Daryl Gregory: Second Person, Present Tense

Then you look up and realize that you’re on the sidewalk outside an all-ages club, and you’re holding a ten dollar bill, ready to hand it to the bouncer. The music thunders every time the door swings open. You turn to Joelly and-

You’re in someone else’s car. On the Interstate. The driver is a boy you met hours ago, his name is Rush but you haven’t asked if that’s his first name or his last. In the club you leaned into each other and talked loud over the music about parents and food and the difference between the taste of a fresh cigarette in your mouth and the smell of stale smoke. But then you realize that there’s a cigarette in your mouth, you took it from Rush’s pack yourself, and you don’t like cigarettes. Do you like it now? You don’t know. Should you take it out, or keep smoking? You scour your memories, but can discover no reason why you decided to light the cigarette, no reason why you got into the car with this boy. You start to tell yourself a story: he must be a trustworthy person, or you wouldn’t have gotten into the car. You took that one cigarette because the boy’s feelings would have been hurt.

You’re not feeling like yourself tonight. And you like it. You take another drag off the cigarette. You think back over the past few hours, and marvel at everything you’ve done, all without that constant weight of self-reflection: worry, anticipation, instant regret. Without the inner voice constantly critiquing you.

Now the boy is wearing nothing but boxer shorts, and he’s reaching up to a shelf to get a box of cereal, and his back is beautiful. There is hazy light outside the small kitchen window. He pours Froot Loops into a bowl for you, and he laughs, though quietly because his mother is asleep in the next room. He looks at your face and frowns. He asks you what’s the matter. You look down, and you’re fully dressed. You think back, and realize that you’ve been in this boy’s apartment for hours. You made out in his bedroom, and the boy took off his clothes, and you kissed his chest and ran your hands along his legs. You let him put his hand under your shirt and cup your breasts, but you didn’t go any further. Why didn’t you have sex? Did he not interest you? No-you were wet. You were excited. Did you feel guilty? Did you feel ashamed?

What were you thinking?

When you get home there will be hell to pay. Your parents will be furious, and worse, they will pray for you. The entire church will pray for you. Everyone will know. And no one will ever look at you the same again.

Now there’s a cinnamon taste in your mouth, and you’re sitting in the boy’s car again, outside a convenience store. It’s afternoon. Your cell phone is ringing. You turn off the cell phone and put it back in your purse. You swallow, and your throat is dry. That boy-Rush-is buying you another bottle of water. What was it you swallowed? Oh, yes. You think back, and remember putting all those little pills in your mouth. Why did you take so many? Why did you take another one at all? Oh, yes.

Voices drift up from the kitchen. It’s before 6 AM, and I just want to pee and get back to sleep, but then I realize they’re talking about me.

“She doesn’t even walk the same. The way she holds herself, the way she talks . . .”

“It’s all those books Dr. Subramaniam gave her. She’s up past one every night. Therese never read like that, not science.”

“No, it’s not just the words, it’s how she sounds. That low voice . . .” She sobs. “Oh hon, I didn’t know it would be this way. It’s like she’s right, it’s like it isn’t her at all.”

He doesn’t say anything. Alice’s crying grows louder, subsides. The clink of dishes in the sink. I step back, and Mitch speaks again.

“Maybe we should try the camp,” he says.

“No, no, no! Not yet. Dr. Mehldau says she’s making progress. We’ve got to-”

“Of course she’s going to say that.”

“You said you’d try this, you said you’d give this a chance.” The anger cuts through the weeping, and Mitch mumbles something apologetic. I creep back to my bedroom, but I still have to pee, so I make a lot of noise going back out. Alice comes to the bottom of the stairs. “Are you all right, honey?”

I keep my face sleepy and walk into the bathroom. I shut the door and sit down on the toilet in the dark.

What fucking camp?

* * *

“Let’s try again,” Dr. Mehldau said. “Something pleasant and vivid.”

I’m having trouble concentrating. The brochure is like a bomb in my pocket. It wasn’t hard to find, once I decided to look for it. I want to ask Dr. Mehldau about the camp, but I know that once I bring it into the open, I’ll trigger a showdown between the doctor and the Klasses, with me in the middle.

“Keep your eyes closed,” she says. “Think about Therese’s tenth birthday. In her diary, she wrote that was the best birthday she’d ever had. Do you remember Sea World?”

“Vaguely.” I could see dolphins jumping-two at a time, three at a time. It had been sunny and hot. With every session it was getting easier for me to pop into Therese’s memories. Her life was on DVD, and I had the remote.

“Do you remember getting wet at the Namu and Shamu show?”

I laughed. “I think so.” I could see the metal benches, the glass wall just in front of me, the huge shapes in the blue-green water. “They had the whales flip their big tail fins. We got drenched.”

“Can you picture who was there with you? Where are your parents?”

There was a girl, my age, I can’t remember her name. The sheets of water were coming down on us and we were screaming and laughing. Afterward my parents toweled us off. They must have been sitting up high, out of the splash zone. Alice looked much younger: happier, and a little heavier. She was wider at the hips. This was before she started dieting and exercising, when she was Mom-sized.

My eyes pop open. “Oh God.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine-it was just . . . like you said. Vivid.” That image of a younger Alice still burns. For the first time I realize how sad she is now.

“I’d like a joint session next time,” I say.

“Really? All right. I’ll talk to Alice and Mitch. Is there anything in particular you want to talk about?”

“Yeah. We need to talk about Therese.”

Dr. S says everybody wants to know if the original neural map, the old Queen, can come back. Once the map to the map is lost, can you find it again? And if you do, then what happens to the new neural map, the new Queen?

“Now, a good Buddhist would tell you that this question is unimportant. After all, the cycle of existence is not just between lives. Samsara is every moment. The self continuously dies and recreates itself.”

“Are you a good Buddhist?” I asked him.

He smiled. “Only on Sunday mornings.”

“You go to church?”

“I golf.”

There’s a knock and I open my eyes. Alice steps into my room, a stack of folded laundry in her arms. “Oh!”

I’ve rearranged the room, pushing the bed into the corner to give me a few square feet of free space on the floor.

Her face goes through a few changes. “I don’t suppose you’re praying.”

“No.”

She sighs, but it’s a mock-sigh. “I didn’t think so.” She moves around me and sets the laundry on the bed. She picks up the book there, Entering the Stream. “Dr. Subramaniam gave you this?”

She’s looking at the passage I’ve highlighted. But loving kindness-maitri-toward ourselves doesn’t mean getting rid of anything. The point is not to try to change ourselves. Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we already are.

“Well.” She sets the book down, careful to leave it open to the same page. “That sounds a bit like Dr. Mehldau.”