by Laird Barron
“I won’t be squelched.”
“And I won’t live like this. I can’t. Enough is enough.”
This, he feels, couldn’t be less true. Enough is never enough.
“I’ll leave,” she adds.
“You did leave.”
“For good.”
For good? What could this possibly mean? he wonders. His good? Hers? Fleetingly, he feels as if he can breathe freely again. The next moment, though, he’s consumed with rage at being dictated to. He wants to grab her, shake her, teach her, make her one with him and his just fury, until she understands and retracts what she said. He so wants her to understand. He loves her that much, he aches with love, and she loves him, and lovers don’t leave each other, they don’t, lovers are inseparable.
The rising sun catches his eye, interrupting his train of thought. A shaft of light shatters the pale morning sky like a bell ending the round. He hears a call, and instantly, the quarrel is forgotten. He’s being summoned, and his terrible rage at his wife becomes an ecstatic rage to get outside. He can no more resist it than the flimsy lock could resist him. He has no reason to resist and every reason to consent, every possible reason to surrender and embrace the promise that lies ahead.
The sun circles.
The sun sets.
The sun rises.
The sun sets.
The slippery moon appears.
From his grassy bed, Dr. Jim gazes upward through the lattice of his creation. Beyond the winking eyes and eye stalks, the spiraling tubes and strands of metal, the phalanxes of pipes, and the knobby, nodal block and tackle, he spies a tufted, popcorn cloud, drifting past the moon like an exploded ribosome. The speed of its drift is a fraction of the speed of his minnow mind, which darts about quick quick quick. He senses the approach of something vast, not a predator but a storm of some sort, and, leaping to his feet, he races to his ladder. He climbs rapidly, through the forest of copper Golgi tubes and their caps of cyclopic screens, swiveling like searchlights on their mounts. As he passes, one points at him, seemingly at random, then another points, and another, until all ten are fixed on his face, ten eyes trained on him, ten adoring, hungry, acolytic eyes, urging him higher. He hurries upward, until he’s standing on the topmost rung, which coincides with the topmost addition, the sum and crown of his creation: another burnished coil of pipe, shoulder-wide, speaking for all three elements of the grand design—the spiraling gene, the resilient, spring-like epigene, and the angelic perigene, rising and expanding like a whorling halo.
He thrusts his head and shoulders through it. The nighttime sky is dazzling and takes his breath away. The air is charged. The stars feel it and chatter in excitement. The moon feels it and grins. Ribbons of energy burst and sizzle across the sky.
He raises his arms in delight. Laughing, he welcomes the storm, invites it to channel itself through him. As he fills with it and as the force of it grows, he has an epiphany. He’s not merely channeling, he’s the channel, too. The linker and the link. There is no distinction between creator and creation, between do and is.
From nowhere and from everywhere he hears a crack, then a splintering sound. The air above him quivers, then rips in half. A slit appears, like the pupil of a cat’s eye, but a cosmic cat. He has a glimpse of what lies beyond, and his mind soars.
The glimpse lasts a mere fraction of a second. But a fraction of a second, a fraction of a fraction, is more than enough time to know the perigene in all its splendor. More than enough time to feel the glory and perceive the universal web connecting all things. More than enough for absolute and total bliss.
For one life-affirming fraction of a second, Dr. Jim is fully informed, and then reality sets in. The force sustaining him, suspending him, as it were, on a cloud, cannot, it seems, overcome an insistent downward pull. This, he dimly understands, is the pull of gravity, to which, had he been asked just moments before, he would have said he was immune. As he accelerates past the broken rung of the ladder on which he was standing, he has no time to be disappointed in its failure to do its job. If he’s going down, which he certainly appears to be—down, as in free-falling—he should make the most of the time he has left. Why fear the ground that’s hurtling like a rocket toward him? Why fear injury, pain, death, the unknown? He’s just had a glimpse of the unknown, and with the speed of light he has another, and suddenly he’s in hysterics. His throat and mouth are like brass. He could be a trumpeter, splitting the air with raucous noise, braying and shrieking the final, wild, delirious notes of his last and greatest song.
