Part One
I, of the Storm
Laurie thrust her hand toward me. “Take ‘em,” she insisted.
“No,” I said again. “I took when I got up. I’m not gonna take again so soon.”
“You need to take ‘em,” she said. “You’re being an asshole.” She tried to push them into my mouth. I smacked her hand away. She cursed and threw them at me.
“Hey,” I said. “Don’t waste those. They’re expensive.” I checked the road and looked down to pick the pills from where they landed beside the seat.
It wasn’t how I wanted the second day of our trip to start. This was supposed to be our “spend-a-long-weekend-together-and-make-up-for-a-month-of-bad-interactions” trip. I doubt either of us believed it would work, but it was a way to get out of the city for a while. And besides, the sex was still pretty good.
As I snagged the second pill — it had fallen between my legs — and dropped them into my shirt pocket, the tape turned itself over. We were listening to a mix tape we’d made together: first a song I liked, then a song she liked. I think she purposely picked songs she knew I despised.
We were taking my brother’s convertible to Coramkon Park, just over the state line. She couldn’t believe I’d never been there, considering how close to it my family lived. I’d wanted to go ever since the hooplah started, but it’s always seemed a little ridiculous to me. When things died down there, I just sort of forgot about it. Now she was determined that I see it.
Having given up on force, Laurie switched to reason (never her strong suit). “Why won’t you take them?” she pleaded.
“Laurie,” I said impatiently, “those pills are not the answer to every problem I have. I’m sorry for being a little short with you. I’m not allowed to be a little upset sometimes?”
“You’re being completely intransigent, Nick. They were prescribed to you for a reason.”
“Completely what?”
“Intransigent. It means. . . . Never mind.” She shifted her weight and sank down in the seat so that she faced away from me.
“Look, I’m not trying to be difficult,” I said, trying not to let the emotion hurt the situation. “I just don’t see why we always have to drag things out like this.”
She refused to turn toward me. “It’s called talking, Nick. It’s what people do when they have something important they need to deal with.”
“We don’t need to deal with this. It’s not a problem.”
“Okay. Do you realize you’re full of shit and you just don’t care, or are you really that oblivious?”
I let out an exasperated sigh. “Don’t talk to me like I’m some fucking kid, Laurie.”
“Then stop acting like a fucking kid,” she shot back. “How can it not be a problem? Your mom’s pissed, your dad’s not talking to you, and you have no job.”
“I cannot take another day at that fucking school!” I shouted. I knew I was being too loud, but it felt good to get it out.
There was a pause. “So what’re you going to do?” she asked quietly.
“I’ll get a job,” I said. “Lots of people have ‘em. I’ll find something.”
She chose not to respond. Maybe she’d had enough, maybe she was formulating her comeback. I wished there were something more interesting around us than the grassy fields through which we were passing. The day was hot, no clouds. I was thirsty, but the only beverage in the car was her diet root beer.
“What do you think Jeff would say about your dropping out?”
The combination of slamming brakes and the hard right turn caused her to lurch forward. She wasn’t wearing a seat belt.
“Jesus,” she said, pushing against the dash to steady herself. Once the car had stopped, I grabbed her wrist tightly.
“Don’t ever talk about my brother again,” I said. “You didn’t know him, and you probably wouldn’t have liked him.”
Trying not to look scared, she glanced at my fist, clenched around her arm. “You wanna let go of me?” she asked.
“Don’t bring him into this,” I said, gripping harder.
She stared at me.
“Okay?” I asked.
She waited.
I could hear myself breathing; tense, frustrated.
“You’re hurting me,” she said at last.
I let go.
Glaring at me sideways, she rubbed her wrist. I pulled back on the road and dipped into my shirt pocket. He wouldn’t want me to drop out, I thought as I took a swig from the diet root beer.
Two hours later we stopped for lunch at a Mexican food place. It was small but clean, set back from the chain restaurants lining the interstate exit. The parking lot was unpaved. On the way inside, I bought a newspaper.
As the waiter showed us to the table, Laurie pulled out her tiny black camera and took a picture of me sitting down. I looked up, irritated.
“Must you?” I asked.
She held the camera out to me. “Take one of me,” she said.
“No,” I replied, taking the camera and setting it down on the table. She grabbed it and handed it to the waiter.
“Take my picture, please,” she said. He took it awkwardly and backed up several feet. She smiled as he clicked the shutter. “Thanks,” she said, taking the camera and sitting down.
“If you’re waiting for me to respond to that look, you better settle in for a while,” she said after a short time.
“That’s a response in itself,” I said.
“Do we have to go through this again?”
“No,” I said, opening the newspaper quickly. I held it up between us. “Forget it.” She rose to her feet and glared at me over the top of the page.
“Look,” she said, pulling it down to the table and pointing in succession to the three pictures on the page. “The photograph is the certifier of an event. If a picture was taken, there’s no doubt that it happened.”
“Fine,” I said, feeling the now-familiar onslaught of tension rising in us both.
“So what’s the big deal if I take a picture of us?”
“It’s not just a picture of us. It’s everything we do — everything you do. It’s like you’re scared you won’t have everything captured on film.”
She flailed her hand at the paper. “Look at the world, Nick! We are in a photoactive world. That’s just how it is. I’m just adapting to conditions.”
“So you take all these pictures to fit into the world.”
“I just like having a record of the things I do.”
“How many pictures have you taken since we left?”
She shrugged. “I dunno.”
“Estimate.”
“This is my third roll.”
I threw my hands up. “Three rolls of film in less than twenty-four hours,” I said with exasperation. “Ansel Adams didn’t use that much film.”
