June - The Liars 14 страница

"Just like French fries," Daniel had quipped as we got out of the car, and began to gather our things. He told us about the potatoes that they grew there and how the smell of the cars usually triggered a lot of cravings for fries. Usually every night during peak season everyone would gorge on the delicacy. It was a popular and inexpensive, and much better than anything a corporation could do, he assured me with a sly smile. From here we went to the kitchen, which was at the end of the hill the main office sat on, and a five minute walk ahead. As we descended, we could see huge strips of land that were used for farming and growing their own vegetables. Fruit trees lined the outer areas of the soil and extended all the way back to the kitchen building. Some were blooming with flowers, while others had richly populated stems and hung down heavily because of their weight. People had already been by earlier in the day to get what was ripe out of both soil and tree, so all we saw as we walked by were buds and food not ready to be consumed. It was incredible, seeing so much life bloom from out of the ground. It put my mural and my memories of flowers to shame.

After our walk through the kitchen, which turned out to be more of a kitchen-living-and-recreation area, we headed out to the shower facilities. An awning from the roof extended out and was able to cover some of the individual shower stalls against weather and sun, but for the most part they depended on the sun to keep the water at a decent temperature. Bathing was clearly not a huge priority here; Daniel stressed swimming in the river instead.

"But some people like to have privacy and mimic the comfort of home, and we get that," he said, pointing at the stalls. The six in total were all separate and divided up like many shower stalls I had seen in swim halls and community centers before when I was younger. In the winter, everyone used the showers that were located inside the kitchen building. Since many people didn't stay at The Bear over winter, the line-ups to get into the two indoor shower stalls were never too bad. Besides, people never sweated that much in the winter. It was summer, and the hottest month of July, that we had all to look forward to. Daniel gave us a mini-lecture on the importance of not using chemicals like harsh shampoos or hair supplies, since this water went right back into the soil. He was going to provide us with soap they had made themselves, and assured us we would be clean.

"The West wastes a lot of water. We have fountains that do nothing but shoot up water and waste it without thinking. We also have a strange idea that we must be completely free of all germs whatsoever, when most bacteria already a part of us help to keep us healthy," he commented, but I could tell no one was just swayed yet by the need to adjust their cleansing rituals. We moved on quite quickly from there.

Down another small hill, there were many silos scattered back beyond the kitchen and their presence marked the end of the property. The land slowly turned into trees and then into woods after that, and while there were pathways that we could use there, the populated living area had stopped. The empty grain silos were used as storage for winter gear and for the temporary people who came and went during their time at The Bear, like Jasmine, myself, and the three others in the van that day. The kitchen and first house (sometimes called The Office in a joking manner) were where the four more permanent residences stayed. Paul had mentioned early on that he and Tonya were together, and had been for quite some time. It had made his decision to stay at The Bear an easy one since she was there too and also didn't plan on venturing out. He alluded to some difficulties she had had with family, but didn't go beyond that. In The Office, the two of them lived and took care of most of the business side of things, though Tonya would often help out Daniel and Kristen in the kitchen, where the other two lived on a more permanent basis. I began to wonder if there was something going on between Daniel and Kristen, but I put it aside. He talked about Kristen the same way that he talked about everyone. He had a higher regard of respect for her, probably because he had lived with her for so long. She tended to most of the plants, and having been trained in biology and raised on a farm when she was young, so growing food and soil irrigation made the most sense to her. I could tell Daniel was impressed by this talent, and if there was anything else there, it wasn't my concern. My mind kept wandering to Daniel's living arrangement and trying to decipher how he felt towards people as we walked through the silos. I knew right away that he was skeptical of Nicole and Catherine (though Catherine seemed to be okay, just a little shy and going along with what Nicole was saying) and he didn't know how to read Ray just yet. Ray seemed spaced most of the time. His long afro was curling around his ears, and he had brought his I-pod with him. I had no idea where he was going to charge it, but he hadn't thought that far ahead.

One thing I could infer for sure, though, was that Daniel liked us. Especially Jasmine. Her talk from before had impressed him, and he was constantly trying to make sure she felt included. He was talking directly about the pregnancy in some conversations, and I began to grow tense, wondering if Jasmine wanted that to be a fact of her being here.

"If anything goes wrong, Paul says it's no issue to drive. I lost my licence a while ago, or else I'd take you. We do have one phone and that's Paul's mobile. Since you'll be with him a lot of the time in the office, he can help you out if you ever need to contact anyone. The phone's mostly for business, but a lot of people feel better just having it around. In the meantime, Kristen is first aid trained and though that doesn't always mean much, it does make some people feel at ease. When are you due?"

