17. What Scares Us

“We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us.”
—Pema Chödrön

The living room looked dark and eerie as Jen walked back inside, alone in Michigan for the first time. It was early, just about seven o’clock according to the clock hanging on the wall, though the sun outside looked like it had risen hours ago. She tried to decide how she would spend the fifteen hours before it would be acceptable to go back to sleep. Her stomach lurched and her familiar queasiness escalated to a level she hadn’t experienced so far. She sat down heavily on the couch, with her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands, and stared at the wall across from her.

She felt the strong urge to climb back under the covers on her wobbly bed and postpone the decision. No one would notice if she slept in, or in fact, if she slept all day. Nobody here knew her and nobody was expecting her to be doing anything. This was total freedom, she realized, trying to psyche herself up for the unplanned day ahead, but it seemed more like utter senselessness, and she wondered whether she had been entirely misguided all the times when she had longed for a life without obligation.

Now, granted that thing that she had so often longed for, a day with truly nothing that she needed to do, Jen hastened to fill it with plans. In her head, she began to make a list of activities for the day; then, spotting a notepad that Becky had left on the coffee table, she sat down to write the list down on paper. It was satisfying to see the list grow and that her plans, documented in this physical way, would fill over half a page:

Go to the co-op.
Get tea and breakfast.
Maybe ask the cashier about yoga classes. (Since this would be the first time that she would stand in line to pay for her own drink.)
Buy Mid-Northern-Central Michigan University t-shirts. (If she was going to be living here, she might as well try to fit in.)
Go to Snail Plant and spy on secret army.
Come home.
Do yoga in the yard.
Cook healthy dinner. (Using the array of healthy ingredients that Becky had stocked the kitchen with before she left).
Read before bed.

It sounded pretty full when she wrote everything out like that. Still, she realized that these activities actually added up to rather a sparse day. She couldn’t possibly spend much more than an hour at the co-op, and she would be lucky to fill an entire half-hour snooping around the Snail Plant.

Then she had an idea, and she added one more item to the top of her list, above all the others: “WALK TO TOWN,” it said, in large letters.

This new aspect of her plan made her almost excited. Walking would be an adventure, and would take up the entire day; if she walked all the way into town, and then to the Snail Plant, and then back, it would definitely be dark by the time she got home. It was the sort of thing that she always fantasized about doing in Los Angeles, spending a whole day just walking. But in LA it would be seen as impossibly weird to walk anywhere more than a few blocks away, and anyway there would be nothing to look at as she walked; just blocks after block of broad boulevards lined with identical buildings and palm trees. Here there was a lot to see, a whole new landscape of forest and Midwestern suburb that was unlike anything Jen had ever experienced on either of the coasts where she had lived.

If she was going to walk, she needed to eat some food first, she decided, feeling proud of herself for her practical planning and self-care. It would be nice to make a little breakfast and some tea. Mint tea would be good for her queasiness, which had already subsided a bit, and then she could get some black tea later at the co-op to keep her alert through her long day. She would go upstairs and choose a book from the bookshelf, a first book that would set the tone of her stay here, and sit and read and drink tea. It sounded so pleasant, so civilized, that some of her dread lifted and she became excited about the morning ahead of her.

She walked towards the back of the house to the kitchen to figure out what to eat. There was bread in the freezer, and peanut butter in the refrigerator; that would be a nutritious breakfast for a long walk. She pried two slices off of the frozen loaf and dropped them into the battered old toaster on the counter, which looked tiny compared to the six-slice deluxe model she was used to using at her house.

The cupboard with the tea was now stocked with a number of exotic varieties that Becky had picked out. Jen rummaged through the different medicinal teas—for throat problems, stomach problems, “women’s” problems, and cleansing—and assorted varieties of chai, before choosing the same licorice-spearmint blend that had been left in the cabinet earlier by Paula’s family. She grabbed her mug, the same one she’d been using all week, from the side of the sink, filled it with water, and carried over to the microwave.

But looking at the slick black door of the microwave oven, her tea enthusiasm cooled. In her pleasant-morning-fantasy, the tea would not be heated in a microwave; it would be poured from a steaming kettle. She looked over at the stove, hoping to see a kettle there, but the crooked burners, circled in black where the white enamel had chipped away, were bare.

They must have a kettle here, she thought to herself, opening the cupboard below the microwave. She lowered herself to her knees, shifting stacks of pots and metal bowls around to see what was behind them. She peered into the far dusty recesses near the back wall, but there was no kettle.

She searched the two other low cabinets, which contained a promising assortment of cooking vessels—large stock pots, frying pans, plastic bowls and Tupperware containers—but no kettle.

Looking frantically around the kitchen, she spotted some high cabinets near the ceiling on the sides of the sink. She dragged a chair over from the dining table and climbed onto it. She reached above her head, then winced and drew her right arm back down as the stretch agitated her broken rib. It was almost painless now, after four weeks; Becky had said that broken bones were supposed to heal fully in six. Still, every so often she would get a piercing reminder that her body was not fully intact, and that she needed to be careful with it.

She lifted her arms again, this time more gingerly, opened the cabinet, and reached up to feel around inside of it. She pulled out a few odd items: a kitchen timer, a coffee grinder, and a small crock pot. She crouched on the chair and placed them on the counter one by one. Still no kettle, she thought in frustration, as she patted her hand around the back of the cupboard, finally hitting the rear wall without finding anything else. She moved the chair over and tried the other two ceiling cabinets, but they were empty, except for a phone book from 1994.She began to panic. She wanted tea, not-from-the microwave tea. She would have to buy a kettle, but she would be on foot today, so she’d have to carry it with her all the way back from town, and meanwhile she would have to drink her tea from the microwave. She sat down on the chair she had jut been standing on, crossing her arms sullenly across her chest. Ugh, the microwave, she thought to herself, staring resentfully at it. It was awful, entirely violating the aesthetic of the rustic morning she had planned for herself.

She felt her breathing speeding up to match her annoyance. She hated feeling like this, helpless, allowing one small problem to ruin her whole day. She wondered what Becky would tell her to do, or that substitute yoga teacher who always spouted all the philosophy. Don’t let frustration cloud your thinking, she told herself. Focus. She thought of an affirmation she had read on a poster in Becky’s room: “Persevere patiently until the end.” She took a deep, slow breath and cleared her thoughts. Focus, she told herself. Persevere. Where, she asked herself, with new attentiveness, would Paula’s mother keep the kettle?

Visually, she scanned the kitchen one last time, looking for spots she hadn’t checked. She counted the cabinets, high and low; she had searched every one. Then she began to look at appliances—could it be on top of the refrigerator? She stood on her tiptoes to look; nothing up there. What about the oven? There was a possible spot: the old, rickety oven looked like it might have one of those strange metal drawers built in below it. She walked over to the oven and kneeled to examine it. The bottom section, below the oven door, had a handle. The drawer stuck a little when she pulled on it, until its contents shifted and resettled with a loud clinking noise, allowing it to slide open. Inside she found a number of dirty metal cooking utensils, wedged forcefully together like an incorrectly assembled puzzle, all covered in a thick layer of dark grease. There was a muffin tin, several baking sheets, a stainless steel bowl, and then, stuck in the very back of the drawer, an old, dinged-up kettle.

Jen sighed loudly in relief, and for a moment she collapsed pleasantly onto the floor, exhausted from the effort of her search. Then she felt something sticky on her arm, and realized that she was lying on a dirty kitchen floor; she sat back up and tried to figure out how to remove the kettle from its revealed hiding place.She tried at first to yank it out clumsily, but then decided to do things properly, to set a good precedent for her new life in this kitchen. One by one, she loosened each pan and stacked it neatly on the floor next to her. The kettle, which was the farthest back, emerged last, sticky with grime and dust, and darkened by funny splotches of black and yellow. She placed the other pans neatly back into the oven drawer and closed it with a loud clatter.

In her past life, the filthy coating of the kettle would have immediately ruled it out as too disgusting to use. Now, though, she was so excited to have found it that it didn’t matter what condition it was in; she could work with it. In fact, she welcomed the challenge. I will make this kettle functional, she thought, and then I will really appreciate my tea.

She brought the kettle to the sink and set it down while she waited for the water from the hot tap to warm up. Next to the sink was an old dish sponge. She picked it up, but then saw something better: a little silver ball of steel wool. She doused it with dish soap and began rubbing it over the rounded side of the kettle. It was pleasing to see the black grease break up, to watch the silver color return to the kettle's smooth sides. Even though the grime was thick, it didn’t take very long to dissolve; in few minutes, the kettle was perfectly clean and presentable.

The ease with which she resuscitated the kettle surprised Jen. It wasn’t like she never washed dishes; at home, she often prepared her own tea or breakfast and then rinsed her plate before putting it in the dishwasher. She wasn’t completely inept at normal household tasks, she thought with satisfaction, comparing herself to Chase, who had a live-in housekeeper and a personal chef who did absolutely everything for him. Still, cleaning a filthy kettle was a new height of practicality; in LA, she would have just thrown it out and bought a new one. But with not much effort at all, this former piece of garbage was usable again. It’s really a cute little kettle, thought Jen, pleased with her work.

Rinsing the inside and outside of the kettle one last time, Jen filled it with water and placed it on one of the front burners on the stovetop. Then, looking at the microwave, she made a decision.
She walked over to it, pulled it forward, and reached around the back to unplug it. Lifting it awkwardly from the counter, she carried it into the hall and set it down right in front of the inconspicuous door that led to the basement. She opened the door and switched on the light, illuminating the tangle of cobwebs that Paula had never swept from the staircase. It was difficult to carry the microwave down, with its bulk blocking her vision so that she had to feel each step tentatively with the ball of her foot before she committed to it.

When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she set down her heavy load and surveyed the basement. Unlike her finished basement in LA, it was dirty and mildew-smelling, and filled with boxes, paint cans, and other assorted junk stacked in messy piles. One corner of the basement angled upwards towards what appeared to be a trap door to the yard; the space underneath was littered with bits of dirt and small rocks that had fallen through from above. There was no furniture at all. She hoped there wouldn’t be too many tornadoes so she wouldn’t have to spend much time down here.

It was obvious where the microwave should go: with the discarded television sets and kitchen appliances against one wall. She felt sad for it as she set it down in its electronic graveyard, buried alive while it was still in functioning condition. But it also seemed appropriate to leave it down there, where she wouldn’t be tempted to use it, to submit to the ease of speed and convenience rather than doing things the proper way. As she climbed the stairs again, she resolved to dust the spider webs herself, as soon as she had a day to spend around the house—maybe the next time it rained, which, she had heard, actually happened during the summer here.

Shutting the basement door behind her, she felt satisfied. Now that she thought about it, she wondered how she could have used a microwave oven for so long. She didn’t even know how it worked, this magical box that heated up food and liquids without ever getting hot inside. She had some vague idea: “microwaves” infiltrated the food and heated up the water molecules inside of it. Or something like that. But what were microwaves? Did they come out of those little holes in the plastic lining of the box? What were they made of? What generated them? She had absolutely no idea, but whatever it was seemed like it had to be pretty unwholesome.

She could hear the tea kettle whistling in the kitchen; she resolved to turn it off in just a moment. First, she climbed the narrow staircase to the room that was now her bedroom and stood across from the tall bookshelf, looking for the book that she would read during her breakfast, the book that she would carry with her into town so that she could sit and read while she ate her lunch at the co-op after she talked to her cashier for the first time. The first book, her foundational Michigan text.

