"And are you?"
"I hadn"t thought of it until Zarafinka suggested it! Now, if I ever need a plan to get rich sixty-five cents at a time, I"ve got one."
I found myself scanning my brain for examples of bizarre behavior, eager to match his tales. "I knew a cartoonist who used to unplug all of his appliances at night, to save on his electric bill," I said.
Ben stirred his coffee. "We should fix him up with my landlady. They could make frugal cartoons together."
"We should," I said. "My sister once set two people up, and then every year, on Valentine"s Day, they would send a card to her."
Ben hesitated, and I could tell he was debating whether to comment on our own situation. We were, after all, on an arranged date ourselves.
"Of course, if it all went south, she could have gotten hate mail every year," I said. "You never know with these things." Ben"s eyes flashed. "I"m sorry, did that sound cynical?" I said. "That probably sounded cynical."
"It sounded honest," he said, leaning back. "I like honest." His expression made me both happy and nervous. Usually I didn"t tell stories involving my sister-it was impossible to mention her without running the risk of having to say what happened to her-and I wondered why I had broken my own rule for him.
"I once went on a date with a guy who could recite Hamlet backwards," I said, to bring us back to weirdnesses.
Ben set down his mug. "Telmah," he said.
"Not a very marketable skill."
"Wolf claims he used to go out with the boomerang champion of the world," he said. "Back in Germany. I"ve seen a photograph. Picture Wolf with a seven-foot-tall Amazon." I imagined Wolf with his palms pinned by a Teutonic huntress wearing nothing but a boomerang, and almost laughed.
"What do you call a boomerang that doesn"t work?" I said. Ben waited. "A stick!" I said, slapping the table. I think this is incredibly funny, even though no one else ever does. Ben smiled, charitably, and I decided I liked him; there was a genuine warmth about him. I hadn"t been on a date since the guy at the dry cleaners asked me out while paying for his shirts, then took me to a whodunit dinner theater. Ben seemed full of potential: brainy, attractive, entertaining. My own young Richard Feynman.
"What"s the weirdest thing that"s ever happened to you?" he said, drawing his chair in closer.
"I thought you didn"t use that word," I said. Under the table I nudged his foot, to show I meant it in a friendly way.
"What occurrence is the most standard deviations away from your normal range of experience?" he said.
If he hadn"t asked, I"d have been able to cover the tablecloth with my list. But of course in that moment, I couldn"t think of a single abnormal thing. I stared at the menu, as if the words baba ghanoush were memory"s shibboleth. The only thing that came to mind, bizarrely enough, was a third-grade paper t.i.tled "The Miraculus Miracle" that had been unearthed recently when my parents" bas.e.m.e.nt flooded.
"I"ve never gotten over the sheer improbability that I was born," I said.
Ben"s chin was resting on his hands. "I"m afraid that won"t do," he said.
I glanced about the restaurant. By the front window, two men were playing klezmer music, one on the clarinet and the other on an accordion. All the tables had little tea lights on them and most were occupied by couples or small groups. Toward the back, a Sephardic-looking woman sat at a table draped in black velvet; in front of her was a crystal ball and a sign that said READINGS BY RENATA.
"I once had my palm read, in Venice, and the woman said: "You"re going to be famous, but not in the way you think." Does that count?"
"What do you think she meant?"
"I have no idea. That"s what makes it weird," I said. I gestured in the direction of Renata. "Do you think she got her crystal ball off the Internet?"
"Do you think you"re going to be famous?"
"I hope not. I feel bad for famous people. They can never enjoy their falafels in peace."
"Fame as inconvenience," he said.
"You think it"s easy being Eartha Kitt?"
"Eartha Kitt is dead."
"Exactly. First you"re famous, then you"re dead. What good does it do you?"
The third-grade paper that survived the flood was about a girl who loved so strongly, she could bring things back to life. First a b.u.t.terfly. Then the family dog. Then the man who gave her Budweiser stickers who always went jogging on her street. But when the newspapers found out about her power and broadcast it, she lost it, and was unable to bring back the thing she loved most of all.
"Here"s something weird," I said. "I know a guy who dreamed he died and went to heaven, and at the pearly gates, Saint Peter asked if he had any regrets. He said: "Yeah. I could have been a great accountant." Before the dream, the idea of accounting had never entered his head. After the dream, he took cla.s.ses, got certified, and now crunches numbers for a loyal cadre of New Yorkers who swear by his expertise."
