“I’m not taking the test,” you said as you sat cross-legged on your straw meditation mat with your head resting between Claire and Chloe’s names on the wall.
“Why not? It’s just for fun!”
“Why take a test that will only prove that we’re not compatible?”
(This exchange resonates deeply in light of recent events.)
You were afraid that I’d be swayed by any evidence that proved we weren’t meant to be. So you didn’t take the test and I never asked you about it again.
From what I’ve read, I can pretty much guarantee that I’m a Communicator with a bit of Commander, which means that the female side of my psyche is barely outmuscling the male side in the tug-of-war battle over my brain. I would’ve bet my first paycheck that you are a Creator. And not that you care, because you think it’s all crap, but Creators like you and Communicators like me are supposed to be ideal matches….
“Is there something wrong?” Dr. Kate asked in a sharp voice, jerking me out of my reverie.
“Oh, yes! I mean, no! Nothing’s wrong.” I didn’t realize that I was frowning until I rearranged my features into a smile. “I was just thinking about how your technology and research could have spared me a lot of heartbreak.”
“That’s my goal: to eradicate heartbreak.”
I smiled wider when she said this because it sounded silly, but then quickly drew my face into a contemplative expression when I realized that she was totally serious.
“It might sound trivial to some,” she said, with the tiniest of nods in my direction on the word some, “but more people are devastated by broken hearts than cancer, AIDS, and all other diseases combined.”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “I’ve never had AIDS or cancer, but I’ve had a broken heart, and I can’t imagine that those diseases could make you feel any worse….”
Dr. Kate puckered her lips in disapproval. Her mouth was so puffed up with plastics that such a tiny, easily-missed gesture took on ginormous, notice-me significance.
“But…uh…,” I stammered.
“What?” Dr. Kate asked.
“Can you really cure heartbreak?” I asked. “I was recently doing some reading for my job, and I learned that the prefrontal cortex shuts down completely when you first fall in love. That’s the part of your brain that controls social judgment, right?”
She nodded.
“So when you first fall in love, you can’t see any of your lover’s faults; you only see an idealized version of him. And over time, when you find out that this perfect guy is a flawed, complicated human being, it can be a huge letdown. Which explains why most relationships implode after a few months or years.”
A half nod.
“I mean, can the iLoveULab brain scans do anything to stop love from fading over time? Doesn’t all passion die and turn into something else, like companionship? I’ve been thinking about breaking up with my boyfriend because no real relationship with him could ever be like the perfect version I imagined when we first fell in love….”
I stopped talking when I realized that Dr. Kate had stopped listening.
“Well, then,” Dr. Kate said, glancing at her diamond-faced wristwatch. “Time’s just about up.”
I waited for her to say something about the next step in the hiring process. She didn’t.
“Well, thank you for meeting with me,” I said. “I know you’re a very busy woman.”
“Yes, I am,” she replied. “Which is why I’m not going to waste any more of my time, or yours.”
I sat up straighter, hoping to hear her say “Congratulations…” But her next sentence began “Unfortunately…”
I wanted to politely excuse myself and ask the Sentinel to borrow his dagger pendant so I could slit my wrists.
forty-two
After my dismissal, I didn’t leave the hotel right away. I wasn’t ready to give up this job that had been mine until I blew it. I went straight to the reception desk, grabbed a complimentary W pen (“Whatcha thinking?”) and postcard (“Whenever Wherever”) to write a quick, apologetic note to Dr. Kate, one that I hoped might salvage the first half of the interview, the part that had gone so, so, so well. But I couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d said about the part that had not.
“Unfortunately,” Dr. Kate had said, “I can’t hire someone who doesn’t believe in iLoveULab.”
“But—”
She raised her hand to shush me. “I didn’t get to be the groundbreaking scientist, author, and entrepreneur I am today by being wishy-washy. Working for me will require no less than a hundred and fifty percent of your time, energy, and enthusiasm. iLoveULab has to be your life.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I—”
“No apologies necessary,” she said with a smile. “This job isn’t right for you, and you’re not right for this job. We’re both better off severing our ties now. I’m being pragmatic.”