She told him in September, and they began to go off on tangents about alternative birthing practices, being born at home, and basically all the things that I already knew, but had taken me months to get access to. She was telling him about it within the first few steps onto the community. I knew they had known one another for a few months now, and they had talked on the phone, so this wasn't completely ridiculous. I tried to calm down, but it still bothered me. I had wanted to be a part of her and this process for so long, and now it wasn't even a big deal anymore. She was just telling everyone, even though Ray, Nicole, and Catherine could hear and were scrunching up their faces when Jasmine said that Paloma would be born at home. It didn't seem fair.

"There is safety in numbers, here," Paul told me, clearly seeing I was distressed. "And safety in seclusion. It's one of the reasons Tonya loves it here."

I nodded, and Jasmine began to touch her stomach more, to talk to more people about her pregnancy and the kicking that the baby was doing. She asked people to slow down so she could rest for a second. She was talking about herself, but she was talking about herself as a pregnant body. She was finally actually accepting it. Before, even when she had talked about her ultrasounds and Paloma moving, she had talked about it as something separate from herself. She was Jasmine, and then there was this weird phenomena happening at the same time. Now she was integrating those parts of herself that she had thought she lost. I came up behind her one of the times she asked people to slow down for her, and put my hand on the small of her back.

"You okay?" I asked into her ear. She looked up at me and smiled, really fucking smiled.

"Yeah, for the first time in ages, I am," she said, then starting again. "And so is Paloma!"

I watched her walk on the path, placing her hands behind her back and balancing herself. Daniel grabbed her bag from her - I already had the other one - and she was left to walk by herself. She was given the attention she had deserved for so long, but had refused up until this moment. It actually hurt me to finally see it given and accepted. But she had needed to wait. She had needed to fight for so long. To be pregnant where we came from at our age meant it was a mistake, meant it was an accident, a revulsion, and the worst case scenario. It meant she wasn't smart. I wondered what it meant here; how did it become so radically different that it finally made Jasmine feel okay with herself?

Daniel, like I was coming to realize, would provide the answer. "You know," he began, "when someone who knows how fucked up the world is actively tries to change it, I applaud them. Most people do. When someone knows the state of the world, and then decides to have a child anyway, they are usually hung out to dry. Why? They are raising the future generation, and they will raise them well because they know enough that they have to in order to survive. Even if the world stays the same, and there is no collapse, you're coming here so you have stories to tell your kids. Both of you."

Daniel looked back at me, and I felt my heart jump being included with what he was saying. He was making our lives sound so important, like Alexa. Only we didn't have to save the world this time around, we just had to keep doing what we had always done. I smiled back at him, before he went on in his discussion. He mentioned his favorite topic, the great equalizer in us all: fertilizer. "We are all dirt in the end. But someone who embraces that, and then lives with it, so they can pass it on? I think that's beautiful. Dirt can be beautiful. And if you don't mind me invading your life, Jasmine and Frank, I'd like to talk more about this sometime. We've never had children as a part of The Bear community, but there is a future for anything. No pressure, though." He held up his hands to further emphasize the joke, and gave me a small wink from over his shoulder. We had reached the edges of the silos now, and our tour was basically done. Daniel turned around and faced us all as a crowd again. "For now, let's not get too ahead of ourselves. Take some time, get to know one another, and get to know The Bear until dinner."

There was some small murmuring among us, and some people wanted to be assigned their silos so they could drop off their bags. Daniel took care of that as quick as he could, and he assured us that he would explain the more detailed procedures of the day schedule after dinner. When I realized that there was no clock that could let us know what time to meet for dinner, Daniel just told me that we'd know when it was time. We'd be able to smell it. Or to just come early, bring a book, and hang out until the cooking and eating goes around. They would not forget us, he told me. Even if we were here to forget.

Even when Daniel and I were close together, out of earshot of everyone else, he did not pry into what I was forgetting. He could tell, that unlike Jasmine, I did not feel safe here yet. I felt in awe of the land and the sheer immensity of it, but I was not myself yet. I thought back to my realizations in the car, and about how everyone there was broken in some way. Though Daniel had asked everyone's motivation for coming today, no one pressed him or Paul for why they stayed. I had not met Kristen or Tonya yet, and I couldn't ask them either, but I knew it would be another version of the same story. "Same shit, different day," I thought to myself, with a sigh. Paul in the car had at least given us a bit of his story, though he tangled it with the inferior state of the economy, but even in all of his confession, he did not concede to feeling whole. He knew he was missing something, and that even all of the work he was doing there may not lead him to that feeling of being complete. It was always something to work for, though. Even if it couldn't be perfect. It made me sad, though I knew its validity. I kept trying to find the last piece of myself to make me whole and I tried to replay those moments where I felt it the most. I thought back to seven years earlier, when I knew so little. I felt whole then. I was with Gerard, and he was teaching me things, but he was my whole world. I knew him, and that was all I needed.

