The Transformation of Things

by Jillian Cantor

  “You got indicted. And there was money. In a briefcase?”

  “Indicted?” He chuckled. “No, but you really did hear me didn’t you?” I shrugged. “The money in the briefcase.” He sighed. The image, the moment in the bar still felt resoundingly clear to me. I held my breath, waiting for the truth, and it was strange the way I felt as if I’d been waiting for it forever, though I guessed the absolute reality was, it had been only a few seconds.

  “You know it wasn’t about the law anymore. It was all so corrupt. Lawyers wanting to buy me, and the Feds wanting to use me to catch them. That’s why I had that money—it was all a setup. And I’d had enough.” He cleared his throat. “That and you being here. Well, I just couldn’t do it anymore.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I couldn’t be away from you.” He paused. “I’ve been working a little bit for Dave, selling weed control of all things. He and Kelly insisted. They said I needed to get out of the hospital a little bit. You’re not mad, are you?”

  “Oh, Will,” I said. “I never cared that you were a judge. I just want to be with you. I just want us to be us again.”

  “Me too,” he whispered, lying down on the bed next to me, leaning in close, putting his arms around me, the way I’d dreamed him doing. “Me too.”

  My first night at home, I checked my medicine cabinet for any signs of herbs before getting into bed. But there was nothing there. Somehow, it was Western medicine that saved me, brought me back to life. Back into a real life.

  Will and the doctors said I would make a complete recovery, that what happened to me was a fluke, and also the result of a poorly set up washing station at the salon, something for which Will said we could sue, but I’d already told him that it felt like the wrong thing to do. My neck had simply been at the wrong angle, and something had snapped. Something had to give. As Ethel the herbalist once told me, or maybe it was Ethel the social worker, a small crack was rarely just a crack, but the result of something bigger, something worse, lying just beneath the surface.

  Now I got into bed, and I cuddled up next to Will. I rubbed his leg with my foot, which did feel oddly Jell-O-y, and probably in need of more physical therapy. I thought about my jogs in Oak Glen park, and how they’d felt so real. But I knew they weren’t, or my legs wouldn’t feel this way. Maybe I would start jogging there, though, and maybe when I was over there, I’d stop by Kelly’s more often, too.

  Will rolled toward me, and he stroked my cheek with his thumbs, just like he had on Valentine’s Day. “I’m so glad you’re home,” he whispered. “I missed you so much.”

  “Make love to me,” I whispered back, wanting to recapture it, the magic I’d felt that night.

  “Jen, I don’t know. The doctors said to take it easy for a while—”

  I cut him off by kissing him, and rolling on top of him. I pushed my body into him. He groaned, and ran his hands across my back.

  Then we were naked, tangled up in each other, my body warm and tingling the way it was on Valentine’s Day. Will snored lightly, and I lay there, with my eyes wide open. I was afraid to sleep here, in my own bed, where I remembered falling asleep and dreaming so many times. The dreams themselves still seemed so incredibly real, so incredibly close.

  So I got out of bed, made my way into the kitchen, and made myself some coffee. Then I wandered into the computer room and checked the drawer where I kept my dream notebook, only to find it filled with a few empty reporter’s notebooks.

  There was one notebook, though, sitting by the computer on the desk. I flipped through it, but it was not filled with the dreams I so vividly remembered writing down, but instead notes for the last article I’d written for City Style, about Chinese medicine, herbs, and a little old Jewish lady who’d practiced it. As I flipped through them, I remembered: I had visited her once, all in the name of journalism. She had checked my meridians and told me that she’d felt something there, underneath, and she’d even given me herbs. But I’d never taken them, never gone back. I’d written the article, and then promptly fell into my life in Deerfield.

  I flipped through the rest of the notepad, and these notes were followed by some shopping lists and some auction phone numbers. And, on the very last page, scrawled messily, there was an idea for a novel and some quotes about dreams—one by D. H. Lawrence wondering whether dreams resulted in thoughts or vice versa, and one about an ancient Chinese philosopher who once dreamed he was a butterfly.

