The Book of Why (18 page)

PLEASE UNDERSTAND: I'D
always believed that I could save things; that it was my responsibility. My father, my mother, strangers, objects, the entire world. Cary, of course.

Foolish, especially when someone doesn't need to be saved, or doesn't want to be, or can't be, but I've never been able to help myself.

Which is ironic, I guess: a self-help author who can't help himself.

I'm tempted to say that this is my first literal self-help book—the first meant to help
me
.

The first time I spoke to an audience, I felt as if I was doing what I'd been put on this earth to do. There was no doubt. It was instantly clear—even clearer when people spoke to me after—that my entire life had been leading to that moment; that everything I'd ever done had been in preparation for this; that this was going to be my life's work.

Here's what it feels like: The right words keep finding my lips; they come from a part of me stronger and more articulate than the me the world normally hears from. I tell the audience that I don't need my notes and toss them onto the floor. I move to the edge of the stage. I walk up and down the aisles. I look directly into their eyes and mean every word I say. I'm not a showman; I'm not loud. If anything, I'm quiet. But the quieter I am, the more hushed the audience becomes, and the louder my quiet is. I have some tics (I'm aware of them; I've seen them on video). I rub my beard too much. I rock my weight back and forth from one leg to the other. I keep my hands in my pockets. I wear a jacket and tie but always sneakers. I take long pauses to allow the audience to think about what I've just said. Sometimes I say, “I want you to think about what I've just said.” Or “Take a moment right now and think about that.” Often I'll say, “Listen to me” or “Here's the truth” or “If there's one thing you take away from this seminar, this is it” or “What I'm about to say—imagine it's written in capital letters.” I'll say things like “I
know
you can do this, I know every one of you can.” I'll say, “Be patient—you'll get where you need to go.” I'll say, “Trust me.” I'll say, “I've never been more certain about something in my life.”

I can access the feeling even now, nine years since that last talk in Las Vegas. I miss it. The way they lean forward in their seats; the way they write furiously in their notebooks; the way they blink. I've always found something sweetly vulnerable in a blink, something the body must do. During some pauses—long moments of silence during which I'd look from face to face and send my intention for peace and happiness, all their desires fulfilled—I'd see nothing but blinks. I'd become aware of my own. I'd play a game: try not to blink. A minute, two minutes, the eyes water, they hurt, the room blurs, and then, just for a fraction of a second, it's all gone, everywhere darkness, and then the eyes open again and the world is still there, where you'd left it, and you wonder if it's the same world. Games I'd play. Fun, at first. Then something else. During one talk, in Philadelphia, I started to cry. I don't mean that my eyes watered from the blinking game, but that I cried; that I felt something—even now I can't name what it was—that made me terribly sad, and it had something to do, best guess, with the word
must:
all the things a human body must do: blink, eat, shit, sleep, die.

And then I changed my thinking. I thought of all the things the human body does on its own: it grows, it pumps blood, it breathes.

I took a few deep breaths.

I told them that my tears were tears of joy. Something about how miraculous the body is, how limitless.

In the weeks after my father died, I couldn't sleep. I'd wake early and wait downstairs in the dark for the sound of newspapers dropped on the stoop. Then I'd fold and rubber-band them. If it was raining, I'd put each paper in a plastic bag. I couldn't stand the quiet, so I'd put on the TV. A color bar made a long, piercing beep; I kept folding papers while the station flatlined. I changed the channel, changed it again: TV snow, a swirling gray-white blizzard I could get lost in if I moved closer to the TV and stared long enough. An avalanche that could break me until I was nothing but a peaceful thought tumbling through beautiful white. Sometimes, in the snow, I could hear whispers, but never words I recognized.

