Two Different Names

Shya Scanlon

"Buckle up!"

"They pulled out of the driveway," Rose said, tugging at her seatbelt.

"I think I remember where it is."

"They passed by Jim Sexton's place and saw Jim Sexton standing in the yard, holding a what-do-you-call-it. Where what is."

"The hospital?"

"What was Jim doing with a Dustbuster in the yard," she said.

"Why does Jim do anything."

"True, she thought."

"She said."

"'She said,' he said."

"Rose."

"I'm narrating."

"I know what you're doing. It's weird."

"He said, reaching for the radio to silence his wife."

"Jesus, I was just…"

"Then very smartly deciding against it."

"Is this the whole way with you doing this."

"I have Covid," she said.

"You don't know that," he said.

"I have a fever of a hundred and one point something."

"Three."

"I have a hundred and one point three fever and I'm allowed to speak feverishly."

"What's that book you brought."

"Libra. DeLillo? I heard there's always a wait."

"They won't make you wait."

"He said, privately thinking they'd make her wait. They drove up Tinker Street through the center of town. The Christmas lights were finally being taken down, and though she'd never liked Christmas lights, Rose realized that this year she'd be sad to see them go."

"Wait a minute, you've never liked Christmas lights?"

"Not really."

"But you're always the one who gets them out right after Thanksgiving."

"Because I know you love them."

"It's true, I do."

"And I love you, so."

"You're killing me."

"I've got to do it while I'm still alive."

"Fuck, Rose, come on."

"I was thinking about all the genres that came out of World War Two. Film Noir here. Theater of the Absurd in Europe. Butoh in Japan."

"What's the difference between Butoh and Noh?"

"I don't Noh."

"Did you just spell know n-o-h in your mind?"

"You Noh me so well. These genres came out of the death toll, obviously. Just the sheer numbers. But there was something else. There was the idea that the world could have produced something so monstrous, like we were going along thinking things were one way when really they were another way and it took twenty million people dying for us to admit it. They were another way the whole time and we'd just been in denial. It was in us and it had always been in us."

"I think Noh was maybe older, like traditional."

"It was a schizoid break, and when we started trying to put things back together they looked different than they had before. The stories sounded different."

"Well, but also the same. Maybe they ended differently. Sooner."

"Well, later with Butoh, which is crazy slow. But maybe it's the same. They ended before the redemption part, or else they went on so long redemption never comes. It's like we knew the story, but we'd been getting the timeline wrong. What's that thing about comedy."

"Tragedy plus time."

"Framing," she said.

"Why will you be sad to see the Christmas lights go?"

"And of course you had spy stories come out of the Cold War. Vietnam had conspiracy."

"You think DeLillo is a 'Vietnam' author?"

"Totally. He wrote about the Cold War all the time, but his soul is pure Vietnam. In some ways I think we still live in the Vietnam Era, or did until now. But I wonder what genres will come out of Covid. Maybe we're not ready to be changed. Maybe it's too big. It's all tied together. It's wrapped up in global warming, wet markets, industrialized farming, overpopulation, institutional racism, income inequality, police states and the semi-permeable membrane of our flesh as the site of governmental intervention. Listen to this: 'devices will drain us, make us vague and pliant.' He was writing about surveillance, U-2 planes, the end of privacy. But he could have been writing about iPhones. DeLillo saw it all coming. But it's not paranoia and doubt anymore. People get the whole QAnon thing all wrong. It's not like the conspiracy theories that came out of the 60s. It's not based in paranoia and doubt. It's based in faith. They're convinced they're right and we're convinced they're wrong. We're in the age of conviction."

"I don't know babe, you're kind of all over the map."

"So's Covid. Here's another one: 'The future belonged to crowds.' Different book."

"That's, what, Underworld?"

"Close. Mao II. And look, here we are. What has defined Covid more than crowds?"

"How about isolation."

"No one gets Covid from isolation. They get it from crowds. Crowds made us what we are. The future is here."

"Did you read the new excerpt in Harper's? Maybe three months ago."

"It was profoundly sad. DeLillo used to be this great seer who stood at some mysterious vantage and told us all where we were headed. Now he's like a befuddled chyron trying to compete with what's on screen. I cried."

"You did not cry," he said.

"I wanted to be the kind of person who'd cry at what's happened to Don DeLillo."

"The phrase 'wet market' is gross."

"It's just the opposite of dry market, like dry goods."

"Yeah, but it sounds sinister."

"It makes you think of bloody aprons and brain matter swirling down drains. Like a human scale petri dish. It's practically synonymous with pandemic."

"Wet markets need a rebrand."

"The image is obviously the problem."

"How are you feeling?"

"He asked, having noticed that his wife was visibly shivering. He suddenly imagined coming home without her, leaving her at the hospital and being home alone."

"They're not going to keep you."

"Who would make breakfast, he wondered," she said.

"Hey now, that's low."

"He wondered if she was actually harboring a grudge about being the primary breakfast preparer, or if she was simply reaching out for some typical marital gripe."

"She said," he said, "hoping to distract him from real thoughts of concern, because if he wasn't overtly concerned she felt safer."