  I remembered what it felt like to write my own dreams down, how it had felt oddly free, to write something again, to write something that was purely mine, entirely for me. I wished that had been real, that I had that notebook here with me now.

  I turned on the computer, and in the glow of the half moonlight, I opened up a fresh document and started to type, before I forgot, this crazy story about what was real and what was dreaming, about how much you could know about another person and about yourself, about the difference between being a man and being a butterfly, and how sometimes there was no distinction, no visible difference at all. The transformation of things, I heard Ethel say.

  I typed until morning, until I heard Will’s alarm go off, heard Will’s footsteps coming toward me.

  “You’re writing again,” he whispered, sounding equal parts astounded and relieved.

  “Yes,” I said. “I think I am.” I looked up from the computer to smile at him, and suddenly the exhaustion overtook me.

  Will followed me into the bedroom and lay next to me on the bed. He held my hand and stroked my palm with his fingers. His touch made me feel alive, awake again. “What now?” I whispered. “You can’t sell weed control forever.” I was stating a truth that I had never been able to bring myself to say in my dream world.

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Maybe I could.”

  “Tell me one thing you want,” I whispered.

  He hesitated, then said, “I think I might like to work with kids. Be a teacher.” He almost put it out there as a question, because I knew he knew that the old Jen, the one he last remembered being here on that warm October day, would’ve scoffed at the idea.

  “That’s a good idea,” I said. “I think you’d be good at that.”

  “You know, summers and weekends off. Good hours.” He paused. “We’d probably have to move.”

  “That’s okay,” I said.

  “But I want to be around more, if we have kids,” he said. “And even if we don’t, I don’t want to miss everything.”

  “Good.” I rolled over, so my body was leaning close into his. “I don’t want you to.”

  “What about you?” he asked. “What’s one thing you want?”

  “This,” I said, snuggling in closer to him. “You. And I think I do want to write still, finish that novel.”

  “That’s two things.” He laughed. “No fair.” He paused. “I want you to have it all, Jen, everything you’ve ever wanted.”

  “I know,” I said, feeling groggy again and too close to sleep to really make the words come out the way they were supposed to.

  “Sweet dreams,” he whispered, kissing my hair.

  Let’s hope not.

  If I dreamed, I had no memory of it when I woke up, feeling utterly rested, my head completely clear and not throbbing at all. Will lay next to me, awake, and I wondered if he’d been watching me sleep.

  “Are you hungry?” he whispered. “Can I make you something?” I was hungry. Starving. So I nodded and thanked him. “Stay here,” he said. “I’ll bring it up to you in bed.” Part of me wanted to protest, but I saw the way his face, his eyes lit up, and I knew that this would make him happy, taking care of me.

  He stood up, and I noticed, for the first time, the two little porcelain figurines teetering on the edge of his night table just behind his alarm clock: “The Perfect Family” and “Afterglow.”

  This sense of panic overtook me as I wondered which reality I was in. I heard Ethel’s voice. Was he a man, dreaming he was a butterfly, or a butterfly, dreaming he was man?
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br />   “Where did you get those?” I asked Will, pointing to the figurines.

  “Oh, these?” He shrugged, picking them up. “I bought them for you in the hospital gift shop. Here.” He handed them to me. “They’re yours. They’re silly, but …”

  I heard Ethel’s voice again: You make your own reality.

  “No,” I said, taking them and holding them between my palms. “They’re not silly at all.”

  Thirty-four

  It is swampy in Boca Raton in July, and I sit in my white folding chair and fan myself with the program. “Do you want a drink?” Will asks. “I can get you a water from inside the hotel.”

  “Yes.” I rest my hand on my growing belly. “We’re thirsty.”

  He kisses my forehead. “I love you,” he whispers.

  “I love you, too.” I watch him walk away, watch with wonderment that he still looks cool and perfectly calm, his hair just a little curlier from the humidity.

