Select Few

by Marit Weisenberg

  “Have you been sent to find out?” I asked.

  “No. I’m curious.” He nodded to me. “You’re obviously a relation of Maya’s. But you’re the first she’s let in. Are her parents well?”

  I paused at the mention of grandparents and then jumped on the suggestion. “That’s something I’d like to talk to her about,” I said, not wanting to let her get away with an interaction by proxy.

  “I see. Well, I’m Emmanuel, here to deliver supplies, but I also need you to sign these release forms.”

  “So if we drown in the ocean, you’re not responsible?” Angus eyed him.

  “Exactly,” the man said pleasantly. So far he was the first friendly person we’d encountered.

  “How long have you been at this—intentional community?” I asked.

  “Years and years, my friend. You’re the first young people I’ve seen in a long while.”

  “What about up there?” Angus asked, pointing to the bluff. “You see people up there.”

  “We don’t leave. The world comes to us. At least the guests who apply to come visit. And the people who deliver our food and supplies.”

  “When was the last time you left?” No wonder he seemed to have no concept of the news.

  “Oh, man, that had to be fifteen years ago. That’s when I stumbled on Maya living down here. She was first. This community was all her doing. Slowly she filled some of the bungalows with her friends when the previous tenants left. And then some of us quit leaving the beach altogether.”

  Angus looked at me sidelong. Did her friends know she owned it? Remembering that the land came to her through Novak made me feel like this beautiful place was dirty once again.

  Angus and I signed the waivers. The man still lingered.

  “Yes?” Angus asked.

  The bald man looked at us more intently, sizing us up. “This bungalow is reserved for registered guests. I’m not sure how long you can stay here. Until then, please, you’re our guests like anyone else. Join us. Everyone would like to see you at the meditations. Young people are a breath of fresh air.”

  After the man left, we drifted inside. Angus plunked himself down into the giant papasan chair without a care, saturating the bright orange cushion with his sopping wet shorts. He seemed to sag with disappointment. “We don’t know how long we have here?”

  “It’s not very welcoming,” I said.

  “Whatever,” Angus said, as if he suddenly shook off disappointment and became practical again. “We’re on a fact-finding mission. We already know the most important thing. Your father didn’t ruin her.”

  “Or did he? We don’t know what she’s like or what this is.”

  “If anything, it seems like he created her.”

  “Do you think this is a cult?” With my birth mother as leader. The same had been said about my father.

  “I don’t know yet,” Angus said. “That guy who’s friends with Elizabeth and lives here full time just seems like a hippie. The ‘guests’ don’t seem like cult types. More like rich people who wear shirts that say ‘spiritual gangster.’ ”

  That night, we went to the room where we’d first seen Elizabeth and ate plates of beans, rice, and mango while sitting in a circle on the floor. Small cushions were provided to the visitors who shifted uncomfortably throughout the meal as they tried to sit with their legs crisscrossed. Elizabeth was conspicuously absent. The room was quiet except for the crash of the waves that carried through the open windows. The curious stares aimed in my direction had a light, non-threatening quality. I either kept my eyes on my food or on Angus, who nibbled on mango and pushed the rest of the food around the plate.

  As we departed dinner to walk down the beach to our bungalow, one older couple hurried to catch up to us. Angus and I stiffened.

  “Hello!”

  “Hi,” Angus and I said in unison.

  “Are you Maya’s daughter? My wife wants to know,” the man asked.

  “Roy!”

  I didn’t know how to answer that.

  “She is,” Angus said, claiming her for me.

  It was a fact after all. And those seemed to be getting harder to keep track of in this confusing place.

  “Wow. I had no idea she had children,” the woman said. They quickly fell behind when we kept up our pace, making it clear we didn’t welcome conversation.

  Later, when we switched off the lamps, I leaned against the wicker headboard of the queen-size bed under a white cotton coverlet. Angus began the night on the floor on a yoga mat, but eventually the hard floor sent him into bed next to me. It was more of a comfort than an annoyance since I was wide awake, knowing just down the beach there was someone who could finally tell me about my past. I was in a strange space—not wanting to wait but almost too scared to find out more.

  AUGUST, one month later

  JOHN

  Whenever I had a second alone, I focused on that scrape. Each time I could erase a little bit more of it.

  The next night, I could heal more at one time.

  I used the same skills I used to block you from reading my mind. Quieting my mind to keep you from eavesdropping was the gateway.

  Somewhere along the way, I became okay with not telling you about the healing. I started to throw myself all over the tennis court. I dove unnecessarily, looking to get some minor injuries. I’m sure my family wanted to ask, “What the hell are you doing?”

  I imagined I could see beneath the skin. Going deep, seeing the cells repair. I started Googling anything having to do with people who called themselves healers. I wanted to email a few of them. I didn’t though because I wasn’t sure who was a quack and who might be for real.

  You’d told me that being near you brought this out in me, and that these extras would fade when you were gone. My whole life I’d been careful to do what people asked me to do. This was the thread I picked up to see how it might unravel—what if I could get better at this thing without you?

