Origins of the Universe and What It All Means

by Carole Firstman

  Their juxtaposition, the butterfly and the purple lady, creates a quiet tension, an unarticulated contrast that holds me captive, taunts me with the promise of some secret, some transcendent truth that, once uncovered, would seem so obvious, so simple. Dad’s painting. Mom’s painting. How do I read them, and thus paint myself as daughter? Dad created a perfectly detailed but flat rendition of a non-human organism. He created the center of his montage universe. Mom created an imperfect portrait of the woman who came before us, a rendition that oozes with sharp-tongued personality. I don’t know what the paintings reveal. Transcendent truth has yet to whisper in my ear. For now I cling to them both, along with the scorpion.

  What I do know: I had such high hopes when my father moved to Visalia. It was an opportunity for a do-over. Come live near me. We’ll be one big happy family again after all these years. So what if we’d never been the Cleaver family? It’s never too late. You play Ward. I’ll play Beaver (or Betty). We’ll hike. We’ll hang out.

  And now here we are, all these years later; our roles, my parents’ and mine, have shifted. Like I said—if we had been the Cleaver family, perhaps our new terms of engagement would be simple. Maybe I’d look forward to my daily visit to the rest home, eagerly tuck the blanket around my mother’s feet. Maybe I’d urge my father to catch the next flight from Guanajuato to LAX. Maybe I’d stop wondering if I’m a good daughter or bad, if my life adds up to anything yet, and whether or not I’m satisfied with my mix of big and small potatoes.

  The answers I seek can’t be found in my father’s lecture on the origins of the universe. I’ve long since ransacked his home. I’ve sent a few of his belongings to his apartment in Mexico. Most of his one hundred and one Office Depot boxes still crowd the shed. I continue to paw through his files of correspondence, analyze his love letters to a woman he’ll never meet again, yet to whom he still writes. I’m driven to know my father, understand what makes him tick, what makes me similar to and different from him. Despite my neurotic snooping, I avoid his phone calls and give him all the reasons why now’s not a good time to visit.

  Like my father, I’m caught in a conundrum of attachment and detachment.

  Fifty-One

  Cataviña, Mexico (1994)—

  When my father and I finally reached the cave, we sat in the shaded respaldo overhang. We sipped from our canteens and gazed silently at the mysterious hieroglyphs on the ceiling and walls. Much as we would later on top of Moro Rock, we each wandered in our private thoughts. The rock paintings looked different than I expected. All during the hike I had envisioned we’d find clearly defined symbols—stick figure humans, a blazing fire, rain pelting down from a sheet of clouds, or a mural depicting some adventure, perhaps with a narrative arc. I’m not sure what the pictographs illustrated, with their reddish-brown curves and overlapping lines. In my mind I created a story from the abstract markings, the way you find pictures in a cloudy sky on a hot summer’s day or stare at an abstract painting through squinted eyes until a definitive image pops out—that’s a sun, a moon, a mountain, he runs toward the cactus, do you see it? One version of the story I reassemble contains seven parts:

  i.Light, Time, and Earth

  ii.Scorpions, Snakes

  iii.Sitting-Up Mud

  iv.Starry Nights

  v.Songbirds

  vi.The Face of Perfection

  vii.Presence

  That afternoon in the Mexican desert, after we’d stared at the tantalizing rock paintings for some time, my father finally spoke. “I want to talk to you about so many things,” he said. “But first, let’s take a photo.”

  Funny thing is, we had forgotten the camera. We hemmed and hawed for a while, deciding whether or not we should go back to the car and get it. I wasn’t about to make another round trip through the snake-infested sand—I voted we forgo the photos. My father couldn’t be deterred, though. He’d go back for it.

  I stayed put while he climbed back down the wall of boulders, down to the trail of deep-shifted sand. I stood at the mouth of the cave for a while, trying to relax in the grey threshold between Snake-Infested Out There and Indecipherable In Here. Today, I wonder which really scared me more—navigating a trail spiked with hidden sidewinders, or decoding a faded story peopled with flawed characters. Out There promises adventure, albeit danger, too. In Here requires a certain kind of attention, where old stories crash, then dissolve, then reform anew, like elements of the cosmos evolving from one life form to the next. Remember Gould: We originated from an improbable accumulation of accidental contingencies. If the evolutionary tape were played again, there is no way to predict what would happen.

