The Forgetting Time(94)

How ’bout them apples?

He would finish his book now and then he could do what he liked. And when one day he could no longer read the Bard … then he’d go over the parts he had committed to memory, remembering the depth and cadence if not the lines themselves. He could babble Shakespeare to himself under the oaks all day like a crazy man.

Or he could go back to Asia. It’d feel good to be on Asian soil again. And what was stopping him? Nothing. He could go now if he liked. He could take the next flight out.

Thailand. The dense, humid air, the chaos of its streets.

Why not go? He felt the excitement beginning to pulse through him as he thought about it. He could visit the enormous Reclining Buddha, with its 108 auspicious signs carved in mother-of-pearl on the soles of his feet. He could start to meditate. He’d always been too nervous that a spiritual practice might undermine or influence his scientific objectivity, but that was irrelevant now. And if the Tibetans were right, then meditation could lead to a more peaceful death, which might positively influence his next life (though his own data was inconclusive on that score).

Maybe he’d even stop at a beach. The Phi Phi islands were supposed to be something to see. White sand like silk between your toes, blue water clear as glass. The present moment. Surrendering to that. He’d heard you could take a boat ride and see the strange limestone outcroppings rising out of the mist like something in a Chinese scroll painting: those scenes of painted mountains twisting up into the coiled, unseen sky, while one lone human lingered in a boat down below, so tiny as to be almost invisible.

He’d have to buy a bathing suit. He couldn’t wait.





Forty-Four

Janie leaned her head against the taxicab window, her arm around her dozing son, taking in the familiar sights. There was the broad expanse of Eastern Parkway, its apartment buildings and yeshivas and stately trees; the Met Foods where she bought groceries, and the dark swath of Prospect Park. The sameness surprised her, as if she had expected to find the world at home transformed. They passed the diner in which she’d met Anderson for the first time, where the waitress had YOLO tattooed across the back of her shoulders.

You Only Live Once. That’s what people said, as if life really mattered because it happened only one time. But what if it was the other way around? What if what you did mattered more because life happened again and again, consequences unfolding across centuries and continents? What if you had chances upon chances to love the people you loved, to fix what you screwed up, to get it right?

They were outside her brownstone now. The gas lamp flickered in the night like a friend happy to see her. She paid the driver and hauled her heavy, sleeping boy in her arms and out of the cab, feeling stung with gratitude that they were home, and lived on the ground floor.

In their apartment, Janie carried Noah straight into the bedroom and put him down on his bed without turning the lights on. She curled up beside him, facing him in the narrow bed, and pulled the comforter over them both. He stirred and rubbed his eyes, yawning.

“Hey, we’re home.” He sighed, and nestled up against her. He threw his foot over her hip, placed his forehead against hers. He put his hand on her shoulder in the dark.

“What part of the body is this?” he whispered.

“That’s my shoulder.”

“This?”

“That’s my neck.”

“And this is your noggin, noggin, noggin.…”

“Yes.”

“Mmmm.”

Silence. Then a sound from deep beneath the bedcovers. A sleepy grin. “I farted.”

And, like that, he was asleep again.

Janie slowly got out of the bed. She moved quietly across the room and paused in the doorway.

Noah shifted; he was on his back, now, sleeping under the stars. They glowed above him, all the man-made constellations, that map that was all most of us could handle of the universe that went on and on without end. Years ago, she had placed the plastic decals up there, creating Noah’s own big dipper, his own Orion, thinking that for the rest of his life when he saw the stars he’d feel at home. She tried to remember herself as she had been then, but she couldn’t go back, any more than she could mistake the pasted-up stars for the real.

Noah’s lips slid upward, as if he was having a very pleasant dream.

She stood in the doorway for a long time and watched him sleep.





Epilogue

Nothing about the trip to New York was what Denise had expected.

For instance, the fact that Henry decided to come with her: that had floored her.

You never knew what you’d get lately with Henry. There were days when he woke up whistling “Straight No Chaser” and made blueberry pancakes on Sunday mornings for Charlie and her. Other times he stayed up all night, drinking beer in the living room, the TV on loud on any dumb show, and if she got up to check on him or ask him to turn it down, he growled at her to go back to sleep. She always made an effort the next morning to wake early and get herself together and go over her lesson plans for the day, because she knew it would take a while, pushing him out of bed and making sure he got himself dressed and on his way. Sometimes it felt like she had two surly teenagers in the house. It was amazing the three of them ever got to school on time.

“This is me now. You want me, fine, this is what you get. You don’t, that’s fine, too,” he’d said when he offered to move back home. His face was hard and he’d shrugged as he said it, as if it didn’t matter much to him either way, but she’d seen right through him, as if he were one of her own children, saw plain as anything how much he wanted her to take him back. And how much she wanted it, too.