An Infinite Number of Parallel Universes (5 page)

Mari almost begins to laugh at the absurdity of the moment until the stench hits her. It is thick and pungent. She pulls the collar of her T-shirt over her nose.

Just then the door leading back to the exam rooms swings open and Mari's mom emerges. She smiles at Mari and gestures for her to wait a moment. After a brief conversation with the receptionist, she returns to Mari.

“Can we go now?” Mari asks, voice muffled by her shirt.

“We sure can,” her mom says, smiling at Mari. But a second later she drops the smile and wrinkles her nose. Mari notices her mother catch wind of the fart and starts to laugh. Her mom tries to keep a straight face. “But remember that we have a couple more errands to run.”

“I hope they're as exciting and fragrant as this one,” Mari says.

On their way out to the parking lot, Mari glances back to see the receptionist move from behind her desk and water the plant in the corner.

• • •

“Your eighteenth birthday is eight months from today,” Mari's mom says. She flips the turn signal, checks the rearview mirror, and changes lanes.

“I am aware,” Mari says. “That's a red light.”

“I am aware,” her mom says, hitting the brakes. Once stopped, she examines her manicured nails.

“So . . .” Mari says.

“So . . . what?” her mom says.

“Is there a reason you brought up my birthday which is, like, a year away still?”

“Not really. Just making conversation.”

“That's not conversation,” Mari says. “That's just a statement. A conversation requires a back-and-forth interaction. Like this. This is a conversation. About conversation. Don't you agree?”

“Sorry,” her mom says, still looking at her nails.

“Green,” Mari says, tilting her chin in the direction of the light.

Her mom looks up and steps on the gas. The car jolts forward.

“Actually . . .” her mom says. “Oh, never mind.”

Mari leans her head back and closes her eyes. “Geez, Mom. What?”

She glances at Mari, turns her eyes back to the road, and exhales. “I had an ulterior motive for taking you along with me today. There's something I want to tell you . . . but we're supposed to wait until you're eighteen.”

“So now you have to tell me,” Mari says. “You can't say something like that and then not.”

“But now I'm thinking maybe I should wait . . .”

“What is it?”

“Promise me you won't tell your father I told you.”

“. . . Okay.”

“So we adopted you when you were a baby,” she says.

Mari covers her mouth with her hand in mock surprise. “Oh my!”

“You didn't let me finish,” her mom says, playfully slapping Mari's arm.

“Okay, finish.”

“Okay. So.” Her mom takes a deep breath and then restarts. “We adopted you when you were a baby. We've always told you that if you ever had any questions about it, you could ask us. But you haven't ever.”

“Because I don't care,” Mari says, gazing out the window at the passing buildings.

“I know, and we've respected that. But as part of our adoption agreement, we're required to give you your biological mother's name and contact information when you turn eighteen if you haven't requested it by then.”

“You have to? Like legally?”

“Yes.”

“So then why tell me now?”

“In case you wanted it now.”

“I don't.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. And I won't want it in eight months, either.”

“Well, if you change your mind—”

“I won't.”

They pull into the driveway, and Mari's mom kills the engine. They sit in silence, staring at the closed garage door. Eventually, Mari reaches up and hits the button to open it. She jumps out of the car and disappears into the house.

On second thought, Mari decides to destroy the world.

She crosses out the final paragraphs and brainstorms how she will do it.

It is late. A light in her room is the only one on in the entire house. Her door is closed, and an instrumental track set on repeat plays through her headphones. She lies on her stomach across the floor.

She pauses, pressing the tip of the pen to her lips, and searches the walls for inspiration.

A storm of pictures and pages surround her. Faded colors, curling corners, and thumbtack holes mark the age of each. There are postcards from cities she's visited and cities she wants to visit. There are pictures of people and animals and buildings and clouds and trees and lakes and campfires and statues and streets and cemeteries. There are posters of famous paintings enhanced with handwritten verses taken from some of her favorite lines of poems and songs. There are drawings of fantasy creatures and landscapes. There are yellowing pages removed from forgotten books bought from garage sales, the passages of which contain no particular significance to her.

There is a photo of her younger brothers at the beach. They crouch in smooth white sand while forming a castle. Their pale skin stings with sunburn. The photographer's shadow reaches for the water next to them.

On the same wall, high above her mirrorless dresser, there is a photo of her parents on their wedding day. Her dad stands behind her mom with his arms around her waist. Both stare slightly above-camera and smile blissfully with love and forever.

And opposite her dresser, there is a picture of Mari's best friend who is also adopted. She smiles at the camera, pale pink tongue lolling out to one side over white fangs and black lips. Macadamia, the nine-year-old chocolate lab mix in the photograph, now lies on the floor next to Mari. She yawns and stretches her legs, pressing her back into Mari's side.

The right ending suddenly comes to Mari. She starts scribbling into her notebook, pen lifting and dipping like flames licking at the sky.

Mari puts the period on the final sentence and then reads through the entire story. Satisfied, she tears the pages from the notebook and staples them together. She walks over to her closet and pulls out the milk crate she uses as a filing cabinet.

She breathes in old paper and ink as she thumbs through the file folders, which are labeled according to their subjects. There are folders for her D&D stories and fan fiction, and a few attempts at original fantasy and sci-fi. But the thicker folders are those labeled with the names of her family members and friends.

Among the innumerable words are such worlds in which Dante is a midget, Archie's an orphan, Sam never meets Sarah, and her brothers are girls. One folder
contains the various adventures of Macadamia lost in the wild. Another holds pages wherein Mari is adopted by different families, ranging from the abusive to the loving, the affluent to the poor, the animal to the robotic.

