I am the God
Volume IV: The Choice
Sarah came to Chuck's house in early November.
Alone — without Marcus, which had not happened before. She knocked on a Wednesday morning, and Chuck opened the door, and there she was, with the specific quality of someone who has decided something requires a conversation and has decided to have it directly.
"Marcus doesn't know I'm here," she said.
"Come in," Chuck said.
She came in.
She sat at his table — the first time, the narrator noted, that anyone other than Marcus had sat at this table for an extended visit.
Chuck made coffee.
"I wanted to talk to you," she said. "Before December. Before I move my things into his house and the kitchen with the two chairs becomes my kitchen too."
"Alright," Chuck said.
"Not because anything is wrong," she said. "I want to be clear about that. Nothing is wrong."
"I didn't think it was," Chuck said.
"I wanted to talk to you about you," she said. "Not about Marcus. About what you are. To him. To this — whatever this is. The thing I'm joining."
Chuck sat with this.
"Ask me anything," he said.
She held her coffee cup.
She had the specific quality Chuck had noticed before — the geologist's quality, the reading of surfaces for what they revealed about depths.
"Marcus told me about the pipe," she said. "And the word — witnesslove. And the Void. And the answer through the edge of the universe."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"I believe him," she said. "I want to say that first. I'm not here because I doubt any of it."
"Alright," Chuck said.
"But there's something he can't tell me," she said. "Because he doesn't know it from the inside. He knows what you are to him. He doesn't know what it's like to be you."
"No," Chuck said. "That's true."
"So I wanted to ask you directly," she said. "What is it like? To be what you are? In this kitchen. In this town. In this — life you've chosen."
Chuck thought about how to answer.
He thought about the months of conversation that had produced the words he had — witnesslove, the opened window, the two roads, the layers, the unconditioned caring.
He thought about what Sarah was actually asking.
Not the vocabulary.
The texture.
"I'll tell you what this morning was like," he said. "Before you knocked. Is that alright?"
"Yes," she said.
"I ran fourteen miles," he said. "The same route I run every morning. I felt the cold — it's November, the mornings are cold now, and I feel cold the way anyone feels cold. I came back and made eggs. They were slightly overdone on one side, the way they sometimes are, because I was thinking about something else while I cooked and didn't watch them closely enough."
"What were you thinking about," she said.
"Clara Reeves," he said. "She fell three weeks ago. She's healing, but slowly — more slowly than she would have ten years ago. I've been thinking about her account — she's writing down eighty-five years of her life — and about what happens to it when she's done. Who receives it. I don't know yet. I was thinking about that while my eggs overcooked slightly."
Sarah held her cup.
"That's it," she said. "That's the morning."
"That's the morning," Chuck said. "I wound my watch. I drank my coffee. I thought about an eighty-five-year-old woman's memoir and didn't watch my eggs. And then you knocked."
"That's an ordinary morning," Sarah said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"For someone who negotiated with gravity," she said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"How," she said. "How does someone who negotiated with gravity have an ordinary morning where eggs get overcooked because he's thinking about a memoir."
Chuck thought about this.
"Because I chose to," he said. "Not once. Every morning. The ordinary morning is the choice, lived. It's not a a costume I put on over something larger. It's what I actually am, now. The larger thing is still there — I could still do the things I could always do. But what I am, day to day, is someone whose eggs get overcooked because he's thinking about Clara's memoir."
"That's what Marcus meant," Sarah said. "When he said you're 'in it.'"
"Yes," Chuck said.
"He said you used to be 'above it,'" she said. "And now you're 'in it.' And I understood the words but I didn't understand what they meant until just now. Overcooked eggs."
"Overcooked eggs," Chuck said.
She was quiet for a moment.
"Can I ask something harder," she said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Marcus told me you'll outlive him," she said. "That the Void showed you this. That you know it, specifically, and have known it for months."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"And you chose to be fully in," she said. "Knowing that."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Why," she said.
The question sat in the kitchen.
