Dare to Know

by James Kennedy

  “He plays the what?”

  “You know. The scribbleboard. In his band.”

  Erin and I glanced at each other, Erin with dawning delight.

  I said, “The scribbleboard?”

  Erin said, “Yeah, uh, could you fill us in on his scribbleboard technique?”

  “I don’t know how he does it, he just starts playing and…” Gregory made some awkward flailing movements with his hands that corresponded with no possible musical instrument. “You know? It’s incredible.”

  I began to say, “What’s a scribbleboard?” but Erin squeezed my hand as if to say, Let it be. Let the scribbleboard remain a mystery forever beyond our grasp.

  But we had warmed Gregory up. He was just getting started.

  “And that’s Greg,” he said, nodding at someone else. “He’s writing a—”

  “I thought you were Greg,” said Erin.

  “I’m Gregory,” he said, offended. “That’s Craig.”

  “I thought you said Greg.” Oh no, was Gregory a misguided comic doing a shitty who’s-on-first? But no, he seemed utterly sincere.

  “Craig is writing a children’s book about Plato’s cave.” Gregory took in our wide-eyed reactions and added, “I guess you don’t know much about Plato’s cave.”

  A merry glance from Erin: Please give him rope.

  I forced myself to lie. “Not really.”

  “Not a lot of people do,” said Gregory graciously. “Well, Craig’s book essentially turns Plato’s cave inside out. Pretty much blows Plato out of the water.”

  Erin was so game. “Oh, but what’s Plato’s cave?”

  “Basically Philosophy 101, essentially,” said Gregory, more comfortable now that he had something to explain. “Like, there’s a cave, right?”

  Here we go. “Uh-huh.”

  “And there are people stuck in the cave—they’ve been in the cave since they were babies, they’ve never left, it’s fucked up, they’re chained there, they don’t ask why. Do you get it so far?”

  I couldn’t believe I was enduring this undergraduate conversation. “Yes.”

  “These people have been chained in the cave ever since they were children. That’s what I was trying to tell you,” Gregory added irritably, as though we had been resisting him all along. “And the way these prisoners are chained up in the cave, they can’t even look at each other. They can’t look anywhere but at this one wall. And behind these prisoners is a fire, and between the fire and the prisoners, puppeteers walk by carrying puppets of things, shapes of lions or trees or humans, whatever, and the fire makes the puppets cast shadows on the wall, so the prisoners see shadows of puppets of lions or trees or humans. Those shadows are the only reality the prisoners know—get it? They’re stuck looking at that one wall.

  It’s their whole world. They never see a real lion, they only see the shadow of a lion puppet, not even the shadow of an actual lion…”

  Gregory trailed off, as though he was losing his own thread.

  Erin put in helpfully, “And so that’s supposed to be a metaphor of the human condition. We never see real things as they truly are. We’re just prisoners looking at the shadows of fakes.”

  “What? Oh…Yeah, I guess.” Every time Erin spoke, Gregory reacted as though he had just noticed her for the first time and acknowledged her in only the most backhanded way. “So anyway, even if one of those prisoners were to break their chains, and escape that cave, and see a real lion, and come back and tell the other prisoners about it, the others would think he was crazy because what they know is a lion is just that shadow on the wall. But here’s the mindblower, here’s the real mindblower, are you ready?”

  Erin moved in close to him. “Gregory, give me the mindblower.”

  “Okay, but it’s not even my idea, it’s Craigory’s.”

  “I thought you said it was Craig.”

  “That’s short for Craigory,” said Gregory impatiently, and even though Erin was enjoying egging this guy on, he had to be messing with us now. We’d asked for a cast of characters, and so now he was giving it to us: Gregory, Greg, and Craig-I-mean-Craigory. I could see this guy going all night, using his improv skills to make up a Russian novel’s worth of fake people to fuck with us, each with a dumber life story than the last. My hand on her elbow, I indicated to Erin I wanted to leave Gregory and do something else.

