by Laurel Brett
“How’s it going?” I asked. I wanted to ask her about drugs, about Rick, about how empty and suicidal she’d been, but it was best to let her take the lead.
“Things are good, if I’m careful,” she answered.
I waited for her to go on but she didn’t. “Careful?” I finally asked, hoping she’d explain.
“If I’m not careful I can get despondent. If I think about Rick or what happened at Stony Brook with Mr. Speed Freak, or the war, or just being on my own, I can get sad. And here we learn that getting sad like that can make us think about drugs. It’s a full-time job, not being sad. I can’t even be snarky without going all negative. And that’s dangerous for me.”
I felt my own pang of sadness. When I met Stony Brook Daphne, although she was nihilistic, she was also gritty and real and compelling. But now she needed to work hard to just to stay optimistic and grounded. I guess it was an improvement because she was no longer self-destructive.
“Do you think about calling your parents?”
“What parents? They don’t know me.”
“Do you mean that your parents feel like the parents of someone else?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“What if reality is more complicated than you think, Daphne? Would you want to know?”
“Right now, I wouldn’t. I’m having enough trouble dealing with the reality I have. Gardening helps. I like growing food and learning about plants. I passed my GED with an almost perfect score, and I am going to Wellesley. Fewer drugs than at Stony Brook, and I got a full scholarship.”
“Wow! Great news! It’s a fantastic school. You’re going in September?”
“If Dr. Celantano thinks I’m ready. He’s my main doctor. He says barring any major relapses, like using drugs or something, I’ll be ready.”
“That’s a year early for you, right? The rest of your class has another year of school?”
“Yeah, but I’m glad to miss all that—the prom, graduation, all that kid stuff.”
“I get it.”
I didn’t really know how to keep the conversation going with this pragmatic young woman. I knew which topics to avoid—anything sad—but I had no idea of how to connect with her. Our friendship had begun with her sadness over the death of Rick Lopez. I didn’t know how to find any other common ground, yet I had missed Daphne so much, I wanted to try. I was about to ask her about what music she was listening to when she interrupted my thoughts.
“It’s getting close to dinner,” she said. “I really shouldn’t miss it.”
“No, I suppose not.” I was sorely disappointed, though it was probably better for me to leave anyway. I shouldn’t talk to this fragile teenager about my metaphysical speculations, or her difficulties, or Martin Luther King’s death, or even her beautiful letter, which might have turned her thoughts to sad things. There wasn’t much left to talk about.
“Thanks for coming, Garrett. Remember the little box I gave you?”
“Of course.”
“Did you open it?”
“No. The cap was on too tight.”
“I gave you the last of my stash, so I could really stop using drugs. I don’t know if they would have searched the little box, but I was afraid to have it with me.”
“Why didn’t you just throw it out?”
“I just couldn’t bear to.”
“What’s in it?”
“LSD. You should throw it out.”
“I will,” I assured her.
“I’m sorry I gave the acid to you. It was before I got sober.”
“I understand.”
“I shouldn’t have tried to drag you into my druggie world. I’ve changed a lot since then even though it was only three months ago. Keep the box, though. It’s beautiful.”
I suddenly thought of Caroline’s idea that I bring at least two Daphnes together. I guess it was in response to the notion of this Daphne going away to Wellesley and another Daphne already in Bronxville. They would all be scattering. The idea was impossible, according to Everett, although my Ur-Daphne had caught a glimpse of SDS Daphne and been spooked by her. I recalled that when she had tried to talk to her double, she’d failed to catch up with her. I remembered the exasperated tilt of her head when she recounted the feeling that her simulacrum had fled. “She was just out of reach,” Ur-Daphne had said, just as Hugh Everett had insisted.
