Miss Subways: A Novel

by David Duchovny

  She dressed in a kind of trance. She thought of her childhood diagnosis of her “bridge,” her corpus callosum, failing to demarcate waking from dreaming. We change so, and do not change, she thought.

  Corvus was gone, so there was less to do this morning. No feeding. She would miss that little dude. She reached for a sock on her dresser and knocked it off, down the back against the wall. She had to get on her knees and reach blindly underneath. As she felt around for the sock, she touched something sharp and flat and pulled that out. Not a sock, but a photo, an old-fashioned Polaroid, of her, her and a man. Emer’s face was lined up with the man’s face so you couldn’t see him, only his dark hair. Emer was smiling in the photo. The man’s hand was caressing her hair. She thought she’d never looked this happy.

  She didn’t know where the picture was from or who the man might be. Curiouser and curiouser. She reached her hand under the dresser again, but came up empty. She put the photo in a drawer.

  PASCAL WAS A GAMBLAHOLIC

  THE DAY ITSELF PASSED like a dream. There was an unreal quality to it that could not be shaken off, and it was not lost on Emer that as her dreams became more real, her reality became less so. She was looking forward to checking in with Izzy at lunch. She found Izzy in her office.

  “Not you again,” Izzy joked.

  “I think I’m having a crisis of faith.”

  “Uh, I’m the token Jew in the citadel here. Perhaps you want to talk to Sidney?”

  Emer held up a paper bag. “I come bearing vegetable panini.”

  “In that case, welcome to my office.”

  Izzy motioned to a tiny chair, made for a small child. Emer sat, her knees pushing up nearly under her chin.

  “Can you just not argue with me about God for a moment?” Emer asked.

  “No, that’s not possible.”

  “Let’s just put that aside, like, okay, I agree that your atheism is legit and I won’t assail it and you agree that my faith is legit and you don’t assail it, and then we can talk.”

  “No,” Izzy protested, “that’s like saying, okay, you get to be bat-shit crazy for a second and say there are virgin births and a handsome blue-eyed straight-haired dude from Palestine turns water into wine, but for the rest of the time, you’ll be sane? I can’t do that. I can’t get beyond your a priori.”

  “But to deal with my crisis of faith, you have to accept my faith.”

  “Okay, to acknowledge that you’re having a sudden flash of sanity, I’ll allow that you’re insane.”

  “Plenty of geniuses believed or came to believe—Shakespeare, Eliot, Einstein, even Wallace Stevens had a deathbed conversion.”

  “It was the air they breathed. It was the water they drank. You’ve come later, you have a better shot. You know I had a little first grader in here an hour ago who was mourning the death of his imaginary friend, too.”

  “What about if it’s as tepid a belief as Pascal’s wager? What if we have nothing to lose? If we believe in God, and there’s a heaven, we win; if we believe in God, and there’s nothing—so what—we all lose, and we were no worse off for believing in him. That’s like faith as a free insurance policy.”

  “But you were worse off. You had to abide by his laws, and do the nasty shit he says to do, and hate yourself and your body in just the way he says to hate yourself and your body.”

  “You think I hate myself?”

  “I think you have your moments. Like anyone.”

  “Maybe there’s something more.”

  “More than God? I’m hoping maybe there’s something less.”

  “More than just the one God, you know, like many gods. Maybe I was right to believe in a System, but maybe it was the wrong System.”

  “Why do you need a System?”

  “A System feels good. I’ve always been a good student. I like structure. I like to know I’ve done the homework, that the teacher likes me, maybe get a gold star at the end of it.”

  “Maybe that’s just nostalgia. For safety. A nostalgia for the order of childhood.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “What about love as a System?”

  “That’s what Jesus brought. He brought love. He replaced vengeance with love. He turned the other cheek.”

  “Too many strings attached with that guy. Pauline strings.”

  “Maybe we need the strings. Maybe without the strings we float away.”

