Something occurs to her that surely she has thought of before: the world doesn’t need her. The highest compliment you can be paid at work is that you are indispensable. We couldn’t do it without you. But of course they can always do it without you. Killian Tech is doing it without her. Her sons are doing it without her. In her world, the real world, when Silas died, the world knitted itself back together behind him, and all that was left were a few scars, nearly all of them in their house. Maybe his girlfriends were sad for a little while. Then they moved on.
Perhaps the reason she is afraid of Derek here, in this world, is that she knows he doesn’t need her. She’s seen it. He can find other people to talk to, to have sex with. So can she. His attachment to her here is superfluous: there is a part of her that wants to just get it over with, to betray him or be betrayed, to leave him or be abandoned. Because it can happen, and the fact that it hasn’t is a hanging thread, an unresolved note.
The man in her office looks up again and she realizes she has been staring at him. He is not her, looks nothing like her, but in this world, to those people, he is her. His brow is creased; he is gazing at her frankly, and with puzzlement. Elisa feels self-conscious now, and turns to go. At this moment a bus arrives, and she impulsively steps onto it.
There is a moment of frustration and embarrassment, as the bus pulls away, that she cannot find her bus pass. Indeed, it would appear that, in this life, she doesn’t have one. She smoothes out a crumpled dollar and feeds it into the cash box, then takes her seat.
This is the number 20. It goes down to the park by the lake and then out to the western edge of downtown before circling back. The air-conditioning is on high and a soft-rock radio station is playing a song by Journey. She shivers. No, she didn’t board the bus on impulse: she intended this all along.
She gets off at the main depot by the library and walks east. After three blocks, she turns south. The frame shop is the fourth building on the right, a small converted cottage, again on a residential street. From the outside it appears identical to the one she knows—cedar shakes stained a slightly artificial brown, louvered windows with gold text: AURORA FRAMING.
He’s there, standing at the main counter, a broad work table arrayed with mat board samples. Behind him, the walls are covered with frame corners. He is typing on a small laptop computer.
He looks up at her with a completely generic smile and says, “May I help you?”
Larry. He’s trim, early fifties, and an inch shorter than Elisa. Clean-shaven, with hair cropped close. He looks subtly different to her—perhaps it is his failure to recognize her. She hasn’t seen this expression on his face, one of expectant politeness, directed at her since the day they met.
Of course, here, this is the day they met.
“It’s silly, really,” she says, and hates the sound of her voice. “Maybe not worth your time.” She draws from her purse the family photo that used to stand on her desk. “I’d like this put into a decent frame.”
He takes the picture, turns it over in his hands. “Do you intend to hang it? Or stand it on a surface?”
“Hang it,” she says.
He turns it over again, as she knew he would. He is deliberate, thoughtful. This is the sort of movement that, in the old life, would quicken her breath, make her tongue find her lips to moisten them. But her body doesn’t want to catch up with her memories, not yet.
“Are you after a contemporary or more traditional look?”
“Traditional. But not gaudy.”
This makes him glance up. Or maybe he just wanted a second look at her. Another small smile, then he turns around and reaches for one, then another, frame sample. His shoulders are broad, for a small man’s, and his jeans hug his hips. He pushes some papers out of the way, removes the photo from the frame and places it on the countertop, facing Elisa. He selects a sample piece of cream-colored mat board, lays it down over the corner of the photo. Arranges a frame sample at its edge.
“This will give it a warmer look than what you had it in,” he says. “Now this…” He swaps out the mat board for a different piece, this one a pale gray. “This will complement the colors of the stones here, behind the figures.”
“Ah,” she says.
“Your family?”
“Yes.”
He looks up at her. “Handsome boys.”
“Thanks.”
“Do we know each other?”
“I’ve seen you around town.” There is a quaver in her voice. She extends her hand. “I’m Lisa.”
“Larry.”
Their palms touch, his dry, hers clammy. He holds on exactly as long as is appropriate. She says, “I like the cooler one. And the plainer frame.”
“Good choice, I think. We can have that for you in a few days.”
He opens a drawer, pulls out a form, takes pen in hand. She is reminded of the way, after sex, he picks up his glasses and puts them back on. She is trying to remember, with unexpected difficulty, what he is like in bed, what his body feels like close to hers. He writes “Lisa” on the form.
But Elisa has already backed up. She is nearly at the door. She says, “No need for that. I’ll be back.”
Larry looks up, apparently surprised. Doubtless there is a deposit policy. But in the end he says only, “All right then.”
Back on the street, she admits to herself how much of this encounter she planned out ahead of time, how many hours some small ashamed part of her mind spent blocking out the movements, working on the script. Perhaps this is why she expected something more—a feeling of something gathering momentum. Instead it feels like the first steps up a steep hill.
Was it really that different, in the old life? Did she want him right away, or did it take time? Maybe she is misremembering the sudden, inalienable erotic pull, the feeling of inevitability.
Or maybe this is the real life, and that one was fantasy. Erotic fantasy.
No. It is just that lust is physical. Maybe it bypasses the mind, like the impulse that pulls the hand away from a hot stove. Lust is in the body, she thinks, boarding the number 20, shoving her dollar bill into the slot, and this is not my body.
