Actually, they disappeared. That’s what appals me most: the blank green gaze of the pond. Where did they go? It’s as if they dissolved into the air. I could tell myself their ghosts will swim in circles around my head forever, inaudibly reproaching me. Or I could tell myself that nature is a wheel of deaths and births, hopping with spiders that also kill (like me) and also die in the beaks of birds that kill and die in the teeth of cats that die and are eaten by vultures that also die. The water bugs I threw out with the mud, not looking too closely for fear I’d pity them, were stubbed out by the sun in minutes.
But these are just stories, and have nothing to do with the fish themselves, whose dying moments were doubtless not eased one bit by reflecting on the cycle of life. Nor, of course, has my guilt anything to do with them, or my pique at good intentions gone bad, or the solace it gave me to think that affording them room to swim would be one small thing to cite in my own defense, a reason it was better for me to have been living than not, or my pique at being robbed of that reason.
Saturday
Became very upset last night upon reflecting that the open notebook in which I was drowsily scribbling “Bad dolly!” itself resembled a dollhouse—hinged at the center like mine—the two halves folding out to permit access to the interior passages—folding shut to present a seeming whole. Dollhouses within dollhouses…
Sunday
Audrey cornered me and demanded we have lunch. We drove to North Beach. We considered the painfully named Bite of China, billed as an “Eating Saloon with Delicacy Delights,” but chose instead a gourmet organic food restaurant, open three days a week. Our talk did not go well. Audrey demanded to know what was going on. I said I was “processing things.”
“What things?” she said. “It’s about time you told me exactly what happened in England.”
I didn’t want to talk about it.
“Don’t you think you should?”
“Audrey, drop it,” I said.
“I will not! You’re not yourself.”
“Who am I, then?”
She shooed the question away. “I’m not even sure the writing is a good thing anymore. It’s too one-sided. You’re like one hand clapping. Where’s the other hand?”
“Around my throat,” I said or thought of saying.
“If you won’t talk to me, would you consider talking to Vyv?”
I snorted. “Venn’s just Togetherism lite: ‘We are one, sort of.’”
“Not really,” she said. “You ought to take a minute to read about it. If only to find out what you’re NOT,” she added cunningly. She rummaged in her bag and pulled out a folded piece of paper printed on both sides.
“Later,” I said, putting it in my pocket. “Maybe.”
“OK,” she said, and snapped her menu shut. “I’m going to have the mahimahi.” She unfurled her napkin with too much elbow, compressing her lips, and when the pony-tailed waiter came, ordered the butternut squash ravioli. I mooed.
“What?” said Audrey sharply.
“Moooo.”
The waiter mooed merrily back at me. “What can I get you?”
“Moooo.”
“Wow, what does that mean? Cow? Beef? Oh, milk!” he exclaimed. “You want milk, right?”
I nodded, tight-lipped. Audrey was looking at me hard. I did not look back at her. I was trying to form my napkin into a mushroom cloud. The waiter returned.
“One house white. And here’s your moo!”
How could I tell her what was really wrong, that I had discovered a feeling I didn’t know I had or could have: when Blanche tried to kill me, my feelings were hurt. I couldn’t believe she would do that to me, her sister! And for an awful moment—you know how I hate mirrors—I saw the world reversed, and thought: I can’t believe I would do that to her, my sister.
Monday
What do I fear? Myself ? There’s none else by;
Richard loves Richard, that is, I and I.
Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am!
Then fly. What, from myself ? Great reason why,
Lest I revenge? What, myself upon myself ?
Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? For any good
That I myself have done unto myself ?
O no, alas, I rather hate myself
For hateful deeds committed by myself.
I am a villain—yet I lie, I am not!
Fool, of thyself speak well! Fool, do not flatter.
My conscience has a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
and every tale condemns me for a villain:*
Thursday
“Tell me about your twin.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t have a twin. I’ll reconnect you to the operator.”
“No, I want to talk to you, Magoo.”
