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So people challenged him on his rationality regularly, presenting him with seemingly inexplicable synchronicities that he took joy in parsing. His most common explanation was that the brain took in huge amounts of information without our conscious knowledge. We always knew far more than we could explain.
It tripped our instinct not to walk down a certain alley, he’d say, or that a person wasn’t trustworthy. It let us predict and anticipate things if we’d trust those instincts. And it also meant that, when paired with people’s desire to believe in the mystical or magical, those things we noticed could be used to convince people we knew things mysteriously. Psychics and fortune tellers read us, not the cards or the spirit world.
We were all, he told us, walking, talking bundles of signs about ourselves, and sometimes other people could read them, even if we could not.
* * *
—
On Thursday I left work early to go to Sid’s funeral. My first funeral.
Since hanging up with Grin on Sunday, I’d spent every minute I wasn’t at work scouring my brain for evidence of other moments when I’d felt some kind of premonition, but I couldn’t find any.
I’d been so distracted by it that when Rhys called last night, I’d messed up. I spoke in monosyllables, and he got upset.
“If you’re bored of hearing about my shows, just tell me, Matt.”
“No, no, I want to hear, I’m just distracted. I’m sorry.”
But when he asked what was distracting me, I didn’t tell him that Sid had died. I didn’t tell him about how I’d known. Because telling my husband I had a deadly premonition that came true made me feel dark and creepy. And since Rhys was as practical as Shawn, there was no way he’d think it was really a premonition, so he’d ask all sorts of questions.
When I didn’t answer, Rhys said, “Okay, well. I’m tired. I guess I’m gonna go. I’ll talk to you soon.” His “I love you” was tinged with the minor key melancholy of “Cross-Country Blues” and I hated it.
I didn’t recognize anyone at the funeral. Even Carl, the guy Grin had said was Sid’s partner, only looked vaguely familiar. I wasn’t sure if I’d met him before or not. I had no trouble picking out Sid’s mom, though. She didn’t look like Sid, but she was the epicenter of grief and everyone else moved in patterns around her. She cried, and other people cried, and a priest or pastor or whatever you call those people said things, and I stood there alone.
What was the point of being here when the person I was here for was fucking dead and got nothing from it? I could almost hear Sid’s voice, sardonic and slightly gruff, in my ear. Been a second, Matthew. All it took to get you to hang out was dying, huh? Good to know.
I made a sound that might have been a giggle or a snort. The woman next to me offered a package of tiny tissues, and I stared at her in confusion because I hadn’t sneezed. Then I realized my cheeks were wet and my lips were trembling and I bolted, pushing past people and back outside, wiping my face on my sleeve.
I walked aimlessly, feeling light-headed and sick. I wasn’t even sure I would miss Sid, not exactly. And that made me sadder than missing her. Because at one time she had been really important to me, and if that could just fade—if feelings for someone could disappear just like that, then that must be how it happened.
That must be how people left each other. Because little by little their caring just went away.
My mother’s red lipstick, a kiss on my forehead, her shining eyes, her smiling mouth calling me tesoro, then nothing nothing nothing.
I was shaking even though it wasn’t cold out, and I stumbled to a bench on the corner and fumbled my phone out of my pocket. Rhys answered on the second ring, his voice tired and wary.
“Hey, babe.”
“Rhys,” I choked out, and then I didn’t know what to say.
“Matt, what’s wrong?”
I felt like I couldn’t breathe, and my heart fluttered so fast I sat down, afraid I’d fall.
“Promise me,” I said. “If the feelings start to go away, promise you’ll tell me? Don’t just—don’t just disappear?”
“Baby, what are you talking about? What feelings?”
“Your—for me.”
I heard muffled sounds on the line and then quiet. “Matt, honey,” Rhys said in his calming-a-wild-animal voice. “What’s wrong? Where are you? Are you at work?”
“No, I’m in Greenpoint. Just promise.”
“I promise that if I start to feel like I don’t love you anymore I will tell you instead of disappearing. But that’s not going to happen. I love you more than anything in the world. Now what the fuck is going on?”
“Nothing. Sid died.”
“Who’s Sid?”
Had I really never mentioned her?