From Dr. Jim’s Diary:
Thursday, January 19th. Sleep, or something like it. Wake to gray light, shivering and wet. Head pounds like a drum. Stumble through maze of pillar, pipe, and post to a door. Door leads to another door, which leads downstairs. Gate of bars at the bottom, open as a trap. A man inside, waiting. We face each other. No fight left.
He helps me sit.
“You’ve had a tumble,” he says gently. “I’m Dr. Jim. You are . . .” He hesitates. “My guest.”
He strokes my head, then retreats beyond the swinging gate, shutting it behind him. The clang and clank of the bolt are like a wake-up call, a helping hand of a sort.
He gazes at me through the bars. His eyes are misty. His expression is raw with pity, gratitude, and relief.
If I could speak, I would, but I’m hollow inside. The days ahead are dark. I churn no more.
The first order of business is to get his feet back under him; next, to survey and explore. Damage has been done, but then there’s always damage. The question is what to do about it.
This depends, principally, on how bad it is and whether or not it can be fixed. Some things are too broken to be fixed. Some broken things, once fixed, are as good as new. Or nearly as good. Some, depending on what material you started with, are better.
Dr. Jim has never been what anyone would call a fixer. He’s more a slash and burn, leave the past behind, the best is yet to come kind of guy. So it’s no surprise, as he stands beside his midden heap of a masterpiece, his tour de force of bric-a-brac and dream, that he decides, with scarcely a moment’s hesitation, to tear it down. The surprise is why. He misses Carol, and when something is broken—a plate, say—and one half not only needs the other half for completion but fits it perfectly, it’s senseless not to glue them together, a disservice to both halves not to recreate the whole.
The decision made, he throws himself into the task like a man possessed. In a week the thing is lying in a pile on the ground. The last bolt is barely out of its socket when he calls Carol with the good news.
Her reply to him is short and sweet. She meant what she said. She’s not coming back. She wishes him the best. Case closed.
He waits a few days, then calls again. And again in a month. In so many of life’s pursuits—from research to weight loss to treasure hunts—doggedness is rewarded, but in this—his pursuit of Carol—it is not. She doesn’t answer his calls and doesn’t reply to his messages. Undiscouraged, he continues to reach out, if for no other reason than to hear her voice. It’s a beautiful voice, and while the recording never changes, each time he calls he hears something new and special in it. Up until the day there’s a different voice, informing him with cold proficiency that the number has been disconnected.
Time plods on. At length he has the debris in the yard hauled away. Then he brings a chair outside and sits. It’s early spring, and then, seemingly overnight, it’s summer. The outline of his sculpture has disappeared: the grass that was crushed by it has regrown and filled in, joined by the stalks and heads of dandelions and other weeds. Ants troop along the ground. He identifies two species, as well as several kinds of beetles, including old friends Polyphylla decemlineata, Stictotarsus eximius, and Loricaster rotundus. He remembers his collection, idly wonders if it has survived, and if so, if its spirit has survived with it, the spirit of observing and collecting, and by doing so, honoring the
greatness and the miracle of life’s diversity on Earth.
He sits and he sits, watching, listening, observing himself as the emptiness slowly but surely fills, until the day finally comes when he’s sat long enough, and that’s the day he begins.
A year later he puts the final touches on his opus, the crowning achievement (so far) of his career. On a whim he googles Carol, thinking what the hell, she might want to know. He finds her at a nearby university, a place known far and wide for its hallowed halls, distinguished faculty, and otherworldly endowment, and shoots her an email with a tracer attached.
She deletes it within the hour, probably the minute she saw it. At noon a week later he sends her another, which she deletes at 4 p.m. Probably after coming back from an afternoon lecture. Probably—once again—as soon as she laid eyes on it.
