The Evolution of Love

by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

She liked the way he seemed both crushed and resilient. It felt like an honest combination. The need to tell about Tom was ballooning inside her.

  “The bike is awesome,” Wesley said. “Your sister took really good care of it.”

  “She’s good with machines. Anything with working parts. Humans, not so much.”

  He laughed again. “So, are you heading home soon? Now that you’ve found her.”

  “I don’t know. I have a job at Trinity Church. Serving dinner.”

  He nodded, maybe glanced at his book. Now was the time to say that it’d been nice to see him and walk away. Instead, she said, “My husband and I are breaking up.”

  Wesley looked startled. Of course he did. She made a face, which she hoped was wry, and turned to leave.

  “Hold on a second.” He stood, looking like a question mark with his long thin legs, jutting hipbones, and slight stoop in the shoulders. The fingertips of his right hand pressed the oak tabletop, as if he might topple without the support. “Are you okay?”

  “Sorry. I don’t even know you. Sharing that was inappropriate.”

  “I don’t think appropriateness is a working concept anymore. Around here.”

  Lily laughed.

  “Just survival.”

  “Just survival,” she agreed and left, employing as decisive a gait as she could muster.

  When, later that afternoon, she walked into the community room at the church, Kalisha did a double take and Ron asked, “Y-y-y-y-you ok-k-k-k-kay?”

  “My husband is leaving me. He thinks I’ve left him.”

  “Th-th-that s-s-s-s-sucks.” As he hugged her, the cowry shells on the tips of his cornrows tapped coolly against her face.

  “Yeah. It does.”

  Later, after Kalisha locked the door, Lily cleaned up fast and then took a seat next to Professor Vernadsky, who was always the last to leave. He looked more dog-eared than usual today: his long hair wisped about his pink scalp like a cirrus cloud and his pale blue eyes were unfocused. He wore a bull’s-eye tie-dye tie in concentric shades of electric blue and hot pink. He turned a damp gaze on her.

  “I’ve been reading up on the meaning of love,” she told him. She wouldn’t mention that her source was the encyclopedia. “Tell me if I have this right. Eros is desire, but at least according to Plato, it transcends the particular. It’s basically desiring or loving beauty itself.”

  “Well—”

  She knew he’d try to equivocate. “Wait. Let me finish. Philia is more like friendship or family love, right? Whereas agape is like God’s love for people and people’s love for God. But it also includes loving all of humanity.” Lily paused. “Like that’s possible.”

  Professor Vernadsky folded his napkin and said, “The use of language to understand love presumes that love has a describable nature. So even before we can discuss the meaning of love, beguiling as that question is, we need to understand a few things about the philosophy of language, the relevance and appropriateness of meanings. In other words, the concept of love may be irreducible.”

  “That can’t be right.” She knew philosophy was all about chewy word arguments, but she thought it was also about believing there were answers. After a few decades at the university, he’d decided that the endeavor was pointless? Just like her marriage.

  He tried to clarify his position by adding, “Love may well be an axiomatic, self-evident state of being that is corrupted by intellectual intrusion.”

  “Like a Kantian category?” She was pleased to have remembered this concept from her encyclopedia reading. Maybe this was why people studied hard subjects; engaging your brain distracted you from a broken heart.

  “Try the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.”

  “That’s physics.”

  “Philosophy has come to the end of its usefulness. It’s been superseded by physics.”

  “But physics can’t describe the exact nature of love!”

  His eyes were the loveliest shade of pale blue, like lobelia blossoms. He blinked hard a few times and said, “Not yet.”

  Kalisha stopped by the table with his wrapped sandwich and a banana. She tucked them in the big outside pockets of his jacket.

  “When you were at the university,” Lily persisted with her inquiry, “did you know a professor named Travis Grayson? He was a bonobo researcher.”

  Kalisha hitched forward and her eyebrows shot up, as if she knew Travis Grayson. Likely she was just twitching with irritation at Lily’s lollygagging, wanting her to get on with work.

