The Waning Age Read online

  Not that I’m complaining. That’s how 99 percent of humanity lives. But the other 1 percent? They can afford to feel whatever they like.

  As I waited for the train to Oakland, I stared at one of the ten-by-ten-foot screen decals on the BART platform. The screens stand at forty-five-degree angles to the rails every twenty feet and play an eight-second clip on a loop. First a beautiful house, coming closer until you’re on the doorstep. The door opens. A beautiful blonde woman. For just a moment, long enough for you to imagine incorrectly that you and she have something in common, her face is blank. Then, suddenly, she’s gasping with surprise. A moment later, sadness. The bittersweet kind, with tears running down her face as she tries to smile. Maybe you’re the husband she thought was dead. Maybe you’re a long-lost sister. Maybe you’re her favorite child. She’s wiping away tears, and the joy is overtaking her face until she’s smiling, beaming, laughing. Then the words appear just below her chin. White italics: Real Feeling. The Real fades, only to reappear on the other side: Feeling Real. I’ve seen the RealCorp ad a thousand times, and I still can’t look away. Nor could any of the other suckers, by the looks of it. We all stood there crammed together, staring at the beautiful face of the 1 percent going through the costly cascade of emotions over and over again until the train arrived.

  I got a seat and let my back sink into the flattened cushions. Even soiled upholstery feels good when you’ve been on your feet for eight hours. The woman next to me, eyes sleepy, was reading headlines on her decal about an earthquake and a deployment of Marines. Nothing new there. In front of us, a pack of girls, likely third-graders, huddled together around a pole, giggling, eyes darting, clothes sparkling, smelling of strawberry shampoo and gum. I let myself watch them, the way their laughter moved through them like an electric current, making even the quiet one who clung too tight to the pole drop her guard and light up.

  That’s what real emotion looks like.

  That’s how Cal laughs. He’s jolted. It’s involuntary and inelegant, like sneezing.

  With Mom gone, it’s Cal who keeps us afloat. I might be the one who pays the bills, but he’s the only one who gives us a reason to. He still feels everything—I mean everything. It’s constant fireworks with Cal: one minute he’s wailing the whole building down, and the next he’s laughing so hard he might puke. I love him to death. And before you say I can’t really love him because love is beyond unaffordable, let me tell you that I do, and I’m not going to belabor it or fight you on it. I just do. I can’t explain why. But I know I do because when I think of a world without Cal, it is an entirely pointless world.

  He’s almost eleven, so the fading should start any day now. He’s overdue. But he hasn’t started waning at all. If anything, it seems as though he’s feeling more than ever. Almost all of his classmates are looking the way I did at that age, dull and kind of mystified, like they can’t figure out who stole all the Halloween candy. Lo siento, kids—it’s gone. Gone for good. And unless your parents can afford top-shelf synaffs, which in our neighborhood no one can, it’s not coming back.

  Every day I tell myself, “It could start today, so prepare yourself.” Then Cal blows up because of some story on the radio about children working in a rug factory or comes home mooning over the most beautiful old Ford and I think, “Okay. Not today. But it could start tomorrow.” Each time I’m glad—glad in the way you don’t pay for, where it’s not a high but you have the satisfaction of seeing a plus sign appear in the right column of your brain.

  Except for when that plus sign gets converted into a big, big minus.

  I didn’t see it coming.

  I walked home around the lake from the BART station, just to make my feet extra sore, and dragged them, two cement blocks, up the stairs. From the hallway, I could hear the radiators clanging, even though it was nearly eighty degrees out. I rolled my eyes as I unlocked the door. Our building is made from remnants of the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, which means we are surrounded by fussy decorative elements that were meant to last about a year. Most parts of the building have never been renovated—the claw-foot tubs, the Pullman beds, the wood floors. The radiators have minds of their own. The kitchen is run by an army of ants. And Cal’s bedroom has so much water damage on the ceiling that it will crumple like tissue paper next time there’s an earthquake. Cheap is the only thing going for it.

  I walked through the rooms and tightened all the radiator valves, and on the kitchen counter I found Cal’s note: With C, T, and J. It’s an old note that we keep in the cabinet; Cal is over there a lot. After taking my shoes off and changing out of my day clothes, I trekked across the hall. Joey, same age as me, is my best friend and has been since we were four. His parents, Cass (Cassandra) and Tabby (Tabitha), have been our foster parents since Mom died last year. I was only sixteen, so someone else had to take on the task of defending us from the adult world, with all its straightforward sordidness. Cass is an artist turned sign-maker, mostly for dingy half-stocked stores in Oakland, and Tabby is an actress, when she can get the work. Her day job is retail at the Good Ole Days, the block-long vintage shop in downtown Oakland. When she’s not selling leather bomber jackets and cravats and antique surfboards, she’s taking care of the stray half-children in her life. For Cass and Tabby to collect the benefit, we are all supposed to live in the same residence, and they have two beds at the ready in case anyone from social services decides to visit in a fit of governmental conscience. But Cass and Tabby know I can take care of Cal myself, so really they just check in on us once a day and invite us over for meals a lot. Also I get many of Tabby’s hand-me-down clothes, which is fine by me because she has the best vintage wardrobe in all of Oakland.

