I’m always happy to see you, I said,
and she said: Yeah, but I was thinking…Say I’m at one-third happiness capacity. If I were to walk through the door, do I all of a sudden become two-thirds happy?
I guess so, I said. Double your happiness!
and she said: But that’s the problem; I don’t know how happy I am. For all I know I could be at seventy-five percent happiness, and if I went through the door I’d suddenly get knocked down to twenty-five.
I don’t know what would be sadder: that I would now be a third as happy as I was before, or the realization that what I was before—that is to say, what I am now—is three-quarters as happy as I could possibly get.
What if I was zero percent happy, and I walked through the door to find that a hundred percent happy still isn’t all that happy?
What then?
And I started to say: That’s not actually— but she was really worked up and then all of a sudden it was almost midnight and I said: Happy New— and the second hand on my watch quivered and all of a sudden it was midnight and we were kissing. The people on the radio were cheering and I heard explosions in the distance, and I opened my eyes while I kissed her and I saw a four-winged hummingbird at the window and everything was too, too beautiful.
Then, all of a sudden, midnight was over and I felt deeply ashamed. It was midnight and one second, which is pretty much as far from midnight as you can get without going backward. I said: Well, I should…
and she said: No, please. Stay with me. Just for a little bit.
Perhaps a better me would have done the right thing and left, or a worse me wouldn’t have worried about it, just indulged in the transgression, but I am only as good as I am, and I could only do what the person as good as I am could do.
A statue isn’t built from the ground up—it’s chiseled out of a block of marble—and I often wonder if we aren’t likewise shaped by the qualities we lack, outlined by the empty space where the marble used to be. I’ll be sitting on a train. I’ll be lying awake in bed. I’ll be watching a movie; I’ll be laughing. And then, all of a sudden, I’ll be struck by the paralyzing truth: It’s not what we do that makes us who we are. It’s what we don’t do that defines us.
* * *
—
I took the Metro back to Yonatan’s campus and slid my key into the door of his office. When I reentered my own universe, the room was flooded; I must have left the Anti-Door open. It was a long walk home. I crawled into bed, and Jessica was half awake and she whispered: Hey.
I said: Hey there.
She pointed to her cheek and I kissed her
and I asked: How was the party?
and she said: Boring. I wish you’d been there.
and I said: I’m sorry.
She said: I can’t talk to people. I have too many teeth in my mouth; all the words come out wrong. I keep growing new teeth—it’s really weird. Do you think it could be a side effect of the pregnancy?
and I said: I don’t know.
We lay in bed and looked at the stars (we were fumigating the house; the bed was outside) and Jessica said: I missed you.
I said: Have you ever wondered what it’s like to go through the Anti-Door?
and she mumbled: Sometimes.
and she fell asleep.
* * *
—
The next morning, my cell phone woke us up early and Jessica shouted: Turn that fucking thing off! It was Dr. Hesslein’s assistant and the ringtone was Mahler’s up-tempo march My Baby Takes the Morning Ludwigsbahn.
She said: Yoni, it’s Carl…he’s dead.
and I said: Oh my God, is he okay?
and she said: Yeah, well, he’s dead, so…no.
Carl had left the faucet running in his house overnight. The whole building had filled up with water and he drowned in his sleep.
We went to the funeral and the shiva call. I said some very nice and accurate things. Jessica squeezed my hand lovingly. But the whole time, all I was thinking was: I have the Anti-Door in my office, and now nobody knows about it but me.
I visited Jecka more. We made love in the bed she shared with her husband, the opposite of the bed I shared with my wife, and since we were each the opposite of the other one’s spouse, I allowed myself to be convinced—no, I convinced myself—that mathematically this was a neutral act.
* * *
—
One day, after performing a neutral act, I returned through the Anti-Door to my office. The room was now half full of water and Dr. Hesslein was sitting on my desk, his feet on my chair, and he pointed at the door to the hallway and said: Yoni! I want for this door to be by you hidden kept. Just until this happens, I will find a place worse.
and I said: This isn’t right. This happened already. You’re dead. In this universe you’re dead.
Dr. Hesslein nodded solemnly. This was afraid I would happen.
I also nodded solemnly, pretending I understood what he was talking about.
He grabbed a legal pad and doodled out a diagram. I wouldn’t be lying if I didn’t say I wasn’t concerned. He paused, then concentrated on his words: When I will leave the Anti-Door with you…No. When I left the Anti-Door with you, I was hoping you would use it. But I thought you could travel back and forth between universes, like a beam of light bouncing repeatedly between two parallel mirrors.
