Turtles All the Way Down

  "Don't waste the money, okay?"

  "Don't worry, Holmesy. This car is only going to appreciate in value. Liam is a future collector's item. I've named him Liam, by the way." I smiled--it was an inside joke that literally no one else would get.

  As we walked across the parking lot, Daisy handed me a thick book, Fiske Guide to Colleges. "I also picked this up, but it turns out I don't need it because I'm definitely going to IU. I always knew that college was expensive, but some of these places cost almost a hundred grand per year. What do they do there? Are the classes on yachts? Do you get to live in a castle and get served by house-elves? Even Rich Me can't afford fancy college."

  Certainly not if you're buying cars, I wanted to say, but instead I asked her about the Pickett disappearance. "You ever figure out what 'the jogger's mouth' was?"

  "Holmesy," she said. "We got the reward. It's over."

  "Right, I know," I said, and before I could say anything else, she spotted Mychal across the parking lot and ran off to hug him.

  --

  All morning, I lost myself in Daisy's college book. Every now and again, a bell would sound, and I'd move to a different room, sitting at a different desk, and then I'd go back to reading the college guide, holding it on my lap under the desk. I'd never really thought about going to college anywhere but Indiana University or Purdue--my mom had gone to Indiana and my dad to Purdue--and they were both cheap compared with going to school out of state.

  But reading through the hundreds of colleges in this book, which were rated on everything from academics to cafeteria quality, I couldn't help but imagine myself at some small college somewhere on a hilltop in the middle of nowhere with two-hundred-year-old buildings. I read about one school where you could use the same library study carrel that Alice Walker had. Admittedly, fifty thousand would hardly make a dent in the tuition, but maybe I could get a scholarship. My grades were good, and I was a competent standardized test taker.

  I let myself imagine it--taking classes like Politicized Geography and Nineteenth-Century British Women in Literature in small classrooms, everyone seated in a circle. I imagined the crunch of gravel paths under my feet as I walked from class to the library, where I'd study with friends, and then before dinner at a cafeteria that served everything from cereal to sushi, we'd stop at the college coffee shop and talk about philosophy or power systems or whatever you talk about in college.

  It was so fun to imagine the possibilities--West Coast or East Coast? City or country? I felt like I might end up anywhere, and imagining all the futures I might have, all the Azas I might become, was a glorious and welcome vacation from living with the me I currently was.

  I broke away from the college guide only for lunch. Across the table from me, Mychal was working on a new art project--meticulously tracing the waveforms of some song onto a sheet of thin, translucent paper--while Daisy regaled our lunch table with the story of her car purchase, without ever quite revealing how she came across the necessary funds. After I'd eaten a few bites of my sandwich, I took out my phone and texted Davis. What time tonight?

  Him: Looks like it's going to be overcast tonight so no meteor shower.

  Me: My primary interest is not the meteor shower.

  Him: Oh. Then after school?

  Me: I've got a homework date with Daisy. Seven?

  Him: Seven works.

  --

  After school, Daisy and I locked ourselves in my room to study for a couple hours. "It's only been three days since I retired from Chuck E. Cheese, but it's already shocking how much easier school is," she said as she unzipped her backpack. She pulled out a brand-new laptop and set it up on my desk.

  "Jesus, Daisy, don't spend it all at once," I said quietly, so Mom wouldn't hear. Daisy shot me a look. "What?"

  "You already had a car and a computer," she said.

  "I'm just saying you don't want to spend all of it."

  She rolled her eyes a little, and I said what again, but she disappeared into her online world. I could see her screen from the bed--she was scrolling through comments on her stories as I read one of Alexander Hamilton's Federalist essays for history. I kept reading the words but not understanding them, then circling back, reading the same paragraph over and over again.

  Daisy was quiet for a few minutes, but at last said, "I try really hard not to judge you, Holmesy, and it's slightly infuriating when you judge me."

  "I'm not judging--"

  "I know you think you're poor or whatever, but you know nothing about being actually poor."

