Over Our Heads

by Andrea Thompson

  Emma continued, “Sure, you’ll measure, analyze and weigh everything, but you’ll also throw out any evidence that doesn’t prove the hypothesis you’ve already decided on. You take a situation and view it through the lens of your expectations and your fears. Especially your fears.” Emma took a breath and waited.

  Rachel stood up with unmistakable annoyance. Emma reminded herself not to enjoy it.

  The screen door opened again, and Lester bounded out onto the porch.

  “You’ll never believe what’s going on,” he said.

  “Oh for God’s sakes Emma, can you please keep your new-age psycho-babble to yourself today?” Rachel said, not so much as glancing in Lester’s direction. “You’re being hysterical. As if you, of all people, have a firm grip on objectivity.”

  Emma felt a tingling in the soles of her feet, as she grounded herself to the earth. She touched her index finger to her thumb, making a circle that she held up to her eye. “It’s like you look at the world through an empty toilet paper roll, and think you’ve got the lay of the land.” Emma let her hand drop to her side, and made an effort to soften her tone. “It’s not your fault though, because you’re completely left-brained. Or is it right-brained, I forget now. Well, whichever brain it is that controls order and function and compartmentalization and math and linear time, that’s you. That’s your world, and you can’t see beyond it.” Emma felt a rush of pride at not stuttering or saying she was sorry, or getting distracted by Lester’s impatient shuffling.

  Lester tried again.

  “No, seriously,” he said. “I just heard it on the news.”

  “And you, you use both brains then, I presume?” Rachel stood with her arms crossed. Emma refused to be daunted. Lester went back inside.

  “Yes, I do,” Emma replied. “Because I function in society. Maybe I’m not the most glowing success by society’s terms, but I function. I dot all the “i’s,” and cross the “t’s” and fill out all the forms. It’s a right-brain world.” Emma made a mental note to keep her own arms unfolded.

  “You mean a left-brain world.” Rachel snickered.

  “Whatever!” Emma blurted in annoyance, then caught herself. “Listen, I pay my taxes, which if you ask me is way too complicated a process for your average citizen to be expected to complete. And don’t get me started on all the contracts and permissions we need to fill out just to exist on the planet today. I mean I can’t even order a song online without needing a lawyer to help me navigate through five hundred pages of gobbledy-gook. But that’s what they want. They want us to be overwhelmed and to give up so we will be good little sheep. But I’m not a sheep, I’m a turtle, which means I may be slow, but by Goddess…”

  “And your point is?” Rachel said, checking her phone.

  “My point is that you hide behind your scientific explanations,” Emma said defiantly. “What does science know about truth anyway? If, for once, science prefaced all their declarations with: as usual, we don’t really know for sure, because the universe continues to be an unfathomable mystery, but this is what we’ve found out so far … the word ‘fact’ would be abolished, and the human race would take a giant leap forward in understanding where the hell we are, why we’re here, and how this place works.”

  Rachel continued looking at her phone, shaking her head.

  Emma went on, as if she had her full attention. “Science is carried out by humans, Rachel, and humans are subjective. We all see the world through a filter. There’s no way around it, our consciousness affects our reality. It’s the way the universe works. Physics has already proved it. Call it the uncertainty principle, or the observer effect or whatever it is you guys want to call it, but the truth is the world is the way we are, and what we are is whatever we fill ourselves up with.”

  Rachel sat down, looking decidedly fed-up. “You have a very poetic way of looking at the universe Emma, but it has nothing to do with reality. The reality is that the universe is not some magical place full of rainbows and unicorns where everyone lives forever. The universe is a vast terrain of unimaginable extremes of size, temperature and speed. You anthropomorphize your physical environment as if it’s some kind of god. You mix up mysticism with fact. Like when you talk about death, for instance. There’s nothing magical about it. Death isn’t poetic, it’s literal and absolute.” Rachel looked up at Emma with an unfamiliar expression of compassion. “I think this whole outburst, this tirade you’re on today is all about trying to deny this fundamental fact.”

  Emma glared at Rachel, and counted to ten. She knew she needed to stay calm and be rational or her message would be lost. She sat down at the card table. “Yes, everything dies, Rachel, but then it’s reborn. Plants grow out of decomposing leaves, even stars are recycled from gas and dust made from other dead stars.” Emma felt proud to know this last fact, but tried not to let it show.

  Rachel nodded her head. “Yes, but that takes energy. It all uses energy that is finite, and one day all the stars will run out of fuel, and the sun will eventually begin to swell and die, taking us and the rest of the solar system with it. And this will happen across the universe, until the only stars left are red dwarfs, burning like coals.” Rachel lifted her hand and used it like a scythe to emphasize her point. “And then, when those are gone, there’ll be nothing but black holes roaming the universe, sucking up everything that remains. And this will go on for longer than your mind can comprehend, and then, even the black holes will starve, and the universe will be cold, dark and dead. That’s where we’re going Emma. That’s the truth of your magical universe.”

  Emma thought for a moment. “Well, maybe that’s exactly what has to happen before it starts all over again. Maybe it takes exactly that kind of nothingness to coax a universe into being. Maybe we live in a giant multiversal field, where everything blinks in and out of existence like fireflies.”

