20

The phone in the underground cavern rang. Sam Beth picked it up.

“Toledo Institute of Astronomy,” she droned. Then she rolled her eyes and covered the receiver. She called out, “Dr. Sparks?”

Irene came riding down the walkway in the tunnel on one of the mopeds that the physicists used to traverse the sections of the collider between the insertion hubs and detectors.

She parked the vehicle and took the phone from Sam Beth’s resentful hand. It was an irony that in the vicinity of some of the most specialized and technologically advanced equipment in the world, they had to use phones plugged into wires because their mobile phones could not communicate from four hundred feet belowground, around so many magnets.

“Sparks,” she said.

Then she listened. Then she said, “This is unacceptable. How do you just lose a person from the face of the earth? I gave her to you. You were supposed to give her back to me, all burned up and stuff.”

“This has never happened before,” said the funeral home director.

Irene said, “That doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.”

“You’re right, you’re right,” said the man.

“You’re in big trouble, mister,” Irene told him. “You don’t just erase a person from the world. You don’t just twiddle your thumbs and throw some glitter in the air and whoops, she’s gone. You just can’t do that, do you understand?”

“I do,” said the funeral home director. “I do understand. I’m still hopeful that we will find her. It’s still possible.”

“See that you do,” said Irene. “She was my mother. She was not just some box of dust that you don’t know what to do with. She was all I had.”

She slammed the phone back into the receiver and turned around to find that Sam Beth was looking at her with her mouth hanging open.

“What happened?” said Sam Beth.

“I stole my mother’s body from the funeral home,” said Irene. “Her burned up, postcremation body. And now they can’t find her, and I am blaming them for losing her.”

“Wow,” said Sam Beth, seeming to be genuinely impressed. “What are you going to do with her?”

“That’s the thing,” said Irene. “I don’t know. I can’t just randomly plant her in some flower garden.”

Sam Beth narrowed her eyes and blew air out gently between her lips. She inflated her lips in this way, tapping one finger gently on the desk.

“I know what to do,” said Sam Beth. “There is a ceremony that the Daughters of Babylon can perform. I think I can help you.”

“You would do that?” said Irene.

“When you just stood there and said you stole your mother’s ashes from the funeral home, my opinion of you kind of changed. I mean, I still don’t think you’re right for Dr. Dermont. But I think what you did was pretty badass.”

*   *   *

It was summertime, 1986. Bernice and Sally had planted a flower garden, trying to attract as many hummingbirds as possible to their kitchen window, because the two-year-old George and Irene found them so interesting. They planted phlox, bee balm, tried to get a trumpet vine to riot over an arbor installed by Ray and Dean. The two men had stayed friends, in spite of the situation, and they often did projects around the house together, Ray coming in to visit for a few days or taking Dean off hunting in Michigan in the fall. Bernice avoided him when he was around, but came to grudgingly appreciate his continued interest in Irene. He was a wild character, but they had underestimated him.

Of course he later became a felon and a gambler, but this was still the golden summer when they were all together, and Bernice could pretend it would always be this way. The babies would sit in their high chairs, side by side, and eat their breakfast watching little birds hover over the flowers while the women drank tea, Bernice resting between sessions, Sally serving up applesauce, scrambled eggs, peach slices, and ripe tomatoes to the kids.

“We need to separate them soon,” Sally said one morning.

“You said when they’re three,” said Bernice, her hands around a mug of tea. They had been making applesauce and had kerchiefs on their heads.

“I said when they’re verbal,” Sally corrected. She used a rag to wipe off the counter and replaced George’s spoon with a new one from the drawer.

“Does it really matter?” Out of habit, she loosed the tea from the tea ball and swirled the contents around in the remaining liquid, then upended the cup on the saucer.

“Yes, it matters,” said Sally. “We don’t want them to be like cousins. We want them to meet as adults. Don’t be weird. If they know each other too well, they can’t fall in love.”

Bernice slowly turned the teacup back over and peered inside.

“What is it?” asked Sally.

“You’re not the one that’s got to move out,” said Bernice. “And lose her job.”

“Yeah, you’re not the one who’s going to have to get a job. Without you here, there’s no astrology practice—it’s just smoke and mirrors.”

“I’m smoke and mirrors,” said Bernice. In the cup: a whirlwind, a broken chain. Sometimes there was a bell, a bridge.

