Swansong (33 page)

Maybe it’s true that we were all One Mind.  Maybe it’s true that we were all one “Adam.”  And “Adam” wanted to see all those beautiful, unique universes.  And “Adam” split himself one hundred and eight billion ways.

And I have seen all those universes.

And when I die—and when this universe dies—

The snowflakes melt in the heat of my palm.  Water swims in the grooves of my palmlines.

It’s as if they were never even there.

* * * * *

The church is stony and dim.  Candlelights dance on the carpeted blue predella, candles wrapped up in Christmas garlands.  It’s dark in here, solemn, but serene.  We sit on the oak pews, the priest ascending the altar.

I don’t know that I believe in God.  Half the time I hate God; the other half, I wonder where it’s gone.  But when I think about it, God is probably the one thing every culture on earth has in common.  Every culture has an established path to God.  Individually, there are disbelievers.  But if you could somehow learn all 6,700 languages on the planet at once, I’m sure you’d find that each one has its own name for a higher being.  Tianzhu.  Wakan Tanka.  Theos.  Elohim.  Allah.

And doesn’t that seem like a strange thing for every civilization on the planet to have in common?  That even the two most remote civilizations believe there’s something Greater, something Other?  Why is that?  How does that happen?  My Id wants me to say that God is a stand-in for science where science isn’t immediately available.  My Superego reminds me that there are observable phenomena science can’t even begin to explain.  Science doesn’t know why bicycles don’t topple over.  Science doesn’t know why we have likes and dislikes.  Science says we don’t have a subconscious.  Science says we don’t have minds.

My Ego is silent.  It sits somewhere in between.  God—science—maybe they’re two names for the same event.

Every language has a name for God.  Maybe mine just happens to have two.

My attention wanders.  My eyes wander.  I notice a girl in the front of the church, sitting all alone in an otherwise empty pew.  Her rose-colored curls fall loosely to her shoulders.  The priest calls for the Sign of Peace.  She turns around to shake hands with the old woman sitting behind her.  She catches my eye and smiles at me, an azure ribbon hanging next to her ear.

I smile back.  My smile is weak.  She hasn’t done anything to me.  It’s my own mind that taunts and terrorizes me.  My mind is fragmented.  My skull is cracked and sprained and splintered.

Have I forgotten something important?  That question has been bothering me since I heard it.  It doesn’t have to mean anything.  It came to me in a moment of psychosis.  Why should I consider it?

Why shouldn’t I?

The truth is, I can’t trust my own mind.  I’ve known that for a while now.  I forget things.  I see things.  I have to take seven different medications just to keep my brain from shutting down.

So, then…

What could I have forgotten?  Were Mom and Dad on the brink of divorce?  Did somebody sabotage the car’s brakes?  Do I have another best friend stashed away somewhere?  A secret twin sister studying in Paris?

Why am I considering this?

“The Lord be with you,” says the priest.

“And also with you,” the parish chants back.  They sound like one person.  One mind in many bodies.

* * * * *

We stop in the bagel shop after mass.  I keep telling Judas not to ruin his appetite, but he swears he’ll go nuts if he doesn’t get a cup of coffee.  I guess it’s pretty cold out, and I can’t fault him for that.

The shop, on the other hand, is overheated.  The moment we step inside I start to sweat.  I unzip my jacket.  The windows beside the booths are fogged up where hot meets cold.  Sitting at one of the booths is Sarah Ayello, a spacey girl from school.

I wave at her while Judas gets in line at the counter.  She looks at me like I’m the Eighth Wonder of the World.  That’s always the way it is with Sarah.

“Are you having a good Christmas?” I ask her, just to be friendly.

“I don’t observe Christmas anymore,” she intones, “now that I’ve converted to Wicca.”

“O-Oh.  That’s…”

“Are you okay?” Sarah asks, doe-eyed.  “I heard you were in an accident.”

And I thought I had a bad memory.  “I’m okay.”  We had this talk months ago.

“Your hair’s so short now.  It’s even shorter than mine.”

“That’s…”  Maybe I shouldn’t have struck up a conversation.

“I have to go,” Sarah says, standing.  It’s as if she’s answering a call only she can hear.  “Bye, Wendy.  I hope you feel better.”

She glides out the door like a specter-girl, her half-eaten muffin left behind.  I stare after her in confusion.

“You know her?” Judas asks.  He makes his way over to me, coffee cup in hand.

“A little,” I hedge.  “Let’s go home.”

We head out the door.  The snowfall’s dwindled to a slow and leisurely drift.  A fine white dust coats the sidewalk, trampled to a misty slush underfoot.  I zip my jacket up again.  I can’t feel my fingers.  The city lights drown out the lights of the stars.

Judas tilts his head back to watch the falling flakes.  I grab his coffee cup before he can drop it.

“Hell,” Judas says.  “Last time it snowed I was…”

He doesn’t finish.  I wonder why.

We walk to the street corner.  The asphalt is slippery.  Maybe I shouldn’t have worn my Mary Janes.

“Do you think this universe wants to live?” I ask.

Judas looks at me funny beneath the stoplight.  “You asking me if the universe is sentient?”

I don’t know.  It’s smaller than us.  It’s bigger than us.  It’s everything.  But it’s only the tip of the iceberg.  I don’t even know what you would call that.

“Is it fighting to live?” I ask.  “Or is it fighting to die?”

He takes back his coffee cup.  He drinks from it.  I thought he didn’t like coffee.  I guess I was wrong.

“We live in something called a Fine-Tuned Universe,” Judas says.  “Do you know about three-degree kelvin radiation?”

“Yes.”  Kory told me months ago.  He told me the Big Bang’s still giving off radiation.  The universe is still expanding.

