The Book of Why (21 page)

“I can't stay,” I tell her.

We were supposed to meet, Sam says. Maybe the reason doesn't have as much to do with her brother or Gloria Foster—though she's still open to that possibility—as with each other, she says. We needed to come into each other's life at this exact moment, she says. We can help each other, she says. Maybe we're both lonely, she says. Think about all the signs, she says. There are no accidents, she says. There are signs everywhere, she says. You wrote books about this, she says.

“I burned those books,” I tell her.

“Listen to me,” she says. “Something strange is happening.”

“I'm done with strange,” I tell her.

“I found us at the Laundromat, then in the park, on the side of a tree.”

She turns off the burner and serves eggplant, peppers, and baby corn onto two plates of rice; she brings the food to the table. We stand there watching steam rise from the plates. She pulls out a chair, but doesn't sit. She looks at the table, then back at me, then back at the table; I follow her eyes: on top of each napkin is a square of white paper the size of a stamp.

She lays one in each of my palms, then covers my hands with hers. It looks like we're about to play a game of red hands—the slap game.

Eric
is on one square, in fading black ink, and
Sam
is on the other square, in red to match her hair.

She found them in separate dryers, she tells me. She thought they were labels that had fallen off her shirts.

That would have been strange enough, she says, but when she stopped to pet a dog in Madison Square Park and looked up, our names were carved into a tree.

“Eric and Sam,” I say. “Some gay couple.”

“Come
on
,
” she says.

“Come on what?”

“I'll show you,” she says. “I'll take you right now.” She grabs her keys from her desk and walks to the door.

“I believe you,” I tell her.

“I want to show you.”

“Sit down,” I say, but she doesn't move. “You can put down your keys—you don't need them.”

“I keep calling the locksmith,” she says. “I swear.”

“I know you're still married,” I say.

She lets her keys drop to the floor. The noise wakes Ralph; she looks at us, then lowers her head and falls immediately back to sleep.

“You were running away,” I tell her.

“It's not
him
,
” she says. “I really did leave my husband years ago, and it was because of you—your first book. But somehow”—she takes a deep breath—“somehow, despite my best intentions, I married him again. Not
him
,
but someone like him.”

“I'm sorry,” I tell her.

She sits on the floor at my feet, but doesn't look up. “Why do I keep attracting men like that into my life?”

“I don't know.”

“You're supposed to know,” she says.

“I don't have any answers.”

“I asked him to leave,” she says. “I changed the lock.”

“You should call the police.”

She looks up at me. “I must be doing something wrong.”

“You're trying your best,” I tell her. I give her my hand and pull her up. I take her other hand too and hold them both and wait for her to say whatever else she needs to say. But she just looks into my eyes, and eventually I let go.

She sits at the table and moves her food around on her plate. “Don't you believe that all of this is supposed to be happening?”

“Things happen whether we want them to or not.”

“Well, what do you want to happen?”

I want her to be happy and safe. I want her to stop looking for answers. I want her to stop reminding me who I used to be. I want to live entirely in every moment. I want to want only what I have, only what
is
. I want to be more like Ralph. I want to be more like Cary. Like Cary
was
.

“Tell me,” she says. “What do you want?”

“The truth,” I tell her, “is that I want to go back in time.”

“Not me,” she says. “I don't want to relive any of it.”

“No,” I say. “I'd do things differently.”

“Oh,” she says. “You and me and everyone.”

Sam sits on the floor again and makes kissy sounds. Ralph gets up and stretches. She walks over, puts her head on Sam's lap, and makes her content noise—low moan, eyes closed—as Sam scratches her ear. “See,” Sam says. “I know all her favorite spots.”

“I should go,” I say.

I walk to the door; Ralph jumps up, runs to my side.

“I'm afraid,” Sam says.

“So is everyone.”

“One last question,” she says. “If you were to write a self-help book now—”

“I wouldn't.”

“Let's pretend,” she says. “If you were to write another book—”

“I wouldn't.”

“But if you were to write one.”

“Keep trying your best,” I tell her. “That's what my book would say.”

W
e could end with her sleeping.

We could end with her leaning against a man who looks like me.

They're sitting on a bench in Prospect Park after a short walk after days of not walking or eating or getting out of bed.

The dog's off leash. She's running across a field covered with snow and ice, then running back to the bench where they sit. She shakes snow from her coat, cries for them to throw something, but there's nothing except the pathetic excuse for a snowball he makes. He throws, the dog chases. But the snowball breaks apart midair. The dog makes circles in the field, nose to the snow. She sees it as her duty to fetch whatever's thrown, and it upsets her not to be able to.

The man who looks like me makes another snowball and tosses it high enough for the dog to get under it. But when she catches it, she catches nothing, or so it might seem to her; it disappears in her mouth, it turns to water, and she waits for the man to make it reappear as if by magic, by miracle.

“Here, Ralph,” he says. “Right here.” And he throws again.

Some books say the past and future are illusions: the past gives you a false identity and the future promises salvation. Some books say the present moment is all there is, there's nothing other than right now.

This would mean that the man who looks like me is an illusion, and so is his wife, and so is his dog running through the snow.