  Erin preferred not to take the hint.

  “So what is Craigory’s idea?” she said to Gregory. “His book, I mean?”

  “It tells the story of Plato’s cave, yeah,” said Gregory. “But here’s the thing, though. It tells it from the point of view of the shadows.”

  I repeated patiently, “From the point of view of the shadows.”

  “Exactly. Plato got it wrong. It took Craigory to get it right.”

  Erin bit her lip. This was right up her alley. She cherished the ridiculous things she overheard her students say, the ignorant boasts in the cafeteria of anatomically impossible sexual acts, the pompous phrases from unhinged letters sent anonymously to the teachers by a boy who signed himself only as the “Foggy Weiner,” and countless other absurd kid sayings. I was sure that the phrase It took Craigory to get it right had just entered Erin’s lexicon.

  “Look, who’s the real hero of Plato’s cave?” Gregory went on, gaining steam. “It’s not the puppeteers, obviously. It’s not the prisoners forced to watch the shadows either. It’s not even the guy who escapes the cave and sees reality. The real heroes are the shadows on the wall. Because those shadows naturally want to escape the cave and become the things they’re the shadows of, right? The shadows want to become real! The shadow of the lion wants to escape the cave and become a real lion. The trees want to become real trees. And so on. That’s the real story.”

  “I get it,” said Erin encouragingly. “It’s like Pinocchio wanting to be a real boy.”

  Gregory stared at her with baffled distaste, as though she’d totally misinterpreted him.

  I was definitely finished with Gregory. It was then that I realized that the music had stopped inside, and had been stopped for a while. Maybe there was a change of DJ, or some rowdy drunk had stumbled into the turntables and knocked them over, or something.

  “What’s happening in there?” I asked.

  “The music stopped,” observed Gregory, brilliantly.

  “Sounds like an opportunity,” said Erin. “What if your friend Nate busted out the old scribbleboard?”

  “As if.” Gregory looked at the wedding crowd ruefully. “They’d never get it.”

  “So anyway,” someone said, and I turned and saw it was Keith, fresh off the dance floor in his sweat-soaked dress shirt, red-faced. “Someone spilled beer on Seth’s laptop but Matt says he can get his—oh hey, I haven’t said hi to you yet, I’m so glad you could make it, man!”

  We did the introductions. I guess Julia had told Keith about me a little.

  As the names and hellos went back and forth, Gregory’s eyes widened. His manner changed into something intense.

  Gregory gripped my arm. Hard.

  “Hey,” said Gregory. “Make sure you remember what I said.”

  “What?”

  “Okay, Gregory,” Keith said with a chuckle, gently trying to disengage him from me.

  Gregory wouldn’t let go of my arm. “You’re gonna remember what I said though, right?”

  “Okay, I’ll remember.” I laughed too until I looked in Gregory’s eyes and saw something so desperate it stopped me.

  There was no music. The rain had ceased. Conversation had died down. For a moment it felt like the patio had emptied, like there was nobody in the world but me and the suddenly crazed Gregory and I didn’t know if he was about to punch me, or throw up on me, or start crying—

  “Hey Gregory,” said Keith, a little more firmly. “Let’s get you inside. Get you
a glass of water.”

  The desperate look drained out of Gregory’s eyes. He seemed bewildered, as though he’d just woken up. Keith began to steer Gregory away, mouthing something apologetic to me. Erin looked a little guilty—oh no, had we been subtly mocking some guy who actually had, like, diagnosed mental problems? Erin grimaced and followed Gregory and Keith into the house on the off chance she might be helpful. I had been standing there for a minute or so when Julia finally made it over to me, looking exhausted and happy.

  “Having fun?” she said. “You look lost.”

  “Oh no, it’s been great, I was just talking to Gregory about Craigory.”

  Julia looked confused. “Who?”

  “I made friends with Gregory? He was telling me about Craigory, who’s writing a kids’ book?” I said, and when Julia looked at me like I was the crazy one, I stupidly went on to say, “And Nate? The scribbleboard player?”

