The Smash-Up Read online

  One season drifted into the next. The leaves outside turned red, then brown, then—like the cameras, who eventually left to chase some new headline—they disappeared entirely.

  * * *

  —

  I am trying to tell you what happened. I am trying so hard to explain.

  * * *

  —

  Ethan stayed by Alex’s side after the smash-up. He refused to drift more than a few feet from her bedside. He barely ate, slept only in short bursts. Mostly, he read to her, chapter upon chapter of whatever books nurses could find for him, as if his voice was a life buoy that could haul Alex back from the depths.

  I was drifting in and out of sleep near Alex’s ICU bed, when Ethan stopped reading midsentence. “Well, hey there,” he said. He sounded like he was talking to an ordinary kid waking up from an ordinary afternoon nap, and not to someone who’d been unconscious nearly forty-two hours.

  I rushed over. A nurse was there, and a physician, too, and the four of us leaned in, peering at Alex’s bleary confusion. Ethan asked gently, “Do you…know who we are?”

  Alex blinked. Her eyes drifted, vaguely to his face. Slowly, she said, “Eenie.” She paused, took in the nurse, the doctor. “Meenie…miney…” Her eyes came to rest on me as she finished:

  “Zo.”

  One side of her mouth curled into a half smile. Then she closed her eyes again, and returned to sleep.

  * * *

  —

  Here was the official count: thirty-three distinct fractures, almost entirely on Alex’s right side. One lung punctured, then collapsed, then repaired through surgery. Two spleen ruptures, requiring three separate surgeries. Fourteen surgeries in total, which took place over a combined thirty-nine hours.

  It could have been worse.

  It would have been worse, in fact.

  * * *

  —

  Five days after Alex woke, Ethan and I left the hospital together. Dressed in black, we drove to the First Congregational Church of Starkfield. Once again, our sleepy little town was transformed—filled with strangers holding handmade signs. On this day, though, the visitors were quiet, somber. On this day, their signs bore messages not of anger but of love.

  Someone else—I don’t remember who—parked our car. Ethan and I walked up the church steps, ignoring the cameras, the microphones, the reporters, the gawkers. Inside the vestibule, a stranger handed us a program.

  On the cover was a photograph: Elaine.

  Elaine of the Witches, of the elastic waist. Elaine, who somehow understood what was happening at that protest before I did, before anyone. Elaine, who had, it seemed, been anticipating this moment, practicing for it, her whole life.

  I’d been talking with her, trying to explain myself. Telling her I wouldn’t speak that day, why I shouldn’t, couldn’t possibly. Elaine was right there in front of me, and then she wasn’t. By the time I’d made sense of what was happening, Elaine had already moved away from me, toward the oncoming truck. She’d managed to throw Alex a few feet backward—not enough to protect her completely, but enough that my daughter was hit from the side rather than straight-on, which would have been certain, instant death.

  As it was for Elaine.

  * * *

  —

  Elaine had been an attorney, a lifelong activist. She’d helped organize protests against Vietnam, then the Iraq War, then the WTO. She’d briefly been among the higher-ups at the National Organization for Women, where she’d been one of the leading voices for the Violence Against Women Act. She had, also in the 1990s, coauthored a groundbreaking, data-rich tome about women’s influence in politics. That book, still widely used in wonkish circles, would, within five weeks of her death, help usher in an unprecedented wave of new women congressional representatives, something I wish desperately she’d been around to see.

  Elaine, it seemed, had an instinct for being at the right place at the right moment, for nudging history forward the way it’s usually done: in tiny increments. A modern-day Sisyphus who maybe, just maybe, got a little further with each try. Bit by bit, then all at once.

  She was, said the pant-suited, pink-haired nun who officiated the funeral, a genius.

  I’d been asked to speak. When it was my turn, I stood at the pulpit, looking down at the words I’d prepared. Something about the word the nun had used—genius—had jarred me, thrown me off my game. I cleared my throat, looked out at the packed church. The witches filled the front two pews. Behind them sat Ethan, wearing a face I could not read.

  I knew at that very moment, the Supreme Court nominee whom we’d been protesting was at his swearing-in ceremony, right hand raised, left hand on the Bible.

  I folded up my prepared words. I spoke, instead, about the first time I’d met Elaine.

  * * *

  —

  A woman drives through a small town. It is the second week of November. Something happened a few days before, something unexpected, unbearable. All attempts to reassure her have failed. She is weeping, this woman. She feels very much alone.

  As she passes the village green, something catches her eye: a lone figure, a little hunched. It’s an older woman, bundled in a heavy coat, holding a cardboard sign: Hope over fear. There is no further explanation, no context.

  The weeping woman continues driving.

  Two days later, the hunched figure appears again. This time her sign reads: Fight for the vulnerable. The day after that, there are three figures, three signs:

  Love one another.

  Hate has no home here.

  I believe in humanity.

  The weeping woman isn’t so sure she believes in humanity, not right now. But still. She pulls the car over.

  And that is the answer to the question Ethan used to ask me: What, exactly, is the point of a tiny protest in the middle of nowhere, seen by almost no one?