"See, it's fun."

"You didn't answer my question."

"About the lights? I'm not sure. They drove for a while in silence, watching the winter landscape. Rose wondered if everything had somehow vanished beneath the snow, and the snow-molded shapes were empty, hollow white forms covering nothing. How would they know? They'd go about their lives as though everything were normal until the spring melted the snow away, revealing the true void that had swallowed the world. I think I'm feeling better."

"Better?"

"I think so. It's hard to tell. She flipped to another page and found another line she'd underlined, 'There is much here that is holy, an aberration in the heartland of the real.' A page later, another underlined phrase, this one just two words: 'eerie realness.' What do these things mean, she wondered. What kind of realness can be aberrant? What kind of realness can be eerie?"

"Reminds me of Lacan."

"Haven't read him."

"Honey, could you map it? I feel like that whole part of the city has all those weird one-ways?"

"I forgot my phone."

"Here."

"She searched for hospital, pulled up the address. They were still only halfway there."

"Am I going the right way?"

"I remember this."

"I wasn't driving."

"You were basically comatose."

"I literally have no memory of the drive."

"You were dying. I mean, you were totally convinced. You'd convinced me! You had me call your mother, which sucked."

"Absent actual experience dying, I don't know how you're supposed to tell the difference. Plus I'd never had a panic attack before."

"They were very nice after the scans, after the MRI. I'll never forget the discharge nurse telling you about her niece. You were so embarrassed."

"I was relieved."

"You wouldn't talk about it for days."

"Okay, I was embarrassed. Who knew I'd have some kind of unexamined skepticism? Some kind of thing against mental illness that it's weakness or whatever. I would have argued to the death, but then it happens and culture takes over and you retreat back into this version of yourself you barely recognize."

"You're hard on yourself."

"Obviously I can't handle isolation very well. Everything felt like it was closing in and there was nowhere else for me to go. What was that, a month after everything shut down?"

"You were going to tell me about Lacan."

"You took such good care of me through all that shit. I don't know what I would have done. I didn't know my ass from a tea kettle."

"You would have been okay."

"They're going to see us pulling up and think, oh great, another fake illness."

"Except that I have a verifiable fever."

"See? It's all in your head."

"That's funny."

"I'm a funny guy."

"Looks aren't everything."

"How are you feeling."

"Dude. Stop asking. Keep talking."

"I'm going to botch it."

"So botch it."

"Okay, so Lacan broke up experience into three realms: the Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real. The Symbolic and the Imaginary are basically what forms the conscious mind. This is where all our thoughts and dreams and actions come from, or where they have meaning. The Imaginary, by the way, isn't imaginary in the sense of being fake. It's based in images, or projections of value. Projections of desire. All we do in life is project our way forward toward desire that can never be achieved. Or actually we do two things: we desire things we can't achieve, which is a state called neurosis, which is a permanent state, and we avoid the Real, which is maybe the event horizon for what we can experience. The real is unmediated. It's symbolically impenetrable. And because it's the antithesis of anything we can really comprehend, even the slightest encounter with it totally fucks you up. But you can't encounter it directly anyway. The closest you get is an awareness of a disturbance in the realms you're conscious of. Kind of like how we know elementary particles are real now that I think about it. But anyway that's enough to cause serious trauma, this disturbance, because your whole self-conception relies on the stability of your neurosis. When the story you believe about yourself is fucked with, it's pretty disastrous. I thought of it because of that DeLillo quote about eeriness. Zizek has compared the Real to a distortion that endlessly generates what is being distorted. I saw it on YouTube. It's—"

"Have I told you I've been spending time on Craigslist? If I could make a rule, it would be that everyone has to spend an hour a day on Craigslist just looking at what's for sale. No specific category because that misses the point. Just, you know, for sale quote unquote. Seeing what people think has value is an important portrait of our time. What people are willing to give up."

"For a price," he said.

"What people are willing to put a price on."

"Old dolls," he said.

"Old clothes for old dolls."

"Handmade replacement clothes."

"A needle once used to make handmade doll replacement clothes."

"Three dollars. Serious inquiries only."

"But the price doesn't even matter so much. I mean, it does. People are desperate. But the ads themselves, they're these small unguarded moments of caring. There's a vulnerability to posting an ad for a used Matchbox or a paper bag full of wood screws. It's a window through the fantasy of who we think we are, or who we want other people to think we are, and it's okay because it's anonymous."

"It kind of levels the playing field."

"Yeah, we're all contributing to this system. Like the listing isn't important on its own, but it's playing an important part in the larger network of failure and need."

"I think we're getting close. Are we getting close?"

"Says we arrive in five minutes."

"How are you feeling?"

"Lightheaded."

"I'm sorry."

"So, if I do end up testing positive, you need to tell Jim."

"Jim who? Sexton? Why?"

"Because probably he either gave it to me or I gave it to him. Either way he needs to get tested if he hasn't already."

"What are you talking about?"

"Wednesday. The night they stormed the capitol?"

"We didn't see Jim that night did we?"

