Unpossible Read online

  "The brain isn’t one thing, of course," he told me. "It’s millions of firing cells, and those resolve into hundreds of active sites, and so it is with the mind. There are dozens of nodes in the mind, each one trying to out-shout the others. For any decision, the mind erupts with noise, and that triggers ... how do I explain this ... Have you ever seen the British Parliament on C-SPAN?" Of course I had: in a hospital TV is a constant companion. "These members of the mind’s parliament, they’re all shouting in chemicals and electrical charges, until enough of the voices are shouting in unison. Ding! That’s a ‘thought,’ a ‘decision.’ The Parliament immediately sends a signal to the body to act on the decision, and at the same time it tells the Page to take the news—"

  "Wait, who’s the Page?"

  He waves his hand. "That’s not important right now." (Weeks later, in a different discussion, Dr. S will explain that the Page isn’t one thing, but a cascade of neural events in the temporal area of the limbic system that meshes the neural map of the new thought with the existing neural map—but by then I know that "neural map" is just another metaphor for another deeply complex thing or process, and that I’ll never get to the bottom of this. Dr. S said not to worry about it, that nobody gets to the bottom of it.) "The Page takes the news of the decision to the Queen."

  "All right then, who’s the Queen? Consciousness?"

  "Exactly right! The self itself."

  He beamed at me, his attentive student. Talking about this stuff got Dr. S going like nothing else, but he was oblivious to the way I let the neck of my scrubs fall open when I stretched out on the couch. If only I could have tucked the two hemispheres of my brain into a lace bra.

  "The Page," he said, "delivers its message to Her Majesty, telling her what the Parliament has decided. The Queen doesn’t need to know about all the other arguments that went on, all the other possibilities that were thrown out. She simply needs to know what to announce to her subjects. The Queen tells the parts of the body to act on the decision."

  "Wait, I thought the Parliament had already sent out the signal. You said before that you can see the brain warming up before the self even knows about it."

  "That’s the joke. The Queen announces the decision, and she thinks that her subjects are obeying her commands, but in reality, they have already been told what to do. They’re already reaching for their glasses of water."

  I pad down to the kitchen in bare feet, wearing Therese’s sweatpants and a T-shirt. The shirt is a little tight; Therese, champion dieter and Olympic-level purger, was a bit smaller than me.

  Alice is at the table, already dressed, a book open in front of her. "Well, you slept in this morning," she says brightly. Her face is made up, her hair sprayed into place. The coffee cup next to the book is empty. She’s been waiting for hours.

  I look around for a clock, and find one over the door. It’s only nine. At the hospital I slept in later than that all the time. "I’m starved," I say. There’s a refrigerator, a stove, and dozens of cabinets.

  I’ve never made my own breakfast. Or any lunch or dinner, for that matter. For my entire life, my meals have been served on cafeteria trays. "Do you have scrambled eggs?"

  She blinks. "Eggs? You don’t—" She abruptly stands. "Sure. Sit down, Therese, and I’ll make you some."

  "Just call me ‘Terry,’ okay?"

  Alice stops, thinks about saying something—I can almost hear the clank of cogs and ratchets—until she abruptly strides to the cabinet, crouches, and pulls out a non-stick pan.

  I take a guess on which cabinet holds the coffee mugs, guess right, and take the last inch of coffee from the pot. "Don’t you have to go to work?" I say. Alice does something at a restaurant supply company; Therese has always been hazy on the details.

  "I’ve taken a leave," she says. She cracks an egg against the edge of the pan, does something subtle with the shells as the yolk squeezes out and plops into the pan, and folds the shell halves into each other. All with one hand.

  "Why?"

  She smiles tightly. "We couldn’t just abandon you after getting you home. I thought we might need some time together. During this adjustment period."

  "So when do I have to see this therapist? Whatsisname." My executioner.

  "Her. Dr. Mehldau’s in Baltimore, so we’ll drive there tomorrow." This is their big plan. Dr. Subramaniam couldn’t bring back Therese, so they’re running to anyone who says they can. "You know, she’s had a lot of success with people in your situation. That’s her book." She nods at the table.

