Hub - Issue 32 Read online

  ***

  What comes after science is more science and better science and I think that to understand the new science our brains will have to change which is okay because we’re already changing them slowly over time. A long time ago people saw visions all the time for real. There are documented cases of gods appearing to Roman soldiers and telling them things like when and where it’s safe to cross a river because the Romans’ brains were divided in a way that made it hard to calculate things like the depth and speed of a river and the distance across it. Science is going to change so drastically that we are going to look back at ourselves the way we look at those Romans and think it’s almost funny how hard even the simplest things were Before.

  Joan Ellen had started writing in college, mostly because all her friends thought of themselves as Writers. She found it strange how seriously they took themselves: they seemed to consider writing some transformative act that exempted them from the dreariness of normalcy. One by one, they’d given up, publishing little or nothing at all. Joan had never written to publish – she considered everything she did a practice exercise – and by the age of twenty three, she’d begun placing stories. Living in South Africa, as she and Pieter divided their time between Capetown and Pretoria, Joan had begun her first novel. In six months, she’d finished it, and was astonished when it was snapped up by a South African publishing house. For a while, she’d gone back to stories, but for the past year, she’d been working on a new book, currently titled, To Me.

  Joan was unconcerned when her dry spell began – after all, she’d just moved to the other side of the world, and more than that, over the years, she had developed an ability to work out revisions and the solutions to story problems without considering them consciously. That dark secret part of Joan Ellen that supplied the germs and themes of fiction seemed to work well enough unsupervised. But now, three months had passed without a usable word, and Joan couldn’t help but brood over the possibility that Joan Ellen Soames might already have written all she had to say – that maybe she had more in common with the other jobless Embassy wives than she liked to admit.

  Joan sucked her teeth and looked up as Pieter stepped out of the bathroom, still dabbing aftershave onto his cheeks. “I don’t know about this,” she said. “Do you think he’s up to going out?”

  “He’s been shut up in here for days,” Pieter said absently, “If he’s well enough to start school Monday, he’s well enough to have a little fun. You should come with.”

  “The novel...”

  “It’s only a few hours,” Pieter said. “The novel will be here when you get back.”

  Bright Maghrebi sunlight slanted down into the field as Joan Ellen watched from the bleachers, wishing she had a cigarette.

  A cigarette? She and Pieter hadn’t smoked since her pregnancy test came back positive.

  What were the teams? Who was ahead? The rules of the game seemed wholly arbitrary.

  “Aw, come on!” Pieter bellowed beside her. Some of his beer sloshed onto the aisle steps.

  “Why are you yelling?” Joan said.

  “Did you see that?” he said, red-faced. “It was – ! You’ve got eyes!”

  “It’s only a game.”

  Pieter’s head rocked back. “Only – ?” He seemed to check himself. “Yeah. Yeah, wow. You’d better drive, huh?”

  “Where’s Patrick?”

  “With the other kids,” Pieter said. “You know. On the thing...” His hands fluttered in search of the word.

  “I’d better go check on him, I think.”

  The school ladies room was small. Just a couple stalls, an opaque window, and a trio of sinks with mirrors affixed to the north wall.

  “I’m not crazy,” Joan Ellen said, and took a moment to watch herself in the mirror.

  Other embassy wives drank too much. Barbara Tenhave drank too much, but Joan Ellen kept busy. She was a professional in her own right.

  “You are,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with him.”

  A terrible smell had shut itself in here with her. Like shit, or burning hair. The world seemed ready to shake apart.

  ...our brains will have to change...

  How easy all this would be if Joan Ellen could just change her brain.

  “You can’t just change the rules!”

  “Can too!” Patrick said as he grasped the aluminum bar above his head and swung out above a stretch of braided netting.

  “Patrick!” Joan called. She hated to sound so like her own mother.

  He glanced her way and let go the bar, falling hard into the netting. He didn’t raise his hands to break his fall, and his scream was not a scream; it was a high whistling sound like the noise a teakettle makes.