"Well, you went to bed but I stayed up watching. I had to see those fuckers vote. I refused to go to sleep until they voted because after that day it just seemed like anything could happen. There was nothing I wouldn't put past them and I didn't want to wake up in a different world than the one I'd fallen asleep in, you know what I mean? So I stayed up, and I was drinking, obviously, and after the vote I was having one last beer and I saw Jim outside smoking and so I went out and bummed a smoke, so—"

"This was outside?"

"By his garage under that light, he—"

"I seriously doubt you could have caught it from smoking near Jim." 

"No, it wa—"

"Oh, did you share a cigarette or something?"

"He said, interrupting her again."

"Okay."

"He was finding it hard to let Rose finish because he sensed, he felt in some worm-like way deep inside of him that what she was trying to say was going to be hard."

"I said okay. I'm sorry. You're freaking me out!"

"Are you going to listen?"

"Yes."

"So I was drunk and I wanted a cigarette. Jim's obviously not someone I look to for conversation, I've always found him creepy, the way he talks about his dead wife like she's just in another room, I mean, right? But the fact that he was up at that hour made me think he probably just watched the vote too. I went out there and he gave me a cigarette and I wasn't paying attention, but he wasn't really talking and then suddenly he pushes me up against the garage door and he's kissing me."

"He what?!"

"He kissed my mouth. I couldn't move."

"He kissed you?! Fucking Jim our fucking neighbor?"

"Then he stopped."

"Holy fucking shit. Then what?"

"And then I went back home."

"That's it?"

"You mean did he like rape me? No."

"And you're okay? I mean, he didn't hurt you?"

"Physically? No. He—"

"Holy fucking shit. I can't even believe it."

"It happened."

"No, yes, of course! I just mean, what the fuck was he thinking?"

This is what Jim Sexton was thinking. While watching news of patriots attempting to prevent the usurper from being declared the new president, Jim had had an epiphany. His body had been flooded with a dark power it would take him months to fully manifest and which when Rose had come to smoke his cigarettes had still been largely nascent, a dim awareness that his person contained some manner of spiritual filth, and that in order to become clean he needed to evacuate this filth into the bodies of women. When he'd accosted Rose his own corporeal form had recoiled at the immobile form it had held, the young woman's stiff body strangely enervating, and he'd stepped back to let the pale creature peel away, scurry back to her lightless hole. He'd watched her go and after a while he'd returned inside to his wife. For weeks he'd been hearing sounds issuing from inside her urn, and that morning he'd emptied its contents onto the living room floor in order to sift through the ashes and shards in search of the source of those noises. He'd sifted through them over and over, and had finally vacuumed them up, and the afternoon Rose's husband drove her to the hospital Jim was in the process of scattering her ashes around the yard so she would be able to speak more freely. It will work. By spring, Rose and her husband will move out of their house, which will be purchased by a single woman from the city, and this woman will become Jim's first true gift. He is coming into a new version of himself, and he will bring the world with him.

"So," Rose said. "He should get tested."

"I don't give a shit if he has Covid, are you kidding? I'm going to call the cops. Should I call the cops?"

"It was over in a second. We were both drunk."

"How do you know he was drunk?"

"He'll say it was consensual. It will be a she said he said."

"Yea but… I mean… Gimme the phone."

"No."

"Rose!"

"Just drive okay? You literally just swerved."

"Okay, okay, let's talk about this after the hospital. You just said he… It's sexual assault, right? I'll talk to Jennifer. She can maybe tell us our legal options."

"Jennifer, your brother's wife? Please don't. She already thinks I'm an alcoholic."

"No she doesn't! Plus that's totally… Please give me the phone?"

"She could tell he was getting angry."

"I'm not angry. I mean, yes, I'm fucking angry, but not at you."

"It's natural to get angry when someone you love is hurt. I was reading about it. You get mad because it feels like they're doing it to you. Their pain hurts you, and it's their fault or it feels that way. It's natural. If you loved me, you'd be angry at me."

"Rose, please."

"I love you."

"I love you, too. You're going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay."

"Not really, but that's okay too. I think I've figured out why I'll miss the Christmas lights."

"Why."

"Because I finally believe."

"In God?"

"Santa Claus."

"There it is."

"I mean, not literally. But also, kind of literally. We don't see him directly, but we see evidence of him. That disturbance. The lights and the feeling. It points in a direction."

"Stay with me Rose."

"It's an apophatic theology, the allegory of the cave. We conjure the vision, a cliché that confirms some basic animal desire, and that vision is false, it has to be, but what it's there for is more real than anything."

"What's real is that we're here."

"Don't be. Don't be. It's good. It's better this way."

"Don't be what?"

"They pulled up to the emergency room. She took off her seatbelt. Thank god, she said. I'm scared, she thought. She flipped to another underlined line in Libra. 'The same ship used two different names.' This used to be the way of things. Explanations were up for grabs. Nothing was fixed. But that had now changed. The lights had been taken down, but what they illuminated was finally clear. The virus had just been a crack in their chrysalis, the new, immutable form emerging with new ways to see the world. There was no return. There was no more fear. Her husband reached over and took the phone, then he got out of the car. 'Stay here,' he said."