And then the snow was gone and a man was preaching. His gray hair had been combed over his otherwise bald head; he was sweating, huffing into his microphone. He wore brown polyester pants and a striped tie that hung well below his belt. He stood before a young dark-skinned woman in a wheelchair and laid his hand on her shoulder.
Create a new spinal cord in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Create a new spinal cord right now. All things are possible to he who believeth. We thank you, God, for a new spine in Jesus' name. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.
The woman slumped in her wheelchair, eyes closed. The preacher turned to other people standing in a line.
Well, are you ready?
He went from one person to the next and laid his hand on each head and spoke in tongues, and one by one they fell back into arms waiting to catch them. Then he stopped in front of a child whose legs were in braces. He gestured for everyone to give him space. He hunched over the girl—she was tiny—and touched her head.
I lay my hands upon this little one. By the direction of the Lord, in obedience to the law of contact transmission—oh my, oh my, oh my my, my my my my—the healing power of God Almighty is ministered to this body, to undo that which Satan has wrought, to affect a healing therein from the top of her head to the soles of her feet.
The girl fell back.
In the name of Jesus. Say it again, everybody. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Amen.
Another line had formed; he touched each person, and one by one they fell back. An old woman wearing a red beehive wig. A tall, thin man in a powder blue suit. Twin girls wearing matching red dresses. A woman holding an infant. A teenager with arms crossed in either boredom or defiance. They all fell, and the preacher spoke in tongues, and when he was finished he said,
I felt the electricity of the Holy Spirit go into every one of you. You mustn't lose faith. Keep the switch of faith turned on. A few years back a woman brought me her child, three or four years old. Both of that poor child's feet were deformed. Now, I've seen a child with one club foot, but never did see one with both of them. Well, I took that dear child in my arms and held those little feet in my hands and I could feel the healing power of God go into them. But when I looked down, those feet were just as deformed as they ever were. I told the girl's mother, I felt the electricity of the Holy Spirit go into those feet, your child is healed, that's all I know. You need to keep the switch of faith turned on, don't let Satan bring doubt into your heart. The healing power of God is working on the feet. Well, two weeks later she brought that child back and held her up for the congregation to see, and both feet were perfect.

Every night that year, the year of healing, I slept with my hand on her head. She fell asleep first, and I would wrap one arm around her, and with my other hand I would touch her head. I would close my eyes, and in the dark beneath my eyelids see whiteness, what looked like TV snow, and I would think,
I send you an intention for complete and long-lasting wellness. I send you complete and long-lasting wellness. I send you complete and everlasting wellness. I send us both complete and everlasting wellness. I intend for you a long and happy life filled with peace, perfect health, and well-
being
. I am pre-grateful for your long and happy life filled with peace, perfect health, and well-being. I am pre-grateful for our long and happy life together filled with peace, perfect health, and well-being.

Electricity counts.

Brilliant if you were
it,
infuriating if you weren't.

Tag, the simplest game children play, was my least favorite. A game you don't choose as much as it chooses you: someone tags you, a hand on your back,
You're it
. The other children run away, and the only thing to do is chase. Otherwise you're
it
for the rest of the day. We'd hide in the bushes beside the rectory or behind the statue of Mary. I'd chase, but not to catch, not for the fun of catching, but rather to not be
it,
to relieve myself of that burden. If I was lucky enough to tag someone, that person would tag me back and run away. Sometimes we'd tag each other back and forth a dozen times. One time I had the idea to run around a parked car; the girl who was
it
would never be able to tag me. But after five or six dizzying sprints around the car, she stopped. I was leaning against the hood to catch my breath. She touched the bumper and said, “You're it—electricity counts!”

I wanted to say,
If electricity counts, then you're it, because your feet are touching the ground and so are mine.

But then she could have said the same to me.

In which case, the entire world was
it
.

Love connects people at a molecular level; their cells become entangled. If you poke one, the other flinches. Once two particles have interacted intensely, even if you separate them by miles, years, lifetimes, they behave as if they're still connected.

Sounds nice. A story like any other. A fairy tale, some might say. Wishful thinking.

But this one has been tested.

Two people with close ties—in most cases, lovers or spouses—are placed in separate rooms. One of them, the healer, watches a monitor. At random intervals the image of the healer's beloved—sitting in an electromagnetically shielded room—appears on the screen. The healer sends the beloved compassionate intentions upon seeing his or her face. Scientists have found physical evidence—changes in perspiration, temperature, heart rate, and blood flow—that one person's thoughts can affect another person's body.

I didn't need this study to believe—I'd been writing about this, in my own way, for years—but it renewed my hope that I could do this alone, that even if Cary had lost faith in her ability to heal herself, or if she'd never really had it in the first place, then no matter: I would focus my every thought on her wellness. I would meditate on it, envision it, be certain of it. I would take her life in my hands. Literally. Through summer and fall and winter, as long as it took, I would lay my hands on her head and the tumors would shrink, then disappear.

