by Reif Larsen
One night, she was working late in the bowels of the library, reorganizing the card catalog—something she often did when she did not want to face the solitude of her insomnia. The campus was practically empty, so she was surprised when H. H. appeared in the doorway, his tie undone, his hair standing at attention. His car was not working, he said. Would she mind if he waited here with her?
She did not ask what he was waiting for. They spoke briefly of something potentially meaningful, about the viability of protest, about the inevitability of cultural evolution. A theorist was mentioned. There was a silence. She was aware of the space between them. And then he was coming toward her, and she could hear the card rustle in her hands and she could smell the drink on his breath and then he was upon her, with his mouth open and his tongue wandering in circles, and she was receiving this tongue, falling into him, hating him.
“Charlene,” he whispered. “I’ve wanted this for so long.”
He undid his corduroy trousers and placed his hand on the back of her head and pushed her down and she took him into her mouth.
• • •
IN THE END, she barely slipped out of Syracuse with a degree. Her version of the narrative blamed everything on that night, located his assailment as a kind of anti–deus ex machina, where the universe performed its ultimate act of subterfuge while she was busy trying to play by the rules. It was analyse réductrice, but it gave her an excuse to drop the tiller entirely.
She started to drink again, with an enthusiasm honed by a year and a half of sobriety. She bounced around several Jersey librarianships, but she had no appetite for the job anymore. The books mocked her. She now saw the arbitrariness of the Dewey system as an exercise in futility—clearly, it was impossible to classify anything of real consequence. Meanwhile, Louise and Bertrand, once so hopeful for their daughter’s turnaround, worried at her sharp descent.
One evening, she was locking up the Hilton Branch of the Maplewood Memorial Library when she decided to have a few drinks from the bottle of rum that she kept hidden in her bottom drawer. She called up a friend she had met at a disco club on the Bowery and invited him over to the library. They dropped four tabs of Popeye blotter paper and proceeded to spend the rest of the night pulling down books. It was the most fun she had had in years. Running up and down the aisles destroying the system, one volume at a time. The books fell with great drama, splaying open on the ground like slaughtered animals. Then they screwed in the children’s section with their socks on, and afterwards it seemed like a good idea to purge the library of its most unworthy members. A small offering to the pagan gods—her own private me¯nis session. The Wrath of Charlene. She started a small fire in a waste bin. She was high, but she knew exactly what she was doing. In went a shelf-ful of mystery novels. An instruction manual on computers. Norman Mailer’s An American Dream. The volume H from the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
“The books aren’t burning,” she said, staring at her smoldering creation. “They’re resisting!”
“You’re one wild chick,” her companion said to her. He was naked, save for his socks. He resembled a kind of prehistoric hunter.
The books might not have burned in quite the manner she had hoped, but they created plenty of smoke. The fire alarm was soon triggered, flushing them out into the night.
A lone dog walker found them struggling into their clothes on the lawn outside as a yellow alarm beacon beat open the darkness.
“What’s happening?” he asked, his terrier standing at attention. “Is there a fire?”
“Don’t worry sir,” said Charlene. “We are professionals.”
Three thousand volumes suffered irreparable smoke damage. Thanks largely to her mother’s behind-the-scenes negotiation, Town of Maplewood v. Charlene Volmer was settled out of court; Charlene was placed on probation and sentenced to fifty hours of community service. Needless to say, she was also fired. It was an ignominious end to her career as a librarian.
She fulfilled her obligation to the community at the Legion Hall in Elizabeth. On Veteran Career Finder Day, she sat beneath a sagging magenta banner that declared WELCOME BACK BOYS! blindly distributing self-help literature to the hollow-eyed men fresh from the bunkers of Vietnam. In a distinct violation of her probation terms, she was nursing her second flask of schnapps and Kool-Aid beneath the table.
When she looked up again, he was standing at the head of the line. He, back only two weeks from the war in Vietnam. He, standing with hands folded to keep down the shaking, which had started since his return, or at least this was when he had started noticing it. The day he had left, Staff Sergeant Emerson, never known for saying a nice thing about another human being in his life, had squeezed his shoulder and called him the best damn radio operator he had ever worked with.
“What kind of job are you looking for?” she asked, only half registering the darkened eyebrows and the sculpted Slavic rumba-dimple of his chin.
“Radio operations. Repair. This kind of thing,” he said. Something in his voice.
She looked through her books for the first time that day. “I’m not sure I have that in my pile right here.” A slight slur to her speech. Ready to hand him whatever was on top.
“I know how to do this,” he said. “I do not need your book. I know what I want.”
“You do?” she said. Her eyes focusing.
“I always know this,” he said.
“You do?” she said. Lingering, wondering what was happening to the weight of her body.
“What is your name?” Kermin asked. “I want to know this.”