And once again I began to suppose for a moment that everyone was right. But if I was crazy, how had I constructed such an elaborated fantasy world? This was my own personal science-fantasy novel, if the Schrödinger girls weren’t real. Did that mean that the aide at the rehab center wasn’t real either? Or that Galen’s portraits were fantasies? No. Occam’s razor, the idea that the simplest explanation was truest, intimated that they were real. Why their presence challenged everything we knew about reality was a question I couldn’t answer, but I was profoundly grateful to my Schrödinger girls. Just seeing Stony Brook Daphne made me feel alive again. Even this Daphne, so focused on being sober, exhilarated me. Her love of plants, for example, was inspiring, and her auburn hair glinting in the sunlight looked so joyous. How long could I inhabit my own little pocket of reality? Maybe all the girls would disappear.
Since I couldn’t see two of the girls together, I decided to try to do the next best thing and see two of my Schrödinger girls on the same day. I drove to a phone booth and called Galen’s Daphne in Bronxville. It was only five o’clock so it would still be early enough when I got there to have dinner with her. The phone rang three, then four times, and I was about to hang up when Daphne answered.
“Hello, Daphne here,” she said in a breathless voice.
“It’s Garrett.”
“Oh, hi. Let me catch my breath. I had to run for the phone because I was outside in the garden. What a glorious day it is!”
“That’s a coincidence. I was just outside in a garden too. Sure. Catch your breath while I ask if you’re free tonight for dinner around seven. I could be there in Bronxville in an hour and a half.”
“Maybe. Let me ask Galen what he thinks. Can I call you back in just a minute or so?”
I gave her the number of the pay phone and waited in the booth. True to her word, the phone rang within five minutes.
“Hi,” she said brightly, and before I could respond, her answer came tumbling out: “Galen says that would be fine. He has something he wants to catch up on and is happy to make himself a salad. So I’m all yours. Oh, and guess what! I’ve gotten my driver’s license and can drive myself to town. I’m willing to risk being out after dark with my junior license.”
I congratulated her on the milestone. She named a favorite restaurant and we arranged to meet. This was a familiar scenario, meeting Daphne in a restaurant to chat, but now she would come as an adult. I wondered if I would feel any different.
* * *
On Saturday night Bronxville was filled with Cadillacs and Lincolns, lawyers and stockbrokers taking their wives out to dinner. Just as I arrived, a Karmann Ghia pulled out and I snagged the only available space. I wondered which car Daphne had driven. Probably Galen’s old Jag.
I walked along the main street, which possessed a kitschy charm with all its fake Tudor facades, until I found the place. Since I had overestimated the distance, I was there early, but thoughtful Daphne had made a reservation in Galen’s name. She had chosen a pleasant restaurant that attempted a Tuscan atmosphere with arches, earth tones, and centerpieces of lemons. When she walked in I must have been perusing the menu because she laughed a throaty laugh, and I raised my head from reading to see her sitting across from me.
“You must have seated yourself by stealth. Maybe you should be a spy.”
“Well, you shouldn’t. If I were a spy, you might be dead. You had no idea that I was here.” She laughed again. The bodice of her sundress was an ice-blue paisley print that set off her auburn chignon. She was still wearing her hair that way.
She seemed different, though. She was wearing makeup that
accentuated her eyes, and very pink lipstick, and her psychedelic print gave her a sixties flair despite the chignon. As I glanced around the upscale eatery, there seemed to be hippies everywhere. Tie-dye outfits, guys with hair way past their ears and wide ties, bell-bottoms, and puka-shell necklaces, and girls in peasant blouses and gypsy skirts with long, streaming hair and bandannas keeping it out of their faces. My mind drifted to Caroline’s sleek black locks. Now none of that. You’re here with Daphne. She wore beads on her sundress, but her tight, low bun set her apart from the other Sarah Lawrence girls.
My head was now spinning with my impressions of Galen’s Daphne and Stony Brook Daphne. Their features were so exactly the same, and yet they were so totally different. I know identical twins can be uncanny, but I had satisfied myself early on that this girl wasn’t one of a set of twins, or triplets. Now that there were four, I felt even more certain that a multiple birth was not the explanation. It’s easy to canvass hospitals to find out about quadruplets; they are a rare occurrence. Just seeing one with short hair and one with long hair was unnerving. They sounded different, yet they sounded the same. Their energy felt different, yet it felt the same.