  Rachel opened her mouth, then closed it and shook her head.

  Emma went on. “And what about that law of thermal dynamics? ”

  Rachel looked at Emma in surprise for a moment, then smiled.

  “The one that states.” Emma continued, “that energy is never lost?” Emma felt triumphant, and waited for a response.

  Rachel was silent, and looked past Emma toward Garden Avenue. She cocked her head slightly, as if she was listening to something just above the rooftops.

  “So, really, how you science people can believe,” Emma continued, while following Rachel’s gaze. “That there’s no such thing as reincarnation is just mind-boggling to me,” Emma concluded, taking a breath, and praying to the Grandmothers that her words would flow into open ears.

  “For one thing,” Rachel began, looking back at Emma again, “it’s called thermodynamics, not thermal dynamics, and secondly,” she continued, “your whole premise is flawed.” Rachel was about to go on when the feeling that she was being watched overcame her. She turned around and looked back at the house. Sam was looking out through the screen door.

  37.

  SAM WAS STANDING on the welcome mat at the front door in jeans and a T-shirt, towel-drying his hair, and watching his sisters argue. He stepped onto the porch.

  “Enough you two. Enough. Just for one day, do you think it would be possible for…” he began, then stood, as if frozen, mouth open, staring at the street.

  A panicked reindeer, with antlers as big as baseball bats, ran down Indian Road, and up on the sidewalk. Three men, with ropes and netting, and a woman with a TV camera followed on foot, attempting to surround the animal, as a city parks van and a news truck rumbled behind.

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you,” Lester said, coming up behind Sam to join them all outside. “I just heard it on the radio.”

  “What did you hear?” Sam asked.

  “Someone broke into the zoo last night and set all the animals free.”

  Rachel looked at Emma.

  “Oh
shit,” Emma said, and then Lester and Sam looked at her as well.

  “You’re kidding me,” Lester said, laughing. “I was wondering where you were last night, and where all that mud…”

  “You broke into the zoo?” Sam asked, incredulous, then pulled a cigarette out of the pack in his back pocket, and lit up.

  “Yes,” Emma said. “I mean no. I mean, honestly, I’m not sure.” She stared after the reindeer, then looked at Rachel, who hadn’t said a word. Instead, Rachel looked past her, to where Nina Buziak Fletcher was approaching up the crumbling walk. Nina looked professional and determined, in spite of the circus taking place behind her.

  “I heard about it on the way over,” Nina said, looking back to the street. The reindeer had gotten its antlers caught in a car antenna, slowing it down long enough for the men with ropes and netting to surround it. Nina turned back to the two women. “The news report said that at first they thought the incident was related to the occupation of the Native burial ground – apparently it’s been a year to the day since protesters set-up camp in High Park.”

  “What are you talking about?” Emma asked, suddenly pulling her gaze away from the reindeer.

  “You weren’t here,” Lester jumped in. “It was all over the news last year. There was this huge protest in the park over the land, you know where the BMX trail was? Well apparently they were riding right over this Iroquois burial site called Snake Mound, and so a bunch of Six Nations Grandmothers decided…”

  “Snake Mound?” Emma asked, her eyes wide.

  Rachel interrupted, looking at Nina. “There’s a problem with the will, isn’t there?” Emma, Sam and Lester looked at Nina as well, and waited.

  Nina took a deep breath. “I didn’t think it was appropriate to get into it yesterday,” she began. “But your mother wouldn’t agree to sign the papers to let you sell the house.”

  Rachel stood up. She could feel heat from her belly rise up into her face. She opened her mouth to speak.

  “Wait, Rachel,” Nina said. “She didn’t agree, but she isn’t going to stop you either. She waived her rights to the house all together.”

  Emma stood up as well, backing away from the table, until she was leaning up against the outside wall of the house. She watched, as the reindeer was led, reluctantly, inside the van.

  Nina continued. “Which means the determination of what to do with the house is up to the two of you. You have to decide. Together.”

  Sam looked at Rachel, who watched as Emma ran her hand back and forth over the stones, absentmindedly, like a child. Rachel thought of the tie, neatly folded and placed into a zip-lock sandwich bag in her purse. Then she thought of Wanda, returning it to her. She had looked like a derelict when they saw her at their grandmother’s service.

  Rachel felt dizzy again, so she sat back down in a lawn chair. A strand of hair fell loose from the bun that was unraveling at the back of her neck. She pushed it back behind her ears, and shielded her eyes with her hand. For a moment she considered taking out Grandma’s green visor, which she had tucked away, right next to her father’s tie in her purse.

  Nina walked over to where Emma was standing. “Your mother also had a message for you, Emma,” she said. “I have to say, I’m not sure I understand it, but I’ll pass it along, anyway.”

  Emma waited.

  “She said Mrs. Dalloway thought you should know that Wanda doesn’t remember much about your father. All she knows for sure is that he loved animals.”

  Emma slid down the bumpy wall, and sat in the flowerbed. She put her hands over her face and her shoulders shook in a way that made it unclear if she was laughing or crying.