Her unarticulated plan was to read one of the Zen books from the spirituality shelf. Ever since she had first examined the bookshelf, this had been her unspoken intention. While she hated to admit being curious about anything associated with Skipper, she couldn’t help but be intrigued by his professed belief system. During this first, difficult week in Michigan, his words had resonated in her head many times: “That’s the central paradox of human life: acceptance versus desire.” It hadn’t fully made sense to her when he said it, but increasingly she was thinking of this paradox throughout her day, as she tried to decide what it was exactly that she wanted and whether she could accept what it was that she had. Here she was in this new town and this new life, and she knew that she wanted something, wanted it horribly, but she didn’t know yet what it was.

She scanned the top bookshelf looking for books about Zen. The book about Zen and sexuality was a little too much for her right now, plus it would be embarrassing to be seen reading that in town. There was another called Ancient Zen Texts. She pulled it out and let it fall open to a page somewhere in the middle. The page was discussing various scholarly interpretations of a particular letter of the Japanese alphabet. All the scholars agreed that the repeated use of this character in the words of a particular Zen text was symbolic, but they could not agree on what the symbolism entailed. One author was certain it represented “the spirit that imbues all living organisms,” while another believed that it extended not only to organisms but to all organic materials such as dirt and rocks. A third author believed that the character symbolized energy that travels between two bodies, such as magnetism or electricity, or, by further metaphorical extension, sexual tension.

Jen flipped through the rest of the book, scanning for something more illuminating for her own state of mind, but it mostly looked similar to that first page. She placed it on the bed as a possibility and continued looking for something more promising.

She didn’t see any other books on the spirituality shelf that interested her, at least not right now; maybe she would like to learn about the Kabala or Central American tribal religions someday, but right now she felt that it was Skipper’s philosophy that she wanted to understand. It’s okay, she told herself; she could buy something suitable at the bookstore once she walked into town. She just needed to find something on this bookshelf to tide her over until then.

She squatted to search the books on the very lowest shelf, Paula’s shelf. She needed to pull the books out to see what they were, since the titles were worn off of all their spines. She grabbed three thin books in one handful and spread them like playing cards.

She was startled to discover that she had found exactly what she was looking for. In her hands, aligned like a perfect straight flush, were three books by the same author, all with the same cover design, and all on the topic of Zen. One, Zen for Relationships, was clearly not the right choice. She put it back on the shelf and looked at the other two. One was called Zen for Everyday Living. The other was called Zen for Times of Crisis.

She wondered which one better applied to her current state. Logically, she felt that “everyday living” was more apt. It was, after all, a perfect description of what she needed help with; she did not know what her everyday life here would entail, what she would spend her time doing. And yet emotionally, she felt drawn to the book on “crisis,” even though there was no clear reason why this term would apply to her current situation. Maybe her divorce, or that thing with Skipper, or when she broke her rib—those had been acute traumas that called for immediate action. Now things were just…new. New and scary, if she thought about it, but if she didn’t think about it then everything was fine. “This isn’t a crisis,” she said aloud to herself, scornfully. “This is just life.”

She held one book in each hand, judging their weight against each other like a scale. Finally, she put Everyday Living on the floor and examined the back of Crisis.

In place of a blurb, the book had several expert testimonials as to its quality. “Thomas Fo is a national treasure,” the first one said. It was attributed to a professor from the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California at Santa Cruz. “His authority on the fundamentals of Zen philosophy is unquestionable, and his ability to convey these precepts to the common reader is unparalleled.”

Hmm, thought Jen. With that description, she imagined the book could go one of two ways: it could be a useful beginner’s guide or a trashy self-help book. She read the next testimonial, which came from a woman described as a “paranormal expert and life coach.” Already this seemed to be a clear sign pointing towards trashy.

“Fo’s perceptive analyses and practical strategies are a must-read for every person facing one of those pivotal moments of decision that make us human.”

Although Jen found this description to be distastefully on the self-help end of the spectrum, it did sound like what she was going through. A pivotal moment of decision; if that’s what a crisis was, then she was in one. She was definitely leaning towards this as her first bookshelf-book.

There was one final testimonial: “I have been a great fan of Fo’s work for many years. His teachings have informed all of my most difficult decisions and helped me find my own personal path to success.”

This one came from Nicolai Snail, who was described simply as a “mogul.”

Jen was fascinated now. She rose up from the floor and sat down on the shaky bed. She could hear the neglected kettle still whistling downstairs; just a minute more, she told herself.

She opened to the first page of the introduction. It started with a story about the author’s life:

“Eleven years ago, I was deeply engaged in that most despicable of careers: acting. I appeared in over seventy television commercials, endorsing products that I had no interest in or even knowledge of: electric razors, amusement parks, batteries. I did a few plays at night, weird student-project types of things that paid almost nothing and never had more than a few people in the audience, friends of the playwright. Every week I went to auditions, trying to get a big break in a sitcom; I got called back a few times, but I never quite got the job. As soon as I raised enough money, I planned to move to Los Angeles, where the real jobs were.

“What was this prize that I was seeking, the sitcom job? Sure, it was steady work, a regular paycheck, an end to the horrible ordeal of auditions. But if a reliable income was my goal, surely there were easier ways to get there than by acting on a television show. So it must have been something else I was after. If you had asked me at the time, I would have said it was artistic expression, the honing of my craft. But what was this craft? Where was the artistic merit in mimicking a stereotype so familiar it was devoid of all meaning, feeding a passive audience the same comfortable, received ideas that the television had taught them since childhood, contributing to the buzzing swirl of half-formed ideas that is the American pop consciousness?”

Jen found herself nodding; she had often felt the same way about her work, the hopelessness of contributing to an already saturated media with yet more distracting fluff. It was a truly depressing feeling, and she completely understood why the author might characterize it as a crisis.

“One evening, after a long, stressful week, I was at a party with a few actor ‘friends,’ trying to relax. I was talking to a woman I had known for a few months, and she was telling me a story about an audition. As I listened to her story, I tried to appear involved: I nodded attentively, laughed at ‘funny’ spots, made a sympathetic face when I felt the story called for it. And yet, I had the distinct feeling that all of these reactions were feigned, that I was still ‘acting.’ I tried to stop, but I couldn’t. I would think to myself, ‘Don’t act! Be sincere!’ Then I would envision what a sincere person would look like, and I would shape my facial expression to look like that.

“I realized, with horror, that I no longer knew who I was. I was so caught up in trying to be a successful actor that my life had become a performance. I tried to figure out how I felt about the story she was telling me, and I realized that I had no idea if I was amused, or sympathetic, or annoyed. I knew how to display the façade of emotion, but not how to feel my own, true feelings.”

Jen looked up from the book and remembered that the kettle had been whistling for quite a while, at least fifteen minutes. Reluctantly, she closed the book and carried it downstairs to the kitchen.

When she turned off the stove and poured water for her tea, the kettle was light to lift, and she felt stupid to have boiled away all her water after all that work to find the proper heating vessel. Still, there was just enough left to fill her cup to the top. The minty steam pouring invitingly from her mug validated her choice of the kettle over the microwave; her microwaved tea had never smelled half this good.

Her toast, still sitting in its slots in the toaster, was cold, but she didn’t mind. She put it on a plate and spread peanut butter on it. She licked the peanut butter from the knife and realized, as her stomach growled aggressively at her, that she was ravenously hungry. Dipping the knife back into the jar (after all, she rationalized, I am the only person who will be eating it), she spread a bit of extra peanut butter on the toast, and even added some honey from the squeezy-bear that she had seen in the tea cupboard.

With her feast prepared, she sat down at the table, where she had left her book. It was a nice place to sit. The table was in front of one of the windows, allowing the morning sun to enter and warm her chair, and giving her a dazzling view of the lake sparkling in the daylight. Still, she was more excited to get back to reading than to enjoy the scenery. She opened the book, flipped to the second page, and propped it awkwardly open using salt and pepper shakers as weights. She continued reading where she had left off, with Thomas Fo’s realization of the shallowness of his life as an actor.

“I realized then that I needed a change. I needed to escape from this false existence while I was still conscious enough to recognize its falseness. So I did something a bit drastic, something that many would say is only possible when a person is very young, or very foolish, or very desperate. (I was all three).

“I sold all my possessions except for a small suitcase of clothes and a small box of books, moved out of my apartment, disconnected my phone number, and traveled to a Zen monastery in a small island town off the coast of Canada.”

Wow, thought Jen, looking up from the book for a moment as she became aware of something, some strange association like déjà vu in the opposite direction, like recognizing something that you were going to see again in the future. The sun was shining right into her eyes now, and the light reflecting off the lake was blindingly bright. She turned her head back down towards the book. The introduction was almost over. Jen read the final two paragraphs:

“This book chronicles those difficult years—as an actor and as a student of Zen Buddhism—and the lessons I learned from those years of struggle and study.

“The greatest lesson I have learned is this: Always be honest with yourself, and don’t engage in behaviors or mechanisms that you can’t explain. Resist the false consciousness of consumer culture. Do not act if you can be. Do not drive if you can walk. Complex amenities make us stupid to easy solutions. Simplify your life and face each challenge honestly, with unclouded vision.”

Jen was in awe as she read these final lines. It seemed a bizarre coincidence: so many of the principles that Fo was describing constituted the very project she was currently engaged in. She had given up acting and moved away from her home. This morning, she had decided to walk to town rather than driving. And just minutes ago, she had rejected her microwave because she could not understand how it worked. She and this Thomas Fo must be kindred spirits of some sort, she thought. She was anxious to turn to the first chapter, but decided to save it for after the first leg of her walk; she was even more anxious to get started with her day’s adventure, which this book would now become a part of.

She picked up the book from the table and closed it pensively, holding it between her two hands for a moment. Then she carried it into the living room and placed it on the coffee table, next to the notepad she had written on earlier. She tore off her day’s to-do list, folded it in half, and shoved it between the pages of the book. This would be the first item to go into the backpack she would carry into town.

Half an hour later, she left the house, her backpack filled with water, a jacket, and her book and to-do list. She was wearing her baseball cap and sunglasses, but she knew people would recognize her, anyway. Still, she was excited to experience this journey on foot, which so far she had only undertaken in the rental car and Paula’s mother’s SUV. As she walked down the long driveway and into the shade of the uncleared forest, she thought about the tea kettle, and how upset she had been when she believed she would not find it. It occurred to her that she could have just heated water in one of the numerous pots she had found in the cabinets; that would have worked just as well.

That guy Fo is right, she thought: stupid to easy solutions.

Chapter 18:
http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2009/01/18-ordinary-meanings.html

16. Exactly Through the Motions

“The function of the wrestler is not to win; it is to go exactly through the motions which are expected of him.” —Roland Barthes

After that first day in North Middleton, things fell into a comfortable routine. Every morning, Becky, Paula and Jen would drive into town and have breakfast and drinks at the co-op. Jen continued drinking black tea instead of herbal. She decided that it would be safe to indulge in this one, small vice for the time being; without the caffeine to maintain her edge of alertness, she was afraid that her brain would become as slow and sleepy as her life in this town.

Jen’s cashier was at his same register each day. Becky always stood in line to pay for the drinks and food, but he always made a special point to turn and smile at Jen as she sat with Paula at their table by the window.

“That guy’s pretty star-struck,” said Paula, on their third day at the co-op, as he turned back towards his computer monitor after flashing his shy smile at them. “He should give it a rest.”

“You really think he recognizes me?” asked Jen. Her hair was short and black now; Becky had brilliantly replicated the spiky look on the box of hair dye. No one had given Jen a second glance since she arrived in North Middleton. She was starting to really believe that she might live unnoticed here, just like a normal person.

