“Like, some poor woman keeps giving birth, and the result is us?”
“That might be a little more related than I thought. But possible, I guess.”
“I think there are more of us than that. And I think there have been people like us for a while, secret for the same reasons we’ve kept ourselves secret. Both our power and our survival depend on it.”
“And do you think we’ve always been like this? From the very first day?”
“There’s no way to know, of course. But what I think? I think we were born just like everyone else, and then on our second day, we woke up in another newborn’s body. That first baby lost the first day of his life—but how will he ever know? We leave long before any memories are formed.” He looks at me. “You’re smiling. Why are you smiling?”
I tell him the truth. “Because I’ve asked myself this question thousands of times over the years. And at a certain point, I gave up on ever hearing anyone else’s answer. So to be talking to you about this…it’s not what I was expecting.”
“You thought I was going to hit you over the head, spirit you away in my white van, and suck out your soul to put inside a monster I’d built.”
“Something along those lines,” I say. His mention of my wariness has reminded me of it. Just because he’s joking about the white van doesn’t mean there’s not one parked outside, the keys in his pocket.
He seems alarmed by my alarm. “I really made quite a first impression. It’s been over an hour—will you allow me to apologize again?”
“It’s okay,” I tell him. “The hour has changed things.” Because before, I would have assumed the worst. Now I’m trying not to assume anything. Because I want us to keep talking.
“For me too.”
“So what else?”
“You said you don’t think of yourself as a he or a she?”
“No. You do?”
“I’m definitely a he.”
“That’s so weird to me. You still wake up female sometimes, right?”
“I wake up in women’s bodies. But I never wake up female.”
“But why would you choose?”
“Because every human being has to be one or the other.”
“That’s not even remotely true.”
“Okay, okay—I concede that point. But for me, it’s important to have a concrete identity, even when you are changing your physical form so much. Perhaps even more so. It’s important to know who you are. What you look like—”
I can’t believe he’s saying this. “You know what you look like?” I interrupt.
“I know what I should look like. It’s very clear to me.”
I gesture to Wyatt. “Is this it?”
He looks down at Wyatt’s hands, then back up at me. “This is close enough.”
“So you chose it.”
“In some senses, yes. I took the do-overs until I got it right. Or right enough. You’ll be able to do that, too.”
“But I don’t want that.”
“Why not?”
“Because once you have preferences, once you start thinking of people in terms of better or worse—then suddenly there will be bad ones and good ones. And I’ll treat the bad ones badly, just because I have preferences. I don’t believe in that. I don’t believe any body is inherently better or worse than any other. The outside world makes its judgments. And I’m sure the people themselves make their own judgments from the inside. But when I’m in there, I am not there to judge. I felt it happen a couple of months ago, when I was starting to see myself as I thought the outside world saw me. I could feel myself tilting into feeling I wasn’t the right size or the right gender. And that, more than anything else, made me know I was going down the wrong path. So I left. I tried not to see myself through the outside world’s eyes.”
“Through her eyes.”
“Her?”
“The girl you love. You haven’t told me about her yet. But I have to imagine the two are related.”
“How do you know about Rhiannon?” I ask, even though I know the answer.
“Nathan, remember? Don’t worry—he wouldn’t tell me much. I just knew she was his conduit to you. But I inferred. You must love her.”
It seems pointless to deny it. “I do.”
“And, naturally, that makes you feel seen. By the ‘outside world,’ as you say.”
“It does. Have you ever been in love like that?”
“Absolutely. It’s hard for us, isn’t it? Almost impossible. But not entirely impossible. That gap between almost and entirely—that’s what we’re always trying to squeeze through, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“But listen to yourself. How is she supposed to love you if you don’t give yourself any true form? What is she supposed to love—a name? A? How can you give her something that you don’t have?”
“We’re figuring it out.”
“Which is what you need to do. And I want to help. I know I don’t have much standing to do so. But I’ve been through this, A. I know exactly what you’re talking about. And because of my own experience, I can see all of the barriers that are currently invisible to you. I can see the core problem that builds all the barriers.”
“And what’s that?”
“Are you sure you want to hear it?”
“I want to hear it.”
“I think you have spent your entire life making yourself subservient to the people whose bodies you occupy. Instead of treating yourself as a full human being—and we are full human beings—you treat yourself as if you’re a parasite, an infection, a twenty-four-hour virus that has some choice about the damage it does. So you hold back. You deny yourself your own humanity in order to perpetuate theirs. But I ask you this—and it is something I have asked myself many, many times: Why are their lives worth more than yours, just because of who you are?”
“I don’t think of them as worth more than me.”
“Really? Who have you taken more energy to care for over the years? What pattern did falling in love with Rhiannon disrupt?”
“But what choice do we have?” I ask.
