States of Being by Jared Levy
Associate editor Zoa Coudret on today’s bonus story: “States of Being” escalates quickly and darts in surprising directions. Once it starts moving, it refuses to stop. The irrevocable changes that result from a silly diversion contain haunting echoes of what happens while living in uncertain, isolated times.
States of Being
One day during the pandemic, my girlfriend Sarah and I walked around the park. I threw a frisbee in the air and she said to me, “What if you dressed up as my dad and we played catch?”
We were running out of ideas, so I agreed. We went home, I found a Hawaiian shirt, and I put it on. I wore tan chino shorts and we tossed a ball, back and forth, in the street.
“This is good,” I said, “but can you dress up as my mom and we'll paint flower pots?”
She agreed and we went inside. She put on a smock, pulled her hair into a bun, and we painted ceramic flower pots with yellow hearts and daffodils.
“I bet your mom would love to see her dad,” she said. “Would you dress up as him?”
“My grandpa?” I said.
“Yes,” she said.
Because we were bored and had done so much therapy, we tried it out. Maybe there would be some secret benefit.
I went into the closet and found a beret my grandpa used to wear. A bolo tie, too. Then I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I pulled the bags under my eyes. My grandpa and I both had bags under our eyes and the more I pulled them, the more mine looked like his.
I went downstairs and Sarah was practicing a Long Island accent like my mom’s.
“You got into law school? Ya kiddin’ me!” she said.
“You're really getting into this,” I said.
“Look who’s talking, bubala,” she said, and we laughed.
I sat on the couch as my grandfather, and Sarah, who was now my mom, asked me how I was doing in the afterlife.
“Are you proud of me, daddy? I tried to do my best. Really, I did,” she said, and cried into my arms.
One moment, I was her great-great grandfather, returned from the Civil War. The next, she was a mother or a sister or a wife from my family.
I perfected the accents: Greek and English. She learned Hebrew prayers. As we got further into the past, the words we had for one another became scarcer. Sometimes we just communicated with long looks into each other's eyes as we tried to see what the other was seeing. I wept when my great-grandfather's grandmother hugged me like she hugged her son before he immigrated to America.
The relations between us became as fluid as time as we shifted for long spells. I forgot who I was, my grounding in myself, as I kept changing clothes and identities.
Months into our transformation, our phones gathered dust. The electric company turned off the power and we lived by candlelight. My sister visited and said, “Jared, what the hell? It’s me, Amanda. Why did you stop answering my calls?”
How do you tell a distant relative you're trapped in the past?
I closed the door in her face and bolted it shut. I turned and watched Sarah tighten a corset which she crafted out of fabric and coat hangers.
Journals of our discoveries littered the floor. We could smell each other’s teeth. I felt my moods shift wildly as I became more primordial. Once we were past the dawn of civilization, we abandoned our clothes and collected food in the park, the same one where we played frisbee months before.
People stared.
Then someone called the police, and we were detained before they figured out who we were and contacted our families. My mom came to see us, puzzled by the states of our being.
“Why are you doing this to me?” my mom yelled, muffled through her mask. “Where did I go wrong?”
We went into quarantine before being separated and taken to neighboring psychiatric facilities. The pandemic continued through our recovery. Though we could not see each other, we howled for each other through the windows at night.
What I remember is white pills in Dixie cups. Lectures on how to hold a spoon. I was instructed to focus on the present moment. Memories started to lift out of the fog: our first date at Fountain Porter; hot bagels in Montreal. I was back in my world and this life was vivid to me.
I felt renewed in my body. My senses returned—a slight ringing in the ears; the long bristles of my mustache that I could almost chew—but I couldn’t help feeling nostalgic for the past Sarah and I shared. I missed her and I missed us.
My mom came to pick me up and wept, seeing me in normal street clothes. I asked her, “Where’s Sarah?” and she looked at me, stunned.
“She can’t get out.”
“Get out?”
“She won’t leave the past.”
I asked to see her immediately.
“The doctors say that's not a good idea. They say it could lead to relapse.”
“I don't care. I need to see her.”
I walked across the courtyard, past the trees, and into her facility. There were women dragging their knuckles across the ground. Rubbing two sticks together to make a fire. A small spark existed within me, wanting to be near them. I was them once, too.
An orderly took me to Sarah’s room. He opened the door, left, and in the corner, I saw Sarah: an amoeba with one blinking eye.
“You’re going all the way back,” I said.
She blinked her eye.
I looked at her, the first living being, and wondered, How do we go forward?
Jared Levy has stories published in several regional and international journals including Apiary Magazine, The Matador Review, and Cleaver Magazine, for which his short story “Waiting for You in Paris” was nominated for a Pushcart Award. He holds a BA in Philosophy from Bates College and is a recipient of support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Lacawac Artists’ Residency, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. He is a proud member of the Backyard Writers Workshop in Philadelphia, Pennsylvainia, and an MFA candidate at Warren Wilson College.
