by Owen Thomas
“I want to go back,” he said in a whisper, leaning across the table. “I want to start over. … Colonel? Elle?”
“You can’t go back.”
“Yes…”
“No. You can’t start over.”
“I mean … I want to start over with you. I want that feeling we shared. Remember the launch? Elle? Do you? Look at me. Remember the feeling in your chest? Like something breaking open. Like something blooming inside you for the first time. Remember? After that first count sequence? After the last burn? It was just the two of us. Floating. No sound. No Earth. No others. No history. Just us.”
“Lieutenant…”
“I want to go back to that, Elle.”
“Alan…”
“I want us to go back to that feeling.”
“There is no going back.”
“You loved me. You love me still. I know that. And I love you.”
“No. You don’t love me. You never did. You can’t go back to something that never existed in the first place.”
“I love you, Elle.”
“You love leaving. Alan. That’s who you are.”
“No.”
“Yes. That feeling in your chest? That glorious blooming? That was your lust for leaving.”
“That’s not true.”
“That was escape.”
“You’re wrong.”
“There is no love, Alan. Not for you. There is only a prelude to leaving. You can’t conceive of a love that doesn’t end. And unless you find someway to end it first, then your life has no meaning. Your love carries the seed of its own destruction. It comes with a poison pill.”
“Jules killed herself, Elena.”
“And your unborn daughter. Just like you knew she would. Just like you hoped.”
“No. She was sick.”
“Sick? You think I haven’t read the reports? She was heartsick, Alan. She’d lost everything. Her parents. Her sister. You were all that she had left. You and her illicit fetus. Was it your idea to make her a felon? Was she that in love with you? Did you counterfeit the birth waiver or did she?
“That’s not…”
“How long had you been grooming her? You got to her just in time, didn’t you? Did you pull her out of line at the clinic and take her out for a soda?”
“Elle…”
“Did you impress her with your UNIX rocket man credentials? Did you convince her to skip that right of passage into womanhood from Provisional Infertility to Permanent Sterility? Did you tell her the penalty?”
“You don’t understand, Elle.”
“And then, right before disappearing from her life, you told her about us.”
“She deserved to know.”
“And I didn’t?”
“It was over. I didn’t think…”
“You thought plenty, Alan. You told her – making more of me than you had any right to – knowing what that would mean. And then you signed up for an eight ball on Rhuton-Baker. That’s a long time for someone about to be a brand new father. You should have been denied clearance. You lied on your review.”
“You don’t understand.”
“You knew she was fragile.”
“No.”
“You gave her the pills.”
“I gave her prescribed medication. I picked it up for her.”
“Still in the unopened zip pack. Downstairs. In the bathroom. That’s not what was in the glass. The glass with your biosig, Alan. It’s been dated to the half-minute.”
“Of course I handed her the glass. But it was only water. I’ve told you that. We’ve been through all of this.”
“Yes. We have.”
“Why would I do such a monstrous thing? I loved her.”
“Oh. You mean like you love me?
“No. Not like I love you. Is that it? You think I could do that to you? Abandon you? Poison you? I couldn’t.”
“You could. You will. If I let you.”
“Why? Why would I?”
“Because that’s your lion tree, Alan. You’re always going to go back to that understanding. That identity.”
“My lion what? What understanding?”
“You’re not the one left behind. That terrifies you. You’re the leaver. Who was the one who first set this sickness in motion, Alan? She must have been something. I’m guessing your mother.”
“Elle…”
“Was there a wife before Jules? Someone else you haven’t told me about?”
“I love you. You. That’s my only understanding about anything.”
“My uncle was a forensic mentalist for the military. A good one. Before that he was in private practice. He liked to tell his patients stories. You know, old parables. And then he liked to recast the stories so that his patient was somewhere in the middle. He’d stop and let the patient finish telling the story. He said it helped him figure out why they did the things they did.”
“Elena. Please. We’re running out of time. I need you to …”
“The lion tree story was one of his favorites. You know lions, Alan?”
“Yes. Elle. I know what lions were. I passed Natural History.”
“The lion tree story starts with a family; a mother and father and two children, one boy and one girl. That was important because it allowed a lot of opportunity to use the story with all kinds of different patients. It worked with men and women of all ages. Anyway, this family takes a trip to what was then a place called Kenya on the continent of Africa. They went for a safari. A safari was like a …”
“I know what safaris were. Elena…”
“Yes, well it was nothing like the Africa we know. It was a living continent then. Teeming with life. The whole thing was inhabitable. The father was a big game hunter and photographer. He wanted pictures of the wildlife. Elephants and giraffes and water buffalo. But especially the lions. So he hired guides and spent two weeks roaming the baking savannahs with his family, camping and taking pictures. One day, …”
“Elena…it’s almost time. I’m begging you. Don’t do this. Even if I deserve it, don’t give in to that uniform. You’re not a heartless person. Take me with you. It’s a long trip back. We’ll work things out. I’ll explain everything. If you still aren’t persuaded, I’ll take my chances with UNIX. I’ll prove my innocence. The science can be wrong. Even if I’m convicted, I’ll feel better if you’re not the one executing me.”
