We Only Know So Much (12 page)

twenty-four

P
riscilla has just gotten a text from Taylor.
OMG 3rd callback today!!! What 2 wear???
Priscilla cannot believe Taylor is being so insensitive. Couldn’t she have texted someone else? Priscilla has not officially been rejected, nor has she heard anything more since her last meeting. She sends a text back,
White jeans
, the ones she knows Taylor loves but which Priscilla thinks make her look severely slutty. Her thong always sticks out the top. Like, entirely on purpose. Slutty
and
tacky. Priscilla would never.
With what top???
Priscilla would totally smash her phone right now, but she did that once and her parents wouldn’t buy her a new one and it took her two wretched text-less months to save up the money for a new one.
WhatEv!
Priscilla texts back—the capital E indicating her irritation—then turns off her phone with a grunt and a sharp, unsatisfying poke of her index finger. This was her one chance, and Taylor has taken her spot, and now all the spots were taken, and she doesn’t even have a BFF to commiserate with. She totally wishes she were the type of girl who would kill herself. Well, not, like, permanently, but it could be super great to be able to kill herself briefly so everyone would realize what a huge mistake they were making in not immediately casting her on this TV show.

She spends a minute or two thinking about how she could actually fake this, like in that old movie from the seventies her mom always loved with the old lady and that bug-eyed young guy. How great would it be if she could make it look like she stabbed herself in the neck, with, like, a big freaking stiletto heel or umbrella or something and a bunch of fake blood? Maybe not so believable. She could just spill out a couple of pills on the floor, lie down next to them. But what if Otis were the one who found her? She doesn’t hate him that much. She actually doesn’t hate him at all, he’s just severely annoying. That would suck ass, actually, her poor little brother. Plus, whoever found her, how would this news get back to the TV show? Following this thread, P imagines that Taylor finds her instead, that starts out being a genius idea, like, “
Now
do you get how important this was to me? Are you happy to have this show over my dead body? I bet not,” but then her imagination goes in the wrong direction and the show in her mind follows Taylor in her grief, giving it a layer of depth it might not have had otherwise. Either way, Priscilla realizes that it’d still really be about Taylor. Fuck. She would have to make sure it was her mom who found her.

Priscilla has no idea what has been going on with her mom lately—like, she has seriously been on a mental bender to Outer Mongolia or somewhere. This would snap her back to. But it would also suck pretty hard. She doesn’t really wish that on her mom. Even just a fake suicide, that would be a suck-ass two minutes before she sat up and revealed herself to not be dead. Does she wish that on any member of her family, really? Fine-
nuh
, she doesn’t. It would be nice if any of them noticed her, is all. She thought Taylor at least had her back, but now she wonders if anyone does.

twenty-five

J
ean is wandering around the mall today. She’s gone there to pick up a new book she’s heard about, even though she hasn’t been able to read a thing since James died, is still barely able to flip through a magazine without seeing James on every page, every black-and-white perfume ad of muscled lovers is James and Jean (though nothing particularly “muscled” ever came into the real life picture), every recipe with an ingredient once eaten by Jean and James in some dish, every article somehow reminding her of James, every title with James in it, somewhere.

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Wandering through a department store, Jean mindlessly fingers various cosmetics, tries on a lipstick in a bright shade of red that is decidedly not her. It’s unflattering, but it is bold. For a second she thinks of leaving it on, as a little screw-you to the world. Huh. Screw you? Is that really what she’s going for? She’s about to wipe it off when a saleswoman bounces up from under the counter and tells Jean it’s fabulous, pulls out a few samples and creams, directs Jean to sit on the tall chair right in front of her, she’ll give her a free makeover. A makeover! A super idea. She hasn’t updated her look in forever. If this were one of those TV makeovers, it could go either way. She could be one of those who end up looking kind of generically shiny, not improved so much as just different—but if they get it right she could be a knockout, walk in the front door for the reveal and watch as Gordon somehow finally notices her, sees both her outside and inside, such is the power of a TV makeover. In fact, Priscilla could probably help her mom out, make her look like herself but better, fresher. But no one’s thinking of that right now. That’s not what’s happening here. She’s in a mall. Jean doesn’t expect this will change much of anything, thinks maybe it will be a little pick-me-up at best, and for the first moment or two she’s able to tune out the saleswoman’s pitches, feeling only the woman’s gentle touch on her face, drifting away for a brief moment in which these hands belong to James, a moment where James is lovingly touching her face as he once had. But as the saleswoman dabs on an under-eye cream, Jean drifts back in on the word “anti-aging
.
”

I’m sorry
, Jean says,
what did you just say?

I was saying that this is one of the best products on the market right now for anti-aging, an incredible value. I swear by it myself.

Jean looks at the jar of cream. Miracle Worker, it’s called. Miraculous anti-aging moisturizer. To witness a miracle is to know yourself, vital, brilliant, heavenly in spirit. It’s all right there on the label.

This is the promise of the cream? Seriously?

Why is this the big thing, anti-aging?

Oh, you know, we all just want to look our best, right?

I don’t think you understand what I’m saying. Anti-
aging, Jean says.

I’m sorry . . . I . . . guess I don’t?

I think you’re selling me a lie.

The saleswoman is doing everything she can to maintain her poise, somewhat concerned that this woman means this personally against her, that she is lying.
Oh, but ma’am, I swear to you, this is a fabulous product.

