Woke Up Lonely (2 page)

She stepped back. “Amazing. For you, it’s like these last few years never happened. It’s like we’re still in our twenties.”

“You were closer to thirty.”

“And should have known better. But, Lo, it’s been forever. Don’t you think you need to move on?”

“I don’t see a ring on your finger, either.”

“There are other ways to move on. You don’t know anything about me.”

He shook his head. He had no tolerance for this kind of talk. He got to the point. “Doesn’t it mean anything to you that I’ve loved you all this time? That you and Ida are my
family?
”

She looked away. “Sure, me and all the people you slept with while loving me. So much love, Thurlow. So much. You really are perfect for the job you have.”

It was his turn to look away, but only to conceal the joy overrunning his face. Esme was bitter! And this bitterness was sourced in anger, and anger at someone you once loved can only mean you
still
love.

“Just so you know,” he said, “the Helix is not a cult. We are a
therapeutic movement.
We just meet and
talk.
And it’s not me people are getting behind but the group.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, I know. Share and confess. Want to share something now? Tell me why your therapeutic movement is armed and talking to North Korea. Because that doesn’t sound so harmless to me.”

Ugh, North Korea. He nearly threw up his arms in disgust. For all of their time together, it had always been about North Korea. At least for Esme. At least until Thurlow had decided to go there himself. A month ago on a visa extended to a group of Japanese tourists, which was supposed to indemnify the North Koreans against charges he’d been coerced and to conceal from the Americans news of his trip. One ambition had panned out; the other obviously had not. He had felt the scrutiny of his life and doings intensify the minute he got home. The feds had been on him for years, but this was worse. North Korea had made everything worse. And it had accomplished nothing.

“There are extremists in every movement,” he said. “Doesn’t mean they represent that movement.”

“You’re really going to pretend you’re not responsible for those people? Because last I checked,
you’re
the one who went to North Korea.”

“We’re not armed. We are a peaceful,
therapeutic community.
”

“For now. But what do you think North Korea expects you to do with their investment? Host a social in Pyongyang?”

“Maybe.”

“Oh, Lo. Not even you can believe that. Unless you really have gone mad.”

“Has it even occurred to you,” he said, “that maybe I had a
good
reason to go there? That maybe I was trying to do something good?”

She took a seat across from him. She looked stricken and tired. “Maybe no one cares, Lo. I shouldn’t even be here, but can’t you listen? You’re in over your head. And I’m not sure how much longer you have. Things aren’t good on the Hill, you know that. They don’t like what you’re doing.”

And this was true. It was a dicey time: January 2005. In December, a tsunami had overrun Sumatra, which mobilized a big relief effort that forefronted just how discrepant was the government’s will to aid victims abroad and those at home. The White House had just been returned to the incumbent, in large part because his opposition was a drip. It was the highest voter turnout since 1968; the electorate was engaged and angry, and finally disappointed. The two-party system was offering up leaders no one wanted to champion. The Helix filled a niche, its membership had spiked a thousand percent, and now North Korea wanted in. To fund what it presumed was a dissident movement poised on revolt.

Not that Thurlow had given them this idea. And yet they had it. Perhaps because he
was
attracted to the North Korean principle of
juche
—independence of thought and self-reliance alongside an intermingling of people united behind a common cause, which was to be together. That, or because Thurlow had actually accepted their money in the name of friendship. Sure, North Korea was broke, but only insofar as it refused to fund anything but the military, which is to say that it was not broke but discretionary, and that diverting funds into the Helix coffer from a sale of missiles to Syria was not out of the question.

But that did not make him a militant, never mind what the North Koreans thought. Never mind what half his followers thought. There were the members, steeped in apprehensions of the forlorn, who just wanted to belong. And there were the fringies, who wanted to blow up Capitol Hill.

Dissidence and despair. Should he confess this was not the miscegenation of feelings that had birthed the Helix? That this movement’s origin had, instead, everything to do with her?

He’d been back in the States for three weeks, but his sleep schedule was still a wreck. That, plus regular insomnia, and he could lose track of his thoughts for whole minutes at a time.

“Stop staring at me like that,” she said. “I’m serious,” she said. “Stop it.”

