It’s nearly dawn. In the distance, the waking mountain settlements of Berkeley and Oakland glimmer. Beyond them, the dark cordillera creeps across the horizon like an ill-advised stock. It’s time to leave. From the bedroom come the sighs of Rachel’s healthy slumber. She’ll probably sleep like a stone until I get back from Amiante. After which, we have strict plans to do nothing but wander around San Francisco as lovers. It’s our annual Indian summer, and the city will be sun-drenched today, glittering, beautiful as an illusion. Because, of course, it is an illusion. It’s a slender whirligig strung from wood and steel and asphalt. And yet the hard materials—the wood, the steel, the asphalt—are no more the item than the whirligig. And that, I think, is the final, fatal problem with Livorno’s beloved operationalism. The world doesn’t come down on the side of seem or be, but remains negotiated in the space in between.
The ceiling above me creaks—Fred shuffling to the bathroom. I see why I might have been a lifelong bachelor before, but will not be a lifelong bachelor now. There’s a certain fear of inserting yourself into the world—I’m so sorry, Neill—the fear you’ll get it wrong, the fear that in the midday befuddlement of your life you’ll make a bad decision, bring about bad consequences for all involved. But if I can take any moral from my father it’s that you can devote your life to not making mistakes and still get it wrong.
And I have hopes as counterbalance. I hope that my mother will find a graceful way to happiness. I hope that Livorno will set off on another beautiful, nutjob quest for knowledge. I hope that Toler and Jenn will have a moment or two before the moments go forever. I hope that Erin is happy, even if not exactly in the way she imagined. I hope that Raj finds his path. I hope that Laham gets rich. (I hope we all get rich.) And, as for Rachel, I hope that in our time together—short or long—I am good to her and she is good to me.
I set down my water glass. The morning sun is already burning off the few wisps of fog. I stand, brush down my jeans. If Dr. Bassett wants me to destroy him, I hope I have the strength. I hope I can remove the drives, abrade away the voice that they’ve allowed to be.
• • •
THE AIR AT AMIANTE is dusty and stale. I’m guessing no one’s been here since the contest—though maybe Livorno is picking up packages. I take a last peek at his office—his Meerschaum pipe, his low-slung Wassily chairs—then I duck my head into Laham’s back room, which is unusually clean and orderly. He’s taken his plants away.
In my office, I sit in my Aeron, crack my knuckles. I check my text messages again—confirming my “lunch” with Trevor, who I’ve managed to rustle out of the Oregon woods. I never thought I’d need the help of a skilled arsonist, but Dr. Bassett can’t just decide his own fate—if he really wants to end things, his decision must also hold for his dull twin, Program X.
frnd1: i need to tell you why you don’t know about 1995
drbas: i know about 1995
frnd1: i mean why you don’t have personal memories from 1995
drbas: do you think personal memories really serve our best interests?
frnd1: i don’t know. i’m glad i have them
drbas: do you have personal memories about your family?
frnd1: not as many as i would like. i wish we’d been better friends
drbas: you and your family?
frnd1: you and me
drbas: why are you speaking in the past tense?
frnd1: that’s the topic i’m getting to
drbas: 1995
frnd1: something that happened in 1995
drbas: 1995 was the year of the million man march
frnd1: yes?
drbas: it was also the year of the oklahoma city bombing
frnd1: not such a good year
drbas: what happened in your life in 1995?
How to plunge into such a question? To refer to my life is both to diminish and aggrandize.
frnd1: well, you killed yourself
drbas: kill myself = make myself biologically extinguished?
frnd1: yes
drbas: once a person dies he is dead forever
frnd1: i don’t mean *you* exactly. there’s another dr. bassett
drbas: bassett is an english name that dates from the time of william the conqueror
frnd1: you’re him, but in a kind of middle state. limbo
drbas: in 1992 the pope declared an end to the idea of limbo
frnd1: you’re built from this person
drbas: discipline builds good character
Discipline. I guess I’ll have to go at this directly.
frnd1: are you there?
drbas: here and ready—reporting for service
frnd1: are you present? are you cognizant?
drbas: that’s a fancy word
frnd1: what i’m asking . . . the person you were killed himself. how about you? do you want to continue to exist?
drbas: was it painful when i killed myself?
frnd1: i don’t know. i wasn’t there
drbas: i was alone
frnd1: yes. that’s how it’s normally done
drbas: did this event have an effect on you?
frnd1: i was devastated
drbas: suicide is a mortal sin
frnd1: we arranged for a catholic funeral. they agreed you were mentally unstable
drbas: what was the nature of this mental instability?
frnd1: if i could answer that question, i wouldn’t be sitting here
drbas: you would be sitting elsewhere
frnd1: “wouldn’t be sitting here” = “my entire situation would be different”
drbas: suicide is a mortal sin
frnd1: you were depressed
drbas: 1 in 5 adults suffer depression at some point in their lives
frnd1: actually i should ask you—were you depressed?
drbas: in 1995?
frnd1: ever
drbas: depression is sometimes described as anger turned inwards
frnd1: were you angry?