  “Okay, so now you’re saying, a priori, you’re not just a little crazy, you’re lots of crazy, a big steaming bowl of crazy. You want the Baby Jesus and a whole host of other phenomena.”

  “I ain’t crazy, I’m just waking up. I’m woke.”

  “Are you gonna start speaking in country songs?”

  “My Jesus is not like that; he’s not the walks-with-me-and-talks-with-me kind.”

  “How about the Jesus-that-makes-you-rich kind? Where’s that cat? Dial that fucker up.”

  “Mine’s more like your Yahweh, I imagine: a tough, unreasonable mother.”

  “My Yahweh? Did you just call me a Jew, you mackerel snapper?”

  “You are a Jew, Jew.”

  “Of course, but being a Jew is not a religion in this city, it’s a culture. We Jews like to leave God out and the cream cheese in. There’s this ultra-Orthodox group, the Satmar sect, right now, that wants to ban girls from higher education. Clearly I’m not down with that retro-madness—I’m an agnostic, Netflix-addicted lesbo with two advanced degrees working in a school run by Jesuits—they’re not inviting me to their big beard and payess party, and I don’t wanna go. But don’t take away my fucking bagels, the Sunday New York Times, and the two-week August time-share in Cherry Grove.”

  “You can’t judge a religion by its extremes.”

  “That may, in fact, be the best way to judge, like blossoms on the branches.”

  Izzy took a bite of the veggie panini and sipped iced coffee. “Can we talk about Game of Thrones now? The Bachelor? Remember when we used to talk about Trump all the time? He gave our lives focus, like cancer. But funnier. Then it got real. And no longer remotely funny.”

  “I’m having visions,” Emer confessed. “Visions and dreams.”

  “Good,” said Izzy. “Good, I think.”

  “What do you really think?”

  “I think you need to get laid.”

  “That’s such a guy thing to say.”

  “Thou shalt get some sexy time.”

  Emer secretly dived back into the imagery of her dream last night. The Dragon King. Her father making love in the reservoir with strangers. What the fuck? There was no way to process that—either as a dream or as reality. As a dream, what did it say about her? As reality, what did it say about everything else? There was nowhere to put it but aside, in a dark corner maybe. Locked away in the house like a gun in a box in a safe on a shelf in a closet. The bell rang for class.

  Emer rose from her seat, her knees stiff from the extreme angle of the little chair. Izzy rose and took her friend’s face in her hands.

  “You’re gonna be okay, okay?”

  Izzy’s baseline kindness made Emer want to cry.

  “I think your father is fading and you’re heartbroken. Those are the words, the rest is bullshit. But you’re gonna sail on through. I know this.”

  Emer nodded. “Okay.”

  Izzy kissed her on the cheek. Emer hugged her and whispered in her ear, “I need to find someone like you.”

  “With a penis.”

  “That would be a bonus.”

  “The holy grail. Now get back to work and mold some young minds. As-salaam alaikum.”

  FEAR AND TREMBLING

  IZZY’S WORDS made Emer want to check in on her dad before heading home. Most days, after school, she spent a couple hours with him. But with Corvus around, she’d been somewhat delinquent. She felt guilty. But Corvus was gone now and she could get back into the lulling rhythm of her days: home, subway, school, subway, dad, home. On the subway, she looked around for the mystery man. Nope.
But she did land upon a Train of Thought that caught her eye:

  When one has circumnavigated existence, it will appear whether one has courage to understand that life is a repetition, and to delight in that very fact. Repetition is reality, and it is the seriousness of life.

  —SØREN KIERKEGAARD

  Yeah, tell that to the assembly-line worker or the zombie-eyed barista at her Starbucks. She remembered the Camus story where Sisyphus, pushing his rock up that hill day after day, was ultimately deemed “happy.” Doing the same thing over and over again, without hope of completion or victory. “Shoulder to the boulder,” as that other Irishman in her life, Sidney, liked to say to buck up the troops. Were we all characters in a Beckett play directed by Sartre? And if so, looking around, she wondered why more people didn’t seem delighted by their serious lives of repetition.