Paula nodded. “He must,” she said, “the way he keeps looking over here.”

Although she didn’t usually argue with people, especially over silly, unprovable things, Jen couldn’t stop herself from retorting. “Maybe he’s just friendly,” said Jen.

“Or he’s the only person in this town whose head isn’t so far up his ass that he can’t see what’s in front of him,” said Paula.

She let Jen mull the image over for a moment, sipping her drink, then added, “He must not be from here.”

While Paula and Becky chatted over their pastries, Jen surreptitiously watched the cashier scanning boxes and punching numbers into his computer. He always wore tidy, dark-colored jeans and flat-bottomed sneakers under the black half-apron all the cashiers wore around their waists. And his t-shirts were nice, soft-looking and well-fitted, showing off his muscular shoulders.

Jen studied the designs on the shirts, trying to learn something about him. One day there was a picture of Bruce Lee on the front. Another day, the shirt had some kind of Asian writing on it. Jen thought Becky or Paula might be able to identify the language, but she didn’t want to ask them about it and draw attention to her fascination with the cashier.

A few days into the week, he finally wore a shirt with English writing on it. Jen thought it was more of the mysterious Asian lettering, but as she stared longer she realized that the English words were simply in an Oriental-looking font. Even so, she had to squint to read them across the distance and through the funny embellishments. “Master Park’s Academy of Tae Kwon Do,” they spelled out. Oh, thought Jen, it’s like Paula was saying. They’re into karate. That explained the other t-shirts, the Asian writing and kung fu heroes. She felt a thrill of success run through her; she had figured something out about him, just from his clothes!

This guy, Jen realized, would be the perfect person to ask about a yoga school. He would be sure to know. As soon as Becky and Paula leave, she thought, I’ll ask him if there’s one in town. Jen was collecting little plans like these, to enact once her friends had left: find out about a yoga class, walk into town from the house in Cone, visit the Snail Plant. They weren’t much—she couldn’t fill a full day with them all together—but they gave her a sense of what her routine might be in the strange, empty days ahead. And now she could add one more: have a conversation about yoga with the cashier.

After breakfast each day, Becky, Paula and Jen wandered around the Mid-Northern-Central Michigan University campus. It was tiny compared to the sprawling university where Jen had done her two-and-a-half years of college. You could walk from one end of campus to the other in ten minutes, and the low, rectangular buildings looked like trailers.

For the first two days after Jen died her hair, the three of them walked through the campus unnoticed, popping into buildings to look at the different departments and use the bathrooms. They visited a student art gallery filled with glazed ceramic vases and bowls. And on one day, they even sat unnoticed in the back of a lecture hall, observing a class about Buddhism, after Paula saw that the students milling around in the hall before class were carrying a book called Psychology and Eastern Philosophy. Jen was worried that the professor would notice them and demand that they leave, especially since they were conspicuously over ten years older than most of the students in the room, and the only ones who weren’t scribbling furiously in notebooks as he stood on stage behind a music stand acting as a podium, reading his lecture in a distant, droning voice off of tattered sheets of yellow notepad paper.

“Ugh,” said Paula, the moment they were out of the classroom. “I’m glad I’m not in college anymore. That was awful.” She covered her mouth abruptly as the professor walked right past them, but he didn’t show any sign that he had heard her.

Their daily schedule ended up with Becky and Paula cooking dinner back at the house, and then two hours later, yoga in the upstairs loft. It was a quaint little routine, and Jen began to get excited about how sweet and plain and unobserved her time in Michigan would be.

But on the third day of Jen’s black hair, things changed in North Middleton. Jen first noticed it when they arrived at the food co-op. As she walked across the colorful sculpture garden with Becky and Paula, a woman crossing their path stopped abruptly and stared. Jen felt a jolt of irritation and self-consciousness. But she reminded herself not to be self-centered; the woman might have had some other reasons for stopping. Maybe she just remembered that she forgot to buy something she needed, Jen thought.

Inside the co-op, they walked past the cash registers and over to the café to pick out their drinks and pastries, just like they had for the past three days. But this time, as they passed by, the people in the line stopped mid-motion, froze in place, and turned their heads to stare as though Jen were a car accident. She turned and caught a woman openly pointing at her, talking to a friend; the embarrassed woman lowered her finger and looked away as Jen met her gaze.

“I think they finally recognize you,” said Becky, her tentative tone suggesting that she found the sudden change in their environment as jarring as Jen did.

“You must have been on the news or something,” said Paula. “They were never going to figure it out on their own.”

They walked over to the espresso counter and ordered Jen’s tea, Becky’s black coffee, and Paula’s cappuccino. Jen was starting to feel queasy, and the pastries in the case, which usually never looked particularly appetizing to Jen, suddenly appeared downright grotesque. She could see the oil glinting on the surface of her usual bran muffin, the hard crust forming on the top of the cheese Danish that Paula would most certainly order. Jen didn’t want to get anything, but she had promised Becky, and herself, that she would eat; she didn’t want Becky to worry that she would starve herself as soon as her friends left town. She decided on a plain bagel. As anticipated, Paula got the pastry with the crusty cheese. Becky ordered the bran muffin, then went off to pay, while Jen and Paula carried the drinks and food to the seating area.

On the way over to their usual table, Paula grabbed an abandoned newspaper off of an empty table. When they were seated, she plunked it down in front of Jen and began rummaging through the disorganized sections, scanning the front pages.

“Aha!” she announced triumphantly, yanking one crumpled section out of the pile and holding it in the air like a trophy. She unfurled it so that Jen could see the front page of what turned out to be the entertainment section. Most of the page was taken up by a picture of a cartoon robot, evidently the lead character in a movie that had opened the previous weekend; Jen had been too distracted to keep up with any of that. But on one of the side columns, Jen saw a photograph of herself, her heart-shaped face framed with jagged black locks; it had evidently been taken in the last two days. “Actress Seen Vacationing in North Middleton,” the headline read.

“Where am I?” asked Jen, grabbing the paper from Paula’s hand and bringing it closer to her face. She hadn’t seen any photographers anywhere. Studying the picture, she realized that it must have been taken right where she was sitting, in the co-op. She could see the edge of the window frame, with its vibrant blue paint, just above her head, and the side of Paula’s face, which had been cropped out of the picture, leaving just a blurry bit of her cheek and shoulder.

“It was taken right here,” she said to Paula, pointing at the evidence in the picture. “I didn’t see anyone taking pictures.”

“Me neither,” said Paula. “But it was pretty crowded in here yesterday. They probably used a distance lens. And we were here at the same time every day, so it would be easy to find you.”

Paula thought for a moment, twisting her dreadlock around her finger. Jen put down the newspaper and sipped her tea, trying not to be agitated. She had expected people to recognize her in North Middleton. But now that she had gotten used to the luxury of anonymity, to have it taken away from her felt like an assault.

“Someone in here must have recognized you,” said Paula, allowing her hair to drop from her finger. “Someone who knew that you were coming in here every day.”

Paula turned her head and rotated her eyes towards the cashier. Becky had finally made her way to the front of the line, and she appeared to be chatting pleasantly with him. Jen could see his impressive shoulder muscles moving under his shirt, which featured more Asian writing on the back, this time above a yin-yang symbol.

“No,” said Jen, taken aback at Paula’s implied accusation of her new best-friend-to-be. “Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know; don’t they give you money for that kind of tip-off?” She was still absently playing with her hair, sending the now-familiar sandalwood smell in Jen’s direction.

“I don’t think so,” said Jen, although truthfully she had no idea of the pay scale for celebrity espionage. “It doesn’t seem newsworthy enough to pay for.”

“I’m sure it’s the most exciting thing to happen in North Middleton for the last year,” said Paula. Turning her head to scan the occupants of the co-op, she added, “Maybe ten years.”

“How could that be?” said Jen, pointing at the newspaper lying on the table between them. “There’s a whole newspaper full of news. I’m not even on the front page. I only made the entertainment section.”

“This,” said Paula, lifting the paper up with both hands and pulling the top of the page taught for emphasis, “is the Cadillac newspaper,” she said. “You made the entertainment section from seventy miles away.”

Paula pulled the article in front of her and scanned through it half-aloud, muttering incomprehensible phrases here and there, until she read, “North Middleton, best known for housing Mid-Northern-Central Michigan University, is a normally sleepy town.” She slapped the paper back down on the table. “See,” she said triumphantly, her point made, “People in Cadillac don’t even know where North Middleton is.”

Becky arrived at the table and pulled up the third empty chair, just in time to hear Paula’s statement. She looked down at the newspaper inquisitively.

“I didn’t know Cadillac was a town,” said Becky.

“Exactly,” said Paula.

That afternoon, to avoid any further gawking, they decided to skip their campus walk and do yoga by the lake instead. They didn’t use mats; instead they practiced right on the back lawn, which had been warmed by the afternoon sun.

Becky led them silently through the familiar sequence of postures. Even though it was difficult to balance on the uneven ground, Jen liked hearing the sounds of birds and feeling the grass under her bare feet. This was a real spring, Jen thought, admiring the buds and blossoms on the trees overhead as she twisted her face up towards the sky. Everything was fecund and blooming and green. Even the swampy smell of the lake reminded her of burgeoning new life.

After they had risen from their final pose, the corpse, lying dead and flat on the ground, they continued to sit cross-legged in the grass, enjoying the perfect weather and the tranquil scenery of the lake.

“It’s really beautiful back here,” said Becky, raising her bony knees to her chest and resting her chin on them. “We haven’t spent any time by the lake at all.”

“It’s a good thing Jen was in that newspaper,” said Paula.

Becky laughed, but Jen groaned; after the tranquility of the yoga, she had almost forgotten.

“You know,” said Paula, “this would be a great day to go swimming.”

“Oh, good idea!” said Becky, lowering one hand to the ground and then jumping to her feet. “Let’s go get the bathing suits.

“I’ll wait here,” said Jen, not wanting Becky to go searching through the luggage for her bathing suit. Jen hated swimming, precisely because of having to wear a bathing suit. She wasn’t sure which one Becky had packed, and she looked fine in all of them, she supposed. But in LA or San Diego or Mexico or Hawaii, wearing a bathing suit was an invitation to unflattering photos of some invisible-ink cellulite that only appeared under the magic camera lenses of the paparazzi, photos that would appear three days later on the covers of the trashiest tabloids but only on the inside pages of the classier ones.

Jen recognized that the odds of any photographers appearing in this secluded back yard were pretty low. Still, after her unexpected appearance in the newspaper, she felt awfully exposed. She couldn’t bear the thought of putting on a bikini right now.

“Oh, come on,” said Becky, who knew about Jen’s aversion to bathing suits. Becky had no such aversion; she was one of those people who enjoyed going to spas where people walked around naked, and she was as comfortable in her underwear as in a winter parka. “No one will see you back here.”

“I just don’t like swimming,” said Jen plaintively, wishing Becky would drop it. It was embarrassing enough that she didn’t like wearing a bathing suit; she didn’t need Becky to talk about it.

Paula must have deduced the reason for Jen’s hesitation. “This isn’t the beach,” she said, rising from the grass and brushing dirt off of her behind. “This is a lake. You can wear whatever you want.”

Jen wasn’t sure what Paula’s comment was supposed to mean. No, you can’t wear whatever you want, Jen thought, imagining diving into the lake in the stretchy sweatpants she was wearing for yoga. They would get so waterlogged, she would probably sink, she thought.

