The Shimmering State

by Meredith Westgate

  head

  fall

  back.

  The knife enters slow,

  pushing, until with a pluck

  it sinks, thick on either side of the blade.

  With a twist, the small body feels hollow, its insides soft.

  When it slides out, easy, the blade looks near black, dripping dark drops that burst bright red against the white linoleum. The knife goes in again,

  sweet delight,

  tough then easy, just as before, and the wetness spreads, covering everything in a glorious gloss—hands, chest, shirt—splattering with each push

  further, faster,

  until there is only a deep darkness covering everything.

  All these bodies keep hidden, stolen inside, waiting to be spilled; that they should be so lucky to see all that they hold, what so many never have the chance to know.

  Oh, that I would spill the beauty from them all.

  Sophie wakes up in her own bed, feeling gutted for what she has seen—what she has done. The life he took, she felt. Complicit in the actions of this stranger latched on inside of her. What she joined in, whether or not already done, feels marked inside her all the same. In the moments continuously flashing behind her eyes even now, and in her fingertips, she wanted it as badly as him. The experience feels no less real than if it were her own.

  She still feels her hands pushing inside of the body. Even here, under her soft comforter, she feels the blade going deeper, unbelievably deep, and deeper still. She feels another person’s life in her hands and then taking it. The quiver of it. The horrifying satisfaction that lingers inside of her, like some postcoital exhaustion, haunting her skin like pleasure.

  That they should be so lucky. That I would spill the beauty from them all.

  PART TWO

  SHAPIRO: All right, thanks for hanging in there. This is Ari Shapiro and you’re listening to All Things Considered. We’re back with Dr. Angelica Sloane of the Center in Malibu. Before the break you mentioned a certain second sense that occasionally remains, even after treatment at the Center. Can you tell us more about that, this second sense?

  DR. SLOANE: This is what we call the phantom presence—it does not show up on our screenings, in our tests, the lab work. And yet somehow, it remains in some patients. Such patients test as clean, or neutralized, but they are still feeling the lingering effects without understanding why. Naturally it is incredibly difficult to treat what you cannot detect. What for all intents and purposes has been removed. This is without a doubt our biggest challenge.

  SHAPIRO: So what is the recourse, for such patients?

  DR. SLOANE: Like any rehabilitation center, in many cases it becomes about lifelong management rather than a magic cure. Extraction and reimplementation, followed by continuous exposure to one’s own memories is the only treatment we have found successful. Truly, it is the only option. And then we wait. We must starve the lingering consciousness of fuel, or anything to latch on to, until eventually the last remnants of its grip fade away.

  I tend to overuse metaphors when talking about our work, but let’s imagine a drop of ink added to a bathtub of clean water. You can scoop it out quickly, sure, but trace particles may remain. Now, depending on the consistency of that ink—of that particular consciousness—it may be more or less viscous; it may have dissipated too quickly for you to catch, and may no longer be visible to the eye. As such, it appears impossible to remove. The best way to ensure a clean tub, then, is to open the drain and run the water. For as long as it takes.

  At the Center, we have very clean water.

  Chapter 18 BEFORE

  Another heat wave.

  A wave doesn’t so much describe the weather as its pattern of arrival. The illusion of concrete rippling, the air above it hazy like undulating rock. Concrete covers so much of this city that Lucien wonders how far it would stretch if you took all the freeways and driveways and parking lots and laid them flat side by side. Would they cover Manhattan? Maybe all five boroughs. If you stacked them up lengthwise, could they touch the moon?

  Wildfires have been hopping freeways again in Ventura toward Santa Barbara, and the Santa Ana winds responsible for them have been pushing smoke to Los Angeles, casting a silk screen behind the nearest buildings and making everything in the distance a gray blur. The news has been covering the fires nonstop. Videos of what looks like volcanic hellfire approaching gridlocked traffic break first on social media, then on the major channels. The images are so surreal that Lucien half expects to see Universal Studios branding in the lower corner.