“So, you’re finally in town,” I said. “You and Galen get around.”
“Yeah, we do. But I wish I had been here when Dr. King died. Too sad. And of course, being abroad just wasn’t the same. What’s happening to our country, Garrett?”
“And something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Miss Jones?”
“I’m serious,” she said, in the elegant manner she had adopted. She seemed somehow taller than the others. She sat up straight, with an elongated neck. Maybe she’d learned this while posing for Galen’s paintings.
“I couldn’t tell you,” I said. “I was hoping you knew.” I was acting nonchalant, but just being in a restaurant with Galen’s Daphne inspired me. Two Daphnes in one day! My head was spinning. She was chattering on about her career plans. They were obviously influenced by Galen, but that’s just the way her universe had branched off, I supposed.
I began to think of Ovid’s rendering of the Daphne/laurel myth. Of all the Schrödinger girls, she seemed the only one who had been trapped by Apollo—in this case, Galen. The others had gotten away. My Ur-Daphne was still free. Stony Brook Daphne had been saddened by Rick Lopez’s death, but she was making her own way in the world. I could only assume that SDS Daphne was also still free and not Terry’s puppet. But here was Daphne, Galen’s Daphne, following his pursuits and being painted by him over and over again. He had shown her fixed and turning into a tree in many of his canvases. I wondered if she would ever be really free or ever become her own woman.
I began listening more carefully when she said, “I’m going to go to graduate school in art history when I’m done at Sarah Lawrence. Yale or Columbia. Striking distance from Bronxville. That way I can curate Galen’s work and do my own academic research. My new love is Turner. He discovered a kind of very early impressionism.”
I remembered two Turners from my trips to the Met with my mother—one of whalers and one of Venice. From what Daphne said, I suspected that neither was in the style of which Daphne was enamored. This conversation was more familiar to me than the conversation I’d just had with the other Daphne. At the rehab center we hadn’t talked about books, music, or painting at all.
We both ordered pasta and then espressos. Daphne continued discussing painting, especially her interest in Turner. But I wanted to get away from Turner and talk about the Daphne portraits and the myth. “I would have thought you’d be interested in portraits.”
“Why?”
“The Daphne portraits. I just saw another one at the Forester Gallery. You were turning into a tree.”
“That’s not me. That’s a character I modeled for,” she asserted, bristling slightly. She was too quick to protest.
“But she is Daphne and so are you.”
“Mere coincidence.”
“Galen’s interest in Ovid has nothing to do with you?”
She blushed. “Well, maybe a little.”
“When did you start sleeping together? The first night after the Russian Tea Room?”
Her green eyes flashed with anger. Her back stiffened. She shifted in her chair. Her discomfort suggested that she might suddenly bolt from the restaurant. “And that’s your business, why?”
“We’re friends, and I care about you a great deal. I’m sorry if I sound somewhat . . . parental.”
Her back visibly softened and her lips twitched into the tiniest of grins. “Oh, all right. Actually, we haven’t. Slept together, I mean. Galen is being ridiculous. He wants us to get married on my eighteenth birthday. I’m going to take my junior year abroad in Florence, of course, and Galen is coming with me. We’ll be married there next spring, and he wants me to be, you know . . .”
“A virgin?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“He’s protecting you? He’s the river god, not Apollo?”
“How should I know?” she asked petulantly, suddenly a child, her lovely chin jutting out. I noticed she was playing with her leftover pasta. “And anyway, I don’t live in a myth.”
Had that been what I was doing? Casting her in a myth? A Schrödinger myth? Was it possible to unmask an unadorned reality of Daphne? Whenever I tried, Ovid or Schrödinger intruded. Still, Schrödinger was science, wasn’t it?