“What are you going to wear?” she asked Paula. Although Becky and Paula were both standing, ready to go change, Jen was still sitting obstinately on the ground.
“Shorts,” said Paula simply, as though this were the only reasonable thing to wear for swimming.

“You have some shorts in the suitcase,” said Becky. “And there’s an old t-shirt. Why don’t you swim in that? You can put it on over your bathing suit.”

“Fine,” said Jen resignedly, standing to join them. Her tone was grudging, but she actually felt enthused about the novel idea of swimming in shorts. Now that she thought about it, she realized that she actually liked swimming—it was peaceful to be surrounded by water, and it gave her time to think. It was really only the bathing suit that she disliked. Still, she had just said that she didn’t like swimming, and she wasn’t ready to admit her lie.

“You guys are always forcing me to do stuff,” she said petulantly, as she followed them up to the house.

Twenty minutes later, Jen was floating peacefully on her back in the middle of the lake. She had waded in behind Paula and Becky through the forest of reeds and algae by the shore. This far out, though, the water was murky but unobstructed by plant life. Paula and Becky were having a contest to see who could swim out the farthest. Jen followed them out until her feet could no longer touch the bottom; then she stopped and floated.

She stared at the sky above her. It was a deep, healthy blue, filled with puffy clouds. She could feel the t-shirt swishing around her body as she leaned slightly to one side and then the other to stay afloat. It made her feel like a beautiful sea plant, swaying with the flow of the water. She couldn’t remember ever having felt more content.

She heard splashing off to her side. She turned and saw Paula swimming towards her, her soggy hair flapping up behind her with each stroke. Jen turned her body upright and began to tread water.

“Pretty, huh,” said Paula, panting a little as she stopped next to Jen. The two of them were facing the same direction, looking at the thick wall of trees off to one side of the lake. In this direction, the lake seemed to extend into the trees, past what could be seen of it. The water was reflecting the light of the sky, like a smooth, sparkling mirror between the shady green of the forest.

“Mm-hmm,” said Jen.

“It’s really brave of you to stay out here,” said Paula.

“I’m not scared of swimming,” Jen said, struggling a little to get out a full sentence without sinking.

Paula began to either laugh or speak; either way, it caused her to swallow a gulp of lake water and begin to choke. After she was done coughing, she said, “No, I mean in Michigan. It’s brave of you to stay out here.”

Jen wasn’t sure what to say. Was it brave? If so, that meant that there was something here to be frightened of. She knew what that something was: boredom and loneliness. She didn’t want to think about it.

“Thanks,” she said.

“I just want you to know,” Paula continued, stopping every few words to take in a deep breath through her nose, “that I’ll take care of Becky.”

“What’s wrong with Becky?” said Jen, turning to face Paula. She suddenly remembered Chase’s strange behavior, how quiet and irritable he had been just before Jen left, how she had worried that Becky was sick. And Becky had been acting strangely, with all the vitamins and odd foods. Jen felt the blood in her feet go cold with worry. If Becky was having a problem, any kind of problem, Jen couldn’t stay here; she would need to go back to Los Angeles with Becky.

“Oh, no, nothing’s wrong,” said Paula, hastily. “I just meant, you know, so she wouldn’t be lonely without you.”

“Oh,” said Jen, not sure if she really believed Paula. “Thanks,” she added, uncertainly. She’d have to make sure that everything was okay with Becky before she left; otherwise Jen was going straight back home.

Jen stayed by herself, floating and thinking, long after Paula had swum back to shore. It was probably nothing, like Paula had said. Becky would tell her if something was wrong. Wouldn’t she? Things had been strained between them for the last few months, but that didn’t change their long history together or their unspoken vow that they would be each others’ family forever, no matter what happened, till death did them part.

As she thought about Becky, she stared into the distance, floating on her back, her head and feet tracing a skewed circle as the current turned her gently. Mostly she saw trees in the distance, but from one angle she saw houses, familiar houses, the houses across from the one she would be staying in. She recognized the balcony of the old, green house directly across the lake from hers. And there, on the balcony, was the same distant figure, sitting and staring straight back at her.

For the rest of the week, they decided to stay home and enjoy the lake. Becky went to the co-op by herself and bought enough food to stock the kitchen, she said for the week, but Jen thought it was enough to last her a month. Every morning Becky and Paula would cook breakfast while Jen sat in the nearby living room and read. The food was always healthy and tasty and abundant, and Jen wondered how she would manage once they were gone.
Becky must have wondered, too, because she took to quizzing Jen during each meal about her dietary plans for the future.

“So what will you eat for breakfast?” asked Becky, scooping up scrambled eggs with a warm tortilla.

“Oatmeal,” said Jen, dutifully. “With soy milk. Cereal. Eggs.” She took a large bite of her own eggs to confirm her healthy appetite.

“What about for lunch?” Becky asked.

Jen found the exercise embarrassing, but she knew she had earned it through her failure to eat properly in the past. That, coupled with her inability to cook, might give even the most reasonable and non-controlling best friend a reason to question her. She would have to learn how to cook, she resolved, healthy things with fresh vegetables in them. That would give her a reason to go to the co-op more often. They even sold cookbooks there.

But for the first time in many years, it was not only Becky who was watching out for Jen’s well-being. During these final few days together, Jen observed Becky carefully, looking for signs that something was wrong. Becky seemed pretty healthy and content; she was eating normally, even more than usual, and had even gained a little weight around her waist. She kept herself busy cleaning up around the house and unpacking Jen’s clothes, which Jen would have just kept in the suitcase otherwise, arranging them neatly in the upstairs dresser and closet. Each afternoon they did yoga and went swimming, and Becky’s vigorous energy didn’t seem to wane through any of it.

Jen wanted to find a time to talk to Becky, to make sure that everything was all right, but there never seemed to be a good opportunity. Paula was always around, and Jen didn’t want to reveal that Paula had alarmed her with her comment while they were swimming. Even when Jen did get a moment alone with Becky, Becky was so busy grilling her about her plans, her food, and her daily routine that Jen couldn’t figure out how to interrupt her.

On Saturday morning, a week after they arrived, they woke early so that Becky and Paula could drive the rental car back to the Detroit airport. While Paula packed her duffel bag in the other room, Becky busied herself organizing Jen’s things for a final time.

“Your socks are in this drawer now,” Becky was saying, pointing at the bottom of the dresser. Her skin looked green and pale, and her forehead was beaded with sweat. She turned toward the closet, but Jen could see her bring her hand to her mouth as though she were about to vomit.

“What’s wrong?” asked Jen. “You haven’t been feeling well.”

“We’ll talk once you get settled in,” said Becky, turning back to face Jen and smiling weakly. She gave Jen a comforting and resigned pat on the arm that Jen recognized from movies. Oh my god, she thought; Becky’s sick. She had thought it before, when Becky first started acting funny, but now she felt sure. What else would Becky need to talk to her about? Becky was sick, and now she was waiting to tell Jen because she didn’t want to ruin her trip. And it was probably Jen’s fault that she was sick in the first place—she had caused Becky all that stress, and they had been so disconnected, and now Jen was abandoning her right when Becky needed help and couldn’t ask for it.

“Tell me now,” said Jen, grabbing Becky’s hand. It felt warm and sweaty.

“There’s nothing to tell,” said Becky. “Not yet,” she added. “I promise I’ll tell you if anything comes up.”

Jen tried to feel relieved, but she couldn’t. Becky’s vagueness was too disconcerting. There was no way she was going to let Becky leave with this secret hanging unsettled between them.

“You don’t have cancer, right?” said Jen.

Becky laughed at the panic in Jen’s voice. Jen felt a little relieved, but not entirely convinced.

“No,” said Becky. “No cancer.” She looked straight at Jen, and for the first time in months, Jen saw none of the stress, the distance, that had colored their recent interactions. “Really, you don’t need to worry. There’s nothing wrong.”

With her face so close to Jen’s, Becky looked for a moment just like the little girl that Jen had befriended so many years ago. Jen wanted to cry thinking of how that girl had grown up with her, through so many stages and changes in life, so that now they were both grown women. She couldn’t remember why they had been so distant now; she loved Becky, she remembered.

She put her arms around Becky and gave her a long, warm hug. Becky’s body felt stiff and protective; then it buckled and softened against her, so that Jen felt she was holding Becky up from falling. Jen’s eyes filled with tears, which slid down her cheek towards Becky’s shoulder. She wondered how she was going to survive here by herself, and whether Becky was going to be all right.

They stood like that for a long time, until Paula came into the room and told them it was time to go. Then Paula and Becky gathered up their bags, threw everything into the rental car, hugged Jen goodbye, and drove away down the long dirt path. Jen stood in the driveway, shivering in her t-shirt, and watched the blue sedan until it rounded the corner and disappeared behind the dense wall of forest.

Chapter 17
http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2008/12/17-what-scares-us.html

15. Then a Man Dreaming

“Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.” —Chuang Tzu

Jen, Becky, and Paula walked the five blocks from the food co-op over to the campus.

They emerged from the side street onto Main Street, right in the middle of a small shopping district clearly aimed at the university students. They passed two discount bookstores in a row. The window of the first one was filled with bright purple sweatshirts, visors, binders and notebooks, all stamped with magenta letters spelling out the university’s initials, MNCMU. Several sweatshirts were decorated with a cartoon of a winged rodent wearing a tiny aviator’s cap.

“Squirrels?” asked Jen, basing her guess largely on the ambiguous rodent’s giant, bushy tail.

“Flying squirrels,” said Paula. “That’s Mid-Northern-Central’s mascot. I hope you like that cartoon; you’re going to be seeing a lot of it.”

Even as they stood looking into the window, Jen noticed that a large proportion of the students passing them on the sidewalk were wearing clothing in that same vivid shade of purple, their reflections in the glass matching the merchandise displayed behind it. She wondered if all the students here were so school-spirited. During her brief stay at college in Los Angeles, she remembered, it was the height of un-hipness to own a single piece of school-sponsored apparel. She turned from the window and watched the students directly as they passed by, noticing now that every fourth one sported the purple and magenta colors on a t-shirt, backpack, or baseball cap.

Jen wondered if there were any detractors from this orgy of campus pride. Where were all those hippies from the food co-op? Did any of them go to this school? She didn’t see anyone that looked like them; it was as though she had accidentally slipped into a different universe the moment she stepped onto Main Street. Weren’t there any weirdos at this school?

Right next door was her answer; this second bookstore evidently catered to Mid-Northern-Central’s nonconformists. No sign of purple appeared in the window, which featured a display of comic books alongside notebooks and binders covered in camouflage and skull patterns. Jen did see several flying squirrel t-shirts. One featured a red-eyed and goofy-smiled rodent sprawled on his back, smoking an enormous joint; another showed the mascot getting kicked in the head, karate-style, by a red-headed bird with a long beak. The bird was wearing a little white karate uniform.

“That’s the UPSU woodpecker,” Paula said, noticing Jen and Becky pointing at the shirt. Now that she said it, Jen realized the bird did bear a strong resemblance to Woody Woodpecker, enough to be recognizable but not quite enough to be a copyright violation.

“UPSU?” Jen asked. Before she was set loose on her own in this place, she wanted to make sure she knew the lingo.

“Upper Peninsula State University,” said Paula, rolling her eyes. “Their hockey rival.”

“Why’s he doing karate?” Becky asked.

“Oh, they’re obsessed with that stuff here,” Paula said. “It’s kind of…” She trailed off, sounding unsure of how to finish. Instead, she turned toward Jen and simply said, “Well, you’ll see.”