Daniel took us to our silo last, and showed us where the candles were before taking off back into the kitchen area. Jasmine said that she wanted to rest awhile, and from her tone of voice I knew that meant alone. I left without complaint, and started to head towards the woods that outlined the back of the community. Paul had given us some warnings about the woods. He spent a lot of time there by himself, and it was perfectly safe, but the deeper you went in, especially if you got off the path, the more likely you were to find animals. Maybe even a bear. There had been no attacks, but it did happen. You had to be careful.

I approached one of the well worn paths at the mouth of the forest and took a deep breath before I went inside. I wasn't scared; I was actually overcome with an elated feeling that made me want to run into the woods, and keep running. I wanted to spend my whole life in there instead of in the real world, under the open sun, scaring me. I wanted to descend into the center of The Bear and stay there for my life. I wanted to forget the world, and that was why I had come, but I began to wonder if it was too late now. Did I know too much? Were my days reading theory damning? I felt too fractured all around to ever feel whole again. And the person that I had known so well before, knew as my own skin, was fracturing as well. I had been trying to fill in the pieces myself when I had done my readings, but now I wondered if I further separated them. I began to see the holes in all of the narratives of my life and I wondered how on earth I could form a cohesive story. Where did I start and Jasmine end? Gerard? How was I supposed to talk about my life without including their stories as well, but how could I, when I understood so little about each of them? How could I talk about them without talking about their personal history, their likes and dislikes, their interests and what had been happening all around them? I loved them both so much, but I knew nothing at the end of the day. Was this what Socrates meant? I could know nothing about anyone, nothing for sure, but I was sure that if I accepted that doctrine then I'd really descend into madness. I rejected that.

I thought of Paul again. It was never possible to be whole again, but it was possible to try. I headed deeper into the woods at a brisker pace, but I still was not running. I would wait this feeling out until dinner, I would hope for progress. Maybe I would get my answer by the end of the month, or maybe I'd leave more confused. Given the way that Jasmine had already felt towards this place, maybe we would never leave at all.

As I walked through the woods, I walked through my life at the same time. I replayed the images and events before myself like a dream. How could one man change me so much? How could he become so key and integral to my identity that even when he left for seven years, he never really did leave? I carried him around with me like a dead weight, and it had been only within the last two months that I had begun to feel its burden. I didn't get far in the forest or too tired before dinner. Though we had spent nearly the entire day in the car, my legs were exhausted. I walked and walked, but then stopped and sat on a log. I was alone. Completely and utterly alone. Everyone else was back getting to know one another or resting and checking out their new lodgings. Paul wasn't even in the forest; he had gone to see Tonya before dinner. This type of solitude I was not used to, there were no walls to close me in, and there was no one close by to hear anything. For the first time in a long time, I closed my eyes and cried. It wasn't simple tears that fell when I was upset; these were deep sighs and sobs. My lungs echoed violently and I sounded like an infant with colic, like one of the ones I had seen in the clinic. This was all that I had been afraid of expressing, even around people I knew and loved and trusted. With no one to witness a display of haphazard weakness, I let myself become overwhelmed.

This was the first time I had been away from Gerard. I was by myself right now because I had chosen to be that way. He had told me that the essence of freedom was choice, and in all of my readings, I was finding this response as well. He had chosen to leave me, he had chosen to go to Paris, and yes, he had set me free from himself. We could not have continued at the rate we had been. I needed that distance from his physical body, but he never really left me. He just crawled up inside my subconscious and refused to pay rent, and never got evicted. At least, until now.

Inside the forest, I was alone. I was by myself. I was away from my job, my stresses, my money, my family, the good and the bad. I had separated myself from Jasmine and I just walked into a place that didn't demand anything of me. That kept me secluded and coddled like an infant. No one knew I was in the forest, and no one could hear me sob. I sobbed and sobbed and could not believe that I could cry so hard. I felt dizzy. I desperately wanted a drink of water, but I didn't want to move. I stayed inside the woods and tried to separate Gerard from myself. I tried to evict him because he was not paying rent anymore. He was just there. He had always just been there, whether or not I had wanted him to be. Most of the time, I did. But things changed. I wanted to be by myself. I wanted to have those seven years back. I just wanted.... to be alone.

