The Shimmering State

by Meredith Westgate

  Lucien hasn’t been taking his supplements. He doesn’t like the sensation of feeling himself at different ages, in all the anxiety of those times. If only his mother were more present in some of them, not in the background as she always is, then he might take them more often. If only he could feel her hand on his back, see her smile. Though of course she isn’t; if she were, he would disappear into them and never want to come out. He might never leave. They would find him back in that bright room, on the cold table, OD’d from the liquid drip of his life. What a way to go, he thinks. Is it joint suicide if one of you is already dead?

  “You’re quiet today,” says Sophie.

  “Sorry,” he says. “Just thinking.”

  “Are you scared of me now, then?”

  “Not at all,” he says, feeling guilty for not making that clearer. For not apologizing sooner. He looks her in the eyes, careful not to shy away. “I wasn’t thinking about that. If anything I feel bad about that. I never should have—”

  “Please don’t feel bad.”

  “Okay,” he says. “I’m good at that.”

  She looks amused, relieved.

  “I’m sorry… you’re going through this.”

  Saying it feels empty, and he regrets it immediately. Sophie doesn’t respond, and he considers apologizing, again, for that. She closes her eyes, and sniffs her sachet.

  “Touch has a memory. O say, love, say, What can I do to kill it and be free?”

  Lucien watches, waiting for more.

  “That’s nice,” he says when she doesn’t go on.

  “Keats,” she says. “One of my favorite poems. I thought I understood it before, in high school. But I had no idea. No idea. It’s funny, the things that come back clearer than before. I could recite the entire thing. You’d be impressed, wouldn’t you, if we weren’t—in here?”

  She holds the sachet under her nose, hiding a smile.

  “I’m still impressed,” he offers. “It’s about a broken heart?”

  “I thought so, but no. I think it’s about not understanding freedom until it’s gone. Whether in love, or lust, or trauma, you’re free until you’re not. Then that thing, that state—it owns you. You can’t see freedom until you want it back.”

  They sit in silence.

  “If there’s anything I can do to help,” Lucien says, “because honestly, you do that for me. I don’t know how, but your being here, it helps. And I’m not sure if there’s even a question in there, or what I have to offer, but if you ever want to talk about—”

  One of the nurses walks over and stands in front of the fireplace, between them. She picks up two logs and stacks them in the flames. She stands there for a few moments, holding her hands to the warmth. Neither of them speaks until she is gone.

  “Come to my room again tonight?”

  * * *

  At the Center, so little feels personal or physical. One could go through the entire program without ever being touched. Skin to skin. The drug at the root of their addiction is so clinical—so precise—that the treatment matches it. Lucien thinks about Sophie all the time. Her graceful neck, the way it would feel to lay his mouth along its nape. Maybe because of the last time he touched her—and knowing now that he can’t—he wants to that much more.

  When he arrives at Sophie’s room, Lucien lingers in the doorway, watching her rising and falling on her toes, wearing a white nightgown they must leave for female patients, not that he’s seen any others. The thin fabric is nothing special, and the cut is loose—one size fits all—but on Sophie it is transcendent. Through the gauze, he sees the curves of her as one arm crests overhead, her gaze following, until she appears more arc than human.

  Lucien has never seen someone so matched by their purpose in that moment. Maybe his mother when he caught her examining a canvas—elbow to her hip, paintbrush in hand, totally unaware of being watched—but he never understood that, not in the moment. Sophie turns at the sound of his footsteps, and as their eyes meet, he thinks, how is it possible to have missed someone you did not know before?

  They sit on the hardwood floor, shoulders almost touching, in the near darkness of her room. Lucien wonders if others are doing this, visiting one another at night, or if they are being awarded some special privilege. Lucien doesn’t know and he doesn’t want to find out; he doesn’t want anything to stop what he imagines could become a new ritual. Sophie leans back and Lucien follows her. They lie side by side, just close enough for Lucien to feel her nightgown fanned out against his forearm. The fabric feels special—charged.

