The Answers

by Catherine Lacey

  Mary remained silent though she could tell he was waiting for her to say something. Her long silences unnerved him, and in this silence, he felt he finally understood this strange feeling he had around Mary. It was doubt. Something about her made him question himself and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to feel this way.

  In the bedroom a little later, their night rituals all thrown off, she sat on the bed beside him and petted his hair and felt whatever she felt. It wasn’t that she loved him. It was something else. She didn’t know what it was.

  This man is my employer, she reminded herself. This is my job. This is my workplace.

  But she didn’t know where she was or who he was or whom she had become.

  * * *

  The next time Ashley showed up, Mary believed Kurt when he insisted it had been unplanned, that something was wrong with this woman, that he didn’t know why she was behaving this way, but by the third or fourth time, Mary suspected the attacks were now a part of the design. Ashley would arrive suddenly and attack him or just scream at him or break something and threaten him with the shards. The looming possibility of her arrival made Mary and Kurt’s time together feel stolen and special.

  You’re a good person, Ashley shouted at Mary one night as Kurt let his nose bleed over the sink. He wants us to hate each other, but fuck him. He doesn’t own us. I won’t play his games.

  After throwing a wineglass at Kurt that shattered on his shoulder, Ashley left in a rush, setting off the alarm, as was her pattern. Other times she was all insults—he was a hack, a fraud, a truly awful person, unredeemable, a shitty artist, he’d gotten everywhere on his looks and nepotism and under it he was nothing. He was nothing at all.

  And after nights like that the silence of the apartment had a luxurious quality to it, like silk against clean, warm skin. He’d stay silent for a while, then cry, heaving violently against Mary in bed, and she could do nothing but lie there and let him. Sometimes she’d cry, too, but she didn’t know where it was coming from or whom it was really for. Those nights they slept the way children sleep, exhausted by feeling a full range of emotions in a single day, but faithful that someone would take care of them tomorrow.

  19

  In Ed’s waiting room that Tuesday a small potted tree was on the receptionist’s desk and behind the tree a laptop and behind the laptop a small receptionist. The door to Ed’s office was shut. It was never shut before Mary’s appointments. Ed was usually standing there, waiting for her, each time she arrived. But Ed was nowhere and the lighting seemed harder now, brighter and somehow flat.

  Excuse me, your name, please? The receptionist spoke in a hurry, looking past Mary instead of at her.

  I have a PAKing session.

  With whom?

  With … Ed.

  He’s actually unavailable at the moment. May I take a message?

  But—this is my regular time and he didn’t say anything—

  Oh, well, let’s just see— The receptionist flipped through some papers on her desk without any discernible goal. Actually your appointments have been canceled. Ed won’t be seeing you anymore.

  Mary waited for the receptionist to realize her mistake.

  You’ve completed your PAKing series.

  But I have at least four more sessions—

  There’s been no mistake, Mary. Ed cannot work with you any longer. I would be happy to leave a message for him, but I can’t promise you that he’ll respond.

  Mary’s mouth went dry. Several muscles in her back spasmed.

  Tell him I can explain everything, and that I just need to …

  But the receptionist wasn’t listening, had gone back to reading a magazine about yoga. Mary stared at Ed’s door, straining to hear if he was in there with someone else, but all she could hear were his white-noise machines. She was too surprised to move for a moment, then too embarrassed to stay, rushing from the room and into an elevator, suspecting that even the deliveryman in his brown uniform and that stranger draped with that thin lilac sweater could tell that she was a liar, that she’d done something horribly wrong, her shame creating a stink around her. She went home and immediately to sleep in an attempt to avoid or stave off the avalanche of symptoms she felt certain were rumbling in her body, ready to upend her.

  * * *

  She woke at three the next morning, her body empty and dry, and picked up her phone, hoping for a word, no matter how confusing, from Chandra.

  Mary, you are trapped by the present moment.

  Some people will try to tell you that the truth lives in the present but it doesn’t.

