Lightning Field

by Dana Spiotta

  “You’re weird. You act strange,” Mina said, pouting, moving back to the couch. “What’s with that book? Is it really necessary to carry it with you at all times?”

  “This? I like to read it sometimes.” Michael tossed the book in front of her. Mina ignored it. He smiled at her, then spoke flatly. “All propositions are of equal value. The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value — and if there were, it would be of no value.”

  “Michael—”

  He continued, smiling as if he were telling a joke, his eyes glancing right as they always did when he recited things, his performance face. Michael had always been what Mina’s father called mnemonically performative. But not so relentlessly, not withher.

  “If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental. What makes it nonaccidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental. It must lie outside the world. Hence there are no ethical propositions.”

  “Yeah, whatever.” Mina picked up the remote control and started skipping channels with a ridiculous velocity. “I’m sure you could recite the whole thing and I would never speak to you again. So stop. It’s—” She saw he was looking at the book, and she could tell he was saying it anyway, to himself. She felt he was not only not her brother, but a sort of imposter who took the superficial details of Michael and distorted them, ridiculed them.

  “So like what’s it about, anyway?” she asked. He stopped his trance and looked at her.

  “I don’t know. Mina, I have no idea. It’s abstracting yourself,well, self-reference, anyway, to a kind of philosophical autism. It’s like falling off a cliff, and then you’re stuck in a labyrinth of solipsism.”

  “Yeah, whatever. Like as if anything you said actually means anything to me.”

  “Well, that’s the point.” “

  What. .ever.”

  He frowned at her. “When did you become so flip?”

  “I don’t know, maybe when you became such a freak.” She shook her head. He stopped fingering the book.

  “Look,” he said, gesturing at the TV.“Imitation of Life.”

  “Who cares,” Mina said. “I hate those old movies.”

  “Yeah, right, Mina.” Michael smiled and tried to pull her down to the floor next to the TV.

  “Don’t.”

  “Mina, Lana Turner. Did you hear me?Lana. Lana Turner.Just her name, the way it sounds, likewanna turn her.Her aging platinum-poached face. Her turbaned head. Her dressing gown, her vanity set. All those amazing Edith Head clothes.” Mina reluctantly glanced at the TV. Michael took her hand and pulled her to the floor in front of Lana’s Technicolor fuchsia-lipped head.

  “Frosted everything,” she said.

  “Sandra Dee, Mina,” Michael said.

  “Troy Donahue.”

  Mina put the phone down. She had to check in with the restaurant. Then she had to see Max. Again. Nearly every day now. Just the thought of how it would go once she got there, how they would start right in without talking, was enough to make her feel better.

  * * *VIDEO # 2

  Outside MAX’S house. Surveillance black and gray, video hazy. Static angle down on doorway. Obviously from a fixed security camera. We see nothing but the doorway for a moment.

  TITLE: ARRIVALS AND DEPARTURES

  GIRL appears at door. Her face has been pixelated to obscure her features. She is wearing a sun hat. She leans into the intercom. She pauses for a moment, then pushes the door open.

  CUT TO: SAME DOORWAY AGAIN.

  Exact same shot of still entrance. The door opens and GIRL exits. She pauses, puts on her sunglasses, and walks off camera.

  CUT TO: SAME DOORWAY AGAIN.

  GIRL enters the frame, no sunglasses. She pauses, opens her purse, and takes out a compact. She checks her face, touches her hair. She returns compact to purse and presses buzzer. She waits, looks directly at camera, and waves. She rests her hand on the doorknob and then goes inside.

  CUT TO: SAME DOORWAY AGAIN.

  Entrance is empty for a few seconds. The door opens and GIRL exits, rushing right off camera in an instant.

  CUT TO: SAME DOORWAY AGAIN.

  END TITLE: A MINAMAX PRODUCTION

  Two Weeks from Leaving

  Saturday.

  Mina had to go to work today.