  I knocked and opened the unlocked door. “Hello?”

  “Kitchen,” Cass called. I walked through and found her standing by the oven while Cal, Joey, and Tabby sat around the petite dining room table. They all looked up at me expectantly, their movements suspended.

  I am good at doing two things. Cleaning rooms and reading faces.

  What do you know, they have a few things in common. They both have to be learned. They require that you pay attention to minutiae. They are hard to do well and easy to take for granted. And they are both things I would rather not have to do. Because, let’s face it, cleaning that sticky seam between the floor and the toilet is a major drag. And so is having to study the angle of a person’s nostril to figure out what they’re feeling. But neither one has yet become redundant and so far they seem to be my only life skills. So I’m hanging on to them.

  At the moment I was reading Cal’s face, and it was a complicated story. Eyebrows crinkled and raised. Mouth tensed, one side quirked slightly upward. Eyes unable to stay still. Slightly contracted pupils. I saw distress, anxiety, nervousness, and some guilt. A tiny sliver of relief in the midst of it all, probably because I was home. Even if I’d been unable to read all of this, I would have known that something was wrong because Cal was clutching a glass of chocolate milk, and Cass was making madeleines, and these two things in combination are, on very rare occasions, the only way to make Cal feel better.

  In case my descriptions have not made this clear, Cal is a sensitive boy. He cries at least once a day. Most days, it’s more like five times. I wouldn’t have it any other way. He is the world’s most generous ten-year-old. He notices everything. Four times out of five, he’s crying for somebody else, not for himself. He has messy brown hair and a dainty nose and big eyes that look at you with old, old humor—like there’s an ancient soul inside him that is finding this whole tragic-orphan-trying-to-make-it story deeply amusing. Right then the old soul’s humorous side was a little dampened.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  Joey pushed his glasses up his nose and silently—a lot of what Joey does is silent—handed me a sheet of paper folded in thirds. It was from Cal’s school. It read:

  To the parents of Calvino Pe�
�a:

  We are writing to request your attendance at a consultation with Dr. Elizabeth Baylor, school physician. Cal has exhibited acute affect signaling for longer than expected, and it is recommended by Dr. Baylor that he undergo testing. Please indicate your availability to attend a testing session and a meeting on October 8 at 3:00 p.m.

  Sincerely,

  Charles Freeman, Principal

  “What?” I said eloquently.

  Cass closed the oven and put her hands on her hips. “Don’t worry, we’ll go with you,” she said. She is tall, with square shoulders and a square jaw and curly blonde hair that I have never seen loose. She pulls it back with rubber bands like the hair is her enemy and she is going to win at all costs. In fact, that is her stance toward a lot of things. Pale blue eyes, solid nose, and straight teeth that make it out often because she laughs a lot. She doesn’t believe in jewelry, other than her wedding band.

  “I’m not worried about who’s going,” I replied.

  “She’s worried about why they want to do testing,” Tabby explained helpfully.

  “I realize that.” Cass rolled her eyes. “I’m just saying, Natalia, you don’t have to deal with this alone.”

  Nobody but Cass calls me Natalia.

  “That is true,” Tabby agreed. She stood up and put her arm around my shoulders. Tabby is barely as tall as I am—five foot five—and about the same weight. But she is curvier, and in general she is softer than me and Cass combined—soft round face, soft brown eyes, soft brown hair, soft gentle hands. She does everything gently, which I have reflected more than once is hard to do when you don’t have feelings.

  “Did your teacher say anything else to you about this, Cal?” I asked.

  Cal shook his head. “She only said that the principal wanted to see me, and when I went to the principal, he gave me that letter.” His voice was watery. “It was addressed to my parents, so I gave it to Cass and Tabby.”

  He looked at me pleadingly. I could see what I needed to do, but I had that familiar sense that he was calling out to me over a chasm, and that I had to strain to hear what he was saying. I sat down in Tabby’s empty chair and took his hand. It was kind of grubby from the chocolate milk and who knows what else. He squeezed my hand tightly. “We don’t have to do this testing if you don’t want to,” I said.

  There was silence in the kitchen. I could feel Cass’s skepticism and Tabby’s acceptance and Joey’s silent encouragement, because Joey can be counted on to back up any scheme, crazy or not.

  Cal looked at me earnestly. “Really?” he whispered.

  “Really. There are very few things you have to do, and this is not one of them. If you want, I will tell them you won’t get tested.”

  “What if they say I have to?”

  “Then we’ll fight them on it. We’ll move you to another school. We’ll go somewhere else.”