  JULY

  Chapter Nineteen

  I refused to think of her as Maya. That was the name she’d used to remake herself after Novak left. I wanted who she was before that.

  I was conscious of time slipping away as Tuesday approached, the day Elizabeth’s “silence” would supposedly end. I didn’t see her on the beach or at the meals, yoga classes, and meditations that consumed Angus and me. Though we kept a certain distance we’d begun to follow the schedule as an investigation of sorts. The community always welcomed us.

  We knew how to be quiet. But this was a different kind of quiet. A quiet that wasn’t eerie and cunning. It was just, for lack of a better word, open. Time took on a new quality after the third time I meditated on the beach. I had gone to the first meditation uneasily, only looking for Elizabeth, but something had happened. Everything had felt vast. All the worry, all the obsessive planning, it had fallen away.

  I didn’t bother asking if Angus felt it too. He’d become more quiet. When he did talk, he mentioned the beach and how he could stay forever, listening to the waves.

  That melded feeling, like we were part of a larger whole, and the rate at which we’d become comfortable were what caused Angus to mess up.

  We were finishing our third and last meditation of the day. It felt like one second had passed, not one hour. For the entire session, I’d kept my eyes closed and felt as though I’d become part of the ocean, drifting in the waves. At the end of the session, my reality slowly came back to me—John, Novak, my currently empty hotel room—but it was hazier than it had been before. I didn’t feel the same sense of urgency.

  First, I heard a gasp to my right. I didn’t immediately open my eyes, not wanting to make the abrupt transition to reality before I was ready. I wanted to savor the moment, the cool ocean air against my skin, the ebbing light further darkening the world beyond my closed eyelids.

  Angus moved next to me,
and my eyes snapped open. Everyone was looking at Angus. At first I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing.

  Angus sat, angelic, his legs in crossed position, two inches off the ground. He floated.

  “Angus.” I smacked his knee with the back of my hand. Startled, he came down hard on the sand. The assembled group was watching us. Eyes were large, but no one said a word. Thankfully, none of the meditation tourists had come to this last event of the day. Only the residents were present.

  “What?” Angus whispered to me.

  “Well done,” said Emmanuel who’d led the meditation. He got up and stretched, acting blasé. The group took his lead and stood, glancing sidelong at Angus, shaking off the miracle.

  Emmanuel shielded his eyes from the sun. “Maya said she’d seen that in India, at a temple once. You are an advanced creature already, my friend. Use it wisely.” He clapped Angus on the back so hard that Angus’s slight chest thrust forward.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” Angus asked me when everyone else had left.

  “You levitated,” I said.

  “No.” He eyed me skeptically.

  Worry about what people had seen took a surprising backseat. “What did it feel like?”

  No one was grabbing pitchforks. Yet.

  “That was…” I paused. “I don’t even know what. Pure, I guess.”

  “Are you serious? Damn. Do we need to leave?”

  “I’m not sure. They don’t seem very excited.” Which felt like a miracle in and of itself. I wasn’t sure I could trust it was safe, but I wasn’t ready to leave yet.

  “I felt…I don’t know…I wasn’t even here. I was somewhere else.” Angus was glowing.

  “You are an advanced creature, my friend,” I agreed. “I don’t quite know what we should do next though.”

  “Look.” Angus lightly touched my shoulder and pointed to Elizabeth slowly walking down the beach.

  Novak would have approached us with an entourage, but Elizabeth came by herself.

  “You ready?” Angus asked me.

  The beach darkened as the sun set and Elizabeth closed the distance between us.

  “Stay with me, okay?” I said.

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “She won’t call the police about us. I don’t think she wants any trouble…” I said the words though I didn’t know a thing about what she would and wouldn’t do. She may be unstable for all I knew. Judging by the alert but calm energy of the people who’d surrounded us since we’d arrived, I would guess Elizabeth knew what she was doing. The question was, could she be special? Both Angus and I wanted to see something in her that could give us a clue as to why Novak had thought she was different.

  Elizabeth was nearing. She was dressed in white linen pants and a white yoga top with an oversize cardigan falling off one shoulder. I resisted the urge to grab Angus’s hand. Angus and I had never met an outsider who knew history we didn’t.

  “I saw you’ve been doing some tricks down here,” Elizabeth called to Angus over the waves. Her voice was pretty, more pleasant than I remembered from the other day.

  “It wasn’t a trick,” Angus replied.

  “No, it wasn’t. I’m sorry, that was the wrong thing to call it.” Elizabeth tilted her head to indicate we should move away from the crash of the waves to better talk.

  We followed her thin figure to our bungalow. Her hair hung loose and stick straight almost to her waist, tucked behind one ear. She looked like an apparition. I wanted her to speak to us again so I had an excuse to look at her.

  Angus and I trailed Elizabeth up the stairs, watching her lead the way into the space Angus and I had shared for the past two days. Angus gently closed the door behind us.

  Elizabeth faced us, placing her elbows on the counter of the kitchenette behind her. “I’m Maya,” she said, looking at us both but definitely more at Angus.

