12. A Strange Life

“Then he suddenly saw clearly that he was leading a strange life, that he was doing many things that were only a game, that he was quite cheerful and sometimes experienced pleasure, but that real life was flowing past him and did not touch him.” —Hermann Hesse

For the first time in over a month, Jen was eating a regular breakfast. On the plate in front of her were two little crumpets that Becky had bought at the bakery. Becky was having hers with jam and butter. Jen wanted to eat hers plain, but Becky convinced her to spread a tiny bit of butter on the top. The crumpet tasted good with the butter, Jen thought, sort of comforting, but so rich that it made her queasy. She couldn’t imagine how her body would get used to eating food like this every day, not to mention more than once a day.

She sipped her tea between bites, thankful that breaking her fast did not require her to stop dousing all her food with lemon juice. The strong lemon flavor in the tea cut through the heavy flavors of butter and white flour, helping her tolerate just a bit more than she would have expected.

Becky finished her own crumpets quickly, then pulled another one from the small white bakery bag and lowered it into one of the six slots on Jen’s fancy bagel toaster. As Becky waited for it to brown, she sat across the high counter from Jen, watching her eat. Jen felt the instinctive urge, ingrained from years of photo ops at fancy parties, to put her food down the moment she perceived someone’s gaze on her. But realizing that Becky was judging her appetite, she instead took an ambitious bite out of her buttered crumpet. It was a lot to chew, and she found her jaw moving in that resolute way that happens when people are trying force down food they don’t like.

“Does your side hurt a lot?” Becky asked.

“Not too bad,” answered Jen truthfully, mumbling through her still half full mouth. Becky had given her a second pain pill to eat with breakfast, but, deciding it might be a bad idea to take pills, she hid it in the pocket of her sweatpants instead. Her side felt a little funny when she breathed regularly, and there was a sharp, shooting pain if she inhaled deeply. When she had undressed the night before, she had noticed a funny bump, like a small bone jutting out of her abdomen. Other than that, she just felt a bit sore and queasy. She had woken up in the morning feeling like she might throw up; still, she felt determined to eat a nutritious breakfast, both for her own body’s health and to help her get what she wanted from Becky.

Becky seemed to consider her answer for a moment, looking thoughtful and worried. “Is something wrong?” she asked after a moment.

Jen gulped the crumpet down. “What do you mean?” she asked. She wondered if her nausea was obvious to read on her face.

“If you’re still mad at me, you should tell me,” said Becky, leaning closer in over the counter that separated them. The stream of bright morning sun from the skylight hit Becky’s upper arm, which looked particularly wiry and well-defined by the angular light. Jen thought of how Becky’s arms looked when she did a low yoga pushup, the triceps flexed and held close to her body.

“Why would I be mad at you?” asked Jen, although she knew the answer.

Becky let out one little “hah” of a humorless laugh. “That’s very generous,” she said. There was a snapping sound as her crumpet popped up out of the toaster. Becky turned her back to Jen as she went to retrieve it. She pulled the crumpet out carefully, with two fingers, and tossed it onto her plate. “For ignoring you for the past month,” she said, carrying the plate back over to the counter across from Jen.

“No,” said Jen, “I’m not mad at you.” She thought of how guilty she had felt for causing Becky all that trouble by getting herself into the tabloids in such a degrading fashion. If anything, it had been a relief not to have to face her every day. She just hoped her own distance had made Becky’s job easier rather than more difficult. “You needed a break from me,” she said.

Jen popped the last large bite of her second crumpet into her mouth and chewed hard. She swallowed triumphantly, proud and excited to be finished with her first meal of her first full post-fast day.

“Do you want another one?” Becky asked. Despite all of her resolutions to eat heartily, Jen couldn’t bear the thought of a third crumpet. The other two were already sitting heavily in her stomach, which still felt bloated from her meal the night before. “No, thanks,” she said.

Becky surveyed her skeptically for a moment more “Is there something you’re not telling me?” she asked. “Did something happen?”