  It is a weakness to live in the present. Lies live there.

  You are now entering the future.

  Chandra had taken her to a dance class in college, and Mary had lurched through the moves—the graceless lumber she’d learned from a childhood of farmwork—while Chandra glided in them. It seemed she had extra seconds in her counts, a private circuit of time, and Mary wondered now, as she read this e-mail over and over, if Chandra could still pirouette and leap as easily as she once had, if perhaps she’d had this control of time all along. The only time Mary had felt that sort of easiness had been in those dreamy hours just after PAKing. Now, without Chandra and without Ed, she felt the absence of all these people who had come to and gone from her, people who had meant something, done things to her, changed her, made her who she was now, alone. She waited in her clammy bed for dawn to come, tried to figure out what she felt, scanned her body as Ed had taught, looking for any tender place, a feeling, a message from some core of herself, some place she couldn’t reach.

  In the dark she used the GX phone to search for PAKing New York but there was nothing, then PAKing, nothing, then Pneuma Adaptive Kinesthesia, and still nothing. There was no evidence of what had happened to her, no proof but her memory, that flimsy appliance.

  Voices from the street slipped in the window above her mattress. A sad woman was telling a story, voice thick from weeping, half her words too melted to hear, as another woman soberly consoled. Mary put the phone down and tried to listen—it was something about a guy, something about two weeks ago and Facebook and it’s like she doesn’t even know me and a text, a lost sweater or some lost days or something else lost—Mary couldn’t be sure. Did her listening have any effect on the woman? Did the woman feel how her story, however incomplete, was landing somewhere? Something about listening from a distance, drowsy in bed and in the dark, made Mary’s caring feel so pure.

  A car drove up. The voices stopped. Doors opened, slammed, the car motored away, and the silence came back heavier.

  Then, lulled into a half sleep, Mary vaguely remembered someone using Facebook to track someone else down. She’d never used Facebook (or had it or been on or in it—a person’s grammatical relationship to Facebook had never been clear to her) because it had seemed, in college, to be a display case for friendships (of which she had few) or a document of one’s past (which she didn’t want to believe she had) or a way to keep tabs on the people who had receded from one’s life. So she had never joined until now, thirty years old, entering no photographs, no hometown or job or interests, no hobbies, political or religious views, just this blank blue-and-gray receptacle with her name (a name) on it. It was alarmingly easy to find her, the only Chandra Broder, a little square photo of her taken from behind—full lotus on a beach, facing a sunset. Add Friend.

  She stared at the tiny photo of Chandra until she fell asleep, and when she woke, she found nothing had changed except daylight had come back, that ambivalent turn. Her apartment was as empty as it had ever been. She wouldn’t be needed at the loft until the afternoon so she stayed in bed for the next few hours, copying and pasting the same message to Chandra’s friends.

  You don’t know me, but I was Chandra Broder’s college roommate. I have been unable to reach her lately and I am worried. Also I have been getting distressing e-mails from someone who claims to be her. Any information would be helpful. Thank you, Mary Parsons

  I
t read stiffly. She wondered if she should lighten or darken the mood of it, make it seem more or less urgent, friendly, distressed, but she gave up revising and kept sending it out, without variation, to each friend on Chandra’s list.

  The first reply was from someone who couldn’t remember how he’d met her. Another hadn’t heard from her in years: Sorry. Another: Dude, weird. Another said she would try to get in touch, but that even though she didn’t know Chandra that well, this didn’t sound that weird to her. She’s flaky, the message said. Mary deleted it.

  All the while a blank white box on Facebook kept asking, What’s on your mind?—and telling her to upload a picture so her friends could find her, to add her schools so her classmates could find her, to complete her page, explain herself, but Mary kept on her task, sending the message, reading the shrugging replies, until a page came up with a blue thumbs-down: Sorry, something went wrong. Everything was gone and she couldn’t get back in. She threw the phone across the room, hoping it would break, but it landed on a towel, perfectly fine.