“The first choice you have is to define yourself.” He pushes back his chair and stands up, and for an outlandish moment I think this is the end of our conversation, that he’s so disappointed in me that he’s going to walk away. But instead he says, “Let’s take a field trip. I hear there’s an art museum nearby?”
“Okay,” I say, gathering my coat and picking up my tray.
“There have to be thousands of images of people in these galleries. I have to believe that, deep down, you have some sense of who you are. Let’s walk through the museum until we find one that connects.”
“It’s like you’re asking my type. And I’ll telling you, I have no type.”
“And I’m saying, I think we all have a type. It’s just a question of whether we admit it to ourselves or not.”
“Fine,” I say. “Let’s try.” It’s not too different from what Rhiannon asked me to do at the Met. I don’t think the results will be any different this time.
I am only now seeing how crowded it’s become. The speeches are still happening on the Mall, but more people are coming inside, resting their feet surrounded by art.
“That’s good,” X says. “Museums are for people-watching as much as anything else. You may find yourself in one of them, too.”
I want to tell him that I find myself in all of them. But I haven’t even given it a shot. So I ask myself what I look like. Not what I want to look like—I can knock on that door, but there’s no room behind it.
There’s a photography exhibit on the ground floor, images from across the stretch of the twenty-first century we’ve traveled so far. I look into the eyes of peasants and publicists, Anglicans and Africans, suburban families and soldiers half a world from home. I d
on’t look at where they are, but try to look into their faces instead, their eyes. But while I feel I could wake up as any of them, I don’t feel that any of them are more me than any other. Certainly, some speak more to my experience. But not to who I am.
We move to paintings. Jazz Age flappers, and migrants working in sepia fields.
“Nothing?” X asks me.
I shake my head. “You? Do you see yourself anywhere here?”
“In this gallery, I guess that’s the closest.” He points to a sculpture—Torso of a Young Man. Typical Greek shape for a torso of a young man. Strong. Somewhat blank. “Only I have all my limbs.”
“I’m guessing you’re not bronze, either.”
“Depends on the day.”
I am trying to reconcile this person talking to me with the Reverend Poole I met. I tell myself I didn’t really meet X that day; I ran before I could. And it seems he’s learned a few things since then.
“Let’s try upstairs,” I say.
I lead us into a gallery of black lines on white canvases.
“Not me,” I joke.
Then I walk into the next gallery and am taken aback. We are suddenly surrounded by all of these strange fields of color floating into each other. Some look like horizons, others like stacks. Some colors go together. Others clash and complement at the same time. They are clouds, but they are solid. They are quiet, but they speak. They make no sense, and they make perfect sense.
“This?” X asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“Rothko. Interesting.”
I don’t want my shape to be a shape. I want it to be colors. Every color. Each day a different combination.
I know this isn’t me. I know I’m not an abstraction. This is not the answer. But it’s the best answer, much better than picking a kind of body and saying, This is me.
“I don’t want to disappoint you,” I admit. “I don’t want you to think I’m not trying.”
“No! You can’t disappoint me. Anything you say is meaningful to me. We’re discovering, aren’t we? That’s the whole point of us getting together. To discover. Don’t you think there are so many things to discover?”
“Absolutely.”
We stand next to each other, looking at a rectangle of gray hovering over a rectangle of red. Although the more I look, the more the gray becomes many colors, like there are waves of green and purple and blue underneath.
I hear footsteps behind us and am surprised, because I know it’s Rhiannon who’s come into the room. Rhiannon, looking for me. I was supposed to meet her so many hours ago. I hope she’s seen what’s been happening. I am sure she’ll understand.
It would be easy enough to turn, to tell her to join us, to introduce them. But at least some caution remains from my first encounter with X, because I decide against this. Instead I step back, and while X is still looking forward, I put my hands behind my back. I make a heart with my fingers, then flash five fingers three times, hoping she’ll know I mean I’ll go to our meeting spot in fifteen minutes. I hear the footsteps move away.
“I don’t suppose a visit to the Renaissance galleries would make any difference, field-trip-wise,” X says.
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, then. What now?”
“I’m afraid I’m supposed to go meet someone.”
“Rhiannon?”
“No. Rudy’s parents. They must be petrified by now about where he is.”
“Again, I will mildly but forcefully point out that Rudy’s life is not more important than your own. Rudy is missing a bout of DC tourism that staring at a few postcards will cure. Have you been to these monuments? There’s nothing memorable about them beyond their size. Whereas what you are doing today—that, I daresay, has more importance.”
“I know, but I guess I’m assuming we can continue it tomorrow.”
“That’s not in doubt. We’re only just starting. You’ll just have to pardon me—I’m impatient! This has been a massive afternoon for me.”
“Me too.”
“Good. Then we’ll continue tomorrow. I’ve gotten a suite at the Fairport. You can come by and we can go from there. If you give me your email address, I can send you the details and my phone number.”