“No, nothing happened,” said Jen, trying to sound nonchalant. The truth was that Jen was not sure herself whether something had happened. She had a suspicion that she had not yet shaped into words, exactly, even in her own mind. Everything had changed since yesterday, and she needed to figure out exactly what this change meant. Or perhaps she knew already, but wasn’t ready to face it with certainty. She felt like she was keeping a secret, not from Becky, but from herself.

As she thought about secrets, Jen suddenly remembered how sullen Chase had seemed the evening before. He had been quiet in the car and downright silent at dinner. After dinner, instead of sleeping over like he so often did, he took off in the low black convertible that he usually only drove between his house and Jen’s because Becky preferred to drive the two of them around in her tiny, fuel-efficient car.

“What was up with Chase yesterday?” asked Jen, as much to change the subject as to find out the answer. “He seemed upset.”

Jen expected Becky to launch into a funny story about whatever Chase’s problem was: a bad audition, a job that hadn’t panned out. Or maybe some kind of frivolous fight between himself and Becky that Becky would want to complain about.

Instead, Becky was silent for a moment, frowning. Then she said, “He’s fine. Just stressed out.” Looking tense and distracted, Becky picked up Jen’s plate and carried it over to the sink. Jen hadn’t noticed until now that Becky’s face looked strained, with little wrinkles showing around her mouth and eyes.

Jen hadn’t been seriously worried about Chase until Becky gave her this evasive answer. Suddenly she felt panicky. Whatever was going on must be pretty serious if Becky didn’t want to tell her about it. Was he sick? She hadn’t paid much attention to his appearance last night; she had been too exhausted and focused on her own problems. Or maybe something was wrong with Becky, something bad that Becky wasn’t telling her. But then Chase wouldn’t have left, Jen reasoned, feeling only a little guilty at her relief. It must be something going on with him.

Jen decided that, at least on her end, this withholding of secrets would stop. If she couldn’t tell Becky what was on her mind, she could at least tell her what she planned to do about it.

“You know, I do have something I need to tell you,” said Jen.

Becky pivoted anxiously away from the sink and towards Jen, knocking the butter knife in her hand against the electric mixer as she turned.

“What is it?” said Becky, her upset tone showing that she was waiting for bad news.

“Well,” said Jen, unsure how to start. “You know Paula’s mom’s lake house in Michigan?”

“No,” said Becky. Jen was puzzled; how could Becky have forgotten?

“I mean, no, you can’t go there,” added Becky in an authoritative voice.

Jen hadn’t realized just how excited she was for her trip until Becky said this. She felt a sinking disappointment at the thought of not leaving, of not getting out of Los Angeles, of having to deal with everything she was about to deal with in a city full of actors and reporters and photographers.

“Is someone else staying there?” Jen said, realizing that she was ready to make a deal, to share the space somehow. Or else she would just have to rent someplace, to set it up on her own. That might be better, she tried to convince herself. That way she wouldn’t be restrained to northern-central Michigan. She could go anywhere she wanted. But in her heart she knew that the specificity of the lake house, and the lack of necessary decisions it provided, was what made the voyage so appealing.

“No,” said Becky. “No one’s staying there, and I don’t think you should, either. I don’t know what I was thinking letting Paula talk me into that. I thought somehow it would be good for you to get away for a while, but now I see that you shouldn’t be isolated like that, by yourself in the middle of nowhere, where you don’t know anybody.”

Becky’s face, which had looked pale and drawn a moment before when they had talked about Chase, now looked flushed and blotchy. Jen tried to interrupt her, but she continued, her voice rising considerably out of her usual calm yoga-teacher register.

“And now if you’re going to go off there and make yourself miserable in some kind of passive-aggressive attempt to get even with me, well that just seems like a really stupid decision and I’m not going to let you do it.”

Taking a deep breath, Jen utilized her own yoga-bred powers of restraint to keep herself from yelling a number of obvious facts back at Becky: I’m an adult. It’s my money. You can’t tell me what to do.

I could fire her, Jen thought, kick her out, sell the house, and move away on my own.

But of course, this was a ridiculous and impractical way to think because Jen was not going to do any of these things. It was a waste of energy to even indulge in such thoughts, to make fantasy plans for the mere sake of spiting Becky. Besides, without Becky, Jen wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to go about selling the house or moving out of state.