Still. Four hours compared to one.
He knows he’s a fool. The question is, how much of a fool, to consider this progress?
Carol’s Diary:
Carol thumbs through her diary, surveying the torn, slashed, shredded, mangled, hanging-by-a-thread, pages. What a pleasure, after a long day like today, to make a new entry. Afterward, though, she feels an unexpected emptiness, as though something is missing that shouldn’t be. She can’t quite put her finger on it, other than to call it “peace of mind,” which is far too vague to be helpful.
This happens on a succession of nights, and on each of them she falls asleep, fully expecting she’ll wake in the morning with a workable answer. But she doesn’t, and finally, after a particularly restless night, she wakes with a new feeling. Or rather the same feeling, subtly amended: it’s not, to be precise, that she’s missing something she had, but rather that she’s missing something that, prior to getting those stupid emails from her ex, she didn’t have. Something, in other words, that previously didn’t exist and now does.
How fascinating, she thinks . . . to an ontologist. How infuriating to her.
It’s the news of his book and his offer to give her a sneak preview. Dangling the bait. She wouldn’t be much of a scientist, not to mention an epigeneticist, if she weren’t curious. Say what you will about the man, he’s always been an exceptionally deep and original thinker. It would be a feather in her cap, professionally speaking, to get a first peek. Who knows—if he’s true to his word about her being an inspiration (she remembers this clearly), she might find her name in the list of acknowledgements.
The more she considers, the more she thinks, Why not? It’s not as if he’s asking for anything. It’s no slight on her character, no affront to her dignity, no encroachment on her sovereignty or disrespect to her person that he wants to share the news. If anything, it’s an opportunity.
From irritation to interest. From annoyance to cautious optimism. How the mind enlarges. Some say it’s a pendulum that swings equally forward and back. Rubbish, says Carol. The mind either shrinks or grows, regresses or advances.
Only a fool would not consider this progress.
As the day of their meeting approaches and finally arrives, Dr. Jim is beside himself with excitement. A normal excitement, he feels. He checks himself in the mirror, checks the time, the mirror, the time, a non-sustainable activity that he interrupts with nervous glances out the window. She said two o’clock, and it’s ten minutes past. So many possible reasons for this, but unlike her. Her voice sounded different, too, throatier, more muscular, as if fashioned by a hitherto unknown and unplumbed force. After hanging up, he found himself wondering if there was someone new in her life. He searched the Internet, which didn’t have the answer but did have an alternate one. Two separate papers described anatomic changes to the female larynx (and a subsequent deepening of speech) as said females ascended various corporate and non-corporate ladders. So the voice thing could be due to that and not a new lover, which relieved him somewhat.
At eighteen past the hour, an SUV pulls into the driveway. He rushes to the front hall, and when the doorbell rings, flings the door open.
Perched on the threshold is a woman who, at first glance, he barely recognizes. She has long black hair that flies from her head in an explosion of curls. Deep-red lipstick and deep-red, miter-shaped nails. A long-sleeved black knit dress. Bracelets on both wrists. A silver barbell eyebrow ring. Eye shadow the color of smoke.
She’s grown, it appears, both in size and in stature. An imposing package.
He invites her in and escorts her to the living room, which he has swept, vacuumed, dusted, and straightened within an inch of its life. Thinking this will please her, as it used to.
Without comment, she sits.
“You look well,” he says.
“Different, you mean.”
“Different, yes. But also well.”
She inclines her head. “I am. Very.”
“Your work agrees with you.”
She assumes he knows what it is from having reached her online and seen her various postings. “I love my work. I love being tenured. I love being able to do what I choose. Within limits, of course.”
“Limits agree with you, too.”
“If you say so.” She pushes a bracelet up until it’s tight on her forearm, like a bridle choking a snake. “I love being able to call the shots. Not all of them, obviously. There’re plenty of hungry fish above me in the chain, but in my little school, my fiefdom, I’m boss.”