  Joan Ellen didn’t remember mounting the climber. First she was standing on the sand at the edge of the playground. And then – quick cut – she was kneeling on the platform by Patrick’s head, turning him onto his back as his whistling ceased and he began to convulse.

  The girl who’d chased him stood open mouthed on her wooden climber platform, watching with a stricken expression as thick white foam poured from between Patrick’s clacking teeth.

  Don’t put anything in there! The thought was bright with panic, but Joan knew it was entirely correct. If she put anything in his mouth, Patrick would either bite through it or break his teeth.

  What should she – ?

  Joan lifted Patrick’s head until his chin touched his chest.

  “Get help!” she roared. “Get – ! Somebody! Someone please!”

  The tears didn’t come until the uniformed men lifted Patrick’s stretcher into the Renault ambulance. The first sob nearly bowled Joan Ellen off her feet, but she swallowed the next one and shrugged Pieter off.

  Joan clenched her teeth and climbed into the ambulance to sit on the bench beside Patrick, watching his face in repose.

  Pieter joined her without her noticing and touched her arm as the ambulance began to move.

  “He’ll – ”

  Joan Ellen cut him off with a sharp shake of her head. “Talk to him. Do you hear? Do you hear, baby? Mommy’s here, and Daddy, too.”

  Dr. Ben Azir trotted down the corridor, his footsteps clacking under the fluorescent lights. Joan Ellen placed a steadying hand on Pieter’s back as he unfolded himself to look up at the doctor.

  “I came as soon as I heard, but the imaging results aren’t back yet.”

  “I saw it this time,” Joan Ellen said. “It’s got to be epilepsy.”

  “We’ll do our best to – ”

  “Why would you think it was anything else?” Joan said. “You said something about the – about the MRI?”

  A caught look appeared on Ben Azir’s face. “The lesions.”

  “Lesions?” Pieter said.

  “Has Patrick ever suffered intense migraines or been severely electrocuted?”

  “Of course not!” Joan said.

  “The – The damage is quite advanced, Mrs. Soames, and damage like this doesn’t happen on its own.”

  “His brain is damaged?”

  “Quite severely, according to the MRI. So much so that he shouldn’t have been able to move or speak.”

  “I’m going to throw up,” Pieter said crisply.

  “Wait,” Joan said. “But he did move. He spoke. Your imaging is faulty, or – ”

  “I thought as much myself,” Dr. Ben Azir said. “I didn’t mention it before because I didn’t want to alarm you.”

  Joan Ellen didn’t know what to say.

  “I am more than competent,” said the doctor, but Joan hardly heard him. “I studied at Johns Hopkins and at the Sorbonne.”

  Joan Ellen had taken up her post beside Patrick’s bed while Pieter went to freshen up. Patrick seemed to sleep – His sleep looked heavier than usual, but Joan imagined she saw his eyelids flutter every now and then.

  But he’s not asleep, she thought.

  They’d have to go home. They’d have to – Returning to DC would offer little c
omfort now.

  Quietly, Pieter slipped into the room. He smelled of aftershave.

  Joan went very still as Patrick stirred in his sleep.

  Pieter said something, but Joan ignored him.

  “C – c – caaaaaaaan too!” Patrick said. His voice was much too low. “Y – Yesssss. Yes I... Yes I cuh – Yes.”

  His eyes were still closed.

  “Come on!” Pieter said. “You can do it, champ! Wake up! Wake – !”

  Patrick started talking backwards.

  That’s not Patrick, Joan Ellen thought. It was all she could do to keep from saying it aloud.

  Patrick had stopped talking and sat up, eyes wide and vacant. His mouth had fallen open, and his thumbs twitched against his other fingers.

  It’s a seizure, that’s all. It’s another – !

  Joan Ellen made a noise. Had she screamed? She wasn’t sure. Someone should – Someone should call a nurse.