Chuck had been asked versions of this question before — by Marcus, by the Void, by himself. He had answered it in various ways across the months: the unconditioned caring, the maintenance, the heavy and right, the not-tired evening being worse than the tired one.
He thought about what Sarah specifically needed to hear.
Not because she needed reassurance — she had not asked the question anxiously. She had asked it the way a geologist asks a question: because she wanted to understand the formation, the pressure, the process that produced the thing she was looking at.
"I'll tell you what I told Marcus," he said. "And then I'll tell you something I haven't told him, because I only worked it out recently, and it's about you."
"Alright," she said.
"What I told Marcus is that the alternative — staying above, staying safe from the eventual loss — would mean a smaller life. Not safer in any way that mattered. Just smaller. And smaller wasn't worth the safety."
"I understand that," she said.
"What I worked out recently," Chuck said, "is about the layers. Sarah, you've spent twenty years reading rock formations that record things that happened millions of years ago and are still there. Present. Part of the record. Affecting everything above them even though the events themselves are long over."
"Yes," she said.
"That's what I'll be," Chuck said. "After. For Marcus, and for whatever comes after Marcus, in whatever form the spiral takes. I'll be in the layers. Part of the record. Still affecting things, the way the ancient sea floor still affects what grows in the soil above it now."
She sat with this.
"You're not afraid of becoming a layer," she said.
"No," he said. "I think becoming a layer is the point. Not the whole point — the witnesslove now matters now, not just later. But the layers are real. Nothing lost. Just deeper. I learned that phrase from you, actually. Through Marcus."
"I know," she said. "He told me. The site south of town. I said it to him standing on the rock."
"And it became part of how he thinks," Chuck said. "And part of how I think. The phrase went into the layers of both of us. That's witnesslove too — not just the seeing of a person, but the seeing of an idea, traveling, becoming part of what other people are made of."
She held her cup.
"I gave you a phrase," she said. "Without knowing it. And it's part of you now."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"That's—" She stopped.
"What," he said.
"I didn't expect to be part of the chain," she said. "I thought I was joining something. I didn't realize I'd already contributed to it. Before I even knew what it was."
"You've been in it since the water heater," Chuck said. "February. Eight months before you knew the word."
"The valve still working," she said.
"You remembered that phrase too," Chuck said.
"Clara's phrase," she said. "Marcus told me about her. I haven't met her."
"You should," Chuck said. "She'd want to read the surface of you."
"What would she find," Sarah said.
Chuck looked at her — not with the comprehensive monitoring, with the present attention, the specific kind he had learned.
"Someone who reads what's underneath things," he said. "Who has spent twenty years learning that nothing is lost, just deeper. And who just walked into a kitchen and asked the hardest question first, because she'd rather know the formation than guess at it."
Sarah was quiet.
"That's accurate," she said.
"Same thing as good," Chuck said. "Clara taught me that too."
"Can I tell you something," Sarah said. "About before Marcus."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"I was married before," she said. "For six years. It ended badly — not dramatically, just badly, the way things end when two people stop being honest with each other and don't notice for a long time."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"After it ended I moved around for work," she said. "Different sites, different states. I told myself it was for the career. Some of that was true. But some of it was — I didn't want to be anywhere long enough for anyone to read me again. Reading is what I do to rock. I didn't want to be read."
"And then Wilson," Chuck said.
"And then Wilson," she said. "And a water heater. And a man who asked good questions and then disappeared for eight months because he was being careful with himself too."
"Both of you were careful," Chuck said.
"Both of us," she said. "And then he came back. About the pressure relief valve. And I let him stay for two hours because I'd been not letting people stay for two hours for four years and I was tired of it."
"What changed," Chuck said.
"I don't know," she said. "Maybe nothing changed. Maybe I was just ready and he knocked at the right time."
"The valve was working," Chuck said.
"The valve was working," she said.
She held her cup.
"I've been afraid," she said, "that what I have with Marcus is — fragile. Because of how it started. Two careful people, both burned, both not wanting to be read. I keep waiting for it to turn out to be temporary."