Instead, you’ve fallen through them like a light hitting two mirrors at a diagonal, skipping across them infinitely. You understand? You don’t come back to the same place you came from!
Wanting proof, I grabbed a familiar book: Milton Hilton. I turned to a page I knew well, the one where Hilton asked Debra to marry him. It now said:
Particles, particles, everywhere particles. Also, Debra, I love you, but I think I need to be alone for a little bit.
* * *
—
Things with Jecka got more complicated. The more I visited her, the more trouble we had communicating. She was depressed. She hated her husband. I would try to tell her: Things will get better, but it came out as: Nothing didn’t get worse. One day, over takeout, she told me she didn’t love me. I didn’t know if she meant exactly that or the opposite. She told me she was pregnant. All I could say was WOW, which is MOM upside down.
I crossed the street and crawled through the Anti-Door. Dr. Hesslein was standing on the ceiling of my office, crying and laughing at the same time. Tears were flowing up into his eyes. He shouted at me: Yoni! Everything was always a mistake! You are so wonderfully unapologetic! Can you never not unforgive me?
I spat out a tooth.
My house was so far away and it rained the whole walk back. Jessica was in the living room, glaring, horrified, at our newborn baby son. I said: It’s beautiful.
She didn’t say anything
so I said again: He’s beautiful.
She said: I can’t stop cooking. I don’t know why. I can’t stop cooking food and I can’t close my mouth because of all my teeth and I don’t know what’s happening to me and I don’t know what’s happening to us and I’ve never been more scared.
I wanted to say: Everything’s going to be okay, but instead what I said was nothing.
She said: You’re cheating on me.
and I didn’t say anything,
and she said: That was a question. Are you cheating on me?
and I didn’t say anything,
and she said: If you’re cheating on me, don’t say anything.
and I didn’t say anything.
Guess what, she said: I hate you.
and I said: I probably could have guessed that.
I almost left, she said: I almost took the baby and left, but I love you too much.
and I said: You almost left?
and she said: Yeah, but I didn’t.
I ran for what felt
like hours through the waterlogged streets, racing past overturned cars and disgusting birds and billboards advertising Milton Hilton’s new book, Debra, I’m Sorry, Please Take Me Back.
My keys wouldn’t unlock my office, so I kicked down the door and dove through the Anti-Door directly into the Beckermans’ kitchen, where Yonatan was drinking milk and rum and staring at the wall.
What happened? I said,
and he held up a note: I almost stayed. But I didn’t.
I sat next to him and neither of us said anything for a while.
I said: Do you remember, several years ago, on the Metro…I started over: Did you ever witness Something Terrible?
He nodded.
Did anything—I mean, how did you—I mean…I started over: What did you do to stop it?
He shook his head.
He had done nothing, just like me. He recalled the shouting, the fear—we recited in unison the passage of Milton Hilton that we had both read over and over. Particles, particles, everywhere particles. As near as we could figure out, the only thing different about his experience was that he didn’t lie in bed awake wondering what his opposite would have done.
I thought again about what we used to say in the lab—how, as a general rule, the opposite of silence is silence.
I said: What am I doing here?
It was a rhetorical question, but I didn’t give Yonatan much credit in the knowing-which-questions-are-rhetorical department, so I was surprised when he didn’t answer.
* * *
—
There’s an old joke my mother used to tell me, about a rabbi and his student:
What’s purple, hangs on the wall, and sings? asks the rabbi,
and the student says: I don’t know. What’s purple, hangs on the wall, and sings?
and the rabbi answers: A dead herring!
But, Rabbi, a dead herring isn’t purple.
Well, you could paint it purple.
But, Rabbi, a dead herring doesn’t hang on the wall.
Well, you could hang it on the wall.
But, Rabbi, a dead herring definitely doesn’t sing!
Oh, that? That I just threw in to confuse you!
[PAUSE FOR LAUGHTER.]
* * *
—
It occurred to me that maybe I’d tried to push the edges of my universe too far. After all, we live in the real world, and in the real world, you can paint a dead herring purple, and you can hang it on the wall, but hard as you try, you can’t make it sing.
And I imagined that if I were in some other, better universe, there’d be someone who could tell me, It’s okay, or You’ll get ’em next time, tiger. Someone would tell me that all the stupid things I’d done, all my mistakes, they didn’t matter. This someone would say that, no matter what, she was proud of me, that I filled her heart with warmth, and that that’s really the most you could hope for in life—to just for an instant make somebody else just a little bit happier. She would tell me that—guess what!—everything was going to be all right.