  Even in the silence, he feels something like bliss. Sure, there is an underlying, constant shame for not feeling a sense of urgency to get back to his grandmother, with no one to visit her but him. But each time he thinks of Florence, a heaviness takes over his stomach—guilt, he imagines—so perhaps it is better not to, not until it is finally time to leave. After all, it’s not entirely up to him. He must drift off because when he wakes, Sophie is staring at him.

  “Jesus, how long have I been out?”

  “Long enough,” she says. “You’ve had a nice life.”

  “Is that so?”

  “I can tell just by watching you,” she says. “I think our dreams are different here. I think they show us. You disagree?”

  “About my life? I think it depends on when you’d asked me that.”

  “I’m asking you now.”

  “Right now?” he says. “I’d have to agree.”

  Sophie smiles, shy.

  “Everything looks enchanted once you’re far enough away,” she says a bit wistfully.

  “I’m not sure I agree with that.”

  “Then it hasn’t been long enough.” Sophie slips her hand into his, and scoots closer so that their thighs press together. Lucien feels wide awake. He waits for her to react, to fall apart. But she is still there.

  “Want to play a game?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay, what do you see?”

  Sophie reaches her hand over his eyes.

  “Uh, nothing.”

  “Not yet!”

  Sophie’s other hand leaves his, though the one over his eyes remains. He sees darkness, the backs of his eyelids, prickles of color from the total lack. And then—he gets a wave of it. The leaves in autumn once there are more on the ground than the branches. The figure of his parents in the window; his father’s hand articulating something, furious or hilarious. His mother’s face. Lucien pulls Sophie’s hand away and sees she’s been holding her sachet under his nose.

  “You’re not supposed to do that,” he says, sitting up onto his elbows.

  “Fuck it,” she says, and rolls onto her side. “So, what’d you get?”

  “I got… I dunno, grassy perfume. Something a teacher wore.” He lies and he’s not sure why. “Okay, close your eyes,” he says, reaching out his hand.

  Sophie slaps it away.

  “No, I don’t want yours. I can’t.”

  “Fuck it,” he mimics.

  “I don’t want to!”

  “Okay,” he says. “I didn’t even bring mine. Just trust me.”

  Lucien hovers his hand over her eyes, feeling her lashes flutter against the inside of his palm.

  “Salt crusted on your jaw, in your hairline, on your tongue; water beading over your shoulder, facedown on a terry-cloth towel.” He pauses to see it himself. “Eyelids heavy, thin seaweed plastered across your butt cheek.”

  Sophie smiles and he feels her breath on his hand.

  “The ocean dripping down your back, off your hair,” she adds.

  “My hair?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Overhead lighting, AC on blast,” he starts again, then waits.

  “CVS in the summer,” adds Sophie. “Crisp magazines, everything plastic. Looking for nail polish. Seafoam and baby blues.”

  “Here’s one,” Lucien says. “Shadows faceting the spiraled structure like something carved out of clay.” He speaks like he’s reading a story to her, s
howing off maybe, and watches her mouth purse in thought, then curve into a smile. “Streams of people following its curves. Quiet, even when it’s humming. Crowds like a symphony tuning, raucous harmony, until you enter the flow.”

  Sophie pulls his hand down. Her face now feels incredibly close, looking back at him.

  “The Guggenheim?”

  Lucien looks at her in performed shock at the naming.

  “Stop it,” she says. “What? I can see it, so clearly.”

  “It wasn’t a riddle,” he says. “I thought that was the point.”

  “Well, I’ve only been there once. I was just a girl.”

  “That’s not how we play.”

  “I was in New York for a dance trip. A prize, really. And one day, we ended there for a holiday concert. All of us sat in chairs arranged in the center on the lower level, while waiters handed out drinks—hot cider for us—and trays of colorful cookies. I took two because they were so beautiful, but I kept them in my pocket until they crumbled.”

