For one long moment, Amy counted her blessings.
Then she tied her hair into a ponytail with a rubber band she found conveniently on the floor.
She walked back outside and put on her sneakers where she’d left them on the steps so many days before, a life and a half ago. She hadn’t run since Dan supposedly went to Boston, and her shoes had been moldering outside all that time.
She did a little ballet stretch, using the handrail as a barre, and then bounced up and down on her toes, listening to her ankles crack, trying to psych herself up. The stars had begun to sparkle against the darkening evening sky.
“Amy,” Dan said. “We need to talk.”
She turned around, and there he was. Her husband. He had been her husband for twenty-something years. He was standing in the doorway.
Somehow this struck her as funny. She started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” said Dan. He closed the door behind him and stood at the top of the steps, looking down at her.
“Nothing.” Amy laughed. “Only you, Dan, you. You want to talk. What’s there to talk about? You lied to me and the kids and you ran away with another woman. I don’t think there’s anything to talk about. I think you should pack your things and get in your car and go.”
“I don’t want to go,” said Dan.
“You don’t have a choice,” said Amy. “I’m throwing you out of the house.”
“It’s my house, too,” said Dan.
“Not anymore,” said Amy. “You gave up that right.”
“I did not,” said Dan. “I made a mistake and I want to make it up to you.”
“That’s a joke,” said Amy, but she wasn’t laughing now. In fact, she was dead serious. “Pack your things and go.” She repeated herself.
“I won’t,” said Dan. “I have nowhere to go to.”
“Go to your girlfriend’s house.”
“No,” said Dan. “Besides, I don’t see my car.”
Amy looked at the carport. For a minute, she’d forgotten that she’d forgotten the car.
“I left it at the Chois’.”
“Have you been there all this time?”
“None of your business, Dan. You don’t tell me where you go; I don’t tell you where I go.”
She started to jog in place, warming up her calves and thighs. She wanted to run. She wanted to run as far away as she could from him. She would leave this world if she had to, just to get away from him.
Dan said:
“I didn’t go to Japan, I went to Boston.”
“I needed to get away.”
“I needed to find a job.”
“I hiked the Appalachian Trail.”
“I didn’t mean to fall in love.”
“I wanted to fall in love.”
“She’s got me up and moving. She makes me feel alive.”
Amy was dizzy with his multiple realities; she was trying to escape all of them.
In one, she said: “That’s interesting, because I am up and moving, and I basically keep you alive.”
“I love you,” said Dan. “I’ve always loved you.”
She thought he said that, or maybe she just could not follow the conversation. She simply could not keep track of all his decisions and declarations, his truths and lies, all the alternatives and alterations.
While Dan talked, Amy could hear him and see him, but she couldn’t record what she heard and saw. It was as if what she heard and saw passed right through her.
She wanted to run. She wanted to run, run, run into the bluest night. If she let him in she would have to stay and listen, so she let the words fly by, but still she stood there dreaming.
“I love her, not you,” Dan said.
“I don’t think I ever loved you,” Dan said.
“You’re my best friend, I need you to help me figure it out. No one understands me like you do.”
“It was a fling; it didn’t mean anything.”
“It was just sex.”
“We’re a family. I want to preserve our family.”
“I’ve been depressed. I’ve been out of work. A man needs to have work to feel vital and alive.”
“We should both think of the children.”
“I think the children should come first.”
“I’m torn between my love for her and my love for the children.”
What about me? screamed Amy. What about me? Aren’t you torn by your love for me? she screamed at him in the seclusion of her mind.
“I went with her to Japan,” Dan said, “but nothing inappropriate happened between us.”
“I think we’re onto something big with this story,” Dan said.
Maybe he said that. Who knew? Who cared?
“I would never risk my marriage.”
“I’m a happily married man.”
“Our marriage is over.”
“I am attached to you.”
“I am motherfucking attached to you.”
There were tears now, this time. Whatever planet they were on. Whatever universe. Her husband of twenty-something years was crying in his beer.
They were separated by a million miles.
But then Dan reached out his hand. He said, “Amy, come back inside. I love you. I love the kids. I’m sorry I hurt you. If I could take it back I probably would. Even though in a way it was good for me. Even if in a way it was also good for us. But I want to make this work. More than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. You’re my wife. I love you. Please. Please. Come with me.”
His hand was outstretched. Amy could see it from the other side.
Out of the solid wall of night, Squidward erupted, dashing past her in a blur of fiery fur and muscle. Where had he been all this time? He circled through the carport, and like a bolt of lightning streaked down the block. Instantly, he was a dark shadow on the corner, his eyes glinting an unholy red under the haze of the streetlight, waiting for her, for Amy, to join him.
She could smell the eucalyptus.
This is what I have instead of heroin, Amy thought. I can run.
She looked up at Dan. She looked at his hand.
His face was flushed with hope.
“I hate you, Dan,” said Amy.
His head snapped to the side, as if she had reached out and slapped him. Still his hand stayed outstretched, waiting for her.
“But, apparently,” said Amy, “I have also loved you infinitely.”
The words hung in the air between them.
“Me, too,” said Dan.
She climbed up the steps, and although she didn’t take his hand, she opened the door for him. And then Amy followed her husband back inside their house.
