Atmospheric Disturbances: A Novel

by Rivka Galchen

  No, no, no, no, no, she said, standing up, moving too close to me, talking right into my face, her body so close that I thought I could feel the air move out of her way. She went on: “It doesn’t make sense to anybody, at least not to anybody else that I know,” she said, infected, I believe, with my admirable tendency to qualify. “Not even to Harvey. It’s just you,” she continued. “Doesn’t that make you wonder when something is just only you?”

  “I didn’t come up with this craziness,” I said. “It came to me, not from me.”

  22. Conclusions and future work

  Toward the end of his retrievals paper Tzvi wrote: “Are these errors a reasonable simulation of those actually present in Doppler radar data? Is there any way to recover useful information from the resulting fields?” Naturally these questions came to mind when I was deciding whether or not to return with the simulacrum to the apartment that I shared with Rema.

  Let’s say that I agreed to return, that she agreed to return with me. We arrive. I imagine the apartment will smell musty and she’ll open the windows and cold blasts will compete with one another through the length of the space; the curtains will billow. The thin dog—who will return her?—will retreat to the simulacrum’s lap for warmth. An old newspaper will be out on the coffee table, as if still important, something circled in red pen. The bed will not be made. Four spoons and a glass will be sitting unwashed in the sink. Not sure how to behave, I will offer to make tea. The click-click of the gas stovetop will make a nice contact sound as I set the teakettle to boil. I don’t want tea, she will say. So if you’re doing that for me, don’t do it, she will add. I’ll ask her if she wants coffee. She’ll say no. Hot milk? Do you want to rent a movie? Go for a walk? Eat chocolate? Lie under covers? She’ll be inconsolable and I’ll find myself curiously dedicated toward her immediate consolation.

  “Sometimes you’re not very mean,” she’ll concede, eventually, after dozens of suggestions.

  We’ll go out for dinner, which Rema and I never do, and the dinner will be okay. The butter will be unusually good, but neither of us will speak much, and I’ll order a hamburger in an attempt to be cheap and will regret it. She’ll finish less than half of her lamb. I’ll mention something I saw in the newspaper—young Turks’ voting patterns maybe, or the mummy of Queen Hatshepsut—and she will say that she also saw that—whatever it might be—in the newspaper, but we’ll fail to turn our mutual reading into a conversation. When we decide to return home, the nearby subway station will be closed; we’ll walk ten blocks to an open station and then descend and wait. She’ll say she doesn’t believe the train will ever come. I’ll assure her that she is right, that the train will never come and that also the gates will close, and we’ll be locked in the station, and she’ll say that she is just so tired and regrets ever having thought that she wanted to go anywhere. Then the train will come; there will be plenty of seats; she’ll lay her head on my shoulder. And in the dark glass of the subway car I’ll see this gentle sleepy her leaning on me. We should have had pizza, she’ll say. Even though there’s no good pizza in the neighborhood.

  The next morning I’ll catch the grassy scent of Rema’s shampoo coming from the shower. I’ll walk into that steamed room. The dog will have preceded me, will be curled up on the bath mat waiting for her. Without saying hello but also without apologizing for my presence, I’ll wash my face in the sink. Later I’ll find she’s wearing my socks.

  Maybe we’ll eventually get a second dog, one who dotes on me more than on her.

  As time passes, I will begin to wonder how far my collaboration with the simulacrum might, or could, or should, or shouldn’t go. Perhaps we’ll eventually find ourselves wholly making believe as if she is the original Rema, as if nothing has happened. That is perhaps what we were meant to do. Be partners in solving a poorly defined crime. Appear normal. Share the wide bed. Take turns doing laundry, walking the dog (or dogs), parking the car. Cook lentils, watch old movies, fumble through the recycling to find a news story. Maybe we’ll do the crossword puzzle together and she will be a little bit better than me. If one night she wakes up in an undefined terror it will be my responsibility to put an arm around her, pet her until she falls back asleep. Though of course then I’ll be awake, from having woken to calm her; I will disentangle myself; I’ll leave the bed to take a long hot bath; I will use her soap with its flecks of abrasive and I will use her pumice to scrape my feet, and when, still very awake, I bring my handheld into the bed so as to be able to read the news online—there will be conflict somewhere in the world, atrocity—the tiny glow will reawaken her, and she’ll be furious with me for this, so the next day I will sweep, and bring home nice fruit, and then everything will be more or less okay between us.

  This will repeat itself, in variations.

  In many ways, I’ll realize, this alternate life of mine will be a small but fitting memorial to my life with Rema.

