Chapter Sixteen

“Tell me something, Tree. Do you love your mother?”

She gives me one of her sideways looks. Tree Carter and I are seated at her kitchen table eating inscrutable pink Chinese ice cream. Beyond the kitchen window is a view of the green- and orange-tiled building where Tree provides English to Shenzhen’s most out-of-body first-graders. Her refrigerator is covered with examples of their crayon art.

“Of course,” she replies. “She drives me crazy, but I love her. Why?”

“Just curious. Do people love their mothers in some kind of predetermined, preverbal, pre-vertebrate way, or is there a moment of choice at some juncture? Either way, I seem to be in need of reinstalling the software.”

“Talk,” says Tree.

Not easily done, actually. The space that my maxillary first premolar crown once filled seems enormous. Even my vowels are beginning to whistle. Unfortunately, I slept through this morning’s appointment with Dr. Xylophone, now rescheduled for the day after tomorrow. Bellamy’s busy that day but he promises to send his secretary, Ursula, whose hairline and upper lip are about a quarter-inch apart. That would be roughly five millimeters.

I’m going metric.

“Lil says I am defined by my Mom issues,” I tell Tree, dabbing at the pink ice cream at the bottom of my porcelain teacup.

“And what do you say?”

“I think I’m defined by a lot more issues than that. But Lillian always goes straight for the reductionism, projection, and self-justification. Not to mention the family mean streak. And she’s probably right.”

Tree waits for more.

I gaze at my ice cream. As with most of the prepared foods in this country, the color, scent, and tang are at sharp odds with each other. This particular flavor, I think, is called Bubblegum Hotdog Surprise.

“The first time I encountered the word adopted,” I tell Tree, “I said, oh that’s what I am.” I turn to her. “Why do I suddenly have the urge to call you Oprah?”

“You loved your mother, Jules. You still do. You’re no different from the rest of us. You just have to pass through the pain and the anger. Then you’ll find the love. You know why this is coming up for you now?”

I force myself not to squirm in my chair.

“Everything that is destined to be,” says Tree, her brown eyes softening, “already is. The work we came here to do is already complete, Julian. It’s calling back to us through time, guiding us in. When we feel that pull, that discomfort, that emotional wound crying out for healing, it means we’re being prepared for something that can no longer be postponed. Our job is just to be with all that. To feel it all, whatever it is.”

“Feel?” I say.

Tree nods.

Frowning, I place another spoonful of inscrutable Chinese ice cream on the left side of my mouth. Since losing the premolar crown, I eat everything on the left side, which leaves me feeling curiously half-fed. The crown, a small fortune in jewelers’ gold actually, now rides in my left shirt pocket. How nice to be falling apart both emotionally and physically. Maybe I’m spending too much time in Lillian’s bed. I keep having the urge to turn on all her sex toys just to see what they’ll do to each other.

Tree tilts her head slightly, as though seeing me for the first time. “It’s people like you who have the hardest time, you know. Smart people? You learn how to go inside your head, and after a while you forget how to come back out. The important thing is, Jules, you’re asking the right questions now. You’re starting to take a look at yourself and that’s very, very encouraging. I never thought I’d live to see the day when you’d come to me about your feelings for your mother.”

“I didn’t come for that,” I protest. “And while we’re asking all the right questions, what exactly is supposed to happen on the Three-three-three?”

“I don’t know.”

“Want to memo me when you figure it out? It’s February, you know. To be honest, I have enough on my plate just now without all your little veiled references to things we’re supposed to do on behalf of God Almighty Jesus Jerusalem Hogwaller. Between you and that big blond you hang around with, I feel out of sync with inner processes I probably don’t even have.”

Tree’s eyes are steady. “What’s going on with you, Julian?”

I set down my spoon and share her gaze. “My publishing deal is dead, my novel is as unfinished as ever, you won’t even talk about bringing in Truman for me—”

“He said you have to prove yourself.”