  "Okay, I'll shut up about it," I said.

  "You're so stuck in your head," she continued. "It's like you genuinely can't think about anyone else." I felt like I was getting smaller. "I'm sorry, Holmesy, I shouldn't say that. It's just frustrating sometimes." When I didn't respond, she kept talking. "I don't mean that you're a bad friend or anything. But you're slightly tortured, and the way you're tortured is sometimes also painful for, like, everyone around you."

  "Message received," I said.

  "I don't mean to sound like a bitch."

  "You don't," I said.

  "Do you know what I mean, though?" she asked.

  "Yeah," I said.

  We studied together quietly for another hour before she said she needed to leave for dinner with her parents. When she got up to leave, we both said, "I'm sorry," at the same time, then laughed. By the time Davis texted me at 6:52, I had mostly forgotten about it.

  Him: I'm in your driveway should I come in?

  Me: No no no no nope no I will be out shortly.

  Mom was emptying the dishwasher. "Headed out to dinner," I told her, and then grabbed my coat and got out the door before she could inquire further.

  "Hi," he said as I climbed into his car.

  "Hi back," I said.

  "Have you eaten?" he asked.

  "I'm not really hungry, but we can get food somewhere if you are," I said.

  "I'm good," he said, backing up. "I actually kind of hate eating. I've always had a nervous stomach."

  "Me too," I said, and then my phone started ringing. "It's my mom. Don't say anything." I tapped to answer. "Hey."

  "Tell the driver of that black SUV to turn around this instant and come back to our house."

  "Mom."

  "This isn't going further without me meeting him."

  "You have met him. When we were eleven."

  "I am your mother, and he is your--whatever he is--and I want to talk to him."

  "Fine," I said, and hung up. "We, uh, need to go into the house if that's okay, and meet my mom."

  "Cool."

  Something in his voice reminded me that his mom was dead, and I thought about how everyone always seemed slightly uncomfortable when discussing their fathers in front of me. They always seemed worried I'd be reminded of my fatherlessness, as if I could somehow forget.

  --

  I never realized how small my house was until I saw Davis seeing it--the linoleum in the kitchen rolling up in the corners, the little settling cracks in the walls, all our furniture older than I was, the mismatched bookshelves.

  Davis looked huge and misplaced in our house. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen a guy inside this room. He wasn't quite six feet tall, but somehow his presence made the ceilings seem low. I felt embarrassed of our dusty old books and the walls decorated with family photos instead of art. I knew I shouldn't be ashamed--but I was anyway.

  "It's nice to see you, Ms. Holmes," Davis said, offering a handshake. My mom hugged him. We all sat down at our kitchen table, which almost never had more than two people at it--Mom and me. It seemed overfull.

  "How are you, Davis?" she asked.

  "Things are good. As you may have heard, I am kind of an orphan, but I am well. How are you?"

  "Who looks after you these days?" she asked.

  "Well, everybody and nobody, I guess," he said. "I mean, we have a house manager, and there's a lawyer guy who does the money stuff."

  "You're a j
unior at Aspen Hall, yes?" I closed my eyes and tried to telepathically beg my mother not to attack him.

  "Yes."

  "Aza is not some girl from the other side of the river."

  "Mom," I said.

  "And I know you can have anything the moment you want it, and that can make a person think the world belongs to them, that people belong to them. But I hope you understand you are not entitled to--"

  "Mom," I said again.

  I shot Davis an apologetic look, but he didn't see, because he was looking at my mom. He started to say something, but then had to stop, because his eyes were welling up with tears.

  "Davis, are you all right?" my mom asked. He tried to speak again but it devolved into a choked sob.

  "Davis, I'm sorry, I didn't realize . . ."

  Blushing, he said, "I'm sorry."

  Mom started to reach a hand across the table, but then stopped herself. "I just want you to be good to my daughter," she said. "There's only one of her."

  "We have to get going," I announced.

  Mom and Davis continued their staring contest, but Mom finally said, "Back by eleven," and I grabbed Davis by the forearm and pulled him out the front door, shooting Mom a look as I went.

