The Book of Why (13 page)

To Steven, please, with a
v
,
not a
p-h
.

If you could make it out to Mary—that's my sister.

Would you mind signing two? One's for my daughter. I've been trying to get her to read your books, but.

I didn't bring your books with me, but I just wanted to say thank you, I really loved them.

I saw you a few years ago in Boston. I don't know if you remember—I'm the woman whose son tried to commit suicide.

One hundred six pounds. People said I couldn't, but look at me.

I just wanted to tell you, I read the new book and it really works. People thought I was nuts, but now I'm married, I own a house, I've been sober ten months.

Can I have a hug?

What are you writing next?

That's Meagan with two
a
s. M-E-A-G-A-N.

Could you make it out to my full name—Jerry Stillwell?

I just wanted to tell you, there's a typo on page 222 of the new book—right here, see, it should be
hello
but it says
hell,
it's missing the
o.

Are you working on a new book?

Would you mind writing a note for my aunt? She's very ill, she's barely holding on, but we haven't given up hope.

Actually, I've written a book—it's kind of like yours, but for kids.

Would you mind writing something personal—it doesn't matter what, just something, you know, personal?

Loved this one even more than the first two.

Big fan of your books.

Does this work for allergies—you know, like to dogs? I've always wanted to get a dog.

Big fan. I have both of your other books. I give them as gifts.

If you could just sign it, please. Don't make it out to anyone. My husband says it's worth more that way.

When will you be finished with your next book?

If you wouldn't mind, I really need a hug.

She was last in line, but eventually she would reach me. People handed me copies of my book, told me their stories, and I signed:
Best wishes, keep the faith, hang in there, don't give up, don't worry, it's on its way, expect miracles, sending you positive thoughts, Eric Newborn
. I was riding the natural high that often came during and immediately following my talks. If you say something with conviction, and keep repeating it, you will believe it. Now I loved, and felt loved by, everyone. I wanted to hug and kiss every person who handed me a book to sign. Everything was possible. Everything with Cary would work out. She would be fine. She would come around and see things my way. When I got home, I would keep trying. I would tell her exactly what she needed to do, how to get better. And then I'd write about it, and talk about it, and even though there had already been so much evidence that the universe listened, that something was out there and we could communicate with it, this—her miraculous recovery—would be the biggest, the most important piece of evidence.

But first I needed to convince her. Because I couldn't do it alone. Or maybe I could. The way I felt then, there was nothing I couldn't do, even heal the sick, even heal the sick who didn't seem to want to be healed. And I
would
write
The Book of Why
. I would begin in the morning. And I wouldn't be afraid to say what I believed, which was that
we
are in charge, there's no one else to take credit or to blame.

When the woman in the yellow dress reached me, I was prepared to tell her this, was prepared to promise her the book within six months.

But before I could say anything, not even hello, how are you, how is your son, she hugged me. She pulled me against her. She put her lips against my ear and whispered words I couldn't understand.

I didn't try to pull away from her.

She released me, kissed my cheek, then walked away, past the crowd still waiting to speak with me. I never heard from her again.

Turbulence woke me from dreams:

Churches filled with wingless black birds the size of humans, the tap of their feet up and down aisles made of glass, the faces of the dead staring up wide-eyed from below, the air heavy with incense, the metallic taste of holy water poured into my mouth from a stoup held above me by invisible hands, those same hands using an aspergillum as a tongue depressor, a voice telling me to say
ah
.

I clutched the armrests, took deep breaths to slow my heart. Fear despite another pill an hour earlier in the plane's bathroom.

My mother could read about the crash in the morning paper; she could shake her head and cross herself, could tell the mailman about it, could tell the neighbors, all before realizing that her son had perished—she would use this more dramatic word—and then there would be nothing left for her to be afraid of, yet she would still be afraid, she would still, at almost seventy, push her night table against her locked bedroom door, a barricade to keep out whatever happened during the night to make the morning news.

I wanted to get home to Cary, wanted to tell her that everything would be all right if she listened to me. There would be no more pain, no more sickness.

Around me, despite the turbulence, human mouths hung open in dreamless catatonia. Through a sudden drop the captain would later apologize for, twin boys fought with swollen thumbs for a video game. A man wearing silk pajamas and burgundy velvet slippers ordered drinks for everyone in his row. More heavy chop, and the man finished his new drink so as not to spill it. Everyone on the plane was gladly stuck in Vegas. If the plane went down, it would be my fault: I was convinced that I could think it down. And so I tried to think it up, as if the engines and the captain's training weren't enough.

Another pill, and I closed my eyes: soon the plane was a womb and I a child waiting safely to be born, and the turbulence, so bad that even the crew had to sit and fasten their seat belts, was my mother-to-be dancing, and the rain against the plane's windows was the lullaby she sang to her belly, to me.

Four hours later: home.

A cab from Queens to Brooklyn, past windows lit with Christmas lights. New snow fell softly on snow I'd missed while gone.

The yellow shadow of fear had hopped in the trunk with my bag, and now it followed me up the stoop, up the stairs. I tried to enter the apartment quickly, lock it out, but it slid under the door.

It was after two.

A lamp on in the hallway, a blinking wreath in the window. Ralph greeted me with a shoe, made circles around my legs. I crouched, and she dropped the shoe to lick my face. I scratched her ears, found the sweet spot; one of her back legs involuntarily kicked and kicked, her nails tapping the wood floor.