  “Crumbled cookies in your pocket,” Lucien jokes, going on. “Sprinkles everywhere.”

  “The chorus descended single-file down the ramp,” she continues, ignoring him. “My god, it was beautiful. Otherworldly. Or, out of my world at least.”

  “We used to go to that, too,” Lucien says before realizing.

  Suddenly it feels different to put himself in the scene, to bring up his family. He hasn’t mentioned anything about his past. Not even where he was from.

  “You and your family?”

  “I miss that feeling here, in LA,” Lucien says, avoiding. “How something as personal as a museum could feel intimate. Your own in some way, just like it’s everyone else’s, too.”

  “Los Angeles doesn’t owe you anything,” says Sophie.

  Lucien can’t tell how she means that.

  “It’s like you said earlier, missing a feeling once it’s gone,” he says. “Recognizing it once it’s gone. I feel that way about New York all the time. I feel that way about a lot of things.”

  “Me too.”

  They lie still, looking up at the ceiling. White, though it looks blue in the dark.

  * * *

  They spend the next three nights together, describing the world outside from the dark, describing the things they are afraid to take for granted. Lucien pulls from his own memories, from his favorite photographs or feelings and tastes. Often when leading the prompt, he sees a still image, unsure of whether from his own life or a photograph so firmly rooted in his memory that he mistakes it for his own. Together in the dark, he feels they are building a world where they can go after this, made up of their offerings to one another.

  When no one interrupts them, Lucien thinks he was wrong about the cameras in every corner. Had he presumed his own prison, when in fact they are largely free? What does it say when freedom feels like the scarier option?

  “I want to tell you something,” Sophie says one night. She sits up and faces him with her legs crossed. “I still remember things.”

  She says it like a confession, like it terrifies her.

  “What do you mean?” he says, sitting up to match her.

  “Things I’m not supposed to.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know,” she says, and then she starts to cry. Not the terrifying cries he witnessed twice before, but helpless, quiet tears.

  Lucien considers what to say, remembering the phone call he first overheard, the worry Dr. Sloane could not hide from her voice; the sight of Sophie not so long ago, in the same room.

  “How much do you remember?”

  “Little things, really. Most of it is gone. I remember driving and feeling totally out of control. Like every passing thought might come to fruition. I remember it scared me.”

  “In your own memory?”

  “Yes, in my own memory,” she says. “But it wasn’t really me, not after the Mem.”

  “Have you told Dr. Sloane?”

  “She knows. I’ve had my initial treatment five times now. They don’t know why it’s still happening. Those should all be gone.”

  Lucien thinks of the cold metal table, how much he hated that feeling of blankness. How it haunted him for days, in dreams, until it didn’t. He cannot imagine going through that again. And again.

  “What kind of thoughts?”

  “Have you ever stopped at a traffic light and watched someone crossing the street in front of your car, this big monstrous machine, and thought how delicate it all is? That fragile body in front of so much power? And how if you sneezed and jerked the gas, how easily all this could be over, for anyone? Who knows, maybe there has always been something wrong with me, somewhere.”

  That’s not so bad, he thinks to himself, having expected much worse.

  “I would be walking and see a small child, looking so vulnerable,” she says, “and part of me would think how trusting they are, and how beautiful that is, obviously, but also—how easy it would be to change that. To rip them from their comfort.”

  Now Lucien wants her to stop, stop before he knows any more.

  “I had all these thoughts, terrible violent thoughts.” Sophie breathes deeply and wipes her tears. Then she shakes her head. “They aren’t my own. But I’d be out walking, and I would see those same innocent children and start doing things, like touching their hair as I walked by, tugging at their clothes, not because I wanted to but because I could. It was like I was testing myself, like there was some trigger inside of me that made it happen to spite me, and then all of a sudden they weren’t even my thoughts being acted on, they were tainted until they became things I never would have thought of, ever, and then I started to lose the ability to differentiate what was mine and what was his, and what I could stop and what I couldn’t, and when I realized that, I had to…”

  “You had to what?”

