* * *
Angelica carefully folds the newspaper and moves to her home office, attached to the house but with its own separate entrance and bathroom. The memory of that day comes back in full. David needed to come in on a weekend, and Angelica suggested he come to her home office, rather than both of them driving to Pacific Palisades. Some patients only saw her at the home office; she had been toying with the idea of letting her other space go altogether. She opened the door to find David standing there, headphones slightly askew, adjusting his backpack. He looked more nervous than usual, and like he didn’t want to be seen.
The first thing he said was I’m sorry.
“David, for what? You’re right on time.”
“I didn’t know her address, I only knew her house. Your house, I mean. I dropped her off so many times I just knew how to get here. I thought it was a coincidence, that you might be neighbors or something.”
“It’s okay, David. Come inside.”
“Did you know?” His voice grew frantic, afraid.
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” Angelica said, though she was certain by now. Her own distress was momentarily kept at bay by the performance of calm she knew her patient needed more. “Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out.”
He sat on the small couch facing her, his feet crossed, shoelaces untied, one sneaker bouncing as always to some inaudible beat. He had often mentioned his girlfriend before, and as he spoke, Angelica fought to keep her mind focused on him, rather than scouring her memory for details that should have tipped her off. Was her daughter so foreign to her that she couldn’t recognize her? Should she be able to? Would another mother be able to?
By the end of the session, they decided that they would talk to David’s parents first, and then Remy. She would be leaving soon for Brown, which would address at least the immediate complications. David had been struggling significantly more given his girlfriend’s impending absence, all of which Angelica knew and his girlfriend, her daughter, did not. No one else could give David the kind of treatment Angelica was providing; outpatient Memoroxin therapy was still rare and exclusive. But Angelica felt immediately protective of Remy as well, despite her fondness for David. She didn’t want her daughter to become his salvation. Tethered to someone who might hold her back, when she was just about to leave, when she had worked so hard.
She was so young. They were both so young.
* * *
In her small office bathroom, Angelica smooths her short hair, pinning it behind her ear with a bobby pin from the jar she keeps on her desk. She likes it this way, a sleek curtain she can hide behind. She licks her pointer finger to slick down the few stray wisps, dyed grays no doubt, and watches her face until the familiar voice inside begins questioning what she sees.
When patients ask whether Angelica has ever administered Memoroxin therapy on herself, her rehearsed answer is that, of course, for her clinical studies she was the subject of her own memories undergoing the therapy. She believed it an important step to understanding a patient’s experience; and believes the treatment to be not only effective, but safe for anyone. What she doesn’t tell them is that years ago, still in research for her PhD at Johns Hopkins, on one of the first teams developing the technology to transfer memories, she had not in fact volunteered for Memoroxin therapy as a patient; she had taken another researcher’s batch.
Sahar, her girlfriend at the time, had been deeply invested in the project as it related to her research on PTSD in veterans. Ever more ambitious and adventurous than Angelica, Sahar was one of the first volunteers for initial extractions. Hers was one of the first examples of an effective memory capture and transfer. Even then, Angelica knew the risks of ingesting someone else’s memory capture, but she couldn’t help herself. She was desperate to step inside the mind of such a brilliant, fascinating, and beautiful person. And she trusted Sahar, with her life. Her love had been so strong it surpassed the value Angelica held for herself, her sanity. It violated it.
Angelica and Sahar had just begun living together, a year into their relationship. There was no part of Sahar that she did not want to see. And one night, when Sahar was distracted with her own research, Angelica administered a tiny dose of Sahar’s Memoroxin to herself. Back then they weren’t fancy pills, but a dull powder to be mixed with water, dropped into a petri dish, and pressed into a dissolving edible strip. There were no sedatives in the formulation at that point, so you were present for the entire trip, making it a deeply disorienting yet revelatory experience.
Angelica’s first time in Sahar was intoxicating. To experience a jolt of the person you love more than yourself—well, it was impossible for Angelica to ever explain afterward. Words failed. One evening, sitting in their shared apartment in Butchers Hill, Angelica resorted to tapping keys on the piano in melancholy but sweet, lingering notes. Nothing could adequately convey the sense of Sahar. In that moment, Angelica felt she had stumbled upon the most potent gift one lover could give to another—their heart, their soul, their very consciousness—to be relished in tiny, exquisite doses.
Being inside of Sahar, or having Sahar’s memories and feelings inside of her, was an intimacy stronger than any Angelica had physically experienced. But soon enough Angelica wanted more. When she was with Sahar, she felt the disconnect; she had gotten direct, unfiltered access, and now the shell of Sahar she lived with was unbearably false. But the more of Sahar’s extraction she took, the more lucid the memories became. She felt her love deepening with every moment she experienced, as if instead of simply listening to her favorite song, she had finally learned to play it. No, she had become the notes themselves, both floating through the air and delighting her own ears.
