Andrea Barrett - The Middle Kingdom

Who could answer the question Dr Amadon had asked? I parked in the woods near the reservoir and remembered all the nights Walter had traveled, when alone in our bed I’d touched myself and come coldly, silently, my small shudder damped by my blanket of flesh. When we fought we fought in silence, never speaking what we meant, and whatever glue held us together couldn’t be named. Three crows argued in the trees near me, their harsh calls echoing against the car windows, and two deer emerged into the clearing and then froze. On the blank margins along the back of the cookie box I wrote down their names: Odocoileus virginianus. Then I wrote down the crows, Corvus brachyrhynchos , and the names of the trees and the ferns and the small mammals and the geese passing overhead. All the names I could remember, all I’d learned, and when I was done I drove home and didn’t tell Walter for weeks that I’d stopped seeing Dr Amadon. I left our house each Tuesday at the appointed time, and then I drove to the Quabbin or to the Chesterfield Gorge and I made species lists. I grew calmer, even a little slimmer. It wasn’t much of an occupation, but it was something. Walter said the doctor must be doing me some good.

‘She’s all right,’ I told him. ‘We’ve been talking about what I might do for work.’

Which was not completely false — I had been thinking about that, thinking hard. I spent hours poring over the ‘Help Wanted’ sections of the Springfield and Northampton papers, trying to think what I might do. There was secretarial work, always possible — I’d survived the Swedenborgian accountants in Philadelphia. The phone company — during high school, I’d spent a summer trapped in a room full of hot, fat women, plugging cords into black panels, pulling them out, timing calls, and I knew I could do that in my sleep. I could do laboratory work for Walter, who’d offered to bring me back into his lab as a salaried technician, or I could try for any one of those gray jobs that required no obvious qualifications. Receptionist, waitress, sales clerk, assistant of one sort or another. The ad that finally caught my eye early in January was encouragingly vague:

Are you bright, creative, talented, energetic, and underemployed? Have you had trouble finding a career that suits your unique capabilities? I’m looking for an assistant — preferably female, 25 to 40 — and you could be the singular person I want. PO Box 6046.

I spent three days writing a flashy letter. I mentioned my art background and left out Randy; mentioned my biology training and the work at Quabbin but left out Walter. I said I was a spectacular cook, an avid reader, an appreciator of Oriental art and antiques (I left out Uncle Owen), and a former graduate student who’d left school to explore the universe on my own. I exaggerated wildly and appropriated talents belonging to the men I’d known, and a week later I received a bright yellow envelope in return. Inside was a single sheet of heavy, electric-pink letterhead. A L I V E was stamped across the top in bold black letters, followed by the outline of a lightbulb in place of an exclamation point. The message read:

Dear Grace —

Certain I am that this isn’t (real!?) news to you, yet I’ll say it again — You must be described as a phenomenon , and not in terms known to the average being (alive!) in this Universe. We are the source of our knowledge — I have no choice but to follow my intuition and reach for a certain passing (flashy!) star. Contact me at the number below, and we’ll arrange a (stellar!) meeting. Which will be (I’m certain!) for our mutual best.

Live!

Rollo Carlson

Printed below was a California address and an italicized line in quotation marks: ‘You are the source of all thought.’

I called, of course. Who could resist? I reached a smooth-voiced woman, who told me to meet Rollo Carlson in a restaurant in Northampton. ‘He’ll be wearing a dark suit,’ the woman said. ‘Pink shirt, yellow tie. An unusual pin in his tie.’ Somehow I knew the pin would be in the shape of a tiny lightbulb.

‘I have long blond hair,’ I told the woman nervously. ‘I’ll be wearing …’

‘Don’t tell me,’ she said. ‘He’ll know you by your aura. Be there at one.’

I wore a flashy teal dress with a white linen collar and cuffs, long silver earrings, low shoes. Some combination, I thought, of the exotic and the practical. At twelve-thirty I walked into the restaurant and took a table in the far corner from which I could see the door, promising myself I’d slink away if Rollo looked too strange.

The restaurant was almost empty. Two Smith girls tore at croissants and discussed their love lives in shrill voices. A woman in her early forties held hands surreptitiously with a man in his late twenties. In the back, two of the waiters read the paper and the bored hostess sat at the cash register, filing her nails.

My heart was pounding with excitement. I ordered a turkey club sandwich, just to calm myself, and then an ice cream soda to wash it down. In the opposite corner, a pudgy woman with an unlined face and startling white hair mashed her spoon in a brownie covered with vanilla ice cream and hot fudge sauce. She glanced at her watch; I glanced at mine. She pulled out a compact and checked her careful makeup and adjusted the beads at her neck. I looked at my reflection in the back of a spoon. The Smith girls left; the middle-aged woman at the front table withdrew her hand from her companion’s and bent her head and wept. At one, the door opened and a swarthy man with a big nose and a mane of swept-back hair walked in.

Dark suit, pink shirt, yellow tie. I smiled, half rose, upset a glass of water. Across the room, the woman with the white hair smiled, half rose, twisted her fingers in her beads. Rollo walked to a table in the center of the room and beckoned to both of us. ‘Connie,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Grace. Come sit, my dears.’

We made our way nervously toward him, eyeing each other. Rollo introduced us. ‘Grace Hoffmeier,’ he said. ‘Meet Connie Chrisman.’ He beamed at us, revealing huge white teeth. ‘Two phenomenal women in one place,’ he said. ‘Remarkable! We’re all alive! ’ Then he folded his arms across his chest and waited.

We didn’t say anything. We sat; he sat. Just when the silence was becoming truly uncomfortable, Rollo said, ‘Well — you know who I am — I’m sure you’ve read my books and familiarized yourself with the A L I V E! movement.’

Connie and I shifted in our seats. The A L I V E! movement? Rollo’s books? ‘Time is precious,’ Rollo said. ‘Time is alive! I was so impressed with both your applications that I decided to learn about you by listening in as you talk to each other. Let me see the spirit within you. Let me see how you exist in the Universe! All that lives is alive! and you are the source of all life. Begin.’

He was so dark, so strange, sitting there in his hot pink shirt and his yellow tie and the tiny pin proclaiming his Alive!ness. I looked at Connie and Connie looked at me, and then she rose and slung her purse over her shoulder and picked up her coat.

‘If you’re alive ,’ she said to Rollo, ‘I’d rather be dead.’

Briefly — as I had when I’d first met Page, when Page had mocked Professor Tinbergen — I thought of Zillah. I looked at Connie and saw, not a middle-aged woman whose life had somehow reached a point where she was interviewing for a job in a dark restaurant, but a girl who’d tried to counter the world by growing wings. Before she could vanish, I grabbed my things and followed her. Once we were outside we leaned against the door and laughed together.

‘Christ,’ Connie said, wiping her eyes. ‘Did you know?’