  I take my phone out of my purse and check for messages, and I sigh when there aren’t any. Lisa is due any day, and she promised to text me as soon as she goes into labor.

  Just as Will gets back, the music starts, and Dave turns around from in front of us, holding the video camera steady. Kelly walks out in her lavender bridesmaid’s dress, holding on to flower girl Hannah, and flanked by ring bearers Caleb and Jack.

  “Too bad your father didn’t want Sharon to stress you out,” Will says, “or you could’ve been up there, too.”

  “Ha,” I say. “Too bad.”

  Kelly looks overwhelmed, but when she sees Dave, her face lights up, and she blows him a kiss.

  Sharon and my father walk down the aisle together, their arms linked, their faces glowing in a sheen of sweat and maybe love.

  And then they stand under the chuppah, vowing, in front of the rabbi, all their senior friends, and us, to love, honor, and cherish each other in sickness and in health.

  Will catches my eye at that part, and I smile at him. I wonder if my father will be able to do it this time around, and though I’m not a fan of Sharon’s, I’m still rooting for him to change, rooting for him to be the man that he thinks he might be able to be.

  We’ve been talking more since I woke up, and though our relationship is still far from perfect, I can’t get over the fact that he came to visit me in the hospital, that he was there for me, in a way he never was for my mother. Maybe that was his way of apologizing, and maybe mine is simply showing up, not missing his wedding, not missing what might be a moment of happiness for him. I now understand how easily happiness can come and go.

  Before I filled his prescription for prenatal vitamins, I took Dr. Horowitz up on his offer to get the genetic testing. I wanted to choose to live, to choose completely, as Ethel had said, and knowing seemed like the best way to do it.

  The test came back negative, but as Dr. Horowitz said, it did not mean for sure that I’d never get breast cancer like my mother. “There are no real promises in life, Jennifer,” he’d said. “No guarantees.” That, I understood.

  As Kelly once said, I could always get hit by a bus, and having a stroke as I got my hair washed, I kind of did. Yet, somehow, I am still here, still breathing and healthy. As Ethel said, I’m the only one who can take charge of what I want. I’m in control of my own reality, my own destiny.

  I look up when I hear clapping, and then I watch as my father breaks the glass with his foot.

  I hear my cell phone buzz in my purse, so I take it out, my heart beating quickly in my chest in anticipation for Lisa. But I see it’s a text from Kat instead, who is only two states away at the beach in Hilton Head with Danny and the girls. Bored out of my fucking mind! Who said staring at the ocean is relaxing??? Can’t wait till U guys get here!! Danny and the girls say hi. XOXO.

  “What’s that?” Will leans over my shoulder.

  “Kat.” I laugh. “She’s bored at the beach. She says she can’t wait for us to arrive.”

  “Oh, you know she’s loving every minute of it.” He laughs. Just after I woke up, Kat quit her job and got a part-time one with the Inquirer, doing a column about motherhood that she can write from home. This is all your fault, you know, she called me and said, just after she got the new job. You making me reevaluate what the fuck I was doing with my life.

  I thought about our conversation in the coffee shop, and though it still felt entirely real to me, I knew what she was really referring to was my coma, my long period of, as Kat put it, scaring the shit out of everyone.

  I hear the booming sound of Dave’s laughter, and Will and I both look up. Dave has Caleb on his shoulders, while Kelly clings to Jack and Hannah.

  I look at Will, who stares at them, with this intense look of joy and admiration and want. He puts his hand on my stomach. “Is she kicking?” he asks. “Does she like weddings?”

  As soon as his hand hits my stomach, I feel the soft kicks, the spiral jabs like uneven dance moves. It’s as if she knows that he’s out here, waiting for her.

  It’s the first time he’s felt her move, and his face lights up with this boyish sort of elation. “She’s actually in there,” he whispers.

  “She is.” I laugh.

  He shakes his head. “Sometimes, I think this is all a dream,” he says.

  “No.” I shake my head. “It’s definitely not.”