  One evening I’ll put key to door but find the door unlocked. No creature will greet me. I’ll hear only an inscrutable but distantly familiar, tinny, regularly irregular popping sound. Proceeding toward the noise, I’ll discover the kitchen ceiling covered with soot; strangely, this sight won’t make me think of anything else. My mind will stick just to that covered surface, but my heart rate will increase, my hands will feel cold, the popping sound will continue until I finally realize that the sound comes from the teakettle having been left on the burner empty, with all the water boiled away. I’ll call out to her and no one will answer. I’ll turn off the flame and try to transfer the kettle over to the sink, but even the safe rubber handle will have become too hot. I’ll call out to her again. I’ll search the space of the small apartment. That very slow way of drinking that she sometimes has, of putting her finger to the surface of the tea and then bringing her finger to her lips—that will come to my mind. That and yellow panic.

  Then I’ll hear the apartment door open. Then I’ll see her. Unmarred, happy, with the russet dog in her purse, she’ll pull several date cookies out of a brown paper bag and offer them to me. She’ll tell me she just went for a walk and forgot; she’ll go to survey the kitchen and wipe stripes in the soot with her finger. She’ll smudge ash on my cheek and nose. She’ll say let’s clean it tomorrow, not today, I had this whole happy idea of having tea and these date cookies and reading the paper and that’s what I want to do. She’ll boil water in a saucepan. I could have fallen in love with this woman, I’ll realize, just meeting her right that very moment, even if there was no history between us. I’ll tell her that. Or something to that effect.

  Yes, I will have the feeling that this life I am living with the simulacrum is real. And one morning I’ll get out of bed first and set the kettle to boil and the heat will smell chalky, and the puppy, or dog—and I will know the creature’s name intimately—will follow my every move in the kitchen and I will be speaking amiably with this creature, distracted, but then when I look up from those dog eyes she will have appeared, standing under the lintel, in green nightie boxers and an undershirt of mine, and her hair will be messy, and she’ll rub her eyes and smile shyly.

  One day, on the subway, she will peel a clementine and hand me slices. When we transfer trains, she will be showing me the pith gathered under her fingernails and this will distract me and then I will find I have bumped into Tzvi Gal-Chen.

  We will all mumble apologies.

  Tzvi will be wearing plaid pants. He will be holding an uncrying baby. He will acknowledge us—the recognition, the uncanniness, the whole situation—very discreetly.

  Then I’ll remember that something has been forgotten.

  I will begin, again, to notice. To really see. Small errors in her performance.

  I’ll note fork, not spoon, marks in the ice-cream container. I’ll think maybe it was a guest I’d forgotten about. But she’ll be walking comfortably in heels; she’ll drink her teas quickly; weeks will go by in which she isn’t irritated with me; I’ll meet people she works with who don’t seem to
be in love with her. We’ll go to a movie and before it’s over she’ll tell me, without embarrassment or explanation, that she wants to leave. Later I’ll come across her ticket stub in her jeans pocket, and it will be flat, whole, nearly unhandled. Of course I will want to deny such evidence. But when the lost luggage from Argentina, full of Rema’s shirts, finally returns, this will excite her not at all. One evening I’ll arrive home two hours late and find her unworried, eating blueberry yogurt. I’ll begin to notice how often she gazes philosophically into the eyes of the russet puppy, as if no other creature in the world really understands her. One day she’ll even stop dyeing her hair. And she’ll cut it short. I’ll run out of ways to deceive myself. And though all of this will be painful—it will be like losing her all over—I will at least know then, again, that I must find her, that I can only ever truly love the original Rema. I won’t know what this means for me, or for anyone else, or for the Academy, or for the Fathers, or for the world; probably I won’t even really be able to care. But for all that ignorance, still—that image of Tzvi in my mind, underground, holding that baby, dressed in a way that could make him a foreigner or a hipster or an accident or a transplant from another time—I’ll at least know the purpose of the rest of my life.

  Acknowledgments

  My friends, teachers, and the perennially generous crowd at the Hungarian Pastry Shop have taken better care of me than I could possibly deserve.

  I’m forever indebted to the profoundly gracious and tireless Bill Clegg, the endlessly smart and charming Eric Chinski, and the wunderkind Gena Hamshaw.

  Also many thanks to the Rona Jaffe Foundation for early and generous support of my work.

  And I owe especial thanks to my family: Yosefa, for a bottomless supply of pears and love; Denise, Tom, Heather, and Greg, for play and comfort; Oren, Viki, Gabi, and Rhone, for unending rational counsel and joy; Aaron, for mahmoul yojimbo moozu; and Tzvi, always my company through life’s alien corn.