“You’re not smoke and mirrors,” said Sally. “You have real talent, whatever your personal feelings about it are. I’ve seen you predict stuff, like spooky accurate.”

“It’s all science,” said Bernice. “You know that. Charts, lists, books, technique. The fact that it happens to work has nothing to do with me, any more than the fact that you’re affected by gravity has anything to do with you.”

“What’s in the teacup?” said Sally. “Is it more plane crash?”

“No,” said Bernice. “I mean, yes, but it means nothing.”

Sally pulled a large ceramic bowl out of the sink and set it on the kitchen island. She began to hum as she wiped it with her towel.

Irene said, “All done,” and Sally swept her tray clean with the rag and replaced the food with some paper crayons for her to play with.

“Can’t get down yet, darling,” she said. “Mama’s still resting, and I’m going to finish putting away the dishes we made the applesauce in. Then I’ll take you outside. If only Uncle Dean would get back, he could take you kids for a while and let us finish.”

Then Dean came through the door, pulling his flannel coat from his shoulders, “Hello, family!”

Bernice saw Sally’s mouth drop open, her head jerk up. Her eyes met Bernice’s eyes. “Wait, this is that moment. Applesauce,” she said. “From our own orchard. It’s happening. And here he is. It’s him. He’s about to do it.”

“What, me?” Dean asked. “Brave, handsome me?”

Dean turned and swung his arms out wide, and the bowl, knocked off the counter, fell toward the ground. But Bernice was already there, standing, and caught it before it shattered on the floor.

“Yeah, right,” said Sally. “You’re smoke and mirrors. You don’t know anything. But you predicted this moment, ten years ago. Down to the pot in your hands. And you know it.”

Irene laughed in her high chair. George threw a tomato. Both the women turned then and looked straight at the children in their high chairs. George was holding Irene’s hand.

*   *   *

Maybe Bernice did not realize that the moment of separation would ever come. Maybe she thought she could keep on tossing herself onto the sofa next to Sally, pulling her friend’s head into her lap, or brushing Sally’s long hair while she was on the telephone. “Oh, that feels good,” Sally would say, hanging up. “It gives me goose bumps. Don’t stop.” Maybe Bernice imagined she would keep on hugging her behind the stove, rubbing her temples with arnica, doing her toenails and laughing. Never mind that she would fall into the arms of Dean, say “Hey, baby,” and kiss him. Never mind that she would fall so eagerly into his bed, laughing into the night. Shitty as it was being third wheel, Bernice could go on forever.

But after that day in the kitchen, with the bowl that dropped and the children holding hands in their chairs, Sally seemed to never stop lecturing that they must raise the children separately to be compatible, so that they could find each other, so that familiarity would not breed contempt. They would train them independently to be magnets, north and south, that would click together when they met, years later, at the appointed time. Maybe Bernice had forgotten this part of the deal, in her happiness. Dean was gone from their lives so much, either in the studio or traveling, that it was almost like old times. Sometimes the mothers even slept together in the same bed. For Bernice, ignoring the possibility that they’d separate the children also meant turning her back on the idea that they’d separate from each other. Yet that’s exactly what Sally had in mind.

They finally decided Bernice would leave on the children’s third birthday. She would live in her old house in the East End, she would continue to work as a tasseomancer, an astrologer, a psychic, and Sally would get a job to supplement Dean’s erratic income. The bags were packed and moved bit by bit, the furniture at the old house dusted and prepared, the utilities restored, and they were leaving. They had let the babies fall asleep in the same bed one last time, and Bernice was to leave as soon as they were truly sleeping, so there would be no sad good-bye to remember, only something sweet. Bernice sat on the bench near the door, hesitating to go and get her sleeping daughter, hesitating to leave her friend.

“It’s only for a little while,” said Sally.

“Twenty years,” said Bernice.

“We can visit each other in our dreams.”

“That’s not enough. I’ll miss you. This is a terrible idea.”

“Well, terrible or not, it’s not a new one. And you agreed to it.”

Sally began to straighten up the entryway, folding a scarf and smoothing the sleeves of a jacket, putting shoes in a line: George’s shoes, Sally’s shoes, Dean’s shoes, even some flip-flops that belonged to Ray, left the last time he’d popped in.

