The Shimmering State

by Meredith Westgate

They should tell them this from the start. Or had they? Had everyone already signed once, before the memory was taken as part of their initial treatment? Lucien wouldn’t have thought much of it then. But it seems wrong, to operate in an ethical vacuum.

  He thinks of the Sophie he knew before his time here. The only fleeting glimpses of her that will remain in his memory. He thinks of all that has come since. How can he go back? Why does he have to lose everything he loves? Even if he refuses, if he stays and gets Sophie to forgive him, keeps their time together in his memory long enough to make it up to her, none of it would matter. It would all be lost eventually. Eventually they would still have to leave.

  Then he remembers his grandmother. He pictures her sitting at home. Waiting, if she ever was, for him. How could he consider staying longer when he owes her his time? He has lost weeks, months. He feels like crying. A loose urge, untied.

  Lucien’s throat tightens as he signs his name. How long has it been since he’s claimed it like that? His name. Losing one thing and regaining another, he thinks as he gathers his clothing and follows the receptionist down another hallway, out of the light.

  Chapter 27 TODAY

  Dr. Sloane shuts the isolation tank and lets out a sigh of relief when it clicks, her daughter inside. Wouldn’t she love to keep Remy in there, safely living the experiences that she has approved for her. These immersion machines have shown so much promise. Already they have given so much comfort. She touches her hand to the glossy white exterior, feeling an intimacy she often finds hard with her daughter in person. Here in the tank, Remy is so small again, so helpless. So much easier to hold.

  Angelica knows there is some unspeakable violation in what she’s done in withholding David. But this is what medical advancements are for—fixing what isn’t fair. Illnesses are unfair. They strike without concern for timing, or the promise of their victim’s future. What is more unfair than losing your freedom? Freedom is what tragedy ultimately takes away. Freedom is where it hits the hardest. As much as one mourns the loss, or feels the trauma, at the heart of that is the inability to proceed unaffected. Remy might have chosen to keep David in her memory, despite the pain, but only without knowing how much better she would feel without him. How much better her life could be. One shouldn’t be allowed to decide such things for themselves. Someone who loves you, who wants what’s best for you, that’s who should be burdened with the decision.

  Angelica knows it’s hypocritical taking such control over her daughter’s life. Especially for something she herself has never submitted to. Angelica has been hurt; she has felt unbearable pain. Yet she would never have chosen to remove it. Angelica could never see past the fact that she loved Sahar, loves her still; she could not see through the infatuation then, or the pleasureful pain of missing her. But the scientist in her wonders what life might have been like had they never crossed paths. Had she not chosen to be destroyed over and over.

  This is uncharted territory; rules for practicing can’t apply when the very questions have no precedent. In years Angelica is sure that she will look back and understand she made the right choice for Remy. Others would understand, should they ever find out. Remy will go back to Brown. She will make new friends; she will build a life that fulfills her, free from the pain, free from the guilt of being happy when the person she loved most had—well, why speak it. Remy will be lucky to be kept off social media for all the standard, explicable reasons. And common decency will keep most people from ever mentioning David to her, since she will never bring him up. They will marvel at her resiliency. If she does find out about him later, which inevitably she will, she will be in a place where such knowledge cannot touch her. The truth will be a distant story, incapable of hurting her more than a sad book she once read, or a movie she can turn off at the end. And she will thank me, Angelica thinks. She will thank her mother.

  Angelica would like to forget David, too. But not everyone gets the blessing of forgetting; someone has to remember. Someone has to carry the burden for both of them. To protect her daughter, she must remember. She places her hand on the vessel again, feeling it warm, the inside aglow as the wash of Remy’s reinstated memories diffuse, reinforcing themselves in her mind. Her bright, strong mind, streamlined and refined to best prepare her to move on. To be the person she was on her way to becoming. If Angelica came up short as a mother before, which she suspects she has, this is something she can offer that no one else could. No mother who volunteered for every field trip, who was there at every soccer game, who handmade their children’s Halloween costumes, none of them could give their children what Angelica could give Remy now.