This would mean that the snow isn't real, and the park bench isn't real, and the two boys sledding down a hill aren't real, and the hill isn't real, and the bare trees bordering a running path, and the woman running along the path, and the freezing rain now, and the dog's pain when she walks on rock salt, and her cries, and the man who gets up from the bench to rub her paws.

We could end with the man rubbing the dog's paws.

We could end with the moment he turns away from the dog to walk back to the bench.

We could end with how happy he feels to see her sleeping, her mouth slightly open, her eyes—he can see as he gets closer—tearing from the cold and wind that aren't real as I write this but were real that day.

She's sitting up and her mouth is open and the tears could be from the cold and wind, and the boys sledding down the hill might otherwise be forgotten, and the woman running along the path bordered with bare trees might otherwise be forgotten, and the date might otherwise be forgotten, and we might end one second before he—oh my—before he looks and—oh my, oh my—something about the tears and the mouth open and—oh my my—he sits beside her and removes her gloves and holds her hands and tries to rub warmth into her hands and—

It's me.

I shouldn't keep implying it isn't when it is.

I shouldn't keep saying
the man who looks like me
as if he isn't me, as if he doesn't live inside me, as if I wasn't there.

The woman running might otherwise be forgotten had I not called out to her, had she not heard me but continued along the path, her role in this story brief but memorable. The boys sledding down the hill might otherwise be forgotten had I not called them over, too, and had they not come cautiously, and had I not said, “Never mind—I was going to—never mind,” and pulled her close so they wouldn't see her face. Not that they would have seen anything but a woman sleeping, her eyes tearing from the wind.

And then for a long while, what felt like a long while, what could have been ten minutes or an hour, no one came close enough to call out to, and I didn't yet know what to call out, I didn't want to call out anything at all, I wanted the moment to be, to continue to be, quiet, and yes, hours later and years later I'd have difficult moments when I'd regret not calling out, not doing something, even though nothing could be done, but I decided to wait and bring her closer and keep rubbing her hands, and during all this the dog ran back and forth in the field chasing something I couldn't see. It looked as if she was playing with someone. She lay down and her tail swept the snow behind her, and then she ran as if someone had thrown something, and she kept doing this, and then I heard someone behind me say, “Beautiful dog,” and I said, “Thank you,” and then I said, “I think I need your help,” and hours later and years later I'd think about that word
think
and wonder why I'd used it when I knew very well that I needed his help, and this man, too, might otherwise be forgotten.

Put down your pens. Put down your books. Stop taking notes. Please stop writing in the margins. Please stop writing what I say.

Close your eyes and take a deep breath.

Let's begin again. Let's start over. Please. Let's have a do-over.

You are here for a reason. Ask yourself why.

Maybe you've lost your job, your home, your spouse, your child, your dog, your health, your peace, your mind, your way.

Ask yourself what you'd like to accomplish today. Ask yourself how you expect me to help you.

Let me be perfectly honest: I can't help you. Not in the way you might like. I can't get you your job back. I can't get you your home back. Or your spouse, your child, your dog, your health, your peace, your mind. I can't help you find your way.

Please hear me when I say this: There are certain things about life, too many things, that we simply can't change.

You see, our lives are stories that have already, at least in part, been written. I'm not sure who the writer is, or the director, or the editor.

Try your best to embrace the mystery of not knowing.

Truth is, we're not in control. We don't always get what we want, what we hope for, what we're expecting. Sometimes, not even close. Sometimes, the opposite.

With practice, we might control how we react to what happens, but even this is difficult.

You're not really giving up control. You can't give up what you never had. But you can give up your false belief in control.

You're afraid that you'll have to feel something painful, that you won't be able to handle what happens.

I understand, believe me.

Here is the only thing you can do: hold your fear in one hand and your commitment to act fearlessly in the other.

That we fall, that we fall apart, are givens. Our goal might be to fall with grace, to sit in the dark.

Don't shake your fist at heaven; it will do you no good. Truth is, anything can happen to anyone at any time. There's virtue in loving one's fate. When you accept the world on its terms, you are living a brave life. Better to greet life with an unconditional yes. Don't ask why, ask now what.

Please, put down your pens. Stop taking notes. Don't write anything that I say. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath.

I'm happy to be here today. I'm happy to get to say these things. Even if only in my mind. Even if only on this page, this lecture I never gave. Even if only a whisper to my reflection in the water's edge as I walk slowly with my arthritic dog on a cold fall morning on Martha's Vineyard just after sunrise with not another soul near enough to hear me even if I were to shout.

AT THE END
of some songs you'd go off pitch on purpose. Your voice would break, you'd given all you could and the song had failed, but it was as beautiful in its failure as it might have been in its perfection.

You'd get excited when a song fell apart as you were writing it. We'd be eating lunch, and I'd ask how your morning went, and you'd say, “The one that was stuck broke open and got messy,” and I knew that was a good thing.

A few months later, at one of your shows, I'd hear it: a song that abandoned its chorus, that left home never to return, that lost its way on purpose and didn't care; or a song made up of nothing but choruses, a dozen songs in one.

Mess was the worst thing for me; uncertainty didn't work. Each of my books—before this one—was outlined before it was written. There was a plan, and I stuck to it, no matter what. I had lists, bullet points, goals.

Once, when I was stuck starting
The Book of Why
,
you said, “Just sing it,” and I said, “But I'm writing bullet points,” and you said, “So sing your bullet points.”