“Ansel Adams didn’t record anything of his life. He only shot nature.”
“Ansel Adams wasn’t a narcissistic weirdo.”
“Why am I weird, Nick? Because I want to keep track of where I go and what I do?”
“No, because it goes so far beyond that. You take pictures of everything, especially yourself. It’s bizarre.”
“I think it’s bizarre that people don’t take more pictures. That’s why people keep photo albums, like of their kids. They want to document their growth.”
“People take pictures of special events and times they want to remember. You take pictures of stuff you do every day. It’s like you’re obsessed.”
“I’m not obsessed. Pictures prove things take place. What we see is what happened. You know, seeing is believing? Well, how am I supposed to believe in myself unless I take pictures or carry a mirror with me wherever I go?”
“But you’ve got pictures of yourself. Tons of ‘em. Why do you keep taking more?”
“I don’t have a picture of us in this restaurant.”
“So just take a to-go menu on the way out.”
“What does that prove?”
“It proves you were here.”
“No, I could have gotten it through the mail.”
“Who is it you need to convince that you’ve been here? The Supreme Court?”
“I need to convince myself. And that’s harder.”
“Well, hurry up and convince yourself, so you don’t have to flash that thing in my face every ten minutes.”
She raised the camera and snapped the shutter.
I leaned over the table. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I asked through clenched teeth.
She smiled, a sight I wanted less than anything to see at that moment. I was happy being mad at her, but her smile always woke a painful emotional schism in me: joy, of a vicarious type — her being happy made me happy. But also frustration, because I wasn’t as happy as she. Sometimes I’d be very happy. But in general, she was always much happier as a person.
For a while I thought it was a recent thing, a result of the stuff I had to deal with at the time: bad grades, disagreements with my parents, walking into the bathroom one morning and finding my brother slumped in the corner between the toilet and the wall, puddles of his thick blood coagulating on the tile floor amidst sleeping pills and razorblades. The usual postadolescent stuff.
But then I realized I wasn’t all that happy before Jeff’s death either. Worse, I’d never really been able to define the source of my misery. His death gave me a convenient excuse, but there was a lot more to it than that. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
And it seemed as though Laurie, if she suffered from similar internal chaos (and I think she did), knew herself well enough to deal with it. So she was able to be happy more of the time. It really got to me.
Fortunately, for whatever reason, when she smiled at me in that restaurant, I was able to back down and let out only a perturbed sigh. I raised the newspaper again and heard her open a section of her own.
“You know you love me,” she said quietly.
She was right, but I didn’t know why.
That night we stopped at a campground and unloaded our stuff. The place was less than two hours from Coramkon Park, and we arrived well before sunset. But Laurie said she wanted to get there in the morning.
After we watched the sun go down over a big hill on the edge of the campground, I set up the kerosene stove and threw two cans of clam chowder in a pot. We sat staring into the flame and I stirred the soup periodically.
Laurie was leaning against me, her hands wrapped around my right arm. It felt good. It was a warm night, but the slight breeze gave her an excuse to cuddle against me.
“See now?” she asked. “Isn’t this enjoyable? Aren’t you glad we did this?”
I nodded. “Yeah, it’s been fun, I guess,” I said. “I just feel so cut off. I don’t have any of my stuff.”
“It’s called roughing it. It’s good for you.”
I nodded. We watched the soup bubble for a while.
“Why did you say I wouldn’t have liked Jeff?” she asked out of nowhere.
“I dunno,” I said, not wanting to get into it. But I knew she wouldn’t let me out of it. When Laurie chose a topic for discussion, that would be it, come hell or high water. Sometimes — like now, for instance — I knew it was a relevant topic. But even now I didn’t have any desire to explore the nuances of the hypothetical relationship between my brother and my girlfriend. So while I thought it might make sense to talk about it, I wanted desperately to do anything but. As usual, my wants had little effect on the ultimate course of events.
“C’mon,” she said in her soft, we’re-on-good-terms voice. “You said it for a reason.”
I tried to think of a way out of answering, for the simple fact that I didn’t really have a reason for saying it, other than as a way to convince myself that she and I were very different. As long as we’d been together, I’d felt this need to establish myself as distinct from her — not so moody, not so childish, not so emotional. I loved Laurie, but I felt better when I could convince myself of our complete dissimilarity. Sometimes I wondered if it was just a way of trying to feel superior, a way that I couldn’t admit to myself.
With almost the same passion, I’d been looking since Jeff died for ways to bind myself to him on a level other than simple brotherhood. So it seemed like a good way to kill two birds with one stone. Only now the stone was coming back to hit me.
She shifted her weight and looked up. “Tell me,” she said.
I’d never really said much to Laurie about Jeff. In fact, I’d never really said much to anyone about Jeff. My buddies never seemed interested and I sure as shit wasn’t bringing it up with mom and dad.
I stared into the light of the stove. I was tepidly dancing around memories of Jeff like home movies in my head. I wanted to go back earlier, much earlier. I didn’t want to go where she wanted me to go, not right then. I wanted to forget about all that, move on, keep going, turn the page, obtain closure, forge ahead, get on with my life.
“About a week after he came back from Iraq, I was tossing and turning one night. I couldn’t sleep. It was like three a.m., but I just couldn’t fall asleep. I don’t know what it was.” The story was coming out by itself — it was the last thing I wanted to talk about. I stared into the blue flame as I spoke, my eyes solid and blank.
“And Jeff comes running into my room.”
“This was in ‘98?” she asked. I ignored her.
“He was huddled over, clutching his stomach, and he leaned up against the wall, mumbling something. I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I turned on the light and his eyes were closed.