“Right, well, if that radiation were even one degree hotter than it is right now—if it were four-degree kelvin radiation, or five, or six—we’d all be dead.  Matter of fact, there wouldn’t be a universe at all.  The air would be so hot, all the hydrogen would fuse together.  Without hydrogen, there wouldn’t be any stars.  No stars means no Periodic Table.  No Period Table means no water, no oxygen, no nothing.”

It’s all very deliberate.  It’s hard to just dismiss the universe as some cosmic accident.

“In astrophysics,” Judas says, “there’s something called an Anthropic Principle.  Basically these physicists all believe that the universe is as Fine-Tuned as it is because we need it to be.  Because we’re observing it.”

Then we’re back to phenomenology.  “They really think so?  Actual scientists?”

“Actual scientists.  The stability of the universe is predicated on way too many coincidences.  The three-degree kelvin radiation is just one of them.  At some point, it all stops looking coincidental.”

“But…can we really call the universe ‘stable’ if it’s on the verge of dying?”

That’s what I want to know.  I want to know what this universe wants.

But if this universe exists just because we’re looking at it…

Maybe I just don’t want the burden of making a choice.  Maybe I want to run away.

I want Azel.

“Kiddo,” Judas says.  “Anybody ever tell you you can be a mite depressing?”

I rub my cold cheeks, embarrassed.  “Blame my brain.”

“I do.  Don’t worry.”

We cross the street.

“I think it’s Kory’s fault,” I say.

“Kory?”

“The sculptor kid?  A couple floors down?”

“Can’t place him,” Judas says.

“Glasses and earrings?”

“Probably a good thing I can’t place him.”

Well, that’s kind of mean.  “And Azel,” I go on.  “Those boys are crazy.  They make me question…pretty much everything.  Until my head hurts.”  Often literally.

“Azel.  The Arab kid?”

“Why do you word it like that?”  I wonder whether he would call Sarah Ayello “the Italian kid.”  I doubt it, somehow.  But then, I’m not sure she’s even Italian.

“I gotta meet this kid,” Judas decides.  “He spends too much time around you.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“He’s a boy.”

“Jude…”

“He’s the one who gave you that cat, right?  Where’s he getting all these spare cats from?”

“It’s just the one cat.  It’s his sister’s friend’s.”

Now that I think about it, I don’t actually remember Azel handing the cat to me.  This is what I mean when I say I can’t trust my mind anymore.

Azel.  I think of the Pavane.  I think of the way he danced for his semester project.  He was like smoke.  He was like water.  I want to see him dance again.

I almost forgot about my own project.  The Lynx Arc Supercluster.  “Did you get my report card?” I ask.

We’re just outside the shooting gallery now, the one with the spinning holo disc.  “What do you mean?” Judas asks.

“They didn’t send them out yet?”

“Send out what?”

The snow’s stopped falling.  “Report cards.  I thought they’d send them out over the winter break.”

Judas looks at me, candy pink lights from the holo disc spilling down his scarred face.  I can hear muffled voices inside the shooting gallery.  The cops can’t be bothered cleaning up messes like these.  It’s pretty scary how blatant that is.

“Are you talking about school?” Judas asks.

Why is he being so—?  “Yes.  My report card.”  I want to know which subjects I’m failing.

Judas takes my shoulder in a big, skeletal hand.  He draws me away from the rotting, boarded building.  I almost thank him.  It’s on the tip of my tongue.

“You know you haven’t been to school,” Judas says.  “Right?”

A sinking feeling settles in my stomach.  “It’s winter break…”

“Wendy.”

He’s wrong.  He’s wrong.  I say he’s wrong.

“You haven’t been back to school,” Judas says.  “That’s what we agreed on back in September.  You weren’t ready.”

He’s wrong.

“Do you remember the accident?”

“Of course I remember the—”  I don’t remember the accident.  My voice is high, tight.

“Wendy.”

“I want to go home.”

“We’re going.”

No, we’re not.  That’s not home.  That’s not home.

I want to go home.

* * * * *

It’s quiet in my bedroom.  Dark.  I pretend that if I strain my ears hard enough, I can hear the snow falling outside the stucco walls.

I haven’t back to school since June.

That doesn’t make sense.  It absolutely does not make sense.  Of course I’ve been back to school.  I’ve been taking Comp and Precalc.  I’ve been taking History.  I just finished a take-home test on Vercingetorix.  I—

I turn the lamp on low.  I root around underneath my bed.  I stowed my take-home test underneath the box spring.  It’s there, I know it’s there.

My hand meets bare wood.  I find a striped blue legging, rolled up and forgotten.  No take-home test.

I sit back on my knees.  The hardwood’s hard on my knees, my kneecaps sore.

This doesn’t make sense.

He’s wrong.  Judas has to be wrong.  Of course I’ve gone to school, because where else have I been going everyday?  And what about all those paintings Miss Rappaport made me hand in for homework?  Where did they go when I finished painting them?

Did I finish painting them?  Did I paint them?

No.  No, I can’t start thinking like this, because this is
insane
, because of course I’ve gone to school, because—

Wouldn’t Kory have mentioned it if I hadn’t gone to school?  All those times we talked about homework.  All those times he shadowed me between classes.  He—

Oh.

Oh, no.  No.  No.  Don’t tell me that. 
Don’t tell me that.

My stomach tightens and convulses and dark spots coast across my eyes and
don’t tell me that.

“Wendy?”

I vomit on the floor, the back of my throat raw and aching, my stomach crushed against my spine.

A gentle hand rests on the clammy curve of my back.  I know who it is even before I turn around.

“Leave me alone!” I shout at her.

Am I shouting?  I think I’m shouting.  I don’t know that I’m shouting.  I don’t know anything.  I don’t know.  I don’t know.  Kory isn’t real.  No.  I don’t know.