“I can’t,” she said.
Mark was quiet for a while, and she could feel his eyes boring into her. She could feel him discarding question after question, but he didn’t say anything.
“Don’t you think it’s weird that I never talk about my past?” Kate found herself speaking, not even knowing where the words were coming from. She was surprised at how calm she felt. “Don’t you think it’s weird that I never ask about your family? That we’re just existing now, that there’s no past or future—”
“Speak for yourself,” said Mark, his voice gentler. “I’ve got a future with a gorgeous astronaut. Oh, come on, you can smile. I swear I won’t tell anyone.” He sighed, and Kate could see his anger leaving him. “I don’t know what you mean. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
Kate didn’t know what to tell him. “I’m your best friend, and I’ve never asked you your father’s name.”
“My father’s a jerk.”
“That’s not the point. I should have asked. We should ask each other. We should just ask, and then we should tell each other the truth. We should talk about our pasts and tell each other everything we know, everything we remember.”
Mark squatted in front of her, and it wasn’t until he touched her face that she realized he was wiping tears away. “What happened?” he asked, and it was soft.
“Nothing.”
“That’s a lie.”
He was right. Lying was normal to her. She didn’t know how to tell the truth. She didn’t even know what the truth was. She was afraid of it, afraid that all around her, every other person had one real story about their origin and destination. She knew she craved this and she also knew she’d have no idea what to do with such a vision of herself. All she wanted to do was run; she didn’t want to have to think anymore. She also knew that even if she could come up with a clear sense of where she’d come from, there’d be no way to explain it to Mark. There was just too much. Too many words. Sobs overtook her.
Mark sat down on the floor next to her, bringing his arm around her back so she could lean on his shoulder. “Was it Samuel?” he asked.
Of course it was and it wasn’t. Samuel, and what he believed, and what he’d said, and what she’d hoped about him, well, all of that was unthinkable. All Kate could do was cry.
“We’ll figure it out,” said Mark. “You know I’d do anything for you, don’t you? Rob banks and conve-nience stores? Enter a life of crime? I’ll even be angry at Samuel if that’s what it takes.” Kate decided to let Mark have that. To let him believe it was as simple as all that, that her heart was that easy to break, and that Mark would have the power to fix it. Soon enough he’d find out otherwise. She burrowed her head into Mark’s shoulder and let him hug her, gently, let him remind her she was herself. She knew, even as she closed her eyes and settled into sleeping, that she was planning something he wouldn’t understand.
MYLA AND I CALL DAVID AT his office at the college. She lets me hold the receiver and talk into the talking part even though it’s so heavy in my hand. She tells me what to say when David picks up the phone.
“We don’t like Leslie,” she whispers. So I say it too and then David speaks back.
“You two need to stop worrying about Leslie and start taking care of yourselves.”
Myla has her head pushed hard against my ear so she can hear everything he says. “Stop pushing,” I tell her and then she pinches me in the arm and whispers, “He doesn’t know I’m here. Just repeat what I say.” So I nod yes. Then she whispers, “How can you know how great she’s supposed to be if you’re never home for dinner anyway?” so I say the same and then David is quiet.
“Listen, Pru, I know that Myla’s right there, so can you just hand the phone over to her?” I try, but Myla moves away from the phone like we’re pretending it’s poison. She points to it over and over and mouths, “TALK,” with wide eyes, so I put the phone back up to my ear. I can’t think of anything to say, though, so I just breathe. “Pru?” David says.
“Mhmmm,” I say.
“Hang up the phone and tell Myla we can talk about this when I get home.”
Myla breathes on my other ear and whispers, “Ask him when he’ll be home and make it sound like you’re little and helpless.” I stick my tongue out at her, but I still do it.
I make my voice a tiny bit sad. I say, “But Daddy, when will you be home?”
And then he says something that makes Myla mad. “Tell her the daddy trick doesn’t work on me. Tell her that you’re only four and she shouldn’t use you like this. I’m hanging up now. Don’t call me back—I have student conferences all afternoon. Love you, Pru.” And then the phone is blank from sound. It makes an empty note in my ear.