What I need to do, Jen realized, is direct my energy to get what I want. She took another deep breath and drew up all of her will from the farthest corners of her bodily extremities, from the smallest capillaries in each little finger and toe up through the veins and tendons of her arms and legs, and into the large, open cavity of her chest where it swirled through her lungs and organs, so that she could speak honestly, persuasively, and directly from her heart. She felt still and calm and assured when she spoke.

“Becky,” said Jen. “I am not angry with you or trying to upset you. I very much want to go away for a while. I would like you to buy plane tickets for three weeks from today. I am going to spend the next three weeks eating healthy, taking care of myself, and putting things in order here. At the end of three weeks, if you still don’t think I should go, I won’t.”

Jen felt something funny as she spoke. She looked straight into Becky’s gray eyes, the color brightened by the slanted light from above, and she felt that she was pushing Becky. She felt like she had crouched low with her legs and back, summoned all of her strength, and pushed hard into Becky’s stomach, and that, although Becky was stronger than her, she could not resist the force of the push, and instead fell straight over onto her back.

Becky must have felt something too, because she shook her head, as though to awaken herself from a trance. Jen saw then in Becky’s eyes that she would agree, but that she was sorry for Jen to go, that she would be lonely without her.

“Okay,” said Becky. “If that’s what you really want.” And she smiled a weak and sad smile at Jen.

Three weeks later, Becky, Paula, and Jen landed in Detroit. Paula hadn’t wanted to come, but Becky made her. “You can’t expect us to set up in your mom’s house without you,” said Becky reproachfully. “It’s just one week.”

Chase had not come with them. Whatever his secret problem was, it seemed to exempt him from Becky’s coercion. When Becky had booked the tickets, Jen wondered whether Chase was included, but she had been too scared to ask. After all, she was supposed to be on her best behavior, and there was no sense in getting Becky upset.

They had flown business class; it was Paula’s first time. She cooed in excitement at the reclining seat and the footrest. When the food came, she exclaimed, “It actually looks good!” But she was most impressed by the hot facecloths the stewardess brought after lunch. “It’s like being in a spa,” she sighed, pressing her face into the towel. Jen, who had flown on private jets plenty of times, shot a guilty look at Becky; Becky’s slight eye roll in return indicated that Jen shouldn’t feel bad about it.

The festive business-class mood of the airplane dissolved once they reached the Detroit airport. It was crowded and hectic, and even Paula wasn’t sure which direction to head from the gate to find the luggage claim. Jen felt nervous; she was in a new place, somewhere she had never been before, and she was staying for an unspecified amount of time. After a week, Becky and Paula would fly back to Los Angeles, and Jen would need to figure out how she was going to fill her time for the next few months. For the next few seasons, a voice in her head whispered. For the next year. Jen tried to ignore it and think of the present, the next week, a vacation with Becky and Paula, in a cabin by a beautiful, tranquil lake.

Unfortunately, Paula and Becky were not currently seeming like the most fun people to spend a week with. Despite her enjoyment of the flight, Paula seemed furious to find herself in Michigan. Once Becky identified the route to the luggage claim, Paula walked ten paces ahead of Becky and Jen. Becky was also quiet and preoccupied, following Paula’s lead with a grim, business-like gait. Paula stood cracking her knuckles and staring distantly at the far wall as she and Jen had waited for Becky to get the luggage from the carousel: three large suitcases full of Jen’s clothing, toiletries, and a few books, a smaller suitcase with Becky’s clothes for the week, and a duffel back for Paula, who liked to travel light. All in all, this was not looking like a promising week, Jen thought, suddenly feeling much less reluctant to see her two friends return to Los Angeles.

Before they left the airport, Becky said she needed a snack. Jen thought this was odd; they had been fed plentifully on the plane, and Becky had finished Jen’s leftovers. The food Becky chose from the little gift shop wasn’t exactly nourishing, either—a bottle of fizzy water and a pack of chewy ginger candies. Jen waited with her by the register while Paula stood outside, guarding the luggage. Jen stared resolutely at the area around the cash register, her back turned to the colorful wall of magazines behind her. But there was one magazine displayed by the registers that she hadn’t noticed, and, as she glanced idly at the display of Detroit key chains and hockey pucks on the counter, her eyes fell upon her own photograph. It was a particularly unflattering one; her skin was pale and ashy, her eyes were darting wildly to the side, and her cheeks were gaunt and sickly-looking. It was a small close-up, shot through a crowd of people and then enlarged.