  Eventually she got out of bed, took a long shower, gargling and spitting mouthfuls of water, then screaming, just a little and quietly.

  It seemed her whole life had been a series of waves, that everything and everyone she’d ever known had come at her with a force she couldn’t fight, rushing in, roaring, sucking her down, nearly drowning her before spewing her out again, leaving her alone on a shore before another wave came for her, another force from some unseen center.

  20

  Love is a compromise for only getting to be one person, Mary said, her pupils huge and deep, her whole life, her entire history, Merle and Clara, that tiny dorm room shared with Chandra, whatever happened in that alley, the Paul months, every fact she’d ever learned, every word read or written, every exhale, every blink, every ounce of her pressed forward, pressed her into the present, this patch of grass on his rooftop’s garden, the sky awash in a pastel summer sunset, her hand in Kurt’s sweating hand—the ordinary (hand in hand) turned so remarkable and terrifying, a whole other consciousness trapped in flesh touching flesh, touching the flesh holding her consciousness—and her brain was every ocean and every sea combined and her eyesight impeccable as she felt she could see every ridge of every brick on any building across the river, that she could count each spoke on the bikes spinning across the bridge. Every fiber and cell of her pulsed against the air and she felt true.

  Wait, Kurt said, his eyes as doll-like as hers. Wait right there. Mary watched him retrieve his phone. Say it again, say it exactly as you just said it.

  She closed her eyes and opened her mouth, forgot everything she’d ever said, forgot all language, forgot her life, and as she opened her mouth, lips untouching slowly, her vocal cords shaking words from her throat, she could feel every slick tooth and muscle in her mouth in the highest detail, and she was filled with wonder over the perfect construction of her mouth, of all mouths, all those wet tongues lying behind lips, beside teeth, between roof and bed of mouth in so many skulls and it was the tongue where all this had begun only an hour before, when they had licked a white powder off a glass plate in his kitchen, chased the bitterness with grapefruit juice and seltzer before splaying themselves on the grass of Kurt’s rooftop garden, every living green blade coming alive against their backs as the drug hit, nerves pulsing under the skin, around the heart and gut, in the spine, behind their eyes. She could feel the fire in everything, more alive than ever.

  All this time, she thought, all of this was here and we didn’t see it. How could we have missed it? How did we forget?

  After he had recorded her saying the sentence (Love is a compromise for only getting to be one person) and after he had replayed it several times into the air, smiling and manic (Love is a compromise for only getting to be one person … Love is a compromise for only getting to be one person…), the two stood, locking hands, unable to look directly at each other without overwhelming and being overwhelmed. They walked to the edge of the roof and looked at the skyline for what felt like hours but was only a few minutes.

  The meat around my skull can’t stop smiling, she said, and he laughed so much she was afraid he might never stop, and when he did, she was so relieved that she hugged him with the intensity that a parent would hug a child previously feared to have been kidnapped, and they held each other quietly for some time, feeling the bones and tendons in each other’s back and thinking about nothing but the simplicity of their bodies pushed together, life against life, all there is. The sun was setting and below them and some blocks away a street fair had lit up with lights strung between posts and the noise of carnival games and the smell of fried dough wafted up in the hot air and it filled their noses and mouths and ears and sinus cavities, reminding Kurt of summers long past, of the child he no longer was.

  We should go down there, Kurt said, a boy again, we should go see what it is. The drug had burned away some of his fears, as drugs will do, and though he had an intense dislike of crowds and fear of being photographed with anyone in public, he felt that his sunglasses and hat and Mary and this incalculable awe would keep him safe.

  A block from the loft they noticed a couple under some construction scaffolding, arguing. The couple seemed resigned to their dissatisfaction with each other, as if it had been going on this way for such a long time that they had committed themselves, moved into it, signed a lease. The man appeared to be exerting all his energy into the skin around his skull, and the woman was shouting, leaning toward him, both her hands held out with the palms up, pleading. Then she covered her face and began to shake. He moved toward her, put a hand on her arm that she shrugged away. She uncovered her face, a ruin of red and tears, and threw some hard words at him that Kurt and Mary could barely recognize as English.

