The Shimmering State

by Meredith Westgate

  Then Lucien’s heart skips, and there she is—his mother. Isabel.

  She is three years old when she first appears, and he recognizes her instantly by the smile. He feels his grandmother’s overwhelming love—a mother’s pride and worry—that he never truly understood, that no words from his own mother could ever explain, in leaving. Indescribable love. But she disappears again, and like the breath has been punched from him, Lucien looks for her in the cascading moments and faces that pass. Gasping. The next time she surfaces, she is sixteen and yelling, face smeared in bright-pink lipstick and blush that Lucien never once saw her wear, mascara running from the mean, teenaged tears. Her mouth is stretched, spewing words too fast for him to hear, but he feels them as sharply as his grandmother does, hot with hurt. What surprises him is how, underneath this personal slight or anger, is a baseline love that makes Lucien miss his own mother all the more for the daughter she had been and the life she had before he was ever a part of it. The sedative in the pill is beginning to dull Lucien’s mind, but he sucks harder.

  The next memories come out of sequence, but more vivid than ever—Isabel in an inflatable kiddie pool, naked except for a duck beak stretched with elastic over her mouth, flapping her arms and giggling uncontrollably in the same way she did at twenty, smoking a cigarette, lean and cool, and then again at thirty-five, when Lucien sees himself standing next to her. He shudders despite the surge of Fleur’s fondness for him; he scans for the preteen flaws he knew he had then, finding none in his grandmother’s memory. He smiles earnestly back at her, at himself; he’s not wearing his signature preteen scowl, not seething with the insecurity he remembers at the time. Who was mistaken, or were they both and neither at the same time?

  His mother, Isabel, again as a baby, lying on a blanket in the grass; dressed up in a long, adult dress and high heels that her feet only fill halfway, pretending to smoke a cigarette with one hand and flicking a platinum blond wig with the other; behind the wheel, her long teen legs she hasn’t grown into, stretched toward the pedal; shielding her eyes as she reads on the lawn; stroking his hair in the street outside their old apartment—

  Lucien can’t stand it any longer—he swallows.

  He imagines his tongue coated in luster from his grandmother’s Memoroxin as the pill travels down his throat and enters his bloodstream, filling him with the sense of her. Only now he is fading as she comes on stronger, the sedative working faster, until he disappears completely.

  * * *

  The Vista’s marquee announces the film on both sides in big, black letters. So final, so finished. The bright, round bulbs blur into a straight line in Fleur’s unflinching eyes as others pass her to buy their tickets.

  Alone again, sleep to sleep, sun to moon.

  Her emerald dress hangs loose around the waist, its delicate pleats folding concave as she slides into one of the plush seats toward the back of the grand theater. The cushion prickles where her skin shows behind her arms and legs, and she wiggles herself against the fabric until it feels smooth. Her hands rest clasped in the emptiness of her lap that only days ago had life, heartbeat, company. The tiny body with tiny fingers and toes she had felt inside her all those months, Fleur touched only for a moment once out and knew she could never let go.

  The screen comes alive with animated candies in their dementedly cheerful advertising jig, and Fleur’s thumbs dance back and forth to the tune while the theater fills with couples. As two of them shuffle into the row behind her, giggling, she feels their purses and rear ends brush the auburn curls pinned low against her neck.

  When at last the theater turns dark, she sinks deeper into her chair. Her green eyes widen. The opening credits appear like magic, text like fireworks—An American Cowboy—and she pushes her eyes closed, imagining the rest of the names she cannot bear to see. The theater grows quiet. When she opens her eyes, she is in the Wild West, sunset in the distance, the High Noon Saloon in the foreground.

  She tastes the desert. She feels the sting of sunlight on her shoulders. And when the silhouette of the wide-brimmed cowboy hat turns to reveal a familiar face, she smiles.

  And then it is all dust.