“Super, but I don’t have a twin.”
“If you say so.”
“What do you want to talk about, Mr…. ?”
“Mr. E.”
“Mr. E, what do you want to talk about?”
“You know, the dead and other has-beens such as ear trumpets, typewriters, and our own former selves, are neither simply gone, poof, nor happily alive, forever, in an adjacent pleat of the space-time fabric over which, antlike, we toil.”
“They’re not?”
“Nope! They are, rather, in a position analogous to that of, say, dolls…or maybe pets, for example goldfish…characters in a book…prosthetics…really any transitional object—you’ve read Winnicott, no? I.e. they require our attention to establish themselves in their natural habitat: our minds.”
“Is that so? Can I ask who—”
“Between times, they wait, miniature cards clutched in their frozen paws, calabash pipe halfway to the wizened lips.”
“Who is—”
“There is a further contention, more controversial: that this relationship is a symbiotic one. Picture a Venn diagram with two cells, the future and the past. Where the two intersect is the present, and that’s where we live. Without the past, we would have no future; we would be trapped in a dimensionless present, a null set. We live because we tell stories about what has been, and dream of what will come. You tell stories, don’t you, Tiffany?”
“Who is this?”
“That’s a very good question, because the present-tense self has no identity of its own, it’s just a bitty band of flesh between memory and anticipation, and each of us converses with many pasts, and when we’re history, just ink on paper, we will converse with many future ones.”
“Mr. Nickel?”
“And Disme.”
“How did you get this number?”
“Isn’t this a fun way to be in touch? Aren’t you glad to hear from me?”
“Why are you stalking me?”
“Stalking, gracious. I’ve missed you, you and Blanche both, you make me feel alive. Life is strife. Louche would agree with me, wouldn’t she? I was jealous of her, you know.”
“You’re the devil.”
“Nonsense. I’m your guardian angel!”
“You’ve been spying on me. You’ve bugged my house or my suitcase or—Blanche, her mouth, her ears…”
“You’d be amazed at the spy-gear you can order right out of a catalog. But I wouldn’t. Heavens. I’m just a good listener.”
“Look, I’ve decided I’m not going back to the clinic.”
“We’d love to have you, but we understand.”
“And I’m not joining the Togetherists either.”
“We’d love to have you, but we understand.”
“What the fuck do you want from me?”
“Would your mother approve of that language? She asked me to keep an eye on you. That’s why I’m here.”
“Why doesn’t she keep an eye on me herself ?”
“Wow, gee. I’m sorry to be the messenger, but—well, I’ll let her explain. I’ve recorded a message from her. It’s stored in Roosevelt’s memory bank, just a minute…” [whirring sound]
> “‘Hon? Are you OK? It’s your mother. I’m in jail, but don’t worry, I’ll be out soon, but I won’t be allowed to leave England until the trial’s over. Now I know you’ve had a hard time and you aren’t speaking to each other, but I want you to try and see each other’s point of view. Do you hear me? You will value that relationship in the future. And I know you [crackle] my funny little beliefs, but I also think it’s important for the world that you attempt to [crackle crackle] another [crackle] right nearby, as close as [crackle, crackle, click.]’
“Got that? Swell. Now I can tell her I’ve spoken to you, and you’re fine—you’re fine, aren’t you? Are you fine? Over that goldfish thing?”
[click.]
Saturday
The yucca everywhere is just plausible, but I can no longer ignore the Joshua trees that have sprung up all over Duboce Park, sprouting even in the streetcar tracks—how will the transit system carry on? Blanche is winning. The desert is coming.
Tuesday
All morning while I was writing, I could watch a reddish ovoid separate from the lower left corner of my window, bob right, just grazing the sill, pass through a flaw that stretched and finally pulled it in two, reform, sink below the sill, then two minutes later, perform the same trip in reverse. For the last half hour, however, this has ceased. Finally I open the window and lean out. Mr. Nickel is perched on a campstool right under my window.
