March 1
I have a dream I’m King Midas but instead of gold it’s aluminum. Everything I touch turns to it. I hug my father and poof! he turns into a tin man.
“I have a heart,” he says sorrowfully. “That’s not the problem.”
“What’s the problem?” I ask, peering at him. He has rust-rimmed eyes.
“I am always cold,” he says.
March 2
We’re moving class off campus starting this week because Levin’s schedule has become erratic, and we no longer feel confident in our ability to avoid him. Theo has spotted him on campus every day this week. Rumor has it that he’s having trouble at home, and that’s why he’s spending all this extra time on campus.
The idea Theo and I plant into Dad’s head is that because we’re learning about the Los Angeles Aqueduct, we should take an educational field trip to go visit it. We should see it in person!
The aqueduct was started in 1908. It would divert water from farms in Owens Valley, whose water was runoff from the Sierra Nevadas. The question was always: Who should get the water, Owens Valley or Los Angeles? Teddy Roosevelt voted in favor of Los Angeles. The farmers were unhappy with that decision. You can still make out the parts of the aqueduct that the farmers dynamited.
Dad is lecturing happily despite the sun, which is beating down on us. Nobody looks comfortable. Sweat is collecting between my boobs and I want to scoop it out.
“That looks heavy,” Theo whispers, about my purse.
“It is,” I whisper back.
Wordlessly he lifts it off my shoulder and puts it onto his.
March 4
I see, walking on the other side of the street today, a man with enormous pecs. They look as inflated as popcorn bags right after microwaving.
The phrase “born humans” is what I think of whenever I see someone wildly different from me.
Fetal circulation is different from that of born humans. Fetuses have fine hair all over them that born humans don’t have. Fetuses do a thing like breathing that isn’t actually breathing—the motions develop their lungs. They take their first breath when they’re born and that’s when the whole system changes incredibly: unborn to born.
We’re born humans, I think, about the huge-pec’ed man. With our functioning circulatory systems. Breathing, walking, having real hair. Just look at us.
Later, at the farmers’ market, I watch a couple bros sample dates.
“Shit,” says one bro, coughing. “I think I’m allergic to this giant raisin!”
“That’s not a raisin, Steve,” says another bro. “That’s a Medjool date.”
Born humans, I remind myself.
March 5
We’re at Home Depot because Dad’s decided he wants to finish building the covering for the patio. He abandoned the project years ago, when I was in high school. In a book called Backyard Structures, we find a photo of the thing he wants to build: a “pergola,” the book says, and provides a list of materials and steps, like a recipe. We load a cart with fresh two-by-fours and buy a new saw blade to replace his rusted one. Near the cash registers, an old woman is struggling to pull some orange buckets apart. Dad helps her.
We tie red bandannas to the wood that juts from the car’s open trunk and cross our fingers that the cops don’t pull us over.
My grandfather was a carpenter and a roofer.
“But I’m afraid of heights,” is what Dad confesses to me now.
March 6
Today you asked if I’d ever watched a moth eat clothes and I replied honestly: no.
Today you said you didn’t believe it!
Today you admired a magnolia tree and I told you that it was one of the earth’s oldest plants, that the flowers are so big because beetles used to crawl into them carrying the pollen on their legs. And you asked, Why should I believe you? And that was a very good question.
March 7
Linus called, so I’m trying to chop a bell pepper one-handed, and making slow progress. He’s telling me about his latest argument with Rita, which was over what to have for dinner. I don’t care, she said, when it was clear, he said, that she did.
This week Rita got back from Bali, where she’d been for a month, doing yoga and drinking fruit juice. As of three days ago, she’s back, looking fitter than she ever has, and now they are being awkward with each other. Linus worries that he has gained as much weight as she’s lost. They are having trouble getting back into the swing of things.
“You’d think we’d have so much to talk about. In terms of, like, ground to cover. Stuff that happened while we were apart,” he says. “But when I ask her questions, it’s like she’s hesitating—deciding what to tell me. Or she’ll answer in a really bare-bones way.”
“It’s not that easy, to say what happened,” I say. “What happened to you, for example, yesterday?”
“I tried to talk to my girlfriend about her vacation, that’s what happened.”
There’s a pause.
“What if she met someone?” he says.
“You’re overthinking this,” I say. I try to sound convincing, reassuring.
“Let’s talk about something else,” he says.
I tell him about what I read today: that scientists have learned how to embed false memories in mice. Using pulses of light, they were able to make the mice remember something that never happened: something unpleasant. The mice showed fear, remembering the thing that happened that had never actually happened.
Memories are stored in collections of cells, and when we remember, we reassemble the cells like a puzzle.
A few years ago, they figured out how to give mice déjà vus. They gave the mice the feeling of having been somewhere before.
Last year they figured out how to implant memories in a piece of brain in a test tube. Which—whatever, is my feeling. Why don’t they figure out how to keep mice from forgetting things? We don’t need more memories. It’s hard enough trying to get a handle on the ones we’ve got.
“What do you think happens to all the mice?” I ask Linus.
“I hope they’re retired somewhere,” Linus says.
“I hope someone is feeding them gouda and giving them massages.”
“And they’re fat. And they’re happy.”
“Is that Linus?” Mom asks, peeking into the kitchen, and I nod. “Let me talk to him,” she says, taking my phone.
“Hi, dear,” I hear her say.
March 9
Theo has sent me a photo of his parking permit and I’ve been on the computer, trying to counterfeit one for the car. The font isn’t exactly right, but it’s close enough, I figure. Not close enough to use in the actual parking lot, but realistic enough to appease Dad. I glue-stick the faux permit to the front windshield.