At the Bottom of Everything(70)
And then at some depth, streaming past, clearer than they’d been in actual life, were the Batras. Faces in a submarine window. The only way I can describe their expressions is: I knew I would rather be blind for the rest of my life than to have to look at them again. They were so clear I could see the tiny hairs in the pores of their cheeks. Words like devastation, grief, horror, shock are fingers pointing at an abyss; their faces were the abyss.
I must have screamed.
Somewhere far above me, or somewhere close but with many layers in between, I heard Thomas’s voice; I felt his hands on my shoulders, heard him saying something; I could feel the words but couldn’t understand them, they were like snowflakes or ash.
“Are we dead?” I said.
He didn’t answer.
I was so, so tired, I wasn’t sure if I’d actually managed to speak.
“I’m going to save you,” Thomas said. “Like you saved me. I can’t keep you from dying, but I can save you.”
“OK.”
“Can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Say something if you can hear me.”
“I am. I can hear you.”
“Are you breathing?”
“Yes.”
“If you’re breathing, just feel it. Forget your name.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’re breathing.”
“Yes.”
“You aren’t dead.”
“No.”
“Can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Move your hand if you can hear me.”
I moved my hand.
“Something was switched on when you were born, and it’s never been off, not for a second. Do you understand me?”
“No.”
“It was there before you met me, before you met your mom. It’s been running through the accident and the trip here and every conversation, every dream, there’s been this thing; it never flinches, it never closes its eyes, not even now, it doesn’t love or hate, it doesn’t want or not want, nothing has ever happened to it. Do you understand?”
“No. Thomas, I’m so sorry. I’m tired. Please. I’m so sorry. I’ve made so many mistakes. I’m so, so tired.”
“Squeeze my hand.”
“I am.”
“Just listen to me. You can fall back into it. It’s always there. It doesn’t care where we are. It doesn’t care what we’ve done.”
“I don’t understand. Please.”
“Just fall back. Fall.”
“I can’t.”
But I could. Because I fell. And the thing in me I would have said was me—it was unplugged like a refrigerator. I hadn’t known what silence was.
“Hello?” I said.
“Yes. You’re talking.”
“Thomas?”
I was still conscious, I’m pretty sure, but I was in rooms of my brain that I’d never been in. The best way to describe what I was experiencing then is to say that I’d been poured back into the lake. And that I understood, in the way you “understand” you have a body and a name, that it wasn’t really my lake; I’d been, at most, a gallon or two; I was dissolved. And among the things I discovered, in this new state, was that it didn’t matter anymore whether I was speaking out loud. I could talk to Thomas without opening my mouth. I could think at him.
Remember when we lay side by side on our backs on the sofa in your room and walked on the ceiling, stepped over doorways.
Yes.
Remember when we sat at the top of that hill in the sun eating a Kit Kat and said this was the happiest we’d ever be, that there was nothing else we’d ever need.
Yes.
Did you mean to stop the car?
I think so.
Did you think I would jump in the window?
I don’t know.
Are we here as punishment?
I don’t know.
Are we going to die?
Yes.
Do you forgive me?
Yes.
We were so young.
Yes.
The mistake was so small.
Yes.
The disaster was so big.
Yes.
My tears tasted salty and thin. I was rising, by that point, the sound was coming back into the world; I kept trying to open my eyes and realizing they were already open. My tongue was so dry it felt swollen. I could feel Thomas’s shoulder against mine; he seemed to be propping me up; he was tipping water into my mouth. I had to struggle to keep myself from falling asleep.
“Now are we dead?”
“No.”
I coughed and swallowed water.
The doors to the rooms where I’d been were still open, but I was back now in the ordinary, semi-ordinary, rooms of my brain; I didn’t know whether an hour had passed or a week. I felt as if I were treading water in a pool that was exactly the same temperature as my body. I was both as heavy as the mountain we were trapped in and completely weightless. The roaring behind the walls was louder than it had ever been, and I was trying to say this to Thomas, trying to ask him whether he heard it too, but I couldn’t remember what words to use, and it was too loud anyway.