It seems ridiculous to use Nathan as a go-between at this point. So I give him the information and he types it into his phone.
I mean, Wyatt’s phone.
“What about Wyatt?” I ask. “Doesn’t he have to go home?”
“He will, eventually. I’m telling you, I wouldn’t be able to stay in here if he didn’t want me to be here. And it’s the weekend. His parents will think he’s stayed an extra day after the protest.”
“They don’t know where he is. They’re worried.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Nathan sent me his Facebook page. So I would know what you looked like.”
“Crafty Nathan. I’ll be honest—I haven’t checked Wyatt’s Facebook page myself. Do you post as them when you’re in their bodies?”
“I try not to.”
“Me as well. It seems wrong to contribute to something that counts as permanent—or at least as permanent as modern technology can offer. So no, I haven’t been posting. And yes, I’m sure that’s freaking some people out, because heaven forbid someone goes off-line for a week. How dare he! But I assure you, that’s the only place Wyatt’s considered missing. And he’ll go back soon enough.”
“Okay. So I’ll see you both tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry you have to go now.”
“Me too.”
“I’ll send you the information right away, so if you end up having free time later this evening, let me know.”
“I doubt Rudy’s parents will let him out of their sight.”
“So don’t go back!”
“Stop.”
“Sorry. I get it. Truly, I do. I’m just being selfish. I want to talk to you more. We haven’t even scratched the surface. Which, come to think of it, is a very poor metaphor to use vis-à-vis you and me. But you know what I mean.”
I can’t help but smile. “I do.”
“Good. Now go be the catalyst for a family reunion. I hope they don’t ship you back to Manila this evening as punishment.”
“Don’t even joke about that.”
“Yes, please don’t make me fly for eighteen hours for part two of this conversation.”
“I’ll make sure not to.”
The only way to pull myself out of the room is to remember that Rhiannon is back with the impressionists, waiting for me.
“I may stay here a little bit longer, to try to see what you see. Good luck.”
“You too.”
I start to leave. Then X says, “And, A?”
I turn back to him.
“Yes?”
“It’s great to meet you.”
“You too.”
* * *
—
My mind is barely in my body as I walk from the East Building of the museum to the West. It was almost ridiculous to be searching the walls for something similar to me, when the most similar person to ever come into my life was standing right next to me.
The museum is kind enough to provide plenty of reflecting surfaces, so I can check to make sure X is staying true to his word and remaining in the Rothko gallery rather than following me. It’s only as I get farther from him that the reality of the day returns. I think about Rudy, and about his parents. And I think about Rhiannon, who I find waiting exactly where we were supposed to meet a few hours ago.
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” I say immediately.
“And I’m sorry I was late. We underestimated the traffic by about two hours. How’d it go?”
“It was incredible, Rhiannon. I don’t even know how to describe it. He knew ex
actly what I was talking about. From the inside. He’s been asking himself all the same questions I’ve been asking myself.”
I tell her more about it—exactly what we talked about. I don’t want to hold anything back from her.
I don’t expect any particular reaction from her—I know this is as new to her as it is to me. Still, I’m a little surprised by how concerned she is.
“You’re talking about him like he’s a really good guy,” she points out. “But that’s not really the sense of him that we’ve been getting. He beat the hell out of Nathan, A. Not once—twice. Did you ask him about that?”
“No. It didn’t come up,” I say, knowing how lame it sounds.
“Well, I wasn’t expecting him to bring it up. But you might have mentioned it. Just out of curiosity.”
“I’ll ask him tomorrow. I thought about it—I did. But it wasn’t the right time. I was learning so much from him. I didn’t want to shut that down.”
Rhiannon sighs. “Did you make sure he didn’t follow us here?”
“He was staying behind to look at those paintings some more.”
“He’s still in the building? Seriously?” She looks around quickly. “Let’s go. Now. I am going to walk ahead and go out on the Mall side, because it will be more crowded. Stay behind me, but not too close. And if you run into him again, I just want you to know—I’m going to keep walking. Then I’ll email you.”
“I don’t have phone service without wifi.”
“There’s free wifi in every one of these museums, A. I swear to God.”
There’s no goodbye. She just heads out. I wait half a minute and follow.
I don’t see X dodging away, or hiding behind any sculptures. I don’t think we need to act like spies right now. But there’s no way to call her back.
So I push ahead, the crowds getting thicker and thicker. When I’m outside on the steps of the museum, I’ve lost her completely…until she’s at my arm, saying, “Come on.”
It feels like there are indeed millions of people on the lawn. Over the loudspeakers, we can hear someone singing “Imagine,” with a large part of the crowd singing along. I try to add my voice as we push toward the National Museum of American History. “Wait,” I say, holding Rhiannon back for a second. “Look at this.”
Someday Page 26