  "So? Dr. Subramaniam is writing one too." I pick up the book. The Road Home: Finding the Lost Children of Zen. "What if I don’t go along with this?"

  She says nothing, chopping at the eggs. I’ll be eighteen in four months. Dr. S said that it will become a lot harder for them to hold me then. This ticking clock sounds constantly in my head, and I’m sure it’s loud enough for Alice and Mitch to hear it too.

  "Let’s just try Dr. Mehldau first."

  "First? What then?" She doesn’t answer. I flash on an image of me tied down to the bed, a priest making a cross over my twisting body. It’s a fantasy, not a Therese memory—I can tell the difference. Besides, if this had already happened to Therese, it wouldn’t have been a priest.

  "Okay then," I say. "What if I just run away?"

  "If you turn into a fish," she says lightly, "then I will turn into a fisherman and fish for you."

  "What?" I’m laughing. I haven’t heard Alice speak in anything but straightforward, earnest sentences.

  Alice’s smile is sad. "You don’t remember?"

  "Oh, yeah." The memory clicks. "Runaway Bunny. Did she like that?"

  Dr. S’s book is about me. Well, Zen O.D.-ers in general, but there are only a couple thousand of us. Z’s not a hugely popular drug, in the U.S. or anywhere else. It’s not a hallucinogen. It’s not a euphoric or a depressant. You don’t speed, mellow out, or even get high in the normal sense. It’s hard to see what the attraction is. Frankly, I have trouble seeing it.

  Dr. S says that most drugs aren’t about making you feel better, they’re about not feeling anything at all. They’re about numbness, escape. And Zen is a kind of arty, designer escape hatch. Zen disables the Page, locks him in his room, so that he can’t make his deliveries to the Queen. There’s no update to the neural map, and the Queen stops hearing what Parliament is up to. With no orders to bark, she goes silent. It’s that silence that people like Therese craved.

  But the real attraction—again, for people like Therese—is the overdose. Swallow way too much Zen and the Page can’t get out for weeks. When he finally gets out, he can’t remember the way back to the Queen’s castle. The whole process of updating the self that’s been going on for years is suddenly derailed. The silent Queen can’t be found.

  The Page, poor guy, does the only thing he can. He goes out and delivers the proclamations to the first girl he sees.

  The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen.

  "Hi, Terry. I’m Dr. Mehldau." She’s a stubby woman with a pleasant round face, and short dark hair shot with gray. She offers me her hand. Her fingers are cool and thin.

  "You called me Terry."

  "I was told that you prefer to go by that. Do you want me to call you something else?"

  "No ... I just expected you to make me say my name is ‘Therese’ over and over."

  She laughs and sits down in a red leather chair that looks soft but sturdy. "I don’t think that would be very helpful, do you? I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, Terry."

  "So I’m free to go."

  "Can’t stop you. But I do have to report back to your parents on how we’re doing."

  My parents.

  She shrugs. "It’s my job. Why don’t you have a seat and we can talk about why you’re here."

  The chair opposite her is cloth, not leather, but it’s still nicer than anything in Dr. Subramaniam’s office. The entire office is nicer than Dr. S’s office. Daffodil walls in white
trim, big windows glowing behind white cloth shades, tropically colored paintings.

  I don’t sit down.

  "Your job is to turn me into Mitch and Alice’s daughter. I’m not going to do that. So any time we spend talking is just bullshit."

  "Terry, no one can turn you into something you’re not."

  "Well then we’re done here." I walk across the room—though "stroll" is what I’m shooting for—and pick up an African-looking wooden doll from the bookshelf. The shelves are decorated with enough books to look serious, but there are long open spaces for arty arrangements of candlesticks and Japanese fans and plaques that advertise awards and appreciations. Dr. S’s bookshelves are for holding books, and books stacked on books. Dr. Mehldau’s bookshelves are for selling the idea of Dr. Mehldau.

  "So what are you, a psychiatrist or a psychologist or what?" I’ve met all kinds in the hospital. The psychiatrists are M.D.’s like Dr. S and can give you drugs. I haven’t figured out what the psychologists are good for.