Then one day, after a particularly potent dose, Angelica recognized herself in Sahar’s memory. For a moment, she saw her own harsh beauty. Its sleek, groomed perfection. A rigid intensity. Angelica never considered herself that way, and the perspective was both flattering and embarrassing, to think that she came off so calculated, so severe. But the memories went on. Angelica saw—and felt—how Sahar saw her, and how that had already changed over time; how it hardened, too, and especially how it differed from Angelica’s idea of herself. Even after she came out of Sahar’s memories, she couldn’t unhear the critical voice at her every move. Angelica would be prettier if she frowned less, if she softened. She felt how Sahar hated the way her forehead wrinkled when she smiled, the way she pushed her lips together right before kissing, the smell of her breath in the stupidly blissful moments in between. How she was always, always around. They were the worst kind of insults, felt too deeply to be voiced, so woven into the consciousness that they seemed mere truths.
Angelica tried to forget; she tried to understand. Sahar swore her love to her. She acted like it was true, too. Of course, we all think terrible, judgmental things without knowing. No one is meant to see themselves through another’s eyes. Angelica couldn’t tell Sahar what she had done, or how she knew there was more Sahar had left unsaid; if she did, they would be over. Not only their relationship, but Angelica’s career and possibly Sahar’s. Angelica would be admitted to testing, the violation of which made her feel physically ill. But the more Angelica tried to open herself to the love she still felt for Sahar, the more she hurt. This is what she tries to convey to her patients at the Center while healing them from misuse; that she understands their pain. That there is a way through it.
Angelica never considered herself particularly kind. All her life she felt different—cold when other women fawned, numb when they gushed. But after Sahar, Angelica understood that she was in fact kind, deeply so, and it was the world that was not. No matter how much others smiled and praised each other, deep down, they judged. They resented. And from then on, she felt no shame in forgoing the superficial pleasantries she had so often forced before. She let her face relax without forcing a smile when she said hello, she replied honestly whenever someone asked how she was, and she kept herself safely sequestered from the wound she had endur
ed through Sahar’s eyes, so that when it finally healed she would not open it again.
Then, eighteen and a half years ago, she made one crucial mistake in keeping that plan. Angelica adopted a baby girl, and her heart—tightly closed and always measured—exploded, laying open and vulnerable every day since. No matter how Remy treated her, Angelica felt herself splayed. Unwavering. Unrelenting. She was and always would be there for Remy, and she would do anything for that child. Even if she was no good at showing it.
With Remy gone for the day, Angelica might pour a glass of wine and get back into bed, regardless of the time. Then this Saturday might unfold like so many others. She might take out the carefully curated capsules she made herself a few years ago once she had the authority; she might sample from the array of moments where she could still enjoy the comfort of Sahar’s smile, the invitation of her deep brown eyes, her bright lips. Her hair that smelled of gardenia. Memories of her own, where she could still see the love in her partner looking back.
Memories from the happiest years, before Angelica saw herself from the other side.
Chapter 12 TODAY
The circle clears for the day. The other patients return their chairs to their respective places and either go back to their rooms or take another supplement on the nearby couches to nap. Dr. Sloane walks back to her office. A meditation workshop is being held shortly in the quiet room. The girl sits in the chair closest to the fireplace, totally still.
She looks so peaceful. Still Lucien cannot stop seeing her, strained and frantic, just two nights ago. Just before, he had stood in this same room, seeking peace for himself. Looking for something he does not know. Following a feeling. He considers what Dr. Sloane said, about how appearances obscure what is underneath, but there is some deeper truth to this girl’s appearance that he cannot let go of. The fact of her beauty, irreconcilable.
Who’s to say the flutter he feels around her is no more than some phantom false recognition? Here, of all places, nothing would make more sense. Déjà vu could be a fancy scented candle burning in the common spaces, and Lucien would believe it. A trick of the synapses that feels like memory but shifts like fog.
And yet here they are, together, waiting for themselves. The most stubborn kind of waiting. Waiting for something that is already there.
The pieces of him that should feel most fresh, the most recent ones, elude him. Everything in the few weeks prior to coming here feels faint, or loosened; had his grief made him so detached that he barely remembered what happened around him?
Lucien returns his chair to its place by the long glass wall and then walks toward the fireplace. He sits down on its stone ledge, beside the girl still in her chair. The stones are warm from the fire. So much of this place is stark, cold. Lucien never wants to move.
“You seem well,” the girl says. “Are you leaving, then?”
“I don’t know how soon, but eventually,” Lucien says. “That’s the goal, right?”
“Any goal is the goal, I guess.”
“Aren’t you?” he asks.
“What?”
“Leaving, eventually?”
“I think I’ve already overstayed my welcome.”
“Is there a time limit?”
“Everything has a limit,” she says, pushing the grout between the stones nearest her chair. Her fingers remind him, L-O-O-K-U-P.
“I thought this place was a public service.”
She scoffs aggressively, and he remembers her leg, stretched and flailing in the air. He reminds himself, this is a person he does not know, but all he really knows is what he still wants to be true.
“Public rehabilitation centers? What country do you think this is? Welcome to America, land of privatization. Welcome, we’ll put you on the wait list and check your credit.”
Lucien watches her, feeling out her anger, coaxing it like a puppy he might hook his arm under and pick up. Finally, their eyes connect. He senses her settle.