  The point is that the person who does see might need exactly this, exactly now. The point is, her individual grief can become part of a collective one. The point is, this may or may not change the world, but it will almost certainly change her.

  * * *

  —

  What happened is people were hurting. What happened is people were afraid. What happened is that anger is stronger than fear, and so, for that matter, is hate.

  But it is easier to know what you want to burn down than it is to imagine what you might grow in its place.

  * * *

  —

  After the smash-up, I was deluged with calls: film producers, screenwriters, book agents, important ones, all clamoring for Alex’s life rights, for mine. I ignored every one.

  But after the funeral, I kept thinking about what that nun had said: that Elaine was a genius. I cycled over the word again and again, in the same way I’d been cycling over what happened.

  Genius. Something about the word crawled inside me, got stuck, repeated itself, like a groove in a record. Genius.

  It occurred to me that I had a very specific image of what a genius looked like, and it wasn’t Elaine. I thought of professors I’d known, poets I’d loved, novelists I’d cherished, filmmakers and artists and scientists who had influenced my work, my life. Had any of them been called a genius out loud?

  The idea came to me just after Alex’s fifth surgery: a book, an encyclopedia of sorts. Filled with grand ideas from world-changing geniuses at work today—not unlike other “great minds” books, except for a single twist: these pages would be filled only with those who didn’t look the part, many working in fields too often ignored.

  I’d call the book This Is Genius.

  I emailed one of the book agents, sent her a proposal. At the last minute, I attached an idea for a second book, something totally different: a half-listicle, half-journal called Goodbye and Good Riddance: An Eviction Letter to the Ones Who Have Been Living Rent-Free
in My Brain (the first half would be filled with descriptions, each beginning the ones who…The second half would be left blank for a reader to fill in her own experiences. The whole thing, I suggested, could be printed on materials that are easy to burn).

  The agent sold both books within four days.

  It’s possible the publisher genuinely liked these ideas. But it seems just as likely they hoped to be first in line should I ever decide to tell that other story: the one about Alex, about me, about what happened, about what it’s like to be the mother of the new national symbol of our fight against hatred.

  But this I will never do.

  The day after I signed the contract, I told Ethan I planned to move out.

  * * *

  —

  What happened is that each of us can see only so far. What happened is that we are graceless and blundering, like selfish toddlers who reach out to touch something beautiful and shatter it.

  Curious, how a single, simple sentence—“I hurt”—simultaneously holds two, opposite meanings. I myself am hurting. And also: I am hurting someone else.

  Or, no. Not opposite. In fact, maybe not so different after all.

  * * *

  —

  It was about the work, that’s how I explained our separation to Ethan: I needed to get the books done quickly, we needed the money. If I could just write fast enough, without distractions, perhaps I’d complete both projects before Alex came home.

  This explanation was both true and not true. Like much of my life, it was a half-truth, a simulacrum, a dot-to-dot picture that could be drawn in infinite other ways. The full truth, like all complete truths, was a tangled jumble, knotted so tight a person could spend her lifetime trying to unravel it and never fully succeed.

  It had something to do with the way Ethan and I had been moving around each other, guessing at the other’s what happened, both of us almost certainly more wrong than right. It had something to do with a sense I couldn’t shake: that there was someone I had yet to become, but to find her, I’d first have to unbecome.

  It had something to do, too, with what my research on genius was beginning to reveal: New ideas, new worlds, new truths, new selves, always begin in negative space. Unlike the groaning heft of What Is, possibility has no mass of its own—no force, no shape or structure, not yet. To most eyes, What Could Be looks like nothing at all. It takes faith to discern this invisible thing, to protect it and tend to it, until the day it comes screaming into the open, startling everyone with the plain fact of itself, a truth that’s suddenly clear as day.

  * * *

  —

  Two weeks after the smash-up, Mr. McCuttle stopped by the hospital. He told us the Rainbow Seed School was there for Alex, whenever she was ready to return. Faculty would tutor Alex, help her catch up, whatever Alex needs to return to the classroom with all her wonderful friends. I watched his mouth move, and I was struck by how small he looked.

  How inadequate any one person is, really, in the face of all the world’s need.

  I thanked Mr. McCuttle for the visit and explained that whatever money we had would surely go toward Alex’s medical needs. Then the following week, Shreya Greer-Williams visited. She stayed just long enough to deliver a stack of hand-drawn cards from Alex’s classmates and the world’s largest teddy bear (wearing a Rainbow Seed T-shirt, of course). Then she pressed into my hand an envelope. Inside was a folded-up piece of paper: a printout of the total from a GoFundMe campaign she’d organized, which had raised enough to cover the next three years of Rainbow Seed tuition. More, she said, was coming in by the day.

  After she left, Ethan and I stared at each other.

  “Well,” I said. “That Shreya certainly knows how to get things done, doesn’t she?”

  “Huh,” said Ethan. He rubbed his bare chin, looked like he was thinking hard. “For some reason, I always thought her name was Stacy.”