I stayed in the woods until dinner. Daniel had been right; while I couldn't smell the food that was cooking, I had somehow just known it was time to leave. I found Ray still outside his silo, hanging out with the person he was sharing it with. It was another guy about my age who had been here for the past few months, but was probably leaving soon. His name was Korey, and while I introduced myself to him, I was beginning to realize that there was no way I'd be able to keep track of everyone. There were fifteen people in total living here, and I had only met half of them. The three of us walked towards the kitchen together, and on the way I saw Jasmine with Daniel and Nicole. I smiled to myself; it looked as if they were already having their first disciplinary meeting, and now Jasmine was a part of their group, on the side of Daniel. I wondered if I could live here, if Jasmine decided to stay. Daniel had talked about children in the commune, and Paul had had experience with that. It was not a completely crazy idea, I was convinced. I knew that Jasmine would give our daughter a good education, but that was getting ahead. I was not really sure of anything yet, but I did know that I liked the woods. I had left so much in them already and it was just the first day.

I was in much better spirits while we ate the meal. It was a huge feast that seemed to take up most of the long table we were designated to eat at. The pots and pots of stew that were ladled out and passed around in bowls seemed to be never-ending. But when I considered how much fifteen people really ate, let alone fifteen people who had been working hard all day, it didn't seem to go very far at all. We all got a decently sized bowl along with some bread that had been baked that afternoon, and other leftover vegetables and fruit which were passed around afterwards. There was other food on the community ground that was out for people to eat if they got hungry later on, but for the most part, dinners were small affairs. At least, in terms of how big the meals were. The people all around, and the murmur of conversation, made up for any perceived shortage.

With the dinners that Jasmine and I were used to having, there had been just the right amount of people at Vivian's table to ensure that we were all included into one big discussion. The idea of having just one discussion at one time at The Bear's dinner table was just not possible, unless it was one person talking at everyone. Daniel did get up at one point and do that, but it was brief, and mostly to introduce everyone. After that, we all formed our own little groups, and talked to who we were sitting near. Jasmine was close by me, at the corner of the table, with Daniel closer to her, but still within earshot of me. Paul was at the other end of the table and with Tonya. They walked in together, murmured to one another, and almost completely segregated themselves off at the table, but other that those nuanced behaviors, it was hard to tell that they were in a relationship together. Occasionally I was able to see that Paul had his hand on her leg under the table, but they were very reserved in public, even if the "public" was the entirety of the commune. Tonya had not grown up on a commune, but she had been homeschooled most of her life. She had "family problems" that Paul had alluded to earlier, and she had lived on the street at some point. That had been where they had met, right around the time that Daniel and he were sharing information on From The Wilderness flyers. While Tonya didn't know as much about economics or business as Paul did, she was a fast learner. You had to be, she had stated, when you're homeless. Because she had seen things from the bottom, she knew how the top worked. Tonya came over to Jasmine and myself at one point during the meal, letting us know that the solar panel for our place would be coming tomorrow. It was a bit of a burden to put them up, but she assured us that they were getting some of the older guys who had done it before to help. Korey, who looked a little shaky and scrawny, had helped before and volunteered this time around. I was grateful for his help, because I still didn't even understand how solar panels worked, even though Gwen, another person who was staying in a silo close by ours, had tried to explain it to us both.

"So, there are two main types that are used. In concentrated solar power, the heat that the sun produces on these huge panels," she gestured with her hands, as if we were unsure how huge really was, "is taken and used as the energy source to boil water and then to produce power in the system. The kind we use is the slightly more complex grid system and using photovoltaics. This is when the solar cells produce the DC - direct current - power which fluctuates which how much light we have outside. For this to work correctly, we need a conversion to happen to obtain desired voltages, or alternating current - AC - which inverters are needed for. All of these solar cells, like the one that Paul and Tonya forgot to get for you guys, will be connected inside modules. From there, they are wired together to form arrays, and then attached to the inverter, which is what will produce your power." She smiled at Paul, to let him know she was kidding, but he was no longer paying attention. She turned back to us and shrugged her shoulders happily. "See? It's pretty easy. I can tell you more about the process, but I know some people prefer to just see the light rather than understand why it's there

I laughed a bit at her joke, and while Jasmine did ask a few more questions, the topic had gone completely over my head. Other than this small exchange, Jasmine and I didn't talk too much during the dinner, but she did slide her hand to me under the table and squeeze a few times. She was happy, and I could tell. I could not wait to go back to our room together. We had both been exploring what our new environment was like before we started the real work tomorrow. The sun was going down through the large kitchen windows, and when everyone was done their food, those who had not cooked headed to the kitchen to do dishes. Jasmine and I followed the rest of the people who had come today, along with Korey and Daniel, into the kitchen.

