I am the God
Volume IV: The Choice
The test arrived on a Wednesday.
Not announced. Not dramatic. The way tests of the significant kind arrive — through ordinary channels, wearing ordinary clothes, presenting itself as simply the next thing in a sequence of things.
Marcus had a call at seven in the morning.
Chuck felt the call from three streets away — not the content, the quality. The specific quality of a professional receiving information about something that required immediate response.
He was at his table.
He waited.
The call ended.
Marcus's truck started.
Chuck sat.
He did not go.
He waited until eight, which was the usual time, and then walked three streets and knocked.
Marcus was back.
The truck was in the driveway.
He opened the door.
"Come in," he said.
The quality was wrong.
Not crisis-wrong. Wrong in the way of someone who has been to a job and found something that was more significant than the job warranted and is now carrying the more-significant thing.
Chuck came in.
"What happened," he said.
"Bill," Marcus said.
Chuck was still.
"His house," Marcus said. "I got the call at seven. There was water in the basement. A lot of it."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"The main line," Marcus said. "The one that runs under the foundation. It failed in the night."
"How bad," Chuck said.
"Bad," Marcus said. "The basement is — there's significant damage. His wife's studio is down there. She's a painter. Was."
"The paintings," Chuck said.
"Some of them," Marcus said. "The ones she was working on. The current ones. The finished ones were in the other room — those are fine. But the ones she was in the middle of—"
He stopped.
Chuck sat with this.
Bill's wife.
He had not met her — had sat on the porch with Bill and Marcus drinking coffee after the farmhouse job, had felt the quality of eight years in the way a name was said. Had not met the wife.
But the studio was in the layers now.
The paintings in the middle of their becoming — not finished, not stored, just being worked on. Present in the basement. In the water.
"Can they be saved," Chuck said.
"Some of them," Marcus said. "Maybe. I don't know enough about paintings. I fixed the pipe — the line is capped, the water is stopped. But the restoration—"
"That's not plumbing," Chuck said.
"No," Marcus said. "I called a water damage specialist. They're on their way. And Bill is going to call someone who knows about paintings. But—"
He stopped.
"But," Chuck said.
"But some of them are gone," Marcus said. "The ones that were flat on the work table. They were in the water for hours."
Chuck sat with this.
He sat with what he was feeling.
It was the specific weight of something that had been lost. Not his loss — not Bill's loss even, in the primary sense. Bill's wife's loss. The specific grief of paintings that had been in the middle of their becoming and would not finish becoming.
He felt it going all the way in.
The weight of the not-finished becoming.
He sat with it.
Here is where the test was.
He knew what was in the basement.
He knew — with the comprehensive awareness that monitored everything — what the water had done and what it had not done. He knew which paintings were gone and which were salvageable and which were in the uncertain middle.
He knew, because he was what he was and had arrangements with what he had arrangements with, that he could walk into that basement and address the damage. Not the pipe — Marcus had fixed the pipe. The paintings. The water damage to the studio. The specific restoration of what had been lost.
He could go there.
He could make it right.
He could give back what the water had taken.
It would take him — he assessed — forty minutes.
The complete restoration of everything in Bill's wife's studio.
Forty minutes.
First road.
Above. Universal. The comprehensive correction of everything correctable.
He sat at Marcus's kitchen table.
He felt the weight of the not-finished paintings going all the way in.
He felt the possibility of restoring them.
He felt the gap between the feeling and the doing.
He sat in the gap.
The second road did not offer restoration.
The second road offered: being here. Being in the kitchen with Marcus who had been to the job and had done the job he could do and was now sitting with the weight of what he could not do.
Being with the weight.
Not removing it.
Being with it.
Chuck sat in the gap between first road and second road.
He had made the choice.
The choice was in the layers.
He sat.
The test, he understood, was not dramatic.
It was not a temptation in the specific sense of something pulling him off the right path. He knew which road was right. He had known since March, had confirmed it three days ago, was confirming it now.
The test was the cost of the right road.
The right road cost him the paintings.
Not his paintings. Bill's wife's paintings. The ones in the middle of their becoming that would not finish becoming.
The cost of the second road was: not doing the thing he could do when the not-doing meant someone's loss.