Myla glares at me, but she can’t think of anything mean to say. I want to tell her that I like Leslie, that she smells like patchouli and grown-up-girl things like shampoo and lotion and new clothes. Myla hates Leslie for one reason only: Leslie isn’t David. She makes up other reasons sometimes: that Leslie probably wouldn’t know what to do if one of us broke an arm, that Leslie sometimes smells like she’s been smoking and what kind of example is that, that Leslie obviously doesn’t care about our nutritional health because who do I know who makes chicken cutlets and mac and cheese for dinner and doesn’t even include a vegetable?
Now Myla goes outside to ride her bike around the block. I don’t even have a two-wheeler with training wheels yet, and my tricycle isn’t fast enough to catch her. She doesn’t have to tell me I’m not allowed to come. Instead I go sit with Leslie. She’s on the porch reading a magazine. On hot days like this, she makes iced tea from a yellow round can and she braids my hair. We sing all the verses we can remember from “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” She gives me her bracelet made out of hemp. Myla passes us every five minutes and glares at us from her bike seat until she’s out of sight again. Eventually she gets bored and comes and has iced tea too. And then things feel good again. I know Leslie will go somewhere sometime, away from me, and I won’t know her anymore, and probably someone else who smells like her and likes the same things will sit on this porch and be the same kind of person to me. For some reason, that makes me feel happy. Because even when things change, they’ll be the same for us, for Myla and me. We’ll both of us be floating, together, with different people holding us to the ground by our ankles. The air around us will feel fine. We’ll remind each other who we are.
KATE SCOTT ENTERED HER small room in the basement of the library knowing it would be the last time. In her five years here, this room with its one lamp and sturdy old desk—so heavy she’d never been able to move it against any of the four walls—had been the only home of which she’d been sure. On weekend mornings, soon after the first librarian propped open the set of doors to signal a new day of studying, Kate would clip through the halls, seeking the quiet. She’d move swiftly past the girls whispering by the copiers, the boy spreading out his papers on a long oak table. Until recently, the research had opened up a sharp clean force inside her that kept her happier than anything else. Heading like an arrow toward this room, Kate would shed her demands on herself, knowing that soon the room around her would lend strength to her brain. She’d grip her key and her hands would warm in anticipation of the clicked lock. Finally inside, she’d descend into the safe depths of analytical thought. Her retreat.
She couldn’t help imagining the room literally carved out of the earth, constructed with the spines of books, held up internally by thought itself. She’d lock her door and her brain would at last let go, loosen itself within the cell’s cool silence. In this room she didn’t need a name or a body or food or conversation. Before Samuel, she’d relied solely on her thoughts, believing they were all she needed. Each weekend they blossomed and made the cold walls pulse with color and sound and ideas. Then, at the end of every day, she’d pack up her books and papers and pens. She’d pack up her mind, cramming in everything she’d discovered, in much the same way she might command a sleeping bag back
into its sack. Every time this seemed to be an impossible task, but until Samuel, she’d always managed to do it.
She looked around the room in which she’d found divine comfort. The medievalist was medieval. She knew she’d chosen to study men like Theodorus and Tundal not simply because she admired their minds, but because she admired their lives. These men lived in monkish simplicity, their minds burning with a life their bodies didn’t share. But now, looking around the room where she’d spent so many blissful solitary hours, she knew the similarities between the monks and her were more superficial than she’d believed. Those men had been able to leave behind the world, and had delved into their work because of a steadfast and unwavering belief in God. But Kate believed in nothing but the act of work itself, and that had gotten her into trouble. Because it had been easy to stray from this work, easy to be distracted by the likes of Samuel Blake. Medieval monks were rewarded with ecstatic visions, and she had nothing of the sort.