It was winter and we were still in Chilmark, but in my mind it was spring and we were back in Brooklyn: the first bud in our garden, a walk beneath blooming cherry trees, Ralph chasing a tennis ball in Prospect Park. I laid my hand on Cary's head as she slept and visualized the future we wanted. Cary would be writing songs again. I would write
The Book of Why,
and this would be its happy ending: the year of healing, the year of entanglement.

But she lost more and more: words, weight, balance, pockets of memory. Some days, for long minutes, she forgot me; she stared and stared, but couldn't name me.
Husband
,
I would say, and she would repeat this word, would stare at me, and I would wait, would push aside my fear that she'd never remember, and eventually she would nod and say,
Husband
,
and smile, and I would kneel on the floor at her feet and lay my head on her lap.

The dog she never forgot, even though there were moments when she lost the name.
Puppy
or
Pooch
or
Big Ears
or
Buttercup
all meant
Ralph
. Even on the coldest, shortest winter days, when night came too early, there was always Ralph to lie with on the floor or bed. I'd watch them, or sometimes join them, and visualize a clean brain scan. I'd imagine the tumor shrinking from the size of a cherry to the size of a pea to the size of a mustard seed, to nothing.

IF THIS WERE
a fairy tale, I would end with a wedding.

We were married in Flushing Meadows Park; it used to be an ash dump before Robert Moses turned it into the World's Fair. We had the ceremony near the Unisphere, a stainless-steel globe twelve stories high. The fountains surrounding the globe sprayed us, and I wanted us to move, but Cary wanted to stay, so we stayed.

When the officiant, Cary's uncle, pronounced us husband and wife, Cary kicked off her shoes and waded into the reflecting pool; she walked to the base of the globe. If I wanted to kiss the bride, I had to follow.

Our guests cheered when I took off my shoes, louder when I walked across the water, louder when I kissed her, then they took off their shoes and came into the water, too.

Moments earlier, during the ceremony, her uncle had said, “Life can't be predicted. No life already lived can prepare you for your own. You can't plan your life,” he'd said. “Because, let me tell you, it's already been planned
for
you.”

Our friends stood around us in the reflecting pool, and we looked up through the world at the sun.

The world had been built to withstand the burden of its own weight. But it was permeable: rain and snow would fall through its latticework; wind would blow from the inside as well as the outside.

When I was eleven, my parents took me to Flushing Meadows to see the monument where a time capsule had been buried the year I was born. The capsule was fifty feet belowground. Credit cards, cigarettes, tranquilizers, a bikini, a Bible, a plastic heart valve—all of it waiting for someone to dig it up five thousand years later.

All I could think that day and night and for the many days and nights that followed was:
Five thousand years from now, five thousand years from now, there will be people five thousand years from now
.

When we walked past the Unisphere that day, there was a man climbing it. His name, I now know, was George, a toymaker from Queens, and he waved to us. There was another man, already at the top of the world, filming the climb. I said to my parents, “I want to do that. I want to climb the world,” and my mother said, “Don't be ridiculous—that's a fine way to kill yourself.”

The year my father died, two Voyager spacecraft were launched, each containing a gold-plated record put together by Carl Sagan. People from around the world were asked to record a greeting for beings in the universe who might someday, perhaps billions of years later, find the spacecraft. I kept asking my parents if my voice could be on the record, if someone could hear my voice in a billion years, and they said no, but I could record my own message and bury the tape in the yard. But I never did.

We in this world send you our goodwill. Dear friends, we wish you the best. Good health to you now and forever. We wish all of you well. Are you well? Hope everyone's well. We are thinking about you all. Please come here to visit when you have time. We are happy here and you be happy there. Let there be peace everywhere. God give you peace always. Wishing you happiness, goodness, good health, and many years. May the honors of the morning be upon your heads. Friends of space, how are you all? Have you eaten yet? Come visit us if you have time. Welcome home. It is a pleasure to receive you. Good night, ladies and gentlemen. Goodbye and see you next time.

Also included on Carl Sagan's Golden Record: earth sounds.

Thunder, wind, rain, crickets, frogs, birds, whale song, laughter, a heartbeat, the sound of a kiss, a baby crying.

Also included: data from his wife's brain and heart.

She was hooked up to a computer; all she had to do was think and feel. She thought about war, violence, poverty, the challenges of being human, what it feels like to love.