“This isn’t going to work unless we separate them, Bern,” she said as she cleaned. “And really separate—no playdates, no field trips. If we’re still hanging out together all the time, they’re not separate. This has got to be a cold cut.”

Sally stopped fidgeting and put her hand on Bernice’s shoulder. “And after they get married, why think of how much life we’ll have to live together? We won’t even be fifty! We can still get adjacent suites at the old folks’ home, BERN-iss! It’ll be just like we always planned. But our kids will be happy. And that’ll mean we can be happy. Right? Come on. The grandchildren will be here in like five minutes. And then we can tell them everything. As soon as they’re safely in love.”

*   *   *

For three years they maintained the separation. For three years, Bernice was able to maintain the sobriety she had kept for the three years she’d lived with Sally and Dean. Sally would send her letters, sometimes, detailing the ways they’d put the children’s lives together: what music they’d love, what countries they would visit, what poems they’d learn. She made a map for them to find each other, through the study of the stars. Every letter was signed, “I love you! Don’t forget that!” Bernice kept these letters in a locked box, and read them over and over.

And then one night, alone, afraid, tired, and restless, Bernice broke. There was no special reason for it: just a dissolution of will. Breaking meant drinking. Drinking felt terrible and wonderful and like going home again and like being cast out of home into the fire, and when she was good and drunk she called Sally, on the telephone, something that Sally had specifically forbidden.

“Hello?” said a voice. The voice of a child.

“Is your mother at home?” Bernice said, as best she could.

“What?” the child said. “What did you say?”

Bernice was mustering the courage to try again, do better, when Sally spoke, “Give me the phone, George. Who is this? What do you want?”

“Sally, it’s me.”

Sally arrived at the front door thirty minutes later, and the first thing she did was to grab Bernice by the wrist and pull her out onto the porch. She shut the door and the screen door and peeked into the window, where Irene was watching television.

“What’s wrong with you?” Sally asked through clenched teeth.

“What’s wrong with you?” Bernice responded.

“Are you drunk?” Sally was aghast.

“No. I’m not drunk. But I’m going to be a drunk if you don’t call off this deal. I’m done. I’m done with the thing. It’s stupid anyway, and who cares, and this is not right. I think what we are really doing is ruining my life.” Bernice let herself drop into the porch swing.

Sally clutched her face with both hands and sat down next to her. “You’re drunk! I’ve never seen you like this.”

“I’m. Like. This.” Bernice said it very slowly. “I. Always. Am.”

Sally took Bernice by the hand. “We’ve got to get you some coffee,” she said. “It’ll be OK. We’ll get you coffee and aspirin. It’ll be fine. You just went a little crazy.”

The touch of Sally’s hand on hers made her begin to cry. “I’m so lonely,” she said. “I’m lonely and I don’t know what to do.”

Sally smiled her big wonky smile. “Maybe you just need a boyfriend!” she said. “You could find someone. Someone like Dean. He may be gone a lot, but he’s so—”

“He dazzles you,” Bernice cried even harder. “I know.”

“Is that it? Do you need to, like, date?” Sally frowned. “It almost seems like the last guy you had a date with is Ray.”

“Irene’s father.”

“Don’t call him that. He’s George’s uncle.”

“That’s what he is.”

“What’s going on with you? I mean, I get that you weren’t dating when the kids were little, but why now? Are you, like, some kind of nun? Are you pouting?”

Bernice knew that what was going to happen next would be something she remembered forever, good or bad. In her mind, she would reach out and brush Sally’s hair away from her face, place her palm alongside her friend’s cheek, and say, “It’s you, Sally. It’s you, and it’s always been you. That’s why I can’t bear this separation for the children. It’s separation from the only one I’ve ever loved.” She would see a light of understanding in Sally’s eyes, and she would lean in and kiss her, first on one cheek, and then on the other, and then Sally herself would turn her lips to meet Bernice’s. It would be something she would remember forever.

But what happened was different. Bernice said something Sally didn’t understand, and then she reached for her friend and hooked her around the ear. She came in for a kiss, and Sally stopped her by pushing back on her shoulder and standing up.

“What are you doing?” Sally asked.

“I love you,” said Bernice.

“You really are drunk,” Sally laughed nervously.

“I like girls,” said Bernice. “Girls, not boys. I like girls not boys. NOT BOYS.”