“You sound like you’re breaking up with me,” I said, mustering a lame laugh.
“It’s not all that different, actually.”
“But—”
“No buts.” She stood to encourage me to do the same. “Many psych majors are analytical to a fault. It’s the nature of the beast, I suppose. But they do too much thinking and not enough doing.”
She jerked her head on the last word, and I responded with my own empathetic head bob. But it was too late. The mirror was shattered.
“You seemed like the bright, highly motivated go-getter I need to launch this new venture, but you lost your way during our conversation. You tuned out and turned your attentions elsewhere….”
Still wincing at the memory of her admonishment, I sighed and put the pen and the blank postcard in my bag. There’s no point in arguing with someone you know is right. When I trudged outside in defeat, I discovered that the sunny afternoon was quickly turning gray. By the time I emerged from the subway in Brooklyn forty-five minutes later, the heavens were deeply unsettled by the oncoming storm. The sky crackled with electric tension throughout my ten-block walk home.
(PROPHETIC FALLACY ALERT.)
The common area in our subterranean apartment was dark as night, with only a bluish light coming from the TV. I was surprised that anyone was there at all, let alone to find Hope and Manda doubled over in hysterics on the rug. They had obviously been laughing so hard and for so long that their contagious laughter had spread to inanimate objects. Not even the Olga could contain itself, having shaken off the tasteful green slipcover to reveal its true colors, a garish arrangement of orange and yellow stripes.
“Jess! You have to see this!”
“What is—” My question was cut off by their shushing.
I set myself down on the floor in front of the television. An out-of-tune piano plunked out a simple melody I’d never heard before, sung by a class of six-year-olds in loud, unintentional, atonal twenty-five-part harmony. I could barely make out the words:
“April is the month of showers and gloooooom!”
Two kids stood up from the risers, a boy and a girl in matching yellow rain slickers and boots. The boy held up a sign that said APRIL. The girl carried an umbrella.
“May is the month when bumblebees zoooooom!”
“And help make all the flowers bloooooooom!”
Two more kids stood up. The first, a boy, wore a garbage bag painted with yellow stripes, and a set of deelybobber antennae on his head. He held a card that said MAY. The girl was wearing a green leotard and tights, her head surrounded by crinkly pink crepe-paper petals.
“Birds winging, children singing…”
“Badly,” Hope muttered under her breath.
“It’s all a part of spring springing!”
I grabbed the remote and pressed Pause. Manda and Hope protested.
“I’ll turn it back on as soon as you tell me what the hell we’re watching!”
(I know I overreacted, but I was still bummed about my botched interview, and a little more so by the fact that neither Hope nor
Manda—but especially Hope—had asked me about it.)
“Duuuuuuuuh!” Manda said, elementary school style. “It’s our first-grade pageant. ‘Twelve Months of Memories.’ Written and directed by our teacher, the wonderfully talented Mrs. Kornakavitch.”
“Where did it come from?”
“My mom found it in the attic,” explained Manda. “I just got it today. I haven’t seen it in fifteen years!”
“Doesn’t that freak you out?” Hope asked Manda.
“What?”
“That we’re old enough to say, ‘I haven’t seen this in fifteen years.’”
“Or old enough to say, ‘I’ve known you for twenty years.’”
“Twenty years!” Hope exclaimed. “We’ve known each other for twenty years!”
“We have,” Manda said. “It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?”
I nodded in agreement. I often forget that Manda has known Hope longer than I have, that they have about ten years of shared history that has nothing to do with me.
(The irony, in retrospect, is that I wondered if Hope was as unnerved by my parallel friendship with Bridget as I was by hers with Manda. I didn’t even think about you.)
I cringed as the kiddie choir launched into another ditty with a surf-pop melody meant to conjure up images of summertime sunnin’ ’n’ funnin’.