  I take Will’s hand, and then we walk inside the hotel together, holding on tightly to each other, neither one of us willing to let go.

  Acknowledgments

  First, I want to thank my agent, Jessica Regel, whose constant encouragement and enthusiasm for my work always amazes me. She is fabulous at what she does, and also a remarkable person. I feel lucky every day to have her on my side, as well as everyone else at the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, who truly are the best.

  An enormous thank-you to Lucia Macro, Executive Editor at Avon Books. Her passion, enthusiasm, and insight have made her an absolute joy to work with. Many thanks also to Assistant Editor Esi Sogah, and to everyone else at Avon, who have helped transform this from a manuscript I dreamed of seeing in print to a real, bona fide book.

  I am overwhelmingly grateful to my writer friends, a constant source of support. You all make my life infinitely richer and more well-read. Thank you to Laura Fitzgerald and Morgana Gallaway for support on the home front and for fabulous dinners and talks. Thank you to The Novel Girls, who have been blogging and chatting with me since the very beginning of my publication journey: Tracy Madison, Lisa Patton, Lesley Livingston, and especially Maureen Lipinski, who also keeps me sane and laughing on a daily basis.

  My family has always been supportive in everything I’ve done, and without them, I know I never would’ve had the discipline or the conviction to write this book. Thank you to my dad, Alan Cantor, for sharing his experience with herbal medicine with me, and my mom, Ronna Cantor, the most experienced reader I know, for telling me honestly that the beginning was much too slow in the draft she read. Thank you to my sister, Rachel Cantor, who I am also proud to call a friend, and who continually inspires me to give my characters a sister.

  Thank you to my children, and to my husband, Gregg Goldner, for always, always supporting me, for giving me the time to write, and for sometimes believing in me much more than I believe in myself. And an extra thank-you to Gregg for reading what probably seemed like infinite drafts of this book and offering advice, and beyond that, for being my best friend and the best husband anyone could ever ask for.

  Once I, Chuang Tzu, dreamed I was a butterfly and was happy as a butterfly. I was conscious that I was quite pleased with myself, but I did not know that I was Tzu. Suddenly I awoke, and there was I, visibly Tzu. I do not know whether it was Tzu dreaming that he was a butterfly or the butterfly dreaming that he was Tzu. Between Tzu and the butterfly there must be some distinction. (But one may be the other.) This is called the transformation of things.

  —CHUANG Tzu, CHINESE PHILOSOPHER

  About the Author

  JILLIAN CAN
TOR was born and raised in suburban Philadelphia. She attended Penn State University, where she graduated with honors with a BA in English. She then attended the University of Arizona, where she received her MFA in fiction writing. While there, she was also the recipient of the national Jacob K. Javits fellowship. She’s the author of two books for teens, The September Sisters and The Life of Glass. The Transformation of Things is her first novel for adults. She lives in Arizona with her husband and two sons.

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  Praise for

  The Transformation of Things

  “The Transformation of Things is an elegant and involving page-turner about perception, truth, and what’s really true about each of our lives. Part mystery, part love story, part coming-of-age, it is a wonderful book. I could not stop reading!”

  —Barbara O’Neal, author of The Secret of Everything

  “Jillian Cantor’s The Transformation of Things is a moving and delicate look beneath the surface of a life, a window into the world of ‘what if,’ one woman’s unique journey through a tremendous personal challenge. It speaks to the power of the mind to heal itself, to uncover truth within fiction, and indeed to change one’s entire perspective on what makes life important.”

  —Morgana Gallaway, author of The Nightingale

  “A provocative novel that raises fascinating questions about marriage and how to find our way back when love falters. Thoroughly original, highly engaging, and wonderfully tender. I couldn’t wait to see how it ended!”

  —Laura Fitzgerald, author of Veil of Roses

  “Remarkable and magical, The Transformation of Things is a surprising and honest look at the assumptions we make about ourselves and those around us.”

  —Maureen Lipinski, author of A Bump in the Roadand Not Ready for Mom Jeans