22.
It’s a few nights later. She’s home alone, Derek is out buying a six-pack of beer from the supermarket, and the phone rings. The caller ID tells her it’s Lorraine. She decides to let the machine get it.
But then she picks it up. She can’t stop herself: she’s curious. “Hello, Lorraine.”
“Hello there, dear, how are you?”
“I’m good, I’m good…” Already it’s different: Lorraine never calls her dear, doesn’t ask her how she’s doing.
“I expected to hear from you—how did the conference go?”
“Fine, it was fine.” She is analyzing every word for hidden content: the “I expected” is typical Lorraine, but not in this context. Lorraine expecting to hear from her? The question does not sound sarcastic. The intent does not seem to be to mock and humiliate.
They make small talk. Or Lorraine does, and Elisa tries to. Elisa doesn’t know how to do small talk. This is why they never have anyone over. Or perhaps in this world they do—maybe they have parties, lavish boring parties. Lorraine is telling her about her book group, a novel they read, the comments some of the other women made. She describes a television show she watched the night before, and offers some details about the child of some neighbors who has just graduated from Harvard.
Elisa feels as though she’s supposed to offer something in return. Some little morsel. She mentions getting the photo reframed.
Silence. Then, “Maybe you should just take it down, dear.”
“Maybe,” Elisa says. Another silence follows, so she continues: “Do they… do you ever speak with them?”
“You know that I don’t.” This quietly, uncertainly.
It feels like an opportunity to Elisa, but she isn’t certain what kind. She says, very quietly, “Lorraine. It’s all right if you do.”
She thinks she mus
t have made a mistake—Lorraine says nothing, then draws a deep, ragged breath.
“Thank you,” she says, and nothing more.
A moment later she hears Derek coming through the door. Does Lorraine want to talk with him? No, she doesn’t. “I just wanted to catch up with you, dear,” she says, with audible relief.
“Well, thank you.”
Some pleasantries, which Derek listens to as he arranges beer bottles in the fridge. “My mother?” he says, when Elisa hangs up.
“Yes.”
He shakes his head. “All she ever wanted was a daughter. Sometimes I think she likes you better than me.”
23.
She starts bringing work home. The binder. Budget materials. It’s all begun to make sense, but she wants it to be intuitive. Natural. Out of all the things that are alien to her, she thinks, if I can master this, then I can master it all. Evenings, Derek cooks, she clears the table and puts the dishes in the machine and wipes the table down. Soon she has her glass of wine and is working under the bright kitchen lights. Surely this is not quite right—there are things she’s missing, things Derek expects her to do. But he says nothing. Sometimes he looks at her too long: this is when he’s waiting for her to discharge some obligation. Nights he appears anxious, frightened even. He says good night, then waits. She might get up and go with him, and in bed he will reach out and touch her shoulder, then withdraw. She might remain seated in the kitchen. They haven’t had sex yet.
Friday night, she stays up after he goes to bed. She has been in this world for five days. Laptop open in the kitchen, she searches the internet for references to Silas. Then she composes an e-mail to Sam. It reads, We want to see you. She doesn’t know if this is even possible—if they or he have the money to travel. Surely they do—they did in the real life. The e-mail sits on the desktop, unsent.
She wonders what the other Elisa is doing. If she is adapting, or if she is floundering. The latter, Elisa tells herself—this Lisa, the one she is impersonating, is soft, pliable, defanged. Or perhaps she is merely flattering her real self. In any event, if that Lisa has adopted her old life, Silas is being mourned again.
The memory of Silas’s death—his funeral, his burial, and her subsequent months, years of grief—no longer compels strong emotion in Elisa. The way a factory worker, forced to listen to the same clang of metal against metal for years and years, will lose that frequency for good: that part of her is worn away. But the thought of that woman, her doppelgänger, experiencing this for the first time, stops her breath. A little hiccup of misery convulses her body; the stool barks on the linoleum. The poor thing.
But then again, maybe the Lisa who once inhabited this body, who endured the challenges of a living Silas, has had to evolve a more agile mind. Maybe I’m the weak one, Elisa thinks—the woman who couldn’t hold her marriage together, who cheated and lied, who couldn’t get along with her mother-in-law. And now the smarter Lisa, the stronger Lisa, is making better use of her freedom than the real one ever could. Maybe the fake Lisa mastered Killian Tech even more quickly than the real one mastered the Levinson Center. She has seduced Derek and resisted the advances of the creepy frame shop guy, who keeps calling her, though they’ve never met. She is working harder, thinking more clearly, feeling more deeply. What does Silas’s death mean to her? In this world, the wrong one, he might as well be dead. He isn’t in her life anymore.
She still hasn’t sent the e-mail. After a moment’s thought, she signs it Love, Mom and hits SEND.
As if in reaction, she reaches out and snaps the computer shut. A wave of terror rises up in her and then subsides. On the chair beside her lies her purse. She has carried it with her everywhere all week and has barely looked into it, except to remove and replace her wallet. Now. This is a good time for it.