“’Jeff,’ I said. ‘What’s going on?’ But he didn’t answer. I got out of bed and walked over to him. He was sleepwalking. I’d always thought of it like in the movies — arms out, moving real slow. But he was all hunched over and leaning on the wall.
“When I shook him, he started whimpering. I thought he was gonna cry. I backed up, because I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. He kinda looked like he was gonna strike out at me. It was really scary.
“So I shook him again and said his name louder this time. That woke him up. He looked down at his hands, then up at me, then around at my room.
“Then he said, ‘Jesus’ and sank to the floor, with his back against the wall. I just stared at him. I asked him if he was okay. He said ‘yeah’ but he just sat there. His hands were in his lap, palms up. He looked like he was meditating.
“I went and sat down on the bed. He just sat there, staring into space. He’d been acting kinda weird since he got back, but never anything like this. I didn’t know what to say. So we just sat there. We sat there for a really long time, like fifteen minutes. That doesn’t seem that long when you just say it, but sitting there like that, it’s a long time. Especially when the other person looks like they’re in a coma.
“So finally I got feeling really uncomfortable. So I say, ‘What was it like over there, Jeff?’ And real slow, he turns and looks at me, like he was thinking of how to respond. Then he shook his head real fast and took a deep breath. And he looked normal again. But his tone of voice was still really weird.
“But he started telling me about it. About the trip over there, and the guys in his platoon, and the shit they ate, and about the people in Saudi Arabia, and how they couldn’t have porno stuff, because of the Muslims.
“But all of that was like he was leading up to the next part, and he started talking about the tension in the air over there. He said there was always this real heavy tension. Because they were all ready to go to war with Saddam Hussein, but nothing happened. He said some of the guys were in Desert Storm and told all these stories about kicking Iraqi ass and how all the new kids like him couldn’t wait to be a part of it too.
“He told me about this one guy who described a weapon they used in ‘91 that made a tiny hole in one side of a tank, and a tiny hold in the other side, and vaporized everything inside. He said they were all ready to use that type of stuff again. He said how they were totally pumped and ready to go.
“But nothing happened.
“There was some last minute deal and they sent everyone home. And, like overnight, all this tension and excitement was gone. Everyone was back to normal.
“And then he came home.”
It was like a record had stopped playing. A bizarre silence filled the air, punctuated only by the bubbling soup.
“Then what happened?” Laurie asked. It was too blunt, too soon, too invasive.
“I don’t know,” I said. I turned the stove off and put the pot of soup between us, and dropped her spoon in the pot. I began to eat, not looking up at her.
It was true — I didn’t know, but I had a theory. A couple of days after he came back, we were hanging out downtown, going to get something to eat. We passed this small group of about fifteen people demonstrating. It was about the sanctions against Iraq. Jeff got really pissed off. He shouted something like: “The war’s over, you fucking hippies! Nothing happened!”
They were passing out these fliers with all kinds of statistics about the sanctions. I took one because I thought it would be funny, but Jeff snatched it out of my hands and started to rip it up.
But before he did, he paused and looked at this picture they had on the front of the flier of a sick little Iraqi kid. He was frail and thin, lying in a hospital bed, with a bandage around his head. Jeff only glanced at it for a second, but when I looked up at his face, I could see something register in his eyes. Then he scowled and tore the leaflet into shreds. I think something about that picture did something to his head, like maybe he started thinking it was his fault. Like all the kids dying were his fault.
Everyone thinks he didn’t leave a note, but he did. But he didn’t leave it on the kitchen table, or in the bathroom sink. He left it in my backpack. I found it three days after the funeral, right before history class. It was written really sloppy, and the ink was smeared and smudged. It said: “I don’t like what I’ve become. I want to kill but I want to live. I’m sorry. Tell them I’m sorry.”
I grabbed my bag, ran out of the building, past the student center, into the woods, and burned it. I’ve always assumed the “them” meant our parents.
After we ate, Laurie and I lay down together on top of our sleeping bags. There was a nice breeze and no bugs, so we decided to skip the tent. We started kissing, but when she tried to take off my shirt, I pushed her away. There was no way I was going there.
“Okay,” she said quietly. “Okay.” I turned and lay on my side, facing away from her. She put her arm around me, but an indescribable frustration rose in my chest. I pulled her hand away and let out a sigh. I could feel her turning away. A few minutes later she started crying.
I barely slept that night.
We were back on the road by mid-morning. Laurie took the wheel. I tried to pass out in the passenger seat, but the twists of the road made it impossible. I asked her to turn the radio down.
“Oh sure,” she said. “No problem.” Sometimes it seemed like Laurie’s emotional barometer reset itself when she slept. She was definitely a morning person. I’m sure she had bad mornings sometimes, but never around me. Sometimes I wondered if it was an act.
We began to see billboards and souvenir shops with the park’s telltale logo. The place had become like Disneyworld, infecting the whole environment with its symbol. Coramkon was a national park, but had become more famous than any other. For better or worse, though, interest in the oddity of the place was all but extinct. Tourism to the area had pretty much stopped, although visitors from overseas occasionally dropped by. I’d heard that a tiny cult had formed in the park when the initial craziness was going on. I wondered if they were still around.
“I’m so psyched,” Laurie said cheerily. “You’re gonna love this place. I can’t believe you’ve never seen it.” She reached beside her knee on the seat and raised her camera. “Smile,” she said.
I rolled my eyes, but tried not to be disagreeable. “It’s gotta be a scam,” I said.
“It’s been there for six years,” she said. “That’s a really long-running scam. And expensive.”
“But it would be the hoax of the century.”
“But they did all those tests on it. They tried everything. Nothing worked. How do you know what it is?”