“You do?” she said again, and the thrice-uttered question sealed their fate. It was the kind of collision where there was no time for courtship, where two wounded planets lock into orbit and can never quite free themselves from the insistence of their gravitational pull. Charlene and Kermin. Kermin and Charlene. Each would come to understand, in very different ways, that what had come before was only the tuning of the instruments before the real movement began.
5
What are you writing?”
Kermin was standing in the doorway of the kitchen. She had risen early and was working away at the typewriter.
“Not really anything,” she said, flushing. She closed the novel and maneuvered the typewriter slightly, so that its page was less visible to the room. “It’s just something for Dr. Fitzgerald.”
Kermin nodded. She watched as he began his morning routine. Since Charlene had known him, his breakfast had never varied: white toast, Marmite, slice of cheese, slice of ham, glass of orange juice. He always ate everything until there was only half a bite left, and then he was finished. His consistency was maddening, but then such consistency had also saved her. After so many years of instability, she had come to depend upon that last half-moon of toast remaining on the plate.
“So this doctor,” Kermin said, uncapping the Marmite jar. “He is good?”
“Yes,” she said. “Of course he’s good.”
Kermin sat down across from her.
“He’s good,” she said again, edging the typewriter away.
He took a loud bite of toast.
“So what did he tell you?” he said. Crumbs.
“About?”
“About Radar.”
“Oh, plenty of things. I mean, they’re still doing tests,” she said. “But we’re very lucky that he agreed to take on Radar in the first place. I mean, he’s the best there is. He’s . . .”
She tapped at a key on the typewriter, and a faint F thwacked onto the page. She could feel herself blushing again.
Kermin studied her. After a moment, he let his hand drift over to a shortwave radio sitting on the table. A flick of the wrist and the radio came to life. A loud sea of static enveloped them. He slowly turned the dial, stroking the rib cage of the morning’s frequencies.
“Kermin,” she said. “You’ll wake up Radar. He did
n’t sleep last night.”
“This doctor,” he said over the noise. “He is the last.”
“What?”
“After this, no more.”
“Kermin, he’s the best there is,” she said. “We’re so lucky that he even—”
“What did he learn from my blood?” he said without looking up from the radio.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t ask. They’re looking into various genetical possibilities. Something in our DNA. He said it was very advanced science.”
The radio hung briefly on two stations at once, both voices vying for supremacy through a canopy of static.
“Kerm!” she hissed. “Please. Turn it off.”
He snapped the dial. A click. A sudden silence.
• • •
IN TRUTH, HER VISITS to Boston were not going as well as she had initially hoped. Although she could not say exactly what it was she was hoping for. The less frequent their appointments, the more fervently she typed. Her Anna Karenina was taking shape, page by page, and at certain moments, when the beat of the typewriter became like a second pulse, she was blessed with the fleeting sensation that she was the writer of this book, that she, Charlene Radmanovic, was conceiving of Vronsky’s torrid pursuit, of Levin’s fervent idealism. Or, more precisely: that the real Anna Karenina had not truly existed until now, until it had flowed through Tolstoy and then through her and come out the other side. But these moments of transcendent begetting were rare. More often than not, she was aware of herself as nothing more than a scribe, a clumsy regurgitator of words. A book was a dead thing; no manner of resuscitation could change that.
When she finally managed to corner him on the phone, Dr. Fitzgerald claimed he had all the data he needed for his article. The news felt like the thinnest of daggers sliding into the soft space between her ribs.
“Can you tell me what’s wrong, then?” she said into the phone.
“Wrong?”
“With him,” she said. “With us.”
“Nothing’s wrong. He’s a beautiful child.”
“You know what I mean.”
There was a pause. “We’re looking into it. I assure you, we’re doing everything we can.”
She breathed. Wanting to say things that could not be said.
“When can we come back?”
“There’s not really a need—”
“But when?”
He agreed to see her the following Monday. In a panic, she stayed up nearly the entire weekend, desperately trying to finish Anna Karenina’s denouement. Once upon a time, this had been her favorite part of the book, for it was that strangely euphoric space in a novel after the main character is gone, where the author can get away with almost anything. When she had read it all those years ago, she had imagined a world after her own funeral, a world where she existed only in memory. But now, charging through these final pages, Levin’s protracted exchange with the peasant and his resulting epiphany about his own pious fallibility—a realization that had once struck her as desperately profound—came off as dull and belabored. Maybe it was just because she was viewing everything through the lens of transcription, but when, at 3 A.M., she finished typing out Levin’s final declaration to Kitty regarding the power of goodliness, she wanted to shoot the man and Tolstoy for creating such a blatant mouthpiece. And she hated the doctor for goading her into what she now saw as a fruitless endeavor. It was perhaps the loneliest moment of her life.
The next morning, they took the train up to Boston. When they arrived at Dr. Fitzgerald’s office, Radar ran over and punched the doctor in the groin, but playfully, as a kind of familiar salutation.
“Ray Ray!” said Charlene. “Be careful!”