  Wealthy celebrities pop in and out of the coverage praying for their properties. One even brings up his private vineyard, now in the path of the flames. His priceless film memorabilia. Entire counties watch their homes turn to scorched earth from the safety of their extended families’ homes or local evacuation centers. Single objects remain standing in charred houses—a safe, a toilet. One photo showed a bedroom without its house, exposed like a dollhouse: paintings still on the walls, a quilted throw neatly folded across the soot-covered bed. The earth in the background, still smoking. The contrast is what unsettles Lucien most.

  Civilians save cute animals along the fire-licked freeway; a bunny hops into the arms of a young man wearing a hoodie. The man nuzzles it until his face is bearded with soot, and the bunny’s fluff persists in patches. In Los Angeles some residents have been leaving out buckets of water for displaced animals. A few nights ago, a coyote wandered down to the ocean in Malibu, taking a few cautious laps before he ran, eyes aglow, south toward Santa Monica. A bobcat was spotted in West Hollywood.

  One news story on the radio highlights a luxury hotel in the Santa Barbara area opening its rooms to firefighters, evacuated residents, and those who have lost their homes. Lucien wipes away a tear as he drives, his eyes irritated from all the particles in the air, or maybe because he thinks he has never heard such kindness. Lately he wonders if he is okay, or if he is losing some great binding thing that previously kept him from falling apart. Then again, what is wrong with everyone else? How do they continue life as normal in Los Angeles with the smell of burning in the air? How do they reconcile their privilege of being so blissfully unaware? Still honking at fellow drivers along their commutes, asking for dressing on the side at restaurants, fussing over a spill. Meanwhile, entire neighborhoods burn. Schools. Libraries. The air is laden with the smell of loss.

  Lucien drives along Los Feliz Boulevard in the direction of Beachwood Canyon. He’s been avoiding Liv around his apartment and the café, savoring his time alone. His escape. But there’s a time to come up for air. He needs to pace himself. He knows where this could go. His eyes are still irritated from all the smoke and ash, yet he notices a man running along the side of the road wearing the small white face mask they keep recommending on the news. Any suggestion of a blizzard coming to New York, let alone a hurricane, and every D’Agostino gets cleaned out, not a battery or bottle of water left in the greater metro area. Lucien grew up expecting advance warning—claps of thunder, charcoal skies. Even in a summer thunderstorm, there was that breath beforehand where the temperature drops, the light retreats. Here in clear blue skies, the Santa Ana winds whip through with a fury and leave just as fast. Lucien has never been someplace where the weather could hide such violence.

  A woman in a tank top and jean shorts, with a giant scarf wrapped around her neck to cover her mouth, walks her Chihuahua near his grandmother’s house. As he passes his grandmother’s driveway and sees the thatched roof in the corner of his eye, he feels guilty for how happy he is not to be turning there. Though part of him is tempted to run in and make sure all the windows are closed, that the air filter he bought her is on. And, if he’s honest, snag a few more pills.

  The sun is just beginning to set as he turns toward Liv’s house, low palms obscuring any remaining light into pink rays that blush whatever they touch. The particles in the air hold the color longer than normal and Lucien is surrounded for a moment by a sta
rtling beauty even as it ushers in darkness.

  * * *

  Liv uses tongs to toss the noodles in what appears to be some sort of curry. Coconut curry pho, she informs him as he comes up behind her, the steam making her hair stick to his face. He wraps his arms around her waist, lets his nose settle into her braid.

  “Smells amazing,” he says. “The food, too.”

  The soup smells like a sweaty subway stop as whatever brussels sprouts or cauliflower involved fills the air. Liv smiles and turns back to the stove, wiggling her hips into him.

  “It’s vegan,” she says. “Sorry!”