“One day, as the sun was setting, the group set up camp beneath a cluster of large trees. They were called Acacias. They had canopies that looked like layers of green clouds, casting pools of shade across the dry hot, grasses of the savannah. Wouldn’t you give just about anything to live in a time when you could see wild trees? Just to stroll up to one and sit under it and watch the sun looking for you all afternoon?”
“No. But I would give just about anything to take your hand in my hand …”
“Then, when it was completely dark, and everyone was in their tents, the lions came. And …”
“Okay, cut. Cut,” Blair interrupted, pushing his hands out over the table. “Let me stop you there. Stewart, I’m gonna be coming in real tight in this scene. Okay? I mean right in your face. Your eyes are gonna fill the damn screen by the time we get to the end of it. You’re really gonna have to emote from the bridge of your nose up. Okay?”
Stewart nodded simply, as if people were always asking this of him.
“It’s all in the eyes. Voice calm, body calm, but the eyes need to be intense. Time is running out for you. She’s about to leave you on this fuckin’ rock okay? She’s taking all of the miners and other workers with her. The experiment is a bust. Rhuton-Baker is non-sustainable. So everyone is bugging out except you. You’re staying. The sweet talk hasn’t worked.” Blair jabbed a thumb in my direction. “She’s turning out to be tough as nails and cold as ice and she’s about to leave you to your greatest terror, which is to be abandoned. Alone for a fucking eternity.”
“Or until the food runs out,” Stewart quipped.
“Food? Fuck the food. You’ve got enough provisions to last ten lifetimes. It’s sanity that’s going to be in short supply. And you bloody well know it as she’s telling you this story of hers. So I need your expression to transition smoothly from the hopefulness of love through the pain of accusation and then down into a creeping despair and by the time I am ready to widen the shot, and I’m going to go really wide on this one, I want terror to have taken over those baby blues. Okay?”
Stewart nodded, taking notes.
“Tilly,” Blair said, turning to me. “I know this is a dry run and a rough one at that. The set work will pull everyone into the moment. But try your best to guard against sounding glib and superior.”
I found myself missing the old days when Blair, in an effort to cover our sexual entanglement, would have barked savagely at me to stop being so goddamned glib and superior! From that first meeting of what Blair liked to call The Second Go, he was so grateful to have me on board that every criticism was delivered with extra padding.
“This is not victory for Elena,” he continued. “She’s still making up her mind, even as she is talking to this guy. This is a big fuckin’ thing she’s about to do to him. Okay? She loves him and they both know it. So this isn’t easy. Miller’s gonna go mad or kill himself or both before he sees another human so we need to hear that weight in your voice. We need to hear this rigorously restrained emotional conflict in every syllable. Life and death. That means…”
“That means I need to slow it down. Not so fast.”
“That’s exactly it. Slow it down. Pour some lead in there. We’re going to be hearing your words and watching Miller react. I’m doing a slow fade out from Miller, a slow fade into the Africa footage, and a slow fade back to Miller’s face and all the while you are telling this story. Okay? So be thinking about voice. Tone. Pacing. He’s sight, you’re sound. Got it?”
My cell phone buzzed. Zack was calling. It would wait. I rejected the call.
“I can do that,” I said, trying my best to sound neither glib nor superior.
“Good. Alright then. Angus. Anything to add from your end?”
There was a painfully long delay. We all looked at Angus who was alone at the far end of the table drawing slow hash marks on his pad. His face was pinched in some secret torment. One by one the others looked away. Blair and I looked at each other.
“So. Okay,” said Blair. “Let’s turn to the…”
“You think she’s immoral.”
The sound came from Angus. He had not looked up.
“Who? Tillyjohn? Well of course she immoral, Angus. Haven’t you been reading the newspapers? Good God man! Why do you think I’ve hired her?”
There was a cloudburst of mirth around the table with none laughing louder than Blair. I feigned annoyance. Angus did not flinch.
Silence restored itself with an unnatural rapidity, pushing the laughter off a cliff. Blair sighed and took a drink of water, obviously wishing it were something stronger. I felt momentarily sorry for him. I could only imagine how many of the conversations like the one he was about to have he had endured with Angus over the course of the filming. I found his patience with Angus astounding, particularly given Blair’s normal disposition with respect to those who would deign to wrest his authority over any aspect of a project.
“I’m only joking, Angus. I know you didn’t mean Tilly.”
“So then…” said Angus, reversing the slant of the hash marks to make a herringbone pattern that ran the width of the page. The unfinished statement hung in the air, becoming a question. Blair looked sideways at me and rubbed his face with one hand.
“Right. So. Immoral. Do I think Ivanova is immoral? I’d have to answer yes. In a way, she’s as immoral as Miller is. I mean, she does to Miller what Miller did to Jules. Right? She’s operating on essentially the same egocentric behavioral principle: abandon lest ye be abandoned. That’s what makes it so damned intriguing. On the one hand she is obviously imposing judgment, but in doing so she becomes just like Miller. And this is not at all lost on Miller, who suggests that she’s a heartless executioner. He’s suddenly in a position to judge her just as harshly as she judges him.”