  Lorene called her early, waking her. She sounded upset, but Mina pretended not to notice. All she could think about was no Max today. Instead she would have to cover the lunch shift at the restaurant. She would have to get it together and smile and be the face of calm and confidence. She had lied to David about having to work and now she really did have to work.

  Lisa had to go to work today.

  The twins could not be left with their father on Saturdays. He slept in and by the time he was up and about, the children had been awake for hours. In his misery and exhaustion, he had no patience. Mrs. Brenshaw was feeling ill today and couldn’t baby-sit even for a few hours. Lisa decided she would take the children to Lorene’s. She’d let them play in the living room and watch TV while she cleaned. This was not allowed by her company. But she couldn’t leave them alone with Mark.

  Lorene did not have to go to work today.

  She canceled her appointments and her session with Beryl at St. John’s. She would stay in bed and do nothing. She would let Mina handle everything and sleep in.

  She would perhaps spend the day under her sheets, in the dark, trying to be still. She was contemplating some self-touch therapy when she heard the door unlock. She froze under her sheets, and then she remembered Saturday morning the cleaning woman, Lisa, came. She wouldn’t have any peace, not even one morning of it. She put on a chartreuse vintage silk kimono painted with tiny Eiffel Towers and black velvet Chinese slippers with sequins. She went down the spiral stairs intending to ask Lisa to cancel today’s cleaning. In the living room Lisa had her two five-year-olds, each grasping one hand. They were a boy and a girl, and Lorene watched as the heavyset woman arranged them on her couch with their toys in front of her large TV. Lisa had on a T-shirt that said “California” in looping cursive letters, with a stylized palm tree punctuating the finala.

  “Mom, it’s much bigger than our TV,” the boy said.

  “Yes, it is. Now, you guys watch cartoons just like at home. Don’t touch anything. Sit right here and afterward we’ll get ice cream.”

  The children nodded and smiled and were already too occupied with the TV to bother with their mother any longer. When Lisa turned away from the kids and saw Lorene, she nearly fell back.

  “Lorene. I didn’t know you were here.”

  Lorene waved at her, smiling.

  “I’m playing hooky today, Lisa. Are these your children?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry. I’ll take them home right now. I couldn’t geta sitter, so I brought them. I’ve never done that before, but I figured it wouldn’t be a big deal. I should have checked with you. I’m so sorry.”

  Lorene shrugged and looked at the children, mesmerized by her TV.

  “It’s all right. They seem like well-behaved kids. What the hell. What are they, twins?”

  “Yes. It’s OK? Are you sure?”

  Lorene shrugged.

  “Yeah, just go ahead and do your work. I’m going to have some coffee.” Lorene sat in her kitchen sipping coffee and watching Lisa do her routine. It was strange to watch a stranger clean your house. Lorene felt oddly fascinated. It was embarrassing, really, but in truth she found the company comforting. It distracted her from herself, and she didn’t mind sort of thinking about someone else.

  “You do a good job, Lisa. You’re very thorough.” Lisa sprayed the oven with oven cleaner, then readied the bucket and mop for the floor.

  “Thank you. Your house is pretty easy. It doesn’t seem like you even live here sometimes.”

  “I guess you can tell a lot abou
t someone from cleaning their house.”

  Lisa scrubbed the countertops. She looked at Lorene in her silk kimono. Lorene finger-combed her blue-black hair, pushing the ends forward so the curl cut against her cheekbone. An inward glance at an old photo of Louise Brooks that Lorene had permanently etched in her brain inspired this early morning primping. Lisa shrugged a shoulder up to her cheek to move her hair out of her steamy face. When that didn’t suffice, she lifted one wet yellow-glove-clad hand and brushed her hairback with the peek of forearm where the glove stopped. Still it was in her way.

  “I think there are these people who analyze these things— what a person’s trash says about them, their dirt, the kind of debris they create. I think it’s supposed to be quite telling,” Lorene said.

  “Yes, I guess so. If you really think about it, but I’m not sure why someone would. Basic things. Whether they have kids or not. What they eat or don’t eat. Whether they entertain or not.”