  “Bonobos!” The professor looked pleased. “The biological key to the question, ‘What is love?’”

  “Yes!” Lily said. “You know about them!”

  “Fascinating creatures. Perhaps the genetic code to our salvation.”

  “That’s what Travis says! Do you know him?”

  “I’ve been retired for a long time. But I have a university directory at home. Come see me. We’ll talk.” Professor Vernadsky rose from his chair with a great deal of effort, and Lily handed him his walking sticks. He shuffled toward the door.

  “Did you know Professor Vernadsky before the earthquake?” Lily asked Kalisha.

  “I studied with him. He was my advisor.”

  “Really? You studied philosophy?” Lily instantly regretted showing her surprise.

  Kalisha smirked briefly, but then jerked her head to the side, flicking away the insult and forgiving Lily her assumptions. “Yeah,” she said. “He has a fair amount of dementia now, but he was a smart, smart man.”

  “So did you major in philosophy?”

  “I was working on my doctorate.” Kalisha spoke the words carefully, as if they were a lovely shell she held in cupped hands, close to her chest.

  “Did you study love?”

  She ran a work-weathered hand over her skull. And then, as if saying the word cost her something, “Epistemology.”

  “Um—?”

  “Another time.”

  “Do you agree with Professor Vernadsky, that love can’t be understood?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think my husband and I are splitting up.”

  The planes of Kalisha’s face softened and the dirty penny color of her eyes warmed, as if the copper had been polished. “Are you okay?”

  “Everything is spinning.”

  Kalisha nodded and said, “Yes.”

  “It’s like everything I thought I knew about my life may no longer be true.”

  “Let me know if you need anything.”

  “This.” Lily swept her hand in the direction of the kitchen and community room. “I need this.”

  Kalisha smiled. Then she picked up the sponge and started wiping down tables Lily had already cleaned. Lily wrung out another sponge and helped redo them all.

  17

  Kalisha made her way down the dark hallways of the church, carrying a lit candle. She didn’t allow herself to go to the sanctuary often. She saved it for crucial moments, as if its potency would be drained if overused.

  She stopped at the head of the aisle and held the candle up to the cross at the altar. “Hell of a mess you all have made,” she said aloud, and then walked to the front pew where she took a seat.

  Lily knew Travis Grayson. That surprised her. Maybe even alarmed her.

  Had she joined his Cluster? What was this business about bonobos? She had a strong feeling she needed to figure out, understand, their connection. It frightened her, as if somewhere in the link between herself and Lily and Travis there was danger. But that was crazy thinking. Lily and Travis both had been so helpful.

  She closed her eyes and held them tight. There was so much she wasn’t afraid of: the instability of Earth’s tectonic plates, falling ceilings and loosened gas pipes. She wasn’t even afraid of hunger. But the unknown. Unanswered questions. The unrelenting need to feel m
ore intensely. These terrified her.

  She ran her fingers along the scar-covered veins on the insides of her elbows. The scars always reminded her of God, how He—She, It, whatever—came to her when she was using. The clarity, the beauty of the universe, of her own soul. But of course that God happened to be dope. And if a skinny white boy (maybe black, according to Michael) who lived two thousand years ago couldn’t do anything about the pain and suffering on earth today, neither could heroin.

  But no, see, that was the problem. That was the greatest temptation of all. Dope was the conduit, the path, but it did lead to God. She believed that. It allowed her to see and feel Him—Her, It, whatever. If Jesus had known about brain chemistry, what would he have done with the information? Probably mainlined. Who didn’t want to experience God?

  Kalisha had been clean for ten years, but the desire, the chemical love, could still come on with a vicious intensity whenever she felt a void.

