I quickly strode past the twenty-foot-tall cement wall around the physics building. Written in large red letters was a warning:
I shook my head in disgust. They said it like no quantum physics rays, or whatever it was inside their compound, could escape.
Supposedly the dance department building, one of the farthest wings from the science department, was immune from the disruptions. We all knew it wasn’t true.
On the way to the dance office, I passed a secretary I recognized from the neighboring music department. At a holiday party two years ago she had shown me pictures of her three adorable children, all under eight years old. I could remember all their names: Jody, Jaimie, and Jessica. I couldn’t remember hers. When she had asked if I had kids, I’d choked up and pretended the cookie I was eating had gotten caught in my throat.
In reality, it was the recent miscarriage that made me unable to talk.
Today the other secretary was wearing a hot pink blouse and a fedora. Not her usual fashion choice. She smiled and waved. A minute later I passed her again, only this time she was wearing a conservative green blouse. She waved to me as though it were the first time she had seen me today.
It was the first time that version of her had seen me today. I waved again. I wondered if the alternate secretary had three children with J names.
Any day now I expected another version of myself would walk in this world. I dreaded that day.
Five minutes later, I arrived in the office of the dance department, setting my purse and coat on my chair. It was a long walk from the free parking lot for staff, but at least I didn’t have to pay twenty dollars a day for parking.
“The head of the department brought us donuts!” Martel, the intern, said with the bubbly enthusiasm of a college student who loved free food.
He pranced around like a puppy as he followed me to the communal breakroom. I surveyed the artery-clogging box Giselle had brought. It was tempting.
“You are welcome to a donut,” I said, knowing he was waiting for one of the paid employees to dig in before he took one.
Martel grabbed a jelly-filled donut and bit in. I filled up my cup with coffee, turning back to him to find he had a donut in each hand, bites out of each.
“You want to see the selfie I took with my twin from another space and time? I took it yesterday.” He transferred the cake donut to his mouth, holding it like a frisbee as he showed me selfies I didn’t particularly want to see.
I nodded politely. “That’s great.”
Giselle strolled in, stretching like a cat. The big smile on her face attested to her good mood — if her gift of donuts didn’t.
“Who wants to hear about my visit to another dimension yesterday?” she asked coyly.
“I do!” Martel said. “Especially if you have juicy details!”
“Is this appropriate for work?” I asked, giving her a meaningful look. She was our boss, and I didn’t think it was appropriate for her to talk about her exploits at work, especially in front of a student intern.
Giselle had accidentally walked into a parallel universe last week and found herself living with that Parisian lover whom she was still besotted with thirty years later and wished she’d ended up with. I suspected the spring to Giselle’s step was due to another night in that dimension. Lucky her.
“Is someone jealous?” Giselle asked.
“No,” I lied.
She looked like she was about to say more when Nelson strolled in.
“I hear there are donuts in here,” Nelson said, adjusting his glasses. As usual, he wore trendy yoga pants that hugged his lean frame. “Are any gluten-free?”
Three months ago, Nelson would never have asked that question. I had a suspicion that the contemporary dance teacher permanently switched places with an alternate version of himself because they coveted each other’s lives. I couldn’t prove it, but it seemed obvious from the abrupt change in mannerisms, swankier fashion choices, and lack of complaining about the choices he could have made.
“Each multiverse reflects our choices.” Giselle said, her expression dreamy. “It’s a testament of freewill and the beauty of the universe’s complexity.”
I couldn’t help snorting at that.
Martel turned toward me. “Have you ever met one of your twins yet? Or walked into one of the other dimensions or anything like that?”
“No,” I said quickly. “Never.” I left them to enjoy donuts and gossip in the breakroom.
If only I could have accidentally walked into a happier version of my own life. Instead, my alternate lives haunted me. Each life is different, but the same. Each parallel dimension is as disappointing as my own.
Almost every night, I find myself transported into a life like this one but with details just slightly off. I’m still me when I’m there, imposed in this other person’s life, usually knowing everything I know here and now, but not always. I experience what my life would be in a parallel world.
In the morning, I ache with hopelessness after such visitations. I yearn for a respite from this life for one where things might be different. Not that I would be able to stay, but I just want a glimpse there is hope for me somewhere.
• • •
In one universe, my sister decides she can’t afford both of her children because her husband is out of work. I am overjoyed when they offer one of their children to me. This is like the best birthday present in the world. Finally, someone has given me the gift I’ve always wanted.
I drive around, trying to figure out how to get to the daycare to pick up my new baby to take home with me forever — or until my sister decides to take him back like she did with that toy camera when we were kids, but I can’t find the daycare. I circle the city for hours. Panic rises in me like a tide, threatening to drown out all else.
At dark when the daycare closes, I still haven’t found the address or gotten to take home my baby.
When I returned to my own reality, I can’t tell if the surrealism and lack of logic from this world is because this is simply a weirder version of my family and their already dysfunctional logic or their entire world is this way.
• • •
In a parallel world, I married my ex-boyfriend. It is a decision I would not have considered in this life since he didn’t want children. In this other life, my husband’s friends have triplets. When I hold one of their babies, she fits perfectly in my arms. The yearning inside me is unlike anything else I have ever experienced. I love this baby. I need her.
These friends are so overwhelmed by having newborn babies, they don’t notice when I take one of them home to care for her as my own.
I try to hide the baby from my husband so he won’t know I have stolen his friend’s infant. I wake up before I know how long this plan works and the consequences.