  “Come on, more than that. What music they listen to, what books they read — or if they read. What clothes they wear, and how much they spend on clothes.”

  “You have a lot of beautiful clothes.”

  Lorene nodded.

  “So what do you think? I mean, you’ve cleaned my house for a couple of years now. What conclusions have you drawn?” Lorene hated herself for asking; she turned every situation into an exercise in self-contemplation. Her favorite subject, herself. Lisa looked at her oddly as she continued scrubbing.

  “I don’t know. Do books and clothes really tell you all that much about a person? I wouldn’t know much from that. I think just talking to you now is more about you than all the stuff I clean in your house.”

  “How so?”

  “That you seem more like a person in a movie than any person I’ve ever met. Everything about you seems so — I don’t know. So arranged.”

  Lorene smiled at this. “Yes, that’s true. Rehearsed for some performance.”

  “And you are aware of this. It kind of pleases you, I can see.”

  Lorene took out her first cigarette of the day. She caughtLisa glancing at it, and Lorene made a bit of a show of lighting it.

  “Well, isn’t maturity about recognizing who you are and running full-throttle toward it?”

  “You’re not messy.”

  “It’s either maturity or glamour. I haven’t figured out which one yet.”

  “That’s a pretty terrible thing to say. Cynical.”

  “I’m glad to hear I’m not messy,” Lorene said. There was a pause and Lisa finished rinsing out the sink. She turned off the water. She looked at Lorene, who stubbed out her cigarette. A million half-finished cigarettes. What do you make of that. Lisa peeled off the gloves.

  “Lisa.”

  Lisa looked over at her again.

  “Lisa, by the way, I’m not cynical.”

  “I’m sorry, it’s just, you. .” Lisa glanced around the room and then looked directly at Lorene. “You have a lot of beautiful things. You have a peaceful, safe place to be. I don’t feel sorry for you.”

  Lorene almost laughed. Women like Lisa used to really admire her. It was a given, an absolute certainty. What had happened?

  “You’re sort of a smart cookie, huh? Fair enough. I asked, after all. And when I talk to you, I don’t ask you any questions about your life, do I?”

  Lisa smiled at her, shrugging.

  “I noticed that, too.”

  “So what occupies you, if not some performance of yourself?”

  “What occupies me? My family. My family, my family and, oh, yeah, my family.”

  “Your kids?”

  “That’s what I said, my family.”

  “And their father?”

  Lisa shrugged again.

  “Their father is an unwilling participant.” She put the cleanser in the cupboard and shut it. “I have to clean your bedroom now.”

  Lorene nodded over her coffee. “I’m sorry. Go ahead.”

  Lorene could hear Lisa getting the vacuum cleaner from the hall closet and carrying it slowly up the stairs. Soon afterward she heard the sound of the vacuum running in the bedroom. Something almost crossed her mind about what it would be like to be Lisa instead of herself. Almost. She crossed her legs and her kimono opened loosely, revealing one white smooth knee and one hairless creamy thigh. She examined her leg, pushing her hand across her smooth skin, sitting alone in her pristine kitchen.

  Mina walked the two miles to Vanity and Vexation. She had to break her date with Max, stop in and check on the other two restaurants, then return to V and V for a meeting with the designer, then make it home in time for dinner with David. She hadn’t read the postcard in her pocket. She knew it was another one from Michael. When she arrived at the Gentleman’s Club, she had phone messages to call her father, her mother, and Lorene. She ignored these. Then she received a phone call.

  “Mina?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Scott.”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t seem too happy to talk to me.”

  “Well, I’m busy.”

  “I’m in town.”

  “But you were just here.”

  “I know, but I need to talk to you.”

  “I just saw you.”

  “I have to see you.”

  “I’m really busy. “

  “But I really have to see you.”

  “OK, OK. Not today, though. Sunday. Three o’clock.”

  Mina walked back along Wilshire to Food Baroque.

  When you ignore me, I feel as if I don’t exist.

