Tasha
It is done.
I am free.
Lucy
I am alone.
Tasha has dissipated and I am alone.
I watch, alone, as Simon grieves. I watch, but I don't hear him. I can no longer hear the living. I watch, but I don't go to him. I can no longer visit or touch the living. I can only watch from behind a thick glass. Through the speculum, as it were. Darkly.
The glass that surrounds me blocks sound and movement. It locks me in their present, freezes time so my tattered spirit is trapped. Trapped, with Simon, in his present. It is a curse and it is a gift. The corners of myself are pulled and shifted until we no longer know ourselves. We are here and we know something but it is not ourselves we know.
The glass stands fast; it blocks and holds. But it is, after all, permeable. It allows something through, from the living to the dead. The wash of their feelings seeps through it; the sentiments of the living reach us. Their emotions sweep over us in waves. We are left drenched.
We curdle in the tide of Simon's pain.
We stand fast. We feel the current as it starts to temper, change. The waves move, as waves will. They ebb and flow and move and change and shift. They are towering, crashing monsters. They are an army of toddlers smashing everything in their passionate wrath. They grasp and pull. They give and lift. They move, and move, and move constantly, but remain always one substance. Always changing, never changing. Motion without movement. The vast depths of pain never leave, but they change. They calm, they shift, they are joined by new currents.
No, not new. The currents were always there. But now they are floods. Tides of bright curiosity and swirling happiness and a center of calm. We let them wash over us. We are bathed in their waters.
Simon The third Tuesday in November, in the story's present
I'm not all that surprised to realize that I'm dreading Thanksgiving. I've always hated Thanksgiving. The last four weren't much better than the first seventeen. Everyone at school celebrated Thanksgiving, so it's always felt awful to be the one person who has no home to go back to. Aimee and Jonah and Annika and Sarayah all went home, every year. They invited me, too. Every year. But I knew better than to go to other families' celebrations.
But this year is different. I won't be by myself for a change. I'll be with Baz. I'll be with Penny. I'll be with Ebb, who's driving back from Vermont tomorrow. On Thursday we're going to bake and cook together all day, and then we're going to have like a million people over for dinner. Friends of Baz's from school. Friends of Ebb's from who the fuck knows where. Friends of mine from the neighborhood.
This year will be better. This year is better. Now I get to watch Baz out of the corner of my eyes without the pretense of needing to see if he's plotting something. Now I get to listen without hiding as he sighs and stretches when he wakes up. I get to tease him when he sneaks snickers bars when he thinks no one's watching. I get to kiss his bottom lip when he chews on it while he's studying. I get to admire how his jeans hug his legs. I get to touch the sliver of his back I can sometimes see when he reaches up to grab something off the top shelf of the wardrobe.
I still can't stand the idea of being forced to be thankful, though. So I try to put the holiday out of my mind and just pretend we're having a big dinner party. Penny's vegetarian anyway, so there will be absolutely no turkey. I've also banned stuffing and pumpkin pie. I make an exception for cranberries, though. Obviously.
Simon The third Wednesday in November, in the story's present
I half expect Ebb to hike home with a giant staff and a long cloak. I certainly do not expect her to pull up in a sleek red Italian sports car wearing old jeans and a hoodie. There's a goat figurine hanging from the rear view mirror, though, so I guess not everything has changed. Ebb herself remains Ebb, through and through. She seems younger, though. Lighter.
It's so good to see her that I instinctively step forward to hug her as soon as she gets out of the car. She makes a small noise of surprise and hugs me back. I feel a little weird. Dazed. The things I'm feeling are so unfamiliar that I have to put them away for later. I feel a little embarrassed, but it's hard to stay embarrassed around Ebb, so it quickly fades.
We weren't supposed to start baking until tomorrow. But Ebb is super excited because she says she's worked out how we can do a violin cake and now she wants to try out her ideas immediately. I've already made and delivered all the Thanksgiving orders, so we have the bakery to ourselves and no schedule to keep to.
We fall easily back into our routines. She mixes the batters, I set the molds and slip them into the ovens to bake. Then I start the fondant and set up the station where we design and build new pieces for custom cakes. Ebb has a brilliant plan, not surprisingly. It involves a lot of delicate meringues and strands of spun sugar, and soon she and I are completely absorbed in testing out different textures and glazes. We finally get a few prototypes that seem promising. Now there's nothing left to do but wait for the cakes to cool and start building.
Ebb starts to make tea, like she's always done at this juncture in our cake collaborations. The feeling from earlier overwhelms me again. This time, I have the space to look at it, while she's busy fussing around choosing mugs to fit the moment and deciding what kind of tea she wants to make.
I feel kind of sad, and happy. I'm happy but my heart hurts a little. That part isn't unusual. I always feel sad when I'm happy. I keep trying to see my feelings. I feel hungry, hungry and very thirsty. I know by now that it's an abstracted feeling. It's a craving for something that doesn't exist, not for food and water. But that doesn't help me understand why I feel so strange. These are all feelings I'm used to. I always have this feeling of wish wish wish, that burns benignly behinds my ribs. The difference isn't there. Ah. The difference is something that's not there.