  --

  "Are you okay?" I asked as soon as we were safely inside his Escalade.

  "Yeah," he said quietly.

  "She's just really overprotective."

  "I get it," he said.

  "You don't need to be embarrassed."

  "I'm not embarrassed."

  "Then what are you?"

  "It's complicated."

  "I've got time," I told him.

  "She's wrong that I can have anything I want whenever I want it."

  "What do you want that you don't have?" I asked.

  "A mother, for starters." He put the car into reverse and backed out of the driveway.

  I wasn't sure what to say, so eventually I just said, "Sorry."

  "You know that part of Yeats's 'The Second Coming' where it's, like, 'The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity'?"

  "Yeah, we read it in AP."

  "I think it's actually worse to lack all conviction. Because then you just go along, you know? You're just a bubble on the tide of empire."

  "That's a good line."

  "Stole it from Robert Penn Warren," he said. "My good lines are always stolen. I lack all conviction." We drove across the river. Looking down, I could see Pirates Island.

  "Your mom gives a shit, you know? Most adults are just hollowed out. You watch them try to fill themselves up with booze or money or God or fame or whatever they worship, and it all rots them from the inside until nothing is left but the money or booze or God they thought would save them. That's what my dad is like--he really disappeared a long time ago, which is maybe why it didn't bother me much. I wish he were here, but I've wished that for a long time. Adults think they're wielding power, but really power is wielding them."

  "The parasite believes itself to be the host," I said.

  "Yeah," he said. "Yeah."

  --

  As we walked up to the Pickett house, I could see two place settings at one corner of Davis's huge dining room table. A candle flickered between the settings, and the first floor of the house was lit a soft gold. My stomach was all turned around, and I had no desire to eat, but I followed him in. "I guess Rosa made us dinner," he said to me. "So we should at least have a few bites to be polite."

  "Hi, Rosa," he said. "Thanks for staying late."

  She pulled him into a big bear hug. "I made spaghetti. Vegetarian."

  "You didn't need to do this," he said.

  "My children are grown-ups, so you and Noah are the only little boys I have left. And when you tell me you have a date with your new girlfriend--"

  "Not girlfriend," Davis said. "Old friend."

  "Old friends make the best girlfriends. You eat. I'll see you tomorrow." She pulled him down into another hug and kissed him on the cheek. "Take something up to Noah so he doesn't starve," Rosa added, "and do your dishes. It's not too hard to wipe dishes clean and put them in a dishwasher, Davis."

  "Got it," he said.

  "Your life is so weird," I said as we sat down to eat at the table set for two, with a Dr Pepper in front of my spot and a Mountain Dew in front of his.

  "I guess," he said. He raised his can of soda. "To weird," he said.

  "To weird." We clinked cans and sipped.

  "She acts like a parent," I said.

  "Yeah, well, she's known me since I was a baby. And she cares about us. But she also gets paid to care about us, you know? And if she didn't . . . I mean, she'd have to find a different job."

  "Yeah," I said. It seemed to me that one of the defining features of parents is that they don't get paid to love you.

  He asked me about my school day, and I told him I'd had a fight with Daisy. I asked about his day at school, and he said, "It was okay. There's this rumor at school that I killed not only my dad, but also my mom . . . so. I don't know. I shouldn't let it get to me."

  "That would get to anyone."

  "I can take it, but I worry about Noah."

  "How is Noah?"

  "He climbed into bed with me last night and just cried. I felt so bad I loaned him my Iron Man."

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  "He's, just . . . I guess at some point, you realize that whoever takes care of you is just a person, and that they have no superpowers and can't actually protect you from getting hurt. Which is one thing. But Noah is starting to understand that maybe the person he thought was a superhero turns out sort of to be the villain. And that really sucks. He keeps thinking Dad is going to come home and prove his innocence, and I don't know how to tell him that, you know, Dad isn't innocent."

  "Does the phrase 'the jogger's mouth' mean anything to you?"

