The Answers Read online

  Do you have any favorite celebrities? he asked.

  No, I said.

  Well, do you know about the personal lives of any celebrities?

  That they have personal lives?

  Ah—no. Do you follow the lives of any celebrities, in particular?

  Through websites or magazines? Melissa chimed in.

  No. I don’t actually, um, read any magazines.

  Melissa blinked hard and looked at her notes. What kinds of movies or television shows do you watch? Are there any actors or directors you enjoy in particular?

  I was beginning to sense that I’d been duped, that there was no job, no income-generating experience, that this was some poorly funded marketing firm’s attempt at research.

  The truth was, I had this not-so-fun party trick called Guess What Movie I Haven’t Seen? The Wizard of Oz? Star Wars? The Godfather? The answer was always no. A film studies major at Columbia—a beady-eyed Christopher who wouldn’t answer to Chris (That’s not my name, he would say, producing his driver’s license)—had tried to force me to watch my first movie, Citizen Kane, when I was twenty. He wanted to curate my entire experience of film, spoon-feeding me black-and-white classics first, and telling me what to think of them, building in me his own empire of taste. It failed because I fell asleep after a few minutes of each movie or else just couldn’t concentrate on the screen, had to get up and find something to read or do instead. I’d never gained the skill or desire to watch things like that, I suppose, in the same way that people who grow up without a religion rarely feel the lack of one as an adult. (Adult-onset ADD, Christopher told me. I’ve seen it before. You know you can take something for that, right?) After a few weeks of failure, I told Christopher I couldn’t do his project, that I didn’t have it in me, and he said I’d ruined his entire thesis and wasted his time. I didn’t know you were such a vapid pleaser, he said. I asked him what that meant and he said, You know, one of those women who want male approval so badly they go along with whatever a man asks them but ultimately end up failing because they never think about what they actually want. It was a beautiful autumn day and we were standing in front of the old library, the concrete steps strewn with students. My veins dilated. I said, I didn’t know you could be one of those pretentious assholes who think they have a right to something just because they have one stupid idea, you skeezy fuck. I had never felt so large and small at the same time. I didn’t recognize my own voice and words. Shame and pride swirled together in a way that felt animal, so I darted away from him. I was still new to this kind of adrenaline, the immediate release of anger instead of gnawing on it like overdue gum.

  I really don’t know, I told Melissa. I don’t watch things.

  Do you mean, like, recently? Like a tech cleanse?

  I’ve never had a TV.

  So you watch things online?

  I just use a computer at work.

  What about your phone?

  I have a landline.

  She looked at me as if I were a hallucination, then lowered her gaze, bewildered, to her clipboard.

  Wait, what about movies? What was the last movie you saw?

  I’ve never been to one. I watched some of Citizen Kane one time, but I fell asleep. I’ve seen the beginnings of a few others but I don’t know which ones.

  I couldn’t tell from their expressions if this was a deficiency or impressive.

  Well, I guess—um, let’s move on for now, Matheson said. Is there anyone in your life that you tell everything to?

  Like a best friend, Melissa added.

  Yes, or a relative. A parent? Sibling?

  No siblings, no parents anymore.

  What about friends or a boyfriend? Melissa asked, noticeably unslowed by the speed bump that mentioning my parents usually was.

  I have one good friend, but I guess I keep a lot to myself.

  Forgive me if I’m prying, Matheson said, but are your parents still living?

  They weren’t dead, or if they were, I didn’t know how I’d ever find out. I assumed Aunt Clara would call me if anything happened, but we had spoken so rarely since I stopped visiting Tennessee and not at all in the last few months or year or so. I wondered if we were just trying to let enough time pass so we could forget what had happened.

  They’re off the grid, I explained, though that didn’t really explain it.

  Oh my God, were you like Amish or something? Melissa asked.

  Just homeschooled, I said, but homeschooled didn’t even begin to explain it. I always avoided talking about the way I’d been raised. Are you going to ask me about my résumé or those essays?

  We read your application, Melissa said.

  And it’s fine, Matheson interrupted. Admirable. Columbia. Steady job. CPR training. Scuba certification. Spanish, French …

  Yes, it’s all very impressive, Melissa said, isn’t it?

  So, you don’t have any questions about—

  Matheson held his hand up to stop my voice. Mary, we appreciate your cooperation as we go through this very rigorous selection process, and we can assure you that should you be selected for this work, you’d be pleased with both the compensation and the extremely interesting experience.

  We work for a very interesting and influential man, Melissa said.

  Wise beyond his years.

  And talented.

  And wealthy, of course.

  Of course.

  And we are responsible for assessing candidates for a very innovative project, a state-of-the-art inquiry into some of life’s most challenging questions.

  That’s all we can tell you.

  For now.

  Right.

  Candidates who pass additional interviews will be given more information.

  As needed.

  A cell phone pinged and Matheson and Melissa rose in unison, extended their hands for shaking.