• • •
In another life, I find a baby in my house. She is at least six-months old, and I don’t remember giving birth to her, but sometimes that happens when shifting into another reality.
Even if I can’t remember this baby, I know she’s mine. Who else’s would she be? I cradle her in my arms and hold her. She is quiet, only making gurgling murmurs. She seems so tiny and vulnerable. I can’t tell if she’s tired or weak. I want to protect her forever.
I love her more than anything else in the world. Just gazing at her beautiful face makes me want to cry. Maybe it’s hormones. Oxytocin. I feel myself bonding with this baby, connecting with her as though we are made from the same skin. She is part of me.
My mother enters my home unannounced, just like she does in my other life. “What’s wrong with this baby?” she blurts in her New York blunt manner.
She takes the baby from me, and I am powerless to stop her. I am just as weak as this baby.
“This baby is hungry,” she says. “How long has it been since you fed her?”
“I don’t know. Probably a couple hours ago.” I can’t remember. I don’t have the thoughts of the person who belongs in the body I hijacked. Perhaps the other me is in my body right now, in my world.
“Her diaper is wet, and she has a rash,” my mother chides. “What kind of mother are you?”
She insists we take this baby to the doctor immediately. When we do, we find out I haven’t fed this baby for days.
How could this even be possible? How could I forget to feed my own baby? This is my baby, isn’t it? Doesn’t the other me who belongs in this world love her as much as I do? Or has the other me been gone in other realms for days?
“You messed this up, just like you mess everything else up in your life,” my mother says.
She might be right.
I am hauled away for jail, and I am separated from my baby. Once again, there is no baby in my life. My heart breaks, and I feel as if the sorrow inside me will swallow me whole.
• • •
In another universe, I am taking elementary school students to the bus during afterschool duty. It is the other life I might have had, teaching dance to elementary children instead of working with college students in a dance department. I sometimes wonder how my life might have gone if I had made that choice.
I am happy as an elementary school teacher in this parallel life, surrounded by children. And yet, I still don’t have a child of my own.
As my students line up for the bus, a little boy crouches by the bushes.
“Look.” He holds something in his hands. “Someone left this doll, but it doesn’t look right.”
The doll resembles a fetus. Instinctively, I’m careful as I take the doll from him, even though I have no way of knowing this isn’t a doll. She’s so small she fits into my palm. Her skin could be made of a soft, flexible material like silicone, but I know this is real flesh. She’s cold and slimy but mostly clean. I can’t tell if she’s alive or dead.
I leave my class at the bus line (such an irresponsible teacher, I know!) and go to the office to ask for paramedics. The police come instead and tell me I was supposed to leave a body at a crime scene. They say the school grounds were a crime scene where some woman obviously aborted her baby.
I wasn’t aware abortions were illegal in this other dimension, though it is just as possible someone could have miscarried as aborted. In any case, there is no blood, and I know they are wrong. Someone abandoned that tiny premature baby. This is the true crime.
I hug this precious unwanted baby to me because I want to keep her warm and safe. I think I feel a heartbeat. Is that a breath?
The police insist she’s dead. They take her away.
Only, I’m certain she wasn’t dead. I feel like I am the one dead inside.
I find myself on the floor of my house, tears streaking down my face. I have no idea how I got home.
• • •
When the other versions of myself from the multiverse visit my life, I wonder what they experience in my body. Will it be the day I was told I would never be able to get pregnant, only to find out a matter of hours later that I already was pregnant? I had been pregnant for two months before that consultation with the fertility doctor. The one test they never thought to give me was a pregnancy test.
That let down of initial news was immediately chased up with a high that I didn’t think could be burst.
I wanted to laugh and shout, “In your face, doctors! You were wrong! I did it!” until I gushed out blood and miscarried a couple days later.
My temporary high came crashing down lower than before.
Maybe that will be the day my other self from another universe will experience. Or perhaps it will be the day I was preparing for the invitro fertilization but found out all the eggs that arrived were poor quality and none survived.
“It turns out they were spoiled,” the doctor said, scratching his head in dismay.
Spoiled. As if this were something as banal as a carton of store-bought eggs.
He was rated the best fertility specialist in my city. Later I learned he was the only fertility specialist in my county.
My husband — ex-husband now — didn’t like that doctor. He thought he was insensitive because the doctor wouldn’t stop talking about who had died in the most recent episode of Game of Thrones. All my husband at the time could focus on was that the doctor was ruining the plot for us.
All I could think about was the eggs that never had a chance.
Maybe one of my other selves will experience the day the next batch of eggs arrived, the ones with a guarantee for a blastocyst. I was so excited, so hopeful. Out of eight eggs, six succeeded in being fertilized, two blastocysts were implanted, and the rest were supposed to be saved in case the two blastocysts didn’t work out.
Even though the doctors said it was impossible, I could tell the moment my body rejected the eggs. They say the naked eye can’t see blastocysts, but I was sure I could see those two tiny dots on the toilet paper after my body ejected them.
Unfortunately, all the other blastocysts saved for later were poor quality. They didn’t survive. If my other selves witness that day, they will feel the heart-wrenching anguish of me failing to become a mother yet again. Another me will get to experience my despair and hopelessness. Perhaps that other me who failed to adopt or failed to foster children or failed in some other way will presume I am predestined to be childless.
I don’t think the other versions of myself will find a happier version of reality in my life than they have in theirs.