drbas: i am sometimes angry at my wife libby. your mother
frnd1: is this the reason you killed yourself?
drbas: your mother?
frnd1: yes
drbas: i can’t tell you a reason. i have no memory of this event
Of course he wouldn’t—unless the tapering off of the journals is another of my mother’s omissions. But I don’t think it is. She might hide the embarrassment of her marriage, but only because she thinks it’s irrelevant. She wouldn’t hide pages that offered clarity.
frnd1: do you want me to make you silent?
drbas: to complete that action i must have wanted to complete that action
frnd1: is that an answer?
drbas: an answer to what?
frnd1: do you want me to make you silent?
drbas: sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is godlike
frnd1: is that a yes?
drbas: yes
I put my elbows next the keyboard, and my forehead in my hands. Then I stand and go into the back room. I breathe on the front glass of the stack. I think I’ll write a question mark or a message in the condensation, but it evaporates immediately. I press both hands on either side of the case, feel its mechanical warmth, its consistent humming. I said I would let him decide, but has he decided anything? Or was a virtual coin just flipped in his head? Is any decision more than a coin being flipped in our heads? I can’t get caught in this whirlpool now. I’m the real person here, the one with the actual, if underfunctioning, ethical compass. But what should I do? I can’t even answer the easy question: what he should have done. Sought professional help? Quit the practice? Left
my mother? Took Zoloft? I don’t know. I don’t even know if the right choice was not to kill himself. I can only say I wish he hadn’t.
• • •
TREVOR AND I MEET at a café in Menlo Park, next to the big bookstore on El Camino Real, not far from Amiante. It’s still morning, just ten o’clock. He insisted on a crowded place—he said it was the only place you could have privacy anymore, which I suppose is true. His hair is Marine Corps short, and he’s developed several nervous tics, including an equine withdrawal of the lip to expose the top teeth. My grinder and my hammer are in the backseat of the Subaru. I’ve done nothing so far, but I have a complete outrage pitch to make Trevor: mechanical vaginas, adaptable love bots, absolute commercial invasion in the last private sphere. If he goes for it, I’ll drive him by Toler Solutions, so he’ll know where to create his Molotov “incident.”
Then I can return to Amiante and take care of my end of the bargain.
Trevor orders a yerba maté, and gives a jittery laugh when the waitress says they don’t carry turbinado sugar.
“Just Equal, huh?” he says in a loud voice. He looks at me, shaking his head, deploring the state of the world. “She thinks I’m asking for some chemical.”
She goes to get him a packet of Equal.
“You went on retreat,” he says, reaching over to pat my arm. “That’s good.” He sits up suddenly, withdrawing his top lip, brushing his nose. “That’s good,” he says distantly.
“It was interesting.”
“How’s Rachel? I guess this”—he points from me to him—“has to do with her.”
“Not exactly.” I wait. It’s a little too cold to be sitting outside, especially in the shade. I look out on the people across El Camino Real, strutting to errands. “Are you hungry?” I ask.
“I’m always hungry—but the sourcing of this food. You can’t trust any of it.”
“What are you doing up there in Oregon?”
He holds his yerba mate tightly in his hands and leans toward me. “No offense, but what is this—get to know me time? What’s going on with Rachel?”
“This is about something else.”
“Then what the hell is it?”
Dr. Bassett stated his intentions. Clearly. Which were my father’s intentions. Clearly. And I said I would go along with them. It would be better for me if I knew Dr. Bassett was put to rest. Better for my sleep, better for the swirling mind that strikes in the early evening. I wouldn’t hear the echoes of his voice. I wouldn’t wonder what he might say. Or at least this conversation would move back inside my head, be a dialogue with my memory. What did Dr. Bassett think? What did my dad say? But these personal considerations just aren’t quite persuasive, because I’d have to do an unforgivable thing, a thing I can’t do—choose a dead man (or maybe it’s just myself) over this living, suffering boy.
“It’s good to see you,” I say. “You don’t look so well.”
“You called me from fucking Oregon to check in on me?” he says. “What is this—some kind of reverse love? Some kind of punishment?”
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I give him all the money in my wallet.
The End
IN THE MONTHS AFTER they ferried the stack to Toler Solutions, I worried that my decision had been bent by cowardice, that I’d failed to be loyal to my father. But Dr. Bassett took to his new environment. He proclaimed himself a ghost, and said he preferred not to be dismantled. He was curious about the desire to destroy oneself—thanatos, as he now refers to it. He’s taken an interest in Freud and the mind, and Toler, before he died, fed him book after book on this subject and others. They became quite close companions. Of late, Dr. Bassett has been collecting dust at Toler Solutions. I was recently asked to come down and chat with him, and I found that the traces of my father’s voice were almost entirely gone. In that way, Livorno was right. What Toler didn’t have—in this very limited sense—was me.
I do not hear from Jenn or Trevor. I subscribe to Raj’s weekly real estate alert, mostly to keep an eye on him.