Now that she knew what she was planning, the room felt different, smelled different. The walls were cool, but this time they were nothing more than walls. She wanted to leave the room empty so that no one would expect anything of it. She wanted it still to be hers, and the only way to do that would be to leave it with nothing of hers in it, nothing for anyone to interrogate. Only Mark knew that this room was truly her home. When they came to pick it apart, he wouldn’t be surprised to learn she’d thoroughly emptied it.
She didn’t let herself think about Samuel, or what he’d believe once she’d gone away. He’d lost the privilege of claiming any real estate in her mind. She’d told herself this over and over again, ever since she’d heard Ruth Handel’s name pass over his lips. Samuel Blake was unthinkable.
And then Kate, standing for the last time in her cool dark basement room, realized that perhaps Samuel was unthinkable simply because she had no one to help her think. Perhaps it was the familiar woody smell of wet spring earth moistening outside the basement walls that made Kate long in a deep, gaping way for what she’d been wanting all along: her father’s brain. David would have been able to explain Samuel’s ignorance and unintentional cruelty in words that she could understand. For a moment she imagined how extraordinary it would be to speak to David right then. He’d been the first person to teach her how to think, yet somewhere along the way, she’d lost him. Lost the thoughts he’d given her. Knowing this, Kate remembered why she loved this room. She let her mind cast back.
David had a room like this in his library too. She remembered the girl students smiling at her when he led her down through the carrels and the stacks. She thought she had to be so quiet; someone must have told her that the library was not a place to make noise or laugh or even crack a smile. So even while David nodded to students and spoke to a passing colleague, she kept her eyes turned as far down as she could and watched her quiet feet passing over tile. This must have been when her mother was alive, because Kate was so small she had to look up to the door handle, and because there was no shadow of worry at the back of her thinking. David was popping in to get something he’d left in his room. She’d probably been strapped onto his bicycle, and he knew he couldn’t leave her outside.
Tiny streams of light cobbled down over his desk. She knew it was a desk only because she saw the shape of it, but every part of the tiny room was filled with paper and envelopes and folders and books. It smelled smart. It smelled of thinking and being full of words that made your body grow strong. The light folded over the edges of all of David’s grown-up things, of all the things she knew really mattered to him, and it made her long to stay there all afternoon. She wanted to have the words to say to her father, “Sit down and let me watch you work. That’s all I want today, to watch.” But she knew this was strange. She knew she couldn’t even read yet. She knew she wanted these reams smoothing underneath her fingers, she wanted the tree roots curled outside David’s window to part the light for her, she wanted to stand inside the smell of these papers and understand what the smell meant. Words. She wanted them to love her.
Sometime then David must have closed the door. They must have strapped themselves back onto his bicycle and left the library behind them. She realized now, standing in her own emptied room, that some people must look at such a memory and think, “That’s when I knew what I wanted to do.” For her, it was bigger. That was when she knew who she was, her very being defined by the swell of her own mind. Strapped behind her father, hurtling across campus on a spring morning, her hand must have waved through the air, over and over, a physical chant of the promise her life would be. She was the luckiest person alive. She knew the world and it welcomed her.
chapter three
kate was early to her gate, and unlike the man sitting kitty corner to her, she didn’t feel like sleeping. She didn’t feel like reading either; every time she looked at a book, she recognized the enormity of what she’d just done. She’d left the semester with three full weeks to go, simply walked out on her classes. She hadn’t told anyone she was going, didn’t even leave a cat for someone to feed. Just left. She would lose her job. Guilt and terror tugged in her when she realized she’d fled her carefully constructed life; at the same time, it made her want to whoop with liberation.
In her bag was a ticket she’d bought with the flight coupons Marcus Berger had sent. The moment she’d heard Samuel utter Ruth’s name, she’d felt herself flooding with shock; when she’d heard what he said, she was sick with panic. In the past, getting drunk had provided some solace when she’d felt such terror. After each episode, she’d been provided with concrete worries—was she a drunk? did she need help?—and those concrete worries would successfully distract her from thinking about ancient history.