“Doctah Popeye!” said Radar. “Doctah” and “Popeye” were the fourth and ninth words, respectively, in his approximately fifteen-word vocabulary.
“He’s been wanting a Popeye Band-Aid. The one you give him after the blood tests.”
“This can be arranged,” he said. The doctor swung Radar up onto his desk and looked him in the eye. “You’ve done everything we asked and more. You’ve never complained once. I think you’re going to grow up to do something amazing someday. Mark my words.”
Hands fluttering. One became two became one. Radar laughed and did the same back to him, a mirror image: two became one became . . . The gesture fell apart.
“You’ll have to practice that one,” said the doctor.
A nurse took Radar from the room for a final physical and the prize of a Band-Aid.
Alone again, they sat in silence.
“Is there anything else?” the doctor said.
Charlene took a breath. From her bag she produced the stack of pages. Her stance toward them had warmed somewhat since her low point. She tidied the pile and then slid them across his desk.
“What’s this?”
“You inspired me,” she said.
He slowly glanced through the pages. Licking his fingers. She tried to read his face.
“I see a mistake,” he noted.
“Yes,” she said, hurt. “Probably. I just finished last night.”
He put the pages down and cleared his throat.
“Charlene,” he said and looked up at her. “Is there anything you’re not telling me?”
She was startled by his question. “Like what?” she said.
“Really any information can be relevant,” he said. “If there’s anything you’re not telling me, it could delay us from our conclusion.”
She considered this. She briefly toyed with telling him about her olfactory condition. She had kept this from him. She had kept many things from him.
“I would tell you anything,” she said. “I mean, I’ve told you everything.”
“Have you?” He was coming around the desk.
“Yes,” she said, shrinking back into her chair. “I think so.”
He was standing in front of her. She closed her eyes. She could smell his aftershave. The hooked barb of musk. She could feel what was about to happen, and she was not sure how she felt about it. But when she opened her eyes again, he had moved to the window. The faintest shiver of rejection.
She went to him. Placed a tentative hand on his shoulder. She could see the false familiar of his reflection.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?” she whispered.
“Are you acquainted with the principles of uncertainty?” he said suddenly.
“Yes,” she said, taken aback. She took her hand off his shoulder. “I mean—no, not really.”
“Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle,” he said. “People are often confused by it. Heisenberg stated that both the position and velocity of a particle cannot simultaneously be known. You measure one, the other will always remain uncertain. The observation affects that which is observed.”
“Okay,” she said. “What does this have to do with Radar?”
He walked past her to his desk. “This is where people confuse the issue. It’s not the act of observation which makes things inherently uncertain—it’s the system itself which is uncertain. We blame it on us, the observers, but this is merely a convenient excuse, for the uncertainty is actually built into the world. A particle can never have two definite attributes—direction and position. If you define one, the other fades into indeterminism. And so: there is no way to know everything. You must choose your knowledge.”
She could feel the tears. She willed them back, but they came anyway.
“But I’m not asking to know everything! I’m just asking for this one thing! I don’t care about anything else!” she cried. She took a step forward. “Wait, why are you saying all of this?”
“Heisenberg—”
“You don’t want to help us, do you?”
“Of course I want to help you. The question is, do you want to help you?”
>
“You never wanted to help us!”
“Charlene.”
“You don’t care about us!”
“Charlene, listen,” he said. “The Japanese have a saying: Shiranu ga hotoke.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You must be prepared not to know what you want to know,” he said. “You must be prepared for the question to be the answer.”
The nurse appeared at the doorway with Radar, who was proudly holding up his elbow, recently adorned with a Band-Aid.
“We didn’t have Popeye, but we had a bumblebee,” said the nurse.
“Popeye is bye-bye,” said Radar.
The nurse sensed her intrusion. “Is everything all right?” she asked.
“It’s fine. Everything’s fine,” said the doctor. “We were just finishing up.”
Charlene wiped at her eyes and sniffed. Perhaps it was from crying, but she could no longer smell him.
“Come on, Radar,” she said. “We’re leaving.”
“Charlene!” he called after her. “You forgot your pages.”
“Keep them,” she said without turning around.
• • •
IN THE WEEKS and months after, she fell into a kind of mourning. A month passed without any word from the doctor’s office. Charlene finally caved and called his secretary, who was polite but evasive. She said Dr. Fitzgerald had gone to Europe to promote his skin classification system. And no, she didn’t know when he would return. But she said this in such a way that it was clear she knew exactly when he would return and had been instructed not to share the information.
Two months went by. Then four. What could he be writing? During her visits, Charlene’s sense of smell had calmed somewhat, but now, as she waited for his article, it returned with a vengeance. Some days it was so bad she would wear a swimmer’s nose clip around the house. She found the mild sense of asphyxiation comforting. After dinner, Charlene would lean out their bathroom window and smoke cigarettes into the night. She had not smoked in years. The smoke tasted awful—the tarry remnants would linger and fester in her sinuses for days—but still she found herself leaning out that window again and again.