“It could be anything,” I insisted. “Maybe it’s part of some NASA thing. Maybe it’s—”
“What’s with that phrase?” she asked, cutting me off. “’It could be anything.’ It makes no sense. Obviously not, if it’s stood up to this kind of abuse and inquiry!”
“What if it was someone powerful who wanted to play a trick on everyone?” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Say you’re some big millionaire and you wanna pull some big hoax to prove how powerful and important you are. So you get this thing and you put it there and then you manufacture a lotta hype and publicity and get everyone talking about it.”
“But the tests.”
“Maybe he got some people to pretend to do tests. And NASA is fooled by fake memos from the CIA, and the FBI is fooled by fake memos from the White House. It’s possible. And then, twenty years later, you say ‘Joke’s over!’ and tell everyone how you did it. And you become famous.”
She was silent, shaking her head with a contemptuous smile.
“It’s possible,” I said smugly.
She nodded and looked over with a pitying gaze. “It’s possible,” she said.
We reached the park a short time later. Once out of the car, she grabbed my hand and hurriedly led me down the path. There was no way to miss the park’s main attraction; all signs pointed to it and all paths led to it. Laurie raced up a hill, dragging me along, and when we suddenly turned a corner, it was there.
When I actually laid eyes on it, all the numbers I’d heard and read became meaningless: as wide as five city buses, circumference sizes, diameter measurements. Although I did my best to disguise it, I was struck with its incredible size and sheer beauty.
The trail we were on came to an abrupt halt to our right, with a big stone tablet at the end, bearing a plaque telling the spot’s history. In front of us was a worn wooden guard rail; beyond that, a cliff, dropping down into a lush green valley, with a wide, slowly-flowing river cutting through it. Bushes and trees covered the area, with a field of tall grass to the left. Far to the right we could see some other cliffs. There was a small beige building on one of them. A flagpole beside the building flew the U.S. flag. And hovering over the valley, about five feet above the tallest trees, was an enormous silver sphere.
At first I didn’t know what I was looking it. The mirror-like surface reflected its surroundings strangely, so that it almost looked like the air above the valley was twisted upward somehow. But after a few seconds, it made sense. At least visually.
I was struck by how perfectly round it was, with no lines on it, no seams anywhere in sight, no irregularities at all. Of course it was far away, but it looked perfect. Perfectly round, perfectly mirrorlike. In the reflection of its wide curve, the river and trees moved slowly with the wind, a double-image of the tranquil scene.
The globe was so huge and imposing and unnatural that I expected it to be doing something. I don’t know what exactly — shaking slightly, or moving up and down. But it was perfectly still. Motionless.
Suddenly I realized that a long time had passed. I blinked several times. My amazement fled and I allowed the cynicism and indifference back in. Laurie was smiling at me. She raised her camera and took a picture.
“Still think it’s a hoax?” she asked.
Suddenly a voice came from behind us. “A hoax?” it said. We spun around to see an old woman trudging up the path. Her hair was a mess of grey and black, and she wore an ugly long dark green skirt with a black shirt. Her face was scrunched up, but she wore a big smile. “Who says it’s a hoax?” she demanded. She spoke with a strange accent that I couldn’t place.
Laurie pointed at me. “He does.”
The woman made a “tsk, tsk” sound and shook her head, never losing her smile. “It ain’t no hoax, dearie,” she said. “Do you know the story of how it got here?”
I started to nod, but Laurie kicked me in the shin. The woman laughed.
“That’s okay,” she said with a wave of her hand. “It’s a good story.”
“For years, this area was just another valley with all the normal valley stuff: trees, grass, a river. White folks kicked the Indians off about 1870, you know. This area became farmland, mostly. I grew up right near here, about two towns over. I used to swim in this river when I was a little girl, before they made it into a national park. Not at this spot, you know, but different places along it.
“And when they made the park a federal land, it brought all kinds of tourists and nature-seekers for a while. That used to be a big deal, when they declared a national park. Now no one cares. Anyway, the weekenders got bored with it pretty quick. I mean it’s nice land, but there’s more exciting places to go on vacation.
“Then one day about six years ago, this thing showed up.” She pointed to it, as if we weren’t sure which thing she was referring to. “Guy who first saw it said he nearly messed himself, he was so shocked.
“At first people didn’t know what to make of it. Lots of people thought it was a bomb, or a alien ship or something. Others said it was a big publicity stunt. As soon as the government found out, of course, they moved everybody out. At first they cleared the area and sent in a bomb squad, but they couldn’t make heads or tails of it. So they sent in some fellas with gieger counters, but they didn’t read anything. So they started doing tests.
“They tried everything. The first thing they learned was that you can’t get closer to it than three feet. There’s some kind of invisible barrier. It’s three feet, three inches, actually. Which is exactly how far above the tallest trees it is.”
“Has it been that far away the whole time?” I asked.
She nodded.
“But haven’t the trees grown since it first got here?” I asked, pleased with myself for finding a hole in the story. “They would either bend or go through the barrier.” She shook her head, like she was expecting it.
“They’re not getting any taller for some reason,” she said. “They did all kinds of tests to the trees, didn’t find nothing. They’re growing outward, but not upward.” Laurie smiled and took a picture of the woman.
“So anyway, they tried to get through the barrier. They set up scaffolding along the edge of it, but nothing worked. They drilled, they used saws, they even tried a bunch of chemicals. Nothing worked. The folks at NASA made some high-powered thing that they shot right at it. But it just crashed into the barrier and fell down. Some folks in Washington said it could be dangerous and said we needed to blow it up, or shoot at it. Others said we should expose it to nuclear radiation. Fortunately those people lost out and the military was kept out of it.