Cary had fallen asleep on my side of the bed, one leg above the covers, one below. I took off my coat and the rest of my clothes and let them fall to the floor, and then her warmth against my cold body. In the six years we'd been together—over two thousand nights—I had rarely fallen asleep first. She would say that she had the pleasure of falling asleep with me still awake beside her, my breathing a lullaby. And I would say that I had the pleasure of watching her sleep. Sometimes, in sleep, she would put my hands—I have cold hands—between her legs, where her skin was warmest, and I would press my stomach against her back, and here was another night like that. But now there was something else: there was the pleasure of the moment, the comfort of being warm inside when outside was cold, but no longer the feeling that an infinite number of such nights lay before us. Now there was a kind of pre-missing that made the moment more precious yet less peaceful, and I would never go away again, no matter how much someone was willing to pay me to speak.

S
am is in the driver's seat, reading my third book,
There Are No Accidents
. I ask if she wouldn't mind reading something else.

“I didn't bring anything else.”

“Never mind,” I tell her. “The ferry will be in Woods Hole soon. Then you'll have to drive.”

I forgot to bring my pain medication. Breathing hurts, so I hold my breath. Ten seconds, twenty, but eventually the body has to breathe. My head is worse than my ribs. I try to keep my eyes closed, but when I do, light flashes beneath my eyelids. A car alarm keeps going off, the siren echoing in the ferry's hull.

Ralph sighs in the backseat, oblivious to our human drama. Her nose twitches; even in sleep she's trying to smell the sea air.

“Tell me where we're going.”

“The less you know, the better,” she says. “Let's face it—you haven't been very positive about this trip.”

“How long until we're there, wherever
there
is?”

“Depends on traffic.”

“Ballpark.”

“Seven, maybe eight hours.”

“Were you really going to go without me?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you were bluffing.”

“No way,” she says. “Something big is going to happen.”

As I empty my bladder into a clogged toilet at a rest stop in Connecticut, I decide that I'd be better off back in Chilmark—morning hikes with Ralph, throwing sticks for her to chase, a walk to the market. I decide that my father was a dream, Gloria Foster will be a dead end, and that this trip—this adventure, as Sam likes to call it—will serve no purpose.

But I have no plan—no place to hide, nowhere to run. There's no one I might call from the pay phone beside the soda machines. I'm not the type to hitch my way back to the ferry, or anywhere, for that matter, though I suppose I should have no reason to be afraid. Once the worst happens, there's nothing left to fear. I used to wonder why my mother didn't understand the freedom that comes with loss. Now I understand: there's always more to fear.

I look through the crack between door and hinge: a man helps his son wash his hands; the boy keeps pushing out more and more soap until it forms a pink mass on the sink. An older man, gray and bearded and hunched, cords and sneakers, splashes his face with water. A teenager—black trench coat, black eyeliner—bumps into the older man. “Sorry,” the man says, even though he's done nothing wrong. The paper towel dispenser is empty and the air dryer is broken; he tries to shake his hands dry, gives up, leaves.

Me in thirty years.

So you think, so you shall be, the old me would have said.

Ask and it is given.

The old me would have tried to save the old man, would have straightened his spine, would have had him smiling, feeling ten years younger, all from showing him how to change his thoughts.

The old me would have tried to save the new me.

I stand in the stall for twenty minutes—not long enough to come up with a plan, but long enough to become nauseated by the smell.

Long enough for Sam to be waiting for me outside the bathroom.

“I was worried,” she says.

“Did you think I would abandon Ralph?”

She looks at me, confused. “I just thought maybe you were sick.”

“I am,” I tell her. “I think we should go back.”

She moves her face close to mine, and for a moment I think she's going to kiss me, and I'm so tired that I'll let her, though I'm not sure I'd have the energy or inclination to return her kiss. Up close, her black eye, not quite healed, could be the eye of someone ten years older. Quietly, almost a whisper, she says to me, “I want you to listen to me. I promise you, I swear to you, that we're going to find her, and when we do, it will mean something.”

I have an urge to sit on the floor—to refuse to move or speak. Either that or bang my head against the wall.

“Mean what?”

“I don't know,” she says. “That's what we're going to find out.”

“This is all about your brother.”

“Not all,” she says.

The old man I saw in the bathroom wanders from candy machine to soda machine, wiping his hands on his pants. He reaches into his pocket for change, drops the coins on the floor, bends to pick them up, can't reach, kicks them under the machine. I touch the change in my own pocket. More than anything, I want this man to have his soda. I don't want to know his story, but if only I could make the machine give him what he wants. As I think this, as I intend it, the man reaches out and presses a button, and the machine, even though the man has inserted no coins, dispenses a can of orange soda.

“I retired from helping people,” I say.

“I don't need anyone to save me.”

“How do you expect
me
to help you?”

“I just know you need to be there.”

“Tell me where.”

“Four more hours.”

“Tell me.”

“Fine,” she says. “Pennsylvania.”

“Where in Pennsylvania?”

“Lancaster.”

“Lancaster?”

“Ever been there?”

“Once, when I was a kid—a weekend trip with my parents.”

“Anything weird happen?”

“Not that I remember.”

“Well, that's where we're going.”

“Do you have an address?”

“No.”

“A street?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then how will we know where we're going?”

“The house near the cemetery.”

“Do you know how many houses might be near that cemetery?”

“Yes, but the street—in the dream, I mean—was green. The cars, the houses, the hospital across the street. My brother stepped on the street and everything turned green.”

“So what?”

“So maybe it's Green Street.”

“This is what we're going on?”

“This is why I didn't want to tell you the details,” she says. “For someone who made a killing teaching positive thinking, you can be really negative.”

“You haven't met my mother.”

“Well, don't be your mother.”