“—I have to prove myself, the Shenzhen Textbook Publishing Company is stiffing me, my teeth are falling out, Lillian can’t seem to get out of Memphis, and I can’t seem to get out of China. And this ice cream is offensively bad.”

“Only if you’re expecting something different,” says Tree, lifting a spoonful. “You know, you might try enjoying China. It’s a pretty special place, you know.”

“And I haven’t been laid since the Year of the Pterodactyl,” I add. “And you can’t buy a decent number-two pencil anywhere in this country. Other than that, life couldn’t be much sweeter, now could it?”

I avoid mentioning the spot of worry that accompanied this morning’s web search. Not only does Regis Laboratories manufacture plastic hormones for old ladies, they also do a lot of hands-on genetics. That’s how I’d encountered their name before, years before while trying to uncover Lil’s and my birth records. In the end, the only solid fact I managed to unearth was that the artificial insemination of our mother had been conducted in Chicago, Illinois, by one Regis Laboratories. Which I’d call ironic at the very least. The same company that once horsed around with this woman’s ovaries is now managing their tour of obsolescence while cutting a monthly check for the attorney who hired her daughter at an obscure Memphis law firm whose usual clientele runs more to multiple-amputees than multinational pharmaceutical trolls. In fact, I’m not sure whether ironic quite covers it.

Tree’s smile spreads effortlessly. “Julian, everything you’re looking for is at the centermost of your heart.”

I wait for a little more information. When it doesn’t come, I say, “That’s really special to know, Tree. And why have you hidden this little nugget from me for so long? Listen. Seriously. How can I convince you to bring Truman in for me? Just once? This material is good for a Pulitzer at least. Do you know how few people get the Pulitzer?”

“Everything you need is inside your own heart,” says Tree, unfazed. “Ask. That’s all you have to do. There are guides, lots of them, whose whole business is to take you where you need to go.”

“You mean Jesus, Krishna, Buddha… ?”

She nods. “Mother Mary, Guan Yin, Meher Baba, the archangels, on and on.”

“Are you going to sing ‘Rock of Ages’ now?”

“They’re codes, Julian, that’s all. They’re codes that work.”

I try to give Tree’s proposition serious consideration. I don’t get very far. I tried om-ing once. It made my nose hairs itch.

“There’s one other thing you should know,” says Tree, pushing her empty teacup away. “When you ask, you receive. Don’t think it won’t happen. And don’t think this is just about you and your mother. It is, of course. But this stuff is old, Julian. It’s very old. It’s why we came into these bodies. It’s why we’re in this country, sitting at this table, having this conversation. It’s why this solar system is here, as a safe house, a hypothetical learning space for working out exactly these issues.”

I scowl at the word hypothetical. “What exactly do you mean by ‘when you ask, you receive?’”

“It’s too late to take it back now.”

“Take back what?”

“You signed on for this a long, long time ago, baby. Just pay attention. The universe will send you situations that will take you to your centermost heart. Some people call these kinds of things tests. Some say they’re punishments. But they’re all blessings, Julian, and I’ll tell you why. Each one gives us another chance to love what we could not love before.”

“I may need a few more chances with this ice cream,” I say.

Tree leans forward. “It has nothing to do with ice cream, or your mother, or your sister, or your novel, Julian, and I’ll tell you why. What you could never love before is yourself. That’s the battle you are fighting. All that adolescent behavior of yours, all that denial you like to wrap yourself up in—that will soon fall away, revealing the warrior within. Once that happens, our work truly begins. Until that happens, it doesn’t matter how many Three-three-threes come and go. You’re asking the right questions now. That’s what’s important. That means the answers can’t be too far away. Believe me when I say they are coming at you at the speed of light. Hear me when I tell you this. There will soon come a time when denial will no longer be a possibility.”

I give her a blank look. Go ahead, I’m thinking. Underestimate me.