  She wondered if some omniscient MTA honcho had posted Kierkegaard as a sop to the riders who did the same thing every day. And wondered further if such existentialism was more of a palliative than the idea of heaven that she still clung to somewhere deep in her childhood mind that curated her doomed desire to become a priest.

  Her reverie was broken by one of those spooky half-human, half-automated announcements that had run like a horror-movie theme beneath the sounds of the subway ever since 9/11—warning that people should be aware of any unattended bags and to report suspicious packages blah blah blah. It was like the safety instructions on an airplane. The scary stuff inevitably merged into the voice of Charlie Brown’s parents. For your safety wah wah wah … tighten the buckle wah wah wah … always put on your mask first before helping with someone else’s wah wah wah. But the fact remained that there were people willing to kill for their tiny corner of God, and that left her in awe and terrified and wasn’t it the same one God we worshipped and wah wah wah.

  Opening the door to her father’s apartment, she half expected to see her dad up and about, dancing around his room with Ging-ging, but no such luck. The old man was asleep and Ging was perturbed. “He no sleep good,” she said. “And look … he up eat in middle of the night. Chef Boyardee.” Ging pointed at the kitchen counter, where no fewer than eight cans of Spaghetti and Meatballs stood open and at attention, their still-attached jagged lids forming some sort of ironic salute.

  “He ate all that himself?”

  “I no eat it.” Ging seemed insulted at the insinuation, which Emer had not meant to make.

  “Let me ask you, Ging, and please, this is not an accusation, but is it possible he’s sleepwalking?”

  “Sleepwalking?”

  “Yes, where a person gets up and does things—walks, eats”—she didn’t say “takes part in a mass aqua-orgy in Central Park”—“but is still asleep.”

  “I know what is sleepwalking, miss.”

  Emer checked the old man’s gray New Balance sneakers. They were caked with mud.

  “It rained yesterday,” Ging-ging said, and then giggled strangely.

  Emer did not know what to make of the giggle, and didn’t want to provoke the woman further. Ging took the sneakers from Emer’s hand.

  “I clean.”

  Two words that sounded more like “fuck you” to Emer. Ging-ging left with the sneakers and, moments later, before she could protest further, Emer heard the tub running. Ging was going to get the New York City filth, shit, whatever it was on her dad’s shoes in the tub? She let it go. She didn’t want a fight; she needed Ging too much. And that made her feel all the more guilty for not being a better, full-service daughter. Hadn’t this man changed her diapers? Why couldn’t she clean him? Why was she too busy for that?

  “Well,” Emer called out, extending an apology to the Filipina in the bathroom, “eating is better than not eating.”

  Her father opened his eyes and said her name. Then, raising himself up slowly, he whispered as if he didn’t want Ging to overhear. “I have to go to confession.”

  Remembering the night of the Dragon King, Emer nodded.

  THE SACRED HEART

  EMER COULDN’T REMEMBER the last time she’d been to church with her father. She had to use Google to find Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church on West Eighty-second Street, just a few blocks from her dad’s place. They could walk there easily. She was encouraged that the church was averaging 4.6 stars out of 5 in its reviews. Most movies, books, and gods would take that.

  They entered the building in silence. She made a bee line to the confession booths, ushering her father inside one. She figured that was enough, that the priests are used to dealing with crazy shit all the time. Emer found an empty pew and hit her knees. She didn’t know what to pray for; she wasn’t without, she wasn’t unhappy really. It had been so long since she imagined herself talking to Christ.

  She had once visited the Sacré-Coeur in Paris where traditionally there is always someone or many anonymous someones praying twenty-four hours a day, not for themselves, but for others. It was like a version of the Buddhist monks who live on alms because their “work” is of the spirit. These Parisian mendicants prayed for the world at large, not personally but universally. She liked that idea, and decided that she would import her own minor-key version of the Sacré-Coeur to New York City. Nobody would know.

