Some of the Parts (12 page)

wednesday
10/1

A
t the YMCA, there's an indoor pool under a huge glass atrium, and you can stand on a balcony above it and watch the kids take their swimming lessons. It's like a human aquarium, small creatures in brightly colored swimsuits, oblivious to my presence. Suspended in the water, arms and legs spread in all directions, the children look like they're parachuting from a great height. They are unafraid. They are free.

We used to take lessons in that pool, and Nate would stand on the balcony after his were over and sometimes I would wave to him as I floated around on my back. So trusting. So sure he would be there when I looked up.

After the accident, I went there a few times when my mother wanted to walk around the indoor track but wouldn't leave me home alone. No one ever asked me what I was doing. I guess they assumed I had a little brother or sister in the pool. If they had asked, that's what I would have told them.

Now—hoping for another boy-in-the-bleachers moment—I catch myself looking for him again: through store windows as I walk by, in passing cars, behind trees in the park. Despite the lump in my throat, the jumpy heart locked in my chest. I want to make it work, find a way to keep him and get over it at the same time.
Can I have both?
I ask myself again.

Mr. Cunningham says there is no randomness in the universe, only the illusion of randomness. Patterns that we cannot detect because they are too large, or too small.

He reminds me of this when he hands back my mollusk essay after class.

“Sometimes nature fools us,” Mr. Cunningham says. “Sometimes we convince ourselves that nature needs our help, when all along nature has a bigger plan that we can't see.”

“Sounds like what people say about God. That there's this big master plan and we're just too small or too stupid to understand it.”

Mr. Cunningham shrugs. “I'm not a religious man. But I do believe there are forces at work on a scale that I cannot fully understand. Maybe biology is my religion.”

“You should write Ms. Pace a song about that,” I tell him. Mr. Cunningham pinkens. Mel told me that Mr. Cunningham uses his free periods to practice medieval love chants on the guitar. She also told me that Mr. Cunningham has a terrible singing voice. I don't want to seem cruel.

“Or a poem, maybe,” I offer.

“Yes, well,” he says. “In any case, I'm going to ask you to rewrite your essay. There's no rush, take your time. But the assignment was about shared characteristics of freshwater and terrestrial mollusks.” He dips his head to the side a little as he says this, as if he's apologizing for trying to teach me. “I like what you wrote very much. But it's a bit…philosophical.”

I tell him that I understand, and politely decline his offer of a late pass for my next class. There isn't a teacher in this school who will give me detention. I'm not as squeamish about their pity as I used to be. I'll take any kind of advantage I can get, especially now.

Dad flipped the calendar page this morning. It's October first.

Red Circle Day is on full display. If I want Chase's father to help me, I can't put this off any longer.
It doesn't have to be weird,
I tell myself.
Just keep it simple.

I happen to know that Chase has calculus this period, so I saunter casually past his classroom and linger for a moment in the door's tall rectangular window. It takes about ten seconds for him to look up. Mel sees me, too. I shake my head and point at Chase, who quickly raises his hand and asks for a bathroom break. Dr. Monroe is about five hundred years old and probably spends most of his day in the bathroom. He will not deny any of his students the same privilege.

“What's up?” Chase asks after closing the classroom door behind him. He is wearing his
BOOM
shirt again. Mel scowls at us through the window, so I take a few steps backward and Chase follows. As we huddle against the water fountain, my keep-it-simple plan suddenly seems all wrong, and instead I say, “Do you believe there are universal forces that operate according to natural laws we cannot comprehend?”

His brown eyes widen. “Just a casual inquiry?”

“I'll rephrase. If Harry Houdini wanted to come back, do you think he could choose how he appeared, or who he could talk to? Are there operational rules for the afterlife?”

Chase strokes an invisible beard. “My best guess is that the connection between our realm and that one would be subject to some kind of structure, yes. But it might not be constant. It might not be the same for everyone.”

“That's not a whole lot of help,” I tell him.

“Sorry,” he says. “I'm just a guy who's supposed to be going to the bathroom.”

I can't for the life of me figure out how to steer the conversation properly, and even Dr. Monroe has limits on how long he'll let a student disappear. Then I notice that Chase is looking at my mouth. Either I have something on my face or I have just discovered that even this strange boy with the binder is not immune to hormones. My various inner voices can debate this discovery later. “What are you doing after school?” I ask.