“Did you get my letters, at least?”

“Have you been listening to me? You haven’t changed at all. Always in your head. Always thinking about yourself. What am I even doing here?” And she stared at her palms as if they had an answer.

His mouth opened. His heart frothed. “No, no—” he said, but she cut him off. She had to go. Fine, he said, but would she come to his hotel later? She could yell at him all she wanted at his hotel. He said he was sorry. For everything. Just please come. He had a Helix event this morning, but how about later? Any time this week? He’d cancel Seattle and Eugene and Santa Cruz.

“I’ll do anything,” he said. “Just ask.”

And then he commanded all the readiness and solicitude in his heart to show in his eyes, so she would know he was in earnest. After all, he had gone to North Korea for her and botched it entirely. And now North Korea wanted something in return for its investment that he was not willing or even equipped to give. What was he supposed to do? The Helix was not the Confederate Army. It was single dads, divorcées and widows, lawyers and dermatologists. It was average Americans. People with migraines and high blood pressure. People who watched a lot of TV. Who tested poorly on the UCLA Loneliness Scale and, if asked, would sooner trade the invisible companionship of God for someone to share with in this life until such time as they had to meet God on the other side.

“I might come,” she said, but she frowned saying it.

He felt a trembling down his legs but hid it as best he could.

“But listen,” she said. “Whatever you’re thinking about North Korea, it’s not too late to change your mind. To think if it’s worth it.” And she reached over and touched his sleeve. Then she zipped up her coat in a hurry.

Thurlow didn’t say a word. He was faint with hope and fear, which countenanced each other, but warily. She was up and walking out the door.

“Don’t leave,” he said, and he grabbed her arm.

“I have to. Unlike some people, I actually have a job.”

“Don’t leave! You can’t imagine the strain I’m under.”

“Whose fault is that? Just think about what I said. And if that doesn’t work, then okay, think about Ida.”

He squeezed her arm even tighter. “I think about her all day long. Promise you’ll come over later. Just to talk.”

She freed herself. He tried to follow her out, but the Laundromat owner, who’d been leaning against a dryer and watching them the whole time, put out his hand, saying, “Hello, I recognize you. My name is Max Chen. I haven’t paid my taxes in three years. I have a wife who doesn’t love me and a girlfriend who doesn’t love me, either, now that I stopped paying for her English classes.” Thurlow nodded and called out for Esme, except a woman folding Incredible Hulk Underoos said, “Oh my God, Thurlow Dan in a Laundromat? You really
are
like the rest of us. Hey, see how big these Underoos are, my boy’s going on thirteen but he’s still got some issues since his father died and God knows I’m scared to raise a boy on my own and it’s not like I have anyone to confide in about it.” Again, he watched Esme trudge through the snow, away from him, only this time, he thought there was a chance she’d be back.

“That’s good,” he said to the woman. “I feel like I’m closer to you already. No wait, I
am
closer to you”—and he smiled because sometimes for preaching the same thing over and over you forget you also believe what you’re preaching. He patted her shoulder. “There’s an event later, not far from here.”

“Oh, I know,” she said, and pointed at the double helix tattoo inched across her wrist.

By now the Laundromat was clotted with people. Taking photos, sharing their stories. He told them all to come to the event; he was headed there himself. At last, his SUV pulled up outside, and in came the driver with such purpose of stride, everyone got out of his way without being asked. He took Thurlow by the elbow and led him out.

Dean was waiting for him in the backseat, with a coat across his knees. “Did something go wrong this morning?” he said, and sent the driver an angry look, which meant he’d chewed him out already.

“Do you really have to carry that thing around?” Thurlow said, and he nodded at what appeared to be a rifle nosed out from under Dean’s coat. “It’s stuff like that that’s giving people the wrong idea about us.”

“Sorry,” Dean said. “I can put it away, just stick with the Glock,” and he felt for the holster strapped under his arm. He unzipped a gear bag in the trunk and, from the sound of it, stashed the rifle among several of its kind.