  Julia stared at me blankly.

  Shit! Why did it have to get this awkward this quickly? Julia had the expectant smile of someone who really hopes a punchline is coming so she could at least have a pretext to politely laugh, to defuse the social tension. But I had nothing.

  “Oh,” she finally said.

  Didn’t Julia know her own guests? I guess Gregory had been messing with us after all. I looked around the patio, the milling groups of sweaty dancers who came out to smoke, the guffawing dudes, their patient dates, the sweetly irrelevant older family members, the little kid cousins darting around, intent on their own manic games. I turned back to Julia in her wedding dress.

  She was looking at me quizzically, maybe a little suspiciously.

  Her familiar face, those sharp eyes, the peculiar way her lip turned—

  Oh no, no, no.

  Because the truth hit me then, it hit me unexpectedly and overwhelmingly, I had come today thinking I would pity Julia and her dopey groom and her rinky-dink wedding, but I shouldn’t have come, and not only because it was impossible for me to simply smile at our old relationship like we were merely two veterans who could mildly reminisce about our shared time in arms together—the faint image I had in my mind of Julia was utterly fucking swept away, stupid shit, because I was near the actuality of Julia right now, the half-disappointing, half-thrilling reality of her voice, the specific redness of her hair, her slightly crooked teeth, her soft smell, even the simple fact of her being three and a half inches shorter than me, it all erotically floored me.

  I wanted us to leave this wedding.

  Together. Right now.

  So, so stupid.

  “I guess all this isn’t quite what you expected,” I managed to say, my tone all wrong.

  Julia gave a brittle, defensive smile. “What does that mean?”

  Fuck! I’d overstepped, I didn’t mean that, it sounded like I implied her wedding was tacky. Well, I did think it was…Pull up, asshole, pull up! “Well, you know—the thunderstorm.”

  Julia relaxed but still eyed me without trust. “Oh, yeah, well…It’s clearing up.”

  Compliments, pour on the compliments. “What you did with the backyard is beautiful.”

  “That’s all Keith.”

  We both looked out at the yard, at what could have been. To be fair, Keith had fixed it up amazingly well, at least before the rain came bucketing down: paper lanterns strung overheard, a bride-and-groom archway of thick crooked branches lashed together and tied with wildflowers, tulle and luminarias down the aisle, string lights wrapping up the trees, and repurposed rustic items like wheelbarrows, watering cans, etc. Keith had an eye, I’ll give him that. Is that part of what Julia saw in him?

  As if to answer me, she said, “Keith and his buddies—”

  His “buddies”! Jesus.

  “—were out here all night working on this. Setting all this up was kind of his bachelor party. He likes to make things.”

  I couldn’t take it. Keith was too wholesome by half. And now he was returning, with Erin no less, and they were laughing and chatting about who knows what, certainly not the awkward conversational disaster I managed to perpetuate with Julia in less than three minutes. But soon after Keith and Erin rejoined us, we all felt the social meter running out. Erin and I could sense how Julia and Keith were beholden to other people at this wedding too. When we parted ways I knew that Julia and I probably wouldn’t get a chance to say a real good-bye later, that this was the end, the real end, and I think I held Julia’s hand a little longer than I should have, and gave her a more lingering look than was appropriate.

  What did I hope to accomplish with that?

  An hour later Erin and I left. It was starting to rain again but the party had gotten its second wind, the music situation had been fixed, and the dancing in the basement was going strong. Julia and Keith were clearly having so much fun with their friends now, their real friends. It felt intrusive for me to interrupt and tell her we were leaving, so Erin and I slipped away unannounced. We jogged across the street to my car as the rain sprinkled down. We had a hotel room in Bloomington.

  Erin said, “Wait, I left my purse in there.”

  “I’ll get it—where’d you leave it?”

  “The laundry room, on the washing machine.”

  “I remember. I’ll go get it.”

  Erin smiled. “Really?”

