The it that was happening was the Anti-Door, a project he and I both had spent the majority of our adult lives daydreaming about, all of a sudden becoming a reality thanks to a generous grant from the Frank and Felicity Fielding Foundation.
* * *
—
I first became interested in Carl’s research several years earlier, after I witnessed Something Terrible on the Metro.
I was reading Milton Hilton’s new book. It was a meditation on particle velocity levels—nothing revolutionary. Suddenly, very loudly, I heard Something Terrible happening.
No! Please don’t!
I didn’t look up.
Help, I heard. And then, just in case I hadn’t heard: Please help me. Please!
I tried not to listen.
I focused on the words in my book. I read the same paragraph over and over again. This is what it said:
Particles, particles, everywhere particles. Also, Debra, I love you; will you marry me?
For dinner, Jessica and I had Chinese. My wife didn’t like to cook—I say that like she should, like it’s her job, excuse me—neither of us liked to cook. We got takeout a lot. That night we had Chinese.
I said: How was your day?
and she said: Fucking fruit flies…
and I said: Yeah…
She said: How was your day?
and I said: Milton Hilton asked Debra to marry him.
and she said: That’s nice. And then: Who’s Debra?
and I said: I don’t know.
That night, I lay in bed and stared at the stars (we were remodeling at the time; our bedroom had no roof) and I thought about how I did nothing, how Something Terrible was happening and I did nothing, and I wondered if a better version of me might have acted less cowardly.
In the following days and months and years, I often pondered this un-me, an un-me who was gracious to my wife when I was callous and patient with my students when I was irritable. I thought about this man every time I meant to say I love you but instead I said Don’t touch that. Every time I meant to say YES! but instead I said…Yes? Every time I meant to say Everything’s going to be okay but instead I said nothing.
If I tell you I can’t count all the times I’ve made the wrong call, chosen the wrong words, taken the wrong path, please know I’m not saying it to be modest about my counting skills, which I assure you are more than adequate. But if there was another me, an opposite, someone who did do all the right things—well, I figured, that guy could really be something.
Dr. Hesslein had written in detail about an anti-universe that counter-resembles our own, balancing us, neutralizing us, receiving our excess energy and converting it to anti-energy. The braver, wiser, better un-me would live there, as would the uns of everybody who ever existed. Everything the anti-universe is would fit neatly into the crevices of everything we are not, like two halves of an English muffin. It would have the solutions to our problems and it would inspire us to become a better un-them.
And now, having finally raised the capital, Dr. Hesslein was assembling a team of physicists and engineers to design and build the door that would take us there. He asked me whether I wanted to be a part of history if I wasn’t too busy throwing words at handfuls of bored undergrads. I didn’t even have to think about it.
Work began on the Anti-Door that fall, under the assumption that while we were constructing a door that opens in, scientists in the opposite universe would be building a corresponding door that opens out, because: logic.
My first day on the job, Jessica insisted on walking me to the Metro stop. She said: Be careful with all those complex theoretical equations, okay? Some of them have sharp corners.
and I said: I’ll be sure to wear gloves.
For real, though, you’re playing with the fundamentals of time and space. Don’t create some sort of paradoxical pocket universe in which you were never born, because I still need you to clean the garage.
and I said: Your concern is touching.
and she said: I was joking! I’m sorry; I’m nervous.
and I said: Don’t be; it’s bad for the baby. I kissed her on the forehead.
She said: Seriously, though, when you get back, you’ll clean the garage?
* * *
—
Of course, the universe is not black and white, and opposites turned out to be a little more fluid than we anticipated. The opposite of a dog can be a cat, or a different dog, or nothing at all, the absence of dog.
* * *
—
I should iterate that this is an oversimplification of the math, but it is emblematic of the basic principle. Here are a few more examples:
Ex: Possible opposites
I will not go out today. I [will] go out today.
I will not [stay in] today.
I [will] [stay in] today.
I [will] [stay in] [every day].
My mother [My father]
[My wife]
[My unborn child]
[My mother] [(My mother is dead.)]
I don’t say I love you. I [say] I love you.
I don’t say [I hate you].
[You] don’t say [you love me].
I don’t say I love you. [I don’t even think it.]
Note that in the last example, in three out of four cases, the opposite of silence is silence. We had announced with great fanfare a new era of balance and understanding, but the more tests we ran, the less certain we could be about what was on the other side of the door we had just spent eight months building.
What if you walked through the Anti-Door and gravity lifted you off the ground and hurled you into outer space? What if the oxygen on the other side of the door was toxic? If there were no piranhas in the room you left, would you walk into a roomful of piranhas? Or, worst of all, what if the world on the other side of the door was no better or worse than our own, just different? What if it was just as heavy with war and famine and iniquity and cowardice?