“So if this place is private, who’s paying? I know I’m not.”
She tilts her head, the whisker of her butterfly bandage puckering around her eyebrow as she smirks. On her cheek under where the earlier bandage was is a faint scratch, almost gone. The skin is glossy, and Lucien wants to run a finger over it, down to her full lip.
“It’s the Big Pharma Spa. For the amount of money they’re making, they can afford a few rehab centers like this for their new wonder drug. At the very least it’s good PR, probably even cheaper than the old-fashioned kind.”
“I thought this was—isn’t the Center run by Dr. Sloane?”
“Sure it is, but she’s not funding it herself.”
“But they can’t possibly treat everyone who’s been using.”
“They look like they’re addressing it, that’s all that matters. Get a few off the street, especially the problematic ones. You’ll see some famous people come through here if you stay long enough.”
“I haven’t,” Lucien says, looking around the room.
“Maybe you just don’t recognize them,” she says, and he cannot tell if that implies they look different, that he simply can’t remember them, or both.
“How do you know so much? Are you—undercover, here for a story?” She laughs for real for the first time. He nods toward her bandages. “A bit over the top if you ask me.”
They sit together, smiling, until they’re not.
“My brother is an addict,” she says. “Telling you that is probably wrong, or against the rules, but whatever, it’s one of my few certainties these days. I’ve seen everything with him. Countless times. Never Mem, but—that’s how I know. About these places.”
“What for?” Lucien asks. “Your brother, I mean.”
“Meth, most recently. But that’s not how it started. He’s still on some wait list for another rehab. My parents have been taking care of him for the past year by themselves, through withdrawal, everything. They don’t even know that I’m here. I can’t quite believe it.”
“Do you remember what happened?”
“Not since a few days after I got out of the hospital, in an urgent psychiatric center.”
“What was that like?”
Lucien lifts a hand, only realizing as he does that he expects to find a cigarette. He glances at his hand, almost impossibly sure of it. He brings his fingers to his lips anyway.
“It’s the place they send you to when you’re a danger to yourself or others,” she says. “And no one else seems to want you. How do you think it is?”
“So how’d you get here?”
“They realized I was fucked up from Mem,” she says. “Then I guess someone decided I mattered. The golden ticket.”
She slips a foot out of her beige slide and holds it in both hands, pushing her thumbs into her sole with intention. She closes her eyes. The pleasure shows on her face.
“Is this your way of asking me to let you be?”
“All this pain, and somehow my feet are fine,” she says. “Just sore, but that’s nothing new. Anyway, you probably don’t know what that means for me. I mean, of course you don’t.”
“Tell me.”
“No.”
“Okay, your name, then?”
She leans her face right up to his, so their eyelashes nearly touch. She bites her upper lip, flattening the bow. Her eyes flicker with the flames.
“No.”
“Please.”
“Why should I?”
“I’m Lucien.”
He feels a rush at the release of it. The reinstatement of his name, his self. There was something to withholding after all; it makes the reinstatement feel like something sure. She pulls at the back of her neck. Then glances around the room. And speaks so softly it sounds like breath.
“Sophie.”
“Sophie,” he repeats, feeling a familiar haze around the name. Or is it just the relief—the rush—at having a place to put her in his mind. “Tell me everything.”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell
me anything.”
They laugh in the silence. Their mutual uncertainty, the crippling fear of it all, of where they go next. Something rises from the pain inside him. Happy without reason. If he weren’t next to her, confronted with her face, he’d think this was another trick of the treatment, phantom happiness projected onto the present. If her beauty, even bandaged, weren’t sitting there, proof.
“Like, how are your feet sore here?”
“What do you mean?”
“We don’t do anything,” he says. “We don’t walk. There’s nowhere to go.”
Sophie lets go of her foot and rises from the fireplace.
“Where are you going?”
“You asked me to tell you something about myself.”
Sophie leads him to the hallway toward the bedrooms, then around the corner. He pretends not to know where they are going, the way to her room. With every couple doors they pass, Sophie turns to check that he’s still following. Or to check for anyone following them.
Once inside her room, she shuts the door behind them. Lucien is suddenly worried; he feels a responsibility given what he has seen. What he heard without knowing. For the fact that he is here, with her, alone. Her room is nearly identical to his, though the window is in the opposite corner. Still, somehow, this feels like seeing her home—the way she makes her bed, the faint impression of her left in the sheets. Sophie.
He stays.
Without speaking, she shuffles down her baggy jumpsuit and peels the tape off the remaining bandage at her shoulder, wincing as she rolls it out. He looks away, but then glances back at her body, in a bralette and briefs. Slowly, she rises onto her toes, lifting her arms high overhead, her fingertips delicately arched; then she switches back and forth, ankle toe ankle toe, as if it were the most natural motion on earth. One by one she lifts each foot to her opposite knee, triangles forming and disappearing. Here, in this room with soft shadows and no sound but the sweeping heels across sanded wood, Lucien wishes he had a camera, as every angle of her body invites him to freeze it, to hold it forever.
The Shimmering State Page 12