The Book of Why (6 page)

It's not an accident that I'm standing on this stage. It's not an accident that each of you is sitting exactly where you're sitting. Believe me, there are no such things as accidents. We have complete responsibility for all that we're experiencing in our lives. We create everything, even so-called accidents. Coincidences are never coincidences. Nothing is random. Nothing means nothing.

This is good news. There's a reason behind everything, and that reason is you.

Synchronicity is just the universe winking back at you. The universe is saying, “Pay attention. This means something. This is what you've been thinking about, what you've been asking for.”

When you're aligned with abundance, you can create accidents on purpose. You can count on everything and everyone you need to show up at the perfect moment. Don't hope and pray for the right person to enter your life. Don't hope and pray for lucky breaks. There's no such thing as luck except the luck we create.

I encourage you, every morning when you wake, to make the following commitments to yourself. I promise to pay attention today. I believe that everything means something. I believe that the universe is constantly winking at me, reflecting my internal state, giving me a chance to cancel and erase any negative thoughts and feelings I may be having. I commit today to being open to serendipity—to expecting it, in fact. I believe that everything I need will present itself to me. I believe that I will meet the exact people I need to meet at this moment in time. I believe in perfect timing. I believe in creating happy accidents.

Now, I acknowledge that there are people who don't believe any of this. Some people believe that the worst that can happen, will. And so it should be no surprise when the worst does happen. They read the paper and begin their day looking for tragedy. They watch the evening news and end their day thinking the world is a dangerous place. Their dreams are dark, filled with anxiety. I don't judge such people, but I really do feel sorry for them. Because they don't have to live in such fear. Please hear me: I don't deny that tragic things happen in the world. But by focusing on tragedy, we attract more of the same.

Each of you has to answer the following question, the most important question you'll ever answer: Do you believe the universe is friendly or unfriendly? If you believe the universe is unfriendly, then that's precisely the kind of universe you'll live in. There's plenty of evidence if you'd like to make that case. On the other hand, if you believe that the universe is friendly, then that's precisely the kind of universe you'll live in. A universe in which like attracts like, in which thoughts become things, in which you are not powerless, in which you deserve to feel as good as you'd like to feel, in which there's no doubt or fear or competition or worry or jealousy or hatred or blame or desperation. A universe in which there's always enough, in which there's no such thing as exclusion. A universe in which one happy thought leads to another leads to another. A universe in which there are no limits. A universe in which miracles aren't miraculous because they happen all the time.

W
aking doesn't feel like waking, more like being reborn: the world is still here, waiting for me.

My body aches everywhere, but I don't care. A bag drips clear liquid into my arm. Inhale and the room swells; exhale and I see tiny white horses ride a wave of steam from my mouth. I try to breathe them back into my lungs, but they gallop across the room, disappear into the air.

Hanging from the ceiling above me is a cord. It's so clear to me: if I pull, the world will turn off. I try to will my hand to move.

A tall woman with red hair stands at the window, her back to me. She's breathing on the window, using her finger to write words on the fogged glass. I try to speak to her, to ask who she is, where I am, what happened, but I can make no sound.

Dawn or dusk, I can't tell. I look through the window to see if the world will become lighter or darker.

With my thoughts—old habit—I try to communicate with her. Turn around, I think, and she does.

“Gloria,” she says.

I look past her and see that this is the word she's been writing in her breath on the window.

She must have been telling me her name. But I don't know anyone named Gloria, not that I can remember.

The arm she wasn't writing with is in a sling. The bandage on her nose wraps around her head. She has a black eye.

“Gloria,” she says, her voice an echo.

I blink twice, deliberately, trying to start a code she might learn to recognize: one blink for yes, two for no.

I want to ask her if I'm critical, if I have information she needs before I die. Perhaps someone tried to murder me, tried to murder both of us. I wonder, for the first time, if she's my wife, and then I remember that I have a wife, and I begin to cry I'm so happy, and my ribs ache with my shaking, the most wonderful hurt I've ever experienced, until I realize the error of my verb tense, not have,
had
,
and now the hurt is just hurt. My fear has changed: I'm no longer afraid to die, but to live.