  Lucien feels a familiar performance between them, like Liv wants him to complain about that because that would fit his part in the dynamic she has decided for them. He doesn’t tell her what he eats alone most nights—cereal, also vegan. Maybe a hard-boiled egg or two. Quesadillas with shredded cheese that expires a full year from its purchase, and bacon until he runs out of it. He isn’t picky. He likes disappearing into Liv’s routine, the smell of her and her home. She is assured enough for both of them, and there is something indulgent about spending time with her, a guilty pleasure that soothes him superficially. Even if Liv has defined herself against it in many ways, she is the most Los Angeles being Lucien can think of. And right now, embracing her feels like staying.

  After dinner, Lucien turns his phone volume up before they go to sleep in case any alerts come in, and he asks Liv to do the same. Night seems to bring the worst of the wildfires; it’s the winds, apparently. Liv laughs, implying this precaution is adorable. Lucien doesn’t understand. With such proximity to devastation, how does anyone feel so untouchable? His attention to the fires seems endearing to her, but when he catches her mocking his concern, she is suddenly unattractive, shape-shifting before his eyes. Later the winds howl through the canyon, and he and Liv curl close to one another in bed.

  Lucien has a dream in which his mother comes back. She visits Los Angeles to see his grandmother and is furious that the house has been emptied, that his grandmother sits in the same drab chair all day. That this no longer feels like their family. At the end of the dream, Lucien brings his mother water where she lies, crying in bed, but as soon as he puts the glass down she rolls away from him, and he cannot wake her, cannot even find her face from either side of the bed. When he finally pulls her toward him, he sees the face of his grandmother, her eyes rolled back in her head, iridescent pills spilling out of her mouth.

  * * *

  A long beam of light from the living room creeps over Liv’s Moroccan rug and across the hardwood threshold into the bedroom. Soon the light will stretch across them, up to Liv’s eyes, and Lucien will no longer have this time to think. But for now he watches morning unfold, the subtlety in its light and shadows, as if seeing again. Even after a few trips on his grandmother’s Memoroxin, Lucien has noticed his eye returning. Or wholly new. His grandmother’s optimism lingers in his blood. And seeing his mother again has temporarily filled the void that otherwise sucked everything into it. He sees in frames again. Moments he wants to hold on to—at least until the next time he can disappear.

  Through the window, leaves and limbs are downed all around Liv’s precariously perched bungalow, more fallout from the Santa Ana winds. The way people in Los Angeles test the hills, the canyons, the crumbling landscape. In the distance, a large mushroom cloud looms to the north, where he imagines tens of thousands wait, evacuated from their homes, and others flee hot terror as the smoke shifts, languid, and spreads toward the city that refuses to acknowledge its fear.

  Liv rolls over to face him and gently tugs at her eyebrow, like she always does when waking up, coaxing her lids open. She groans.

  “I just remembered—I have a Friendsgiving in Venice today,” she says.

  “Isn’t it only just November?”

  “People book up.” She hovers her hand over her mouth as she talks, like she always does until she’s brushed her teeth. “There are only so many weekends until Thanksgiving, and I have like three different ones before then.”

  “Brutal,” Lucien says, stroking her hair.

  “I’d rather a friend just have theirs on the actual day. Anything to keep me from the horror that is my family. Or better, if my mother could disappear for the entire holiday season, then I might actually be thankful.”

  Lucien stops stroking her hair and stares up at the ceiling.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t think,” she says after a moment.

  He’s never met someone who could be so well-intentioned yet so infuriatingly naive.

  “You always do this,” she says. “I’m sorry if I said the wrong thing, but you can’t just freeze me out.”

  “I’m just thinking.”

  “You know, I’d be more sensitive if you ever talked about her.”

  “About who?”

  “Your mother. Or anyone else in your family.”

  Lucien was finally starting to forget his guilt. Call it denial, but whatever is in those pills makes it easier for him to breathe. He could use one now. Even a cigarette. Anything to take the edge off. Is it an edge because it’s sharp, or because you’re looking over it, into the void?

  “You’re doing it again!”

  “I talk about my grandmother all the time! But she’s not exactly giving me new material. You know about my mother, and my dad’s not around.”