Ben poked my hand with his finger. "But that isn"t something that happened to you," he said, pressing my skin as if it held an invisible buzzer. I"m sure his touchy-feely curiosity was intended to open me up and put me at ease, but it had the opposite effect, and I withdrew. It was disturbing to realize how much I wanted to impress him. I wasn"t used to trying to impress people; that had always been Avery"s domain. She"d been so good at it that I simply bowed out of the race, became the pensive little sister with her face in a crossword puzzle. Now here I was, cheeks flushed, lips laced with chocolate, scouring my life for odd events. And all I could think of was Avery.
"What"s the weirdest thing that"s ever happened to you?" I said, feeling ingenious. I always forget that it"s possible to turn the tables.
"The strangest thing that"s ever happened to me is still happening," Ben said in a low voice.
When I was twelve, I spent a summer learning how to raise one eyebrow-time that now felt wisely invested.
"Oh really," I said.
He took my hand. "Come downstairs," he said. Then he led me down the stairs and over to the men"s room, where he tried to get me to go in with him. Never have I so rapidly amended my hopes for an evening.
"I don"t think so," I said. "You seem nice and everything, but I"m good out here."
"I"ll keep my pants zipped," he said, laughing. "I just want to show you something."
"That"s what they all say."
"It"ll only take a minute." I kept waiting for another patron to approach and find Ben grasping my hand, trying to coax me into the men"s room. I wanted to hear how he"d explain himself.
"No way, Benjamin. Men"s bathrooms are vile."
"We can use the ladies" room, then," he said, moving us two feet to the left.
"Why does it have to be a bathroom at all?"
"I just need somewhere dark. Trust me."
"I used to trust you, until you started acting synaptically impaired," I said. "Although I suppose you"ve seemed a little insane from the start."
He dropped my hand. "Do you really think that?" he said. His face grew serious. "Either you trust me, or you don"t."
My mother claims that people show you everything you need to know about them within the first hour of meeting them, it"s just that most of us aren"t paying attention. And I have to say, she might be right. If I look closely enough, all the chords of our four years together were struck that first night: Ben"s eccentricity, his warmth, his need for me to prove my love. As were my desire to please him, my skepticism, my ultimate inability to see things the way he did. All the notes of our undoing were there, alongside the notes of our joy.
"Fine," I said. "But this had better be quick."
We stepped inside and Ben closed the door. It was completely dark. The bathroom thankfully had one of those auto-spritz air fresheners that are used to mask all manner of odiousness.
"Now, just bear with me," he said. "I know this is going to seem strange." He did something. "There. Do you see that?"
"See what?"
"Hold on. Maybe there needs to be a little light." He opened the door a crack. "Now can you see them?"
I watched him slowly rippling the fingers of one hand. "Are you casting a spell?" I said. "If there"s an albino rabbit in here, I don"t see him."
"Now?"
"No."
"How about now?"
"This could easily become tiresome."
"You don"t see very faint"-he paused, as if he hated to articulate what he was about to say-"rays of light coming off the ends of my fingertips?"
I laughed, and worried. "You"re kidding, right? This is a joke?"
"I know it sounds insane. I mean, it sounds insane to me, too. I just needed to show someone." He was still wiggling his fingers and staring. "Maybe I"m imagining it?"
I tried again, first concentrating hard, then relaxing my focus. But I couldn"t. I couldn"t see a thing.
"Have you been playing games with plutonium?" I said.
"No," he said. He dug his hands in his pockets. "You think I"m crazy."
"No, I don"t," I said. I meant it. I knew what it was like to have something you didn"t usually tell people, and I appreciated that he was willing to share his freaky secret.
" "Nothing is to be feared," " I said. " "It is only to be understood." Although I guess I should have spun you in a circle first."
His face opened in a smile. "Marie Curie," he said.
"Now there was a chick with a high tolerance for weirdness."
"I like her style," he said. He lifted the back of my hand and kissed it. "I like yours, too."
"You are an odd one, mister," I said. "But it"s possible I could learn to like you anyway." I clapped my hands together. "Can we get out of here?"
The temperature had dropped considerably, and driving home, we ran the heat full blast. We talked about our work, our roommates, our favorite foods (his: pasta puttanesca; mine: watermelon). In the end, I didn"t tell him about Avery. Not that night anyway. I just said "my sister," casually, breezily, the way anyone would. I didn"t tell him that she may have been in a hurry to get home-that it had been her birthday. That it was theorized she must have a.s.sumed, after waiting several seconds after the first train had pa.s.sed, that the crossing arm was malfunctioning. That she must not have realized, as she drove around it, that it was still down because another train was coming.