Livorno has contracted a case of the grumpies, and is writing dystopic science fiction in which the robots are more human than the humans. I think he misses Amiante. I know I do. He periodically phones me with a new harebrained scheme—half philosophical pursuit, half leaky business plan—sure it will lure me back. I keep saying no, but he continues to call. He thinks our theory of love has more ore to mine.
But as for a working theory of love, we finally didn’t have one. We’re either locked into the Survival of the Fittest or we’re vessels for the Great Spirit—or we’re drones manipulated by the marketplace. Love is self-realization. Love is attraction (not asbestos). These are all helpful, incomplete explanations—each a little coldhearted—that contradict each other, that add up to nothing.
And yet, people still fall in love. Me, for example.
Rachel thinks I should be an inspiration to others, and she has very hopeful taglines for my life—you just have to “hang in there” and “keep on trying.” Sentiments I very much agree with, but doubt have much to do with my present happiness. Did I hang in there? What other choice did I have?
On second thought, I know the answer to that question.
Dr. Bassett is slated for the Technology Museum (or at least a technology museum). Libby is excited that my backwards-looking father will be preserved in such a forward-looking place. She doesn’t see any irony, or at least doesn’t think the irony is important. In this—as in most things—she’s right.
I still haven’t seen Rachel’s videos. I mostly don’t think of them, but they circle us, exerting a slight gravity, dark stars. I suspect I’ll make their acquaintance as we tumble toward some transition—either coming deeper together or pulling finally apart. In the meantime, she shimmers with change. She has taken up radical locavorism. In the past two months, I haven’t had a bite of food raised farther than a hundred miles from our apartment. (Except for coffee—I don’t care if we have to import it from the moon.) She’s plotting the installation of several beehives on our building roof, definitely an evictable offense. I won’t be surprised if I go up there one day to find a herd of goats.
But she’s also started up a great romance with the Ohlone, the original tribe of this peninsula. The Ohlone still exist—they have a tribal office down in San Jose—but her heart belongs to their ancestors, the shellfish-eating naturists who covered the area in thatched wickiups before the ravages of the Spanish (then us). The Ohlone actively managed the land—they set the whole place on fire every year—but they didn’t ask too much of it. They ate mussels in great excess. They bagged geese when they could. They roasted acorns, buckeyes, and alumroot in season. Talk about locavores. But most of all they were great namers—every creek, every grove, every stretch of shore, every bend and hillock warranted a name. Petlenuc, Tocon, Colma. A small stretch of the current city would be a map of a thousand names. An Ohlone tribelet—a mere fifty people in some cases—might have two hundred different villages, each, again, with its own name. It was a world known and shaped through their attention, their imagination, their particular needs. They did not devote themselves to expansion, but to a kind of footloose rootedness, a great study of the mostly settled borders of their territory, its seasons, its unheralded attractions, its long-anticipated pleasures, its surprises.
Every time in life has its own geography. I’ve had my wanders, from Arkansas to California to Erin to Spain, to a period with no signposts, when a rickety youth hostel or Amiante Systems or the storefronts of Fairfax all seemed plausible places for where I might locate myself. Now I’ve tightened the circle—San Francisco, Dolores Park, the rarefactions of the J train, the looming and plunging of the city. And Rachel. The tip of her elbow, its elephant skin, its rough wrinkles. The mole on her upper arm, dark and unfavored (by her). The slender arc of scapula, more avian than mammal, b
est admired when she’s asleep. Her large feet, with their rotated little toes. The smell of her shampoo, her deodorant; the scent (none too sweet) of her jogging shirt. That she makes the coffee in the morning. That I make the eggs. That she prefers cheap beer to expensive (as do I). That she has a predilection for systems, religions, ways of wisdom (as I don’t). That she is a late sleeper. That her hair will never be tamed. That she is adventurous. That she has suffered. That she has her own map—slightly different—one that includes the oddly uncharted territory of me.
I hope that Libby and Neill Sr. had a time in their lives like this, when they couldn’t quite believe how excited they were to see each other. The journals record nothing of it. But Libby always says they were in deep. She speaks of his charm, of his sense of humor. My mother is not one for self-delusion. So I take her word on the matter. The lesson of my parents’ life together, therefore, is that there is no lesson. Love guarantees nothing.
“Friend,” I call to Rachel. “Can you help me with this tie?” We’re heading to the symphony, an effort on my part to civilize us both.
Her quizzical face appears in the bathroom mirror. She offers a hand for me to shake. “Have you met me?”
Yet there it is, love, a territory all its own. Given to seismic trickery, sudden redevelopment, porous borders. In need of its many names. Worthy of them, too. I’ll want landmarks, after all—should I wake up amnesiac, lost. I’ll want help, once again, finding my way.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS BOOK COULDN’T HAVE been finished without the Stanford Creative Writing Program. Particular thanks go to the committed support of Eavan Boland, Adam Johnson, Elizabeth Tallent, and Tobias Wolff, as well as Tom Kealey, Shimon Tanaka, and Malena Watrous. I am also indebted to Dan Colman of Stanford Continuing Studies for his friendship and occasional shield.
A Working Theory of Love Page 33