  "Neither," she says. "I’m a counselor."

  "So what’s the ‘doctor’ for?"

  "Education." Her voice didn’t change, but I get the impression that the question’s annoyed her. This makes me strangely happy.

  "Okay, Dr. Counselor, what are you supposed to counsel me about? I’m not crazy. I know who Therese was, I know what she did, I know that she used to walk around in my body." I put the doll back in its spot next to a glass cube that could be a paperweight. "But I’m not her. This is my body, and I’m not going to kill myself just so Alice and Mitch can have their baby girl back."

  "Terry, no one’s asking you to kill yourself. Nobody can even make you into who you were before."

  "Yeah? Then what are they paying you for, then?"

  "Let me try to explain. Please, sit down. Please."

  I look around for a clock and finally spot one on a high shelf. I mentally set the timer to five minutes and sit opposite her, hands on my knees. "Shoot."

  "Your parents asked me to talk to you because I’ve helped other people in your situation, people who’ve overdosed on Z."

  "Help them what? Pretend to be something they’re not?"

  "I help them take back what they are. Your experience of the world tells you that Therese was some other person. No one’s denying that. But you’re in a situation where biologically and legally, you’re Therese Klass. Do you have plans for dealing with that?"

  As a matter of fact I do, and it involves getting the hell out as soon as possible. "I’ll deal with it," I say.

  "What about Alice and Mitch?"

  I shrug. "What about them?"

  "They’re still your parents, and you’re still their child. The overdose convinced you that you’re a new person, but that hasn’t changed who they are. They’re still responsible for you, and they still care for you."

  "Not much I can do about that."

  "You’re right. It’s a fact of your life. You have two people who love you, and you’re going to be with each other for the rest of your lives. You’re going to have to figure out how to relate to each other. Zen may have burned the bridge between you and your past life, but you can build that bridge again."

  "Doc, I don’t want to build that bridge. Look, Alice and Mitch seem like nice people, but if I was looking for parents, I’d pick someone else."

  Dr. Mehldau smiles. "None of us gets to choose our parents, Terry."

  I’m not in the mood to laugh. I nod toward the clock. "This is a waste of time."

  She leans forward. I think she’s going to try to touch me, but she doesn’t. "Terry, you’re not going to disappear if we talk about what happened to you. You’ll still be here. The only difference is that you’ll reclaim those memories as your own. You can get your old life back and choose your new life."

  Sure, it’s that easy. I get to sell my soul and keep it too.

  I can’t remember my first weeks in the hospital, though Dr. S said I was awake. At some point I realized that time was passing, or rather, that there was a me who was passing through time. I had lasagna for dinner yesterday, I am having meat loaf today. I am this girl in a bed. I think I realized this and forgot it several times before I could hold onto it.

  Every day was mentally exhausting, because everything was so relentlessly new. I stared at the TV remote for a half hour, the name for it on the tip of my tongue, and it wasn’t until the nurse picked it up and turned on the TV for me that I thought: Remote. And then sometimes, this was followed by a raft of other ideas: TV. Channel. Gameshow.

  People were worse. They called me by a strange name, and they expected things of me. But to me, every visitor, from the night shift nurse to the janitor to Alice and Mitch Klass, seemed equally important—which is to say, not important at all.

  Except for Dr. S. He was there from the beginning, and so he was familiar before I met him. He belonged to me like my own body.

  But everything else about the world—the names, the details, the facts—had to be hauled into the sunlight, one by one. My brain was like an attic, chock full of old and interesting things jumbled together in no order at all.

  I only gradually understood that somebody must have owned this house before me. And then I realized the house was haunted.

  After the Sunday service, I’m caught in a stream of people. They lean across the pews to hug Alice and Mitch, then me. They pat my back, squeeze my arms, kiss my cheeks. I know from brief dips into Therese’s memories that many of these people are as emotionally close as aunts or uncles. And any of them, if Therese were ever in trouble, would take her in, feed her, and give her a bed to sleep in.

  This is all very nice, but the constant petting has me ready to scream.

