Perfect Little World(73)

She nodded.

“Marla became very interested in my parents’ work with child development. She became slightly obsessed with the Constant Friction Method.” He then realized that Izzy might not know of this method and he looked up at her to explain, but she waved her hand and said, “I read about it. We all did some sleuthing on you before we came here.”

“I assumed that would be the case,” he said. “Well, Marla was very interested in it. She kept saying that, if the process had created me, then maybe it wasn’t so bad. Of course, I told her the various reasons for why I didn’t approve, and she knew these reasons herself, but she still seemed attached to it. So, a few times, I would find Marla with Jody and she would be intentionally putting him in harm’s way, doing something slightly dangerous. Nothing too severe; perhaps she would be playing with matches with him or tripping him when she didn’t think I was watching. We talked about it a lot; she even went to therapy to work it out. Things got better, and I stopped worrying about it. And then they died.”

Dr. Grind stopped talking and again stared at the floor. Izzy knew that if anyone else in the complex was telling this story, she would give them comfort, but she could not bring herself to touch him. If she did, she knew with certainty, she would kiss him again. She simply waited for him to continue, if there was anything left to say.

“I’m sorry for telling you this,” he said.

“It’s okay,” she admitted. She was amazed that he had said this much, and it felt good. There was a fuzziness inside her, better than being stoned, warm and pleasant, because the doctor had opened himself up just for her, given her a window into the life he had before the complex.

“Well, I often wonder, especially late at night, times like this when I’m awake and everyone else is asleep, if the car wreck wasn’t intentional. I wonder if Marla intended to drive off the road to shock Jody and then actually lost control of the car in the process. I wonder if, good lord, she drove the car intentionally into the tree, thinking they would survive it. And then I think that Marla wouldn’t do that. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? We’re mysteries to each other, no matter how hard we try to prove otherwise.”

This time, Izzy did reach out for him, touching his shoulder as gently as snow falling, and Dr. Grind seemed slightly embarrassed by the gesture, but he grasped her hand and squeezed it. Then he stood and walked toward the door. He stopped and turned to Izzy.

“No matter what happened that night,” he said, “it doesn’t change the fact that I loved Marla very much. Even if I’m furious with what she might have done. That’s what emotions are, I think, complex and shifting, and yet we think that any deviation from what we’re supposed to feel makes us a bad person. We’re good people, Izzy. Hal was a good person. Marla was a good person. But they’re gone and so we do the best we can.”

He walked out of the studio, and Izzy felt so bereft, so strangely saddened for Dr. Grind and herself, the two people in the Infinite Family who had experienced such a loss, that all she could do was go back to the band saw and continue her work. Even if it amounted to nothing, even if it was tossed aside the day after, she had to believe that it meant something now. That it mattered. And so she made the letters and arranged them and read the words aloud.


The next time she saw David, he grabbed her arm and asked, “Why didn’t you wait around for me?”

“I did,” she said, pulling her arm away from him. “I waited for more than two hours. Where were you?”

“Working,” he said, shrugging with great irritation. “Making art. Doing something important.”

“That’s fine,” Izzy said, “but I am making art, too. I’m doing all kinds of things, but I still went to the party to see you.”

“I’m not trying to be rude,” he said, so effortlessly being rude that he didn’t have to try, “but your art is not my art. You’re just copying a story that someone else made. You’re making letters.”

She thought of Hal’s assertion that everything was art. She now realized that he had never stated that one kind of art was better than another. It pleased her, in this moment, to think of him as being more open-minded than David.

“Then I guess there’s no need for further discussion,” she said.

“Do you want to go get high?” he asked her. “Make out?”

“No,” she said.

“Have sex?” he said, smiling.

“I better go,” she said.

“How long are you supposed to live at that place?” he asked her.

“It’s ten years,” she replied. “Total.”

“When it’s over, the whole world will have passed you by,” he said. “You’ll have missed out on everything.”

“Maybe,” Izzy allowed.

“You’ll have missed out on me,” he told her.

“Oh god, David,” she said, “I don’t fucking care about you.” She realized that David’s beauty was the kind that allowed him to be an awful person and still get everything that he wanted. But not her. He could not touch her life. She held up both hands, middle fingers extended. It was so juvenile, but it felt fucking right to her.

“Well,” he said, unsure of how to proceed. “Bye, then.”