Jessica Chiarella - And Again

“I did Google you, actually,” she says, as if continuing a conversation we’ve already been having.

“I knew it,” I reply, feeling a small swell of triumph beneath my sternum.

“You were one of seventeen congressmen congratulated by a group called American Evangelicals for Life. For your opposition to, among other things, abortion and stem cell research.”

“I’ve been congratulated by a lot of people for my opposition to those things,” I reply.

“I wonder what American Evangelicals for Life would think of you taking part in a medical study involving human cloning.” She kicks off her sandals, flexing her feet. They are the color of frozen milk, so white they are almost blue. “Think they’d be cool with it?”

“Stem cell research takes a life in the name of medicine. I’ve done no such thing.”

“So you believe in God?” she asks. I venture a glance at her. She’s looking at me with such earnestness that I wonder if she’s fucking with me.

“Of course I believe in God. Don’t you?”

She shrugs. “I did when I was a kid. I guess I sort of grew out of it.”

I bristle a little at this, the way I do when faced with any sort of atheism, the people who believe they are superior and enlightened for believing in nothing. As if closing your eyes to the light is somehow the braver decision. “Believing in God isn’t like believing in Santa.”

“How does someone like you take part in this study? If there is a God, I think SUBlife is tantamount to laughing in his face. How do you believe in God and also choose to defy everything you’ve been taught to believe?”

“I’ll tell you and anyone else the same thing. That God put a gun to my head and asked me what I was willing to do to save myself, to save this life that he gave me. And I answered that I would do anything. Because life is that precious to me.”

“I guess I can understand that,” she says, nodding. “But I’d bet you that congressman’s salary of yours that the AEL won’t.”

“Maybe not,” I reply. “Maybe I’ll get lucky, and they’ll never find out.”

“And what if they do? Have you thought about what you’d do if you can’t go back to who you were before?” she asks. Her arm is brushing against mine. I wait a moment to see if she’ll move it, and when she doesn’t I press a bit more toward her.

“I haven’t thought about it much. There’s a lot about me that my constituents haven’t ever found out.” I want to shock this girl, because I think maybe she’s the type who is impressed by things that shock her. “You know, I used to steal cars as a kid.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope,” I reply, “there was this dealership in our town with a real shitty security system. We’d break in at night and get the keys, joyride around. I think to this day Mr. Beecham is wondering why the cars on his lot were always low on gas.” My body is suddenly drunk on the recklessness of being seventeen, punching through the darkness of rural routes without streetlights, hollering into air that was empty for miles. The thrill is so sharp, even in memory, that gooseflesh erupts on my skin. “And you? What will you do if you can’t go back?”

She doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then she shifts, and I feel her arm pull away from mine. Her mouth tastes like heat when she kisses me, like the muggy, asphalt-baked air of summertime. It’s an appalling taste, and wholly intoxicating, like so many things I’ve experienced, a muddling confusion of attraction and revulsion. Coupled with my lingering memories, it’s overpowering. But she pulls away before I can give myself over to it. I move a hand to my mouth, wiping away the sheen of wetness there.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know what I’d do. Reckless things, probably.”

“I can’t afford to be reckless anymore,” I reply, trying to temper everything that is rioting inside me. There are a lot of thrills to be had down that rabbit hole. I’ve been so marooned in this new body, so diminished and altered, that to be recognized by this girl feels like a small bit of salvation. But I cannot be that boy again. I cannot be this man. “I’m married.”

She nods, eyes downcast. But she doesn’t apologize. “You know, you look married.”

“What does that mean?” I ask, endlessly curious about how others perceive me, especially now. Especially her.

She shrugs, settling back against the wall. “Comfortable, I guess. Like you’re interested in the world, but not too interested, because you’ve not supposed to be looking for anything anymore.”

I’m not sure what to say to this. I’m not sure, not exactly, what it is I’ve found in Beth. A woman of great beauty, certainly. A political wife of the highest order. A competent, if not always exuberant mother to my son. I try and remember what it was I wanted on those nights, flying through the darkness, just careless enough to be free. I don’t remember wanting any of those things. And the thought scares me a little, scares me in a way driving ninety on a marginally paved road in a stolen car never did.

Hannah motions to my hand. “No ring?”

“Too big.” My fingers are tapered, almost feminine, when I’m used to seeing hands that belonged to a laborer, rough and calloused. Knuckles that had been cut and bruised in fistfights. Palms that never grew clammy, no matter how nervous I was. The broken thumb that gave a baseball the perfect bit of spin when I threw it. Hands that had shaken those of presidents and union leaders and billionaires, and demonstrated that I was just as formidable as any one of them. These hands are not mine. They are not the sum of my experiences. These hands belong to someone much weaker. “What about you?” I ask. “Aren’t you supposed to be engaged?”

“Sort of,” she says, playing with the hem of her scrub shirt. “We agreed that we’d get married after the transfer. If everything went the way it was supposed to.”

“So why are you up here being reckless with me?”

“Because you followed me up here at the wrong moment. Because nothing feels the way it’s supposed to,” she says, turning toward me, fixing me with those huge eyes of hers. “Can’t you tell? Nothing tastes the way I remember, everything is so bright it hurts, everything feels so…” She stops, and I understand it now, why the doctors brought the four of us together. It’s because I understand what she means, exactly what she means, and no one else in the world will. “How can I be the same person,” she asks, “when nothing feels the same?”

“Maybe we’re not the same people. Maybe we’re better than we were,” I reply, though I know it’s not the answer she wants.

“I guess we’ll see,” she says and rises, steadying herself on the brick wall, stepping over my outstretched legs to get to the door. I have to tamp down the sudden impulse to follow her, again, to make her stop, to keep her here. I think of Beth, flawless Beth, who never really tastes like anything I can discern, who is so familiar to me that the smell of her hair is as inconsequential as my own. Hannah opens the door and then pauses, turning back to face me.

“We’re not really off to a great start, are we?”

The world outside of my hospital window feels so huge I expect the air to be too thin to breathe. One morning last week a flock of birds blew around the sky like a swarm of bees. I watched for an hour as they gusted around, breaking and reforming like sea foam riding a wave. I sat there wondering at how full the world was, how huge, to include flocks of birds that do nothing but spend an afternoon riding the air. It reminded me of looking out my window at home, with Cora dozing in the chair next to me.