  By now my blip of a lifespan is at least half over. My parents need looking after, and as difficult as our relationships have been, I cannot turn away, not totally. I can’t name the chemical compounds of the Sun or spout the diameter of Saturn, but perhaps I can make a pile of potatoes and see how high they stack up. In the end, I suspect the small spuds will comprise the largest part of my Square Units of Overall Quality. Getting to know my dad—whether or not I like what I find—rates at least medium-sized. Maybe even big. Maybe that’s what the universe is all about: finding a neglected part of yourself, a dry and withered row in your personal garden, and nurturing it, growing it, giving it a second chance. A do-over.

  PART VII

  Presence

  Fifty-Two

  The sun had shifted farther to the west by the time my father emerged from between two giant stone slabs. He paused at the base of the rock pilings and shouted up to me. From my perch, I watched him climb toward the mouth of the cave with the camera bulging from his breast pocket. Beyond him, the boulders’ shadows stretched across the bone-dry terrain. Mirroring the sun’s migration, the shadows overlapped, blended together in some places, yet remained distinctly separate in others. They stretched eastward and elongated so slowly that their inch-by-inch evolution was almost imperceptible.

  We set the camera on autotimer and posed in front of the paintings. The little red light flashed several times, letting us know when to expect the aperture to open. I reveled in the moment right before the click. Presence: when time stands independent of past or future; a moment captured on film; an ever-shifting point on the continuum of existence; what liquid prolongs for a pickled scorpion, still moist; where curiosity leads; a grain of sand so fine, so small, it settles, sinks beneath your feet unnoticed, unheard.

  Click.

  What next, we wondered. Back to the highway. My father fingered the map poking out of his pocket. “Let’s play it by ear,” he said.

  Acknowledgments

  This book could not have been written without the support and guidance of a great many friends, family, colleagues, and editors.

  Love and gratitude to my husband, Karl Schoettler, for his support, patience, awesome diagrams, and many (oh, so many) pep talks; and thank you to my family, Bruce Firstman, Aranga Firstman, David and Penny Firstman, Tonya Graham, Stephanie Dethlefs, Peggy Schoettler and the whole Schoettler clan; and to my friends near and far. You cheered me on and celebrated each small step along the way.

  I owe a debt of gratitude to all the editors and staff at the magazines where parts of this manuscript were first published as standalone essays, with extra special thanks to Stephanie G’Schwind and Karen Tellalian.

  I am lucky to have worked with dynamite professors and incredible MFA colleagues at CSU Fresno—a thousand thank-yous to John Hales, who put in an unbelievable amount of work giving me insightful feedback and asking just the right questions (the Socrates of thesis chairing) throughout the drafting process... John, I can’t thank you enough; to Steven Church, the best model and advocate a writer and student could have; to my other professors, Bo Wang, Linnea Alexander, Alex Espinoza, and Randa Jarrar; to Connie Hales and Tim Skeen for coordinating the whole MFA shebang; to all of my workshop colleagues; and for all the brilliant conversations and think-aloud sessions, a heartfelt thanks to my dear friend Liza Butler.

&nb
sp; Thanks to many amazing writers who have helped with this book in one way or another—Lee Montgomery, Charles D’Ambrosio, Nick Flynn, David Shields, Brenda Miller, Sara J. Henry, Ashley Wells, Jeffery Gleaves, J. J. Anselmi, Shane Velez, Andrea Mele, Brenda Rankin Venezia, Laura Musselman-Dakin, Yenny Rose, Niki Lassen, Erin Alvarez, Sally Vogl, Phyllis Brotherton, Melanie Weger Kachadoorian, Jackie Heffron Williams, Jamie Barker, Irene Morse, Debby Goehring, Diana Carson, Joni Norby, Nancy Holley, Christopher Scott Wyatt, Erin Lynn Cook, Ethan Chatagnier, Jim Schmidt, Karen Stefano, Ruth Gila Berger, Kimberly Dark, Renée D’Aoust, Jennifer Bowen Hicks, Inara Verzemnieks; and the many good people at CSU Summer Arts, Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, Tin House Writer’s Workshop, and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

  A special shout-out to the entire Dzanc team, especially Michelle Dotter, Guy Intoci, Dawn Raffel, Steven Seighman, Steve Gillis, Dan Wickett, and Michael Seidlinger—thanks for bringing this book to life.

  It really does take a village.