Robert Lennon - Familiar

But that’s what Silas was like. Even in death, he dominated their thoughts, their way of seeing. The likelihood of Silas’s influence simply seemed greater than the likelihood of random chance; Silas was easy to blame things on, when so much was his fault.

Wasn’t it?

Elisa’s palms are starting to itch. Minefield is mesmerizing, mercurial; to read his helpful posts is harrowing. Does this make sense to you? I’m not sure that’s the best example. If that doesn’t work, let me know, I’ve got another idea, too. It’s too perfect, too reassuring, too accommodating; reading it, you wait, hushed, for the explosion, you sense everyone on the forum waiting with you. And then someone, some hapless newb, betrays his ignorance— wait uh I dont get it what? — and Silas pounces.

She wonders now what she did then — is it all theater? Is the charmer merely a stalking horse for the bully? Or is the charmer for real, a genuine part of Silas that he simply can’t sustain? If it’s real, what does it feel like for him, proffering this part of himself, then having to snatch it back? Is he ashamed? Does he feel remorse?

They should have asked themselves that more often, she thinks. When he was bad, they punished him, or tried to. But maybe it hurt him to be bad. Maybe he wasn’t so hard, in the end — maybe it was all armor, a way of defending his most sentimental, most vulnerable self.

But she doesn’t like to think about that. If that’s true, then they did it wrong. If that’s true, then Silas is more like her than she wants to admit.

Elisa tells Becca she’s having a business lunch with somebody from Killian Tech, and will be back at two. Becca doesn’t seem surprised or concerned, and Elisa walks out into the July sun.

Killian Tech is her lab — the one that, in her memory, she was managing just a few days ago. It’s a dozen blocks from the Levinson Center, closer to the lake, and she walks briskly, suffering in the heat.

The people, the houses all look familiar. She is alert for differences in this world that do not involve her husband and sons. But none are evident. That’s not to say they don’t exist, only that she has never been as observant as she might have liked to think. How could she be? Her thoughts have always been more interesting to her than the world itself. She remembers what she liked best about her lab work: data. Having data to pore over, on the filthy computer in the corner by the window, while the other students fussed at their experiments behind her. She loved that world, the world of abstract representation. She loved making numbers make sense. That’s what she did here, at her old lab.

The Killian Tech building is a flat, one-story structure with windows on all sides. It used to be dental offices and is wedged incongruously into a residential neighborhood. Its owner, her employer, lives in fear of zoning complaints from neighbors. But so far there haven’t been any. They’re quiet and unobtrusive.

Elisa’s office is on the northeast corner of the building, facing a bus stop and a NO PARKING sign. From the sidewalk, through the windows, it looks more or less the same: a desk and computer, some plants. She made few changes to it when she took the job, and whoever is working there now clearly took the same approach. Where Elisa had hung a black-and-white photograph of a cobblestone street, this person has hung a diploma. The filing cabinet is larger — Elisa had always meant to do that. There’s a photo of a blond-haired woman on the desk, and a little wooden box containing some sand, some stones, and a tiny rake.

She pretends to wait for the bus but continues to watch the workings of the office. The techs aren’t visible from here — most of the lab facilities are behind an interior wall, where the light can be controlled. But she doesn’t recognize the people coming and going through the lab door. Of course she hired many of the techs herself and wasn’t here to do so, in this world.

Eventually a thin man walks into the office, smiles at her through the window, and sits down. He begins to read his e-mail. She remembers doing the same thing: meeting the gaze of bus passengers, turning to her work.

Something occurs to her that surely she has thought of before: the world doesn’t need her. The highest compliment you can be paid at work is that you are indispensable. We couldn’t do it without you. But of course they can always do it without you. Killian Tech is doing it without her. Her sons are doing it without her. In her world, the real world, when Silas died, the world knitted itself back together behind him, and all that was left were a few scars, nearly all of them in their house. Maybe his girlfriends were sad for a little while. Then they moved on.

Perhaps the reason she is afraid of Derek here, in this world, is that she knows he doesn’t need her. She’s seen it. He can find other people to talk to, to have sex with. So can she. His attachment to her here is superfluous: there is a part of her that wants to just get it over with, to betray him or be betrayed, to leave him or be abandoned. Because it can happen, and the fact that it hasn’t is a hanging thread, an unresolved note.

The man in her office looks up again and she realizes she has been staring at him. He is not her, looks nothing like her, but in this world, to those people, he is her. His brow is creased; he is gazing at her frankly, and with puzzlement. Elisa feels self-conscious now, and turns to go. At this moment a bus arrives, and she impulsively steps onto it.

There is a moment of frustration and embarrassment, as the bus pulls away, that she cannot find her bus pass. Indeed, it would appear that, in this life, she doesn’t have one. She smoothes out a crumpled dollar and feeds it into the cash box, then takes her seat.

This is the number 20. It goes down to the park by the lake and then out to the western edge of downtown before circling back. The air-conditioning is on high and a soft-rock radio station is playing a song by Journey. She shivers. No, she didn’t board the bus on impulse: she intended this all along.

She gets off at the main depot by the library and walks east. After three blocks, she turns south. The frame shop is the fourth building on the right, a small converted cottage, again on a residential street. From the outside it appears identical to the one she knows — cedar shakes stained a slightly artificial brown, louvered windows with gold text: AURORA FRAMING.

He’s there, standing at the main counter, a broad work table arrayed with mat board samples. Behind him, the walls are covered with frame corners. He is typing on a small laptop computer.

He looks up at her with a completely generic smile and says, “May I help you?”

Larry. He’s trim, early fifties, and an inch shorter than Elisa. Clean-shaven, with hair cropped close. He looks subtly different to her — perhaps it is his failure to recognize her. She hasn’t seen this expression on his face, one of expectant politeness, directed at her since the day they met.

Of course, here, this is the day they met.

“It’s silly, really,” she says, and hates the sound of her voice. “Maybe not worth your time.” She draws from her purse the family photo that used to stand on her desk. “I’d like this put into a decent frame.”

He takes the picture, turns it over in his hands. “Do you intend to hang it? Or stand it on a surface?”

“Hang it,” she says.

He turns it over again, as she knew he would. He is deliberate, thoughtful. This is the sort of movement that, in the old life, would quicken her breath, make her tongue find her lips to moisten them. But her body doesn’t want to catch up with her memories, not yet.