The Speed of Dark

“You must trust us, Lou, for this to work. I can give you something to calm you—”

“I am not upset,” I say. I am not upset. I am pleased with myself for thinking through what he is saying and finding the hidden meaning, but I am not upset, even though that hidden meaning is that he is manipulating me. If I know it, then it is not really manipulation. “I am trying to understand, but I am not upset.”

He relaxes. The muscles in his face release a little, especially around his eyes and in his forehead. “You know, Lou, this is a very complicated subject. You’re an intelligent man, but it’s not really your field. It takes years of study to really understand it all. Just a short lecture and maybe looking at a few sites on the ’net aren’t enough to bring you up to speed. You’ll only confuse and worry yourself if you try. Just as I wouldn’t be able to do what you do. Why not just let us do our work and you do yours:

Because it is my brain and my self that you are changing. Because you have not told the whole truth and I am not sure you have my best interest — or even my interest at all — in mind.

“Who I am is important to me,” I say.

“You mean you like being autistic?” Scorn edges his voice; he ca

“I like being me,” I say. “Autism is part of who I am; it is not the whole thing.” I hope that is true, that I am more than my diagnosis.

“So — if we get rid of the autism, you’ll be the same person, only not autistic.”

He hopes this is true; he may think he thinks it is true; he does not believe absolutely that it is true. His fear that it is not true wafts from him like the sour stink of physical fear. His face crinkles into an expression that is supposed to convince me he believes it, but false sincerity is an expression I know from childhood. Every therapist, every teacher, every counselor has had that expression in their repertoire, the worried/ caring look.

What frightens me most is that they may — surely they will — tinker with memory, not just current co

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

On Sundays, the public transportation does not run on the usual workday schedule, even though Sunday is a holy day for only a minority of people. If I do not drive to church, then I get there either very early or a little late. It is rude to be late, and being rude to God is ruder than other kinds of rude.

It is very quiet when I arrive. The church I go to has a very early service, with no music, and a 10:30 service, with music. I like to come early and sit in the dim quiet, watching the light move through the colored glass of the windows. Now once more I sit in the dim quiet of the church and think about Don and Marjory.

I am not supposed to think about Don and Marjory but about God. Fix your mind on God, said a priest who used to be here, and you will not go far wrong. It is hard to fix your mind on God when the image in my mind is that of the open end of the barrel of Don’s gun. Round and dark like a black hole. I could feel the attraction of it, the pull as if the hole, the opening, had mass that wanted to pull me into itself, into permanent blackness. Death. Nothingness.

I do not know what comes after death. Scripture tells me one thing here and another there. Some people emphasize that all the virtuous will be saved and go to heaven, and others say that you have to be Elect. I do not imagine it is anything we can describe. When I try to think of it, up to now, it always looks like a pattern of light, intricate and beautiful, like the pictures astronomers take or create from space-telescope images, each color for a different wavelength.

But now, in the aftermath of Don’s attack, I see dark, faster than light, racing out of the barrel of the gun to draw me into it, beyond the speed of light, forever.

Yet I am here, in this seat, in this church, still alive. Light pours in through the old stained-glass window over the altar, rich glowing color that stains the altar linens, the wood itself, the carpet. This early, the light reaches farther into the church than during the service, angling to the left because of the season.

I take a breath, smelling candle wax and the faintest hint of smoke from the early service, the smell of books — our church still uses paper prayer books and hymnals — and the cleaning compounds used on wood and fabric and floor.

I am alive. I am in the light. The darkness was not, this time, faster than the light. But I feel unsettled, as if it were chasing me, coming nearer and nearer behind me, where I can’t see.

I am sitting at the back of the church, but behind me is an open space, more unknown. Usually it does not bother me, but today I wish there were a wall there.

I try to focus on the light, on the slow movement of the colored bars down and across as the sun rises higher. In an hour, the light moves a distance that anyone could see, but it is not the light moving: it is the planet moving. I forget that and use the common phrasing just like everyone else and get that shock of joy each time I remember, again, that the earth does move.

We are always spi

I try again to concentrate on God, and the light recedes enough to pick out the brass cross on its wooden stand. The glint of yellow metal against the purple shadows behind it is so striking that my breath catches for a moment.

In this place, light is always faster than dark; the speed of dark does not matter.

“Here you are, Lou!”

The voice startles me. I flinch but manage not to say anything, and even smile at the gray-haired woman holding out a service leaflet. Usually I am more aware of the time passing, people arriving, so that I am not surprised. She is smiling.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” she says.

“It’s all right,” I say. “I was just thinking.”

She nods and goes back to greet other arrivals without saying anything more. She has a name tag on, Cynthia Kressman. I see her every third week handing out service leaflets, and on other Sundays she usually sits across the center aisle and four rows ahead of me.

I am alert now and notice people coming in. The old man with two canes, who totters down the aisle to the very front. He used to come with his wife, but she died four years ago. The three old women who always come in together except when one is sick and sit in the third row on the left. One and two and three, four and two and one and one, people trickle in. I see the organist’s head lift over the top of the organ console and drop back down. Then a soft “mmph” and the music begins.

My mother said it was wrong to go to church just for the music. That is not the only reason I go to church. I go to church to learn how to be a better person. But the music is one reason I go to this church. Today it is Bach again — our organist likes Bach — and my mind effortlessly picks up the many strands of the pattern and follows them as she plays them.

Hearing music like this, all around in real life, is different from hearing a recording. It makes me more aware of the space I am in; I can hear the sound bouncing off the walls, forming harmonies unique to this place. I have heard Bach in other churches, and somehow it always makes harmonies, not disharmonies. This is a great mystery.