  So, unfortunately our time is up today, Matheson said. Thank you very much for your time. You’re a very interesting candidate. We’ll be in touch.

  A girl in a boxy beige outfit was at the door. I couldn’t tell if she was poorly or well dressed, stylish or just a mess.

  Hi, I’m Matheson, Melissa, yes, hello, Rhoda, nice to meet you, how are you, thanks for being so prompt.

  Five

  Ed had me by the wrists, pulling the left one up and slightly right, the right one up and slightly left. He was crouching on the table and I was kneeling, my ankles and knees held down by soft leather straps attached to the floor. We had scheduled the next seven sessions, and he agreed to let me pay at the end of the month, twenty-five days to come up with $1,575 in cash. My only backup to the income-generating experience was being a host seven nights a week at a pan-Asian restaurant, which seemed to be a front for something in the back room. I couldn’t quite tell. It wasn’t enough to cover my PAKing sessions, but they paid nightly, under the table, and the guy who’d interviewed me said there was the possibility of more money, though he didn’t say how. He asked a lot of questions about my shoes and ankle strength—There’s a lot of standing involved in … you know, in hosting, being a hostess. He asked me what size shoe I wore three times and seemed to be implying something I didn’t understand, though this was a feeling I had often, the sense of a subtext. On the back of his card he wrote another number, said to call him whenever I liked. I hoped I’d never need to.

  Since you’re ovulating right now, I’ll only be actively working above your heart and below your knees today, Ed told me. We don’t want … to interfere.

  Oh, I said, okay.

  One doctor had told me to keep strict records of my cycle, basal body temperature, and cervical position, so I knew Ed was exactly right though I hadn’t given him any of that information on the intake form. Could a person appear ovulatory? I was accustomed to being blind to what others found obvious, but this felt extreme. I tried to forget Ed’s ovulation comment and focus on my breathing or something, but it was all just too weird, as if I’d caught him going through my purse.


  I, um, didn’t give you any cycle information, I said after a long silence.

  Root your knees into the earth, he said, so I did (or attempted to, or something, and what did that even mean?). He started to chant.

  Without contracting your lower back, he added, breaking and immediately restarting the chant.

  I wanted to ask, more specifically, how he knew I was ovulating, but I was concentrating on uncontracting my lower back as he chanted above me. My shoulders shook as if generating a low-pitched sound.

  A woman’s aura noticeably shifts with her cycle, he said later. He attached sensors between my eyebrows and on the underside of each wrist. Cords ran to a small white machine about the size of a mini-refrigerator. He turned it on and it started whirring, a cool blue light flashing on and off in a senseless pattern.

  At the count of seven please hold your breath and concentrate on the first color you feel.

  I was belly down on the massage table, face cradled, staring at the floor. He pressed his elbow between a muscle and bone just below my neck and counted in a whisper. On seven I saw a pale yellow light and felt my arms go slack. When I woke up a few minutes later, Ed was sitting on the floor beside the table, cross-legged and quietly chanting. I felt as if a swath of molten wax had hardened down my spine, but when I reached for it, there was just my skin. It seemed I had been crying, that I was still crying. Tears rained straight out of my head, fell to the floor.

  Tears are a flow of energy that can be channeled into more progressive pathways, Ed said. Tears are a choice you make.

  I stopped immediately.

  There, he said, now isn’t that better?

  Six

  How was your day?

  I was staring into a black lens embedded in a wall in a small white room in a building in SoHo, reading a list of phrases. Matheson and Melissa sat to each side of the lens, occasionally taking notes or exchanging glances.

  How was your day? I asked the lens again. How was your day?

  I had been instructed to say each phrase three times: That must be hard for you and Whatever you want is fine and You’re right and What are you thinking?

  It was my third, maybe fourth interview. Nothing, as usual, had been explained. I was only told to vary my inflections slightly, imagine I was speaking to someone I deeply cared about.

  Excellent, Matheson said, but moving forward, could you pause a little longer between repetitions?

  Does the job have something to do with acting? Is that part of it?

  No, Melissa said, we can assure you there is no acting involved.

  I missed you was next on the list I’d been given.

  I missed you, I said, wondering who else had made it this far and who or what was on the other side of that lens. I missed you, I said, wondering what missing even is. I missed you.

  Melissa uncrossed and recrossed her legs. The dozen small sensors that had been taped on various parts of my body felt sometimes fizzy or warm, but being measured by some technology or another had become such a normal part of my life in doctors’ offices that these sensors hadn’t surprised me at all.

  I love you, I said to the lens. I love you. I let the pause linger. I love you.

  Melissa stood and left abruptly, saying she needed to check on the results in another room.

  Matheson smirked. The other girls have been a parade of disappointment. So fake and weird. But you were almost totally unpretentious.

  To my left was a large mirror, and glancing at it, I realized it had been built into the wall, which made me wonder if it was a mirror on one side and a window on the other. It depressed me to think that I might have been looking at another person but seeing only myself.