  What are they saying? Kurt asked, not expecting an answer, but Mary took his question seriously and began to translate the argument in a state of revelation.

  Why are you not me? Why are you not doing life like I would do it? I thought being in love meant getting to be two people. How could you do something I wouldn’t do? This is impossible and insane. I can’t be only one person. I need to be you, too. Let me be you. —And she is saying, Shut up, you have it all wrong. I am you, not the other way around. You don’t get to be me. I get to be you. I am you. There is no you, only the other me.

  Kurt stared at her as she spoke, believing her to be some kind of genius or saint, though he couldn’t get any words out of his throat, just stood there, until he finally said—Yes, that’s it! That’s it! Then even louder: YES!

  The arguing couple looked over at them and Kurt shouted YES again and that yes echoed between the tall buildings, leaving fragments of itself everywhere until Kurt added, Hey! We just solved all your problems!

  The woman shook her head and muttered something as the man shouted, Hey! Fuck you! He put his arm around her and they stomped down a darker part of the street, united in their dislike of this stranger. They later made fun of his baseball cap.

  Kurt and Mary watched shadows shift across the couple’s backs as they walked away but found the couple’s anger didn’t bother them. They walked toward the street fair, transfixed by its distant glow, weaving their way into the throngs of people, women with their hair tied up in scarves, men eating funnel cakes, children engulfed by neon-yellow and hot-pink stuffed animals, fuzzy dogs and puffer fish with fur and plastic eyes bulging bigger than the children’s heads, these prizes, this synthetic joy.

  Somewhere a mariachi band played, the horns and guitars distorted by distance, melting in the heat, and as Kurt listened, he realized he’d been in public, just out here, for maybe two full minutes, but no one had noticed him, and no one had asked to take a photo with him or to sign his name on something, and no one had asked him to listen to whatever the person needed to say to him and no one had grabbed him and no one had given him a headshot or a card and no one had told him an incredibly sad life story—and instead everyone had let him exist without being reminded
of himself, to exist as part of a crowd, a person, and his eyes were so joyful behind his sunglasses, unobserved, a gift these people didn’t know they’d given, and he cried.

  He stood still for a while longer, until he noticed that Mary had let go of his hand and he turned to find her standing a few yards from him, staring off, mesmerized by whatever she was mesmerized by, alone in whatever she was thinking. Kurt wished he could be in her head—though this is not to say that he wanted to know what she was thinking, and this is not to say that he wanted Mary to tell him what she was thinking—no, he wanted, more than anything, so painfully and impossibly, to feel her thoughts and feelings at the same time as she was having them. He wanted to feel this moment exactly as she felt this moment, not to observe her life through the lens of his life—no, he wanted to inhabit Mary completely and he thought this must be love, that he had now reached some state of pure love. He felt, with a blinding certainty, that the feeling he had about Mary in this moment was truly permanent, but the permanence he felt was not the permanence of his love for her—as none know which loves can survive a life—what he felt was the permanence of love itself, outside of people. Yet he also felt doubt and protectiveness—how could he ensure this feeling would never leave him in this world so full of endings—nights ending, people there, then gone, melted ice cream, drugs making their finite journeys through a body. He ached to find a way to make this feeling last for at least the short duration of his life—was that asking for so much? Couldn’t there be a way, he thought, to convince this feeling to keep him company, unwavering, to death?

  Mary was scanning the crowd, searching for something (for him, he thought) and Kurt came close to her and she smiled, but only a little, and he buried his face into her neck, took in the perfect animal smell of her, wrapped his arms around her waist, and she whispered, I need water. I can’t find any water here, and he was overtaken with urgency—anything she needed, he needed even more desperately for her.