So you say. But you see, it can’t possibly do what you say it does.

Stunned saleslady silence now.

It says
anti-aging
. This is the big thing. You see it everywhere. Everywhere. But really, why not just say what it really is? Don’t we really mean
anti-death
?

What?

Seriously, what is anti-aging all about, really? We think it’s because our culture is obsessed with youth, but think about it: at the bottom of it, we’re all obsessed with death.

Ma’am, I don’t know what to say. I’ve been using this product for years. It literally turns back the clock.

No, it doesn’t
literally
do that.

The saleswoman pauses for a moment, can hear the hostility ratcheting up in Jean’s voice, but doesn’t want to lose the sale.
I’m sorry?

It doesn’t literally do that. Do you know what
literally
means? It means something actually happens. So what you’re trying to tell me is that by using this product,
all of time
will move backward. Which is not possible, literally, or otherwise.

Oh, well, I just . . .

I truly wish that it were. I truly wish that this anti-aging cream would literally turn back the clock so that I could beg my lover not to hang himself.

Jean jumps off the chair, with one eye made up and the red lipstick still on, and leaves the store.

twenty-six

S
o Theodore’s been working on his paper. Over the years he has given and published many papers, and his audiences have generally been quite enthusiastic. As optometry papers go, Theodore’s always made good use of his sense of humor, where those given by others tended to be on the dull side. Over the last year, though, as his cognitive powers have declined in this odd way, he’s in a sort of a nether place, mentally, where he believes he can do anything, that everything is as it always was, that the only thing different about him is that his body doesn’t work quite as well as it used to. Which is a pain, but it could be worse; it’s not like he was ever into athletics or anything like that, he’s always been an
indoorsman
(it still makes him chuckle to think of it this way). And so what that means here is that he’s been working on this paper, which he genuinely believes he will be presenting at an optometry convention. The thing is, in the months since Theodore got an early (two-page) draft written, “working on” has come to mean “looking at,” sometimes for hours, and reading it for anyone nearby. Today he’s gathered the entire family. An unspoken pact to humor him about the content and the future of the paper has clearly been established. The family seems to understand that, despite his intentions, he’ll never get as far as submitting it for anyone’s approval. Jean has already heard the paper several times before, as has Otis. Gordon has not, and the timing could not be worse. But everyone recognizes that, in Theodore’s mind, these pages are as brilliant as anything he’s written before. He beams with pride as he reads them. He knows exactly what he means, even if no one else does.

Here’s a snippet from the beginning:

Sight vs. Seeing: Optometry, the Long View: Myopia vs. Hyperopia

I first became fervent with visions as a child. My father was an optometrist, and was also in the jewelry business, as these commerces were often conjugated together at that time. I loved to sit in his chair, loved the things of it, the click of the giant eye piece, the blurry letters. But what has always most convoluted me about optometry is perhaps esoteric and not why most people go into this courtyard. What I am interested in is the adherence between sight and seeing. We cannot see if we have no sight. Or can we? That is what I am here to obtain today.

Everyone in the room is doing his or her best to nod in an interested fashion, while avoiding any eye contact with Theodore that might give them away. His hands are shaking considerably; one might wonder how he can even read a piece of paper that’s waving about quite so much, but our guess is that he very nearly has it memorized, given the amount of time he claims to have spent on it.

Hold it still
, Vivian says.

Vivian!
Jean whispers.

What?
Vivian says to Jean, looking aghast.

Theodore doesn’t have much of a stern glare in him at this point; his expression has a few variations, but the endeavor to produce a stern glare at his mother is plenty clear.
I can’t.

Oh! Well, I didn’t know.

Theodore takes a rather long pause here. It’s hard for us to speculate about what’s in his head. In his better days, he would have spoken back to her. Their fights were never big blowouts; generally Theodore spoke his mind fairly directly, Vivian denied that she’d intended anything unkind by whatever criticism she’d put out, and after an hour in separate corners, they’d go back to pretending nothing had happened. Theodore always promoted a cheerful philosophy; he met apologies with
No need
, thank-yous with
Not to mention
. If he’d held on to any resentment toward his mother, that was probably Laura’s secret. What’s different at this moment is that his mother has called direct attention to his limitations. It’s a bubble no one wanted to see burst—least of all, we’re guessing, Theodore. On the outside, at least, his existence is similar enough to what it once was, that we imagine it’s easy for him to tell himself nothing has changed. Until people go pointing it out.

Theodore, go on, please
, Jean says.

Theodore reads the rest of the paper. It’s not much longer than the two pages he began with; nor has it changed in any substantial way. It’s more of the same. He lifts his eyes from the paper, nods to indicate that he’s finished. Everyone claps; it’s the only thing anyone is sure about doing. Their uncomfortable smiles should betray them, but this doesn’t register with Theodore. Vivian is the first one out; Jean kisses him on the head; everyone pats him on the back, tells him it was great and mumbles their various reasons why they have to leave the room. He believes they approve.

Otis is the only one who stays behind.
Great job, Grampa!

Yeah, you think so?

Otis nods, hadn’t planned a follow-up answer, just wanted to keep his grandpa company.

Theodore nods back, smiling. He believes his grandson. His paper will be a huge success at the convention, he is sure.