Robert Lennon - Familiar

She still hasn’t sent the e-mail. After a moment’s thought, she signs it Love, Mom and hits SEND.

As if in reaction, she reaches out and snaps the computer shut. A wave of terror rises up in her and then subsides. On the chair beside her lies her purse. She has carried it with her everywhere all week and has barely looked into it, except to remove and replace her wallet. Now. This is a good time for it.

She pushes the computer out of the way and hauls the bag onto the table. She begins to remove its contents, item by item.

First, makeup. A compact, a lot of lipstick. Eyeliner and rouge. Lipstick she has worn before, but eyeliner? What on earth is this woman supposed to look like? There are Tic Tacs, orange and mint, and two half-empty packets of tissues. There is a pocket calendar. It gives her a moment of panic, until she realizes that it’s from 2007 and is completely empty after the month of May. Lots of receipts, some itemized and listing items that are also in the purse. An eyeglass case containing her same old glasses, which she has kept ever since switching to contact lenses years before. Contact lens case and fluids. Wallet. Keys. Phone.

There are pockets on either side of the main compartment, fastened with a snap. One is filled with pens, as it was in the other life, where the second compartment was empty.

Here, though, the second compartment contains a piece of graph paper folded twice over on itself, rounded and furred at the corners. She removes it, pushes the bag out of the way, and unfolds it on the table in front of her.

It’s in her own handwriting, and it reads:

Pay compliments and express gratitude.

Blame yourself first, circumstance second, your partner last of all.

If you must refuse intimacy, offer something in return.

Account for your time.

Do not use the children to attack your partner.

Elisa lies awake beside Derek wondering what else might be different. She remembers the moment of the switch — has been trying to remember it more precisely — and is certain that there were more or fewer clouds, or that the clouds changed position. And if the weather was different, then a lot of other things must be different. Right?

But then wouldn’t Silas himself, Silas’s existence, be the thing that changed the weather, changed everything that is different now? No. There was something before the van crash that kept him from going along for the ride, and something before that, and something before that. And so the world was already altered, and Silas’s death or survival trivial. The world must be indifferent to Silas, to her affairs and her appearance and her personal demeanor. She is a casualty of circumstance, not the center of the universe. And so this change, this transference, cannot be meaningful. It’s something that happened by accident: a glitch.

For this universe not to be about her, not to be made with her in mind, then, there would have to be more than just the one where Silas survived. There would have to be one where Silas was maimed, and one where Silas was never born, and one where he was a delightful and well-adjusted child, and one where he was a houseplant.

How many would there have to be? All of them.

Of course it’s easier just to say she’s nuts. She’s the glitch. At least that way, she can imagine how she might ever return, if that’s what she wants to do. The mind is more malleable than the universe, as far as she knows. You don’t need to be a genius or a video game character or from the future to manipulate the mind. The mind is made to be fucked with.

This, then, is the most likely, the most sensible, explanation — the world is the same, and Elisa Brown is the thing that is different. There’s a phenomenon she has read about, not déjà vu, but déjà vécu, false memory. You think you remember something, but it’s your unconscious mind that has created it, for purposes the conscious mind can’t fathom. The thing you remember seems real. But in fact only the thing before you is real. This room. This bed. This man.

She wonders what time it is. The clock is on Derek’s side of the bed, turned away because its glow is too bright. Has she slept yet tonight? She feels that she hasn’t, but there’s light outside, almost. Or maybe that is the moon. At this hour, whatever hour it might be, anything and everything seems possible, anything at all could be true. What has happened seems real. The possibility of return seems real.

If she isn’t insane, and if she could return, what would that mean? That is, if her consciousness leaped from one body to the next, then who is to say the body it left is still alive? Maybe the other Lisa isn’t in it, mourning now for Silas; maybe that body is dead. Maybe it ran off the road and through the guardrail and there is a funeral in that world, for her, going on today. Maybe Derek is waking up alone today to bury her.

Or who is to say that this consciousness wasn’t just copied, that the other Lisa is the same as ever, working at the lab and carrying on with her lover? Even if she could go back, maybe there is no place for her to go. Her body there is already occupied by the original.

And if this is so, then what happened to the woman who occupied this body? If Elisa leaves it now, perhaps it will drop dead, too.

Of course all of these thoughts are predicated on the idea that the consciousness in question is, in fact, a thing. A thing that has to be somewhere. And this is not a notion Elisa Brown has ever believed in. The soul. The God who tends it. All of it, nonsense. The soul is chemistry, it dies with the body. Consciousness is an illusion, a piece of software. When the machine shuts down, the program isn’t merely resting. It doesn’t exist.

What has happened to her does not fit into this worldview. Yet there is none she knows of that will accommodate it.

Derek stirs beside her. She doesn’t want to wake him. She slides out of bed, pads to the toilet, and then down the stairs to the kitchen and her computer. She is hoping that when she powers it on she will find an e-mail from Sam. But what she finds instead is one from Amos Finley. It reads, Lisa. Have you thought about seeing me one on one as we discussed?

The e-mail has been cc’ed to Derek.

Her reply goes to the therapist only. No, I don’t think so.

She is startled, first at this apparent breach of privacy, and then even more startled that the therapist is awake and sending e-mail at 5:00 a.m. on a Saturday.

Elisa sits and considers. There is some code here, some message that she does not understand. What is the value of betraying her to Derek in this small way? It is an effort to force her to reform. They are ganging up on her, the men.

As if the e-mails have summoned him, Derek appears, wrapped in his thin cotton robe.

“Who are you e-mailing?”

His back is to her. He has opened the coffeemaker and is dumping the grounds in the trash under the sink. He does this with the brusque, exaggerated movements that suggest displeasure at her not already having done it.

She says, “The therapist is suggesting a private session. With me. He cc’ed you.”

“What therapist?” he asks, filling the coffee urn with water.

She says, “Our therapist.”

“Why are you calling him ‘the therapist’?”

“Sorry,” she says, after a moment. “Amos.”

He doesn’t respond. Something in the curve of his back indicates that he believes he’s being fucked with. Please, Derek, she wants to say, it’s me! But she says nothing.

He asks her, “So when are you going?”

“I’m not.”

“Why not?” Derek turns, straddles the stool across the table from her. Behind him the coffeemaker begins to pant and moan.