Of course I want to hear his theory, but I’m torn. “Um, Finn, I hate to tell you this, but you just turned things back to me, which again isn’t fair, and you still haven’t answered my question!”
He bites his lip. “Hmmm. You noticed that?”
“Yes.”
“You just need a little more patience, because I was about to return to me when you interrupted.” Now Finn is grinning.
I try hard not to return the grin. “It’s also true that I’m intrigued about what you said. So? I’m waiting.”
“All right. Photographic memory, how does it work?” He takes a deep breath, then starts to talk like he’s reciting something to a teacher who is quizzing him. “Synesthesia is a condition that affects the senses, where the stimulation of one of the senses has a corresponding effect on a different one. For example, a synesthete might say that they can ‘taste’ the round shape of an orange, or ‘hear’ the color of the sky. The way a synesthete’s senses blend together is usually consistent. The person will always ‘hear’ the blue hue of the sky, or will always ‘taste’ the round shape on an orange. If the person is a lexical synesthete, then each different word they hear or see will have its own particular color.”
I wait to make sure that he’s done. Then I say, “You sound like a dictionary.”
Finn shrugs. “A photographic memory can work like that. I’ve read about synesthesia before, and I can recall exactly what I read as though I’m reading it now.” Before I can respond, he goes on. “Doesn’t synesthesia sound a little like what you experience with your visions?”
A big wave crashes loud against the rocks, spray darting high in the air. “Maybe? There’s certainly a lot of color, and there’s often sound, and my senses are definitely all involved and seem connected to the colors. But even though that’s an interesting theory, you said that synesthetes experience color and the senses the same, always. And my visions aren’t predictable like that.”
Finn is nodding. But he looks a bit disappointed.
I raise my eyebrows. “Sad you couldn’t scientifically diagnose my situation?”
“Maybe a little? I liked my theory.”
I laugh. “So what does your mother think of your, um, abilities? And the rest of your family, for that matter, since you haven’t told me anything about them.”
His expression darkens. “Things with my family are complicated. They don’t exactly appreciate my ‘abilities,’ as you put it, or my path to becoming a neuroscientist.”
“What? That’s crazy! How could they not! What you do is—”
“—Marlena,” Finn interrupts.
I stop speaking.
He closes his eyes. “Let’s talk about something else. I’ll tell you about my family some other day.”
I study Finn’s profile, lit by the sun. “Okay,” I say quietly. “But there is something else I’m really curious about.”
Finn’s eyes flicker open and he turns back to me. “And what is that?”
I point to his sleeve. “I want to know about the heart you have under there.”
“My tattoo?”
“Yes. You wouldn’t tell me about it yesterday, but today you have to.”
“It’s just a heart.”
I know when someone is not telling the truth, and Finn is not telling me the truth right now. Like my healings, there is something intimate about inking an image onto one’s skin. Something permanent and alive with meaning. “Is it about another girl?” I ask, then wish the gulls overhead had chosen this moment to cry out, drowning my words.
A smile dusts Finn’s lips. “No, nothing like that. It’s just a reminder, I guess. Not to be all up in my head.”
I pull my knees tight to my chest. “What do you mean?”
He shrugs. “I’m already a doctoral student, and I graduated college when I was nineteen. The intellectual side of me has always been what dominates. I got the tattoo so that I’d have a visual reminder of this other part of me and of life, a reminder that there’s more to me than just my brain. Every time I look at my arm or see myself in the mirror, I also remember that it’s okay to feel.” Finn runs a hand through his hair. “I told you yesterday, I’m also a bit of a freak. People have treated me differently all my life. They have ‘great hopes for me’”—he flicks two fingers around this phrase—“so the heart tattoo is there also to remind other people that I’m more than my brain. Even Angie.”
Finn’s words fade. “I’ve never needed that reminder,” I tell him. “From the moment I first saw you, all I could sense was the heart in you.” I exchange this confession in turn for his. The way the sun shines on Finn’s face makes me wonder if he is human or something else, an ethereal creature that doesn’t belong to this earth, that might disappear into the fabric of this universe at any minute.
“Really, Marlena?”
“Yes,” I say.
His hand reaches for mine. “What else did you see, visionary girl?”
The tips of his fingers find the center of my palm. I watch as they slide across my skin. I wait for those half visions I always have with Finn to appear, the sense of something with Finn. But this time is different. A feeling in my belly awakens, an unfamiliar warmth, and I find myself leaning into him, reaching my hand to his shoulder, then his neck, snaking my arm around him and pulling him close until our faces are inches apart, his half-lidded eyes watching mine.
“I don’t know what I’m doing, Finn,” I tell him.
I say this, but then, I also absolutely do know, in the same way I’ve always known how to heal. Wanting another person is like a tiny stirring of the soul, a spark that spins outward until it is lighting up your insides with fireworks. They spill through the thin layer of skin that contains the body and outward, straight into the body of another. Just like a healing, but also not.
“I think you do, Marlena,” he breathes.
When our lips touch, I discover a new way to encounter the soul of another person, to walk within its gorgeous depths, to play hide-and-seek with the most secret parts of who they are. If there were colors, they’d be bright reds and pinks and they would light up my brain like a sunset. Maybe they are doing just that, right now.
TWENTY-THREE
When I walk into the house later on, I stop, as usual, to listen.
There isn’t a sound.
But as I head to the stairs, still light-headed from saying good-bye to Finn, I see her. My mother is outside in the backyard, sitting on one of the lawn chairs she never uses, staring at the ocean. Her knees are pulled to her chest, arms wrapped around her shins. Her dark hair is long and loose and some of it falls down her back, some of it over her shoulders. Once again I am struck by how young she seems, vulnerable almost. This and that her clothing is different. She’s wearing jeans and a big billowy black top.
She never wears black. It’s the color of mourning, she always says. It reminds her of those terrible days after I was born.
Is my mother in mourning?
I open the screen door and step outside.
She turns her head. “Marlenita.”
My mother hasn’t called me that in ages. I walk over to her chair, the grass a luscious sea underneath my feet in the fading light. “Hi.”
“How was your day?” Her voice is soft, her words are soft, but her eyes are difficult to read.
I think about my answer, worrying that her simple question is also a trap. I decide to tell her the truth. “It was good. Really good. The best day I’ve had in a long, long time.”