  Silence expanded to fill the room. Then:

  “Mom?”

  “What – ? What?”

  Patrick had lowered the aluminum rail to sit at the edge of the bed, his bare legs hanging over the side. His hair stood up in corkscrews, and the freckles on his cheeks and nose had dimmed, as if his ordeal had evened his complexion.

  Pieter stood beaming at the boy.

  “What... just happened?” Joan said slowly.

  “I woke up,” Patrick said.

  “I think we should start going to church,” Pieter said as he adjusted his tie before the mirror.

  Joan couldn’t think of a response. She’d taken her shower and had thought for a long time as she washed her hair. Now she stood just outside the bathroom door, steam billowing past her into the room as Pieter let go his tie and nervously fingered the back of his neck.

  He closed his eyes.

  “It’s – What was all this with Patrick? A miracle. The Hand of God reached down and saved – What else was it?”

  “Honey, he still needs tests. He’ll need – We still don’t know what happened.”

  Pieter let go his neck and drew his shoulders together, then let them relax again. “I dreamed him before he was born.”

  “Pieter, honey.”

  “I never told anyone, but it’s true. I dreamed – ! I dreamed of holding him when I was just a kid. It was so real. It was – His weight. And now here he is.”

  Pieter wiped his eyes and turned to look at Joan. She knew she should say something, but she couldn’t find the words.

  “...So this Sunday,” he said. “I think I’d better – You don’t have to come if you don’t want.”

  Without waiting for an answer, he crossed to the chair by the window and drew his jacket on.

  When Joan Ellen sat down to work that morning, all her problems had resolved themselves. AT first she was wary – from time to time, she’d put in three or four solid hours of intense labor, only to find that she’d wasted her effort producing unreadable dreck. Not this time. Something had clicked. The characters interacted more honestly with one another. They seemed eager to help Joan understand their motivations. It was as if Joan had twisted some random mental dial and chanced upon a clearer frequency of fiction. She worked in a sort of trance, forgetting all about Patrick.

  Around one, the need to urinate brought Joan back into the world. Had Patrick eaten? Had Pieter called? Look at you, she thought grimly. Some mother. Some wife.

  Joan shook her head and left her office for the bathroom.

  ***

  Silence was the only answer when Joan Ellen knocked at Patrick’s bedroom door.

  Church? When she and Pieter first met, his status as a committed atheist had been her parents’ chief reservation about him.

  Joan shut her eyes and tried to remember what had happened in the hospital room. She pictured Patrick lying unconscious in the hospital bed, then saw him yawn and stretch. But what about the IV? What about – ? Why couldn’t she remember?

  She thought of Dr. Ben Azir’s expression as he apologized for the hospital’s mistake: I’ve read today’s imaging results. It was – Like you said, Madame, it was just an equipment failure. There’s no damage after all.

  Something had happened. Something –

  “Hi.”

  “Huh – Hi,” Joan said, blinking her surprise. Patrick stood just outside his bedroom, the door closed behind him. Without realizing it, Joan must have stepped back to let him into the hall.

  “I – How are you today? I wanted to talk about school.”

  “I’m not going.”

  “Well, not today, of course. I think we should – ”

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t have time for school,” Patrick said, and Joan was amazed by how like Pieter he sounded. “Call ACST and tell them you’re withdrawing me. Cite my recent health problems. Then go to the Commissary and buy three cans of coffee, five bottles of bleach, all the cheese you can find, and a tub of peanut butter.”

  Joan just goggled at him.

  “When you get back, I’ll tell you what I’ll need from the hardware store.”

  “You’re not Patrick.”

  He laughed Patrick’s laugh. “Sure I am. While you’re out, pick up a pack of cigarettes. They’ll calm your nerves.”

  “What the fuck, Joanie?” Pieter said. “Are you smoking?”

  Joan had to smile.

  Pieter shut the back door behind him and pulled up a stool beside her at the island counter.

  “He said it would calm my nerves,” Joan said eventually.