“Why are you still here?” I am so angry I am panting.
“Nora! I know I’m being a pest, but I just can’t drag myself away, I’m so interested in you and Blanche; I feel so connected to you…”
“You’re trying to drive us even further apart.”
“Further! I wouldn’t flatter myself that was possible. I just”—he spreads his hands, with what should have been a disarming grin—“really like you. I like to be near you.” His eyes are moist with sincerity.
I slam the window shut.
Wednesday
I can no longer ignore the obvious: if Blanche can persuade me that skulls can talk and make me tell that story, what other lies have I dutifully written down? If my thoughts aren’t safe from her, how can my words be? I don’t have to imagine her popping up to scribble a bit, then diving into the gutter like a bookworm. She can lie back, close her eyes, and let me take dictation.
In college, I used to rewrite my books. I scratched out sentences and whole paragraphs, all the soft meat, and discovered their secret skeletons. I thought someday I would publish them on a small press and live in nervous anticipation of the day one of the original authors, undead, came to visit. In this book too another book is buried, and it’s hers. It isn’t hidden, exactly. It’s there for anyone to see. The dictionary has all the words we need. It holds the answer to every question. It’s just a matter of learning how to read it.
But now, everything I thought was mine begins to look like hers. I’m lipsynching my autobiography. This fake book, full of spelling terrors. I pore over it, looking for notes from underground.
Breathe lightly and never criticize her experiments.
Below lies a nobody called her enemy.
I can just make out the shape of Mr. Nickel’s head in the darkness.
Thursday
Audrey has started the process of augmentation, driving up to Sausalito to leave blood and tissue samples at Symbiosis Labs, which turned out to be one skinny man on a houseboat. He strode in, buttoning his lab coat over fuchsia Speedos and shiny white thighs on which the black hairs had been all slicked down with coconut oil, as gusts of sweet reek confirmed. I can vouch for this detail because I was there, having agreed to drive Audrey home if she got woozy after giving blood. By then we were not speaking to each other.
“To be honest, Vyv objects too,” she had said, handing a ten-dollar bill to the tollkeeper. “She thinks I’m trying to fix the free play of identity. She says a spiritual condition doesn’t require a materialist excuse, some, like, lump that proves you’re what you think you are. But I think she’s trying to deny that the body conditions what we think and feel. I mean, we are lumps. Ultimately. Big lumps of gristle. Thank you, sir.”
“Sir lump.” We swept into the crab-colored creel of the Golden Gate Bridge. “By that logic, shouldn’t you be a healthy, happy singleton?”
“Well, sometimes Mother Nature gets it wrong,” she said. “I’m just a little slip of her tongue.” A truck rocketed past in the opposite direction, just a yellow divider away, and we fishtailed in its wake.
“If you’re a slip of the tongue, I’m a whole fucking speech defect. Buh-body. Puh-person. Could we get out of the turncoat lane?” Mornings, this lane was southbound. I found that unsettling.
“Being plurally-personned is not a defect, it’s a privilege,” she said stiffly, snapping on her signal.
“Oh, pardon me, did I use language degrading to your brand-new minority? How fucking presumptuous. Do you really think sewing a meatball on your shoulder makes you a twofer? You’re not a twofer, you’re an idiot with a meatball on your shoulder. I’ll tell you how I know: only a singleton would think it was a privilege to be plural.”
“Oh, look who’s talking! Only a twofer would think there was such a thing as being singular.” She surged into the right lane.
I furiously rolled down my window. Blanche’s hair bannered out and glued itself to the outside of the glass. To the left, as if held back by the cables, was a depthless grey bank of fog, but to the right were limpid volumes of space, mudgreen sparkle and the tiny white slivers of sails, all presently leaning the same way. Into this the five hundredth soul had lately disbursed its endowment of misery. No jumpers today, unless Audrey was one, jumping out of her old life into a new one. Who was I to question that? I’d tried the same thing in the other direction. I ate some long breaths of the cold salty wind and calmed down.
