Lydia Netzer - How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky

“So do you,” said George.

“I believe in nothing. No, correction,” she added. “You’re right. I believe in my experiment. Which is the only thing that’s ever been what it’s supposed to be. That’s what I believe in. Observe. Collect data. Record that data. Make conclusions dependent on the data and nothing else. Absolutely nothing else.”

George shook his head. “I’m not going to fall in love with Sam Beth just because you tell me to,” he said. He smiled and she felt her heart lurch. She could just say OK. She could just laugh and forget the rest. But then, but then, there was still the fact of who her father was, who her mother was, who she was. She couldn’t just laugh and forget that.

“At least give her a try. You’d be stupid not to.”

“Not stupid, just happy,” said George.

“Don’t embarrass yourself,” Irene admonished him. “You embarrass yourself and you embarrass me. Don’t you understand that we’re fools? We’re tricked. We’re misled. You’re gold and I’m dross. You’re teak and I’m fire. The fact that you don’t know that is an embarrassment to both of us. It was a trick, George. It is. A trick.”

“It doesn’t matter what it was or what it is. It only matters what it does.”

“This is what it does,” said Irene. “This is how it ends.”

“No, it’s not!” He slammed his hand down on the desk and glared at her, eyes full of fire. “You think you know yourself, but you don’t. I know you. I see you.”

“No, you don’t!” she screamed back at him, suddenly ferocious. “You see nothing. I am just the ruins of their plan. I am the hopeless residue of everything that they did wrong, George. I’m not worthy to be yours, and if you weren’t brainwashed by them to want me, you would see it. I can’t drink, because I’m too scared of falling down drunk. I can’t have sex—I am too scared of falling in love. I stand on bridges, stand there and stand there, scared to death of falling. I can’t even fall asleep without controlling my dreams. Dreamer? Oh, yes I am. I’m falling, falling, falling all the time. I’m half an inch from suicide, whichever way I turn.”

“You adorable idiot,” said George, now quieter. “Is that what you think?” He stood up from his desk and came toward her, but she held her hand up for him to stay away, and he stopped.

“You’ve had sex, if you didn’t notice. You’ve fallen in love. Done.”

Irene said nothing. Her jaw worked back and forth.

“You think you stand on bridges because you are afraid to die? Baby, you’re the least afraid to die of anyone I have ever known, and the place you stand up on that bridge, that’s the place where you should know that more than any other time. Suicide? Hell, no. That bridge is where you know your impulse is to live . Walking around in our normal lives, on sidewalks, on floors, on the ground, we don’t have to make that decision to live or die. But on the bridge, you’re making that decision: LIVE. With your whole body. That’s where you show how strong you are, Irene. I get that the bridge is where you meet your demon, yes, but that’s why you go there, to kick its ass .”

Irene was breathing heavily. She said, “Well, I’m still afraid to drink.”

“Drink or don’t drink,” he said. “I promise you, it’s got nothing to do with us.”

She leaned against the door frame, trying to think about everything he had just said.

“My head hurts,” said George. “I just want things to go back to how they were.”

But Irene turned and walked away.

When she had gone, George felt sick. He believed that she would come back. But he would miss her in the interim.

He picked up his phone and used a remote to switch off the light in the room. Instantly, his head felt better, and he felt less worried about encroaching visitations. He felt his way over to the middle of the room and lay down on the cool concrete floor in the center of his universe model. He looked up through the pieces of his model and saw nothing. One benefit to being in the basement: total darkness. He swiped a finger across his phone and dialed his mother, the bright screen lighting up his face and the poles right around his body.

She picked up on the first ring.

“Hi,” she said.

“Mom,” he said. “You have to fix this.”

“I did fix it, baby,” she said. “This is it after it’s fixed.”

“No, this is wrong,” he said. He felt so tired.

“I’m sorry you are having a hard time,” she said. “But this is right.”

“I want her back,” said George. He felt like he might be five years old. How could she have gone? How could she have left him? “You did this. You fix it. I miss her!”

“George, let’s not go back over the same territory.”

George pressed his hand around his forehead and squeezed.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“Of course not. But it’s OK. You don’t have to understand everything. Just let me fix it, and move on.”

“But you’re not fixing it. You’re ruining it.”

“George, you think you love her, but you don’t. You’ve had your head turned by some crazy woman with a crystal ball. I know you like that sort of thing, George, but it’s just irresponsible to make your life decisions based on some fortune-teller.”

“She cared about me. I felt it. She knew me. She was Irene’s mother.”

“She didn’t know you, and she wasn’t capable of caring about anyone. I’m sorry she was Irene’s mother. That was a mistake I made that I will never forgive myself for.”

“A mistake?”

“I used to be kind of an idiot, George. But I was young, and I won’t apologize too much for it, because I was only trying to love you, to save you.”

“Save me from what?”

George heard his mother’s voice tighten up. “You’re better off free from this entanglement, darling. Let’s just say I acted in your best interests, then and now.”

“I want to talk to Dad. Is he there? Are you with him?”

“Actually, no,” she said.

“Where did he go?”

“George, forget about your father right now! He has been nothing but a disappointment.”

“To you, Mom. He was a disappointment to you, never to me.”

She stopped talking.

“Let’s return to the point, OK?” George said firmly. “When were you acting on my best interests, exactly? When you trained up this girl to fall in love with me, or when you told her it was all a trick and made her leave me and go to California?”

“George…”

“As if she couldn’t love me on her own? Am I so broken—” He coughed and realized he was about to kick something. He sat up and scootched across the floor, away from his model. He didn’t want to kick it or punch it.

“Don’t say broken. That’s not what you are,” she said.

“You didn’t believe that she could love me without you making her do it?”

“I was wrong,” she said. “I said I was wrong then, but I have fixed it now.”

“It doesn’t feel fixed!”

George felt his hand clench together as if he was going to punch something immediately.

“And I’m going to punch something!” he added.

“Well, go ahead and punch something,” his mother said. “Do it. I dare you.”

“Fine!” said George. He pointed his phone around the room like a weak little flashlight and lit on a pile of folded cardboard boxes, the remnants of his move down to the basement from his lab upstairs.

“Fine!” his mother said. George made a fist and slammed it into the pile of boxes. They slid around and crushed beneath the weight of his arm.

“I did it,” said George. “I punched something. I’m serious!”