  * * *

  Back in her office, Angelica opens the desk drawer and takes out the small bottle of pills marked N/A. She asked for them to be separated and distilled, a record of what was kept out of her daughter’s reintegration. Just in case. In her hand, all the places David’s life touched her daughter’s. An extraction of the pain he left, even in momentary joy. No one else knows what she sorted by, or what was removed. These pieces of her daughter, no longer hers. Like a past that never happened.

  Angelica feels she can hold time in her hands, prevent the things that should not have been. If only within the safety of this place. But that was something. She shakes out a single pill, shimmering. That is something.

  What makes it so hard for her to understand, to connect with her own child? Will it be the same, once Remy is healed and off on her own? Will she push Angelica away just the same? The pill shimmers and refracts, elusive as its owner. How could she hold a little piece of her daughter, inside out, and not take a look? Who would she be if she didn’t?

  Who will she be if she does?

  She is my daughter, Angelica thinks, bringing the pill to her lips. She is my daughter. Each time it sounds different. Once, a call to action. Next, an admonishment. But by the third time, she swallows.

  * * *

  David’s face through a fish-eye, his nose pressing against hers. She smushes his face until he smiles, willing it until it comes. And then there is nothing else but their two smiles, the one kiss.

  * * *

  “I promise you, she doesn’t like me like that.”

  “How could you possibly know?”

  “Because, Rem-by, no one likes me.”

  David sits with his back to her, shoulders hunched. She brushes off the grass stuck to his T-shirt. He lies back down beside her. Remy nudges him. He does this sometimes, looping her into insults aimed at himself, but she doesn’t mind because it places them squarely together.

  Then there is this, the shame in her pause before assuring him that he’s wrong—that he’s wonderful and everyone knows it. The shame in hoping she doesn’t convince him too much.

  * * *

  Remy sits on her twin bed, her quilted duvet wrapped around her. Her new roommate is at a party. The phone is warm against Remy’s cheek; it’s been there for an hour.

  “Tell me something else.”

  “You should go out, meet people.”

  “It’s too cold to meet people.”

  “Already? It’s September.”

  “Tell me what you ate for dinner.”

  “My mom made lasagna. I’m telling you, I’ve got nothing. Go have fun.”

  “You good? I’ve been talking about myself this whole time. How’s your girrrrlfriend?”

  “I’m talking to her.”

  “I mean Ca-lis-ta.”

  “Come on. She’s fine, so is Alex, her boyfriend. She says hi, you know. Always.”

  “Bitch.”

  She can hear his smile break and imagines his nose scrunched up, the way his cheeks push up into his eyes. It’s Remy’s favorite thing. Her chest hurts.

  “All right, you monster, I have to finish my AP Calc.”

  “Ohh, now you’re talking dirty and you expect me to hang up? I don’t think so!”

  “I’m serious, Rem. I have an exam this week.”

  “Ohhh, David! Yes!”

  �
�Good night!”

  “Okay, but—you’re good? Promise? My mother isn’t playing any mind games—”

  “Stop, Remy. I’m good.”

  * * *

  The arrivals loop at LAX, the Lexus smelling of cigarettes and leather. Her mother hugs her too tightly, holds her longer than she should. For a second it feels good, but then Remy remembers her failure. The cost. She pushes her off. How are there no tears in her mother’s eyes? Not even one. Remy sits for a moment, hating her but wanting to be held again. If her mother tried, she would let her. She doesn’t.

  Before, Remy always at least thought her mother was an excellent doctor. She respected that about her. She turns up the radio and pushes her feet into the dashboard. Being her daughter feels like a constant punishment for something Remy never committed.

  * * *

  Remy escapes David’s mother under the pretense of finding the Brentwood Track sweatshirt she left in his bedroom. She agreed to come over before his service so they could go together. David is not really gone, not if Remy can still do him favors; not if he still owes her.