“But they couldn’t make it through the barrier, so they didn’t know what to do. There was an attempt to move it, but of course that failed. I always wondered where they were gonna move it to.
“Now by this time, everyone’s accusing the government of hiding something, so they opened the site up and let people see. For weeks, people gathered all around it. They brought in lots of cops to keep the people back. I’m sure you saw it on TV. Thing was, it didn’t do anything. It just sat there.
“Now, you can’t have a news story about something like that for very long if it doesn’t do anything, so the newspeople went away after about a month. But that didn’t stop everybody and their momma from coming up with all kinds of theories on where it came from. Some said it was a space capsule to take us away, but we had to figure out how to get inside. Some said it was a gift from God. Some said it was a time bomb that would go off in ten years or something like that. Some even said it cured ailments like asthma and arthritis. But no one ever got any proof.”
“What do you think it is?” Laurie asked.
The woman smiled. “I don’t know. I think aliens probably put it here. I don’t see how humans could do it.”
I laughed. “Aliens?” I said. “You’re crazy, lady.” Laurie leveled an angry stare at me.
The woman just smiled. “We’re all crazy,” she said. “Everybody’s crazy. Everyone has something about them that other people consider crazy. And those people who don’t are crazy too, because insanity is relative. So they’re crazy by virtue of being sane among the insane.” She went back to the story without missing a beat.
“So everyone had theories, but no one had any real answers. So the government set up this year-long program to monitor it, with scientists from all over the world. But at the end of the year they had nothing. Zero. So the scientists said it was pointless. They packed up and left. Everyone decided it was a waste of time.”
She gestured to the cliff in the distance. The flag rippled in the wind, as if waving in response. “The army built that building and moved their other people out. They keep two guards there all the time. The tourists died down and the park returned to a near-normal state, with the addition of this huge silver ball in the middle of it.
“Everything was quiet for about two months. Then, something happened near that cliff. In it, actually.
“One morning, when the guard came outside, he noticed these words engraved into the rock. The writing was perfect, like it was done on a computer. Only it was embedded into the rock. You can see it from here.”
I looked over and it was true; on the ground beside the building, large letters were embedded in the stone. But I couldn’t make out what it said.
“What does it say?” I asked.
“The interesting thing about the letters is that they go down about a hundred feet into the ground. They’re cut out in letter shape, all that way down. They dropped a line down and marked it when it hit the bottom, and measured it: one hundred feet. Straight down. To this day, no one’s been able to explain how they got there.
As I looked over at the letters once again, with the army base right next to them, a bizarre headrush came over me. I was flooded with a powerful surge of emotion and confusion. Suddenly I wondered if I’d ever really known who Jeff was. It occurred to me that I didn’t really know him that well.
I looked back at the woman, but my eyes focused on Laurie instead. She was looking at the woman.
“What do they say?” Laurie asked.
The surge came again, nearly knocking me off my feet. I put a hand out to steady myself. Both Laurie and the woman seemed oblivious to all of this. Suddenly I wondered if I really knew who Laurie was. It occurred to me that I didn’t really know her that well.
The woman smiled. “They say: ‘It is spinning.’”
I turned and faced the sphere, as if commanded. The world seemed to fall away, taking the cliff, the trees, the woman, Laurie, the camera, everything with it. I stared into it as if into my own soul. Suddenly I wondered if I really knew who I was.
Part Two
Frequent Seas
Saturday, 2:00 A.M. I was staring at the wall across the room, unable to sleep, when the phone rang.
Sometimes I feel like my life — maybe all life — has little or nothing to do with the stuff that actually happens. It seems like the events themselves are random and tiny. The real stuff of living is the down time: the long periods of space in between, when we can contemplate and reflect. When we mull everything over. Problem is, thinking about things is much harder than seeing them, or experiencing them, or hearing about them. There’s more work involved. Actually, there’s almost no work involved in actually doing something. Just seeing a thing doesn’t require anything — it’s processing what you see that takes work. The flip side is that we get a lot of time for thinking.
But maybe we don’t want to do the thinking. So we concentrate on seeing more, on doing more. We seem to think that if we fill up on activities, there won’t be time left for thinking. So we go to movies and watch TV and play video games and listen to music and drink and smoke and have sex and play sports and watch sports and have more sex.
But does it really work? Or do we just end up with lots more stuff to think about?
Certain activities seem like milestones; so when you look back, you can see all the stuff you’ve done. And the important stuff stands out most of all, the most visible milestones. Even certain times spent thinking about the milestones can be milestones in themselves. But the rest of the time just disappears from view when you look back, even though it’s most of your life.
This was the sort of thing I was thinking about when the phone rang.
I had done a lot of thinking since our trip to Coramkon Park. Seeing that thing had done something to me — shaken and disturbed me to the bone. Deeper. It had made the world seem very clear very quickly; but I didn’t like what I saw. And I definitely didn’t want to think about it.
It’s not very pleasant to realize that you’re completely alienated from yourself and the people around you. But once you realize it, what can you do?
The first thing I did was to cut myself off even more. I told Laurie that I needed some time away from her, that I had some stuff I needed to think about. I expected her to flip out, but she totally went along with it. I’ll never forget the odd little smile she had when she said, “I had a similar reaction when I first saw it.” ‘It’ being Coramkon Park.
So what was it that brought this all on? I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know if I’ll ever know. I’ve thought about going back, but I don’t know if that would be a good idea. All I know is it disturbed me six ways from sanity. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. How can you tell when a perfect sphere is spinning? What does it look like?
