Robert Lennon - Familiar

“You don’t know me,” Elisa says.

“Maybe that’s good.” They both sit in silence for a minute. Somewhere a door slams. “So.”

“It’ll sound crazy.”

She’s hoping for a No, no, it won’t, but instead Betsy shrugs. Her face is expectant, but what is she expecting? To feel interested, compassionate? Or for a good story to tell her boyfriend, about the crazy lady who came to her office?

Well. No matter. Elisa sits up straight and looks out the window where the corner of the building is visible and says, “I was on a road trip. A few weeks ago. And everything changed. Everything around me. And me. My job, my body. My car. Things in my family are different.”

She ventures a glance at Betsy, who is scowling in concentration.

“I mean, everything changed at once. It was all different. Instantly. The whole world. Or that’s how it seemed to me.”

They are both quiet as Elisa gathers her thoughts. The room is very hot. Now somebody walks past in the hallway outside. By the sound of it, this person is dragging a large cardboard box along the floor. Eventually there is silence.

“It still seems that way. It’s still happening. It’s like amnesia. Things have happened that I don’t remember. Except I remember a whole other life in its place. My real life.” She gazes directly at Betsy. “It feels like I switched from one life to another. And I’m not crazy, I don’t think. Do I seem crazy to you?”

“No,” Betsy says, but she is still scowling, still thinking, thinking, and it’s not clear if she means it.

“I started doing research. Into different explanations. I’m… I thought maybe this… this theory could explain it.”

Betsy’s expression hasn’t changed. She’s sitting very upright in her chair, with one leg tucked underneath her, like a child. One hand hangs out of sight by her side and the other rests flat on the desktop. If she lifts it up, there will be a print there, outlined in condensation. Elisa closes her eyes and waits, and eventually Betsy says, “You mean you think you’re in a parallel world?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You think… you think that could be a possible explanation for your situation.”

“I’m saying that’s what it feels like. I am trying not to draw any conclusions.”

Elisa opens her eyes again: it’s time to look. The younger woman wears a curious expression, head tipped back, eyes unfocused, her lips slightly parted. Both hands lie flat on the desk now, and she is biting her lip. She says, “It’s hard to see how it’s possible.”

“I’m just saying how it feels.”

“No, no, I know, I get it.” Betsy appears to lose herself in thought for a long minute. When she turns back to Elisa, she says, “You know this whole multiverse idea, you know where it came from? Who thought it up?”

Elisa shakes her head.

“William James. The psychologist. He wasn’t talking about physics — he was talking about morals. Like, he was rebelling against the idea of predestination, of a universe that was a finished creation. A finished world. Where you have a role to play. And a God that cares about that role.” Betsy is sitting up straighter now and gazing directly at Elisa. “For him, in a moral multiverse, your choices matter. You have free will. And what you do means something. It makes something happen.”

The physics Lisa, she thinks, smashing the right things together. “Are you saying I made this happen?”

“I’m saying… that something made something happen.”

“You think it’s all in my head. Not out in the world.”

Betsy is shaking her head, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of conviction in it. “I don’t know what it is or where it is. Maybe your head and the world are the same thing.”

Elisa is exhausted. Her hands are shaking and she is slumped in the chair. She is given to think of Silas, the interview she found. Games, he said, have to invent themselves. Rain, briefly, spatters the window, then abruptly stops. Did she do that? Did she make the rain? She is suddenly very confused; it’s as if she is drunk, or high. “I don’t think I know what you mean.”

“Me neither,” Betsy admits. She seems resigned to something, it is not clear what. “But let me have your e-mail. I know a guy. He would probably find you… interesting to talk to.”

Since Monday she and Derek have kept their distance from one another. When they have spoken, it has been politely. There has been no more sex. They’re too nervous. He appeared thoughtful when he returned from the therapy session she didn’t attend, but he has said nothing about it. So far she has resisted asking, but now, Friday night, over dinner, she looks up at him with the intention of doing so.

He’s looking at her. They both turn away, then turn back. She smiles. He doesn’t.

She used to talk a great deal, she remembers. Before Silas. When she drank, she would talk even more. She loved it — it felt… low class. They would go out with friends, or with another couple, and Elisa would find somebody to talk to, to talk at, and she would just go for it. Sometimes she would be off-putting to this person, and the person would notice, and would shift her attention to the group, or to someone else. Sometimes her interlocutor would be patient, would endure her. Sometimes something would click and this person would respond with equal enthusiasm. If the person was a man, the encounter would sometimes feel sexual. Derek both liked and didn’t like this. He liked that she relieved him of the need to make conversation, he liked her energy. He didn’t like it when she became too intimate, too quickly, with strangers. His heavy hand would grip her leg under the table, midway between the knee and the waist. This was a warning but it, too, was sexual. His fingers would land close to her crotch and they would stay there for a while. Sometimes she dialed it back a bit; sometimes she kept going, just to bother him. At these times his grip would tighten. They would argue on the way home, then go to bed.

She is wondering where this person went. This talkative, combative Elisa. She wonders if this Elisa has come back, in this world — if Amos Finley has brought her back, and now here the “real” Elisa is inhabiting the poor woman’s body, dragging her back into reticence, into the realm of mystery. She wants to think of something to say to Derek that will evoke the old days, her wilder self, but she’s at a loss. He lowers his gaze, sets down his fork, draws breath.

She says, “Have you ever played one of Silas’s games?”

He’s surprised. “Silas’s games? ”

“Have you?”

“You would know if I had.”

She says, “Where can you get them? Do they have them at the mall? Are they for regular computers, or do you need a thing for your TV, or what?”

Derek shrugs, eyes wide.

“I want to try one.”

He doesn’t say anything, though it appears that he is trying to.

“Come to the mall with me,” she goes on. “There’s a game store.”

He stares at her. Then, as though after long calculation, he nods.

He drives them to the mall in his truck. (In this world, they don’t seem to like her car. She’s glad; she doesn’t like it either. The truck feels good — there is only enough room for the two of them in the cab. For their marriage. It’s their marriage truck!) Elisa is surprised how many people are at the mall on a summer Friday night. She would expect they’d be out having a good time instead. Or perhaps that’s what this is. She and Derek make their way past clothing and gift shops. Elisa, suddenly ebullient, takes Derek’s hand.