Memory returns: I live alone on Martha's Vineyard, this woman came to find me, there was an accident, I couldn't breathe, and then—

Gloria. She wants to know who Gloria is.

I don't know, I think. Isn't that
your
name?

I blink twice, but she doesn't notice. I blink twice again.

“When you came back, you said Gloria. You told me to write it down. It was the only thing you said. I wasn't sure if it was a name or if you saw God.”

Came back from where?

As if she can hear my thoughts: “You're going to be fine, but for a few minutes you were gone.”

And then I remember. Not who Gloria is, but why I said this name, though I have no memory of having said it.

Here,
there
seems only a dream. Yet there,
here
seemed like a dream.

Dream or not, I heard the name. Gloria.

My father's voice.

Impossible, yet it was my father's voice that said this name.

Even if I could speak, I wouldn't tell her everything, this woman who came to save me.

“I know who you are,” she says. “I told you—my accident wasn't an accident. Neither was yours. I think it has something to do with Gloria.”

“Ralph.”

But that's all I have in me—one word.

“She's fine,” she says. “I've been taking care of her. I hope you don't mind, but I've been staying at your house. It's been a week.”

I try to wet my lips, but there's no saliva in my mouth. She gives me an ice chip from a cup on the table beside the bed.

“Two cracked ribs,” she says. “Punctured lung. That's what caused the real trouble. Concussion, too. You have a terrible headache, I bet.”

I blink once.

“Do you remember my name?”

I blink twice.

“Sam,” she says. “Sam Leslie.”

Night through the window: it had been dusk when I woke, not dawn. I close my eyes and listen to drugs drip into my arm.

When I open my eyes again—it could be five minutes or five hours later—the cord above me is gone. Sam is gone, too. I watch my breath, but now the horses have the torsos and faces of men. Quickly I breathe them back into my body. The next time I exhale they are children riding the wave of my breath all the way to the window across the room, where the name Gloria is still written.

I IMAGINE THE
house, her in the house, without me.

She wakes in early-morning darkness, her face sore. Ralph waits bedside, wagging her tail as eagerly as possible for an old dog.

She rolls to the edge of the bed, wincing at the pain in her arm, and presents her face for the dog to lick. Then the dog lays her head on the mattress, waits to be scratched.

She sleeps in her underwear. Perhaps—because she packed only a few items of clothing—she sleeps nude.

Jeans, a sweater, one of my coats, a walk with the dog, cold but sunny, down the road and into the woods, hard dirt trails, the satisfaction of watching the dog empty her bladder and move her bowels wherever she wants, her graceful way of squatting, the steam her pee makes at the base of a tree carved with your initials, a sentimental gesture our last year together.

Back home—after a week, the house feels like home—to feed the dog. She knows by now the dog won't eat alone, won't touch food unless someone else is in the room, so she makes tea (no coffee or coffeemaker) and spoons some yogurt onto a bowl of granola (she seems the yogurt type). Her car has been towed from the mud. I imagine that she has gone grocery shopping, milk and bread and eggs, a jar of peanut butter; I imagine that she has explored the Vineyard, knows where to buy the
Times
,
where the best bookstores are; I imagine that she has bought a new pair of jeans.

The sound of the dog drinking makes her thirsty. She swallows two pills for pain, then undresses for a shower.

Careful not to soak the bandage on her face, she washes with her back to the water. Her sprained arm is pinned to her side as if by an invisible sling. Right-handed, she shaves her legs with her left, using an old razor I shave my neck with once every few weeks. Her red hair wet looks darker.

When she opens the bathroom door, the dog is waiting with her shoe. Thank you, thank you, good dog, and on to the laundry room, where yesterday's clothes are clean and dry.