  "No, but the cops asked me that, too. Said it was in Dad's phone."

  "Yeah."

  "I mean, my father is many things--but a jogger is not one of them. He thinks exercise is irrelevant, because Tua is going to unlock the key to eternal life."

  "Seriously?"

  "Yeah, he believes Malik is going to be able to identify some factor in tuatara blood that makes them age slowly, and then he's going to 'cure death,'" Davis said, using air quotes. "That's why his will leaves everything to Tua--he thinks he's going to be remembered as the man who ended death." I asked him if Tua would really get all of his dad's money, and he laughed a little and said, "Everything. The business, the house, the property. I mean, Noah and I have plenty of money for college and everything--but we're not gonna be rich."

  "If you have plenty of money for college and everything, you're rich."

  "True. And Dad doesn't owe us anything. I just wish he'd, you know, do the dad stuff. Take my brother to school in the morning, make sure he does his homework, not disappear in the middle of the night to escape prosecution, et cetera."

  "I'm sorry."

  "You say that a lot."

  "I feel it a lot."

  He looked up at me. "Have you ever been in love, Aza?"

  "No. You?"

  "No." He glanced down at my plate, then said, "Okay, if neither of us is going to eat, we should probably go outside. Maybe we'll catch a break in the clouds."

  --

  We put our coats back on and walked outside. It was a windy night, and I tucked my head into my chest as we walked, but when I glanced over at Davis, he was looking up.

  In the distance, I could see that two of the poolside recliners had been pulled out onto the golf course, near one of the flags marking a hole. The flag was whipping in the wind, and I could hear the white noise of traffic in the distance, but it was otherwise quiet, the cicadas and crickets silenced by the cold. We lay down on the loungers, next to each other but not touching, and looked up at the sky for a while. "Well, this is disappointing," he said.

  "But it's still happening, right? Like, there is still a meteor shower. We just can
't see it."

  "Correct," he said.

  "So, what would it look like?" I asked.

  "Huh?"

  "If it weren't cloudy, what would I be seeing?"

  "Well." He took his phone out and opened it up to some stargazing app. "So, over here in the northern sky is the constellation Draco," he said, "which to me looks more like a kite than a dragon, but anyway, there would be meteors visible around here. There's not much moon tonight, so you could probably see five or ten meteors an hour. Basically, we're moving through dust left behind by this comet called Giacobini-Zinner, and it would be super beautiful and romantic if only we did not live in gloomy Indiana."

  "It is super beautiful and romantic," I said. "We just can't see it."

  I thought about him asking me if I'd ever been in love. It's a weird phrase in English, in love, like it's a sea you drown in or a town you live in. You don't get to be in anything else--in friendship or in anger or in hope. All you can be in is love. And I wanted to tell him that even though I'd never been in love, I knew what it was like to be in a feeling, to be not just surrounded by it but also permeated by it, the way my grandmother talked about God being everywhere. When my thoughts spiraled, I was in the spiral, and of it. And I wanted to tell him that the idea of being in a feeling gave language to something I couldn't describe before, created a form for it, but I couldn't figure out how to say any of that out loud.

  "I can't tell if this is a regular silence or an awkward silence," Davis said.

  "What gets me about that poem 'The Second Coming' . . . you know how it talks about the widening spiral?"

  "The widening gyre," he corrected me. "'Turning and turning in the widening gyre.'"

  "Right, whatever, the widening gyre. But the really scary thing is not turning and turning in the widening gyre; it's turning and turning in the tightening gyre. It's getting sucked into a whirlpool that shrinks and shrinks and shrinks your world until you're just spinning without moving, stuck inside a prison cell that is exactly the size of you, until eventually you realize that you're not actually in a prison cell. You are the prison cell."

  "You should write a response," he said. "To Yeats."

  "I'm not a poet," I said.

  "You talk like one," he said. "Write down half the stuff you say and it would be a better poem than I've ever written."

  "You write poetry?"

  "Not really. Nothing good."