Lullaby

Chapter 39

Experts in ancient Greek culture say that people back then didn't see their thoughts as belonging to them. When they had a thought, it occurred to them as a god or goddess giving them an order. Apollo was telling them to be brave.

Athena was telling them to fall in love.

Now people hear a commercial for sour cream potato chips and rush out to buy.

Between television and radio and Helen Hoover Boyle's magic spells, I don't know what I really want anymore. If I even believe myself, I don't know.

That night, Helen drives us to the antique store, the big warehouse where she's mutilated so much furniture. It's dark and closed, but she presses her hand over a lock and says a quick poem, and the door swings open. No burglar alarms sound. Nothing. We're wandering deep into the maze of furniture, the dark disconnected chandeliers hanging above us. Moonlight glows in through the skylights.

«See how easy,» Helen says. «We can do anything. »

No, I say, she can do anything.

Helen says, «You still love me?»

If she wants me to. I don't know. If she says so.

Helen looks up at the looming chandeliers, the hanging cages of gilt and crystal, and she says, «Got time for a quickie?»

And I say, it's not like I have a choice.

I don't know the difference between what I want and what I'm trained to want.

I can't tell what I really want and what I've been tricked into wanting.

What I'm talking about is free will. Do we have it, or does God dictate and script everything we do and say and want? Do we have free will, or do the mass media and our culture control us, our desires and actions, from the moment we're born? Do I have it, or is my mind under the control of Helen's spell?

Standing in front of a Regency armoire of burled walnut with a huge mirror of beveled glass in the door, Helen strokes the carved scrolls and garlands and says, «Become immortal with me.»

Like this furniture, traveling through life after life, watching everyone who loves us die. Parasites. These armoires. Helen and I, the cockroaches of our culture.

Scarred across the mirrored door is an old gouged slash from her diamond ring. From back when she hated this immortal junk.

Imagine immortality, where even a marriage of fifty years would feel like a one-night stand. Imagine seeing trends and fashions blur past you. Imagine the world more crowded and desperate every century. Imagine changing religions, homes, diets, careers, until none of them have any real value. Imagine traveling the world until you're bored with every square inch. Imagine your emotions, your loves and hates and rivalries and victories, played out again and again until life is nothing more than a melodramatic soap opera. Until you regard the birth and death of other people with no more emotion than the wilted cut flowers you throw away.

I tell Helen, I think we're immortal already.

She says, «I have the power.» She snaps open her purse and fishes out a sheet of folded paper, she shakes the paper open and says, «Do you know about “scrying”?»

I don't know what I know. I don't know what's true. I doubt I really know anything. I say, tell me.

Helen slips a silk scarf from around her neck and wipes the dust off the huge mirrored door of the armoire. The Regency armoire with inlaid olive-wood carvings and Second Empire fire-gilded hardware, according to the index card taped to it. She says, «Witches spread oil on a mirror, then they say a spell, and they can read the future in the mirror.»

The future, I say, great. Cheatgrass. Kudzu. The Nile perch.

Right now, I'm not even sure I can read the present.

Helen holds up the paper and reads. In the dull, counting voice she used for the flying spell, she reads a few quick lines. She lowers the paper and says, «Mirror, mirror, tell us what our future will be if we love each other and use our new power.»

Hernew power.

«I made up the “mirror, mirror” part,» Helen says. She slips her hand around mine and squeezes, but I don't squeeze back. She says, «I tried this at the office with the mirror in my compact, and it was like watching television through a microscope.»

In the mirror, our reflections blur, the shapes swim together, the reflection mixes into an even gray.

«Tell us,» Helen says, «show us our future together.»

And shapes appear in the gray. Light and shadows swim together.

«See,» she says. «There we are. We're young again. I can do that. You look like you did in the newspaper. The wedding photo.»

Everything's so unfocused. I don't know what I see.

«And look,» Helen says. She tosses her chin toward the mirror. «We're ruling the world. We're founding a dynasty.»