  “...I don’t understand.”

  “I know I’m in control right now because I can talk like this. He’s outside doing something to the generator, and it must require almost all of his attention.”

  For a long time, Pieter just sat, then he reached for a pack of Marlboros. He lit up and coughed quietly on the first drag. “They didn’t have Spirits?”

  “Don’t I wish,” Joan said darkly.

  What happened?”

  “I’ve been running errands for him all afternoon, and the servants are building something on the roof. I haven’t been up there to look at it, and I’m either afraid to go or he doesn’t want me near it, so I can’t.”

  “Who doesn’t want you near it?”

  “At first I thought he must be someone else. That some thing or someone took him over, but now... If you – If you watch him, you can tell. It’s still him, but he’s smarter. He – ”

  “You mean Patrick? Joanie, that’s – ”

  Joan smiled again and nodded. “Go talk to him.”

  Pieter stubbed out his cigarette in the saucer Joan had been using for an ashtray and headed back outside. He was gone for a few minutes, then came back, ashen-faced, to light himself another cigarette. For a long time, he said nothing. Then:

  “He said to keep going to work.”

  “Will you?”

  “Of course. It – I have to do what he says. It seems wrong, but it makes sense.”

  “I know.”

  “I could stand to smoke a bowl right now, I’ll tell you that much,” Pieter said absently. “Are you sure it’s him?”

  Joan considered, though she’d already thought this through more than once. “Pretty sure,” she said. “He said in that paper of his that our brains will have to change in order to – in order to comprehend this new science of his. I think he must have found a way to change his own ahead of time.”

  The next several days passed in a haze of errand running and construction noises from the roof. Patrick shut himself in his bedroom/workshop for hours at a time, emerging for one meal a day. Pieter began to seem less afraid, less confused, and Joan Ellen wasn’t sure whether that was due to Patrick’s calming influence or some genuine mental and emotional adjustment that Pieter had bent over backwards to make.

  Every day Joan tired herself out fetching chemicals or large sets of household items presumably intended for Patrick’s projec
t. On Monday, he sent her to pick up a case of tuning forks and five 60-inch stereo speakers.

  Joan spent her nights writing, drawing her novel to a masterful close. Part of her wondered if her recovered ability might be Patrick’s doing, but she found it difficult to care.

  On Tuesday, after Pieter had left for work, Patrick appeared in the master bedroom wearing a white linen summer suit and tie that Joan Ellen had never seen before.

  “I need you to drive me to Makni,” he said.

  “Can’t you drive now?” Joan said groggily.

  Suddenly, she was wide awake.

  “Of course,” Patrick said, “but I need to supervise the construction, and deflecting the attention of curious onlookers would tax my concentration.”

  “Why don’t you just give your crew a break?”

  “No time,” he said. “Get dressed.”

  This early in the morning, traffic was light, and the parking lot was mostly empty. Joan Ellen pulled the Peugeot into a spot outside the main entrance, and waited as Patrick let himself out of the car.

  Even his movements had changed. He didn’t bounce around or race from spot to spot the way he had. Instead, he moved swiftly and carefully, walking in an oddly graceful slump.

  A few minutes after Patrick disappeared into the mall, Joan Ellen felt his hold on her relax. A shudder washed through her as she gripped the steering wheel.

  Panic welled in her belly.

  Get out of here!

  Could she? She hadn’t seen Patrick angry since... since his change, and she wasn’t sure what he would do if she left him stranded here.

  Joan Ellen wavered a moment longer, then shifted the car into reverse.

  Back at the villa, construction had stalled. As she guided the car onto the little lane beside the broad intra-city highway, Joan Ellen saw eight or nine men perched on the roof like birds on a wire.

  Instead of pausing to open the gate, Joan parked the car outside the wall and let herself in through the front. As she took the steps from the foyer two at a time, she imagined Pieter sitting confused at his desk, trying to remember why he felt so strange.