  And how wide the void had yawned during those first days after the earthquake. She’d sat on her stoop every morning and watched the flow of people moving like rivers to the bay where rescue boats hauled them off. She could have gone. But where? She pictured high school gymnasiums full of people on cots, covered by gray army blankets, waiting for transportation to welcoming relatives in other parts of the state, or other states altogether. She pictured herself lying on one of the cots, under one of the blankets, with nowhere to go.

  On the third morning, as she sat in the sun, the flow of people thinning, a man strode across the church parking lot, headed for her stoop. A floppy midsize mutt, ancient-looking with his gray muzzle and bloodshot eyes, tried to keep up. Both the dog and the man were limping. The man, a few years older than she was, had shaggy blond hair and wore dirty jeans and a ripped red flannel shirt. Maybe he was handsome—she wouldn’t know, she’d never been attracted to white guys. But he had a zealous energy that unnerved her.

  The scars on the insides of her arms and on her groin started singing. Maybe he had a couple of bags in his back pocket. Dealers had a way of knowing where their clients were, and also when they were ripe. Ten years was nothing, nothing at all. She thought she could hear the plastic slipping against the denim of his jeans pocket.

  Her will drained from her like blood from a wound. She did try to plug the hole. She summoned a mental picture of the community room full of diners. But the picture only reminded her that she could no longer feed them. She thought of Michael: the roundness of his cheeks and belly; his expressive hands with the oddly short fingers; the way he talked faster when ideas excited him; the bit of gray she’d recently glimpsed in his hair; his ever-present scowl. He tried so hard. At everything.

  None of that stopped the flashback, the sweet spiritual syrup opening her horizons, turning all of existence into an eternal blue sky. She’d sell anything for it.

  The blond guy stopped in front of her. The old mutt flopped at his feet, as if weary from a very long journey.

  “Yes,” she said before he even asked a question.

  “Are you Kalisha Wilkerson?”

  She nodded, wondering but not surprised that he knew her name. Knowing you, all about you, kept them safer. You were revealed, findable, theirs.

  “Travis Grayson.” He tapped his chest and smiled. “Look, I understand you have a soup kitchen.”

  “It’s a free meals program.”

  “Right. I’ve got food. I can help.”

  “You’ve got food?”

  “Yeah, a lot.”

  “How’d you get it?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “You Robin Hood or something?”

  He grinned, pleased with the comparison. “I can go with that. Anyway, do you want the food?”

  “I don’t have power for my kitchen.”

  The man glanced around the empty parking lot. “There’s no reason we can’t build you a wood-burning oven out here. There’s wood all over town. My Cluster will supply it.”

  “Your Cluster?” It was the first time she’d heard the term.

  Later that very morning, Travis Grayson returned with a crew of young people. They scavenged stones, mixed cement, and built a large oven right in the middle of the parking lot. They gathered wood, split it into oven-sized pieces, and piled it against the wall of the church. At noon, a black Chevy Blazer backed into the parking lot and the young people unloaded a crazy assemblage of food.

  Ron balked at the idea of cooking outside in a stone oven, but somehow they managed to serve a potato, black-eyed pea, and ham stew at four thirty.

  For three days, Travis and his crew delivered truckloads of food and firewood. Kalisha’s flock dined al fresco every evening, eating the concoctions made from the ingredients at hand, including an apple crumble, zucchini-carrot salad, carne asada tacos, and many less-exciting dishes. The Trinity Church parking lot was a maelstrom of fire, food, laughter, and lots of tears, too. Kalisha had to consider God. He, She, It, whatever, had sent Travis. How else could she explain the miracle?

  Then, on the fourth day, Travis didn’t come. Nor did he come the next day or the one after that. Kalisha had no idea if he’d run out of stores to loot or if he’d finally gone back to a swanky home in some place like Sausalito.

  But she was grateful. He’d gotten her back on her feet and, more importantly, the meals program up and running again. Lots of people hadn’t left the East Bay, and they were the ones who needed food most of all.

