand. The mother, Andi’s mother, holds Nancy’s hand to her face and presses in so hard it looks as though it hurts. Judah takes her other hand.
The other friends come in an assortment of Manic Panic, tattoo and leather boots. Judah’s family has paid for the event, and apart from Andi’s mom, the soft-core pornographer and his wife are the only ones in actual funeral attire.
The closest thing to Jewish the venue can muster is Rock of Ages, which only mentions a cross once, and which they play twice, before the funeral director reads from a script. Then, unsteadily, Andi’s mother rises.
“It is not fault,” she says. She is looking at Judah and Nancy. “It begins a long time ago. The loss is difficult. Sometimes, help is possible. Help comes and it is right. Sometimes, help is not possible. Sometimes, there is no recovery.”
In accordance with her tradition, the funeral director announces, she will be buried immediately and privately, but the family of Andi’s friend invites the mourners to attend a small gathering at the Ramada across the road.
The casket is pink, covered in satin. I think of her neckties skirt, her boxes overflowing with fabric. It’s the only actual thing I can recall about her. They play Rock of Ages again; the cleft in the savior’s side, the sin that can be washed, and the only thing that belongs here is the water and the blood.
I sit at the bar with the father while Paul sneaks off with Nancy to smoke a clove of remembrance. I can see them, through the window. Nancy hunches to the ground, and it’s pretty clear she’s crying. I’m trying to make myself feel something, but nothing will come. The soft-core pornographer offers me a drink.
He’s a big man, ex-military, and he’s drinking plain tonic water and lime. “Prediabetes,” he says, sticking out a hand. “I’m Lew.” He indicates a small woman wearing heavy jewelry beside him. “My wife, Trudi.”
“Hi,” I say.
“How long will you be in California?” he asks me.
“I haven’t seen the ocean yet,” I tell him.
“If you want to see the ocean,” he says. “You can just go out back. It’s right there.”
“And you?” I ask him. “Are you sticking around?”
“I live here,” he says. “I’m in movies.”
For a moment, we watch the other mourners kick their studded boots against the bar.
“Excuse me for saying so,” says Lew. “But you don’t look like you belong with this crew.”
Nancy’s mascara is runny when she returns and she’s inexplicably changed into her red dress. “Were you seriously sucking up to Judah’s dad? Do you get the level of slime of that guy? Plus, what’s there to gain? It’s like compulsive with you.”
We’ve come into the bathroom to fix our makeup and now we lean up against the sink and swab at our eyes.
“No one else was talking to him. I was being polite.”
“Seriously: it’s obsessional. You’re always nosing for the biggest ass to kiss.”
“That’s my basic problem?”
“Parent. Teacher. Boss. Whatever. You have an upsetting passion to be directed. What I think, I think you just can’t bear the fact that you have to run your own life. Which, hello, you do.”
“At least I’m not trying to run everyone else’s.”
“Here’s the thing I’ve come to,” she says. I can see her eyes redden again. “You can make a person get on a train. Maybe. But even if you do, you’ve got no control over where they get off.”
I look at her in the mirror. It’s a bad day, in a bad month, in a bad year, but still: she looks so pretty. “We can see the ocean,” I say. “It’s right out back.”
We aren’t the only ones spilling out onto the patio. There’s a pastel wedding party emerging from a tent, and the Manic Panic crew has begun to spill from the bar. Paul’s talking to one of the punks.
“Would you like to know my diagnosis of your apparent boyfriend?” she asks.
“I’m in love. We’re in love, I think.”
“Ew.” She swipes a half-full cocktail from an abandoned table, and begins to walk toward the edge of the embankment. “You need to be the favorite. I need to be the answer. And Paul just wants to be popular.”
The ocean comes into view. The sky at its edge is purple with the last light, and the water already dark. “That’s how Andi was different, I think. She didn’t win. I mean, she maybe was never going to win, but she fought it anyway. She didn’t just give into herself.”
I am pretty shitfaced by the time Judah approaches me. The pastel crowd and the Manic Panic crowd have begun to overlap, the tattoos and the tulle starting to sway in the way that suggests dancing might follow.
“Hey,” Judah says. “Thanks for coming. It means a ton to have people here who knew us before.”
I have packed a little cloud into my gums, and everything that drifts toward me is buffeted. Still. I laugh and he looks uncomfortable.
“Way back when,” I say. “Back in the day.” This accident, of where we started, is what has to pass for value, for worth; we carry some citizenship of an amorphous homeland, and that makes us all kin, no matter our sins. It’s a blanket amnesty. I don’t know what I’m even thinking about. I can barely remember this guy, anyway, and the hostility that rises up, suddenly, washes away.
“Because of how it started. People think that’s why—” he waves his hand to indicate the inebriated crowd. “They think I don’t know. But I know all that, Mellie. All that stuff years ago—”
“Totally,” I say. “Thanks for inviting us.”
The pain that flickers across his face momentarily startles me. Then, it fuzzes out. I can’t see him anymore. Paul comes to my side and takes my hand. We’re not perfect, I know. We’ve still got things to fix, but it could be us, maybe, cutting the sheet cake in the low-end hotel. It’s not impossible. We kiss.
“Gross,” says Nancy, who has begun flirting with one of the groomsmen. “Seriously,” she says, in the nicest way possible. “You guys give me hives.” Then she’s dragging her groomsman out onto the patio, and I’m realizing she gets to go to her wedding after all. By the end of the song, everyone’s joined them.
Nancy was always that kind, who could get a bad party started, who could turn a rough night good. Paul takes my hand and we dance too.
Interlude
Good Samaritan Hospital, Westlake, California
2008
The nurse is helping me pull on my pants and then she hands me a clipboard.
“Just your name, honey. We just need you to write your name.”
“Misty,” I say. I shake my head. “No. Wait.”
“Can you try again?” says the nurse.
“Amelia,” I tell her. “Everyone calls me Mellie.”
In the room, there’s another presence, sharp-edged, perfumed, by the window. I hear the jingle of heavy jewelry.
“Honestly,” says the nurse—she is not talking to me but to the person by the window. “Honestly. You can still see the swelling in her eyes. It’s honestly criminal to release her in this state.”
I nod. She is tiny, the woman at the window, ageless with surgery and injections and a life spent avoiding the sun. In another life, I think, she’d been shot at, seen people die. She has a survivor’s pitilessness for the weak.
“You don’t feel very good right now,” says Trudi. “The doctors and nurses here understand that. They could send you home with medication for your symptoms. There are a number of good options to help with the disorientation and the nausea, and to ease the cravings somewhat, but because of your condition, they are refusing to prescribe at present.”
“My condition?—oh, yes. The baby.”
“We’ve always taken care of her,” the woman says to the nurse. “That’s my husband and I. She’s like a daughter to us. Isn’t that right, honey?”
“Where is—why isn’t he—”
The nurse pinches her lips. “She’s been like this. I think she’s looking for the father, but she won’t give us any information.”
The presence shifts. “There’s no father.” Her English is lightly accented, careful and correct.
The nurse raises her eyebrows, and speaks past the woman to me. “My job, Mellie, is not to be kind. My job is to help you see the situation from a medical perspective. I need to detail some of the risks you’ve run, some of the outcomes our initial screening indicates you are facing. These conditions, these fetal conditions a baby might have, appear untreatable.”
“Are you listening?” says the woman. “Please open your eyes, Mellie.”
The Likely World Page 32