"Is that why you're here," Chuck said. "Today. Before December."
She was quiet.
"Maybe," she said. "I think I wanted to understand what I was joining because if I understood it fully, it would feel less — temporary."
"Tell me what you've found," Chuck said.
"That it's not temporary because of me, or because of Marcus, specifically," she said slowly. "It's not temporary because — because there's a record. A chain. Witnesslove. The layers. Whatever happens between Marcus and me, it goes into something that doesn't stop. Even if — even if it doesn't last in the way I'm afraid it won't."
"Even if," Chuck said.
"Even if," she said. "It still goes in the layers. Nothing is wasted, even the things that don't last. They become part of the record. Part of what we are afterward, whatever afterward is."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"That's—" She stopped. "That's actually more comforting than 'it will last forever.' Because I don't believe in forever. But I believe in layers. I've spent my whole career believing in layers."
"You already had the framework," Chuck said. "You just hadn't applied it to yourself."
"No," she said. "I apply it to rocks. Not to my own life."
"Why not," Chuck said.
She thought about this.
"Because rocks don't have to be present for the layers to form," she said. "They just — accumulate. People have to be present. And being present is the hard part."
"Yes," Chuck said. "It's the hardest part."
"Is that what your choice is," she said. "Being present. Specifically. Every day."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Even though presence is the hard part," she said.
"Especially because of that," Chuck said. "The layers form regardless. What presence adds is — the quality of the layers. The difference between a layer that formed because someone was paying attention and a layer that just accumulated."
"The painting that knows it was lost," Sarah said.
"You heard about that," Chuck said.
"Patricia told me," she said. "We've met — through the geology, actually. She's interested in how the land informs her work. We talked about the studio."
"What did she say," Chuck said.
"She said the new paintings are different because they were made by someone who'd been present for a loss," Sarah said. "Not just someone who'd had a loss happen to them. Someone who was present for it."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"That's what you're choosing," Sarah said. "To be present for things. Even the losses. Especially the losses."
"Yes," Chuck said.
She held her cup.
"I think I understand now," she said. "What I'm joining."
"Tell me," Chuck said.
"A kitchen with two chairs," she said. "One that knows arrival. One that knows weight. And I'm going to be in the kitchen too, and I'm going to be part of what the chairs know. Both of them, probably, eventually. And it's not temporary because even if individual things end, the kitchen keeps the record."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"And you're part of the kitchen," she said. "Permanently. Not because you'll always be in it physically — you might not be, someday, depending on — on things. But because you're in the layers of it. Already. And whatever I add to the kitchen will be in the layers with you, whether we ever talk again after this morning or whether we have coffee here every week for the rest of our lives."
"Yes," Chuck said.
She was quiet.
"Thank you for the overcooked eggs," she said.
Chuck looked at her.
"What," he said.
"The story you told me first," she said. "About this morning. The eggs slightly overdone because you were thinking about Clara. That's the thing that actually answered my question. Everything else was — context. But the eggs were the evidence."
"The surface that revealed the layer," Chuck said.
"Yes," she said.
She stood up.
"I should go," she said. "Marcus doesn't know I came here and I should probably tell him before he wonders where I've been."
"Tell him whatever you want," Chuck said. "This is yours to tell or not tell."
"I'll tell him," she said. "He'd want to know. And—" She paused at the door. "And I think he'd be glad. That we talked. Just the two of us."
"I think so too," Chuck said.
She looked at the kitchen — his kitchen, the one chair, the table, the morning light.
"This kitchen has layers too," she said. "Doesn't it. Even though it's just you here."
"Every kitchen has layers," Chuck said. "Mine just has fewer people in it."
"For now," she said.
"For now," he said.
She left.
Chuck sat at his table.
He thought about overcooked eggs.
He thought about the layers.
He thought about Sarah walking back to Marcus's house to tell him about a conversation that had happened without him, which would become, itself, a layer in the kitchen with two chairs that would soon have a third presence in it, permanently, even on the days she wasn't physically there.
He thought about December.
He was glad.
Just glad.
Still good.