But in this universe, there was just this empty room in this ugly house in this horrifying city, and there were two Yonatans there, and one of them turned to the other and said dully: Do you want to shoot some hoops?
We played a few games and I was better than I expected. He beat me, of course, but not by a lot. I stole the ball a couple times and surprised myself by completing a layup. At one point, we watched the sun set over the river and light up the horizon. Yonatan took it in, this wedge of transcendent beauty separating the ugly day and the terrifying night, and I got really lucky and scored a three-pointer while he was crying.
(a partial list)
• You look really familiar; have I seen you somewhere before?
• I never have more than two (re: drinks).
• Funny story: I actually make a really good boyfriend.
• That’s hilarious.
• That is so interesting.
• That is so funny.
• That’s really funny.
• [laughter]
• I really never have more than five (re: drinks).
• I basically had a double major.
• I’m pretty much running the place.
• I know what you mean.
• Oh yeah, I think I read that somewhere.
• I love this song.
• I love this song!
• That is literally the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.
• I literally can’t eat any more of this.
• I gotta get up early in the morning…
♦ I have this thing for work…
• I’m sorry I haven’t called you; things have been crazy.
• I can’t on Friday. I have a thing on Friday.
♦ Just some friends. Seeing some friends.
• I wrote this song in, like, five minutes. It’s not very good.
• I honestly never think about him anymore (re: Blake).
• More than ten, but fewer than twenty (re: women).
• It’s this dumb work party—if you don’t want to go, I won’t hold it against you.
• No, that sounds like a lot of fun.
• You were the handsomest guy there.
♦ No, I’m serious.
• Yeah, they seem really cool (re: work friends).
• I…love you too.
• I’ve never felt like this before.
• This moment, right here, is the happiest moment of my life.
• Yes.
• Yeah.
• No.
• Definitely.
• I love them (re: earrings).
• It’s delicious (re: soup).
• I just feel like we get each other in a way most couples don’t.
• I also feel that way, exactly.
• I was listening.
• I didn’t even notice her.
• Just a guy I work with.
• You’re reading too much into things.
• He’s like a brother!
♦ It would just be weird.
• I’ve never thought of her in that way.
• Well, that’s really wonderful.
♦ No, I’m not being passive aggressive.
♦ I really think it’s wonderful.
♦ I don’t know what “tone” you’re talking about.
■ I’m telling you it’s wonderful.
• I love your friends.
♦ You know I love your friends.
• What are you talking about? You’re great at parties.
• I didn’t notice (re: weight gain).
♦ No, I’m telling you, you look exactly the same to me.
• I told you red (re: wine).
♦ I definitely said red.
• I checked the weather before we left.
• I didn’t see your text until I was already on my way home.
• They want it to be just the guys, no girlfriends.
♦ I think it’s stupid, personally, but what can you do?
♦ I’ll tell them you said that.
• You don’t need to apologize to me.
• I think the most important thing is honesty.
• It’s fine.
• Fine.
• It’s really fine.
♦ I told you it’s fine.
• I’m fine.
• Of course I’m happy for you (re: promotion)!
♦ I’m thrilled!
• I can listen and check my em
ails at the same time.
• I don’t keep track of those things the way you do (re: who “won” argument).
• I do trust you (re: Blake).
• Okay, you’re right.
♦ I am not just saying that so you’ll shut up, do you know how degrading that is?
• She seems really nice.
♦ I like her.
• It doesn’t bother me.
• Just do whatever you want; I don’t have an opinion one way or the other.
• It was just coffee!
• I think you’re overreacting.
• I’m sorry.
• I had to work late.
♦ I told you, I was at work.
♦ Why would I lie about being at work? I don’t understand you.
♦ I actually have no idea what you’re talking about.
■ I really don’t.
❏ Truly.
♦ This? Whatever this is? It’s all in your head.
• You don’t know me at all.
• I didn’t mean it like that.
• I don’t deserve this.
• I’m just thinking, what’s going to be best for you?
• All I want is for you to be happy.
♦ That’s all I want.
• I think maybe the problem is I love you too much. Could that be the problem?
• Once everything settles down at work, things will get easier with us.
• If you would just come home, we could talk about this like adults.
• That is so mean; I do not have one foot out the door.
• Damn it, we can make this work.
♦ I want to make this work.
♦ I am dedicated to making this work.
Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory Page 6