  It was the first time we laughed together since the smash-up. Maybe for a long time before that too.

  * * *

  —

  And that’s where we are. It’s been nearly five months. In this time, Alex has moved between acute care and rehab, back and forth, again and again. But her stretches in rehab are getting longer, and soon, she will come home.

  Will she live with both parents then, or just one of us?

  All Them Witches bring dinners to Ethan three times a week, and to me when I’m not traveling. They leave the dishes covered in foil, often with gifts: a book of Ada Limón poetry for me, some Mary Oliver for Ethan. Meetings are now at Jackie’s house, but the witches continue to do what witches have always done: refuse to accept the world as it is.

  It will take eighteen months, maybe longer, before we are done with this phase of our lives. Alex will be a young woman before she’s fully recovered. But recover she will.

  I cannot wait until she starts driving us crazy again.

  * * *

  —

  So here are: Me and you, Zo and Ethan, husband and wife, standing in the doorway of the home we shared, breathing in each other’s exhalations. Still and always inextricably linked. Your arms are curled around my back. They feel good there, comfortable. You smell of sweat and spice and Tide. You feel like forgiveness, you feel like home, which is to say comfort and shame and anger and love and failure and hope, all together, all at once.

  Soon, I will drive you to your car, help you change a tire, wave goodbye. Then I’ll return to my rented apartment, where I’ll tell my landlord, the Widow Hale, about seeing you. She’ll pepper me with questions: how did it feel to be back at the house, how did he seem today, did he like the casserole I left?

  And the big question too: Oh, Zo, don’t you think you’ll ever go back?

  I won’t answer that last question, not out loud. I won’t say, I hope so, even though that is the truth. The Widow Hale will frown at my silence, pat my arm, and tell me I’m a very complicated person, which of course is her way of saying she doesn’t much care for me.

  But all of that will come later.

  Right now, though, as I breathe your skin scent, I am thinking of a dream I’ve been having lately. It comes in the early morning: after the nightmares, before the dawn, in that dim, gray, formless in-between place. Between waking and sleeping, night and day, what was and what might yet be.

  The dream always begins the same way: I’m rising. At first it’s more of a hovering, feet dangling, against all physics, as if asking, Do I Dare? And then: unexpected weightlessness, a stomach drop. Like a roller coaster, almost, whoosh.

  I’m never alone as I rise. Others are there too. Sometimes it’s people I know—Jackie, or Alex, or Elaine (this time she does not fall beneath tires, this time she does not disappear forever in an instant I can never erase). More often, though, I’m with strangers, sometimes thousands of them, stretching as far as the eye can see.

  It’s some strange sort of rapture, this. But for whom? And why?

  Up, up we go. We move past rooftops, beyond trees, we rise until we can make out the ridges and contours of our lives, the truths that are harder to see when gravity has us in its grasp: that we are, all of us, part of something much, much bigger than ourselves. That we are, each of us, a holy miracle, filled with potential.

  The air around us becomes thinner, purer.

  We rise until we arrive in some new place, or some old place, maybe. It’s familiar, anyway, and soon we understand why: it’s scattered with bits of ourselves, like some sort of forgotten mannequin factory. Look: here, and here. Here are the parts of us that we’ve lost along the way. We left these fragments of ourselves behind in school hallways, in alleyways, in the backs of cars, in childhood bedrooms, or offices, or back alleys, or basements. We left them behind closed doors, or right out in the open, in full sight of others. No one had noticed our loose parts falling away, not even us, but here they are.


  We pick up these pieces, try to slot them into place, make ourselves whole again. Some search furiously, selfishly, hoarding more parts for themselves than they can possibly carry. Others hold up pieces for others: Did anyone lose this, or this, or this?

  I search frantically, desperately. But it is the same thing, every time: there’s some piece that I cannot find, some essential thing that will make everything click into place.

  This morning, though, that changed. From the faceless crowd, from all those anonymous parts, you emerged, Ethan. You and Alex. Alex saw me first. She brightened, pulled you forward, and when you saw me, it was just like that moment, years ago, when a look in your eyes as you smiled at our daughter gave me a glimpse of a world where love—simple love—might be enough.

  What would that world require?

  What might it produce?

  Just for a moment—fleeting, but no less miraculous for its ephemerality—I could see it: Skylines morphed, becoming at once familiar and not at all. From darkness: new philosophies, films, technologies exploded into being. I saw Aristotles who aren’t Aristotle, Shakespeares who aren’t Shakespeare, Newtons who aren’t Newton. Symphonies began to blare, hallelujah choirs never before heard. All around me, people dropped to their knees, listening.

  Ethan, did you see it too? Did you witness this great expansion, this big bang, this cosmic smash-up, matter and art and understanding and ideas filling the space where empty void has always been? Can you see now, by contrast, how twisted this old world is, how distorted—like a tree growing in shadow, straining toward the sun? Everything down here is flat, a little too gray: a world that’s missing not some, but rather most, of its parts.

  Perhaps love is its own kind of genius. Maybe, like all genius, it has the potential to remake the world, if we just give it the space and time to do its work.