Dean was head of security. Part bodyguard, part bureaucrat, and, as of late, part freedom fighter. He’d come into the Helix after his wife died, and had ascended the ranks with the hooks of his faith. But now, in his fourth year, he’d gotten overzealous in the prosecution of his work. Sometimes, in a panic, Thurlow imagined him and the thousands like him just miles away from the Helix House in Cincinnati, closing in like zombies but still under his command.

He gripped his forehead. He was sweating. He’d had a Twix for dinner last night and nothing since.

Dean leaned over to retrieve a hunting knife strapped to his calf. He cut an apple in four slices and put the plate on the seat between them. The soft sell: sometimes it worked.

“Any news?” Thurlow asked.

“We’re frisking the staff every day now. No cell phones, nothing. Chances of infiltration are nil.”

“Good. But I want you to do it twice a day. Morning and night.”

“Check,” and Dean jotted it down in a spiral notebook. He seemed glad for the orders. He scratched his neck, which was collared in green from a double helix bijou at the end of a gold chain.

They were headed to a warehouse by the airport. “We’re expecting five thousand,” Dean said. “Give or take. The whole country will be Helix in no time.”

“Nice work,” Thurlow said. “But get me a new driver.”

Dean nodded.

“And buy me a new suit. And have some flowers delivered to the hotel. Roses. And get to a toy store. No, a clothing store. Ask them what all the girls are wearing these days and buy every color.”

Dean wrote it all down.

“Make that two dozen roses,” Thurlow said. “Red and white”—because he wanted a bouquet for Ida, too. In the vestry of his dreams was always one in which he reunited with his child, bearing roses.

He looked out the window and tried, for the rest of the drive, to reinstate the paralysis that had overtaken him on the bus. A terrifying moment—to be so helpless—but also transcendent, because how often does love overrun your experience of life so thoroughly that it lays waste to everything else?

They arrived at the warehouse, which could probably fit five thousand, but, just in case: a Jumbotron outside for spillage and stragglers. It was twenty degrees out, but no one would care.

Thurlow sat in a small office. His nerves were like the third rail, like if he thought too much about what had just happened with Esme, he’d electrocute himself. He took a few deep breaths and focused on his speech instead. He thought of the audience, which calmed him down. Five thousand people who’d come to plead their needs. Bodies packed like spices in the rack. Faces upturned, hope ascendant. Tell us something great, Thurlow. Charge the heart of solitude and get us the hell out.

He stayed in the back for half an hour, then marched onstage. In the room: eyes pooled with light, skins pale as soap. He leaned into the mic and began.

“Here is something you should know: we are living in an age of pandemic. Of pandemic and paradox. To be more interconnected than ever and yet lonelier than ever. To be almost immortal with what science is doing for us and yet plagued with feelings that are actually revising how we operate on a biological level. Want to know what that means?”

Decor in the warehouse was bare-bones. Just a couple of spotlights trained on him and the dais, and a screen that lit up just then with a double helix. The sound from the speakers wasn’t reverbed, but it was gritty. The upshot was to make this gathering lowbrow and intimate, despite how many people were there.

“It means,” he said, “that loneliness is changing our DNA. Wrecking our hormones and making us ill. Mentally, physically, spiritually. When I was a young man, I felt like if I didn’t connect with another human being in the next three seconds, I would die. Or that I was already dead and my body just didn’t know it. Sound extreme? I bet not. I was lonely by myself; I was lonely in a group. So let me ask you: how many of you feel disassociated from the people you love and who love you most?”

He heard, from the audience, nodding, grunts, snuffles. Applause from a group cozied in the rafters. And a woman who began to cry. To wail with her head flung back, so that her arms seemed to lift of their own accord. She began to talk to her neighbors. She’d been married thirty-five years. Could you really be this alone after thirty-five years? Her husband worked for the Department of the Interior. He was about to turn sixty, was a good and kind man. And yet here she was. Someone passed her a microphone; she shared her story with the room. Sometimes, she said, she’d wake up in the night, stare at the stranger next to her, and say: Olgo, I like cheese sticks and corn in the can, and when no one’s looking I wet my finger and dip it in the rainbow sprinkles at the back of the cupboard, and you love these things about me, you know me, so why can’t I be reached? And then she cried some more.