Alone with You in the Ether

So anyway, is she hungry?

God yes, she’s starving. Is he going home now?

Yes, he’s going home, will he see her there?

(She waits for a second, half a heartbeat; the time it takes to let a smile flicker.)

Yes. She’ll see him at home.

THE NARRATOR, THE AUTHOR: Aldo and Regan hang up in the same moment without saying goodbye, because they do not need to. They have each unlocked a hidden door today, and though hers is different from his and vice versa, the contents within it are no less valuable from one to the next.

Her showcase triptych, ultimately reviewed as, “visually pleasing if a bit lacking in narrative clarity or substance,” is not nearly as good or as valuable as either of them is willing to believe. Her clinical mood disorder does not disappear because it can’t and “healthy” for them will always be a relative term. There are still bills to be paid and things to be said and they will argue in shades of purple as early as tomorrow, but they are different now; changed. After they hang up the phone and he wipes a bead of early summer from his forehead while she adjusts the slightly sticky strap of her purse, he will take a right onto Harrison Street while she takes a left onto Michigan Avenue and both of them will opt to walk briskly, as if they have places to be, which they do.

Because when they embark, they will have each turned a corner.

And everything will be as it was, only very slightly different.

As a reminder: if he graphs it, it’ll just be a perfect circle.

Cycle.

It’s a circle, Aldo.

Okay fine, she’s poked enough holes in his theories for one day, he accepts.

He concedes, just like that?

He accepts, yes. Just like that.

Okay good, she’s too tired to keep explaining anyway. It’s been a long day.

Has it? For him, too. Oh and he saw her art, by the way.

What did he think?

He thinks he always knew she was an artist.

(Groan. But fondly.) First of all, she’s only an artist because he said she was an artist.

Does that mean he’s a genius because she said he was a genius?

Look, whatever they are, it’s irreversible. She is this version of herself because of him, and vice versa. There’s no changing that now.

Yeah?

Yeah.

You’re sure?

Yes.

Okay, good.

Really?

Yes.

By minute fifteen he was finally gone, turning abruptly and half-sprinting for the doors, and in his absence Regan emptied, watching all their alternate lives begin to wilt. She mourned them like her children, holding their lifeless corpses to her chest, and then she forgot them, slowly, each one vanishing without a trace, until she held nothing at all.

Eventually she looked down at her empty hands and thought: Damn it.

Damn it, I love him.

Then, after the smoke cleared, she could see nothing else.

Of course. Remember? She already knows about the bees, even though she doesn’t.

This is getting complicated, he thinks.

No, it isn’t, it’s … Fuck, she knows what it is. It’s a fucking perfect circle.

There are no perfect circles, Regan.

Yes, there’s one, and it’s this one: They fall in love because they’re always in love.

That’s circular, not a circle.

He can believe whatever he wants; she knows it’s a perfect circle.

Okay, but still. Say he accepts her premise—what does that actually mean?

(Triumphantly:) It means that they, as they are right now, could be their future selves’ pasts.

(A pause.)

He is beyond lost.

Okay, look. She’s trying to say that maybe an older version of them has already turned a corner, and so they met again in the armory of the Art Institute, knowing but not knowing that the moment they met was something they’ve done before. Does that make sense?

(He makes a humming sound, like, Maybe.) How many times?

What?

How many times have they done this before?

She can’t possibly know that, Aldo, and besides, that’s not the point. The point is, maybe it works or maybe it doesn’t, but they just keep trying and doing it over until it does. Right?

That sounds like a lot of uncertainty.

Of course it is! Everything is uncertain, he and she both know that by now, but there is a smaller certainty within all of the uncertainty, which is: The Truth.

And what, he asks, is The Truth?

That she will keep turning corners until she finds him.

(He is quiet for a moment before he says:) Okay.

Okay what?

Okay, he accepts her premise.

“Dad,” he said, the moment Masso answered the phone. He wanted to scream, primally, or to tear at his hair, hysterical with understanding. “She’s nothing like Mom.”

“Rinaldo, I haven’t heard from you in two days, where have you b-”

“You’re wrong and you’re right,” Aldo said again, pacing the stairs outside the museum. “She does burn me, she ignites me, you’re right. But it’s different, they’re different things.” He was thinking more than he was saying, unsure what was even coming out of his mouth. Science without faith is crippled, Masso, and life without it is soulless. She is my hope and for that she is dangerous, unequivocally, but she is also alive, unreservedly. It took this long for me to finally understand.

Masso was silent for a long moment.

“So then what will you do, Rinaldo?”

Aldo laughed, startling the stranger sitting peacefully on the steps who was witnessing, unknowingly, a bit of existential decay. It’s you and me right now, Stranger!, Aldo wanted to tell him. It’s you and me alone in the ether and you don’t even know it, you don’t even care, but still you are tied to this, and to me, and so be it, really.