He had known this abstractly.
He was knowing it specifically now.
The forty minutes.
The restoration.
Not done.
He sat with the not-doing.
"I could fix it," he said.
He had not planned to say it.
It arrived the way true things arrived.
Marcus looked at him.
"I know," Marcus said.
"The studio," Chuck said. "The paintings. I could go there today and restore it. Forty minutes."
"Yes," Marcus said.
"But—" Chuck stopped.
"But it would be the first road," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"The universal correction," Marcus said. "Above."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"The thing you do when you're above everything and can fix everything because you're above everything," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
Marcus was quiet.
He held his cup.
"And you're not going to," he said.
"No," Chuck said.
"Because of the choice," Marcus said.
"Because of the choice," Chuck confirmed.
"How does that feel," Marcus said.
Chuck thought about the honest answer.
"Heavy," he said.
"Yes," Marcus said.
"Not wrong," Chuck said. "Heavy and right."
"You've said that before," Marcus said.
"It keeps being true," Chuck said.
"Yes," Marcus said.
They were quiet.
"Bill's wife," Chuck said.
"Her name is Patricia," Marcus said.
"Patricia," Chuck said.
"She paints landscapes," Marcus said. "West Texas landscapes. The flat land. The light. She's been painting it for thirty years."
"The layers," Chuck said. "She's been painting the layers."
"Yes," Marcus said.
"And now some of them are gone," Chuck said.
"The new ones," Marcus said. "The ones she was in the middle of."
Chuck sat with Patricia and her paintings of the layers.
He sat with the irony of it — the paintings of the deep layers lost to water, to the shallow surface, to the ordinary contingency of a pipe failing in the night.
He sat with not going.
He sat with the weight of what he was not doing.
He let the weight go all the way in.
"She'll paint them again," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"The seeing doesn't go," Marcus said. "Just the paintings."
"Nothing lost," Chuck said.
"Just deeper," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"She has thirty years of seeing the land," Marcus said. "The water took the canvas. Not the thirty years."
"No," Chuck said.
"She'll paint them again," Marcus said.
"Differently," Chuck said.
"Yes," Marcus said. "Better, probably. The paintings she makes from the memory of the lost ones will have — they'll have the loss in them. Which the originals didn't."
Chuck looked at him.
"The layers," he said.
"Yes," Marcus said. "The loss becomes a layer. The new paintings will have the old ones in them, gone deeper."
"Nothing lost," Chuck said.
"Nothing lost," Marcus said.
Chuck sat with this.
He sat with the paintings going deeper rather than gone.
He sat with the weight of not going.
He felt the weight go all the way in.
He found that the full weight of not-going was different from what he had expected.
He had expected the weight to be regret.
It was not regret.
It was — the narrator found the word — presence.
The weight of being fully present with the loss rather than above it.
The weight of being a person who felt what was felt rather than a force that corrected what was correctable.
The weight of the second road.
Heavy.
Right.
"Thank you," Chuck said.
Marcus looked at him.
"For what," he said.
"For knowing I could fix it," Chuck said. "And not asking me to."
Marcus held his cup.
"I thought about it," he said.
"I know," Chuck said.
"For about thirty seconds," Marcus said. "When I first came home. I thought: Chuck could—"
"Yes," Chuck said.
"And then I thought: no," Marcus said. "That's not what we're doing."
"No," Chuck said.
"Because the choice—" Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"And because Patricia will paint them again," Marcus said. "And they'll be better for the loss."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"And because—" Marcus stopped.
"Say it," Chuck said.
"Because letting you fix it would mean I don't trust the conditions," Marcus said. "And I trust the conditions."
Chuck was very still.
"You trust the conditions," he said.
"The world is what it is," Marcus said. "Pipes fail. Paintings get wet. Things get lost. And then people paint them again with the loss in them and they're better. That's the conditions. That's how it works."
"And intervening—" Chuck said.
"Would be saying the conditions are wrong," Marcus said. "And I don't think they're wrong. I think they're what they are. And what they are is — workable."
"Even with the loss," Chuck said.
"Especially with the loss," Marcus said. "The loss is part of what makes it workable. The loss is what goes in the layers."
Chuck sat with this.