  The floral wallpaper in the hallway makes her dizzy, and before she can even reach David’s room, she ducks into the bathroom. She holds the cold toilet between her hands, waiting, but the rising panic never turns to vomit, never leaves.

  * * *

  Remy opens the medicine cabinet. She doesn’t want to move a single thing, his last movements preserved. But she can’t help herself. So many bottles for someone who considered water a styling product. She runs her finger over each one, imagining him doing the same.

  She moves a tube of spot treatment and sees the bottle marked Memoroxin. Her mother’s name in the upper right corner. She clutches the amber plastic in her hand and shuts the cabinet. She wipes her forehead, swiping away blue strands of hair that still smell of peroxide.

  * * *

  Remy scoots forward and places her hand on the thin, skirted leg of David’s mother. The smallness of the gesture quickly feels worse than doing nothing at all, so Remy swivels around to sit next to her in the limo, sliding diagonally between his mother and his aunt, wrapping an arm around his mother’s trembling frame.

  Holding David’s mother makes Remy feel stronger. Maybe there is selfishness in compassion. Maybe that’s why her mother makes a good psychiatrist, if she ever was. The three years they dated, David insisted they avoid this woman, and now here is Remy, holding her close, feeling her breath. She isn’t so bad, Remy thinks, in the lottery of mothers. She’s so human. Maybe that’s just because she’s broken. For a moment, though, she is jealous of David. Even on the way to his funeral.

  * * *

  Remy pulls out one of the pills from her pocket and rests it in her palm. A blue dot shines in the middle of the tiny iridescent drop. She tries not to think about her mother as she snaps the pill in two and slips one half back into her pocket. The broken pill dusts her hand with a powder like loose eye shadow, and then she thinks only of her mother as she draws a line through it with her fingertip, imagining the streak of David’s life, a shimmering expanse.

  David lost his right to privacy, and so did Remy’s mother, when she lost him. When she with all the answers somehow still failed. Maybe if Remy only takes half, she can deliver the eulogy as herself—with a little bit of David, too.

  * * *

  The minister speaks in a detached monotone to guests across the great hall. Her voice rises and falls at the end of each verse, making Remy seasick from its smooth undulation. The little pill is turning pasty in her hand, but she still cannot work up the courage to take it. When she looks through her fingertips clenched in prayer, more of the iridescent residue has transferred to her palm. A firefly held too tightly.

  “David was a source of light,” the minister continues, speaking directly to them now. She sounds more human, no longer hidden behind the detachment of verse.

  The chairs creak under the family’s shifting grief. Remy keeps her gaze forward. Each silence is filled by the sound of a tissue being used or the shortness of breath behind stalled tears. It’s the kind of silence that urges one forward, to say anything to fill the space, but the minister takes her time.

  * * *

  Remy glances across the row, at the bowed heads of David’s family. The pressure wrapping her throat starts to crawl up her face. Her chin quivers. Her eyes fill. At the end of the row, David’s mother motions toward the podium.

  “This is how David lives on in all of us, in our love of God and our remembrance of his life, so that we may honor him back into life, every day, in our own pursuit of God. David is not gone if we let him live on inside of us.”

  David is not gone if we let him live on inside of us.

  What better way to honor someone’s memory than with a taste of it, Remy thinks. She lifts her hands to her face, as so many others do around her, but this time she licks the pill.

  * * *

  She looks over her shoulder and sees David—his photo blown up large. She sees the last time she hugged him before she left for Brown. From his side. Her smile faltering. His heart breaking. She sees herself walking away. And then it is all too much, and she cannot tell whether she is seeing or being seen, looking or remembering.

  * * *

  Remy wipes the steamer, muffling its urgent splatter. The whirring quiets her mind. She holds on to the feeling that when she leaves Dinosaur Coffee at the end of the day, she will go see David. Working here again, she is back in senior year, back at home, back in the part of her mind where David lives.

  At Dinosaur, she is working toward something, and every latte, cappuccino, and chia pudding moves her closer to more time together. To linger in that phantom happiness before it disappears altogether, she would work there for free.