As they walked farther down the street, they passed three copy shops in a row, each with large signs boasting their price of four cents per copy. Jen was watching the students as they walked by, looking for some sign of nonconformity that would make this school, and the thought of spending months living near it, more appealing.

The students mainly looked just how she would imagine mid-westerners to look, clean-cut and corn-fed, mostly blond or blond-ish, with tidy, all-American hairstyles. Most of the girls had highlighted streaks in their hair—crudely done, Jen noted, probably by their friends. Almost all of the boys wore baseball caps, some in the school purple, others with single letters or logos representing sports teams.

As she continued watching, however, she did start to notice the straggling odd students, slinking along close to the walls, avoiding the crowds, who did not fit this prototype. Several girls skulked by in tall black boots, laced to the knees, and black hooded sweatshirts, their faces pierced with a collection of little rings and studs. A boy hustled quickly by in tiny velour shorts and a mesh t-shirt. She even saw one with a short, spiky green Mohawk, head down, hands shoved into his pockets, as though walking into the wind rather than into the pleasant sunniness of springtime. And yet, beneath their external trappings, Jen could sense the kinship between these rebels and their preppier cousins. Under the black lipstick, the piercings, the funny hairstyles, the faces of these students still had the fresh glow and rosy cheeks of people raised on hearty food and healthy air, rather than the sickly, grayish look she had often seen on the pierced and tattooed denizens of West Hollywood or Venice when she was younger. What was missing, she wondered? “They need to do more drugs,” she thought to herself, before remembering that perhaps these young people weren’t trying to look like junkies. But if they were, they needed to study up on their roles.

“Look!” said Becky, pointing at a t-shirt featuring the flying squirrel riding on the back of a cement truck as though it were a horse. Seated just behind the squirrel was an improbably large snail, the same size as his squirrel friend.

The wearer of the t-shirt made an indignant face at Becky. “Sorry,” said Becky, as much to Jen and Paula as to the student. “But did you see that snail?” she added excitedly, once the student had passed by.

“Snail is a huge sponsor of the school,” Paula said. “There’s like three buildings called ‘Snail’ on campus, and about half the students get jobs at Snail after they graduate.”

“Wow,” said Becky. “That’s amazing. This town is like, owned by Snail. They should all it Snailville.”

“You’re really interested in this Snail thing,” said Jen, who felt startled at Becky’s enthusiasm. She had seen Becky’s obsessive tendencies many times before—focused on economics, acting, celebrities, yoga, tantric sex for a while (that had been an annoying summer, Jen remembered), astrology, health food, junk food, and most recently Groundbreakers— but they had never centered on something so mundane as a factory.

Becky's voice became defensive. “I just know a lot about that company but I never realized it was here. I mean, I knew they were in Michigan.” Becky hesitated for a moment, as she often did before deciding whether or not to say something that would hurt Jen’s feelings. “I just thought this was the middle of nowhere.”

“If you’re interested in Snail,” said Paula cheerfully, trying to make peace, “we should go check out the plant.”

Jen groaned, audibly, but Becky was thrilled. “That’s a great idea!” she said, smiling as though Paula had just offered to buy her a pony, her walk turning to a bouncy skip.

“We can go right now,” said Jen, wanting to get it over with. “I can check out the campus another day.” Looking around the town was interesting, but she was starting to feel like she would rather wait and do it herself, when she could view it without the interpreting filter of Becky and Paula’s commentary.

On the way back to the car, Becky stopped in front of a small drug store that Jen hadn’t noticed before. “Can we hop in here?” she asked, already holding the door open for Becky and Paula to walk through. “I need to get a couple things.”

Jen looked around the inside of the store, wondering if this would be where she would buy medicine, now that she would have to do things like that for herself—although she couldn’t remember the last time she had actually taken any sort of medicine; she hadn’t even taken most of the pain pills for her rib, just one. So maybe she wouldn’t need a drug store.

Happy to have an excuse to part ways with her companions for a bit, Jen wandered back towards the pharmacy at the rear end of the store, passing the aisle marked “feminine needs,” and next to that, the colorful display of condoms and spermacides. Scanning the surrounding shelves, her eyes fell on larger boxes labeled with reassuring names like “The Right Answer,” “Accurate Promise,” and “Know For Sure.” Inside the boxes were pregnancy tests. Jen wondered how much the tests cost, but she didn’t want to pick one up. She leaned in to look for a price sticker. The text on one box read, “Don’t let your future remain a mystery. Know early, and Know For Sure, so you can handle whatever’s coming your way!”

Jen’s future was certainly a mystery. She wished she knew how to handle whatever was coming her way.

She carefully turned the box on its side by poking it with her finger. The sticker on this side said that it cost $23.95.

“Damn,” whistled Jen under her breath. She would have guessed it cost five or ten dollars.

Hearing footsteps in the next aisle, she backed away quickly from the shelf. Paula was coming around the corner,

“I saw what you were looking at!” Paula said, in a jovial but accusing tone. Jen felt her face get hot, and knew it was turning red, even as she tried to look calm.

“I’m telling you, there’s no way you’re going to need condoms in this town,” Paula said. “Get ready for a dry spell, because you are going to be like a monk up here.”

She grabbed Jen by the arm and pulled her towards the front of the store. “Hey, I want to show you something,” she said.

On their way to whatever Paula was going to show her, they passed Becky speed-walking in the other direction. Her arms were filled with bags of candy and packets of chewing gum. “Just need some vitamins,” she called out apologetically, as though she were keeping them from something important and not just from their outing to the Snail factory.

As they neared the cash registers, Paula veered to the side, past the showy little islands of cosmetics. “I had an idea,” Paula said, pulling her into an aisle near the shampoo. She took Jen by the shoulders and pointed her towards a shelf filled with pictures of women’s faces, each woman with a slightly different shade of hair, a color wheel of disembodied heads. “What do you think?” asked Paula, pointing at a box marked “spicy ginger.”

Jen was startled. She was used to resisting changes to her appearance suggested by overzealous makeup artists and hairstylists, whose job it was to predict the next big trend in appearances, while Jen liked to keep things simple and traditional. She hadn’t expected Paula, of all people, to be giving her grooming tips, especially at a time when Jen’s appearance would matter less than it ever had.

But then Jen understood her meaning. This was, in fact, the perfect time to change the way she looked, here where nobody recognized her yet and where she could now take the chance to be more unrecognizable still.

“But maybe this one,” said Jen, pointing at a box two shelves below. The woman pictured on the box had short, spiky hair the color of a “raven’s wing,” as the print on the box described it. Jen had always admired dark hair, which seemed so minimal and dramatic at the same time, so unlike her medium, mousy coloring.

Paula lifted her head to examine Jen’s long, light brown locks with their tasteful highlights, hers certainly not done by a friend at home, although they were growing out now. “Don’t you think black might be a little overwhelming on you?” she said.

“Not if I cut it short like that,” said Jen. “Becky can do it.”

Paula clapped her hands in excitement. “Oh, that’ll be so fun!” she said. “Like a slumber party. Let’s do it tonight.”

Suddenly Jen remembered something. “Wait,” she said, placing the box carefully back in its empty slot on the shelf. “I’m going to run back in the co-op and get a natural one. I don’t want to put chemicals on my head.”

“Oh. Right,” said Paula, looking startled. After Paula’s earlier behavior, Jen had almost expected her to roll her eyes and tell her to stop being a baby and just use the chemicals already. But Paula didn’t say anything more about it.

Jen and Paula met Becky by the cash register, where they added a pair of sharp scissors to the pile of things Becky was purchasing, all manner of little boxes, packets, and jars containing various candies and vitamins.

On the way back to the car, Jen quickly stopped into the co-op and bought a box of black henna. Then Becky drove them back down Main Street to North Middleton Road, back the way they had entered town yesterday evening. Soon Jen saw the large, looming buildings that had welcomed her arrival. It had seemed a long way into town from the giant factory, but on returning, Jen noticed that it was easily walking distance, perhaps a mile, from the center of town to this barren periphery. In daylight, the buildings were even uglier due to their color, an industrial tawny salmon.

“It’s huge,” said Becky, staring in awe at the endless stretch of blank, windowless wall as it passed by. “How do we know where to start looking around?”

“Beats me,” said Paula, shrugging. “I’ve never actually gotten out of the car over here.”

“Look!” exclaimed Becky suddenly, pointing ahead at something in front of the car. Jen leaned forward and squinted, trying to see past the glare of the windshield. She couldn’t see anything but gray sidewalk and pink wall. Then, out of her side window, Jen saw what Becky had been pointing at: a tiny chink in the Snail armor. The pink wall dipped inwards, making room for a small garden with benches and flowers. Beyond that was a set of glass doors, covered in a mirrored surface that reflected the blurry shape of the car back at Jen.

Becky pulled over to the side of the road, right in front of the garden. “Is this legal parking?” she asked Paula, turning her head to look for signs on the long road. Their silver SUV was the only car in sight. “Where’s everybody else?”

Paula was unperturbed. “No one stops here,” she said. “If they make it this far, they keep running straight out of town.”

Becky and Paula jumped out of the car as soon as the key was out of the ignition. Jen trailed behind, unenthusiastic about the prospect of wandering around a strange factory uninvited. By the time Jen had shut her car door behind her, Becky and Paula were examining a set of bronze plaques attached to the recessed garden walls.

“We think it’s some kind of visitors’ center,” said Paula to Jen, pointing at the sign above the glass door, which read “Snail Welcomes You to our Home!”

“These plaques are pretty interesting,” said Paula. "They’re all about the history of the factory.”

“Wow,” said Jen, in a flat tone that was neither sarcastic nor sincere.

“Look, this one talks about Groundbreakers!” said Becky excitedly, calling Paula over to the final plaque, which Jen could see was entitled “Blazing Trails in the Community.” Paula walked over to read it; Jen stayed where she was, looking down at a pretty purple flower in the patch of garden at her feet. The flowers, she realized, were all either bright violet or deep magenta. The garden was landscaped in the Mid-Northern-Central Michigan University colors.

“Nicolai Snail first met Vanto Hatch when he was a young business student just emigrated from Russia,” Becky read aloud. “The philosophies of Hatch’s Groundbreakers program were highly influential to Snail as he developed the business plan for Snail Construction and Mining Equipment. Snail credits Groundbreakers with his success and had become a dedicated sponsor.”

Jen decided to take a walk. “I’m going to look around for a minute,” she called to Becky and Paula. Paula was so engrossed by the plaque that she didn’t seem to notice Jen leaving. But not even historical information about Groundbreakers could distract Becky from keeping track of Jen. She looked up at her, held eye contact for a moment, and then nodded in patient understanding.

“We’ll be in there,” Becky said, gesturing towards the mirrored door.

Jen would have liked to disappear immediately, to get some peace and be unobserved, but there was nowhere to disappear to. The Snail buildings continued without break on both sides of the street; the nearest intersection was far in the distance. Jen could hear Becky and Paula’s voices behind her as she walked. She was curious whether they could see her from the garden, but she didn’t want to turn and look. The long block was in fact much longer even than it looked; the pink fortress walls continued on her left without end.

Finally Jen came to the intersection. She turned the corner quickly, onto another smaller but equally barren street, lined with industrial garages on one side and the same pink stucco walls on the other side, the side where Jen was walking. She felt nervous about being somewhere so isolated; this was the kind of street where she imagined a woman could get attacked or abducted and no one would ever hear her scream. In Los Angeles, she never would have walked alone on a street like this—in fact, nobody seemed to walk on the streets there. But she wasn’t in Los Angeles, she told herself; she was in Michigan, and this was the beginning of a new life of bravery and self-sufficiency.

