“What’s going on?”
“He’s playing games. He wanted us to see her and now she’s served her purpose. Poor thing. Why doesn’t he—”
“Hello, kids. Anybody seen the lovely Emmy?”
He must have come from the bathroom behind us. He was wearing a blue baseball cap that said “Japan Professional Baseball—Hanshin Tigers,” and a black-and-white shirt that was designed to look like a crossword puzzle. Both of them were mine.
He pulled out a chair and sat down. “We had this dinner date, but she didn’t show up. I just called and she said she was here. Missed connections, I guess. I loved the show, Wyatt. I was the kid on the left with the colostomy bag.”
“Why did you make her meet us?”
“I didn’t make her; I steered her. Because it’s her time and I thought you three might like to get together for a last drink.”
“Isn’t she already dead?” I tried to say it with venom but it only came out scared.
“She is, but today’s the day she finds out. Big difference. We’ll have dinner, I’ll take her home to bed just like old times, and guess what’ll happen when she hits orgasm – kaboom. Is that how you’d have liked it, Arlen? Our first big time in the sack, but instead of catching AIDS and getting to go out slowly and dramatically like Camille, your last great performance, you’d go right home? It’s not too late. We can still work something out.”
He said it in a relaxed, joking voice. I wanted to reach over and slap His face but that was stupid. Slap Death in the face? He held all the cards and we were only two of them.
“Why are you here? Is it our time too?”
“Nope! Plenty of time to enjoy yourselves yet. I came to show you something I think you’d both like to see. At least I think you would, so I’m going to show you anyway. It’s original. I get so bored doing this the old ho-hum ways that I keep trying to challenge myself to come up with new ideas. Some are good. Not all of them, but some.
“Now, Arlen, I know you. You’re wondering why you got it your way and Wyatt his. So I’m going to show you. I’m going to show both of you.”
“Show us what?”
“The true yous.”
“What does that mean?”
“Come on, don’t be impatient. Wyatt got to put his show on his way. Now it’s my turn.” He sounded irked, as if we weren’t an appreciative enough audience for Him. How human. But I kept forgetting that it was fun for Him to play human, to have the kick of being irked. Before continuing, He hailed the waiter and, ordering a beer, asked if we wanted anything. Wyatt said, “Ten more years?” and Leland laughed so hard all His teeth showed.
“Terrific, Wyatt. That’s what I love about you. Finky Linky at his best. That’s not on my agenda but, hey, who knows, right? Life’s funny. No, I’m going to give you two something much better than ten more years. I’m going to give you your lives.”
Both of us must have stiffened at that, because He put up His hands as if He were trying to hold us back. “No, no, I don’t mean that. I’m going to give you your lives as they really have been.
“Arlen, you’re the big poetry buff. Remember Delmore Schwartz? Come on, the book’s on the third shelf from the bottom of your library. I liked him. Guy went crazy with all the knowledge he had but no one knew it. There’s one poem in particular that’s great. I’ll have to paraphrase it because I didn’t get a chance to memorize it the way the great actress does. ‘No one really knows themselves because they don’t know what the rest of the world thinks of them.’ Hits the nail right on the head. We’re all friends here, so I can tell you a secret. The trouble with people is, no matter how well they think they know themselves, they never really do because they have no idea what other people are thinking of them.”
“You just said that.” I couldn’t stop it. The line popped out by itself.
His face flashed mean, but then He smiled. “I didn’t; Delmore did. And he was a hundred percent correct. What I’m going to do right now, this very minute, is let you both relive your lives with genuine and complete knowledge of what everything and everyone around you is thinking. About you, about their lives, the works. I’ll even let you in on the conversations of plants and other surprises.”
Without an instant’s thought, the idea terrified me. “What’s the point?”
“The point is to show why I don’t like you, and Finky why I like him. That’s what you wanted down deep in your little secret heart, wasn’t it?”
“It’s more than that.”
“It’s always more than that, honey, but I want to do it, so that’s that.”
The waiter brought the beer and Leland thanked him. He took a long drink and licked the shine and bubbles off His lips. “It’s enlightenment. Guys go and live on top of mountains their whole lives to attain it, but I’m giving it to you for free.”
“So I can know more about what my mother thought of me?”
“Partly. Partly. But there were good things too that you didn’t know about. Now you’ll know them too.”
Wyatt reached over and put his hand on Leland’s arm. “I don’t want it. Please don’t do it.”
“It’s done.”
This is what I learned.
First the cells spoke. They sang to each other as they moved and divided and grew together. They were sure of what they were doing. Workmen, they knew their tasks and relished the building of whatever it was they were there to build. They had no idea what it would finally be; they knew only their specific jobs, and they did them and spoke to each other of alignment, angles, space, and distance. If they were dumb, they were dumb with a purpose and weren’t sorry they knew so little. They were here to do this and it was enough for them. It was their life. They died easily because they had no idea of death. It came and they were gone. They had no names, no specific identities. Others were born and replaced them and did the same jobs. Their work was impossibly difficult but they did not know those words, so it was simply work and they did it. Slowly, over months, their labor came together and grew, filled with billions of voices talking, always talking about the job, about what came next, who must move where or what else must be done.
Awareness came slowly, like honey dripping off a spoon. Sensations. Touch. What is this? Awareness comes, but it is not here-I-am so much as the discovery of connected parts. This is here now, but a moment ago I didn’t know that. It belongs. The honey spills onto the table and spirals around, forming a hill that melts down when more honey falls on it, and the hill begins to rise again, over and over. When the drip stops, the pool slowly takes shape and, if allowed, has its final form. This is the finish. This is what it is.
I was born on September 1 under a full moon, and every tide on earth, including the press and heave of my mother, knew each other. Like the cells, they worked in magnificent concert. Off the Cape of Good Hope, they pushed the great fish toward shore and it was a battle of love and esteem between the water and them to see who would win. A young woman in Morocco looked between her legs and ran screaming to her mother, terror-stricken by her womanhood, which had just begun. In Turkey, a man named Haroun watched a woman sleep and said yes to her in his mind because the decision belonged to the moon and not to him.
I knew all this. As I came into the world bathed in my mother’s blood and cries, I still knew that there was no difference between anything but soon there would be because already my brain was bursting and winking, splitting itself into a million distinctions; the awe and flood of the opening moment in life when you learn first of all that you are alone now forever and what you were together a second ago is forgotten.
Mother hated me from the beginning. It was almost soothing to know. She hated the weight, the bad complexion and strange moods, the tension of her belly against her favorite summer dress, and the constant need of her body to give all for two now, always two.