Day Twenty-Two #2
Julia soured, placing her palms down on the table, like she might use them to push herself out of her chair and walk away. Instead she arched a single eyebrow. “Are you so sure about that?”
Since the woman’s eyes remained closed, Norman rolled his.
He took stock of the room—the beaded curtain, the peeling wallpaper, the 1950s stove with two doors, one that read Grillevator (whatever a Grillevator does), and the tin ceiling, which seemed more New England than California dust bowl—before settling again on his chair, shifting his weight to balance himself and sit with a more rigid posture.
The floor was sagging, that much he could tell.
Soon she would need to hire a contractor to shore the foundation. “What else might it be?”
Julia ran her hands over the tablecloth as if she were smoothing it. Eventually she said, “That’s not how this works. That’s for you to tell me.”
“Alien life-forms? Is that what you’re seeing?”
“Is that what you’re seeing?”
Norman knew what he should be seeing if that were the case; he’d sat through plenty of science fiction movies.
But he had no recollection of being on board an alien craft, or otherwise being studied or (gulp) probed.
Of course, ALF could mean other things. He and Lally had learned it also stood for assisted-living facility when they had discussed what might become of their parents.
Maybe that was where he needed to be. Locked away.
Perhaps that was better for him than being here.
“I don’t know what I’m seeing. I’m begging you, I need help. ”
Julia opened her eyes. Norman recognized her expression from his mother. Firm, but not unsympathetic. “Our thoughts don’t communicate linearly, Mr. Alfano. Fractured is memory. I can only give you what I see.”
“Norman,” he corrected, wanting to steer her away from the ALF of it all, and also because he hoped it would humanize him, rally her to his side. “I’ve been somewhere for a year and I have no memory of where.”
Julia nodded slowly, then shook her wrists to jangle her bracelets. “Perhaps it’s not an issue of where. Perhaps it’s an issue of when.”
Norman placed his hands over his nose and mouth and exhaled.
“Not all thoughts are connected. Human beings have feelings, we can dream, we have memories, we can experience depression. We lead rich emotional lives. At least those of us fortunate enough do. But even with our advanced prefrontal cortical development we don’t always know what we’re participating in here.
Extrasensory perception is off-putting to many people.
Scary. I can only give you what you are giving me.
I’m listening. It might do you good to do the same. ”
She was right. It calmed him somewhat, the idea of her as a participant and not a leader in this.
A medium to conduct the message, not write it.
They were in this together, he and Julia, a flimsy triangle with the unknown as a powerful apex.
He might not leave here with the answers he desired, but he certainly wouldn’t leave here knowing less than he did when he walked in, because it was impossible to know less than nothing.
“Okay.” Norman glanced up at the tin ceiling, wondering if they would have more success outside.
If the tin ceiling itself wasn’t blocking crucial signals they needed.
After all, some with a loose grip on reality wore tin foil hats.
But he knew better than to suggest it, just as he knew what she would say.
Too much psychic contamination in an open space.
A plane passing by filled with anxious passengers.
The mailman and his deepest thoughts. A squirrel running on a telephone wire overhead.
God help him if she said nuts in place of fruit. “I’m ready this time. Let’s go again.”
Julia crinkled her forehead but didn’t chastise him taking command. Instead, she reached out and placed her hands in his, and then all fell quiet again.
For what seemed like an eternity.
Norman cleared his head of everything but the warmth of the light.
He tried not to think of it as love; she’d already picked up on that.
But as something else equally enchanting.
Beginnings, perhaps. A fresh start. Something had attracted him to it when it shone down in their yard that night; something had filled him with profound gratitude when it delivered him back.
He sat in emotion rather than thought. And when he had been able to do all that, Julia spoke.
“The warmth. I feel it.” She squeezed his hands tight, urging him not to move so much as a hair on his body. “There’s a collision. No, an explosion. And then so many stars. Racing. And I don’t know what this means, but maybe you do. Father.”
Norman felt a rush of cold air over his body that made his pores contract. If she was right, maybe he had been with god this whole time.
“Father?” Lally asked, gripping the steering wheel angrily with both hands. She was scanning the road for someplace with a restroom. “She just went there? And you paid her full fee?”
“And then some.”
“You tipped?”
“Her fee structure is for, like, a Pomeranian,” Norman argued. “I figure a human has to be more complicated.”
Lally glanced at him skeptically. “A human, yes. You? No.”
Norman rested his head against the passenger window. “I can’t be in the doghouse forever. One of these days Jesse will have to forgive me.”
Lally checked the Laredo’s speedometer and said, “Okay, go over it again.”
Norman closed his eyes and listened until he could hear Julia’s voice. “Collision. Explosion. Then stars, so many stars. Racing across the sky. And then, father. But she didn’t know what that meant.”
Lally crinkled her face. “Did she know what any of it meant?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?”
They passed a gas station, but it had long since gone out of business. “Is it?”
Norman thought it was. “The big bang? Atoms colliding. An explosion. Stars, so many stars, racing across the sky. It’s the origin of the universe.”
“She said that. Across the sky.”
“She simply said ‘racing,’ ” Norman corrected himself. “But where else do stars race? And then father. I mean, it’s god, right? Do you think I was shown the origins of everything?”
“Yeah, because you’re so special. You’re like every American who thinks Jesus is coming back in their lifetime because he just has to meet them. Been dead for two thousand years, but he just has to see Denise from Missouri.”
“Perhaps I am god,” Norman speculated. God comes down to Earth as a mortal to see what it’s all about.
Lally slapped the steering wheel so hard it honked the horn. “Like that George Burns movie they played on cable when we were kids? Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you.”
“Maybe I created the universe.”
“Yeah, if you did I have notes.” Lally was definitely speeding now.
“I mean, I am an architect. It makes a certain amount of sense.”
“Like zebras,” Lally said. “Are they just gay horses?”
“Slow down.”
“No, this is fun,” Lally protested.
Norman pointed at the road. They were fast approaching a red light. “No, I mean slow down.”
Lally stepped on the brakes, and they came to a stop just in time. “You’d think fifty-nine wouldn’t be too fast for someone who’d traveled space and time to witness the big bang.”
Norman scratched his chin and flipped down the visor to see in the mirror if he was developing a rash.
It had been a few days since he’d shaved.
He was surprised at how white his beard was.
He couldn’t have shaved while he was gone.
How did he not return with a long white beard looking like Rip Van Winkle?
A white beard would only make him more godlike, not less. And then it dawned on him.
“What?” Lally asked. “You have that look.” The light turned green and slowly they picked up speed on the 62.
“There’s another explanation, a much simpler one.”
Lally turned to Norman, eager to hear it.
“It’s also the story of me and Jesse.”