  All I want to do is get back home and take off this dress. I had no choice but to wear one of Therese’s girly-girl extravaganzas. Her closet was full of them, and I finally found one that fit, if not comfortably. She loved these dresses, though. They were her floral print flak jackets. Who could doubt the purity of a girl in a high-necked Laura Ashley?

  We gradually make our way to the vestibule, then to the sidewalk and the parking lot, under assault the entire way. I stop trying to match their faces to anything in Therese’s memories.

  At our car a group of teenagers take turns on me, the girls hugging me tight, the boys leaning into me with half hugs: shoulders together, pelvises apart. One of the girls, freckled with soft red curls falling past her shoulders, hangs back for awhile, then abruptly clutches me and whispers into my ear, "I’m so glad you’re okay, Miss T." Her tone is intense, as if she’s passing a secret message.

  A man moves through the crowd, arms open, smiling broadly. He’s in his late twenties or early thirties, his hair cut in a choppy gelled style that’s ten years too young for him. He’s wearing pressed khakis, a blue Oxford rolled up at the forearms, a checked tie loosened at the throat.

  He smothers me in a hug, his cologne like another set of arms. He’s easy to find in Therese’s memories: This is Jared, the Youth Pastor. He was the most spiritually vibrant person Therese knew, and the object of her crush.

  "It’s so good to have you back, Therese," he says. His cheek is pressed to mine. We’ve missed you."

  A few months before her overdose, the youth group was coming back from a weekend-long retreat in the church’s converted school bus. Late into the trip, near midnight, Jared sat next to her, and she fell asleep leaning against him, inhaling that same cologne.

  "I bet you have," I say. "Watch the hands, Jared."

  His smile doesn’t waver, his hands are still on my shoulders. "I’m sorry?"

  "Oh please, you heard me."

  He drops his hands, and looks questioningly at my father. He can do sincerity pretty well. "I don’t understand, Therese, but if—"

  I give him a look that makes him back up a step. At some point later in the trip Therese awoke with Jared still next to her, slumped in the seat, eyes closed and mouth open. His arm was resting between her thighs, a thumb against
her knee. She was wearing shorts, and his flesh on hers was hot. His forearm was inches from her warm crotch.

  Therese believed that he was asleep.

  She believed, too, that it was the rumbling of the school bus that shifted Jared’s arm into contact with the crease of her shorts. Therese froze, flushed with arousal and embarrassment.

  "Try to work it out, Jared." I get in the car.

  The big question I can help answer, Dr. S said, is why there is consciousness. Or, going back to my favorite metaphor, if the Parliament is making all the decisions, why have a Queen at all?

  He’s got theories, of course. He thinks the Queen is all about storytelling. The brain needs a story that gives all these decisions a sense of purpose, a sense of continuity, so it can remember them and use them in future decisions. The brain can’t keep track of the trillions of possible other decisions it could have made every moment; it needs one decision, and it needs a who, and a why. The brain lays down the memories, and the consciousness stamps them with identity: I did this, I did that. Those memories become the official record, the precedents that the Parliament uses to help make future decisions.

  "The Queen, you see, is a figurehead," Dr. S said. "She represents the kingdom, but she isn’t the kingdom itself, or even in control of it."

  "I don’t feel like a figurehead," I said.

  Dr. S laughed. "Me neither. Nobody does."

  Dr. Mehldau’s therapy involves occasional joint sessions with Alice and Mitch, reading aloud from Therese’s old diaries, and home movies. Today’s video features a pre-teen Therese dressed in sheets, surrounded by kids in bathrobes, staring fixedly at a doll in a manger.

  Dr. Mehldau asks me what Therese was thinking then. Was she enjoying playing Mary? Did she like being on stage?

  "How would I know?"

  "Then imagine it. What do you think Therese is thinking here?"

  She tells me to do that a lot. Imagine what she’s thinking. Just pretend. Put yourself in her shoes. In her book she calls this "reclaiming." She makes up a lot of her own terms, then defines them however she wants, without research to back her up. Compared to the neurology texts Dr. S lent me, Dr. Mehldau’s little book is an Archie comic with footnotes.