“You tell me.”

“Can I come over?”

He looks startled, and then pleased. “Sure,” he says.

I see tiny Tallies in his pupils, like the angel and the devil on the shoulders of a cartoon hero. “I'll ride over later,” I tell him. Whatever he is about to say in return is cut short by a set of sharp staccato taps on the door. Dr. Monroe is glaring at us through the glass.

“Later,” I repeat.

And Chase echoes me. “Later.”

I take out my phone as the door closes behind him and compose a text to Mel:

walking home

My thumb hovers over the send button. I have never lied to her before. I have never needed to. Is this what happens to secrets? They split like atoms and create lies as their offspring? Mel doesn't expect me to tell her what I do or where I go, and yet I feel like I owe her an explanation for why I just pulled Chase out of class instead of her. A reason, even if it's an untrue one. Because I am starting to realize that, all this time, I've been expecting her to leave on her own, for our strange friendship arrangement to run its course, for her to move on to some other cause or passing attachment. And now I think it is not going to happen that way. Our moment in the stairwell yesterday taps me on the shoulder and whispers,
I can't tell her, not yet. She'll take it. She'll turn it into something else.

Mel has been my companion in limbo.

But I'm climbing out of limbo, or trying to.

I send the text, and then I start for home. I walk through the empty halls, my footsteps calling out through the endless air, daring someone—anyone—to find me.

The Invasion of the Mollusk: An Essay
by Tallie McGovern

The pearl begins as a parasite, a microscopic invader, irritating a mollusk's slippery mechanisms like a deep itch so that the mollusk must cover it up. Layers upon layers of calcium carbonate trap the offending particle, held together with an organic compound called conchiolin, until whatever it was that snuck into the mollusk's shell—probably when it opened up to eat, or breathe—is contained, and made beautiful.

A pearl rarely forms spontaneously, or naturally. Most come from “farms,” where thousands of mollusks are implanted with tissue from other mollusks, tiny transplanted pieces that are foreign and therefore biologically objected to by the recipients. Often a small bead is added to the donor tissue, to ensure the spherical shape of the pearl in its final form. The bead assists the unwitting clam or mussel in making something valuable out of what must be a rather unpleasant experience.

But does the mussel mind? Does the clam have the capacity to think, “This bead is driving me crazy”? The whole idea of irritation, discomfort, pain—it's really just a problem for us humans, isn't it? A mollusk does not feel loss, or regret. It does not bemoan its fate. It accepts the bit of tissue from its fellow mollusk because it has no choice, and that bit is given its own mineral compartment and is more or less fully assimilated until someone, some pearl farmer, comes along and removes it. And then what? Does the mollusk
miss
the pearl? Does it feel empty, somehow?

Does it want the pearl back?

T
he bike ride to Chase's house feels shorter this time. The first time you go anywhere, it feels like it takes a while, even in your own town, even if it's not a long trip. The second time is always quicker than you remember, and this time I have Matty feeding music into my ears. Three songs. That's all it takes to get there.

I'm wearing the same clothes I wore to school this morning. The thought of Chase's rods and cones having recorded the shape of my mouth almost caused me to change, but then I decided against it. Chase seems like a guy who notices things like that and I don't want to give him the wrong idea. This is just business, research. At least for now.

I'm not put back together yet.

So I play it casual, tell him “Hey” when he opens the door, as if I wasn't half thinking all the way here about what to say. What not to say. And he says it back, easy as can be, and I walk into his house like I've done it a hundred times before. And it feels so normal, until he asks the question I should have seen coming, the one I didn't prepare for.

“What are you doing here?”

I can think just fast enough to throw him an answer he'll catch.

“I wanted to see it again. The binder.”

Chase looks mildly surprised. “Really? Um, okay. Sure.” He leads me into the den, where overstuffed couches laden with throw pillows and cashmere blankets wait patiently to embrace us. My mother would love this room—the books shelved by color, assorted sculptural objects arranged to look like someone just set them there. It looks like a room that Mom and Susan and Michelle would have decorated. Maybe they did.

And on the massive coffee table, the binder awaits. “It's so weird you came over when you did,” Chase says. “I was just about to put it away.”

“Then I'm glad I caught you.”

“I'll be right back,” Chase says. “I've got some new pages to put in.”

