Let’s discuss reincarnation,” says Michael.
For all their philosophical discussions, spirituality rarely factors into Margaret and Michael’s conversation. Neither woman subscribes to traditional religion, and both know that the faith du jour would label what they do together sinful. It has always been easier not to talk about what they do together. Physical love doesn’t need language—this, thinks Margaret, is its beauty. All the worlds within a brush of the knee, or a head on a shoulder, a tongue exploring or a palm cupping a breast, spiral out with possibility—a multiverse born of the body. Name it, and the path has been chosen, the reality ordained.
But Michael’s tiredness has been named, it has been diagnosed leukemia. At first Michael blamed Margaret’s stressful influence and sent her away, hoping the calm she’d leave in her wake would be a cure. When it wasn’t, Michael turned back to God, who she’d known as a sometimes acquaintance in her youth. It is now Margaret’s fault that God has given Michael cancer; there’s only so long one can continue in sin without punishment. Per usual, Michael’s contrition is irregular. She’s yet to find a doctor who is certain of a cure, and yet to convince herself of an afterlife. She’s afraid. She calls often on Margaret.
As a child, Margaret followed her mother into the musty living rooms of Great Neck’s dabbling upper-middle-class spiritualists to be lectured in theosophy. Margaret’s mother believed in the Oneness of the Universe—that every soul returned to the One upon the passing of its patron, then was sent back to humanity in an occultist appropriation of reincarnation. Margaret’s mother is now dead. Margaret wonders if Maude’s soul ever returned.
Three years ago, when Margaret posed the question, Michael laughed. Now Michael has work to do—books to write, lectures to give, minds to enrich—and not enough time in which to do it. She’s leaving for a clinic in Switzerland in hope of convalescing—Margaret expressly not invited, but summoned to see her off. Michael is gaunt, already pulling on her gloves when Margaret gets to East End Avenue. Luggage sits piled in the hall.
“Ride with me,” says Michael. The sixteen miles of traffic between the Upper East Side and Idlewild Airport mean a wasted afternoon, but Margaret nods. She takes Michael’s purse while the doorman gets the suitcases. She stands silently next to Michael in the elevator. The doors shutting behind them feel like the ending of a certain kind of life.
Michael smooths her hands over her lap, settling into the cab. “I’ve been reading about my past lives,” she says. Margaret waits. It’s like Michael to set this as a trap, and she would rather not be caught in it. “It seems there’s no simple way to determine my next body. Whoever I once was got lucky, but that’s no guarantee it will happen again. I want to be sure I’m not some bloated politician. Some cad.”
“So you’ve decided not to die,” says Margaret.
“I’m going to die. We all will die at some point.” Michael speaks as if revealing some prophecy. The car inches over the Queensboro Bridge. Margaret’s mouth is dry. “I want to make sure that my soul is in good hands. A metaphysical estate planning, if you will.”
Margaret smiles, but mostly because her face isn’t sure what else to do. She has always been the fanciful one, Michael grounded in fact. When Margaret thinks about reincarnation, she thinks of the veins across her mother’s hands, thick worms under silk gloves. She thinks of airless parlors and stale curtains and frauds in beaded headdresses who promise resurrection. Of Maude too tired for her children, somehow with infinite energy for the occult. Maude so difficult to impress, Margaret still trying.
“I read your poems out loud,” says Margaret, shifting in her seat so that her leg touches Michael’s.
“And you’ll keep doing so.” Michael nods. “That is exactly the sort of thing I’m going to need. A compass, for when I return. Something to guide me toward art.”
“You’ll obliterate life if you keep trying to prove there’s no death,” says Margaret. They are crossing the East River now, a placid, muddy green.
“If I continue down this path I’ll find the secret of life,” says Michael.
Margaret says, “The secret of life is being alive.”