For two weeks I retreated. My parents were barely talking to me anyway, so that wasn’t a problem. My buddies didn’t put up much resistance when I said I didn’t feel like going out. They seemed a little bummed, but from time to time someone in the group closes up like that, so we’re pretty much used to it. We figure the best thing is to leave the guy alone. That’s what they did for me. Only I wasn’t sure that’s what I needed. Then again, I don’t know how much they could have helped if they’d offered.
Laurie and I talked once in a while, but it never went very far. Usually we just listed the stuff we’d been doing. I got a job in a pizza place and avoided the people I worked with. I spent a lot of time alone. Everything was wrong. My life was in ruins.
At times I felt like it might not be such a problem. Like maybe I could just make it through the tough time and find a way out somehow. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was wandering, running. Not knowing what I was looking for.
After two weeks I felt totally drained. Empty. I was a pizza-making zombie. I was taking my meds, but I kept away from booze. I figured I didn’t need help being depressed.
Then, one Friday night after work, I said “fuck it” and got some beers. I drank them alone, in the dark. Once I was well sauced, I glanced around my apartment. The street light coming faintly through the blinds covered the soft outline of the bottles on the table before me. There were three empty bottles standing up and one lying on its side. I thought of Jeff and suddenly felt the stinging pain of acute loneliness. I ran to the phone and mashed Laurie’s number. I didn’t even think about what time it was.
“Hello?” Her voice was tired, but supple. I couldn’t think of anything to say. “Hello?” she asked again. I stared at the cord, reaching from my head to the phone’s cradle. She sighed. “Nick, is this you?”
I slammed the phone down and fell to the floor, crying. I decided that night I was going to change.
But I didn’t know how to start. I didn’t have a taking-off point that would guide me, and I didn’t know where to find one. The ground was moving beneath my feet. I quickly realized that changing yourself is one of those easier-said-than-done type things. I didn’t know who to talk to. So the next day I called Laurie.
“Hello?”
I hesitated. Was I making a mistake? What had I done last night? Why was I calling her? What had changed since we split up? Maybe she was mad at me. But she didn’t sound mad. Maybe this was really stupid. I decided to hang up.
“Nick?”
A fluid charge of painful ecstacy rolled through me. “Yeah. Hi, Laurie.”
She paused. “How are you?”
I sighed. “Allright, I guess.”
“Just allright?”
“Maybe a little worse than allright.”
“What’s buggin’ ya?”
“I dunno, lots of stuff.” I hesitated. How deep should I get? “Is this a bad time?”
“No, not at all. You want me to come over?”
Yes, absolutely. Come over right now and we’ll talk and you’ll comfort me and we’ll get Chinese food and we’ll watch TV and have sex and everything will be okay. But what I said was, “I don’t know . . .”
“I’d like to see you.”
Eleven minutes later, she was there. I opened the door and tried to smile.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” We hugged; I pulled away.
“It’s been what, a week?” she asked, sitting on the couch. I took the easy chair.
“Eight days,” I said.
She smiled. “Nick,” she said with a little smile. “Have you been counting the days?”
I looked at the floor and shrugged.
A tense moment passed.
“It’s good to see you,” she said quietly.
Jesus Christ, Laurie. Don’t ever leave me. Please don’t go away. Say you’ll always be here. I would die without you. But what I said was “Yeah.” I looked up.
“So what’s up?” she asked tepidly. I could tell she wanted to know what was going on in my head. But I wasn’t ready to let it out.
I shrugged again. “I don’t know what’s going on,” I said. “I feel so disconnected from everyone. From everything.”
“I thought that’s what you wanted. I thought that’s why we—”
“Yeah, but . . . I mean, I wanted some space to sort through things, but I don’t know where to start. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“What things do you want to sort through?”
I thought about everything I’d been thinking about. “You,” I said. “Us. What’s going on with us? Why do we have such a hard time talking? I feel like I barely know you.”
“Well, what do you—”
“And my parents. School. Work. What am I gonna do for a living?” I paused. “And Jeff. Sometimes I feel like I didn’t even know him. Who was he?” I dropped my shoulders. “Who the hell am I?” I asked.
“Who do you think you are?”
I threw up my hands. “I don’t even know! It’s like I’m whatever the people around me want me to be. Like when I talk to my mom, I’m the good little son. When I’m with Jason and Tom, I’m one of the guys. When I’m with you, I’m something totally different.”
“How about when you’re alone?”
I spread my hands. “It’s whatever’s happening. When I’m at work, I’m a pizza guy. When I’m watching a game, I’m a sports fan. When I listen to music, I’m a badboy. When I read the newspaper, I’m a normal citizen. It’s like there are these characters I assume based on what I’m doing at the time.”
She nodded.
“Like the last thing I see or do is what defines my identity for the next couple of hours.”
“What about when you first wake up?”
“It’s whatever I was dreaming about.”
She nodded. “And does any of this have to do with Coramkon Park?”
“Yeah,” I said, answering the obvious. “I don’t know what it was, but something about that place sank me into all of this. I can’t stop thinking about it. It made me realize I don’t know who I am.”
She glanced around the room, then at me. “You can be whatever you want to be, Nick.”
I shook my head and looked away. “God, Laurie. You just don’t wake up one day and create a whole identity for yourself. There are some things that I don’t control which make me who I am.”
She leaned forward on the couch. “Yeah, and there are lots of things that you choose as a part of who you are. Those are the things you need to focus on.”
The room was silent with her last word. She was right but I didn’t want to admit it. I remembered I hadn’t taken my meds that day. I went to the bathroom and took. “Like what?” I called out.