“What does Ben think? Doesn’t he prefer singletons?”
“Wow, I think that’s the first time you’ve actually said his name.”
I didn’t comment.
“He’s struggled with it, but he says he’s almost positive it’s me he likes, not my body.”
“That would be the exact opposite of your lump theory.”
“Look, Nora Either-or-a, if people were consistent they wouldn’t be people. You happen to have a fall guy for your inconsistencies. But if Blanche magically disappeared I bet you’d find out that a lot of what you were calling Blanche was you all along. Don’t look at me like that. I’m saying this is a good thing. It’s probably on the strength of what we don’t know about ourselves that we get by. We’re blurry, thank Venn. Our grey area”—she took both hands off the wheel to form a sort of yoni—“is our window.”
“Incidentally, how do you spell grey?” I said.
She didn’t answer.
I looked over. I was appalled to see that she was blinking tears out of her eyes. “The problem with trying to figure out your philosophy of life is that while you’re working on it, you have to keep living. I’m just trying to live, Nora.”
We swept up to the double tunnel with rainbows painted over both arches, gateway to the moneyed mellow of Marin County. I rolled my window back up and leaned against it, my eyebrow crushed against the hot rim of Blanche’s ear.
Under the rainbow, into the dark.
“Help yourself to a beverage,” said the doctor, looking at me in a way that somehow bypassed my face, as if he were applying mental calipers to my cranium. The refrigerator was full of pinkish shreds in jars, and plastic skulls covered with a slick of goo, and troubling meatloaves. I selected an orange drink called Vitalitá, thought of death, sat down on the deck in back to write this account.
This beverage tastes strange.
Oops, is it a beverage, or some poisonous preservative?
I find I don’t care.
The waves are all urging in one direction, out to sea. It is calming to think of the ocean stretching from shore to shore, rounding the earth’s curve, and with ripples and swells the whole
way, tirelessly generating effects, though it has no audience. I see my magnified cheek and the quivering wing of my right eyelashes reflected in my 25¢ thrift-store sunglasses.
I meant to talk to Audrey on the way home. Tell her about Mr. Nickel, that I think he is trying to drive me to some desperate act—I don’t need to explain about the clinic—that the writing is not helping, that I’m not feeling at all well. But listening to the waves whisper “recede, recede, recede,” I know I won’t. She is over the rail, already out of reach.
Friday
I feel Blanche dragging herself toward me along every line, fastening her talons in the counters of my p’s and q’s, and I cannot stop her. In fact, I am helping her. This writing is not separate from her waking, it is part of it. Oh, I have good reasons for doing it (a suicide leaves a note, a murderer mails a mocking letter to the detectives after him, a poisoned dictator gasps out the names of her assassins), but she has hers as well. Blanche is remembering herself through me. The fact that I am also remembering myself through her may not suffice to save me. It may even be my downfall.
Saturday
“You can feel the stiff frill of her short dress rubbing against your hips, and there are bits of straw and muck under your nails—”
“Say what?”
“Never mind. You have her up against the rose wallpaper, and her head is banging against a mirror that has pictures of her as a little girl holding teddy bears and My Little Pony stuck in the frame, and you’re hammering her—”
“Oh yeah. Yeah.”
“And you’re watching her head bang against the reflection of her head and just then you see the door open in the mirrored room, with its wallpaper of shepherds and shepherdesses, and something comes in…”
“Yes?” he said, impatiently.
Earlier I used the model train metaphor for phone sex. I did not realize at the time that a forgotten line had converged upon the circular track. Sometime in the last few weeks the pointsman had switched the points. Let’s say I got off on the wrong track. I didn’t notice the landscape morphing, the green flocking fading to sand, the bogeyman mugging from behind a cactus. “He was wearing a lab coat and a name tag on the pocket…he was covered with coarse fur… his horns stuck straight up…”
Half Life Page 37