It feels like a secret even though I've seen it before. I lean over and touch it gently, as if it might object or raise a voice I didn't know it had. But it remains a silent thing, even as I draw it closer, even as I open the cover and look inside.

In the front are the pages I have already seen. I flip past those, trying to discern whether there's a system or an order to their placement in the book. But it seems to be random, and there are too many for me to look at them all. Then I think about what the binder is, what it means. That it contains the ends of all of these lives, that the end is where the meaning lies.

I flip to the very back, then let the pages fly forward again, their plastic edges caressing my thumb. Until I see him.

He's still there.

Nate.

His name. His picture. And I am surprised to see that he doesn't look exactly as I remember him, that without the intrusion of actual photographs of him, my memory has made him different. I tell myself that pictures can be deceiving, inaccurate. I'm sure the images of me on Mel's phone don't look anything like me. But I know, too, how unreliable memory can be—like eyewitness testimony, colored and recast by new experiences. I turn the pages, wondering what made Chase deem these stories binder-worthy, how these families have gone on, whether they're even remotely the same.

Chase thinks it's vital to remember the ones who died, but I think of the people left in the wake of each death. The survivors.

There are always survivors.

A man appears in the doorway. “You must be Tallie,” he says. His face is friendly, his voice deep and warm. It's like looking at a future projection of Chase, which comforts me. The idea of Chase's future, that he will have one despite his fixation on the past.

“I must be,” I tell Dr. Abbott. “Nobody else wants the job.”

“What have you got there?” he asks, not moving from the door but thrusting his eyes at the binder. I slam it closed, the cover almost whistling as it slices through the air.

“Just a school project,” I tell him.

“History?” he asks.

“Mortality,” I say.

“That sounds like a dark subject.”

I shrug, putting my hand protectively on the binder. “That's why it's black.”

He laughs, a single perfect burst of sound. “Stay for dinner,” he says, and leaves before I can answer. It wasn't a question anyway.

Chase comes in a moment later, looking panicked. I pass him the binder, carefully, and say, “You owe me.” And then, “What kind of music do you like?”

The ensuing grunge retrospective—delivered through conjoined sets of earbuds plugged into Chase's phone—is interrupted precisely at six o'clock, when we are summoned to the table by an actual bell. Chase's mother emerges from some other part of the house, comes to the table paint-spattered and sulky. Chase's father ignores her, instead asking me many questions about myself and my interests. Since I am not yet ready to reveal what my real interests are (organ recipients, subterfuge), I distract him with talk of journalism, field hockey, and aspirations to attend an East Coast college. Total bull. He loves it. Chase does his best to keep a straight face while I mimic things I heard Nate saying during his college-interview prep sessions with my father. Things like “I feel strongly that a small liberal arts college is the best place to develop my understanding of larger ethical issues.”

Mrs. Abbott interjects. “College is overrated. I think every high school graduate should be sent to a foreign country for a year. Just dropped out of a helicopter with a backpack and forced to live by their wits.”

Dr. Abbott rolls his eyes. “As I recall, darling, you said your year abroad was spent in a four-star hotel in Paris.”

Mrs. Abbott sniffs and takes a sip of her wine. “Well, if I had it to do over again, I would like a more authentic experience.”

“By all means!” Dr. Abbott declares. “Just say the word and I will have a helicopter and a parachute ready for you.”

“Oh, you'd love that, wouldn't you,” Mrs. Abbott mutters. She stabs a piece of steak with surprising ferocity and stares at her husband while she chews. The tension between them probably makes a lot of people uncomfortable, but I kind of like it. I can feel this energy in the room, crackling and snapping like burning twigs. It buoys me just enough to step closer to why I'm really here.

“Dr. Abbott,” I say, “I wonder if I could ask you some questions. For an article I'm working on.”

He sits back in his chair and folds his arms. “What kind of article?”

Chase is across the table from me, hovering in my peripheral vision. I hold him there, not looking at him but not blocking him out either, as I repeat what I told Dr. Balder about the school paper and wanting to encourage new drivers to check off the organ donor box on their license application. This is a higher level of pretense than the talk about private colleges and field hockey. I sound even more false to myself, and I'm sure Chase can hear the difference in my voice.

“A worthy cause,” Dr. Abbott says. “I'd be happy to help. Shall we continue our conversation in the library?”