“We get outta sch-oo-oo-oo-oo-ool in June!”
“Have fun ’cause we’ll be ba-aa-aa-aa-ck here soon!”
The calendar boy for June was wearing a T-shirt and swim trunks, accessorized with a snorkel and a life jacket. The calendar girl for June was dressed like the Little Mermaid, with a tangled red wig, a purple shell bikini top, and an iridescent green flipper bottom.
“That’s me!” Manda said.
Was it a trick of the light? Or was it possible that Manda had more significant cleavage at six than I do at twenty-two?
“I had the best costume,” Manda said.
“You totally did!” Hope said, bouncing up and down. “I was so jealous! With my red hair I thought I should have been the Little Mermaid.”
“Hope was December. And she got to sing a solo in the grand finale….”
Hope blushed, feeling shy about a performance that bowed in 1991.
I bragged for her, “I’m sure that’s because she was the only one who could carry a tune.”
I didn’t have to search hard to find Hope on screen because her crazy blaze of hair rose higher than everyone else on stage. That is, except for the boy sitting next to her, who startled me with his familiar face….
“Is that…?” I asked, knowing the answer.
“Yup,” Manda said. “That’s Marcus next to Hope. And she didn’t sing a solo. She sang a duet!” Manda’s laughter had a serrated edge that cut right through me.
Manda fast-forwarded through the rest of summer and fall. A quick succession of twosomes in costume—Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty for July, a fat jack-o’-lantern and a green-faced witch for October—took center stage for a few seconds before returning to their spots on the risers. Manda clicked the remote again after the November Pilgrim and Indian took their bows.
The lights dimmed and a boy and a girl filled the spotlight. They were twin angels, tall, red-haired, and dressed all in white. Fake painted-cornflake snow fell from the rafters and clung to their feathered wings. The piano music swelled and the boy—You! Marcus!—opened his mouth to sing.
“The days go by, go by so fast…”
Hope had the next line.
“What was once the future is now the past…”
Then you took Hope’s hand and you sang together.
“On and on and on we go…And every day we grooooooooow…”
Make no mistake. It was a terrible song. It was a terrible song that has been written countless times by countless hacks before Mrs. Kornakavitch came along. But when you two harmonized, I not only found religion, but I swear I was in rapture. You took the high part and Hope took the low part, and together you created the purest sound I’ve ever heard.
The symphonic ecstasy was short-lived, however, because the rest of the class joined you on the cacophonous chorus:
“School memories we hold so dear, year after year after year!”
You and Hope were still center stage, holding hands under the spotlight. It was the first time I’d ever noticed that you were redheads from opposite sides of the color wheel. Hope’s hair was a yellow-red, closer to orange, hot. You were a blue-red, closer to purple, cool.
“You and Marcus were always so cute together,” Manda said to Hope.
(It was the “always” that first captured, and then refused to relinquish, dominion over my imagination.)
“Those two were inseparable back then,” Manda said to me with a know-it-all air.
“Really?” I asked, looking at Hope, whose eyes stuck to the TV screen.
“Oh, yeah,” Manda said, answering for Hope. “Hope and Marcus were quite the little item at our elementary school.” She assumed a guise of openmouthed, wide-eyed innocence. “You didn’t know?”
“No,” Hope and I replied. We then glanced at each other with a mutual but rare and strange unease.
“I know you don’t like to talk about the whole proposal thing,” Manda said to me, “but you should know that Marcus has been married before…to Hope!”
Hope muttered a faint complaint. “Manda, please…”
Manda was having too much fun to be stopped. “We had a little ceremony on the baseball diamond in fifth grade. The altar was home plate. Hope wore a toilet-paper veil. Marcus offered a ring made of one of those pull-tops off a soda can. I was a bridesmaid with a yellow dandelion bouquet.”
Hope blinked her eyes slowly, almost too slowly to be considered a blink.