But what's enough?I can hear Oyster say, him and his overpopulation talk.

Power, money, food, sex, love. Can we ever get enough, or will getting some make us crave even more?

Inside the shifting mess of the future, I can't recognize anything. I can't see anything except just more of the past. More problems, more people. Less biodiversity. More suffering.

«I see us together forever,» she says.

I say, if that's what she wants.

And Helen says, «What's that supposed to mean?»

Just whatever she wants it to mean, I say. She's the one pulling the strings here. She's the one planting her little seeds. Colonizing me. Occupying me. The mass media, the culture, everything laying its eggs under my skin. Big Brother filling me with need.

Do I really want a big house, a fast car, a thousand beautiful sex partners? Do I really want these things? Or am I trained to want them?

Are these things really better than the things I already have? Or am I just trained to be dissatisfied with what I have now? Am I just under a spell that says nothing is ever good enough?

The gray in the mirror is mixing, swirling, it could be anything. No matter what the future holds, ultimately it will be a disappointment.

And Helen takes my other hand. Holding both my hands in hers, she pulls me around, saying, «Look at me.» She says, «Did Mona say something to you?»

I say, you love you. I just don't want to be used anymore.

Above us are the chandeliers, glowing silver in the moonlight.

«What did Mona say?» Helen says.

And I'm counting 1, counting 2, counting 3 …

«Don't do this,» Helen says. «I love you.» Squeezing my hands, she says, «Do not shut me out.»

I'm counting 4, counting 5, counting 6 …

«You're being just like my husband,» she says. «I just want you to be happy.»

That's easy, I say, just put a «happy» spell on me.

And Helen says, «There's no such spell.» She says, «They have drugs for that.»

I don't want to keep making the world worse. I want to try and clean up this mess we've made. The population. The environment. The culling spell. The same magic that ruins my life is supposed to fix it.

«But we can do that,» Helen says. «With more spells.»

Spells to fix spells to fix spells to fix spells, and life just gets more miserable in ways we never imagined. That's the future I see in the mirror.

Mr. Eugene Schieffelin and his starlings, Spencer Baird and his carp, history is filled with brilliant people who wanted to fix things and just made them worse.

I want to burn the grimoire.

I tell her about what Mona told me. About how she's put a spell on me to make me her immortal love slave for all of eternity.

«Mona's lying,» Helen says.

But how do I know that? Whom do I believe?

The gray in the mirror, the future, maybe it's not clear to me because now nothing's clear to me.

And Helen drops my hands. She waves her hands at the Regency armoires, the Federalist desks and Italian Renaissance coat racks, and says, «So if reality is all a spell, and you don't really want what you think you want …» She pushes her face in my face and says, «If you have no free will. You don't really know what youknow. You don't reallylove who youonly think you love. What do you have left to live for?»

Nothing.

This is just us standing here with all the furniture watching.

Think of deep outer space, the incredible cold and quiet where your wife and kid wait.

And I say, please. I tell her to give me her cell phone.

The gray still shifting and liquid in the mirror, Helen snaps open her purse and hands me the phone.

I flip it open and dial 911.

And a woman's voice says, «Police, fire, or medical?»

And I say, medical.

«Your location?» the voice says.

And I tell her the address of the bar on Third where Nash and I meet, the bar near the hospital.

«And the nature of your medical emergency?»

Forty professional cheerleaders overcome with heat exhaustion. A women's volleyball team needing mouth-to-mouth. A crew of fashion models wanting breast examinations. I tell her, if they've got an emergency med tech named John Nash, he's the one to send. I tell her, if they can't find Nash, not to bother.

Helen takes the phone back. She looks at me, blinking once, twice, three times, slow, and says, «What are you up to?»

What I have left, maybe the only way to find freedom, is by doing the things I don't want to. Stop Nash. Confess to the police. Accept my punishment.

I need to rebel against myself.

It's the opposite of following your bliss. I need to do what I most fear.