Contain Multitudes

What will it be like when GPS tells us what will happen after we arrive?

That summer, we decided it would be amusing to call ourselves one. As in: One wants the ricotta pancakes, or One has already asked you to clean your room. There were too many specters around us, from the autonomous buses to the sizzling power cords on Skyline Boulevard. We figured it was our right to dematerialize too. One deserved to tinker with these epistemic forces, yes?

The trip to Bodega Bay was spur-of-the-moment. One heard about it from Ornette, who heard about it from Alessandra. Some painter had invited all their friends to a beach house. Yes, kids were allowed. Yes, one should bring food. Aggie, whom one awoke not long after she’d fallen asleep, couldn’t contain her excitement. Alessandra was her favorite. She would have driven through the night to see her. 

But in the car, on the Richmond Bridge, the directions turned worrisome. “You won’t see Alessandra.” Nearly asleep again, Aggie sprang back. “She won’t be at the house. Everyone will be sad.” What could it mean? One asked the specters inside the car, inside the cloud, inside ourselves. What could it mean? “You’re on the fastest route there. You’ll arrive at 11:15, but Alessandra will be gone. You’ll look everywhere, and you won’t find her.” One hardly knew what to do.

“Don’t call yourselves one!” Aggie cried, rubbing her eyes. “There are three of you — it doesn’t make sense!” One finds it hard to relinquish a squeamish joke, but we agreed. After all, we were her parents, and we had no good reason to upset her. 

Halfway there, on a foggy state road, we pulled over, debating whether to continue. We were already sad at the thought of Alessandra’s absence, not just sad but worried. What good did it do to keep going? But then again, why defer to the directions? One didn’t — we didn’t — want to give up our agency. We called Alessandra, we texted, no response. “We have to keep going,” said Aggie. “We have to find out if she’s okay.”

The house in Bodega Bay sat right on the water, practically in the water, swaddled in fog. Every person there appeared to be a painter. Alessandra was missing, Ornette too, and there were no kids, just aquiline aesthetes twirling wine stems and admiring the rafters. One thought — we thought — that they looked entertaining. We studied art history in school, there was toys in the cupboard, we could have fun! However, not everyone in our family could tunnel out of their moods. 

Since there was always a tent in our car, since the summer heat was beaten back by the sea breeze, we camped in the shrubs beside the water. At dawn, the tent unzipped, and Alessandra poked her head in. “I went night swimming!” she said. “I slept on the beach!” Poor Aggie, who had feared the worst, cried into her palms. One couldn’t help but wonder who had corrupted such a perfect night. In a sense, though, the sun hadn’t yet broken the horizon. In a sense, it was still night. In a sense, the night had never been permitted to start.