Turtles All the Way Down

  I needed to reread that case study of the woman who had no symptoms except a stomachache and turned out to have C. diff. Can't get out my phone right now, though--she'll get pissed off--but did that woman have some other symptom at least, or am I exactly like her? Another twinge. Did she have a fever? Couldn't remember. Shit. It's happening. You're sweating now. She can tell. Should you tell her? She's a doctor. Maybe you should tell her.

  "My stomach hurts a little," I said.

  "You don't have C. diff," she answered.

  I nodded and swallowed, then said in a small voice, "I mean, you don't know that."

  "Aza, are you having diarrhea?"

  "No."

  "Have you recently taken antibiotics?"

  "No."

  "Have you been hospitalized recently?"

  "No."

  "You don't have C. diff."

  I nodded, but she wasn't a gastroenterologist, and anyway, I literally knew more about C. diff than she did. Almost 30 percent of people who died of C. diff didn't acquire it in a hospital, and over 20 percent didn't have diarrhea. Dr. Singh returned to the medication conversation, and as I half listened, I started thinking I might throw up. My stomach really hurt now, like it was twisting in on itself, like the trillions of bacteria within me were making room for a new species in town, the one that would rip me apart from the inside out.

  The sweat was pouring out of me. If I could just confirm that case study. Dr. Karen Singh saw what was happening.

  "Should we try a breathing exercise?" And so we did, inhaling deeply and then exhaling as if to flicker the candle but not extinguish it.

  She told me she wanted to see me in ten days. You can kind of measure how crazy you are based on how soon they want to see you back. Last year, for a while, I'd been at eight weeks. Now, less than two.

  On the walk from her office to Harold, I looked up the case report. That woman, she did have a fever. I told myself to feel relieved, and maybe I did for a little while, but by the time I got home, I could hear the whisper starting up again, that something was definitely wrong with my stomach since the gnawing ache wouldn't go away.

  I think, You will never be free from this.

  I think, You don't pick your thoughts.

  I think, You are dying, and there are bugs inside of you that will eat through your skin.

  I think and I think and I think.

  NINE

  BUT I ALSO HAD A LIFE, a normal-ish life, which continued. For hours or days, the thoughts would leave me be, and I could remember something my mom told me once: Your now is not your forever. I went to class, got good grades, wrote papers, talked to Mom after lunch, ate dinner, watched television, read. I was not always stuck inside myself, or inside my selves. I wasn't only crazy.

  On date night, I got home from school and spent a solid two hours getting dressed. It was a cloudless day in late September, cold enough to justify a coat, but warm enough that a sleeved dress with tights could be managed. Then again, that might seem like trying, and texting Daisy was no help because she responded she was going to wear an evening gown, and I couldn't totally tell if she was kidding.

  In the end, I went for my favorite jeans and a hoodie over a lavender T-shirt Daisy had given me featuring Han Solo and Chewbacca in a fierce embrace.

  I then spent another half hour applying and unapplying makeup. I'm not the sort of person who usually gets carried away with that stuff, but I was nervous, and sometimes makeup feels kind of like armor.

  "Are you wearing eyeliner?" Mom asked when I emerged from my room. She was sorting through bills and had spread them out across the entire coffee table. The pen she held hovered over a checkbook.

  "A little," I said. "Does it look weird?"

  "Just different," Mom said, failing to disguise her disapproval. "Where are you headed?"

  "Applebee's with Daisy and Davis and Mychal. Back by midnight."

  "Is this for a date?"

  "It's dinner," I said.

  "Are you dating Davis Pickett?"

  "We are both eating dinner at the same restaurant at the same time. It's not marriage."

  She gestured at the spot next to her on the couch. "I'm supposed to be there at seven," I said. She pointed at the couch again. I sat down, and she put her arm around me.

  "You don't talk much to your mother."

  Dr. Singh told me once that if you have a perfectly tuned guitar and a perfectly tuned violin in the same room, and you pluck the D string of the guitar, then all the way across the room, the D string on the violin will also vibrate. I could always feel my mother's vibrating strings. "I also don't talk much to other people."

  "I want you to be careful about that Davis Pickett, okay? Wealth is careless--so around it, you must be careful."

  "He's not wealth. He's a person."