But Frank and Felicity Fielding and their foundation were not interested in what-ifs, they were interested in results, and since we had none to offer, they cut funding, and I returned to the unglamorous life of being a minor annoyance for hungover teens, and a husband, and eventually, presumably, a father.
* * *
—
One afternoon, after a particularly ill-received performance of my lecture “Matter: Does It Matter?,” I returned to my modest office on the fourth floor of the science building to discover that the cramped, poorly lit space the university had seen fit to give me was even more overstuffed than usual.
Sitting in my chair with his feet up on the desk was Carl Hesslein, and behind him, blocking the window facing the alley (the room’s sole source of natural light), stood the Anti-Door.
Why is this here? I asked,
and Dr. Hesslein said: You think I was just going to hand this over to FieldingCorp? They wouldn’t even know what to do with it!
and I said: We don’t even know what to do with it.
and he said: Just keep it here until I find a better hiding spot, okay?
and I said: But what if someone sees it? What if one of my students wants to visit during office hours?
and he said: Has that ever happened?
and I said: Not historically, no, but I like the idea that someone could surprise me.
and he said: Just keep it for a few weeks. I promise you’ll forget it’s even here.
* * *
—
Well, I didn’t forget. The door was behind me while I graded papers. The door
was behind me while I ate lunches at my desk—a series of sad salads from the campus cafeteria. Every day, the room seemed smaller and the Anti-Door seemed larger.
It was behind me when I got a call from Jessica, after she went to see the doctor about the baby that wouldn’t come out after a year and a half.
The doctor thinks it might be psychosomatic, she said. He thinks maybe I subconsciously don’t believe I’m ready for the baby.
and I said: Really? What do you think?
and she said: Well, I think I’m ready, but…maybe I’m sensing that you’re not ready.
What do you mean I’m not ready? I’m ready.
There was a pause, and she said: I don’t think you’ve really come to terms with the fact that everything’s going to change once the baby gets here. Everything we were, our independent selves, our careers, all the things that mattered to us—
and I said: What makes you think I’m not ready for that?
She sighed and said: I don’t know, Yoni.
and I said: I promise you the baby is going to come and it’s going to be the most amazing thing that ever happened to us, and we are going to be wonderful parents, but until that happens, why don’t we try to enjoy this extra time we have, before everything changes?
and she said: See, this is what I mean, about you not being ready.
and I didn’t say anything,
and she said: I’m sorry, Yoni.
and I said: We’ll talk about this when I get home.
and she said: Okay, Yoni.
I hung up the phone, and the door was behind me
and I spun around to look at it,
and I rested my hand on the knob
and I turned the knob
and I opened the Anti-Door
and I walked through it.
* * *
—
As soon as I crossed the threshold I stumbled into a pool of water. I fell on all fours and spat up blood; I had swallowed a tooth. I squinted as my eyes adjusted to the new light. As far as I could tell, it was the same cramped office I had just come from, but with six inches of water in it. An incredibly handsome man in a dark blue corduroy coat was staring at me. I looked at the name on the office door.
You’re Yonatan Beckerman, I said,
and he said: No doyyyyyyy. I don’t know how you got in my office, guy, but you wanna watch a video of me shooting hoops? I’m real skilled at shooting hoops.
I said: You’re the opposite of me.
and he said: Shut up, you’re the opposite of me.
and I said: Yes, both those things are true.
and he said: Shut up, neither of those things is true.
and I thought: Jesus, this guy’s a pain in the ass.
Then he said: Hey, I don’t know what your deal is, guy, but you want to come over for dinner? My wife’s a really good cook; plus, she’s a total babe.
* * *
—
We walked to his house. The streets were flooded and the other Yonatan made fun of me for not bringing my boots. Everywhere, people were shouting and dropping large electronic appliances out windows. Horrifying bats fluttered from lamppost to lamppost.
Yonatan lived in a water-damaged mansion in the middle of a river. He kicked down the front door and shouted into the kitchen: Jecka, I found this guy! He wants dinner.
and I said: My name is Yoni; I work at the university with your husband.
The first thing I noticed about Jecka Beckerman was how very not pregnant she was. She wiped her hand on her apron and smiled widely as she offered it to me. It’s so nice to meet you, she said. Dinner will be ready in a minute.
It was the best meal I’d had in years. Jecka told us about the research she’d been doing on four-winged hummingbirds. Technically, they’re not really birds, she said. We don’t know what they are. But check out these migratory patterns…I could barely follow her, she talked so quickly. She flitted wildly between ideas and knocked over several glasses of wine. If the field test doesn’t work, I’ll die. I will actually literally fall over dead and stay dead for the rest of my life. But if it does work, oh, Yoni, if it does work…it’s too good to say out loud.