As she walked, she ran her hand absently across the smooth, pink wall. She wondered what it would be like to work inside a building with no windows. What was going on in there? She stopped for a moment and pressed the side of her head against the wall, hoping to hear some sign of activity within. The wall was cold and still, and she couldn’t feel so much as a vibration. She kept walking, sliding her hand along the wall again, looking at the giant rolling doors on the other side of the street; each was stamped with the image of the snail in the mining helmet.

Suddenly the slick surface of the wall disappeared from beneath her hand, replaced by empty air and something metal. Still looking across the street, Jen lost her balance; her left leg buckled under her and she almost fell over. She caught something, the metal thing, and steadied herself against it. Embarrassed, she instinctively looked around to see if anyone was watching, although she was quite certain she was alone.

She turned to look at what she was holding for support, that thing that had both unbalanced and stabilized her. It was a metal bar, a covering where the wall had ended for a moment. She had found a second crack in the shell. Here was a small opening, only about three feet wide, blocked by a tall iron gate whose bars extended as high up as the building did. Jen held onto the bars as she stuck her face between them, straining like a child to see what was behind. She thought she could hear voices—scary voices, shouting some kind of rhythmic commands. She wasn’t sure if the voices were coming from inside the Snail plant or from somewhere else in the distance.

The gate led into a courtyard, Jen was pretty sure. There were tall shrubs blocking her view, and a few trees, but she thought she could see an expanse of open space beyond them. She squinted her eyes and moved her head around, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of the Snail workers or whoever was making that odd noise.

As she shifted her weight to the right, she found a small open patch of unobstructed view between the leaves. Through this opening, she could see a few men in yellow jumpsuits, lined up in a row.

A voice yelled something, a loud, unintelligible command. Now Jen was sure that its owner was inside the gate. She couldn’t see him, but the men that she could see lifted their arms in what looked like some sort of salute.

The voice yelled something else.

The men moved forward, simultaneously, punching the air with their fists. On their last punch, they let out a synchronized yelping noise, a war cry.

The voice barked again. The men dropped to the ground and began to do pushups, counting in unison up to fifty each time they lifted and lowered their bodies. Then they jumped back to their feet and resumed the rhythmic punching.

Jen felt a horrified fascination creep over her. This was an army, she realized. Inside this fortress, Nicolai Snail was training a private militia. Maybe, she thought, Snail is not only a manufacturing company, but something else—something covert and insidious. But what could it be? What did Snail want an army for? Was he just paranoid? Or did he have some reason?

She resolved to find out. Once Becky and Paula left, she could come here and spy all she wanted, every day if she felt like it, until she figured out what was going on here. She would drive the SUV to the co-op, get tea in the morning, and then make the short trip out to the factory. Hell, she could even walk, she thought, adding up the distance—it was only six miles from here to the lake house. It seemed like an absurd whim to follow through with, especially the twelve-mile walk round trip; but then again, she had absolutely no other plans.

Chapter 16:

http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2008/12/16-exactly-through-motions.html

14. The Context and the Breeding Ground

“It is increasingly apparent to psychotherapists that the normal state of consciousness in our culture is both the context and the breeding ground of mental disease.” —Alan Watts

In the morning, when the sun hit Jen rudely in the face, she did not recognize the strange, cold room around her. What was this shaky twin bed? It felt odd and flimsy under her body, and she could tell that no more than a foot of mattress and springs separated her from the empty space below. The wall across from her face was painted a strange, old-fashioned color, something halfway between lavender and light blue. She turned her head upward toward the source of the blinding morning light, squinting, and saw that it was entering the room through a small, dusty skylight overhead.

Turning her face away from the light, she began to panic, because not only did she not know what room this was, but she couldn’t quite recall who she was, what her job was, or who were her friends, or what she had been doing yesterday or for the last week, or month, or ever.

She sat up, causing the bed to bounce and buckle in the middle. She scanned the room desperately for a clock so that she would at least know what time it was, hoping that this information might remind her if she were supposed to be doing something right now. Should I be at work, she thought? Where do I work? She turned her head left and right, but didn’t see a clock anywhere.

Her eyes fell on a series of small photographs hanging on the wall across from the bed. A couple standing at the edge of a cliff, a beautiful sunset coloring the sky behind them. The same couple knee-deep in a river, wearing floppy hats. The couple sitting at a dinner table covered in beautiful silver serving urns of different sizes. Jen was sure that she recognized the couple, even though she didn’t seem to know their names. They looked so happy in their exotic settings, always with their arms around each other, beaming at the camera like they only had things to be happy about. She felt jealous of these people that she knew and did not know, so happy and adventurous and sure of themselves. And here she was, alone in a strange room, all alone, with no idea what she was supposed to be doing or who she was supposed to be.

Her gaze shifted from the photographs to the tall bookshelf next to them, looming over the bed. She leaned forward, until she could almost read the titles of the books just across from her face. One book had been laid carelessly across the tops of the others. “Diagnose Your Aura,” Jen read aloud. She knew the title, and she remembered last night, taking the test, putting the book back sloppily in disgust before falling into a restless sleep.

Now her memory came flooding back, jarred by the memory of the book, and of yesterday. She was in Michigan. In the house of Paula’s mother, the woman in the photographs. In a week, Becky and Paula would leave, and she would be all alone here, alone for an entire summer, maybe longer. This would be her bedroom, and she wouldn’t be going back to her other room, her other house, or anything else familiar and comforting. And worst of all, she thought glumly, looking back at the bookshelf, she had no aura.

She tried to remember why she had wanted to come here. What had made her think that she could take care of herself better in a place where she had no friends, knew nobody at all, where there was no yoga studio or library or anything she needed? She suddenly felt the strong desire to lie back down and huddle under the covers, to pull them up far over her head to keep out the light and the cold of morning.

These frightened thoughts of the future were not helping her get up and start her day, she decided; she needed to come up with some positive outlook. She tried to remember why she had wanted to come here so that she could view her situation with the same romantic perspective that had shaped her fantasies of Michigan back when she was in Los Angeles.

She sat up straighter, determined to be brave and face the morning. She crossed her legs in front of her and sat in a meditating position, preparing to think positive thoughts.

This would be a clean slate. She could start over here, and she could make her life the opposite of what it had been in LA. However spoiled she had been before, by fame, by luxury, by fashion and parties and all manner of other frivolous things, now she could redeem herself. She could be simple, and unknown, and plain.

She began to feel more hopeful, and even though she knew that it was a kind of desperate hope, not rugged but frail and contingent, the kind of hope that might break if you put your full weight on it at once, she had no choice but to hang on to it, carefully.

She began to make plans in her head, plans that were a life raft. She would find the library. A town with a university had to have a library, and if they didn’t, she would go to the library on campus. And there might even be yoga somewhere. Maybe a class at the college. She would find it, find her places here. In three months, she’d be so settled and happy that she wouldn’t ever want to go home. She would learn all kinds of new things, have a new, better perspective.

These were plans to keep her head just above water, just far enough to breathe. She imagined herself floating on the surface of a deep, swampy lake, face down, staring at the dark abyss below.

The lake! Jen suddenly remembered that she hadn’t seen it yet. Now would be the best time to first see it, before Becky and Paula woke up. She would be alone, fittingly, to represent her new life of solitude.

Jen rose from the bed, shivering, and bent over the open suitcase lying on the floor, rummaging through the neat piles of t-shirts and pants that Becky had folded for her until she found something warm to wear, her big red sweatshirt. She pulled it on over her pajamas and picked up her plastic flip-flops from the floor. Quietly, she opened the door to her room, listening for any signs of her housemates. But the house was quiet. She could hear breathing from the next room, the room in which Paula’s mother and her husband usually slept, where Becky and Paula were now sharing the bed.

Jen crept across the loft towards the stairs, holding her shoes under her arm, trying not to make noise as her bare feet hit the wood floor. She walked carefully down the staircase, holding onto the banister and stepping gingerly. Downstairs, she stopped in the kitchen. It was so chilly; it must be very early in the morning. Did she really want to go outside right now?

Through the kitchen window, she could see the sheen of something large and flat glinting in the sunlight. That would be the lake, and she did very much want to see it. She was shivering, though, even in the sweatshirt, and not quite ready to open the door to the yard.

What she needed, she decided, was some tea. She could go outside and sit and watch the lake in the early morning light, and drink her tea until she warmed up.

Rummaging through the cabinets, she found a mug and two flavors of tea: a giant box of plain black Lipton tea and a smaller box of fancy organic blended herbal tea with licorice and spearmint. She was about to choose the herbal tea out of habit; she had stopped drinking caffeine as part of her fast. But the bitterness of black tea sounded appealing, and she decided that some caffeine might be okay, this once, to help her through this first day. She heated her mug full of water in the microwave and dropped the teabag in. While she waited, she dropped her shoes to the floor and slid her feet inside. Then, wrapping the hot mug handle in a dishtowel, she opened the door to the back yard and stepped outside.

The morning smelled fresh and wet, and a bit swampy. The grass was damp as it brushed the sides of Jen’s feet. The yard had a picnic bench, and a small barbecue, and a few plastic chairs scattered around. And straight ahead, a ways down, several plastic chairs had been placed in a little sandy bank, and then there was the lake. Jen walked down towards it, the bottoms of her pajama pants getting heavy and wet. She walked through the grass until she reached the chairs. Then she stopped, and stood next to them, and stared at the lake, and drank her dark, bitter, steaming tea from the mug, wrapped in the kitchen towel. The tea tasted good, even without lemon, she thought. She drank tea every day, herbal tea at least, but she hadn’t tasted anything except lemon in months.

The lake was big and green, and lined all around with thick woods like those that surrounded the house. In the distance, far across the lake, balconies and roofs were visible jutting out of the woods, attached to houses that were mostly obscured by the trees. She could not see how far the water extended sideways; she would need to swim out and look someday. There were bushy reeds growing in the swampy water near her, but past those, the water was flat and clear, and glimmering in the morning sun.

Jen stood watching the water until all of her tea was gone, and even for a few minutes more, clutching the empty mug for the warmth it was still giving to her hands. It was very, very beautiful here, she decided.

As she walked back across the yard, she became curious about those houses on the other side of the lake. Who lived there, she wondered? And how far away were they? The distance seemed enormous, and yet those people were very likely some of her closest neighbors. She stopped and turned to look, squinting at the balcony of a funny grass-green house that was almost invisible amongst the trees. And as she looked, she saw something, small and dark, sitting, facing forward. She couldn’t quite make out its features. But she felt certain that it was a person, sitting on the balcony, staring back at her from across the lake.

When Becky and Paula woke up a couple of hours later, the first thing they wanted to do was go into town for some food and supplies, and to show Jen around the town a little.

Paula drove her mother’s SUV, which Jen would be borrowing, down the bumpy road back to North Middleton. “Let’s start at the food co-op for groceries,” Paula said, turning her head towards Jen, who was in the back seat again. The car jolted as the tire hit a pit in the road, and Paula turned her eyes back forward.

Becky groaned loudly at the impact and wrapped her hands around her stomach. “Good,” Becky said, “I’ll go anywhere with food.” She was wearing dark sunglasses and a baggy, shapeless sweatshirt. Her face looked pale and drawn. For the three weeks since their reconciliation, Becky had been looking sickly and tired almost every morning. Jen wondered if she was the one making Becky ill, by causing her so much stress over the Skipper situation, the broken rib, and the move. That must be it, Jen thought to herself, and she felt horrible.