Jasmine and I took the middle position of drying dishes; there were regulars behind us who put them away in their proper space and then other people in front of us who did the washing. I was bogged down by how many dishes there were, but with everyone pitching in, it went by a lot faster than I anticipated. When we were almost done, Gwen, turned to us again and asked: "So, I don't want to be rude or anything, but are you two married?"

We exchanged glances as we passed dishes to one another, and took a moment to think about it. We had never been okay with that assumption before and the two of us didn't wear rings. But Gwen was smart; she had a science background like a lot of the people here, and was good at collecting clues and making inferences. She could tell that Jasmine was pregnant with our child together, but we didn't wear rings, and she could have realized that we were not legally married through a lot of other means. But she was still asking us. What she was asking and what she wanted to know was something different, and everyone else there wanted to know, too. I could feel the eyes on me as they waited for our response, including Daniel's. In this context, marriage was not a legal or social thing that was done because the society that it functioned in was now in the background. It was something more personal, deeper. It was something that linked people for a time period, possibly forever, or possibly just for a few days. It was a big deal, but it wasn't the same type of big deal it was away from here. Jasmine and I looked at one another, and then I nodded while she answered, "Yes, we are."

Gwen smiled, and then nodded her head. She expressed her delight that we found one another, if only for this time period. I saw Daniel look at the two of us and nod, too. I felt awkward with his eyes on me; I wanted him to say something about marriage the same way he had said something about pregnancy and raising children. Everything was done in a different context here, and it made it okay to do the things that we were doing. But he didn't say anything, he just smiled.

I felt an urge to speak up, but I suppressed it. I looked to Jasmine and wondered if she was feeling the same thing I was. We were married, yes. But I was Spinelli and she was Wyatt. She was legally married, and in fact, all three of us were married. I knew that something like that would be accepted here. They would be good with it. They would probably want to hear the story about how we had painted the rainbow, and then painted the rings on one another. They would want to know what we called one another, they would want to hear about the gardens, and they would accept the story as it was. Our story could be beautiful here, I realized, but my eyes met the floor instead. We still didn't say anything. We were forgetting, too. Willfully, but still forgetting nonetheless. We finished the dishes, and then said a quick good night to everyone as we went back into our rooms.

"Get some rest tonight, you two," Daniel greeted us last. "If there is any problems with the silo, just come here to the kitchen and knock on this door." He pointed to the brown one that went off to the side of the living area. He kept it locked - all the silos and rooms where people slept in were locked out of privacy - but there was a bell if you needed it and he didn't hear the knocking. Kristen slept in the basement, I noticed, and Daniel was upstairs. They were not a couple.

"Thanks," I said, and his eyes never left me.

Jasmine had set up some of her belongings in the silo that afternoon, while I had been in the forest. My bags were off to the side where the bed was, and her clothing and books were on top of the covers on the bed that was there. There were two floors to the silo, with a small staircase connecting them. The bottom one had a makeshift bedroom with some dresser drawers and a bed, along with a chair and a small kitchen table for a workspace. Both top and bottom had bathrooms and I dreaded going inside of it. There was no smell yet, but I knew it would be a matter of time, no matter how much sawdust Daniel said to use. They were to be taken out twice a day and we had been given the tour of where to take them. The second floor layout was very similar to the first, but Jasmine apologized for nabbing the one on the bottom floor first.

"I just don't want to take stairs. I know the other floor's bed is closer to the bathroom and that you'd probably hate it, but I need this bed," she said, explaining her choices.

"Remember the fourth rule, Jasmine? No apologizing for things like that," I said, kissing the top of her forehead. I assured her that her choice was okay, and I wouldn't have dreamed of making her climb those stairs in the heat. Now that we were away from people and all alone in our room, I could tell that Jasmine was anxious. Maybe she had been anxious the whole day, but had ways of distracting herself. Now, being faced with the sun going down and trying to set up the candles before it got too dark, she seemed to be fretting. I told her not to worry, to sit down in bed and get off her feet.

"Thank you," she told me sincerely. She was more willing to accept help, so she could not have been the same type of anxious that she normally was. I didn't want to probe the issue, because I knew, judging from how she was reacting all day, it would come up and be dealt with in her own time. She was in a safe place now. Finally.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14