There was a bustle over by the check-in desk, as men and women in brightly colored uniforms smiled at each approaching passenger. How simple all their movements were. The three clerks joked, tilting their heads from side to side, printing out tickets, assisting every distressed and needy flier. They belonged to each other, and what she felt was envy. Who would have predicted that one day she’d be sitting in an airport longing to be a gate attendant so she could feel she was part of something that mattered?
She had twenty-five minutes before boarding, time enough to worry whether she’d done the right thing, specifically in terms of Mark. She’d contemplated asking him to come with her, to leave school behind, to join her in her quest, but she hadn’t known where to begin. He didn’t even know who she was. She wanted to simply skip to Portland, to see him there, where everything began. See him as herself, and then he would understand.
Instead of offering him an explanation, she’d simply left. She hadn’t even said goodbye, and she knew this would hurt him. So she took the two letters out of her bag to read them once again. She’d mail them on the other side, in the other airport, so Mark could have a postmark that would prove she’d gone where she said she’d gone. Maybe that would put his mind at ease.
Samuel—
Did you have any idea who I really am? If you did, if what we shared was just part of some sick game you were playing, then you aren’t even worth wasting these words on. If you didn’t, then my God, you are the stunningly common combination of intellectual snob and weak scholar. I thought I admired your ideas, but now I can see they’re based not on research or on reason but on whim and theoretical notions of how people “are.” How’s this: instead of expounding on other people’s lives, try getting one of your own. Climb down from your ivory tower, and you’ll find it’s a lot less cut-and-dried for the rest of us.
She put the letter back in its envelope and back into her bag, then turned to the tender letter, the one she’d tried to make as uncowardly as possible.
Dear Mark,
My name is not Kate Scott. My name is Myla Rose Wolfe. I am the elder sister of the Ruth Handel girls, and if you don’t understand what that means, ask Samuel. I’m sure he’ll be pleased to explain his version of the whole story.
I was eighteen when my
family died: my sister and my father, within months of each other. I had two choices: die myself or change who I was. I can’t explain it any better than that—I know, me, at a loss for words—but that’s the best I can do. I transferred schools and forced my way through academia. I changed my name along the way to the most innocuous, unremarkable one I could find.
I’ve realized recently that this plan isn’t going to work anymore. I’m broken. Until I figure out how I’m broken, I can’t be a friend to anyone. So I’m going home, Mark. To Portland, Oregon.
I’m sorry for the mess I’ve made. I hope you can forgive all my lying. You’re all the family I have. That doesn’t mean you owe me anything; I just wanted you to know.
Don’t worry.
Love,
Myla
They were calling Myla’s row as she folded the letter into thirds, stuck it back into the envelope for the last time, and licked the flap shut. She was crying, but the tears were caused by the simplest thing. She’d written her name. Her real name. Myla. And now she was going home.
WE SING PAUL SIMON WITH David, we sing Odetta, the Supremes, Gilbert and Sullivan, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Armstrong. We sing songs people think I shouldn’t know. David pops the needle down on each record and Myla knows all the words. She knows all the harmonies, and she and David teach me to sing the straight tune, the regular part, so she can make chords and play with each song. I never get to sing harmony, except when Myla is at soccer or we’ve dropped her off at a friend’s and it’s just me and David in the car, then he lets me sing harmony. Then he says, “Pru, you take it!” and the first thing out of my mouth is singing.
Bedtime is best, though. Usually we’ll put on a record and dance around the house, washing dishes and sweeping up the floor in the kitchen when it’s covered with onion paper and potato peels and pieces of zucchini. I have a little red broom that my mother had when she was a little girl. We keep it in the closet next to the fridge. The record will be on loud, and it will already be nine or nine-thirty even and then David will look at us and say, “It’s nine? Why didn’t you girls remind me about bed?” and that makes us laugh. He picks me up and helps me put the broom away. Even he knows the bedtime comment is a joke, even he knows all the pretend he makes about being a dad kind of man is silly. He’s a dad in all the ways that matter, even if they’re not about bedtime.
The Effects of Light Page 4