Then Sally whispered, “What? You’re GAY?” Her whisper was loud enough to wake the neighbors, loud enough to overcome the television, loud enough to rock the foundation of the house, loud enough to echo down the years of Bernice’s life, and all the casual touching, and all the friendly hugs, booming with the secret. Bernice could see a light dawning in Sally’s eyes, but it wasn’t love. Sally understood very well what was happening. It was aggravation, and anger, maybe betrayal, and she felt as if Sally was seeing her for the first time, and she was seeing a monster.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Sally snapped. “I’m not an asshole. I would have been cool with it.”

“Because you’re not!” Bernice yelled back. “You’re not gay and I am. That’s it. That’s what happened. Nobody twinned us, nobody set us up for a lifetime of happiness, we just happened to be two girls, one gay, one not, and what am I supposed to do, loving you? What am I supposed to do about it? You won’t even let me see you anymore.”

“You love me?”

“I’m really in love with you,” said Bernice. “Really. I am. Since high school.”

“No, you’re not,” said Sally. “You’re not. You’re over it. You got over it.”

“I AM.”

Sally came very close to her. Bernice could feel her breath coming in and out, landing on her face. Her face was numb. She could feel the heat from Sally’s breath. That was it. Sally took a sharp breath in, and she glared at Bernice. When the words came out, they came hard and low. “Are you telling me that this whole thing has been you trying to get in my pants? Is that what you expect me to believe?”

“No,” said Bernice. “Not the whole thing.”

“When I think”—Sally put her face inches from Bernice, and it was terrible to see the rage in her friend’s face—“about the ways I have let you touch me. You are disgusting.”

“You don’t mean that,” said Bernice. “You’re just mad. You’re just surprised.”

“Surprised is not what I am,” said Sally. “I am not surprised you are gay. I’m unsurprised and unimpressed. Lots of people are gay. Lots of people I know, people you know, so it’s not even news. It’s not even interesting.”

“Good,” said Bernice.

“Not good,” said Sally. “Because the lies you have told have been back to the beginning of our lives. If you love me.”

“I do,” said Bernice. She felt very quiet and small. She felt like a lot of things had been taken away from her that were protecting her, and now she was naked without them, small and cold. Sally stood up and began to pace the porch. The heels of her boots snapped against the floorboards. The light filtering through the blinds from the television streaked across her face, across the back of her head and her golden hair.

“What kind of mother are you,” Sally said with precision. “What kind of mother are you, letting a stranger knock you up, just to get—just to get your breast into my mouth?”

Bernice put her hand over her mouth, and bit into her finger. Sally remembered that night. Remembered it with accuracy, all the ways that it had happened. She had hoped that Sally remembered it, in some way, but not like this.

“It was for the children,” said Bernice. “I love them. I do. Even yours.”

“Your breast was in my mouth!” cried Sally. “How dare you not tell me. How dare you?”

Bernice felt herself stiffen. She felt herself begin to fight. She fought for the memory of that night, for it not to be something wicked that she did, something small and deceitful, her deceiving both of them, for that brief second of contact, for that encouraging smile, that voice humming into her flesh, those eyes flashing encouragement at her: “It’s working!”

Once, when they were kids, when Sally’s breasts were just coming out, and they were still playing with Barbies, there had been a moment in Sally’s bedroom. Making two moments, in all. Two, forgetting all the girls she had drawn into her bed, all the nipples she had rolled around in her mouth, all the tit fat she had smacked with the back of her hand, all the places she had put her cheek and slept. That day, they were putting on their bathing suits. Sally was having trouble with her ties, and the triangles of her bikini were laid down on her belly as she stood there, fighting with a knot, and her new little breasts sprouting. Bernice had said, “Can I touch them?” And Sally had said, “Yeah, sure.”

Bernice, just another young girl with curiosity in the palms of her hands, put those hands over the place where the triangles would go, feeling Sally’s skin cool under her hot palms. “Weird, right?” said Sally. “Come on.” The knot was untied. They never talked about it. Never mentioned it. When they were in bed together, so many countless times, for sleepovers, for college overnights, for whatever reason, Bernice petting her endlessly on the back, never trailing her hand those two inches more down past her tailbone. Suntan lotion on the collarbones, the neck, but never inside two imaginary circles drawn around her breasts. For other girls, her hand slamming into the most unforgiving places. But for Sally, a map of forbidden zones. This body she knew so well. Better than her own.