She pushes the computer out of the way and hauls the bag onto the table. She begins to remove its contents, item by item.
First, makeup. A compact, a lot of lipstick. Eyeliner and rouge. Lipstick she has worn before, but eyeliner? What on earth is this woman supposed to look like? There are Tic Tacs, orange and mint, and two half-empty packets of tissues. There is a pocket calendar. It gives her a moment of panic, until she realizes that it’s from 2007 and is completely empty after the month of May. Lots of receipts, some itemized and listing items that are also in the purse. An eyeglass case containing her same old glasses, which she has kept ever since switching to contact lenses years before. Contact lens case and fluids. Wallet. Keys. Phone.
There are pockets on either side of the main compartment, fastened with a snap. One is filled with pens, as it was in the other life, where the second compartment was empty.
Here, though, the second compartment contains a piece of graph paper folded twice over on itself, rounded and furred at the corners. She removes it, pushes the bag out of the way, and unfolds it on the table in front of her.
It’s in her own handwriting, and it reads:
Pay compliments and express gratitude.
Blame yourself first, circumstance second, your partner last of all.
If you must refuse intimacy, offer something in return.
Account for your time.
Do not use the children to attack your partner.
24.
Elisa lies awake beside Derek wondering what else might be different. She remembers the moment of the switch—has been trying to remember it more precisely—and is certain that there were more or fewer clouds, or that the clouds changed position. And if the weather was different, then a lot of other things must be different. Right?
But then wouldn’t Silas himself, Silas’s existence, be the thing that changed the weather, changed everything that is different now? No. There was something before the van crash that kept him from going along for the ride, and something before that, and something before that. And so the world was already altered, and Silas’s death or survival trivial. The world must be indifferent to Silas, to her affairs and her appearance and her personal demeanor. She is a casualty of circumstance, not the center of the universe. And so this change, this transference, cannot be meaningful. It’s something that happened by accident: a glitch.
For this universe not to be about her, not to be made with her in mind, then, there would have to be more than just the one where Silas survived. There would have to be one where Silas was maimed, and one where Silas was never born, and one where he was a delightful and well-adjusted child, and one where he was a houseplant.
How many would there have to be? All of them.
Of course it’s easier just to say she’s nuts. She’s the glitch. At least that way, she can imagine how she might ever return, if that’s what she wants to do. The mind is more malleable than the universe, as far as she knows. You don’t need to be a genius or a video game character or from the future to manipulate the mind. The mind is made to be fucked with.
This, then, is the most likely, the most sensible, explanation—the world is the same, and Elisa Brown is the thing that is different. There’s a phenomenon she has read about, not déjà vu, but déjà vécu, false memory. You think you remember something, but it’s your unconscious mind that has created it, for purposes the conscious mind can’t fathom. The thing you remember seems real. But in fact only the thing before you is real. This room. This bed. This man.
She wonders what time it is. The clock is on Derek’s side of the bed, turned away because its glow is too bright. Has she slept yet tonight? She feels that she hasn’t, but there’s light outside, almost. Or maybe that is the moon. At this hour, whatever hour it might be, anything and everything seems possible, anything at all could be true. What has happened seems real. The possibility of return seems real.
If she isn’t insane, and if she could return, what would that mean? That is, if her consciousness leaped from one body to the next, then who is to say the body it left is still alive? Maybe the other Lisa isn’t in it, mourning now for Silas; maybe that body is dead. Maybe it ran off the road and through the guardr
ail and there is a funeral in that world, for her, going on today. Maybe Derek is waking up alone today to bury her.
Or who is to say that this consciousness wasn’t just copied, that the other Lisa is the same as ever, working at the lab and carrying on with her lover? Even if she could go back, maybe there is no place for her to go. Her body there is already occupied by the original.
And if this is so, then what happened to the woman who occupied this body? If Elisa leaves it now, perhaps it will drop dead, too.
Of course all of these thoughts are predicated on the idea that the consciousness in question is, in fact, a thing. A thing that has to be somewhere. And this is not a notion Elisa Brown has ever believed in. The soul. The God who tends it. All of it, nonsense. The soul is chemistry, it dies with the body. Consciousness is an illusion, a piece of software. When the machine shuts down, the program isn’t merely resting. It doesn’t exist.
What has happened to her does not fit into this worldview. Yet there is none she knows of that will accommodate it.
Derek stirs beside her. She doesn’t want to wake him. She slides out of bed, pads to the toilet, and then down the stairs to the kitchen and her computer. She is hoping that when she powers it on she will find an e-mail from Sam. But what she finds instead is one from Amos Finley. It reads, Lisa. Have you thought about seeing me one on one as we discussed?
The e-mail has been cc’ed to Derek.
Her reply goes to the therapist only. No, I don’t think so.
She is startled, first at this apparent breach of privacy, and then even more startled that the therapist is awake and sending e-mail at 5:00 a.m. on a Saturday.
Elisa sits and considers. There is some code here, some message that she does not understand. What is the value of betraying her to Derek in this small way? It is an effort to force her to reform. They are ganging up on her, the men.
As if the e-mails have summoned him, Derek appears, wrapped in his thin cotton robe.
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