I had never heard about any of this. From either one of you. As far as I knew, your only connection to Hope was the dishonorable, drug-addled friendship with Heath that began when you were thirteen and ended when he died. As far as I knew, you had only exchanged unpleasantries with Hope on a handful of occasions, and always in the context of having nothing in common other than your admiration and adoration of her deeply flawed but charismatic older brother.
As far as I knew.
“Well, I’m sure they both forgot….” There was a sly, singsongy lilt to Manda’s voice. She was dropping hints no one was picking up, so she clapped her hands to indicate an abrupt change of subject. “I never forgot the time Marcus totally tried to have sex with me.”
Hope’s head almost unscrewed from her neck. “Manda!”
“It was a beach party the summer after freshman year,” Manda buzzed. “He was high on God knows what, and spouted off poetry to try to impress me.”
I said nothing, somehow intuiting that this wasn’t the big secret destined to be revealed. I mean, of course you tried to have sex with Manda. Of course you read poetry to her, because you often read melancholy poetry to your would-be conquests, ripping off lines from Rimbaud (“Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter…”) or Jim Morrison-ripping-off-Rimbaud (“The days are bright and filled with pain…”) and trying to pass them off as your own. Sometimes, though not as often, the verse was your own (“We are Adam and Eve, born out of chaos called creation…”). These seductive tactics usually worked wonders, though not on the spectacularly dumb ones who thought you were a freak, a Dreg, and would have preferred *NSYNC (“How can it be that right here with me there’s an angel…?”) instead.
Manda’s bosom heaved in heavy-breathing anticipation of my response. Hope sat in a—could it be?—lotus position, with her eyes cast down at her hands tucked inside the bottom of her paint-stained T-shirt. She punched her knuckles outward, stretching the cotton away from her skin.
“Oh, it’s okay,” I said, meaning every word. “I’m not surprised. Marcus got in some serious play before he met me, and I don’t doubt that he hit on you when he was still using. He probably doesn’t even remember doing it.”
(Do you? Actually, forget I e
ven asked. It really doesn’t matter.)
“Hmm,” Manda said, “casually” extending her arms toward the ceiling. “Would he remember something that happened a few days ago?”
Hope’s eyes swelled and her mouth hung open. And that’s when I realized that she and Manda were having a totally different conversation.
“Is there something going on here that I don’t know about?”
“No!” Hope said.
“Yes!” Manda said.
Outside, the skies rumbled and rolled like an express train barreling through a local station.
“It’s not what you think,” Hope said quietly.
“I’m not thinking anything!” I said loudly.
(This was a lie. My mind was reeling with sordid possibilities.)
“Marcus knew,” Hope said.
“Marcus knew what?” I asked, getting more desperate by the second.
“He knew that you wanted to break up with him,” Hope said.
“How?” I asked.
“Because I told him.”
On cue, a thunderbolt tore open the heavens, unleashing a torrent of rain.
forty-three
And that’s when Hope told me everything, or rather, her adaptation of “everything.” And I was going to document it for you word for agonizing word, you know, for posterity, but I just don’t have it in me. Besides, I don’t need to transcribe Hope’s version of your conversation because you were there. Here’s what I know:
After the Shit Lit Hissy Fit, you came back to the apartment all by yourself. You didn’t have a key. You were lucky Hope was there.
Lucky, indeed.
You were upset. You didn’t understand how an evening that had offended you on so many levels could be fun for me. You needed someone to talk to about the growing distance between us, and not just in terms of geography. Since coming off of the silence and solitude of Death Valley, you just couldn’t handle the city’s relentless overstimulation, or understand why I thrived on it.
When I think about you having your Shit Lit Hissy Fit, I can still see you twitching and fidgeting, all five senses shaken up from the inside out. You clasped your hands over your ears, closed your eyes, and tried to curl yourself into a semi-fetal position in your chair. A full-grown man with thick, wooly facial hair, you still looked like a child petrified of the imaginary monster under the bed. If the crowd hadn’t been as loud as it was, I probably would have heard you intoning comforting mantras to yourself.