  "People can be careless, too." She squeezed me so tight it felt like she was pressing the breath out of me. "Just be careful."

  --

  I was the last to arrive, and the remaining space was next to Mychal, across from Davis, who was wearing a plaid button-down, nicely ironed, sleeves rolled up just so, exposing his forearms. I'm not sure why, but I've always been pretty keen on the male forearm.

  "Cool shirt," Davis said.

  "Birthday present from Daisy," I said.

  "You know, some people think it's bestiality, for a Wookiee to love a human," Daisy said.

  Mychal sighed. "Don't get her started on the whole Are-Wookiees-people thing."

  "That's actually the most fascinating thing about Star Wars," said Davis.

  Mychal groaned. "Oh God. It's happening." Daisy immediately launched into a defense of Wookiee-human love. "You know, for a moment in Star Wars Apocrypha, Han was actually married to a Wookiee, but does anyone freak out about that?" Davis was leaning forward, listening intently. He was smaller than Mychal, but he took up more room--Davis's gangly limbs occupied space like an army holds territory.

  Davis and Daisy were chatting back and forth about the dehumanization of Clone troopers, and Mychal jumped in to explain that Daisy was actually kind of a famous writer of Star Wars fan fiction. Davis looked her username up on his phone and was impressed by the two thousand reads on her most recent story, and then they were all laughing about some Star Wars joke I couldn't quite follow.

  "Waters for everyone," Daisy said when Holly arrived to take our drink order.

  Davis turned to me and said, "They don't have Dr Pepper?"

  "Soft drinks aren't covered by the coupon," Holly explained, monotone. "But also, no. We have Pepsi."

  "Well, I think we can spring for a round of Pepsis," he said.

  I realized in the silence that followed that I hadn't spoken since answering Davis's compliment about my shirt. Davis, Daisy, and Mychal eventually went back to talking about Star Wars and the size of the universe and traveling faster than light. "Star Wars is the American religion," Davis said at one point, and Mychal said, "I think religion is the American religion," and even though I laughed with them, it felt like I was watching the whole thing from somewhere else, like I was watching a movie about my life instead of living it.

  After a while, I heard my name and snapped into my body, seated at Applebee's, my back against the green vinyl cushion, the smell of fried food, the din of conversation pressing in from all around me. "Holmesy has a Facebook," Daisy said, "but her last status update is from middle school." She shot me a look that I couldn't quite interpret, and then said, "Holmesy's like a grandmother when it comes to the internet." She paused again. "Aren't you?" she said pointedly, and then I realized at last she was trying to make room for me to talk.

  "I use the internet. I just don't feel a need to, like, contribute to it."

  "It does feel like the internet already contains plenty of information," Davis allowed.

  "Wrong," Daisy said. "For instance, there is very little high-quality romantic Chewbacca fic on the internet, and I am just one person, who can only write so much. The world needs Holmesy's Wookiee
love stories." There was a brief pause in the conversation. I felt my arms prickling with nervousness, sweat glands threatening to burst open. And then they went back to talking, the conversation shifting this way and that, everyone telling stories, talking over one another, laughing. I tried to smile and shake my head at the right times, but I was always a moment behind the rest of them. They laughed because something was funny; I laughed because they had.

  I didn't feel hungry, but when our food arrived I picked at my veggie burger with a knife and fork to make it look like I was eating more than I could actually stomach. Eating quieted the conversation for a while, until Holly dropped off the check, which I picked up.

  Davis reached across the table and put his hand on top of mine. "Please," he said. "It is not an inconvenience to me." I let him take it.

  "We should do something," Daisy said. I was ready to go home, eat something in private, and go to sleep. "Let's go to a movie or something."

  "We can just watch one at my house," Davis said. "We get all the movies."

  Mychal's head tilted. "What do you mean you 'get all the movies'?"

  "I mean, we get all the movies that go to theaters. We have a screening room, and we . . . just pay for them or whatever. I actually don't know how it works."

  "You mean, when a movie comes out in theaters, it . . . also comes out at your house?"

  "Yeah," Davis said. "When I was a kid, we had to have a projectionist come out, but now it's all digital."

  "Like, inside your house?" Mychal asked, still confused.

  "Yeah, I'll show you," Davis said.