  Gallant me! Erin took shelter in the car as I ran back into the house, the rain pattering down faster. The easiest way to get to the laundry room was to go back in through the basement, where people were still dancing—though it was slow dancing now, and the basement was a little less crowded. I didn’t see Julia, I didn’t want to see her. I went up the stairs and into the laundry room and grabbed Erin’s purse.

  I recognized the slow song they were playing in the basement from Julia’s dad’s jukebox. I had heard that song countless times back when Julia and I lay on the fold-out bed, a Motown ballad but I forget who by, strangely sparse and eerie for Motown—a tenor falsetto warbling over the jarring chord changes, its harmonies otherworldly, the conventional romantic swoop of violins replaced by a primitive synthesizer that sounded like a buzzing robot mosquito.

  I don’t care

  Where you came

  From

  Oh no

  I don’t care

  What you’ve been

  I came down the stairs of the basement with Erin’s purse. There were just a few couples dancing around on the concrete floor, in this room of exposed drywall, but I didn’t see Julia or Keith, or really anyone else I had spoken to that night. I had heard this song a hundred times, but only when I was in college. I hadn’t heard it or even thought about it since then.

  Nothing about this song should work. The lyrics are nothing special. The lead singer seems to be singing a completely different song, only coincidentally syncing up with the rest of the band. It’s an accidental-feeling overlapping of clunky parts that shouldn’t fit together, but the thing is, the song does come together, by the skin of its teeth, its near failure making it exhilarating, the song would fall apart if just one of its many impossible-to-justify choices was different—even the droning synthesizer solo works—I halted on the basement stairs and felt a deep, disjointed shiver.

  Then came the chorus, the high weird warble of Yes—you’re—my, and then the backup singers kicking in with a ghostly coo: dream—come—true.

  Two children were sweetly and gravely slow-dancing, a little boy and a little girl. Neither of them could’ve been older than five years old. Maybe they were cousins, or best friends, but they were dancing so unselfconsciously, holding on to each other like they meant something real to each other. I saw some adults looking at the little kids and poking each other: isn’t it sweet? It was nearly ten o’clock. I wondered where these kids’ parents were. Aren’t five-year-olds usually in bed by now? But it was a wedding party, normal rules were suspended, maybe on
e of these kids even lived at this very house.

  Julia was in the basement.

  She didn’t see me. Keith was nowhere in sight.

  I was startled by her face. Maybe Julia had had a few more drinks. She watched the little boy and the little girl dance to the hypnotic song with a raw look in her eyes. I had never seen Julia look so empty. Why did these children make her look so alone?

  Yes I’ve been waiting

  For such a long, long time

  Julia saw me.

  Something passed through her eyes when she saw me. In a matter of moments her face rearranged itself to hide it. But too late. It had already happened. No takebacks. Looking at me much differently than before.

  With repulsion.

  And under it, hurt.

  As though I could keep any secrets from her.

  When did I become such an asshole?

  * * *

  —

  I was quiet driving back to Bloomington.

  In our hotel room, Erin and I got ready for bed. I turned out the light. We lay down next to each other.

  “You’re still in love with her,” she said. “Aren’t you?”

  We are always telling on ourselves.

  “I guess.”

  We lay there for a while in silence.

  “I get it,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Yeah. That’s okay.”

  I lay in the dark, not understanding Erin at all. What did that mean? Was this relaxed attitude just a function of her overall generous spirit? I couldn’t take that level of wholesomeness, goodness, forgiveness, understanding. Or was it because we were both a bit older, because we’d both been around the block a few times, we knew how the world worked, how emotions are weird and ungovernable, and she was frankly acknowledging that weirdness instead of holding me to some fake romantic ideal? Or was it because Erin and I had only just started going out and our relationship was all still a lark? That I wasn’t a serious long-term prospect, all’s fair in love and war, and so it truly didn’t matter what I felt about Julia? Or maybe it wasn’t the first time Erin took second place to someone else and she was comfortable in that position?