He thought about fifty-three years of correcting conditions he had judged insufficient.
He thought about the gravity renegotiation.
He thought about the specific moment, as a four-year-old, when he had decided that the conditions had been made without his consent.
He had been right.
They had been made without his consent.
And he had been right to renegotiate.
But there was a difference between renegotiating the conditions that were genuinely wrong — that existed before he could consent and applied to him without his agreement — and intervening in conditions that were simply the conditions.
Pipes failed.
He had not agreed to gravity when he was born.
He had agreed, as an adult, with full understanding, to be inside the conditions.
He had agreed to let the conditions be the conditions.
He had not agreed to fix everything that conditions produced.
He had agreed to be in it.
Being in it meant: being present with pipes that failed and paintings that got wet and losses that went into the layers.
Not above.
In.
"I trust the conditions too," Chuck said.
"Yes," Marcus said.
"Since the choice," Chuck said.
"Before the choice," Marcus said. "You started trusting them when you renegotiated with gravity. You said: I'll be subject to the conditions. That's trust."
"I just didn't know the full implications," Chuck said.
"No," Marcus said. "You learn the full implications by living it."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Day by day," Marcus said.
"Day by day," Chuck said.
He went to see Bill that afternoon.
Not to fix anything.
To be there.
Bill was at the house when Chuck arrived. The water damage specialists were working. The basement was being assessed. Patricia was in the kitchen — not crying, past the crying, in the specific quality of someone who has received the loss and has begun the work of carrying it.
Marcus was there.
Chuck sat with them.
He did not say much.
He was present.
He felt the loss going all the way in — all the way in, the full weight of it, the weight that was available to someone who had chosen the inside.
He sat with it.
He was glad.
Not glad for the loss — glad for the being in it. Glad for the weight. Glad for the second road.
After a while Patricia said — to Marcus, but Chuck heard it — "I know which ones I'll paint first."
"Yes?" Marcus said.
"The one I was furthest into," she said. "The one that was almost finished. Because the almost-finished one is the clearest in my memory. I can paint it again from memory. But this time I'll know I'm painting it from memory. And that will be in it."
Marcus looked at Chuck.
Chuck looked at Marcus.
"Nothing lost," Chuck said quietly.
Marcus nodded.
Patricia looked at him.
"What?" she said.
"I'm sorry about the paintings," Chuck said. "And I think you'll be right. The new ones will have something the old ones didn't."
She looked at him.
"The loss," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"The loss will be in them," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"Like a layer," she said.
"Yes," he said.
She held her coffee cup.
"The flat land looks different when you've lost something," she said. "I've always thought that. The land absorbs what you bring to it. The same light looks different through grief."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"So the new paintings will be paintings of the land as seen through the loss of the old paintings," she said. "They'll have that in them."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"That's almost better," she said.
"Almost," Chuck said.
"Not better," she said. "Different."
"Different," Chuck said.
"The right word," she said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
She looked at him.
"You're Chuck," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"Marcus talks about you," she said.
"I know," he said.
"He says you arrived about a pipe," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"And stayed," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"And everything changed," she said.
"The between changed," he said. "Not everything. The between."
She looked at him.
"What's the difference," she said.
He thought about it.
"The between changes and the everything stays the same," he said. "Except now the everything is in the between."
She was quiet.
"That's what painting is," she said. "You're not changing the land. You're changing what the land is in relation to. You're putting it in the between between yourself and the canvas."
"Yes," he said.
"And the paintings that got wet," she said, "they were the land in the between between me and the canvas before the loss. And the new ones will be the land in the between between me and the canvas after the loss."
"Yes," he said.
"Different layers," she said.
"Yes," he said.
She held out her hand.
He took it.
Not a gesture of greeting or comfort. Something more specific. The handshake of two people who have just found that they understand the same thing from different approaches.
"Thank you for coming," she said.
"I'm sorry about the paintings," he said.
"I know," she said.
He let her hand go.
He sat with them for another hour.
Then he left.
He walked home.
The September afternoon was doing what September afternoons did.
He walked through Wilson, Texas with the weight of the loss in him and the weight of the right choice in him and they were the same weight.
Heavy.
Right.
Both.