  Daisy looked over at me. "You up for it, Holmesy?" I contracted my face into a smile and nodded.

  --

  I drove Harold to Davis's house; Daisy drove with Mychal in his parents' minivan, and Davis led in his Escalade. Our little caravan headed west on Eighty-Sixth Street to Michigan Road, and then followed it down past Walmart, past the pawnshops and payday loan outfits to the gates of Davis's estate across the road from the art museum. The Pickett estate wasn't in a nice neighborhood, exactly, but it was so gigantic that it functioned as a neighborhood unto itself.

  The gate opened, and we followed Davis to a parking lot beside the glass mansion. The house looked even more amazing in the dark. Through the walls, I could see the whole kitchen suffused with gold light.

  Mychal ran up to me as I exited Harold. "Do you know--oh my God, I've always wanted to see this house. This is Tu-Quyen Pham, you know."

  "Who?"

  "The architect," he said. "Tu-Quyen Pham. She's crazy famous. She's only designed three residences in the U.S. Oh my God, I can't believe I am seeing this."

  We followed him into the house, and Mychal exclaimed a series of artist names. "Pettibon! Picasso! Oh my God, that's KERRY JAMES MARSHALL." I only knew who Picasso was.

  "Yeah, I actually pressed Dad to buy that one," Davis said. "Couple years ago, he took me to an art fair in Miami Beach. I really love KJM's work." I noticed Noah was lying on the same couch, playing what appeared to be the same video game. "Noah, these are my friends. Friends, Noah."

  "'Sup," Noah said.

  "Is it okay if I just, like, walk around?" Mychal asked.

  "Yeah, of course. Check out the Rauschenberg combine upstairs."

  "No way," Mychal said, and charged up the stairs, Daisy trailing behind him.

  I found myself pulled toward the painting that Mychal had called "Pettibon." It was a colorful spiral, or maybe a multicolored rose, or a whirlpool. By some trick of the curved lines, my eyes got lost in the painting so that I kept having to refocus on tiny individual pieces of it. It didn't feel like something I was looking at so much as something I was part of. I felt, and then dismissed, an urge to grab the painting off the wall and run away with it.

  I jumped a little when Davis placed his hand on the small of my back. "Raymond Pettibon. He's most famous for his paintings of surfers, but I like his spirals. He was a punk musician before he became an artist. He was in Black Flag before it was Black Flag."

  "I don't know what Black Flag is," I said.

  He pulled out his phone and tapped around a bit, and then a screeching wave of sound, complete with a screaming, gravelly voice, filled the room from speakers above. "That's Black Flag," he said, then used his phone to stop the music. "Want to see the theater?"

  I nodded, and he took me downstairs to the basement, except it wasn't really a basement because the ceilings were like fifteen feet high. We walked down the hallway to a bookshelf lined with hardcover books. "My dad's collection of first editions," he said. "We're not allowed to read any of them, of course. The oil from human hands damages them. But you can take out this one," he said, and pointed at a hardcover copy of Tender Is the Night.

  I reached for it, and the moment my hand touched the spine, the bookshelf parted in the middle and opened inward to reveal the theater, which had six stadium-style rows of black leather seats. "By F. Scott Fitzgerald," Davis explained, "whose full name was Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald." I didn't say anything; I couldn't get over the size of the movie screen. "It's probably obvious how hard I'm trying to impress you," he said.

  "Well, it's not working. I always hang out in mansions with hidden movie theaters."

  "Want to watch something? Or we could go for a walk? There's something I want to show you outside."

  "We shouldn't abandon Daisy and Mychal."

  "I'll let them know." He fiddled around on his phone for a second and then spoke into it. "We're going for a walk. Make yourselves at home. Theater's in the basement if you're interested."

  A moment later, his voice began playing over the speakers, repeating what he'd just said. "I could've just texted her," I said.

  "Yeah, but that wouldn't have been as awesome."

  --

  I zipped up my hoodie and followed Davis outside. We walked in silence down one of the asphalt golf paths, past the pool, which was lit from inside the water, slowly changing colors from red to orange to yellow to green. The light cast an eerie glow up onto the windows of the terrarium that reminded me of pictures of the northern lights.