  She closed her eyes and began to pray. “I pray for all the Bobs in distress”—that made her laugh, but she soldiered on—“and all the Janes in pain, and Franks, and African and Asian names I don’t yet know. And all these poor babies with Zika. And Thalidomide before them. And the children, all of them. And my father. And Corvus—can I pray for a bird?” She decided she could. “And all the children being taught terrorist ideology”—sometimes it was as if someone else were speaking inside her head; no matter—“and the brokenhearted, and everyone named Jones…”

  She looked up and saw another man, middle-aged and listless, on his knees. “And that guy, let him feel peace before death. And the horses that trot around Central Park. They don’t look happy to me, no matter what Liam Neeson says. But let Liam Neeson be happy too, please.”

  She began to sob. Almost to the point of losing control. Once you opened up so wide, how could you ever close up again? It wasn’t like a zipper on her heart. Her heart suddenly felt like a suitcase into which she was trying to repack the unfolded world. It couldn’t fit, could it? There was so much pain, everywhere. Where could she start, and once started, where would she end? She felt a part of everything, this big feeling world; she lost herself in the vast ocean of souls, an image of endless space, and stars, and a cold airless wind. Reeling, she put on the brakes, dug in her heels, couldn’t let go all the way. She frightened herself out of the prayer, like it was a drug coming on too strong and she was scared of an overdose.

  Emer felt something shift inside her; she was so often ashamed of what people did in the name of Christ in her country, but there was a rightness here. She felt closer to divinity in this place, to a Something Else, on this day. She needed more. She had read somewhere once—was it Samuel Beckett again?—“the prayer is the god.” And she felt the righteousness of that perception today, the spiritual wisdom. This extension up and out of oneself. This charitable vector. She didn’t know what it meant exactly or how it would play out specifically in her future days, but the Sacré-Coeur move centered her, made her feel part of something greater than herself. She repeated it over and over, like a mantra—the prayer is the god, the prayer is the god. The prayers are the gods.

  After an indefinite period of this other-oriented bliss, she glanced up and noticed that her father was still inside his confessional. Emer moved up, wondering if maybe she could eavesdrop on the old man. She couldn’t make anything out at first, nothing specific, but then an eruption of laughter came from within the box, a startling noise in this place. She rushed up, and just as she opened the door to her father’s side, an old priest came spilling out the other, like he’d been stabbed or shot. That was Emer’s first thought. Omigod, Dad stabbed the priest! But no, maybe he was giggling, actually holding his sides
like an illustration of someone laughing. And now her father came out too, laughing just as hard. The priest dabbed at his weeping eyes with his colorful vestments and walked off shaking his head.

  Emer asked her father what the Father was laughing about, and he said, “Laughing? He was crying. I rocked his little world.”

  “How’d you make him cry?”

  “I told him the many ways in which you would have been a better priest than he is.”

  Her dad was so energized by his confession that he said, “Let’s get on the subway.”

  “Where do you wanna go, Pops?”

  “Heaven.”

  “Not sure it stops there.”

  “Hell?”

  “Let’s take the One.”

  BETWEEN THE DOG AND THE WOLF

  ON THE SUBWAY, Emer watched her dad aimlessly enjoy the movement; she tried to talk to him about last night—almost as if she wanted him, in his constant twilight, to corroborate what was real and what was not. She didn’t want to ask him outright, that never seemed to work with him; she decided on cavalierly throwing words and phrases in his direction to see what sparked him, like a fairy-tale child tossing bread crumbs.

  “Reservoir,” she said. “The Central Park reservoir.” The old man stared straight ahead. “Should we get some Chinese food tonight? I can order from Dragon King. We can get it delivered.” She pronounced it “de-li-vered,” like a clue. The old man was silent. She felt like she was losing him to that place he went to, pulled in by an undertow in an ocean of night, again.