She was glaring at me defiantly, her eyes cold green gems. “I have to go,” she said, starting to gather up her purse.
But I didn’t want her to leave on that note. “Stay. Please. Dessert?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. I’m expected for drinks and I don’t want to be out too long after dark. I might be able to just make it. We have some art critics coming over, and Galen wants me to be there. Jane is coming too. And before you ask, no, I don’t drink.”
“Cappuccino then?”
She nodded a grudging assent. Maybe she didn’t want to leave angry either.
“How’s Jane?”
But we were silent then until the waiter brought the coffee. “I’m so excited to be going to Florence,” she announced. Then she said, “You have some foam above your lip.”
I wiped it off, making a show of being the buffoon so the awkwardness would pass. “I’ll walk you to your car.” I indicated to the waiter that I’d be back.
The sunset had organized itself into wide bands of strictly demarcated color—salmon, gold, and fuchsia—which rose over a soft slate blue. I had never seen a sky quite like it.
“It’s a sky from Turner,” Daphne said. “Constable did all the clouds, but Turner saw all this,” and she gestured to show off the sky. We walked apart for a block, until we arrived at the Jaguar and she abruptly hugged me. “I’ll miss you,” she conceded.
“Me too,” I said, before watching her drive off.
I returned to my table and ordered another cappuccino. I took out a small notebook and began to write.
May 23, 1968
I have been taken with the differences in circumstances and personalities between the Daphne iterations. However, what I failed to observe until today were the differences in destiny. It is impossible not to notice the striking difference between Stony Brook Daphne, who has struggle and freedom ahead of her, and Galen’s Daphne, who has a life of comfort and confinement mapped out already. Destiny is so mysterious. Even with the opportunity to follow four separate existences of the same person, I can’t locate the mechanism that creates these separate destinies. They seem random and to occur by chance. The other possibility is some kind of deterministic universe/s in which these paths are prefabricated. This second possibility, while plausible, does not seem probable.
Daphne’s admission about her life with Galen changed my assessment of their relationship. Reality was always doing that, wasn’t it? Splintering off in a prismatic way when we learned something new or saw something from a new angle. I didn’t need Hugh Everett III to explain that to me. The Schrödinge
r girls presented me with too many mysteries to contemplate. Beyond the deepest problem of their existences, they raised questions about personality and destiny I just couldn’t answer at all.
Chapter Twenty-Three
* * *
Seeing two Schrödinger girls in the same day elated me. They were absolutely real. Every time I listened to someone else and doubted their existences, I was plunged once again into self-doubt. If they weren’t real, I was crazy. If I was crazy, I had no basis for my life at all. But if they were real, my perceptions were real, and my life was built on solid ground. The only problem now was my estrangement from Caroline.
Since I’d visited Caroline in the gallery and been so rude, we’d barely spoken. I had dialed half her number and then hung up so many times that it had almost become a regular part of my day. Occasionally I called the gallery, let it ring until she answered, and then hung up. Sometimes I waited for her to answer just for the pleasure of hearing her contralto voice. Once I even identified myself, but she dismissed me. I didn’t blame her. Sometimes I was on the verge of renouncing Daphne just to have Caroline back in my life, in my arms, in my bed, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it stick.
Things seemed to be transforming all over the world. In early May, Paris had erupted in student uprisings. And also in Paris in May, formal talks began to end the Vietnam War, though I didn’t believe anything would come of them. Before Daphne, I would have taken sides against the Parisian students and trusted the government to do the right thing, but that naïveté was gone now. Time magazine had called my generation the Silent Generation, too young for the big war. Now some of us were making noise, but King, just a year older than I was, had died for speaking up.
I tried not to go numb again. Slivers of hope flashed in the campaigns of Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy, who both promised to end the horrid war. I was just so tired of seeing children burned by napalm and soldiers with guns to their heads every night on the evening news. Without Daphne, perhaps I’d still be oblivious to these realities. I had followed that yellow rain slicker out of my postwar apathy.