“Lots of things,” she said. “What you have on your walls. What you wear. What you watch and read and listen to and do. What you eat. Steak or fish. Will you drink juice or soda? Will you drive fast or slow?” She paused. “Will you care for people, or be afraid of them?”
I set the cup down and walked back to the main room. She had stretched out on the sofa. “What makes you think I’m afraid?” I asked. She just looked at me, blank. Her left arm was folded, her head laying gently in her hand. I crawled in beside her and buried my face in her shoulder. She rubbed my back.
That night, at 2:00 A.M., as I stared at the wall across the room, unable to sleep, the phone rang. Laurie sat up with a start as I reached over and picked it up.
“Hello?” I said groggily.
“Nick!” It was Tom, shouting over music and other voices. “Shit, I didn’t wake you up, did I?”
“No,” I said.
“Dude, this party is so awesome! Where the hell are you?” They had told me about it, but I had no interest in it.
“I’m not really—”
“Man, I gotta go. Jason’s done seven Jaeger shots and he’s about to do his eighth. You ought to be here, dude.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
The phone died.
“Who was that?” Laurie asked, yawning.
“Tom,” I said. “He called to tell me Jason had done seven Jaeger shots.”
“Great.”
I woke up around noon. Laurie was facing me, sitting in my desk chair. She was wearing one of my shirts, eating a bowl of cereal. I really like it when she wears my shirts.
“Hey.”
“Morning. Sleep okay?”
“Yeah. You?”
She nodded. “You were in my dream.”
I scowled and propped myself on my elbow, dazed. “That’s weird,” I said. “So were you.” I fell back on the pillow.
“Mm.” Laurie held a hand over her mouth as she finished chewing, her eyes trailing off into that space that takes the place of conversation. “And when I looked up, we were staring out over the sea. It was rocking slowly toward us. Pulsing, almost. It looked rough, but I was totally calm.” I’d had the same dream. Only when I saw the sea, it completely shook me.
“And then I woke up,” she said. “I was pretty rattled; I think I called out right when I woke up. I can’t believe you didn’t hear me.”
I shrugged and rattled the ice in my cup. We were at a pizza joint near her apartment; in fact, the same pizza joint where we’d gone for our first date. The wooden chair was uncomfortable and I wanted to be sitting somewhere else.
The furniture was uncomfortable by design — lots of people in for lunch that had to be gotten out quickly. Give them comfortable chairs and they’ll linger. Make them squirm and moving along becomes the better choice.
But it was nine o’clock at night on a Sunday with one other customer in the place. I chuckled quietly as I decided the store ought to have a second set of furniture to be set out only after prime serving times.
Lauries eyes shot up. “What?” she asked with a smile. I realized it was the first time I’d laughed in a while. I shook my head.
“Nothing,” I said.
She squinted at me, but let it drop. Her camera had been sitting on the table throughout the meal, but she hadn’t used it. Her hand moved toward it, but stopped short and set down on the table. I barely noticed. “So,” she said. “What was your dream about?” She said it casually, almost as an afterthought.
I let out a hostile breath and glared at her. “Please don’t do that,” I said.
“Do what?”
“Act like you don’t really want to ask the question, like you’re just doing it because you have to.”
She scowled. “No, Nick. I really want to know.”
“Then ask it like you want to know.”
“What did I say? All I said was—”
“It isn’t what you said, it’s how you said it.”
“How’d I say it?” She was still expressing more surprise than hostility.
“Like you remembered there was something you wanted to ask me. Like it slipped your mind.”
She suppressed an ironic smile and set her hands flat on the table. “Look, Nick,” she said. “A, I don’t really know what you mean, but B, if I do ask like that, it’s because—”
“How can you say what it’s because, if you don’t know what I mean?”
She stood up.
Oh God no, don’t leave. Please stay. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry Don’t go. Stay. Sit down. I’m sorry.
She reached over and grabbed the camera.
Jesus Christ don’t let this happen make it stop let a robber come in and let me save her from him make me do something I love you I can’t take this it’s not such a big deal stop blowing everything out of proportion don’t leave I need you I’ll die I hate myself I love you I’m sorry. But what I said was, “What are you doing?”
“You know,” she said quietly, “a lot of people think I’m crazy to still be with you. Some people say I’m nuts, that I can find someone better to me. And better for me. They say the best day of my life will be the day you leave it.”
Who are these people and why do you listen to them and surely I’m not that bad and you’ve got problems of your own you know and why do you even care what they think anyway? I was silent.
“Most of the time, I just laugh at them, because they don’t know you like I do.”
Oh yes Laurie that’s who I really am that’s the real Nick and only you can tap into it please stay and help me find it let me capture it for myself help me pry the rusted, bloody door open and jam a wad of flesh in the hinge so it can’t close again please please I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.
“Most of the time their comments don’t ring true.”
I accidentally looked up and noticed her eyes were wet.
“But sometimes they do. You know when that is, Nick?”
I stared at the gnawed crust of my dead slice.
“Every time you fucking interrupt me!” She banged her chair into the table and crossed the room, flinging the door wide and hard; as it slammed shut, the walls of the building dropped away and flaming debris fell from the sky, wrecking civilization and the world and existence and I sat in the cold, quiet chill of the wastefield of the apocalypse, frozen and destroyed.
Wednesday, May 3rd
Dear Jeff,
This is fucking ridiculous, but I don’t know what else to do. Laurie won’t answer my calls. I can’t talk to mom or dad, but I guess you know that. I’ve never been so fucking scared in my life. Well, not since you died.
I don’t even know what to write. I’ve got so much shit inside my head I feel like it’s going to explode. Why did I do that to Laurie? How could I be so stupid? When will I learn? What if she doesn’t give me another chance? What will I do? What would I have to live for? I guess I shouldn’t think like that.