  Chapter 14 TODAY

  Angelica arranges a vase of pink dahlias in Remy’s room. She is usually not one for pink, but there is something about the range of its shade in the dahlias, a deep hue that radiates into near white at their ends. It’s a supple, human pink. Through the bedroom window, she can see her daughter lying in the backyard. Their California craftsman has needed so much work over the years, but Angelica loves the nooks, the way every piece of the house feels tucked in. Remy’s room with its vaulted ceiling and exposed beams has always been her favorite.

  Remy could be five years old again out there, her little girl who grew up on her own. Do all parents feel like they missed it? The moment their child no longer needs them, or even likes them? Or did Angelica, in fact, miss it? One of her newer patients at the Center has invalidated her own many excuses for herself; his mother was also a single parent, also unapologetically dedicated to her work. And yet, he will not speak a single unkind word. He blames her for nothing. Was Angelica too accommodating of her daughter’s resentment? Maybe if she had doubled down, Remy would have grown up in awe of her, too? Then again, it is easy for children to hate their parents, living. Angelica has seen it before, how regret turns back into love after death. What a thing to hope for.

  She can’t pinpoint the moment her daughter stopped liking her, though she’s gone over it countless times. There were years when she was her daughter’s favorite person; Remy got homesick when away, always wanting more time with her mom. Only Angelica knew how to do things the way she liked, rubbing her back when she was sick, tucking her in at night, even though she never felt good at those things. She was still her mother, which made her home. Some time ago, long before David, that changed. And home—or simply Angelica—became a propulsive force Remy couldn’t get away from fast enough. Before David’s death, Angelica told herself Remy was like all daughters, pushing away in order to grow up. Claiming her independence. Even now, after such intense loss, Angelica knows her daughter loves her. She’s angry with the world for losing David. And what is any parent but their child’s world?

  Angelica remembers the loose floorboard where Remy used to hide weed and gummies, starting in ninth grade. Angelica never let on that she knew or said anything about the weed. She wanted to keep the line open. At least Angelica knew where to look. She hasn’t checked it in years; as long as Remy kept her grades up, Angelica figured, what was the harm. Her heart races as she kneels down beside Remy’s bed and pulls back the wooden panel. But there’s nothing. Dust. A spiderweb.

  When Remy first found out about David, it was in between midterm exams at Brown and with such spotty cell phone service there the news came in a wave through social media all at once. Former classmates at Brentwood School that she hardly kept in touch with posted their condolences. She called Angelica. Remy told her all of this, like a confidante, like her mother, before she could calculate that Angelica was to blame. Her daughter, finally sharing and looking for comfort the way a daughter should with her mother. Angelica was so taken aback that she momentarily forgot her own involvement. Her own mourning. Then she sensed the shift, even as they spoke, as Remy’s choking tears subsided and she talked through what had happened. If only Angelica had been there to give her a hug, to hold her. By the end of the call, Remy was cold.

  She pushes herself back up, smooths her hair, and glances out the window again. Remy is still lying in the grass, thank god. Her daughter walking in on Angelica in her bedroom is the last thing their relationship needs, even if Angelica is simply doing something nice. The flowers are yet another peace offering. Angelica loves dahlias, how from afar they look like simple rounds of color, but up close each petal is like a curved slipper, part of a larger conical beehive. The form is an engineering marvel, well beyond most human understanding. All of Angelica’s favorite flowers hold this tell, t
he hint at the complexity of nature, disguised in beauty. Humans would struggle to create anything as perfectly intricate as the dahlia. Of course, they try in other ways. Angelica remembers the hideous neon-dyed daisies—shockingly, a relative of the dahlia—she used to see outside the bodega near her apartment in Baltimore. Is there anything humans won’t ruin?

  Angelica steps back to admire the vase on Remy’s dresser. The flowers look too stiffly bunched and inert. She slides the stems around until they have just the right amount of lean. Then she lifts the vase to wipe off any water. Just as she holds it in one hand, the screen door slams downstairs, startling her. She loses her grip and the vase tips, spilling water everywhere. A single dahlia falls, bud first, to the floor.