  “When I realized that, I had to stop myself.”

  Chapter 17 BEFORE

  You Are Liberated.

  You Are Balanced.

  You Are Loved.

  The affirmations are everywhere. They curl in painted script across the colorful tiles that scatter Café Gratitude’s walls; they lay hidden on the inside of mugs and in the center of every plate, patiently waiting to be announced. They are so ever-present, in fact, that they lose all meaning inside the vegan restaurant’s tinted-glass walls. Even the menu items are named in bold mantras, as if ordering a blue spirulina lemonade makes anyone Gracious. As if it could, ever.

  Today in rehearsal Sophie felt inadequate, with all the doubt she pushes down daily creeping into her head every time she looked at the other dancers. Their form, their extension, their bodies. By the time practice ended she had convinced herself that she, the lead, was the worst of all. Moreover, that Auguste had made a mistake in casting her and everyone knew it. When he called her over on her way out, she braced herself for the blow. But all he said was to get her head on straight. I need you here, every moment. You were distracted today. Don’t second guess yourself, mon chou. Of course, her own insecurity would be the thing she most has to fear. When he squeezed her shoulders, touched his forehead to hers, she almost cried.

  Auguste is right, Sophie needs to get her head on straight. Find something inside of herself and hold it tight, no matter what attention comes later, good or bad. She feels a bit pathetic, for coming to this place in search of that. How cliché. She scans the rest of the vegan fare, scouring for more soft spots in herself. Who would create an entire menu of trigger points, then force customers to read them aloud? Claim the thing you most fear?

  You Are Loved.

  What does love have to do with romaine, wakame, and sesame seed gomasio? Why should failed relationships keep anyone from a delicious cashew kale Caesar?

  “Would you like to hear the question of the day?”

  Sophie looks up to find her waiter staring past her, toward a table of girls her age wearing crop tops and floral skirts in different patterns. One of them wears a crown that say
s QUEEN FOR A DAY.

  “Sorry, one sec,” he says, and heads in the other direction.

  Their server sets down a massive slice of vegan pumpkin pie with a candle in it. This is the land of fake foods, where nothing counts. The girls take photos, though not one of them picks up a fork. Just then, the other servers surround the table and begin singing.

  Annnnd a happy happy birthday, a happy birthing day, it’s a happy happy birthday, and that is why we say—it’s a happy happy person, who can truly say, live a happy grateful lifetime, with love and laughter—hey! Have a…

  The birthday girl covers her face with her hands despite clearly loving the attention. Sophie turns back to find her waiter, waiting.

  “Did you want to hear the question of the day?”

  He must have fled so he didn’t have to sing.

  “I’m okay,” she says. “Do they do that a lot?”

  “The singing? Every day.”

  “Yikes. Hmm so, I’ll have the… sorry, the kelp noodles? And could I get that with extra cashew cheese? And a side of kimchi.”

  “You are Connected,” he says back, and Sophie can’t help but feel a sting. “Extra cheese, side of ’chi.”

  Despite the intense brand of holistic-living sourced-positivity that Café Gratitude promotes—not to mention its alleged cult affiliations—Sophie finds herself frequenting the macrobiotic mini chain regularly on her way home from rehearsals. Tonight, she drove home first to shower, put on her most comfortable layers, and took a Drivr to the restaurant. The thought of pressing her foot on the gas pedal was too much after rehearsal. And there is something addictive about a bowl that promises to nourish your soul and body, especially when Sophie’s feel so depleted. Indulge. Nourish yourself. Fill yourself. The seat hurts her sit bones; for once she wishes for the padding she works away every day. The waiter, Jamie, reappears with her food almost impossibly quickly. She smiles even harder against his energy, and his eyes do not soften but widen as he smiles back, hinting at an underlying rage.