What happened, Jeff? Why didn’t you talk to me? Why did you take that flyer? Why did it fuck you up so bad? Why were those people protesting in the first place? Why did they have to use that picture?
I miss you, Jeff. I miss playing football in the backyard. I miss opening presents at Christmas. I miss hearing about your life. I miss tagging along when you went to the movies with your friends. I miss talking about school. I miss watching sports on TV and going drinking and driving around. I miss your friends. I miss being your friend.
Remember that time when I was eight, and I won second place in that kid’s art show at the museum? That was probably the best feeling of my life. But it wasn’t even winning -- for the whole day while they showed our paintings, I sat across the room (it was a huge room, remember?) and watched people look at my painting. I couldn’t believe that people actually wanted to see something I had made. How come nobody cares about that stuff when we grow up?
Why did you even join the Army?
I dialed Laurie’s number. Lately it was the first thing I did when I woke up. If she wasn’t answering, it didn’t hurt anyone to try, right? I waited for the third ring so I could hang up; I never left messages. Instead of the third ring, though, there was a click and silence.
“Laurie?” I said, ice in my spine.
“Look, Nick,” she said, tired. “If I’m not going to talk to you, what makes you think I’ll talk about you to your friends?”
I closed my eyes. I’d asked Jason to call her and try to see how she was. Jason was the worst conversationalist I knew, but Laurie had borrowed a CD from me that I had borrowed from him, so he had a real reason to call her. I guessed he didn’t make the transition too smoothly.
“I dunno,” I said. We need to talk. My eyes were still closed, and I realized she wasn’t talking. “Laurie,” I said. “I need to talk to you.”
There was a pause, then she sighed. “It’s early,” she said. “Call me back at 10:30.”
I nodded, staring at the blackness of my eyelids.
“Okay?” she asked quietly.
“Yeah, sure,” I said. She hung up. I looked at the clock. It was 7:15. I fell back asleep, making a mental note to call her again at 10:30.
Laurie was in my dreams on many nights, so her appearance in my dream that morning was no surprise. But it had been all fields and flowers and sex in heaven, except the day we split up. That dream had been weird — just like she’d said.
Now we were in a plane, hurtling toward the ground. Things were on fire. Windows were broken and people were screaming. I was in the pilot’s seat and Laurie was the copilot. I was trying to level the plane and she kept trying to reach over and take the controls. Every time she did, I’d lose my concentration and we’d spin out of control.
“I can get it,” I said tensely. She reached over and tried to grab the controls. “Why are you doing that?” I yelled.
She looked over with a level gaze. “You told me to,” she said. I looked down and realized I wasn’t holding the control. I looked up at the world outside. Far away, I could see the sea. It was rough but calming, like Laurie had described about her dream.
An alarm marked “red alert” began flashing and wailing. I shut my eyes tight, bracing for the crash. Then I realized it was my alarm. I’d set it for 10:00.
“You’re early, Nick.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Should I call back?”
“No.”
Oh God, Laurie, there’s so many things I have to tell you. You have to come back to me. We’ve got to be together. I can’t live without you. You’re the only person I feel normal with. There is no pain like the pain I feel right now. I don’t want to go on if it has to be alone. I can’t. Please come over. Whatever it was, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. What I said was, “Thanks for picking up. Can we talk?”
“We are talking.”
“Can I come over?”
There was a long pause. A very cold, spacious silence.
“I don’t really think that’s a good idea.”
My chest contracted into itself and stabbed me with its blades. “Why not?” I asked weakly.
“Because I feel like I’m heading back into trouble.”
You’re not, I promise. I’m sorry for what I did. It won’t happen again. I’m sorry. I murmured.
“You know that saying, ‘Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me’? Well, that’s how I feel right now. Why should I let that happen?”
It won’t. If it does, you can kill me. You can leave me if it does and I’ll totally never bother you again. I’ll forget you even existed. But let me prove that I won’t do it. I sniffed. She didn’t talk. We waited.
“I mean, do you even know what youi want out of this relationship?”
Yes, I do. I really do. I’ve found out. This suffering had taught me the value of what I didn’t have. I won’t take it for granted again. I want to reconstruct it all from the ground up and have a sense of us based on understanding and respect and not power and domination. I don’t want to have to feel like I’m on top or I’m better or even that we’re different. I want to lie next to you and be at peace. I want to let moments pass without disturbing mindsets of regret and annoyance and irritation. I just want it to happen. I just want to be there. I want you to be here. I can do it, I can be what I want to be. What you want me to be. I can prove it to you, and I can prove it to myself. “I think so,” I said.
“How do you know?” she asked. “How do I know? What’s going to be different?”
My eyes locked onto the floor. Its surface rippled before me, like the caps of the sea in the dream.
Saturday, 2:00 A.M. I was staring at the wall across the room, unable to sleep, when the phone rang. I rolled over and picked it up.
“Hello?” I said groggily. The voice on the other end was too loud.
“Yeah,” I said. “Uh-huh. Okay. Sure, no problem. Okay, bye.” I collapsed again on the bed.
Laurie rolled over and put a hand on my stomach. I covered it with mine. “Tom,” I said. “He needs a ride to work tomorrow.”
“What time?” she asked, sighing into my neck.
“Eight,” I said.
“Eight,” she repeated. “You wanna set the alarm?”
I gently shook my head. “Nah,” I said. “I’ll get up.”
We eased back into the world of the sleeping.
“Nick,” she said softly.
“Mm.”
“I’m very happy. You’re doing good.” She kissed me gently, like a passing bird’s feather settling onto the surface of the sea.