Dressed but barefoot, she sits cross-legged on the rug, her back straight against the couch, and closes her eyes. Her daily practice. She follows her breath, in and out through her nose, and any thought that finds her—her brother lying on the bathroom floor, the note he didn't leave, how she could have saved him, the strong sense she has, stronger than ever, that accidents are not accidents, that something important is going to happen—she recognizes only long enough to say goodbye, then lets it go, emptying her mind, even if only for a few seconds, before a new thought finds her, then she lets that one go, returns to the breath, and after a while there's nothing
but
the breath, and she's gone.

She comes back only when the phone rings.

An older woman says she's sorry, she must have dialed the wrong number.

No use trying to meditate again; twenty minutes is enough for today.

The phone rings again. It's the same woman; this time she asks for me. “Is Eric there? Is my son there?”

“Don't worry,” Sam tells me when she comes to see me later that morning. “I didn't tell her who I am.”

“Who
are
you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what would you have told her had you told her the truth?”

“That I'm a friend.”

“Did you tell her about the accident?”

“No.”

“That's probably for the best,” I say. “What did you tell her?”

“That I was the maid.”

She picks up the pad on the table beside the bed, looks at what I've written, looks at me.

“What happened when you died?”

“Nothing.”

“Where did you go?”

“Nowhere.”

“Tell me the truth.”

“It was like sleeping.”

“Is this her last name?”

“Whose?”

“Gloria's.”

“Who is Gloria?”

“I've been waiting for you to tell me.”

“If you don't know, then why are you here?”

“What do you mean?”

“If there's no such thing as an accident, then why are you here?”

“I was trying to find you.”

“Okay, but that was for you. What are you here to do for me?”

“Walk your dog.”

“What else?”

“Get you into an accident.”

“If you believe that I was supposed to get into that accident—”

“I got that from
you
—from your books.”

“I don't believe that anymore.” I press the button that sends more morphine into my blood. “You're the teacher now, I'm the student. Tell me why I was supposed to have that accident.”

“What was it like?” she says. “I mean, did you see the light, or what?”

I press the morphine button, press it again, press it again. “What's the point of all this?”

She looks at the paper in her hand. “Gloria Foster,” she says.

SHE WALKS THE
dog, cooks for me, brings me my toothbrush and a cup to spit into. She offers to wash me, and I'm grateful, but I ask her instead to help me to the sink, where I clean my face and hands and chest with a washcloth. She rereads my books, takes notes in the margins. A refresher course, she calls it. Every time she forgets, and begins to read a passage aloud, I remind her not to.

“Funny how you're right next to me—I mean, it's
you
—yet I'm sitting here reading your books.”

“I'm not the same person who wrote those words.”

“I like the old you better.”

After a pause: “That was a joke, you know.”

My doctor has given me orders: two weeks of bed rest; no driving for a month; no exertion, no stress. Expected: headaches and nausea. Possible: dizziness, double vision, tinnitus, depression, mood swings, memory loss, sensitivity to light, and poor judgment, though I'm not sure how I'll decide if my judgment has been poor. If I experience a headache that lasts longer than a day, or doesn't respond to meds, or becomes severe, I am to call. If I experience memory loss or confusion, I am to call. If I have difficulty breathing—beyond the difficulty to be expected with a cracked rib—I am to call immediately. Otherwise: rest, rest, rest.

My car is totaled, so Sam drives hers to the market every day for the paper. The third day I'm home, she's gone three hours. I assume she's taken a trip to a bookstore or to buy another change of clothes, but she returns holding a stack of paper. She went to the library to use the Internet. She found over three hundred Gloria Fosters in the United States.

“Did God tell you the middle name?”

“God didn't tell me anything.”

“Did the same angel or ghost or voice that told you the first and last name happen to mention a middle name, even a middle initial?”

“I told you what I know.”

“No location?”

“No.”

“Not even a state?”

“No.”