  She quickly wipes the top of the dresser, then opens the drawers to see how far the water dripped. She is blindly wiping out the inside of Remy’s underwear drawer when she hears a rattle among the fabric. She feels around. In high school, Remy was always taking her bottles of ibuprofen, so they were missing whenever Angelica had a headache. She feels a bittersweet reminder that those things she thought she’d said goodbye to forever, in this house, with her child, continue now. But when she pulls the pill bottle out from behind a lace thong, she recognizes the amber plastic for another reason. First, her name. Next, David’s.

  Angelica’s brain stalls.

  Why does her daughter have these? Her daughter? Angelica knows, abstractly, the statistics on people abusing Memoroxin. She sees it in person every day at the Center. But her own daughter? She opens the bottle, as if that will clarify anything—it is nearly empty.

  But. Oh god. How could she?

  Angelica pulls out the tiny paper curled along the interior. She recognizes her handwriting—the key she had made for David, listing which pills to take when. The “up” pills contained pleasant memories to lift him out of a depressive episode; by how many of those remain, her first thought is that all the difficult, painful memories have been taken. Those were exposures they were going to work on together for integration, only to be taken sparingly. Angelica thinks of Remy, how they might have affected her if she took them, but then she realizes something far worse and suddenly obvious. David took all of them.

  David. Her kind, adorable patient. She remembers writing this note for his first batch of pills; he must’ve held on to it and moved it from bottle to bottle. So careful. Oh god, David. She never thought of losing him. In all her years, she’s never lost a patient. It makes sense now, why he would do it. The only way his own pills could be dangerous.

  She hasn’t heard Remy since the screen door opened downstairs. Remy? she calls. Angelica feels shaky with rage. How can she bring it up without showing she was snooping? She wasn’t, not when she found them. Does it even matter? Her own daughter. How dare she. Remy! she calls, now running down the stairs. She hears the screen door again. Remy is nowhere in the kitchen. How typical of her daughter, freshly absent from every room Angelica enters. Only a half-empty yogurt container sits on the counter. The apparition has to eat, Angelica scoffs, channeling all her emotions into anger.

  She pulls out the trash can.

  Outside there is a screeching sound and then a terrible silence.

  Angelica opens the door, the curious, annoyed neighbor, but she steps outside a mother. She runs, a mother. Remy’s sneakers, the black high-tops she bought her years ago, the same tattered pair Angelica has tried countless times to replace, lay unmoving in the street. The driver has not yet gotten out of his car. Angelica cannot believe what she sees, the more it becomes clear. Remy, who she just saw lying in the grass. The same legs, arms, face. She cannot look, but she cannot look away, either.

  Now the driver is panicking, talking endlessly, cluelessly.

  How did this happen? How did this happen? A neighbor who rarely says hello appears beside her and holds Angelica’s hand between her own. For a moment this feels awkward, as if awkwardness matters, as if anything matters. How did anything ever matter before this? Angelica realizes then that she is still clutching the bottle of pills in her palm, the woman cupping hers around it.

  And then there are sirens, and an ambulance, and Angelica cannot stop looking at her daughter the entire time the paramedics speak, as they ask her questions and she answers, as she rides beside Remy, the entire way to the hospital.

  Chapter 15 BEFORE

  Lucien stops at Dinosaur Coffee to write the email he has been putting off for weeks, hoping to be buoyed by all the other people writing their own difficult emails. The sweet Novocain of working in public. Today he almost doesn’t need the coffee. For the first time in months, he slept well. His body feels rested, relaxed as if forgiven. Last night he saw his mother, unclouded with any memory of his own. He still feels the warmth inside Fleur’s memories, the freedom of her perspective not his own. Before taking the pill, Lucien would’ve said with certainty that he would give anything to go back to a time before, when there were other emotions that didn’t all lead to loss.

  He’d just never have expected to find that chance, sitting in a bottle beside his grandmother. Or that the time itself would not be his own.

