“Haissem is re-creating this?” I ask.
“Yes,” Luas replies. “Remarkable, isn’t it?”
Nine years later. Toby Bowles is now staggering under the weight of middle age. The regrets of lost youth, the deterioration of his body, the fear of approaching death, the vain search for meaning and reaffirmation-all these things sour his life, making him restless and depressed. His hair has thinned and his worry lines have deepened.
He walks up to a small garden apartment in Morrisville, New Jersey, letting himself in with the key Bonnie Campbell leaves for him under a loose brick. The apartment is dark. He turns to lock the door as he’s always careful to do, but Bonnie has been waiting and goes quickly for his ears, sending gusts of hot breath into the sensual pockets of his mind. His hand drops from the knob and they move quickly into her darkened bedroom before his eyes can adjust from the glare of the midafternoon sun.
Bonnie’s robe falls to the shabby gold carpet, revealing a middle-aged body of creases and folds desirable to Toby only because the candlelight is forgiving-and because Bonnie’s attraction to him refutes what he sees of himself in the mirror. The sheets are thrown back and their bodies embrace, fingers and lips uniting all that is opposite, other, forbidden. The delights are exquisite, suspending time. But bliss is fleeting, shattered suddenly by the distinct metal-on-metal click of the front door knob cylinder. Toby bolts upright out of the bed and Bonnie rolls beneath the covers, popping her head out the other side like a groundhog peering from its hole. A dark silhouette fills the doorway to the bedroom.
“Claire, honey?” Toby says in a voice trembling with remorse, shaken by the overwhelming surge of guilt that has been consuming him during his six month affair with Bonnie Campbell. Yet he’s almost relieved now that it will all finally be over; he’ll be able to confess his crime and beg her forgiveness. The candles on the dresser flicker low in an unseen draft, then brighter in its wake, illuminating tears streaming down the intruder’s face.
“That’s not Claire!” Bonnie screams, pulling the covers up to her chin. “It’s Tad!”
Bonnie Campbell had known Tad since he was a little boy; in fact, she had been close friends with Toby’s wife, Tad’s mother-Claire-making the humiliation of the encounter for Toby even more complete than if it were Claire herself. Bonnie owned the only pet shop in the small town, and as Tad grew older he purchased at least one of every creature she sold, climbing the evolutionary chain in step with his ability to care for them: an ant farm at first, then a fish, a lizard, some gerbils and hamsters, a rabbit, cat, and, finally, a dog, a German Shepherd. He even worked in her store after school. Tad knew her son, Josh, who was much younger; he knew her ex-husband, Joe; he had eaten many meals at their home.
Bonnie switches on the nightstand light, indignant and remorseless, full of pride for what she has accomplished, daring Tad to speak. But Tad does not see her. He sees only his father: naked, panting, stunned. Tears flood down his face, but he says nothing. He turns and leaves the apartment without saying a word.
Toby’s guilt and remorse vanish as quickly as they arose, replaced by rage and a sense of betrayal. He feels ashamed now, not for his own conduct but for his son’s. He could understand why Claire would track him down, but Tad? His eighteen year old son? And to stand there crying the way Claire would have done? This embarrassment crowns all the other embarrassments and disappointments Tad has caused Toby over the years: his lack of interest in sports, his lack of friends, his weakness and inability to stand up for himself, his defense of his mother against Toby’s abuse. Tad had judged Toby and turned on him at every opportunity, but now he had crossed the line. Toby turns out the light and slides back into bed. He takes Bonnie now with a passion he has never before expressed, but not because he wants her. In fact, he finds her suddenly ugly and repulsive. Instead, he takes her to reestablish who is the father and who is the son, to reclaim his biological position as accuser and Tad’s as accused, to reassert his authority to judge what is right and what is wrong, and who is right and who is wrong. And Toby vows to himself to have Bonnie more often now, and to boast proudly of it and rub Tad’s nose in it-for, Toby believes no conduct can be sinful if it is done in the open and to teach a lesson. He will dare Tad to say otherwise, dare him to tell his mother and risk destroying her life. And if that moment comes, Toby resolves not to deny it because, in the end, it is Claire’s fault that he has turned to another woman, not a weakness of his own.
The light is back on now in the bedroom and Toby is pulling his boxers up to his flabby waist. He’s drenched in sweat. He promises himself that he will never forgive Tad. Ever. And then he vows to destroy him, as only a father is capable of destroying a son.
Suddenly the Urartu Chamber emerges into the foreground, displacing Bonnie Campbell’s seedy apartment. Haissem bows solemnly before the monolith, then walks over to join Luas and me. The glittering walls of the Chamber vanish just as magically as they appeared. The three of us-Luas, Haissem, and I-are left standing in the vacant corridor of the train station in front of the large wooden doors and near the animated stone sculptures on the wall.
Haissem turns to me and says: “The trial is over. A verdict has been reached.”
11
After the trial of Toby Bowles, I knew I no longer existed in the living world to which I had once belonged-your world, there on earth. Something momentous had happened to me, something so altering and absolute that reality itself was replaced by a new archetype of existence that could no longer be postponed or denied. It wasn’t a matter of voluntarily accepting the fact of my death, any more than one voluntarily accepts the fact of one’s life. It was more basic than that: a simple acknowledgment that this is what is now, and the other is no more.
Oddly enough, accepting my death wasn’t terrifying; it was, in a way, liberating. I no longer had to rationalize the bizarre things happening around me and to me; I no longer had to search for a cure to an illness or an injury that did not exist. And I realized I no longer had to carry the many burdens of life: I no longer had to go to work, shower, brush my teeth, eat, sleep, exercise, or take care of my husband and daughter. Death is the ultimate vacation away from everything.
Even so, I found admitting my death to be deeply shameful and embarrassing. In the end, death is the ultimate failure in life, the condition we fear, fight, avoid at all cost, that our every biological instinct and emotion abhors and resists. No one is admired on earth for having accomplished the feat of one’s own death; even the words used to describe it are pejorative: you’ve either “lost” your life, as if you’ve somehow been careless and misplaced it, or your life has been “taken,” “stolen,” “forfeited,” or “given up.” I was one of the losers now. The fact that all of the people in history who had come before me were losers too-and that all the people who would come after me were losers in waiting-didn’t make my being dead any less humiliating. Even though I had a pretty good excuse for not taking care of my husband and daughter anymore, I was still away from them. I had abandoned them. Even worse, I had abandoned myself-Brek Cuttler: human being, mother, wife, daughter, granddaughter, friend, lawyer, neighbor, American, all no more.
The more I thought about everything I had lost, the more angry I became. The injustice of dying after only thirty-one years of life galled me like nothing I had ever experienced before; it was a hot anger that burned hotter because I had no way to express the enormity of my loss, particularly to my Nana. She listened patiently, but she could not, I thought, understand my condition because, unlike me, she had died after having lived a full, complete life, raising her children to adulthood and seeing her grandchildren and even her great-grandchildren.