Bewilderment

-

EVERYBODY’S BROKEN, he tells her. They sit on the beach on an upside-down kayak and watch the single low sun throw colors. Two boats in full sail skim alongside one another, back to the docks before the light is gone.

That’s why we’re breaking the whole planet.

“We’re breaking it?”

And pretending we aren’t, like you just did. The shame in her face shows up only in freeze-frame. Everybody knows what’s happening. But we all look away.

She waits for him to elaborate. To say what’s wrong with people and what might cure them.

He says, I wish I had my sunglasses.

She laughs. “Why?”

He points toward the lake. There’s fish in there! We could see them, with sunglasses. Have you ever seen a northern pike?

“I don’t know.”

His face clouds over with incomprehension. You would know. You’d know, if you saw a pike.

A couple with two small kids walk the beach near them. Jay greets them with enthusiasm. He’s forgotten the camera crew. His arms spin around the compass points in pleasure. The parents smile as he points out three kinds of ducks and imitates their calls. He tells them about daphnia and other water crustaceans. He shows them how to find sand fleas. The little boy and girl hang on his words.

Dusk falls in time-lapse. The show’s theme music starts up, far away. Jay and his new best friend sit on their upturned boat. The lights of the city blink on in a ring around them. He says, My dad’s an astrobiologist. He’s looking for life up there. It’s either nowhere, or it’s all over the place. Which do you want it to be?

She looks up, where he’s pointing, into the dark sky. Her expression wobbles, as if she’s training to match the pattern of a feeling her mouth and eyes refuse to recognize. Maybe she’s thinking about how she’s going to violate her promise to me by keeping those last few words of his in the finished video. They’re just too good to be lost to something so small as ethics.

Dee Ramey speaks over the shot of her upward stare. “Most of us think we’re the only ones out here. But not Jay.”

The shot reverses, and it’s Robbie again, gazing at her with the same indiscriminate love he felt for everyone, in that narrow run of days. His face seems lit from the inside. She looks back down at him, a crumpled smile at dusk. Her later self goes on talking while the one on the screen stays mute.

“To spend time with Jay is to see kin everywhere, to take part in a giant experiment that doesn’t end with you, and to feel loved from beyond the grave. I, for one, would love to hear that feedback.”

But Robin has the last word. Serious, he says, smiling up at her in pure encouragement. Which do you think would be cooler?