Kristopher Jansma - Why We Came to the City

“How was the session?” he asked Irene.

“Good,” she said, “I really think it’s making a difference. I know you think it’s stupid.”

“I don’t at all!” George protested.

Irene winked at Mrs. Cho, who shook her head as if to say there was nothing to be done about cynics like him.

George jogged a bit on the step, trying not to be annoyed. Why did everyone think he was so skeptical?

And yet he still couldn’t stop himself from twinging, just a little, when Mrs. Cho took Irene’s head firmly between her two hands and rubbed her temples in tight, concentric circles. She murmured in Korean and began to sweep her hands down Irene’s neck.

“Good work today. Remember, feel the mysterious essence. The transcendental spirit. Everything has a vital life force: your body, your tumors, the ants on the pavement, the trees that the ants climb toward the light from the sun, which is alive, just like the moon.”

George took a deep breath. Once a week, for three weeks now, Irene had been coming here, to a storage room full of bronze jars of GiGi bikini wax and crimson bottles of OPI Nail Lacquer, so that Mrs. Cho could perform this laying-on-hands ritual, lighting rosehip candles and stretching Irene out on a folding table so that Mrs. Cho could throw powders in the air and mutter Korean incantations. Mrs. Cho had invited him to sit in on the first session, provided he could do something about all his negative energy. But as it turned out, his negative energy was persistent — and so George had begun excusing himself to the bar across the street. A nice place with a good atmosphere and — never mind. The nearby bookstore wasn’t so bad.

Mrs. Cho moved her hands about a half an inch above Irene’s body, not actually touching her. Her voice shook as she said, “Everything which is living radiates this essential force which animates all life throughout the universe. It is the electricity flowing in your nerve endings. It is the magnetism of your blood, which encircles your organs, and gushes throughout your veins and pumps inside of your heart.”

George grimaced. True, the human body contained weak magnetic fields created by iron-bearing nanoparticles and the rotational states of protein molecules and free radical reactions. But it was on the order of one tenth of one milli tesla — perhaps enough to help homing pigeons and bats and sea turtles get around, but not enough to kill cancer cells. Mrs. Cho claimed this energy could be harnessed through chanting to create a healing warmth and realign the walls of Irene’s cells. Well, who knows? Maybe it could.

“We can measure this great and powerful energy with the life within ourselves, within our hands and our breath. Your body holds everything of the earth and everything of the universe within it. This air that you are breathing contains the dust of distant stars collapsing. Remember . Doubt is only the denial of happiness.” Was George imagining it, or was she staring at him? “Happiness must be invited. You must allow happiness to enter into you, for happiness is the cure for all disease.”

George felt that happiness was kind of a tall order when the disease involved the total humiliation of the diseased. Unbearable headaches and constant nausea and aching joints and loss of bowel control and thinning hair and fingernails so soft that Irene had lost two of them just trying to sharpen a pencil. Still, maybe Mrs. Cho had a point, because fingernails or no, Irene still sketched happily for hours on end — beautiful, intricate designs that he studied when Irene inevitably conked out at some point. Were these finished pieces? It knotted George’s throat to think of these pages and pages of plans that might never be executed.

Mrs. Cho was glaring at him again, so he faked a huge sunflower of a smile, lest his doubt emanate from his chi or something and deny Irene any curative happiness. He had to admit that, as Irene gave Mrs. Cho a parting hug, she did seem a lot happier.

“Remember,” Mrs. Cho advised as she let go of Irene, “just for today, you will not be upset. You will not be afraid. You will be thankful and attentive. Kindness to all those around you, and whether you open your eyes or close them, clasp your fingers in prayer and contemplate with your whole heart. Say it out loud, and believe it, inside. Just for today.”

George tried so hard not to laugh. They said goodbye to Mrs. Cho and went on their way, back toward the E train.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“ Really good,” Irene said. She spoke softly, as usual these days. George strained to hear her over the sporadic honking of the backed-up cars. What sounded like a stadium’s worth of voices echoed off the twin-level brick mall that lined the block. Ahead, at the corner, he could see a long stream of people crossing the road and heading toward the train.

George supposed it might be a store’s grand opening, or perhaps they were protesting something. Maybe some celebrity was, inexplicably, dining at the Garcia’s Mexican Restaurant on the corner. With a jolt he realized that Irene was still speaking.

“… get incredibly hot all over whichever part of me she puts her hands over. Most of the time it’s like a warm, soothing heat, like a bath or sunshine. I swear, it’s weird, but when she moves over my eye or my elbow, it gets very intense. Almost to the point that I feel like I am actually burning up — like I have a fever or something.”

Fifty years ago we’d have just given you sugar pills , George thought to himself as they followed the pack of people down into the subway station — where was everyone going? Irene went on, quietly, about the shaman ritual stuff, and how she was sleeping better and feeling more alert and less nauseous.

Down at the bottom of the stairs at last, he saw the problem. MTA workers were cross-honoring people’s Long Island Rail Road tickets because LIRR service to Manhattan was apparently disrupted — and so there was general bedlam and endless echoing down around the turnstiles, as people who had lost their tickets argued with transit employees. But still, why would so many people be coming into the city from Long Island on a Saturday afternoon in October? Ordinarily if there was a service disruption, passengers would be impatient, hurried, angry. But most of these people seemed downright exuberant. Giddy. Drunk, even. Had a Yankees or Mets game just let out? No, neither of the stadiums was on this line, and besides, practically everyone here was under thirty, and most looked under twenty. And not a foam finger in sight!

As they got through the turnstile onto the jam-packed subway platform, George noticed that many of the horde were wearing rock concert T-shirts. George had never heard of a single one of the bands.

He was worried that Irene was already looking completely exhausted when the E train finally arrived. They squeezed inside, but it was filled wall to wall with rock fans. A rather confused-looking older man in a gray suit and glasses offered his seat to Irene. George thanked him and hung somewhat oddly off the bar over her.

“Let me take your bag,” she insisted.

“No, no,” he urged. “It’s really heavy.”

She said something else, but very softly again, and George, distracted by the jostling of several loud concert fans behind him, didn’t hear her at all. “What?”

“I said, what on earth did you buy?” Irene rubbed at her throat, which clearly was sore.

“Just some books for work,” George lied. He was a bad liar, and what’s more, he knew Irene knew it.

She arched a thin eyebrow at him, but he turned away to glare at the concert-shirted people behind him, who were shouting much, much louder now. The train was crawling through the tunnel. George watched the dark wall sliding past behind Irene’s head, the spray-paint rising and falling like an antic heartbeat. They could have walked to Manhattan faster!