Staring into the dense woods outside the car window, Jen contemplated the structure of her life, marveling that she should be in a position to cause another person so much aggravation simply by messing things up for herself. Becky has to live off of me like a parasite, Jen thought, feeling sickened. I need to set her free, she resolved. She wasn’t sure how to do it, but she would have a better idea when she returned to Los Angeles. After months of separation, it might happen naturally somehow, without Jen having to make any deliberate change at all.

“They’ve got plenty of food at the co-op, if you don’t mind that it’s all healthy,” Paula said, sounding as though healthy were a bad thing.

The co-op was on a side street near the university. As Jen watched out her window, she couldn’t imagine that a business could be located here. She saw an old apartment building, and then another, and then a series of run-down houses that she imagined were occupied by student renters. Every porch had an old sofa on it. Some yards had plastic lawn chairs, and a few were littered with beer bottles.

Then, interrupting the uniform row of houses, something different appeared: a strange, sparkling gem, a building so overflowing with ornate detail that Jen couldn’t take it all in visually as the car passed by. She was about to ask Paula what it was, but Paula spoke first.

“There it is,” said Paula, pulling into a small parking lot next to the building.

As they walked up, Jen got a better look at the building, which, with its low, flat design, seemed to be a converted garage. It was covered in a mosaic depiction of the solar system, with planets and meteors and spaceships of all colors, all whirling around a giant yellow sun, sparkling with bits of glass and broken mirror reflecting the light of the real sun high overhead. The yard was covered in sculptures of all sorts—animals, human figures, bird-feeders, rendered in clay, metal, and stone— intertwined with overgrown rose bushes and raspberry vines.

The sign above the door was a large piece of amateur art-welding. Twisted metal letters spelled out the name, “The People’s Food Co-op,” adorned with tin flowers and bordered with ragged strips of rebar.

Jen had assumed that things in Michigan would be more tame and old-fashioned than in Los Angeles, but she had never seen anything at all like this, ever, in her entire life.

“Ugly,” said Paula, sniffing at a carved wooden statue of a bear as they walked by it.

On the way in, they passed quite a few people: young mothers with babies in strollers, college students toting backpacks, stocky middle-aged men with long ponytails and sandals. None of them seemed to notice Jen. She was wearing the baseball cap and nonprescription eyeglasses that she often wore to go outside in Los Angeles, but there everyone stared at her anyway. Here, she had the strange and novel feeling that she could be anybody, any anonymous person, just like Becky and Paula. No one’s gaze stopped on her, no one turned abruptly to give her a second look as she walked by. It felt a little sad not to be recognized, but also exciting.

Paula wanted to get the grocery shopping over with, but Becky insisted that they visit the café first. “I need some food, and coffee,” she groaned. She had already eaten toast this morning, Jen thought; that was barely an hour ago. Jen wondered why Becky was so hungry, considering that she was getting less exercise than usual. She usually taught multiple yoga classes every day in addition to practicing on her own, but she had taken a couple of days off before the trip to help Jen pack and get her things in order.

Off to the side of the cash register was a cute corner by the window with tables and chairs and a little espresso cart. Paula and Jen ordered drinks and picked out pastries from the case next to the counter, while Becky stood in line at the register to pay. Then Paula led Jen to a small table beside the window.

“This is the best one,” Paula said, setting her coffee on the table and pulling out a chair for Jen to sit on.

They sat eating their pastries, a bran muffin with raisins for Jen and a cheese-filled Danish for Paula, and watched Becky waiting in line to pay for the food they were already eating. Becky was behind two people: a leathery-skinned middle-aged woman with long, stringy gray hair, reminiscent of Paula’s own dreads, and a skinny, smooth-faced young man with the long, overgrown beard of an elderly hillbilly.

“Look at these people,” Paula said with disgust. “I hate this store.”

Jen found this comment odd, considering that Paula’s careless fashion sensibilities fit in perfectly here. Paula’s disdain for North Middleton had been evident since the moment of their arrival, but her venom seemed the most concentrated here, amongst those who would seem to be her own people.

“This is a great place to be celibate,” Paula added, in a more cheerful tone, as though pointing out the bright side of a bad situation.

As Jen watched the line of unkempt, scrawny people waiting to buy their organic greens and gluten-free bread, she couldn’t help but agree with Paula. Will these be the people I meet here, she wondered? She couldn’t imagine befriending these inscrutable bohemians, with their practical clothing and blank, over-sunned faces.

Becky was at the front of the line, now. Jen watched her step up to the counter, across from the cashier, who was facing Jen. She saw his arm muscles flex under his t-shirt as he punched numbers into the register. Becky said something to him, presumably about the pastries and coffee that she was purchasing for her friends, because he turned his head to look directly at Jen and Paula. His gaze met Jen’s, and she noticed his eyes—bright blue, a striking contrast to his dark, shaggy hair.

He stared at Jen for a moment, smiling slightly. She smiled back, a similarly small, shy smile.

“Oh, finally one of them recognizes you,” said Paula. “People here are so clueless. They don’t see anything they don’t expect to see.”

Yes, he recognized me, thought Jen, with surprise, as though this didn’t happen to her every day. That’s why he smiled. She turned her head away from the cashier and nodded in agreement at Paula.

But secretly, she didn’t think that this was the reason he smiled at all. Secretly, with a certainty that could only be an indication that this was fate, she knew right away that this man would be her new friend.

Chapter 15:
http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2008/11/15-then-man-dreaming.html

13b. An Unfortunate Tendency

“The human being has an unfortunate tendency to wish to please.” —Philip K. Dick

Flipping back through the pages near the end of the book, Jen found the beginning of the diagnostic test, which was not called a “test” at all. Instead, in bold letters, it was titled “Aura Diagnostic Tool.” Below that, the first page was all explanation and instructions.

“This Aura Diagnostic Tool will allow you to determine the primary color of your aura,” said the first paragraph. “This will give you insight into the current state of your Life Force.”

“The questions on this Tool—one hundred total—have been carefully developed to access and measure particular frequencies of your Psychic Energy.

“Auras change over time, as the stages of your life progress. You may not always have the same dominant aura that you have right now. For this reason, you should not think of this Tool as measuring a permanent state. Instead, consider your immediate present as you answer the questions on this Tool.”

These are long instructions, thought Jen impatiently. She scanned quickly through the following paragraphs, which described the accuracy and effectiveness of the Tool, looking for anything important. The only thing she found was at the bottom of the page, which said: “Materials: you will need a pen and paper.”

Jen hopped off the bed and over to the writing desk and found a small notepad in the top drawer. There were lots of pens in the drawer, but when she tested them on the notepad, they all left deep, colorless scratches across the page. Rooting farther back, she found a shimmery purple pen whose plastic casing was decorated with little lavender pictures of shooting stars and flying horses. Jen drew a large scribble on the bottom of the page. The metallic ink was pale and difficult to read. Jen considered looking for a darker pen, but she was anxious to get started, and if she thought about it, the pen’s ephemeral color seemed fitting for the project she was about to embark upon.

Jen sat back down on the bed and opened the book to the beginning of the Tool. The instructions said that the questions were to be answered using the following responses:

A. This is always true.
B. This is often true.
C. This is usually not true.
D.This is never true.

Jen remembered taking a similar type of survey a few months ago when she had visited a new dentist. She wondered if the questions would be similar: “I am happy with my smile.” “My teeth are as white as I would like them to be.”

In fact, this guess was not far off, as the first questions all seemed related to her body. The first one read:

I eat a lot of food.

Hmm, thought Jen. This was difficult already. How much food was “a lot”? Didn’t everybody eat a lot of food, every day, just to stay alive?

Jen thought back to the instructions. “Consider your immediate present,” the book had said. Presently, during the past three weeks to be specific, she had been consuming more food than she had eaten in years. She hadn’t been limiting carbs, or fat; she had been eating whatever Becky cooked, as much as she could stomach until she became too queasy to eat any more.

“B,” said Jen aloud, marking the letter on her notepad. Often true. She moved on to the second one.

I am slender.

This one was even more disconcerting. Certainly she was slender now, but she might not be for long. With all the food she was eating, she was certain to gain weight. And then, there was also the distinct possibility that her body was about to begin a transition, that she was about to start growing larger and larger, past the borders of her own frame, like her legs in that old nightmare. She had a flash, a vision of a large, round belly, bursting out from between the lapels of a jacket like a smuggled cantaloupe.

But again, she was straying away from the present, this time into the future rather than the past. The answer, for now, seemed to be that she was slender. But just in case, she chose “B” again—often true.

I frequently feel dizzy or nauseated.

Once again, focusing on the immediate present altered her answer. Jen hadn’t ever felt dizzy or nauseated on a regular basis until the last month or so. It seemed odd to characterize herself based on such an anomalous time period. But whatever was happening now was the most important, she thought. She struggled between A and B for a moment, trying to remember how dizzy and nauseous she had been, exactly. As she thought, a wave of queasiness washed over her, and for a moment she felt that she might vomit. Then the feeling passed, as it did every time, many times throughout the day, she realized.

She wrote “A” in the column of letters on the notepad.

Once she got used to thinking purely in the present, the remaining questions about bodies were easy to answer: she “often” had fair skin (she took this answer to mean that her skin was medium-fair), she “often” had aching feelings in her body (thanks to her broken rib), and she “always” enjoyed the taste of astringent foods such as lemon. She “almost never” was ashamed of her own appearance, and she “never” craved fatty or sweet foods.

After the first thirty questions or so, she noted a shift in the subject matter. The new questions all had to do with her personality. These were more difficult to answer, since she needed to assess not only her own feelings, but other people’s feelings about her. She realized that she knew very little about what other people thought of her. For example, one question said:

People often describe me as cold or standoffish.

Jen’s first inclination was to answer “A,” always true. She always felt standoffish, always felt that she was alienating everyone around her through her failure to engage properly. She had spent years smiling for cameras, warmly greeting members of the press, happily signing autographs, but it never felt like enough. Whenever she failed to make eye contact with someone smiling at her on the street, or turned away from someone aiming a cell-phone camera at her, or stretched at the beginning of yoga class rather than making chit-chat with curious classmates, she felt like the coldest, rudest, least generous person on earth. Always true, she thought sadly.

Before marking down her answer, though, Jen reread the question. It didn’t ask what she thought of herself, she discovered; it asked how other people described her. So rather than trying to imagine what other people thought about her, Jen tried to interpret the question in the most literal manner possible: to the best of her own knowledge, did people describe her as cold?

She tried to think of who might describe her. There were very few people in her life who spoke honestly to her: Becky, Paula, her mother. All of them had faulted her for various shortcomings: inconsiderateness, laziness, lying to herself. Not eating enough. Not eating the right things. Not being tough enough, too fragile, not resilient. Not open-minded. Those were the ones she could remember right now. But nothing about being cold, unless you counted her mother’s admonitions that she was too “uptight.” Nothing about unfriendly, which is what “standoffish” meant, right? So at least to the people that she knew, the people who mattered to her, she did not appear to be as cold and distant as she often felt.

The only other places she had seen herself described were in magazines, and she had stopped reading those years ago. She tried to recall the last time she had read an article about herself; it was that article about Skipper, she realized with disgust. She tried to remember how it had described her. It had implied that she was crazy, she realized. And promiscuous. But not cold, not standoffish. Nothing about that.

All right, then, she concluded. Not cold or standoffish. But she could not dismiss the idea that people she did not know, those at the health club, those on the street, were describing her that way, without her knowing. “C,” she wrote, not usually, as a concession to those people.