  Is this one of those mirror-window things? I asked, but Matheson didn’t react, pressed his earpiece, looked up, and asked, Mary, why do you think people pair up, so to speak? Why do human beings couple off?

  I thought of the year I’d been one-half of a pair, a little while before all the sickness began.

  Paul. We met on a rooftop, at a party one of Chandra’s rich friends was throwing, and we somehow said hello to each other at the same moment, both of us with the vague feeling that we’d met before, that we’d known each other for a long time, that this meeting had occurred before, would occur again, had always been. Looking at each other, something made sense that hadn’t made sense before. We talked about whatever we talked about, smiling so much it was actually painful, then it was dusk and we left in the dim, forgetting goodbyes to the others, overcome. For hours we walked the streets of that neighborhood, found a park and walked around the outer edge of it, talking and talking, though I don’t remember what about—there was just something in his voice, something deeper than just the sound or words or how he said them. (He said together with more a than e, so it came out sounding like to-gather, and this had a tremendous effect on me, to-gather.) It still makes no sense, even all these years later. I still don’t know what it is or was about him, about us together (his pronunciation), that made us bind so decisively, two indecisive people so clear, for a time, about each other.

  At some late hour we decided to take the subway back to our homes, but he missed his stop and stayed on to keep me company, then I missed mine and we kept right on along, not noticing it at first, then noticing and not caring. We went all the way up to Queens and had to wait on a platform for an hour with a swelling crowd, some annoyed, some tipsy, some commuting to early jobs, and I’m pretty sure I knew, even then, that I was doing what people in books did when they fell in love, romanticizing ugly things, the grungy station, the air weighted with the evaporating sweat of hundreds, that massive stink—but I didn’t care that I was romanticizing it. I didn’t care that I was in a hideous MTA station mid-renovation, with the jackhammers wailing and greenish dust in the air and all the tired, angry, sweating people gathering around us, complaining so loudly. I was in some other place. I wasn’t waiting on anything. I knew that this sort of love, technically, was just a neurotransmitter cocktail designed to make you feel invincible and infinite—beyond language, beyond logic—but I also knew that love was as thrilling as it was temporary, a prelude to pain, though I only knew this through reading—which is just to say I had not really learned it yet and may never. That little shimmer in the chest. How simple it seems. It only seems that way.

  This paradox of feelings and memories filled me in the instant Matheson asked this question, but I couldn’t speak. It all sat impossibly just below my mouth.

  Do you mean … why do people just get together … (to-gather) for the long term?

  Yes—long-term relationships, marriage. What’s the point of it?

  Maybe because they think it will be easier that way? A division of labor?

  (I didn’t believe this. It seemed he could tell.)

  Chores, creating income, raising children, he asked, that sort of thing?

  Maybe?

  And what are maybe some other reasons?

  Maybe … people fall in love. And that makes them stay.

  And what, exactly, is falling in love?

  It makes sense of something that doesn’t make sense.

  He nodded at me and made a note. Do you think of this a lot?

  Not in particular.

  You seem to have some ideas about it.

  I just think a lot. I don’t have much else to do.

  Right, I guess without TV or anything you have a lot of time …

  That wasn’t what I meant but I didn’t correct him.

  He made another note, put a finger to his earpiece. Mary, we live in very strange times. Knowledge is always second to data—big data, data as a form of war, and meanwhile adults are taught to be anxious about not having enough sex while teenagers are shamed for wanting to have it all the time. Haute couture uses emaciated children to sell sex as art, while toddlers are wearing high heels and doing abdominal exercises. The ways in which our culture expresses value and collective sexuality has become, to put it lightly, demented.

>   None of this exactly made sense to me, but I nodded as if I understood. Matheson pressed his earpiece and kept talking like a bad actor imitating a worse politician.

  In the greater context of human history, wealth and power have been indications that a person has secured excess resources for survival. The wealthy and powerful of the world should therefore be nodes of philanthropy and evolution, the ones who move us, as a species, forward with thought and generosity. However, the American concept of celebrity has developed and become deformed in tandem with the rise of the information age. The paparazzi are now everywhere because anyone can be one with nothing more than a cell phone. What used to just be in Us Weekly is now on every corner of the Internet, constantly dehumanizing many of our most emotionally intelligent and talented members of society.

  I didn’t interrupt his rant to ask what Us Weekly was, but looked it up at work the next day. Will I ever stop being surprised by the ways people make hell?

  The value we have placed on superficial knowledge of the personal lives of our celebrities is quickly creating a sort of emotional vacuum for many respected, talented, wealthy, and otherwise evolved individuals … And this paradox relates back to what I was saying about the wealthy and powerful needing to move the human race along. Celebrity obsession is often emotionally and logistically shackling to the country’s most prominent and successful people, and this ultimately hinders those wealthy, powerful, and celebrated people from being the nodes of evolution and progress they should actually be for the culture at large.