But the thickest folder is the one labeled “Biological Mother.” One of her very first stories, only a few sentences long and written in crayon, describes the woman as an exiled alien from another planet who had to abandon Mari to protect her from evil aliens. And there are others in which she is a mortal who slept with a god. A famous artist. A drug addict. A zombie. A rape victim. A politician.

But in none of these worlds does the woman keep Mari.

This is the folder into which Mari tucks her most recent story of a world destroyed. She then slides the crate, her hidden multiverse, back into her closet and closes the door.

She hits the light switch, joining her darkness to that of the rest of the house, and then slides beneath her covers. Macadamia hops onto the bed and cuddles next to Mari. Mari kisses her on the nose. Macadamia grumbles because she cannot purr.

Mari closes her eyes but does not fall asleep. A fire burns in the forefront of her mind, a fire that refuses to be extinguished.

Mari stares at the page like someone looking down a well after dropping a coin.

The top of her letter reads, “Dear,” but she does not know what noun of address to use.
Mom?
Mother?
Biological Mother?
Woman-I've-Never-Met
?
Woman-Who-Abandoned-Me-and-Probably-Doesn't-Even-Remember-Who-I-Am?

She does not know the woman's name, and she does not have a mailing address yet. All she has to do is ask her mom. But to do so would remove the fiction, and the fiction keeps Mari safe, warding against reality. It has always been that way.

Mari chews on the end of her pen. She readjusts her headphones.

She tears the page out of the notebook, crumples it into a ball, and tosses it into the metal wastebasket. On the fresh page she starts over: “Hello.”

• • •

An hour later, Mari feels like she has just finished running a marathon. Her eyes are blurry and her hand is cramped. She has written six pages, front and back. After overcoming that initial road block, her words flowed effortlessly. The letter is a testament to her curiosity, her sadness, her anger.

But she feels better having put these emotions on the page. These words are a lighthouse. A transcontinental railway. A stack of dynamite.

She folds the pages and stuffs them into an envelope. She grabs her keys and heads to the front door. Macademia trots after her.

“I'm going out,” she tells her parents, who are on the couch watching television.

“Keep an eye on the gauges,” her dad says. “She's been acting funny.”

“Will do.”

Mari drives a few minutes away to her favorite diner, a place where she likes to go to think. She steps inside to find the place vibrating with the hum of conversation and the clanging of dishes. The scent of frying food fills the air.

As Mari waits to be seated, a middle-aged black woman walks through the door and then stands next to Mari. Mari catches herself wondering—as she has countless times before—if this woman is her real mother. It's a stupid thought, she knows, but that doesn't prevent it from occurring.

Eventually, a man walks in, puts his arm around the woman's shoulder, and leads her to the hostess booth to request a table for two. Mari lingers as they talk and laugh. Mari then takes her regular seat at the counter with the other lonely souls.

Even though it's getting late, Mari orders a cup of coffee. A moment later the waitress puts a steaming mug in front of her. Mari puts her hands around it, enjoying the warmth.

For some reason, Mari's mind wanders to a friend she had in the third grade, a Dominican girl named Clara who also wrote stories. They would often play a game together that they called “Once Upon a Time.” One of them would begin a story with a single sentence and then pass the paper so that the other person could add a new sentence to the story. They would continue passing the paper back and forth, weaving a disjointed, ridiculous narrative until they were laughing so hard they were crying, on the verge of peeing their pants.

Mari used to go over to Clara's house all the time. Clara had a great mom. Warm and loving. Forever cooking and hugging. And Clara looked just like her.

But when the third grade ended, Clara and her mom moved back to the DR, and Mari went back to reading and writing by herself in corners and under trees.

Mari's mind returns to the present when a man slides onto the stool next to her. He reeks of alcohol and sadness. He has short, gray hair and purple bags under his eyes. Before Mari can ask who he is, the man says, “Excuse me, Miss. Would you like to attend the party?”

Mari hesitates. “What party?”

“The party. In my pants.”

“I do not,” Mari says. “Please leave.”

“Well, I thank you for your time.”

The man tips an imaginary hat and leaves.

Mari takes out the letter and rereads it.

• • •

Back in her room, Mari opens a window. She moves a lit candle to the sill and empties her trashcan onto the floor. She holds the corner of the envelope to the flame and watches it catch. The fire spreads quickly, devouring the paper. The words and the space between them dissolve into smoke, never to be read. The acrid scent fills her room despite the open window.

The flame and heat get dangerously close to Mari's fingers, so she drops the burning letter into the empty metal wastebasket. It's not long before everything she felt turns to ash.

At first Mari thinks that she must have something on her face because Archie keeps gawking at her. Kind of like he wants to say something but doesn't. Whatever the reason, it's weirding her out, so she turns her attention to her notebook where she's sketching a winged minotaur that wields a flaming broadsword. It's the boss the party will encounter at the end of this quest.

If they ever get there.

“Where the hell are they?” Mari asks.

Dante continues to stand silently at the sliding glass doors for some reason. Archie starts talking, but Mari doesn't really pay attention. He's forever saying something, after all.

She hopes Sam and Sarah aren't fighting. If they break up, she's certain Sarah would stop coming to D&D night. Then Mari would have to rewrite the entire world.

But that wasn't the likely scenario. Sam and Sarah usually got along well enough most of the time—primarily because Sam just went along with whatever Sarah said. Like their characters. When they first started playing, Sam had wanted to be the rogue. With Archie calling mage and Dante claiming a warrior, that left Sarah with the cleric. She said that was boring and didn't want to play. So Sam volunteered to be the cleric, the healer, and Sarah got to be the rogue.

Mari's train of thought is interrupted when she feels something land in her hair. She looks up and peers over her shield to find Archie grinning at her. She brushes away whatever it was he threw.

“
Yag thellaru
,” she curses in a fictional language she created years ago for their fantasy world. “Dumb boy.”