Angus did not respond.
“But something tells me you’re going to tell me I’m all wet. As usual. So let’s have it. Can you defend her decision?”
Angus shook his head, almost sadly.
“This is not a morality tale, Blair. The morality of Ivanova’s decision does not concern me. The morality of Miller’s conduct does not concern me. I don’t care if what they have done is justified or reprehensible. What you say is certainly true to a point, but it is irrelevant.”
He fell back into silence, contemplative and brooding. My phone buzzed again. Zack again. I rejected it again. Angus looked up at the phone on the table, glowering.
“Look,” said Blair. “I know from experience that you’re gonna tell me, Angus. So just tell me and we can move on.”
Angus continued his doodling in silence until I thought he was not ever going to respond. Then he looked up at me, ignoring Blair, and spoke as if it had always been our conversation. As if we were back beneath the moon in Kenya, outside the hotel by the elephant fountain. Just the two of us.
“We live in circles. We keep coming back to the same place. Again. And again. And again. Like a scratch in a record that keeps our needle from following a continuous groove, skipping us back to the place we started. And we keep coming back. To that scratch. That flaw. That scar on the human psyche. That thing, that word, that look, that event. Whatever it is that we cannot let go. The thing that has come to define us. It is the place where we were born. Not our bodies. Our identities.”
No one moved or spoke. Angus generally said so little that whenever he did speak, especially when he chose to string entire sentences together, people listened.
“It’s not a tale of morality. It’s a tale of identity. You see … we eventually become the scar. It’s not simply part of who we are. It defines us. We become the thing in our past that we cannot let go. Who is Lieutenant Miller? He is the man abandoned. At some impressionable moment in his life, he was abandoned, perhaps literally left to die by someone he loved. That is his scar. That is the skip in the record and it defines him completely. He spends his entire life replaying that moment. Every relationship, every emotional connection is a self-defeating proposition. The more important the relationship, the more it lives in the shadow of abandonment, fraught with the certainty of dissolution and heartbreak. So he picks with uncanny precision. Women without enough fortitude to stick it through. They all ultimately get fed up and leave him, reinforcing his identity.”
“Not Jules,” I said.
“No. Jules hangs in there. She’s there for the distance, which threatens everything Alan Miller has come to believe about himself. She represents for him a kind of self-annihilation. Of course, on the other side of that annihilation is a new person. On the other side of annihilation the needle of the self finds a new groove and life continues onward. But that is not how we are wired. We cling to what we know about ourselves. We protect it at any cost. Even if it kills us. Because we are who we are. And so how does Alan Miller respond to Jules, the woman who threatens to disrupt the pattern? By beating fate to the punch. By prematurely cutting the ties with her and anyone else who would love him. And where does this leave him but alone and heartbroken; abandoned by his own hand. Right back to the skip in the record.”
“And Ivanova?” I asked. Angus waited a beat, looking at me.
“You tell me,” he said.
Blair looked at his watch, and collapsed back in his chair. When I looked over at him he held up his hands and shook his head with a laugh of futility.
“No, no,” he said. “You two go right ahead. I’ve got nothing better to do than be a fly on the wall at an English Lit social.”
The comment was more perceptive than Blair knew. I really did feel as though I was back at Wesleyan, dissecting some gre
at work of fiction in an empty room with the professor long after the class has been dismissed.
“Miller is now Ivanova’s scar,” I offered at last. “The skip on her record. He’s now the thorn lodged in her psyche. She loves him. Leaving him is the thing she will never be able to let go. She’ll always come back around to that moment. If Miller thinks of himself as judged and abandoned, then Ivanova will now identify herself as one who judges and abandons the ones she loves. They’re flip sides of the same coin. And she’ll look to recreate the event and reinforce the pattern just as Miller does.”
“Yes. Yes. How?”
I thought for a moment, putting myself into Ivanova’s head, back on Earth with Miller alone, a million miles away and devouring himself from the inside-out with nothing but my accusing words in his head.
“First she’ll reinforce by avoidance. She’ll steer clear of meaningful relationships. Those relationships she chooses she won’t commit to, forcing a kind of … I guess a kind of emotional indifference, hoping the other person will drift away on his own. A little like Louie de Pointe du Lac in Interview with a Vampire feeding on rats precisely because he knows what he is but not wanting to be that thing. It’s avoidant self-denial that actually ends up reinforcing identity.”
“Good. Excellent. But that won’t hold, will it?”
“No. Eventually there will be relationships. Potentially successful ones. With people whom she loves and who will love her in return. But she won’t feel worthy of those relationships. She’ll act in outrageous or disagreeable ways, wanting to be judged and rejected for what she did to Miller.”
“Yes. Why?”
“Because the thing she can’t get past is her own guilt. She’ll live to be judged. The harsher the better. That’s the only thing she will want. She won’t feel worthy of love. It’s the guilt that defines her now.”