“How dare YOU?” she demanded, shouting at Sally now. “How dare you not know? You have been my best friend for twenty years, twenty-five years, how dare you not know who I love?”

Sally hesitated, said nothing. Her face was a blank. Bernice was reminded of her expression in that moment, her hands pressing into the cool breasts before the swimming suit was applied, and it was as if Sally’s face turned to hers, her eyes suddenly aware, locked on Bernice’s eyes, saying, “It’s you.” Then Bernice swallowed.

“You knew,” Bernice said slowly. “You did know. How could you not know?”

“No, I did not know. Because you lied!” Sally growled, her teeth bared. “You lied to me. Don’t you turn this around, you liar.”

“You knew,” said Bernice. “You knew and you used me, you knew and you let me follow your bait. My breast in your mouth. You did that. On purpose. Like a prize you were giving me.”

She could feel it there still, stiff under her friend’s tongue, still feel her hands itching to crawl over Sally’s rib cage, dig into her back, draw her down on top of her, never let go.

“This is over,” Sally said. She stood up. She brushed off her shirt, pulled down her skirt.

“No,” said Bernice. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“You’re drunk, may I remind you. And you’re the one that wanted this to be over. So it is. I don’t want you in my life, and I don’t want your daughter for my son.”

Bernice felt bad. She felt drunk and bad. And sorry. And like it was all her fault.

“It’s not her fault,” said Bernice. “It’s not my baby’s fault. Please, please. What is she, if we don’t have this? What is she without him?”

“You sound like the town drunk,” said Sally. “You are out of control. Get yourself together, and go find something else to do with your life. Obsessing over me, and prepping your daughter to marry my son, that’s over now.”

“No,” Bernice begged. “Not like this.”

“What’s more,” said Sally. Bernice, in her drunkenness, couldn’t tell if her friend was angry, or tired, or excited, or dismayed. But she understood this: “What’s more, if you ever come around trying to talk to me, or if you ever send her around to talk to him, I will fucking kill you. I’ll kill you. I am not what you are. Remember that. I am not like you.”

*   *   *

That night, Bernice set a fire. She set a fire but she did not die.

Here’s what is known: one got pregnant and then the other. They took some herbal drugs to induce labor, and they had their babies at the same time. What else really happened? Who knows? What else can really be documented or understood? Why do some people fall in love with each other, and others don’t? What is love? It’s so, so, so stupid right up until it’s real. And then it’s the most important thing in the world, whether you believe in it or not.

*   *   *

Sam Beth was dressed as a Daughter of Babylon in all her ritual markings. Irene, uninitiated, was only allowed to watch and learn, but she wore a black robe with a long cowl that Sam Beth had provided. The procession started at the top of the ziggurat, at 10 P.M., when the moon was at its zenith. The dark rectangle containing the remains was draped with a black cloth, and Sam Beth carried it in her arms. She had a large diamond in her belly button, one shoved into her left nostril, and one hanging from her right ear. She had explained that the triangle created by the relationship between these three diamonds was also traced in coal around her right breast, and the parallax measurement described by the arc of the acute angle was reflected in the name of the star she claimed as her own talisman. They carried the dead woman’s rectangle of ashes from the top of the ziggurat to the bottom and into the crypt that was generally kept for dignitaries in the world of astronomy and math, and they carried her past the person who created the lens that allowed the universe to be mapped and the person who hypothesized the particle that was created when two iron ions collide, and they laid her to rest in a very modest crèche and draped the black cloth across the entrance, and no one disturbed her at all forever. She was left entirely alone.

Bernice had tried to get into her daughter’s dreams from the very beginning. From before she even gave birth she had tried to dream herself into her daughter’s reveries. Before Irene could talk, before she could walk, Bernice was reaching out, reaching in, helping her discover how to release her body from her mind, and go where she would in sleep. All the while Bernice was dreaming and building a special place for her and her daughter to reside. It was a beautiful lake island, with a clay and wattle cabin, a bean garden, and beehives. She invited, and invited, but the girl never ever came. Maybe when I am dead, Bernice had thought, this is where I will end up. Here on this lake island, with the girl I brought into the world. We’ll hear the water lapping and the linnets swooping, and we’ll drift through the rest of time this way. But if she never visits it with me now, how will she ever find me when I am gone?