“Jen’s breakdown,” the headline across her chest read, and below it, “Why the emaciated star was rushed from an Encino health club.”

For the first time in years, looking at her own face on a magazine cover, Jen smiled to herself. “Find me now, assholes,” she thought happily, turning to follow Becky from the store.

They rented a car with a global positioning system, which Paula said she needed to find North Middleton.

“Doesn’t your mom live there?” Becky, who had an excellent sense of direction, asked scornfully. She was sitting in the driver’s seat, and Paula was sitting up front with her to help with directions.

“Only in the summer,” said Paula. “It’s a lake house.” Paula’s mother and her husband lived in Toledo the rest of the year, but Paula had mentioned that she didn’t like visiting them there, either.

“How many times have you been to this lake house?” asked Becky skeptically, as they pulled out of the rental lot.

“Turn left onto East Airport Road,” said the gently assertive voice of the GPS.

“Not that many,” said Paula, defiantly. “At all. I told you, I don’t spend a lot of time in Michigan.”
No one spoke much as Becky drove. She followed the GPS lady’s directions out of the airport and onto the highway. Paula stared moodily out the window, now and then letting out a depressed sigh.

The back seat of the car was leathery and slippery. Every time Becky made a turn, Jen slid to one side or the other, restrained only by her lap belt, her right hand grabbing the handle above the window, and her left had splayed bracingly across the seat. Her rib was feeling much better than when she first injured it, but each time she gasped at Becky’s reckless driving a deep stitch of pain shot down her right side. And she was growing more nauseated with each turn, as though the insides of her stomach and head were spinning centrifugally into mush.

She tried to ease her growing carsickness by focusing harder on the view from the window. Near the airport, the scenery was gray and industrial, with high walls on either side of the road. Smokestacks peered up from behind the walls, pouring filtered white smoke into the air. Jen wondered what the landscape would be like in this mysterious new place she was headed to.

“Bear right onto exit forty-six,” said the calm voice, after five silent minutes. Becky turned onto a long exit ramp that followed the highway for a few hundred feet before veering more sharply to the right and joining a new, flatter, greener road.

This new flat road was lined with trees. The trees were tall and straight and planted close together. Behind the trees were green fields that continued straight through to the horizon. With no hills to break up the background, every detail of the landscape seemed scandalously exposed, like an oil painting unclothed down to its perspective lines. Jen could not remember being anywhere so flat and geometrical and green before in her life. In Los Angeles, the hills were brown and scorched all year long. Some people had green lawns watered heavily with sprinklers, but these looked so artificial in the heat that most residents had replaced them with draught-resistant native plants, sandy gray-green succulents.

“Continue for one hundred and ninety-two miles,” said the GPS voice. Paula sighed audibly in protest; Becky cleared her throat loudly in reply. Jen could see Becky trying to catch Paula’s eye to shoot her an irritated look, but every time she turned her face from the road ahead, Paula shifted her own face further towards the passenger-side window.

“It’s so green,” said Jen, leaning her head up between the two front seats so Becky and Paula could hear her.

“This is only spring,” said Paula. “It gets greener in summer.”

“Wow,” said Jen, who couldn’t imagine summer being a season of verdant health; in both LA and Manhattan, summer meant heat rising off pavement, dirty smells, sweaty bodies with ugly, sunburned shoulders.

Jen closed her eyes for a while. She was not sure for how long; she could hear occasional murmured comments exchanged between Becky and Paula, but couldn’t make out what they were saying over the whirring of the car’s engine and the air rushing past her window. She may have been asleep, or perhaps half-asleep, if such a thing actually existed.