So she asks the old me for help. She sends out her
intention
—​using a step-by-step process I wrote about in
Everyday Miracles
—to receive the information she needs in order to find Gloria Foster. For three days she meditates an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening, expecting a message to come to her. How it comes doesn't matter; could be something she reads, something a stranger says in passing, a phrase or even a single word that enters her thoughts as if someone else put it there.

In Sam's case, it comes as a brief but vivid dream; she's certain it contains the information she's been asking for.

A row house with a cemetery behind it.

“That's
my
house,” I say. “The one I grew up in, in Queens. My mother lives there.”

“Gloria Foster lives in
this
house.”

“How do you know?”

“My brother told me.”

“Your dead brother?”

“He was walking in the cemetery,” she says. “It was him, but how he might look now if he were alive. Heavier, the same wavy hair. Still handsome.”

“What did he say?”

“He kept throwing rocks at this house, but the rocks turned into dandelion clocks. They hit the back of the house, and the snow scattered like light.”

“And you take that to mean Gloria Foster lives in that house?”

“You don't have to believe what I'm saying,” she says. “I should tell you, though, that I'm going to find her even if you don't want to.”

“Just because a man you don't know said her name when he came back to life.”

“I know you.”

“You know
him
.” I point to the book on her lap.

“Okay, then I know him,” she says. “Maybe I'll take
him
with me. Either way, I'm going to find her.”

“Even though this has nothing to do with you.”

“My brother was in that dream,” she says.

“Your brother is dead.”

She pulls the bandage off her nose, slowly at first, then one quick yank. Her eyes water.

“I'm sorry,” I tell her.

“Dead or not, this has something to do with him.”

“Fine, but what does it have to do with me?”

“Your books helped me so much, and then you were gone. There were rumors that you no longer believed what you'd written.”

“So what.”

“But what you wrote is true,” she says.

“And you're going to make me believe again.”

“I just know that we need to find Gloria Foster.”

“Why
we?
 ”

“You're the one who said her name,” she says.

“Now that you have the name, you don't need me anymore.”

“Come on,” she says. “Doesn't part of you still believe?”

“Believe what?”

“That the law of attraction works. That our intentions really
are
powerful.”

“I didn't intend any of this—a car accident, cracked ribs, you.”

“Sometimes you don't realize your intentions until they manifest.”

“If intentions worked, my wife would still be alive. So would your brother.”

“Everything happens for a reason, even though the reason may not always be apparent.”

“Stop quoting me.”

“The universe is always listening to us.”

“Please stop.”

“Your words, not mine.”

“His.”

“He's
you
.”

“He's not me.”

“Okay, but he's still inside you.”

That night she wakes me from a restless sleep. I can't lie on my side or stomach; my ribs hurt too much. On my back, my breathing is shallow.

I stare at her, but can't remember her name. Red hair, freckles, black eye, broken nose.

“I know where she is,” she says.

“Let me guess,” I say. “Another dream.”

“My brother,” she says. “He showed me the name of the cemetery.”

“Hold on,” I say. “I'm hearing everything you say twice.”

She gives me a pill from one of the bottles on my night table; I work up enough saliva in my mouth to swallow it.

“I don't trust dreams,” I tell her.

“I'm asking you to trust
me
.”

“When are you leaving?”

“
We
are leaving in the morning,” she says.

What I don't tell Sam is that all night you've been singing to me as clearly as if you were lying in bed beside me—the song you were singing when we met, the one I play most often now that you're gone. It's been much easier not wanting anything, not thinking too much, not believing in anything but what's in front of me, and now this woman and her dreams and her dead brother and you singing to me in my sleep.

“This is all going to turn out to mean nothing.”

“Nothing means nothing,” she says.

“If you quote me one more time, I swear.”

“Sorry,” she says.

“I'm tired,” I tell her. “I'm just tired.”

“I'll do all the driving.”

“I don't think I've ever been more tired.”

“You can sleep the whole way if you want.”

I turn away from her and close my eyes, hoping to fall back into my dream of you. I listen for your voice, but it's gone.