  Kalisha got up from the church pew and carried her lit candle to the altar. She found the box of candles inside the cavity of the pulpit and took out two. She shoved them into the candleholders on the side table near the crashed picture of Jesus. She lit one for Travis. She lit another one for Michael. Then she backed up and looked at her flickering thank yous.

  “But who is Lily?” she asked.

  18

  Lily spent the next three days in the library, standing in line for the computers and then using her turns to read Wesley’s blogs.

  The Earthquake Chronicles were surprisingly funny. She knew some of the people he’d written about because they ate at the church, and she liked how he found the humor and heart in even the most desperate characters and events. Some of his subjects might not like what he’d written, though, which probably explained why he himself didn’t eat at the church. She read all the way through the blog, finishing with his first entries, the ones about himself.

  “Slow down,” his fare had told him as his taxicab slid onto the freeway overpass, just moments before the earthquake. He glanced in the rearview mirror. At first he saw only the glaring headlights of the truck behind him, but then he saw that the young woman was holding her little boy’s hand. The child looked about ten years old, the same age Wesley’s boys had been when Carolyn left him for Hank.

  The truck’s headlights flooded the cab’s interior, and then the truck itself plowed into Wesley’s rear bumper, crumpling the trunk of the car. The overpass collapsed and the cab plunged to the roadway below, landing upright on a giant slab of the overpass cement. Huge chunks of concrete pounded down around the cab, and a light blue mini landed on Wesley’s hood. He sat still while clouds of debris rained down.

  Later he would not be able to say how much time had passed before he came out of shock. Seconds? Minutes? It could even have been more than an hour. His consciousness came in slowly, like lights blinking on one at a time in a cityscape. He punched away the airbag, and then touched himself, first his legs, and then his arms and chest. When he touched his forehead, his hand came away bloody. He had no idea how badly he was injured. He closed his eyes and slept.

  A man tugged open the driver door and asked Wesley if he was okay.

  It took him a long time to remember where he was and why. The man waited patiently for him to say, “I think so.”

  “How about your passengers?”

  Wesley found that his legs
worked. He climbed out of his cab and looked, with the stranger, into the window of the backseat. The boy’s head was covered in blood, but his eyes were open! The door was jammed shut, but the man had a tire iron, and they managed to pry it open. Wesley knelt down and took the boy’s hands. The child was so still, he couldn’t tell if he was dead or alive.

  As he gently lifted him out of the backseat, the boy moaned. The other man crawled in for the boy’s mother and then crawled out again without her. He shook his head at Wesley.

  “Can you take the child?” the man asked. “I’ll move on to the next car.”

  Wesley wanted to ask, take the child where? But of course there was no answer to that question, and so, with the boy draped across his arms and held against his chest, Wesley started walking. Blood from his own head wound dripped onto the boy’s jacket. Getting away from the freeway exchange was like traversing a small mountain range. He had to take long detours around crevasses and duck under giant spears of rebar. There were other survivors, some stumbling away from the devastation, others helping excavate the trapped and wounded. With the young boy in his arms, no one stopped Wesley, and at last he made it beyond the worst of the overpass rubble.

  He had no idea where to go, so he walked toward the bookstore, even though it was a few miles away. He spoke softly to the boy, telling him he would be okay and that they’d get somewhere warm and safe. Twice the boy said, “Mama.”

  Then, after about an hour of walking, the boy went limp. Wesley put him down and held a finger against his jugular. “Hey!” he said. “Hey. Kid. Come on.” But the boy was gone.

  Wesley couldn’t just leave him beside the road, so he picked him up again, cradling him, and walked. The glass door of the bookstore was shattered, but he used his key anyway. Wesley kicked a space clear of books and laid the dead boy on the hardwood floor.

  The next morning he buried him in the small plot of dirt behind the bookstore. Later that same day, he also buried his mother and Carolyn in their respective backyards. He hadn’t been able to find his ex-wife’s husband, Hank.