As with the “body” section, the questions in this “personality” section became easier to answer with practice. Some were obvious, such as the fact that her relationship with her family was “usually not” close, or that she “often” kept her most important thoughts to herself rather than sharing them.

A few questions had answers that shifted if she only considered the immediate present. She wanted to answer that she “always” had a good relationship with her closest friend, but remembering the recent months when she had gone for days at a time without even speaking to Becky, and the awkwardness that still loomed over their interactions, she changed her response to “often.”

When she was about two-thirds of the way through the hundred questions, the focus of the Tool changed once more. This time the topic was a bit more difficult to pin down, but there was clearly some affinity between the questions. As she read each one, she tried to articulate the overall topic: perhaps it was her goals, or her desires, or her view of the world. Her philosophy, she thought, remembering Skipper for the third time in the last hour.

Whatever the topic, these questions were the most difficult to respond to, given her current state of transition. The answers to many of the questions seemed to have changed as of today; nowhere was this so evident as in the following statement:

I am comfortable where I live.

Oh no, thought Jen. Where I live right now? Here finally was a question that forced her to make a commitment to her new surroundings. She could answer based on her house in LA, in which case the answer would be “A,” always, she always loved her house. She would miss it, she realized, as much and perhaps more than she would miss her friends. This new house seemed cute enough, and cozy, but it did not make her feel comfortable. “Where I live,” she thought, looking at the question again. I don’t even know where I live. She lived off the map, in the uncharted, alien middle of the country, in a house that belonged to strangers that she had never met.

“D,” she answered with a sigh—never.

There were a number of similar questions about her level of comfort with her current life. Many of them received “never” answers, based on Jen’s total lack of knowledge about where she was, what she was planning, where she would be in a month or six months or a year. “My life feels settled at the present moment”—never. “I have concrete plans for the future”—never. “I feel that I am in a rut”—she felt comforted, maybe even cheerful, as she answered “never” yet again.

Her favorite question in this category was:

I have hope for the future.

The statement seemed sweet and quaint and Jen very much wanted to agree with it. She thought for a moment. The future seemed so fuzzy right now; she could barely imagine what tomorrow would be like, and next week, after Becky and Paula’s departure, seemed incomprehensible. Still, she realized, thinking of her quiet life, and the lake, she felt incredibly hopeful, and, in spite of her fear, more excited about her future than she had felt for years.

“A,” she answered—always.

As she continued to search for the theme of this section, Jen noticed another trend. Unlike the previous sections, whose questions had been, if not easily answered, at least familiar, this section contained a number of questions whose topics never would have occurred to Jen, questions about her perceptions: “I prefer round shapes to square ones.” “I would rather listen to music than look at a painting.” “I believe that gray is a color.”
Jen felt that her answers to most of these questions were a bit erratic; today she felt that circles were preferable to squares, the circles being less pointy and safer, but this preference hardly seemed permanent or even significant. On the other hand, several questions alerted her to some deeply-rooted belief or tendency that she had never been aware of, such as:

I enjoy placing things into categories.

Jen laughed aloud, thinking of her own categorization of the books on the shelf and the questions on the test. On the hunch that this was not a new behavior for her, she answered “A,” always. Well, now I’ve learned something about myself, she thought. So even if I end up being an Amethyst, this test won’t have been totally worthless.

Several of the questions in this section startled Jen, making her feel that she was about to cry. One was:

I am happy spending many hours or days by myself.

Jen thought back to the weeks she had spent biding her time in the Encino library between yoga classes, reading on the couches next to sleeping vagrants and practicing yoga poses in the most remote, hidden aisles. She had enjoyed this time to herself; she had felt purposeful and focused, and self-sufficient in a way that she did not when her daily activities were being prescribed by a director or producer, or a husband, or even by Becky. Still, there had always been an underlying sense of loneliness, knowing that no one was taking care of her, no one noticing that she was missing all day or wondering why her clothing had become so unusually ragged. And that was nothing, she thought to herself, nothing at all compared to how this will be. But this way of thinking made her feel like she was about to dive off the brink of a canyon, to float above the ground in a hang-glider, watching her feet dangle vulnerably above the rivers and fields visible so far below. She quickly answered “B,” often, and flipped to the last page of questions, which focused mainly on more innocuous subjects.

The final question on the Tool seemed portentous:

I have or would like to have children.

Jen wondered what she thought about this question. Did she want a child? The change in her life would be enormous, she thought. When she was married, she had often contemplated the possibility of children. The appeal was less about the children themselves, and more about what they signified for the marriage: stability, permanence, the idea that the father would always be linked to you in some way, no matter what happened between you, through this bond of common responsibility and DNA.

Now, she realized, if she were to have a child, there would be no man in her life to share the work, the decisions, to enjoy the feeling of finally having a family with. On the other hand, she thought, there would be no obligations, no compromising, no negotiating. And no marital relationship to be destroyed by the constant pressure, the high-stakes disagreements and debates, the strain of being more business partners than lovers.

Perhaps she would like to have a child by herself, she thought. She wasn’t sure; she couldn’t think it all through right now. She wrote “B,” often, in the final slot on her sheet of paper.

Now that Jen had finished the test (or the Tool, she corrected herself), she stared down at her work, the hundred numbers and letters. Their pattern on the page, the neat rows, looked shifting and surreal in the shimmery lavender ink. Jen hoped the Tool wouldn’t be too difficult to score; she felt impatient to learn her diagnosis.

On the page following the final questions, there were directions for calculating a score. Jen gasped indignantly to learn that the scoring method was hopelessly complicated. Each question had its own set of scores, depending on how it had been answered, and the scores needed to be organized into different columns. She turned her sheet of paper over and started new columns on the back, and began the tedious task of translating her answers into numbers. She noticed that the points assigned to each question increased progressively through the test, so that her final answers about colors and children were worth about five times as much as her early answers about her body.

Jen remembered that she had seen a calculator in the drawer, and she rose from the bed to fetch it. Using the calculator, she was able to total up each of the three columns prescribed by the directions. Then, still following the directions, she multiplied the first column by 2.5, subtracted the second column, and then multiplied that by the third. The result was a palindrome: 161. She double-checked her math, verifying the total of each individual column and then repeating the final three mathematical operations. She wanted to make sure her diagnosis was accurate.

It had been a long time since she had done math, she thought to herself. Becky did all her taxes and bookkeeping, so Jen never needed to calculate anything. Now she regretted missing out; it was kind of fun, actually, methodical and relaxing. She wondered if she’d have more chances to do math in her new, self-reliant life.

On the page following the calculation instructions was a chart explaining how to connect one’s score to an aura. The chart, like the calculations preceding it, was frustratingly complex. This must be what it’s like to do taxes, Jen thought, feeling a bit like a freak for never having done hers. She read the instructions slowly, making sure not to skip any steps that would lead to a faulty diagnosis. She found the numbers corresponding to the Ruby aura—but they did not include 161. Then she found those for Onyx. These numbers were all very low, under twenty, and they did not include her number. The numbers for Sapphire, conversely, were all quite high, over one thousand. Jen gasped as she realized that the only two left were Jade and Amethyst. Please not Amethyst, please not Amethyst, she prayed, scanning the numbers for that most undesired of auras. Triumphantly, she found that 161 was not included. I’m Jade, she thought excitedly, rushing with her eyes to find her number listed under that aura. But when she found the numbers for Jade, once again, 161 was not included.

Puzzled, Jen ran her eyes back over the list of numbers. Then she used her finger, tracing along the gridlines, growing increasingly worried that she would need to go back and total all the numbers all over again.

Finally her eye fell on a small list of numbers in the bottom right-hand corner of the chart, away from the other groupings of numbers and colors. These numbers were all three-digit palindromes, and 161 was among them. She traced her finger back across the chart to find the jewel-tone that matched her responses. But there was no word in the box where the color name should have been. Instead there were three small asterisks in a row.

Jen looked to the bottom of the page, and found three more asterisks, followed by a short passage.

“Your aura is inconclusive,” read the passage. Jen felt a rush of disappointment. Of course she had messed up this test; she had felt that something was wrong the entire time she was taking it.

“Do not be alarmed,” the passage continued. “This result does not mean that you do not have an aura, or that there is a problem with your aura. Instead, the Tool indicates that your aura is in a state of radical instability. It is recommended that you wait at least one month before employing the Tool again.”

Jen silently berated herself. She had never been good at tests, but this one was a Tool, not a test, and she had thought it was impossible to mess up, aside from ending up with the dreaded Amethyst aura. She should have been more consistent in her answers, she told herself. She should have thought through how she was answering. No, she realized: the true problem was that she had taken the book’s instructions too literally, answering the questions based on her present moment, not on who she had been over time. Of course she couldn’t answer well today; she had no idea where she was, what was going on with her body, what her activities in this new place would be. She knew nothing. How could she expect to properly diagnose her personality on the same day that she had been extracted, violently it seemed at the moment, from her homeland and plopped down in the middle of this terrifying flat field?

She resolved to take the test again. "Once I get settled in,” she said aloud to herself.

Just as she spoke, Paula burst into the room looking flushed and energetic and smelling of marijuana, which, Jen remembered now, seemed to play a key role in the grounding of the house. Paula must have gotten ready for bed after the grounding ritual. Her dreadlocks were pulled into a messy ponytail that Jen found oddly attractive, and she was wearing worn plaid pajama bottoms and a tank top with no bra.

“What did you say?” Paula asked.

“Nothing,” said Jen, embarrassed. Then, to change the subject, she added, "You guys didn't ground the rooms up here."

"No," said Paula, "we got too tired. We'll finish in the morning. Plus we didn't want to bother you--what have you been doing?"

“I was just reading,” Jen said.

Paula looked dismissively over at the bookshelf. “Those are kind of the b-list books,” she said. “They keep the good ones in the big house in Toledo.”

Jen remembered her categorization question. “Hey, do you know anything about the books on the bottom shelf?”

Paula walked the few paces to the bookshelf and fell into the same yoga-trained squat that Becky so often assumed on a whim. She pulled a few of the worn books from the shelf to look at the titles that had worn off the bindings.

“Oh,” said Paula. “These are all mine. Wow,” she added, holding up a psychedelically designed paperback called The Cosmic Trigger. “I haven’t seen this book in years.” She pulled out another book, The Art of War, and flipped through the pages.

“These are my really old books, like from when I was in college,” Paula said. “My mom must have kept the ones she liked.”

Paula put the book back on the shelf and stood up, her eyes traveling to the book on Jen’s lap.

“Did you take the test?” Paula asked.

“Tool,” said Jen, stalling for time.

“What?” asked Paula, but she didn’t wait for an explanation. “Which aura were you?”

“Jade,” said Jen, feeling horrible the moment the lie reached her own ears.

“Wow,” said Paula, impressed. “That’s the one everyone wants to be.”

“What’s yours?” asked Jen, trying to prevent any further discussion of her own bogus aura.

Paula sighed. “Amethyst,” she said, in a resigned voice. “I took that test a dozen times, and it was always Amethyst.”

“What’s wrong with Amethyst?” asked Jen, making her voice blank with disingenuous naiveté.

Jen still wasn’t sure why she had lied; she told herself that she was merely trying to avoid a complicated conversation about her indecisive aura, but she didn’t quite trust her own motivations.

“I hate Amethyst,” Paula said, her voice dripping with self-pitying disdain. “It’s the worst one.”

Chapter 14:
http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2008/10/14-context-and-breeding-ground.html