Author’s Note
MY FEARS about and obsession with the Internet have no bounds. Like my character Dan Messinger, I often find myself looking up a tiny fact online and reemerging into the world hours later, enraged, enraptured, sometimes spent, and in need of an intellectual shower, dizzy with information. This book is a work of fiction, but it was heavily researched—a Gordian knot of fact and fantasy. One of the blessings of my job as fiction chair at the MFA program at the New School is access to brilliant young writers, some of whom have worked with me as research assistants over the years and some of whom just fed me great information. Many thanks to Ben Hurst, Jaclyn Alexander, Stephanie Danler, Rebekah Bergman, Alan W. Holt, Catherine Bloomer, KrisAnne Madaus (who taught me the term “balayage,” among a thousand other things), Michaelene Meinhardt, and Yasmin Zaher.
When I started this novel, even I didn’t know what I was writing about, except that I was haunted by the tragedies that befell the people of Fukushima, Japan, after the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown in 2011. My students fed me a steady diet of research from dead-tree publications and a million and one Internet sites (some more reliable than others). Rebekah Bergman interviewed Norman Kleiman of Columbia University’s School of Public Health, who answered some of our questions regarding radiation exposure. Thank you, Dr. Kleiman. Thank you (b
ut no thank you) to Tepco, the Japanese utility company overseeing the cleanup at Fukushima, whose website was useful to me even if their efforts on the ground have been lacking. Thank you, Al Jazeera and Eric Lafforgue, for your photo-essay “Fukushima’s Surfers Riding on Radioactive Waves.” Thank you, the Mercury News, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Stanford Daily, the Japan Times, Mother Jones, the Guardian, the New York Times, and the Washington Post (particularly for an article written by Ariana Cha, “Tech Titans Defying Death”). Thank you, Google. Thank you, Trip Advisor. A shout-out to Yelp. Quora! Wikipedia and the hive mind! Conspiracy theorists! Thank you, Renegade Writer. Dan Boeckman. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Google Earth. I tried wherever possible within the narrative of this story to integrate and cite my sources.
Thirty-some years of visiting the Stanford campus, where my husband grew up, and a long-ago tour of Google Mountain View (thank you, Leslie Leland) gave birth to my fascination with Silicon Valley culture. I am indebted to Walter Isaacson and his biography of Steve Jobs. As a fiction writer, there are all these crazy, streaming, invented narratives that are forever playing out inside my head. Max Tegmark’s book Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality finally gave me a name for this that didn’t imply madness: multiverse theory. It also gave me the governing idea for this book. Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley by Antonio García Martínez was also a terrific tech-industry resource. Hannah Rosin’s article “The Suicide Clusters at Palo Alto High Schools” in the Atlantic helped me to understand the sad contagion that colored my niece’s and nephews’ experiences growing up in Palo Alto. I spent many hours searching blogs, high school newspapers, and community newsletters for information regarding the emotional cost of the loss of these young lives.
My character Yoshi Hibayashi was inspired by a video produced by Vice on Naoto Matsumura, a man who returned to his home in the no-go zone in Japan to take care of his abandoned animals and stayed; just like my character does. But to be clear, Yoshi is fictive; Naoto Matsumura is not. Similarly, I had a profound artistic crush on a photographer who took analogous photos and videos to the ones my character Maryam did in an exhibition that preceded her trip to Japan. Again, Maryam is purely fictive and is not meant to represent anyone living or dead in any manner.
I am very grateful to the Aspen Institute, specifically Aspen Words, its director Adrienne Brodeur, and the Catto Shaw Foundation for providing me with a monthlong residence in Woody Creek, Colorado. I don’t think I’ve ever been more productive than during that glorious stay. Isa Catto and Daniel Shaw, I will never forget your hospitality and kindness.
This book was profoundly shaped by the intelligence, wit, meticulousness, patience, and care of my editor Jennifer Barth. Anyone who says, “Nobody line-edits anymore” has not met the divine Jennifer. Sloan Harris has been my literary agent for over twenty years; more, he is my friend, confidant, coach, truth-teller, and has stood steadfastly by my side through so much. I have tears in my eyes while writing this.
I am ever grateful to the cast and crew at the New School for their support and friendship. Thank you, lifelong friend and photographer Denise Bosco, for the gentleness of your lens and the generosity of your spirit. My civilian (i.e., not writers) mental health team: Joan Aguado, Eve Evans, Melissa Katz, Steve Lipman, and Natalie K. Fisher. There are no words to thank you for your support all these many years.
Finally, to the West Coast Handys, in all their iterations, thank you for making California my second home. As for the East Coast Handys, my squad: in-house editor, Bruce, and our children, Zoe and Isaac. You fill my days with light and love. I’m so honored that you continue to put up with me.
About the Author
HELEN SCHULMAN writes fiction, nonfiction, and screenplays. Her most recent novel, This Beautiful Life, was a New York Times bestseller. She is a professor of writing and the fiction chair at the MFA program at the New School. She lives in New York City with her family.
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Also by Helen Schulman
This Beautiful Life
A Day at the Beach
P.S.
The Revisionist
Out of Time
Not a Free Show
Wanting a Child (coedited with Jill Bialosky)
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
COME WITH ME. Copyright © 2018 by Helen Schulman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Brenda Shaughnessy, excerpt from “Drift” from Human Dark with Sugar. Copyright © 2008 by Brenda Shaughnessy. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.
FIRST EDITION
Cover design by Richard Ljoenes
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schulman, Helen.
Come with me : a novel / Helen Schulman.
p. cm.
1. Fiction—Family life. 2. Fiction—Psychological.
PS3569.C5385 C66 2018
813′.54—dc23
2018043839
* * *
Digital Edition NOVEMBER 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-245915-2
Version 10192018
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-245913-8
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