I nod just as Mrs. Abbott pushes herself away from the table and refills her wineglass. “I'll be in my studio,” she announces, and, glass in hand, swoops out of the room and down a hallway to some hidden refuge. One, presumably, that Dr. Abbott never visits.

Chase and I follow his father down a different path, into a room with floor-to-ceiling shelves full of books that are so perfectly aligned it seems impossible that anyone has ever touched them. I pause in the doorway to survey the factory effect and Chase stops, too.

“Since when are you on the paper?” he asks.

“Oh, I'm full of surprises,” I say lightly.

He looks at me and I can see myself, tiny and doubled, in his eyes again.

“I don't think you are, actually,” he says. “I think you hate surprises.”

He's right, of course. And suddenly I have the sinking feeling that I am going to ruin a perfectly good chance to like a boy, a boy who would like me back, by piling secrets on the two of us until we collapse. But here's the thing: There are only so many variations on a story, aren't there? A plot is a line connecting the dots, and it moves ever forward, and it is logical and so is life, most of the time. Short of running naked through a church or setting something important on fire, how many truly unpredictable things can a person do? Mel certainly tries, but even her fits of outsider performance art fizzle out most of the time. And I find this comforting, somehow, the sense that even if I am making a huge mistake right now, I cannot get irretrievably far from where I started. I cannot get totally lost.

But Dr. Abbott is not, as it turns out, a huge amount of help. We start off talking about the importance of organ donors in general, and then I steer him toward the politics of donor-recipient relationships, like, just for instance, if a donor's family member wanted to talk to the recipients, or meet them. For closure.

Every utterance of the word
recipient
is a cold wave crashing over me.

Most of the answers he gives me are not the ones I want to hear. It is nearly impossible for a minor to do anything without the consent or involvement of her parents when it comes to medical matters, and even if the hypothetical girl I present to him was able to ascertain the identities of the organ recipients, they are probably spread out all over the country. Medical information is highly confidential and only the people who work at the various organ procurement agencies would know who got what.

The bottom line is this: I have a single letter to work from, a letter I'm not supposed to have. A letter I was
definitely
not supposed to answer. Even if I can eventually meet this one man in person, he is unlikely to lead me to the others. Not to mention the dilemma of how I would explain why I am not actually a forty-two-year-old interior decorator named Sarah.

Just when I am starting to think that I have made my way to an impassable brick wall, Dr. Abbott gives me one tiny pearl of hope. “It is possible, of course,” he says, “that a donor who dies in a major metropolitan area, with several hospitals or transplant centers nearby, would provide organs to a few people in the same general location. It's unusual, but it's not unheard of.”

Like Boston,
I think. They took Nate to Boston after the accident, airlifted him for emergency surgery. Which turned out to be futile, of course. My parents had fought about which one of them should make the trip and which one should stay with me. And then Nate died before the helicopter landed and the whole argument vaporized, vanished into the already toxic atmosphere. And then the doctor came to tell me and…

I shake my head to clear the memories and try to focus on what Dr. Abbott is saying. “I could put you in touch with a colleague at Brigham and Women's, if you'd like. Although I'm not sure how much detail you need for a school newspaper article.”

It will start to look suspicious, the more specific my questions get. Someone is bound to guess why I'm digging for more. Given the way he's looking at me, Chase already has some idea.

“It might, um, be useful to compare how different hospitals handle these things,” I say.

“Good point.” Dr. Abbott nods. “Very well. Let me speak to my friend and see if she's amenable to being interviewed. If she is, Chase can pass along her contact information. Sound fair?”

Fair has very little to do with anything,
I think. But I tell him that it does, and after thanking him for dinner (and refusing an offer of crème brûlée for dessert, which I don't think my nervous, dishonest stomach could handle), I let Chase walk me to the door. He has been very quiet, and I feel even guiltier for keeping so many secrets. I am tempted to spill them all, to throw them like pennies onto the glossy marble floor and watch them roll into every little hidden corner. If only I could leave them here for someone else to sort through. Chase hands me my bike helmet and I hug it, pressing it against my stomach. He opens the front door and I step onto the porch. The air feels like chilled liquid on my skin, tickling my bare arms. I loop my helmet straps over one hand and pull my sleeves down to cover the map of scars. I wait for one of us to speak.