  We kept walking until we reached one of the oblong sand bunkers of the golf course. Davis lay down inside of it, his head resting on its grassy lip. I lay down next to him, our jackets touching without our skin touching. He pointed up at the sky and said, "So the light pollution is terrible, but the brightest star you see--there, see it?" I nodded. "That's not a star. That's Jupiter. But Jupiter is, like, depending on orbits and stuff, between three hundred sixty and six hundred seventy million miles away. Right now, it's around five hundred million miles, which is around forty-five light-minutes. You know what light-time is?"

  "Kinda," I said.

  "It means if we were traveling at the speed of light, it would take us forty-five minutes to get from Earth to Jupiter, so the Jupiter we're seeing right now is actually Jupiter forty-five minutes ago. But, like, just above the trees there, those five stars that kind of make a crooked W?"

  "Yeah," I said.

  "Right, that's Cassiopeia. And the crazy thing is, the star on the top, Caph--it's 55 light-years away. Then there's Shedar, which is 230 light-years away. And then Navi, which is 550 light-years away. It's not only that we aren't close to them; they aren't close to one another. For all we know, Navi blew up five hundred years ago."

  "Wow," I said. "So, you're looking at the past."

  "Yeah, exactly." I felt him fumbling for something--his phone, maybe--and then glanced down and realized he was trying to hold my hand. I took it. We were quiet beneath the old light above us. I was thinking about how the sky--at least this sky--wasn't actually black. The real darkness was in the trees, which could be seen only in silhouette. The trees were shadows of themselves against the rich silver-blue of the night sky.

  I heard him turn his head toward me and could feel him looking at me. I wondered why I wanted him to kiss me, and how to know why you want to be with someone, how to disentangle the messy knots of wanti
ng. And I wondered why I was scared to turn my head toward him.

  Davis started talking about the stars again--as the night got darker, I could see more and more of them, faint and wobbly, just teetering on the edge of visibility--and he was telling me about light pollution and how I could see the stars moving if I waited long enough, and how some Greek philosopher thought the stars were pinpricks in a cosmic shroud. Then, after he fell quiet for a moment, he said, "You don't talk much, Aza."

  "I'm never sure what to say."

  He mimicked me from the day we'd met again by the pool. "Try saying what you're thinking. That's something I never ever do."

  I told him the truth. "I'm thinking about mere organism stuff."

  "What stuff?"

  "I can't explain it," I said.

  "Try me."

  I looked over at him now. Everyone always celebrates the easy attractiveness of green or blue eyes, but there was a depth to Davis's brown eyes that you just don't get from lighter colors, and the way he looked at me made me feel like there was something worthwhile in the brown of my eyes, too.

  "I guess I just don't like having to live inside of a body? If that makes sense. And I think maybe deep down I am just an instrument that exists to turn oxygen into carbon dioxide, just like merely an organism in this . . . vastness. And it's kind of terrifying to me that what I think of as, like, my quote unquote self isn't really under my control? Like, as I'm sure you've noticed, my hand is sweating right now, even though it's too cold for sweating, and I really hate that once I start sweating I can't stop, and then I can't think about anything else except for how I'm sweating. And if you can't pick what you do or think about, then maybe you aren't really real, you know? Maybe I'm just a lie that I'm whispering to myself."

  "I can't tell that you're sweating at all, actually. But I bet that doesn't help."

  "Yeah, it doesn't." I took my hand from his and wiped it on my jeans, then wiped my face with the sleeve of my hoodie. I disgusted myself. I was revolting, but I couldn't recoil from my self because I was stuck inside of it. I thought about how the smell of your sweat isn't from sweat itself, but from the bacteria that eat it.

  I started telling Davis about this weird parasite, Diplostomum pseudospathaceum. It matures in the eyes of fish, but can only reproduce inside the stomach of a bird. Fish infected with immature parasites swim in deep water to make it harder for birds to spot, but then, once the parasite is ready to mate, the infected fish suddenly start swimming close to the surface. They start trying to get themselves eaten by a bird, basically, and eventually they succeed, and the parasite that was authoring the story all along ends up exactly where it needs to be: in the belly of a bird. The parasite breeds there, and then baby parasites get crapped out into the water by birds, whereupon they meet with a fish, and the cycle begins anew.