  As usual, Dinosaur Coffee is full of other seemingly dislocated New Yorkers who clutter the Eastside wearing layers in an overcast seventy-five degrees and sitting with their laptops open, idle, phones pressed to their chins, talking with an impatience that seems to insist they are from elsewhere. Lucien has never seen such a performative disruption in New York, his city that deals in disturbances, but maybe having one’s feet so firmly planted in anxiety carries a certain weight in Los Angeles, where everyone else seems at risk of floating away.

  He orders from the cashier he recognizes by her overalls and inky-blue hair.

  “Lucien, right?” she says.

  “Right,” he says after too long considering. Not only did he for a moment feel a sense of Florence still lingering, but the recognition alone in a city where he still feels so out of place—he didn’t see it coming. “Thanks.”

  “Hard to forget, I love the name.”

  “My mother’s favorite painter,” he reminds himself. “Lucian Freud.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Right, why would you? He painted portraits, extremely unflattering and sinister. Not sure what my mother was getting at there.”

  “A curse from your mother that she deems a blessing. Classic.”

  Lucien laughs; it feels good to talk about his mother like she’s still alive, like he can still joke about resenting her for things that don’t matter. After last night, she is, and he can.

  “Well, Lucian Freud, I’ll have to look you up.”

  Beyond the blue hair, Lucien recognizes the look in her eyes, like his own pain staring back. Even in the movement of her fingers at the iPad, he senses the sadness. Even as she smiles at him. He knows the way loss can change your face, how it drags the light from your eyes.

  He pulls out a cigarette and heads out the retracted garage door to the sidewalk. Somehow even a black coffee now takes ten minutes, no matter how simple the order, but any wait time is more tolerable when put into cigarettes. Coffee, one cigarette. Waiting for the J/M train at Lorimer, two. Maybe three if it’s cold. Here people pass him on the sidewalk, confused. One guy motions for a hit before realizing it’s an actual cigarette, not weed. Not a Juul, not a vape, not a joint dipped in cocaine, just an actual fucking cigarette. Lucien couldn’t get into the e-cigs, even before all the safety warnings. He spends enough time with electronic devices. He likes the way a cigarette starts and ends, the way smoking one feels like finishing something and destroying it at the same time.

  Finally, he hears his name. He looks for a spot and is struck by the number of people—guys especially—formatting their screenplays while bobbing their heads to the chaotic music. The more of them he sees, the more unlikely success seems, and he feels sorry for them, despite their impenetrable self-satisfaction. They happily mimic the thing as if the act is all it takes. He has seen the same phenome
non with photographers who carry cameras around, approaching beautiful women to ask if they wanna shoot. Lucien could never, even with a solo show to his name and a stack of pay stubs that all say I’m a photographer. Mostly those guys seem to like talking about it, being the thing instead of doing the work. Lucien likes photography for the removal, the seclusion of the darkroom; that it depends on the finished product and not the performance.

  He finds a spot at a low table. Next to him, two young women talk over cappuccinos, both their voices intensely mellow. One smacks a sugar packet against her palm while the other takes a photo of her frothy heart before lifting it to her perfect, matte lips. When she smiles, her nose scrunches around a tiny diamond. He’s unsure of whether he has seen her on a billboard, or if she simply looks familiar for her manufactured flawlessness, the way one might recognize a mannequin in a storefront. The one beside him tosses her long hair over her shoulder, tickling his arm. He hates how good it feels, lately, to be touched.

  Liv is pretty in this same way, though she’s too careful to be so sun-kissed. There’s something buoyant about her, appealing for now, even if sometimes when she’s talking Lucien finds himself wondering whether he’d be friends with her. Other girls he’s dated have been friends first. If he’s honest, Lucien cannot see himself being friends with Liv, not in his previous life at least. A bad sign for them both.

  Lucien knows he has nothing to give. He is no better than his grandmother, his appearance only hinting at something behind the surface. Maybe his disheveled state translates to an affect of talent here; his haphazard curls and tall, lanky posture mark him as different and even masculine among the petite, the perfect, the pedicured. Even with the men scattering this space, he gets the sense that their stubble might wipe right off with a wet napkin; their round lenses might be full of clear glass; their tattered shirts brand-new.