While Yonatan washed the dishes, I bored his wife with stories of my own career. At one point I must have reminded her of something else, because she bit her lower lip and said: Do you like earthquakes?
and I said: Sure (which is true). Earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes—I like any situation where all of a sudden everything changes and the rules don’t apply. I love an emergency.
and Jecka said: You want to know a secret? I do too.
I walked back to Yonatan’s campus, returned through the Anti-Door to my office, and took the Metro home. My wife was in the living room and I kissed her hard on the mouth and I said: Hey, beautiful! Tell me something interesting about fruit flies.
Jessica looked at me and said: Yoni. They’re fucking fruit flies.
* * *
—
I started dipping into the world on the other side of the Anti-Door every day between classes, each time spitting out a new tooth and shoving it into my pocket so Jecka could sew it back into my mouth later. I became an expert at navigating my way through the opposite Beckermans’ neighborhood and would try to beat my time from the campus to their house. Thirty minutes. Twenty minutes.
This new universe I had discovered was exciting and terrifying and romantic, as anything that’s one tends to be all three. You walk through the Anti-Door, and suddenly you’re a different person. Something is lost and something is gained. Something is forgotten and something is found. You reach into your pocket, you pull out a watch that wasn’t there before, a photograph of a girl you don’t recognize, the business card of a man you’ve never met.
On my birthday, Jecka baked me an earth-day-quake, a confectionary disaster littered with little green candy men diving for cover under a split cookie crust.
We sat together at one of Yonatan’s basketball games. The court was on the top of a hill so they wouldn’t have to play in the water. I leaned in close to the woman who was the opposite of my wife and whispered: He’s really very good.
Jecka smiled. Isn’t he? I was going to make cupcakes, but…for some reason I didn’t.
I said: That’s okay; I can never eat cupcakes without feeling guilty.
and she said: Yonatan’s the same way, and I knew that one of us was lying.
I asked her about her field test. Her eyes sank and then flickered and she asked me what I was doing for New Year’s. Yonatan has to stay at the office and grade papers. Why don’t you come over? I don’t want to be alone.
* * *
—
When I told Jessica I had to stay at the office and grade papers over New Year’s, she took it harder than I expected.
Don’t make me go to that party by myself, she said,
and I said: You’ll be fine.
She said: But guess what: I’m baking a pie. I never bake!
and I said: Save me a slice.
Jessica used to say guess what a lot, because:
she thought it was cute, and
she was a scientist, and scientists (she claimed) should always be guessing what.
When she was in a playful mood, she would say: Guess what, you are my husband, and guess what, I love you, and guess what, you are so adorable I just want to punch you in the face.
and when she thought I needed cheering up, she would say: Guess what.
and I would say: What?
and she would say: I think you’re wonderful. And I am so proud of you.
More often, however, she would use it as a rejoinder, as in: Guess what, you forgot to do the dishes, or: Guess what, someone left his shoes in the middle of the living room for his pregnant wife to trip over.
&nb
sp; * * *
—
On New Year’s, Jecka and I stood in the kitchen, drinking wine and listening to the radio (Yonatan had thrown the TV out the window). There was a war in some country that I was pretty sure didn’t exist in my universe. Jecka leaned against the sink and bit her lower lip, which was something she often did right before asking me a question.
When did you know that you wanted to be a scientist? she asked, and I told her my “How I Became Interested in Science Story.”
Yoni Beckerman’s “How I Became Interested in Science Story”
When I was in fourth grade, Peter Weiss returned from a family vacation in Germany with a horrifying cough and a contagious fever that splattered across the class like a Jackson Pollock painting.
As it turned out, every single gentile in the class got sick. All the blond-haired Smiths and Vanderwilts disappeared, while the Rosenbergs and Cohens somehow seemed stronger, as if we were nourished by the absence of our classmates, like a garden suddenly free of weeds.
Eventually, doctors figured out that Peter Weiss got infected by residual toxins at a concentration camp he visited, and all the Jews in the class, grandchildren of survivors, had inherited DNA immunized due to years of exposure.
And that’s when I realized that science is constantly happening all around us.
Every other subject is static: Brutus will have always betrayed Caesar, one and one will always make two, and when two vowels go a-walking, the first one will always do the talking. But in science, we’re constantly making new discoveries.
We’re the last pioneers.
Jecka looked at me and bit her lower lip, and I could tell she wanted to ask me something so I said: What?
and she said: When you walk through the Anti-Door, does it make you happier?
Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory Page 5