When she opened her eyes again, something looked so odd about the scene outside the window that she had to rub her eyes repeatedly, and blink forcefully, to convince herself that she was not perceiving it incorrectly. What she saw looked like a map. Or perhaps like some sort of unfinished movie set. The road had become narrower, and it was stretched across the middle of one of the endless flat fields that had startled Jen earlier. There were no trees now, just one flat, grassy field that spread from one end of the horizon to the other. Jen could see other roads in the distance, like this one, with a few tiny cars traveling on them, and other roads even further past those.

“Is this what North Middleton looks like?” she asked, the panic evident in her voice.

“This is why I never want to come to Michigan,” said Paula, sighing again.

“Paula,” said Becky sternly.

“No,” said Paula, collecting herself and trying to sound a little perkier. “We’re still nowhere near North Middleton. North Middleton is a town. Mid-Northern-Central Michigan University is there. And the Snail plant.”

“Snail plant?” asked Becky.

“Snail Construction and Mining Equipment,” said Paula.

Becky became suddenly excited. “No way!” she exclaimed, happily. “They’re one of the major corporate sponsors of Groundbreakers.”

“Really?” asked Paula, sounding as animated as Becky. For the first time since leaving the rental car lot, they both seemed pleased about what lay ahead. “I never knew that. I’ve been seeing the factory every time I visit my mom out here, and I never knew they were a sponsor.”

“Yeah, you have to look on the back of the literature. There’s always this little Snail logo there.”

“I’ve seen it!” said Paula. “That little snail with the mining helmet. I never put it together that that’s what it meant.”

Becky nodded. “That snail is responsible for allowing Groundbreakers to grow into a national movement,” she said.

“And it like single-handedly sparked the growth of North Middleton into an independent town, back in the fifties,” said Paula. “I guess I never appreciated it before.”

“You know,” said Becky, “Nikolai Snail is really good friends with Vanto Hatch.”

“Nikolai Snail lives just outside North Middleton!” said Paula. “We used to see him walking his dog at the bar all the time.”

“He walked his dog at the bar?” asked Becky.

“Yeah, well he’d stop in while he walked his dog. Then he’d stay and have a few drinks, and the dog would sit on the floor. I heard he sometimes bought rounds for everybody in the bar,” said Paula in a reverent tone. “But that never happened when I was there.”

“Are dogs allowed in bars in Michigan?” Becky asked.

“Nikolai Snail’s dog is allowed anywhere Nikolai Snail pleases,” said Paula. “He owns North Middleton. I think two-thirds of the people in North Middleton work at Snail. The rest mostly work for the university.”

“Is the house near the university?” Jen asked, happy to change the subject. She felt relieved to know that there was some kind of civilization where she would be living. Looking out at the sparse Midwestern fields, which appeared to her about as desolate as the moon, Jen chastised herself for having craved isolation, and marveled at her own naiveté about what isolation really could be. You had no idea what you were getting yourself into, she thought, shaking her head silently. At least the she would be living in a town. The idea of a university, even of a factory, suddenly seemed remarkably comforting.

“The house isn’t actually in North Middleton,” said Paula. “It’s in Cone.”

“Where’s Cone?” Jen asked, getting worried again.

“It’s about three miles north of North Middleton.”

“Why did you tell me to drive to North Middleton?” asked Becky, sounding puzzled and a little irritated. “You even gave me an address.”

“That was a random address on Main Street. I know how to get to the house from there.”

This answer did not satisfy Becky. “But,” she said, followed by a long pause as though she were searching for the best way to formulate such a ridiculous question. “Why didn’t we just put the address of the house into the GPS?”

Paula sighed dramatically. “Well,” she said, “first of all, the house doesn’t have an address.”

“Hmm,” said Becky. “Okay, what’s second?”

“Second is that addresses in Cone don’t usually show up on maps,” said Paula. “It’s an unincorporated township.”

Jen didn’t know what that meant, but the words scared her. They sounded like she was about to fall off the edge of the continent, and into some strange wilderness that no longer counted as part of America.

“Unincorporated township,” repeated Becky, her forcibly enthusiastic tone threatening to break through into the darkest sort of sarcasm. “Doesn’t that sound relaxing, Jen?”

Chapter 13a:
http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2008/10/13a-entire-new-universe.html