So be it. This is what it means to live.

“I’ll do whatever she wants me to do,” Aldo said to his father, who contemplated this in three beats of silence on the other side of the phone.

“Okay, Rinaldo,” said Masso. “Sounds like a plan.”

He had no intention to observe its contents, noticing the chatter that meant it concerned other people; but then he paused unwillingly when something caught his eye.

It was a view that was both familiar and not. It was new in that he had ever seen it before, but also, it was recognizable in that it seemed to have previously existed inside his brain. The colors, he thought, looked like something he’d seen once or twice among the fabric of his musings, and so he gravitated towards it, slipping through the crowd.

From afar it had been one painting, but upon closer inspection he could see it was actually a triptych of three, individual segments comprising one comprehensive landscape that was smaller upon approach. Up close, Aldo could see the tiny hexagonal lines, fissures of gold so delicate they made the painting look as if it had scales, splintering its content into smaller pieces.

It didn’t appear at first to have a subject. Nothing in it was strictly identifiable, either as a scene or an object, only Aldo felt very strongly as if he’d been transported in time and space. He was no longer inside of a bright white museum looking at a painting, but instead he was on top of his roof, looking at the sky.

In the present, Aldo felt a tap on his shoulder; someone wanted to get by to look at another painting. He snapped to attention, nodding quickly and stepping closer to read the plaque below the triptych.

Alone with You in the Ether, it said, followed by Oils and acrylics.

Below, in smaller letters: C. Regan.

“Oh, this is pretty,” remarked someone beside him, pointing to Regan’s work, and Aldo turned his head, suddenly irritated.

It isn’t pretty, he wanted to say, it’s lonely, it’s desolate, it’s a chilling portrait of vastness. How ignorant are you to look at this and diminish it to some kind of trinket, are you dead? It’s the human condition! It’s the entire universe itself! It’s the depths of spacetime you utter fucking philistine and how dare you, how fucking dare you stand there and fail to weep? What kind of sad, unremarkable nothingness have you so callously lived that you can witness the splendor of her existence and not fall to your knees for having missed it, for having misunderstood it all this time? Pretty, that’s what you think this is? You think that’s all she’s capable of? You fool, she’s done the impossible. She has explained everything there is to know about the world in less than the time it took for your eyes to fully focus, and do you realize that I will spend a lifetime trying to do the same and never come close? This is an opus!, this is a triumph!, this is the meaning of life and you would think the answer would be satire, but it isn’t, it’s Truth. She told the Truth like you could never dream of telling it, and I pity you, that you could see the inside of your own soul and reduce it like this, so pitilessly. So carelessly. With the vacuous deficiency of,

Oh, this is pretty.

Regan had spent months adjusting to those questions, finding them less obtrusive now.

“Well, when he’s there, I feel more … like me, I guess. Like I finally have something to be proud of. I’m in love with someone I think highly of, and I have my work in an actual art show. A real one, not one my daddy bought me.” She exhaled swiftly, “It just feels new, I guess. In a good way.”

“Well, it’s not new in a shocking way. Does that make sense? I think I used to crave newness—No, wait,” she corrected herself, shaking her head, “No, not crave it. Aldo says there’s a difference between cravings and compulsions, and I think he’s right. I used to have this compulsion for newness,” she explained, and the doctor nodded, “but this particular newness is slower, steadier. I actually worked on my technique, you know?” A shrug. “I created something I’m proud of. I’m with someone who makes me feel, I don’t know. Good.”

“Makes sense,” the doctor said. “When is the party?”

“Next week.”

“Oh, soon. And the art show is…?”

“The Monday after, actually.”

“And have you told Aldo yet?”

“No, not yet, I want to surprise him.” Regan paused for a moment, half-smiling, and said, “You know, this is the first time in my life that I actually feel like an artist.”

“Oh?” asked the doctor.

“Yeah. I mean, Aldo tells me I am all the time,” she said with a laugh, “but it really doesn’t mean anything when he says it. Well, no,” she amended quickly, “that’s not true. I don’t think I would have started if he hadn’t said it.”

“Then why keep it a surprise?”

“Well, because—” She grimaced. “Honestly, I don’t know if I’m ready to tell him. For as long as I keep it a secret, it’s mine, you know? My thing to accomplish or fail.”

“And are you afraid of failing?”

“I’m … not exactly. I think—”

She paused for a moment.

“I think it’s the idea of an ending,” Regan said. “I feel like I’ve been going in circles for most of my life, just repeating the same patterns. This is the first time it feels different, and it’s not like I’m afraid, exactly, it’s just that I don’t know how it will feel. I’ve never done it before,” she admitted, “and it’s scary, I guess, but I’m not afraid.”