  “I’m Julia.” I held out a hand to her.

  I wasn’t wrong—her reluctance was clear, when, after a beat too long, she came forward to take my hand. When we shook hands, I barely registered what it felt like; I was too consumed with the fact that it was happening.

  Angus quickly shook her hand as well.

  The three of us stood looking at each other. Was she going to speak? Confront us? No, instead she rested against the counter, keeping her gaze leveled on us.

  I felt Angus look from me to Elizabeth and knew he was about to take over. I knew the right thing to do was to step out from behind him. I was grateful he had taken me this far, but it wasn’t right for him to handle this moment for me.

  “I think I’m your daughter,” I said awkwardly, breaking the silence.

  “Is he coming?” Elizabeth asked right back, not acknowledging what I’d just said. For the second time in her dark eyes, I saw a brief view behind the curtain, before the calm shield went right back up. It reminded me of John.

  “Novak?” Angus asked.

  When Elizabeth looked blank, I said, “My father?”

  “He goes by Novak now?” Then she nodded as if, of course, it all made sense that he would change his name.

  “No. He’s not coming,” I said. Something went out of her eyes. Was it disappointment? Anticipation? Maybe it was only the fear. Her muscles seemed to relax, as if she had dispensed with the most pressing business.

  “But you’re here,” Elizabeth said, sizing me up.

  “Yes.”

  “How?” she asked. “Why have you broken off from the group? That’s how you get your power.”

  What else did she know about us?

  “I left,” I said.

  “And you?” she asked Angus.

  “I was kicked out.”

  She looked me directly in the eye. “What makes you think they aren’t coming to find you?”

  “We’re on our own now,” I said.

  “I’m very good at reading people, and I’m getting the sense that you aren’t done with them.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I also have good foresight, so maybe it’s that they aren’t done with you.”

  “Then you must have known I was coming.” A sarcastic edge slipped into my voice. The stress of the encounter was getting to me. And the fact that she was scaring me all over again about things I’d been trying to forget.

  “No, actually, I didn’t see you coming.” She straightened and crossed her arms protectively across her slight frame. Elizabeth looked wraith-like from far away, but where her sweater had slipped was a ropy, toned arm.

  “Do you want me to leave?” Angus asked me.

  “Yes, give us a few minutes,” I said.

  After Angus left, I looked at Elizabeth and she held my gaze. I realized I could stare and stare at her all day. Over the years, I’d tried to imagine her, but that could not compare to standing right in front of her.

  “Is he your brother?” she asked.

  “No. He’s my best friend. My only family left.” I realized, to her, Angus looked so much more like Novak than I did. I wondered if she wanted to know whether Novak had more children.

  Elizabeth sat on one of the stools pulled up to the counter, leaning her body to one side. She was so graceful, like she’d once been a dancer.

  “It took me a while to get to the point where I didn’t think about this,” she finally said. She lifted her bare feet to rest on the bottom rung of the stool and flattened her hands on the tops of her thighs, pressing down. “Look, I’m not prepared for you. You were someone I’d play with in my dreams and that’s where you stayed. And then finally I had to stop. I’ve spent the last eighteen years trying to rid myself of any expectation—that Chris would come back, that you would find me. I reminded myself over and over again that you people never come back. Even though he told me he’d find a way.”

  “I found a way.” />
  “It’s funny. You’re exactly how I pictured you.” Elizabeth studied me, but it was with remove.

  I wanted to drink her in as fast as I could, used to how fragile life was, that people disappeared.

  “I know you wanted to see who I am, and you managed to find me.” Elizabeth gestured to the room at large, to the ocean. “But I’m not sure I can have this noise here. I built a new life. Your father and those people were a recurring nightmare for me, the thing that kept me from progressing for so long. When you and he disappeared, that was the end of a life for Elizabeth Blackcomb. All of that is to say, I don’t know if you and your friend can stay here.”

  “I don’t mean to ruin your life. I’m just trying to make sense of mine.”

  Elizabeth nodded in response. “That’s fair. I’m just not sure I can open that door. Stay here tonight as planned, but as Emmanuel explained, I don’t know how long I can host you.”

  She was unflappable. Somehow I couldn’t hate her after her honesty. I almost wanted to be polite and let her go on her way. When she turned to leave, I saw a small tattoo on her exposed shoulder blade. It said “12-5.”

  “What did you name me?” I asked, right before she crossed the threshold.

  “Excuse me?” She looked back at me.

  “What did you name me when I was born?”

  “Julia,” she said. The screen door shut behind her, clapping open and closing once more.

  Late AUGUST

  JOHN

  So Alex knew. About you, I mean.

  I’m guessing that my parents saw you mostly as…actually, I have no idea. When I think about it, it had to be strange that their son was suddenly dating someone from a world of private jets whose father was a criminal. They had to be pretty worried that I’d disappear into a life so different from theirs, like I was a commoner marrying into a royal family, although, pretty much all we did was order takeout at your place.