  * * *

  Remy scrolls through the myriad goodbyes and condolences that now adorn this extension of David, on a social media platform he hated while alive. Dozens of new comments and photos have been added since the service. Once filled with sarcasm and dumb memes, his wall is covered with earnest quotes and emoji-filled epitaphs like flowers and stuffed animals littering a roadside telephone pole.

  She resents how her former classmates suddenly find trite words to share publicly; how they can only show compassion facing their screens. And she misses David more in the midst of it. She fights the urge to post some goofy meme—a pissed-off cat or a dog walking on two legs carrying an umbrella. Anything to cut the pretense.

  * * *

  She hates him in waves. Why couldn’t he just wait? He still had her. He was her family. He was all she had, too. Remy reaches into her pocket and pulls out the broken pill, holding it lightly between her pointer finger and her thumb. Even in the darkness of her bedroom, it seems to shimmer. She wonders what memories might be in this tiny capsule, what he might feel like swallowed full, not licked in powder off her skin. Good, bad, it doesn’t matter.

  Come back, she thinks, as she places the pill on her tongue.

  * * *

  “I’m sorry, what? Is this a joke?”

  “Why would I joke about this?”

  “You’re talking about my mother? You’ve been seeing my—did she contact you? Ew. I cannot believe you. Her, whatever, but you? How could you?”

  “She helps me.”

  “She’s ice. She’s numb. She doesn’t even see me and I’m her own daughter. How the hell will she be able to help you? I mean, do you actually think she’ll—she’s doing this to get to me. She’s just so—”

  “Remy. She didn’t know. I only just realized it. I told her. And she thought it’d be best for me to talk to you first, and maybe then the three of us—”

  “So you’re going to keep seeing her?”

  “I can’t just stop. Besides, it’s not like she’s your ‘mom’ when we’re—”

  “She’s always my mom. No matter what she tells you, she is my mom. Believe me, I wish that weren’t true.”

  “She’s not so bad, Rem.”

  “Y
ou don’t know her like I do.”

  * * *

  Remy lifts her head from the prickling Bermuda grass of her mother’s backyard. Her mother’s backyard. When did this become her mother’s house and not her own? Was it always? The house she grew up in. Her childhood home. So many ways of saying the same thing.

  The place where Remy took her first steps, lost every last baby tooth, learned to read, left for school dances. Those memories feel like another lifetime. If anything, a new sense of unbelonging haunts her, where photographs of her younger self still hang. Home is now distilled and pill-sized, resting inside her golden locket. Home lurks inside of her, filtering the way she sees and thinks, tainting her ability to act like herself.

  Her blue hair is fading more by the day, its vibrant dye turning the water blue like Windex in the tub. Her dark roots are just beginning to show at the part, and the once-inky ends have turned pastel. Only a few inches in the middle remain a true blue. There is catharsis in this slow progression, she thinks, each day representing another loss, long and drawn out.

  The day after the funeral, Remy shook the pills out of the bottle. It seemed fitting. Seven pills. Seven days. One last week with David, her own sort of shiva. Since then, she has been slipping out to the backyard each morning when she doesn’t have a shift at Dinosaur, telling her mother that the sunlight is good for her mental health, when in reality it’s her time with David. Mornings are the only time when her mother will leave her alone.

  She’s come to depend on these hours in the grass. To live for them.

  Just a month ago, Remy was starting something. She had made new friends who she now may never talk to again. Their lives will stretch away from hers until it will seem impossible that they had ever intersected. Each day that passes without David opens pockets of loneliness she hadn’t known existed before. Whenever she runs into parents from Brentwood they insist on how well she is doing. This is meant to be a compliment, but it feels like shaming. As though Remy should not be handling it well, as though she should actually feel worse. Or at least let it show. At times she feels fine. But the loneliness bubbles up slowly, like shaking cake batter in a pan, exposing itself in bursts. Interrupting the smooth illusion of acceptance.