As soon as I notice what's different, everything shifts back. So I never have a moment of understanding it and feeling it at the same time. But this is what was different, a moment ago: I wasn't afraid. I was happy and sad and longing and resigned. But I wasn't scared. The fear snaps back into place with the observation of its absence. Now I feel kind of normal. I feel like me, like Simon. I feel ok, at home, familiar. This is what being me feels like.
Ebb turns around, balancing the mugs, and hands one to me. She sits down next to me. We sit and drink our tea and it's nice. Familiar. Then she says my name, and it comes out uncertain.
"Simon?" Almost a question. I turn to her.
"Sure enough," I reply, an echo of her. That works, and she laughs, and the fear that had started wrapping itself more tightly around my lungs loosens just a bit.
Ebb is many things: kind, perceptive, bullheaded, decisive. Never uncertain. The tea sits uncomfortably in my stomach as I wait for what comes next.
Dozens of things flit across the surface of my consciousness. She's going to tell me she's moving to Vermont permanently. She's going to tell me I didn't run the bakery as she'd hoped. She's going to tell me that it's time for me to move on. She's going to tell me that she's closing the bakery. She's going to tell me I don't need her anymore. She's going to tell me that I need to make a new life. That I need to let go of this part of my life. To carry on.
Layered over these thoughts are the others. The uglier, older, messier ones. I did something wrong. I made a mistake. I got something wrong, and now I am no good to her. I'm not what she needs. I disappointed her. I did it all wrong, and she's through with me. I'm a disappointment. I'm a failure. I'm wrong.
And ghosting over those feelings are the thoughts that stomp and stamp with the power of their certainty. This is all in my head. There's nothing to lose, because I never had anything. I work for her, I run her bakery. She has a fucking question. This is not life or death. Not everything is life or death. Not everyone makes everything into everything. She wants to work out a schedule or change the lease or something mundane. She's a normal person having a normal relationship with the person she hired to run her bakery. I am reading something into nothing. It's nothing. It's all nothing, there is nothing, it means nothing.
"Simon," she says again, declarative this time. "I have a thing I want to ask you. I'm not in the habit of asking questions when I don't already have a fair idea of the answer. But I don't want to hesitate on it any longer."
I kind of nod. I really can't do anything else right now. She looks at me, and her face changes. She reaches out her hand, cups my cheek, smiles a small, sad smile. Shakes her head, looks away.
"Ah, Ebb," she says. She seems to be talking to herself, but the words are spoken; quietly, but aloud. "When will you learn what it is to be outside the thing? Don't forget what it's like to be this boy."
Then her eyes turn back to mine and she says, "Simon, it's a scary thing to me, to wish. To think I can make things other than how they are. But I wish you were mine. I love you in a way that's confounding. I want to know I'll always have you near in my heart. I want to know that I have claim to see you as much as I want. I want to know that you'll come to me when you're in need or when you're happy or when there's nothing at all. I want you to be my child. My son. And I know it's a strange thing, to bring paper into the space between people and try to glue them together with it. But I want you to know, clear as clear, that you're my family. I'm scared to ask the thing, because I fear you'll not feel free to answer as you want. That you'll feel obliged or-"
I interrupt her. My mind is very, very slowly trying to pick apart her words. I am scared of misunderstanding. I am scared of understanding. I am scared.
"Ebb. Are you? I mean, is it that? Paper? What are you?" I shake my head in frustration. Tears fall from my eyes; around anyone else, that could never happen. But Ebb doesn't make me feel like my feelings make me weak. Ebb has always seen me calmly and straight on. So I think she might be asking what I think she's asking, but I don't know how to ask her if that's what she's asking. I don't even know how to ask it in my own head.
Wordlessly, she hands me a roll of paper towels, and I can't help smiling.
Then she says, "Let make it clearer than clear, then. I want to adopt you, Simon. I want to be your mother. I want to be able to give you things without you thinking twice about taking them. I want leave to scold you about getting enough sleep or to pester you about grandchildren. I want to be able to protect you and I want to be a part of your life, no matter where that life takes you. I want to be stubborn and I want to be happy and I want to know that no matter what happens, no matter how many mistakes I make or how many things I get wrong, I want to know that you are always, always, always mine. Forever and ever. No matter what. But only if you want that too. Only if it feels like a thing you would want, for you, not like a thing you feel you have to do, for me."
I feel like I'm not quite processing this, but some part of me must be, because this is what happens next: Ebb and I are hugging and crying and laughing and then just hugging. My happiness is still there, and my sadness, and the fear. But the hunger is gone, and the thirst. For the first time, I feel full. This thing that I always thought was part of me, the wishing and wishing and knowing I would wish forever. It's gone. I'm sure it'll return, as the fear does, and the pain. But. Now I know what it feels like not to have that wish chewing a hole through the core of my being. And I feel grateful, and the gratitude doesn't make me angry. It makes me full. It feels good. It feels like being home. It feels like having a home. It feels like belonging. It feels like everything I ever dreamed of and nothing I ever imagined. It feels like safety. It feels like joy. It feels like a beginning and an ending and a middle all at once. It feels like love. Like being loved. Like being whole and broken at the same time.
Honestly, I'm not sure what the fuck it feels like. Except, good. I know it's good. It's good, and it's for good, it's for real. It's forever.