  “I’m sure you still think about her,” says Liv. “Your mother, I mean. I know you don’t have many people out here to talk to. If you ever want to talk about her…”

  “Got it.”

  Lucien feels himself hardening. He focuses on the speckled paint on the ceiling, though he feels Liv’s eyes on the side of his face.

  “It might be helpful, for us…”

  “How does my mother have anything to do with us?”

  “Clearly it upsets you. I mean, it’s hard for you. You must miss her.”

  “And that involves you how?”

  “Okay, Lucien, you don’t have to be mean.”

  “I’m not being mean, I’m genuinely curious what it has to do with you.”

  “I wish you would let me in, that’s all.”

  “Look, what do you want to hear? How I wasn’t there when my mother died? Is that helpful for us? I spent her last living moments with my roommates getting high. Do you feel closer to me now?”

  “Lucien.”

  “How I enjoyed ignoring her call? It was one of countless calls, and for once it felt good to not answer. I actually laughed when my roommate grabbed the phone and told her to fuck off. He didn’t know who it was. But I knew. Is that enough honesty for you? You think it’s helpful for me to go around sharing that? How she did everything for me and I let her—”

  Lucien takes a break, to let the quiver in his voice steady.

  “You want to analyze me or talk about me with your friends like some project? Go ahead. There it is.”

  Liv doesn’t speak at first, and Lucien finally glances over at her. She is still watching him, unwavering. The golden fleck in her eye looks bigger under a tear. He looks back up at the ceiling before she can hold eye contact.

  “I wouldn’t tell anyone that,” she says. “Lucien, I care about you. I want you to know that you can tell me anything.”

  Lucien doesn’t say that his mother took enough pills to kill a horse. That she chose when she left him and how. Her choice, which holds his every burden, grips his insides like a clenched fist. Maybe he doesn’t want to tarnish the version of his mother that he grew up with, the woman who would never do something like that. Though no one would do something like that, until they do. And even if he wanted to tell Liv now, there is only a small window for revelations like this and it’s passed.

  Most days he doesn’t remember the facts as they are, anyway. His memory excuses her, having been so sick for so long. Having almost died, over and over. His mother was a kind, compassionate woman, but stubborn as hell. No doubt she thought she was right, that taking her life would be the
solution to some problem. That she could answer some question. Take back some agency. If he searches long enough, thinks hard enough, Lucien will come up with the question her suicide answered. Him. How much more could she put him through? What he keeps coming back to is another question. What if he had just answered the phone?

  She left, for him. To spare him. And this thing that seems to trap him from all sides was meant to be his freedom. Her final gift to him, goodbye.

  “It’s not your fault,” Liv starts, but he laughs—to interrupt her, and it feels good. He hates the way people try to fix what they can’t. As if they could pardon him. Lucien stares at the smoke detector in the ceiling. What he would give for it to go off right now. Running outside with nothing but a sheet, he would feel less exposed.

  It isn’t Liv’s fault that Lucien has had this conversation enough times in his head to know where it leads. And it isn’t her fault that his happiness bears the limit of his own memory. His mind returns to the moment again and again; Tanner’s dumb voice, Fuck off; his mother finally having the answer she wants. But it was wrong, his mother was wrong. What was best for him was her. Fighting. With Lucien by her side.

  “It was my fault, you don’t understand.”

  “But she’d forgive you,” Liv says. “I’m sure she—”

  “Which is it, then? Was it not my fault or would she forgive me? In all the deep knowledge you have of my mother. Please, tell me more.”

  Liv keeps talking, but Lucien is no longer listening. Having this conversation only makes others around him feel worse, and him no better. No one knows what to say. The traditional condolences don’t work. At least she didn’t suffer. She did, he was there. She was such a fighter. The cancer was relentless, its sheer determination the least human aspect of it. Five years of doctor appointments, treatments, tubes, side effects. He lost count of how many times his mother threw up into something he held, how many sponges they went through in that first year, or—god help them—in the third. How normal sponges weren’t made to absorb the kind of goo that comes up after one of those treatments. He had been there then.