  The card was of two Indians holding corn. She folded it and put it away. She had to get to the restaurant and supervise the new reservationist. Allison, or maybe Alysyn. No, it was Ashley. Or Ashleigh.

  Mina had followed Michael to her parents’ bedroom. Thanksgiving vacation, Michael’s first visit home from college. But it was “Michael,” now college-distanced, Michael 2.0, the latest version, the imposter. He took her hand and said he wanted to show her something. A secret. He actually looked over his shoulder stealthily. It felt for a moment as if they were not teenagers on the verge of dreaded adulthood, but kids again, on a covert, invented mission. She felt a momentary sort of relief. He went to their father’s antique rolltop desk and pulled out one of the drawers. He reached to the back of the drawer and pulled out a hand-sized box. It was inlaid wood with different-colored stain and a smooth satin finish with rounded edges. One of those horrible Santa Barbara craft shop boxes tourists buy, with secret smooth, airtight compartments obviously built for drug stashing. Michael slid open the main compartment. Inside were several small screw-top glass vials full of white powder, and a folded Ziploc bag full of emptygelatin capsules. Mina couldn’t hold back an audible gasp, which made Michael cover her mouth with his hand.

  “Shut up,” he whispered. He opened one vial and sniffed at the opening. He inserted a pinkie in the top and tasted the powder. He had seen this in cop shows a million times, he was well prepared.

  “I think that’s your everyday cocaine,” and he made a stage-yawn gesture. He reached for the next vial and repeated the cop-show bit.

  “That looks grayer and clumpier,” Mina whispered.

  “Well, it’s not cocaine,” he whispered, and made a face indicating a bitter flavor. “I wonder what drug it could be? Maybe I should ask Daddy.”

  “Put it away and let’s get out of here,” she whispered, looking at the doorway. “What difference does it make what it is?”

  “One way to find out,” Michael said. Looking at him, she realized he was enjoying this discovery quite a lot. Then, in a gesture of huge import, something Mina would never forget, a point of difference that would be turned over and over and referred to for years to come, her brother looked straight at her, leaned back his head, put the vial to his mouth, and tapped the entire contents into the back of his throat. He swallowed hard a couple of times. Amazing, exceptional Michael. He had the giddy, exalted air of someone who had jus
t proved something dramatic to himself, even if it wasn’t clear yet what that was, or maybe the giddiness came from not knowing the precise consequences and just waiting for the fallout. Mina thought again about the newly surfaced difference between them, beyond age or gender or geography, but a categorical difference, an absolute, italic difference.

  “Are you, like, fucking nuts?” She felt tiny and frightened.

  “Shh, it’s OK. Jut get me some water.”

  A half hour later it was time for the family meal. They sat at the dining room table, the entire family and the friends who were included as family. Lately — actually,precisely—since her incident with Dennis, her father’s best friend, she regarded these friends as intrusive, creepy, envious types. Sort of Anne Baxter-ish groupie characters, admiring her family but deeply resenting it, too. Right next to her father sat Dennis, as if everything were the same — he had said to forget it ever happened, and, look, he had. And her father’s assistant, Sheila. Smiling at her. All these familiar people now had shadow selves to Mina, as she did herself. But these were only minor distractions compared with Michael. She didn’t take her eyes off him once as they began eating. Michael seemed unaffected. He ate and conversed and even quoted a whole monologue from a movie, flashing his dazzling golden-boy smile.

  “Say, Mike, what are you studying out there?” Dennis asked him. Michael looked at him and took a sip of water.

  “Michael is going to take a graduate philosophy course next semester,” Jack said.

  “As a freshman?”

  “He got to skip his required undergraduate philosophy survey.”

  Mina pushed the food around on her plate, estranged from her own body, abstracting eating into a hideous, complicated thing. Her family invaded by pod people, or what was that movie? Where they all look familiar but they have really been stolen away? They all seemed to be having so much fun, Michael included. Mina felt as if she had taken the mystery vial of white powder, that she must be the one invaded by foreign entities.