I was eight years old at the time-third grade-and when they told me what had happened, I didn"t understand. Another train was coming. It sounded like the punch line to a joke. I kept waiting for everyone to laugh, and my sister to jump out from behind the couch and eat her cake-mint chocolate chip ice cream, my favorite. When they asked her what kind she wanted that year, she said she was on a diet; I knew she"d requested mint chocolate chip for me. But she never jumped out from behind the couch, and no one ever laughed, and at some point they must have thrown the cake away, because when I looked for it in the freezer on my own uncelebrated birthday, three months later, it was gone.
At every red light, I studied Ben"s reflection in the windshield and wondered if when I dropped him off, he would kiss me. I shifted the car into park beside his mailbox. Then it came to me.
"The strangest thing that ever happened to me is that when I was eighteen, I received a letter from myself that I"d written when I was ten."
"In a dream?"
"In the mail."
"You"ve succeeded in collapsing the s.p.a.ce-time continuum then?"
"Our camp counselor had us write them, and address them to our permanent residences. I couldn"t believe it. To me, from myself, in an almost unrecognizable hand."
"What"d it say?"
"Dear Kim, How"s it going? Do you still go to summer camp? Probably not. I have seven million mosquito bites, and Mom found Sabrina up a tree. But you must know that already. I guess there isn"t anything I can tell you that you don"t already know."
"That"s sweet," he said. He was running his fingers through strands of my hair. I swiveled so I was facing him.
"You know, the choice thing would be to have that happen in reverse. I"d like to receive a letter from a self many years my senior. Maybe she"d have some wisdom to impart."
"You really think it"d make a difference?"
"Of course. She could warn me, give me advice: Watch out for that Ben character." I winked.
"And you"d listen?"
"Wouldn"t you?"
"I"m not sure that even if given the gift of prophecy, I"d have the inclination or ability to do anything differently." We were both silent. "What"s wrong?" he said. "You look sad."
"I"m not," I said quietly. He got out of the car and walked around his yard for a minute, then climbed back in. "For you," he said, handing me a small, delicately curved branch. He plucked a stray leaf from its base. "An off-duty boomerang."
I"m not a sentimental person, but do you know I still have that stick? It sits atop my mantel, alongside some river stones and pigeon feathers I picked up on vacation in New Mexico.
He put his hand on my shoulder. "Consider yourself warned," he said, returning my wink. Then he left and took the long gravel path to the house. When he reached the end, he hopped up the steps, turned around, and waved. It felt as if he were waving at me from across a great distance, an unbridgeable abyss-across all the distance between what has been and what is to come.
THE FAR SIDE OF THE MOON.
In those days, I had girlfriends the way some people have freckles. I wish I could recall them all individually, but I"ve retained only the more peculiar traits of each, resulting in an odd farrago that looms in my mind like a Pica.s.so. There was the girl whose prep school roommate had advised her to put root beer ChapStick on her l.a.b.i.a before oral s.e.x, and another who had a parlor gag where she could sign her name with her foot. One girl"s mother had been in and out of mental hospitals her whole life; I remember she once served us roasted chicken complete with burned feathers and cooked innards. I drove to Killington, Vermont, for a weekend with a lively girlfriend who met me at the door wearing nothing but a bra, panties, and ski boots. I"m pretty sure she was different from the one who used to whisper delicious things to me while we were in bed, but she was too shy to speak up about it, prompting me, at the tender age of twenty-two, to consider purchasing a hearing aid, as a kind of s.e.x toy. The prettiest was a girl who belonged to a performance troupe called The Belly Dancers for Peace & Justice, who was convinced she"d seen the Virgin of Guadalupe etched on the hood of a "76 Monte Carlo.
There was one girl who stands out. Her name was Mandy Purcell. She was working at the sw.a.n.kiest old folks" home in Arlington, Ma.s.sachusetts, when we met, during the summer of 1977. I was there doing community service as a result of my work with the Billboard Liberation Front ("adding the blemish of truth" was our motto); Mandy was there voluntarily. All the old guys loved her-the smooth young skin, the frank blue eyes, the gauzy hippie skirts. But there was one fogy, Harold, who reserved for her a special kind of affection. He had that condition old people sometimes get that"s like a combination of Tourette"s syndrome and Zen wisdom. Whenever Mandy would bring him orange juice or change the station on the TV set, he"d start.
"Want to hear a one-word description of the worst b.l.o.w. .j.o.b I ever had?" Mandy would never answer, but he didn"t need encouragement.
"Fantastic," he said.
At other times, he was more philosophical: "Appearance only goes so far in life. You show me the most beautiful woman in the world, and I"ll show you the guy who"s tired of f.u.c.king her."