“As you should be.”
“I completely agree.”
“You’re secure.”
“I’ve always been secure. Now I have security.”
He wants to ask if she’s happy, knows it would be a mistake. “Have you been writing?”
“I have. It’s what I was hired to do. Among other things.”
“About what?”
“You don’t know?”
“I saw you’ve written a book.”
It sounds like he hasn’t read it. She didn’t expect that he would and in fact has prepared herself not to be bothered by this. Which is not to say she isn’t.
“Yes. It’s the one I was working on when you were . . . .” She stops, rephrases. “Before you started on yours.”
“How has it done?”
“It’s gotten some play in the press. Mostly the academic press, but not exclusively.”
“Has it been well received?”
“Very well. I’ve become something of a celebrity. The high priestess of cultural epigenetics. A lightning rod for visionaries, idealists, crackpots, and the suppressed.”
“The suppressed?”
“Yes. I tell them to express themselves. That’s something I learned from you.”
“Do they listen?”
“Actually, I tell them they’re expressing themselves all the time, whether they know it or not. The epigene, it turns out, is key. That’s where expression begins. I know you don’t agree, but there it is.”
She’s right: he doesn’t. Her statement is not only true but prescient. His own book contains a long and detailed argument against this very point of view. It stops short of being a diatribe, though she might not agree, especially given what he’s titled the epigene section—“High Hopes, Diminishing Returns”—which she won’t possibly miss if she has even a cursory look. Now has to be the worst conceivable time to give her the opportunity. A quarrel is the last thing he wants.
So what is it with him? Pride? Boastfulness? Ingenuousness? The desire to share something precious with her? His natural and troublesome impulsivity, aka the uncanny ability to shoot himself in the foot? What is it that makes him blurt, “I’ve written a book, too.”
“Yes. You said.”
“Would you like to see it?”
“Now?”
“Why not?”
He leaves and returns with a tome as thick and heavy as a brick. It’s got a clear plastic cover, beneath which is the title page. She reads it aloud:
“‘The Halo, Not the Helix: The Science
and Promise of Perigenetics.’” She raises an eyebrow. “It’s a science, is it?”
“An evolving science. Feel free to have a look.”
She riffles through the pages, pausing every now and then—at section and chapter titles, or at one of his winsome little hand-drawings that are sprinkled throughout the work.
“Take it home if you’d like.”
“You’re not serious.”
“I’d welcome your opinion.”
“You want me to read it?”
“I insist. I’d love to hear what you think.”
She hides her pleasure at this. “I’m extremely busy these days—you know how it is. I may not get to it for a while.” She pauses. “Quite a while. I’m really up to my ears with work.”
This is payback, pure and simple, for his not reading hers. In truth, she’d like nothing better than to dive into it at once. She can’t wait to see where his prodigious intelligence has taken him. Knows there’ll be plenty to chew on. Expects to be inspired, challenged, irritated, and galvanized.
“Take your time,” he replies with equanimity. “It’s good to have a full plate. I’m always happiest when I’m busy.”
He’s so different from how she remembers. Patient, attentive, engaging.
“What’s up next for you?” she asks, warming to him.
“Next?”
“Yes. What’s your next project? I assume you have a next project. Actually, I assume you’ve already begun.”
He smiles.
She laughs. “I’m right, aren’t I? Want to tell me what it is?”
He won’t meet her eyes.
“C’mon. Tell.”
“It’s hard to put into words.”
“Shall I guess?”
“If you like.”
She rattles off a series of ideas and projects, each one a little more provocative and outrageous than the next. When she’s done, he shakes his head.
“None of those.”
She leans forward to study him more closely, as though to read his mind. The light from the street catches his face in such a way as to make him look young, boyish even. All the boys she’s ever known have had double, or triple, lives. It feels pointless to continue guessing.