  “We can keep the house,” Rachel said suddenly.

  “No,” Emma said, as she slowly stood back up. “It’s time to say goodbye. We’re selling it, and that’s that.”

  It was only a few hours later, after Nina and Sam had gone to lunch, and Lester had gone back to his apartment in Kensington market, when a police cruiser pulled up in front of old number 66 and stopped. Two uniformed officers stepped out, and started up the walk toward where Rachel and Emma sat at the card table. One of the officers tripped and stumbled a bit on his way up the walk, grabbing on to the arm of the other officer for a moment to steady himself.

  “I think I’m in trouble,” Emma said, standing up, brushing imaginary dirt off of her indigo dress.

  “Don’t worry,” Rachel said, standing beside her. “We’ll get it sorted.”

  38.

  NATURALLY, IT HAD BEEN Emma who let all the animals out. As the squad car pulled up to the curb, she had a sinking feeling in her stomach. She still couldn’t remember convincing Billy to join her in her caper. She couldn’t remember getting on the back of his motorcycle and taking him on a tour of the park. She couldn’t remember showing him the Snake Mound burial ground, or telling him about the Howards, or taking him past the children’s playground, and explaining that it had been fenced off for reconstruction after a suspected arsonist left it in ashes.

  Emma couldn’t remember getting Billy to drive over to the little High Park zoo, or how he had stopped her when she tried to hop the fence to “go say hello.” Emma didn’t remember Billy deciding it was time to go home after that, and depositing Emma on the doorstep of 66 at around two am. Nor did she remember only pretending to go back in the house, and instead, returning to the zoo on her own. Sadly, she also didn’t remember the joy in her voice as she belted out the words to Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song,” just before unlocking all the gates to the pens, and leaving them wide open.

  Emma didn’t remember any of these things but still, in her gut, she knew. She had been the one to let the animals run free. Later, the incident will make her laugh to herself, and even feel a twinge of pride in her actions, though it will take her some time until she gets to that point. First there will be charges laid, and lawyers to consult, and a court case to attend, and then sentencing. It won’t be until Emma has finished her community service that the whole episode will settle into a memory that makes her smile.

  Naturally, Rachel took care of everything. The settling of the will, the sale of the house, as well as arranging Emma’s legal defense. Still, the whole week could have left Rachel in much the same frame of mind that we found her in if it weren’t for one small momentary lapse, one moment of forgetfulness, which became the catalyst for everything.

  Rachel blamed herself, of course. She should have double-checked that the garage was empty. After all, it was she who had plugged in the Easy Bake Oven on the day of the garage sale. Some haggler was hell-bent on a discount, unless Rachel could prove it worked, so she had taken the old oven into the garage and plugged it in. Then she and the potential buyer had argued for fifteen minutes, the result of which was his walking away. Rachel had been annoyed, and must have walked away as well. It’s impossible to know for sure, but it was easier to blame herself. If someone else had been responsible for burning old 66 down to the ground, she’d never be able to let it go.

  It’s a shame the house didn’t make it. It really was the most beautiful home you’d ever seen. I can almost feel those stones now, just thinking about it. Obviously, they cancelled the sale, and the new owner’s money was refunded. The lot was sold eventually, and a new house was built on the land. But it looks nothing like the old number 66.

  Emma took her cut of the insurance settlement and used it to revamp her website, attend the Animal Communication Symposium and to pay for advertising in those free magazines you get at health food store. It surprised Emma, as much as anyone, that the story of the grieving pet psychic who emancipated the animals from the High Park zoo attracted so much attention. She was interviewed on radio and television news shows. A group of animal activists even created a Facebook page to share her story. Emma became a hero, and was booked months in advance for her animal communication sessions. The news stories never mentioned the fact that Emma off
ered animal medicine consultations as well, but people must have found out through her website. She didn’t have as many of these clients as she did for her pet psychic business, but the ones who did come to see her left knowing that Emma truly had a gift, and they were finally one step closer to healing whatever it was that ailed them.

  As for Rachel, the biggest change came from something seemingly inconsequential. It wasn’t as if her life transformed overnight, or as if anything really earth-shattering happened at all. She didn’t suddenly decide to become a Hari Krishna or to climb Mount Everest or train for the Boston marathon. What she did do was start a garden, right there, on the balcony of her condo. At first it was just tomatoes, basil and parsley — practical plants that would help her save a bit of money on groceries. But then she planted some sweet peas, and built a trellis for them to climb. She bought a lavender plant, and kept her patio doors open so its fragrance could fill the condo when it bloomed each spring. And when the nights were warm and clear, Rachel would take out her father’s old telescope, and sit out on her aromatic balcony, renaming stars.

  Epilogue

  The World Began With A Whisper

  by Emma (aka Koko)

  Once upon a time ago

  back thirteen point seven

  billion years

  so were told

  the universe gave birth.

  Out of gas and dust

  and cosmic clouds

  chaos created

  Gaia divine

  a Goddess

  we call Earth.

  Now before I get this going

  let me start by telling you

  that this is not a poem

  about the saving of the planet.

  For since the earth’s formation

  there’ve been at least four mass extinctions