  I had never heard of someone getting a letter like this one, but I knew what it could mean, just as everyone in the room old enough to get it—everyone other than Cal—knew what it could mean.

  Over the years, many a huckster has tried to claim renewed feeling, like medieval blind men restored to sight by the touch of a saintly relic. It’s always a scam. Synaffs, good acting, or self-delusion. Every once in a while, there are real cases of partial, usually dysfunctional, restoration. A woman who feels genuine euphoria, and never anything else. A man who flies into fits of real fury. Another who suffers from bona fide, unshakable depression. These are freaks of nature, splashed on the tabloids and then, no doubt, sequestered in a lab for neurological tinkering.

  And every once in a while you hear of children who somehow, unpredictably and defying any kind of pattern, fade late. At age eleven. Or twelve. Fourteen is the latest I’ve heard of. They always fade eventually, but they linger. When a child fades late, it means there’s something different about him. That he feels emotion for longer. And if he feels emotion for longer, that means maybe something about his brain is resisting the fade. And if he’s resisting the fade, that means he might keep resisting. Maybe he’ll get to fifteen. Or sixteen. Maybe he won’t fade at all. And that . . . Well, that would be a game changer.

  Cal squeezed my hand again. His brow softened. His tensed lips relaxed. Then he sighed, and I saw that old soul in there perk up, looking not cheery, exactly, but at least peaceful in a way that could be cheery again soon. That was good. If Cal was okay, then for me, everything was okay. “It’s just a test, right?” he asked me. “We can just do the test and see what it says.”

  “That’s true,” I agreed. “It’s just a test.”

  * * *

  —

  There are times when it can be an advantage not to feel things. This was one of them. I couldn’t conjure up the feeling of dread, because it was lost to me along with everything else, but as I made rapid calculations—odds, distances, nickels and dimes—I got the definite impression that Cal and I were standing at the mouth of a tunnel. And my calculations told me that at the end of that tunnel there might be a guillotine, or maybe a six-foot spider, or maybe something worse—something I had no power to imagine.

  3

  CALVINO

  oct-11

  11:07 a.m.

  calvinopio:

  Essay: What are emotions? By Calvino Peña

  Over many centuries there has been much debate over what emotions are. Long ago people believed they were placed in our souls by God or by the gods. Then philosophers believed that they were created in our bodies by thoughts but others still believed it was God. Then scientists argued that emotions were caused by chemicals in the brain.

  For as long as there have been emotions, which is forever, there has been debate over what they are. For example today we do not believe that it is possible to die of rage but people in the past believed that. Today we believe that emotions are reactions that happen in the brain and that affect the whole body.

  We know this because it is possible to watch these reactions with special scientific equipment. And after age ten most people do not have most of the reactions that we call emotions. They have other reactions still like responding to pain and hunger but not the ones we have mostly considered emotions like fear, anger, sadness, happiness, or all the related ones.

  (Note: Scientists haven’t realized that even if you do not have equipment you can see these reactions. Adults cannot see them without equipment but children can. Children are able to see emotions that adults cannot. They can see that even after waning, adults still have some emotions. This has not been discovered by science but it is true.)

  hglt: Thanks for this essay, Calvino. By the way, do you go by Cal, Calvino, or Calvinopio?

  calvinopio: No, I just chose this username because it was my mom’s nickname for me but no one calls me that. I go by Cal or Calvino.

  hglt: Great—got it, Cal! Your note at the bottom presents a fascinating idea. What makes you think adults still have emotions?

  calvinopio: I can see them. They are invisible emotions, which means that they are invisible to the people who have them but not to children. Only children are able to see them.

  hglt: If they are invisible to adults, that explains why I haven’t seen them! What do they look like?

  calvinopio: That is hard to answer. Sometimes people conceal emotions on purpose, but they know they are there. Sometimes people conceal emotions so much they don’t even realize they are there. But you can still see them.

  hglt: I think I know what you mean. You’re describing what we call “repressed” emotions. A person might be really angry or really sad and lock that feeling away so tightly that they actually don’t realize it exists. Nevertheless, the emotion has an effect upon them. And an outsider might be able to detect that anger or sadness.

  calvinopio: That’s kind of what I mean.

  Are we done now? Can I come out?


  4

  NATALIA

  OCTOBER 8

  Moses Elementary is a mid-twentieth-century effort—executed in concrete and paint—to ignore all of the natural inclinations of children. Ignore and extinguish, I guess, since most of those inclinations were considered a nuisance when the school was built. The dining hall is a row of picnic tables chained to concrete posts, and there are far fewer seats than students. In my day, I mostly ate my lunch standing next to the chain-link fence. The screen decals, flurries of movement and color, are attached to the desks. The desks are attached to the chairs, and the chairs are screwed into the floors. You get the idea. Limit mobility. Ensure attentiveness. Get them all in line. Once upon a time the place used to make me want to run screaming, but now it just seems like a joke in poor taste. A school for children run by adults? It’s like summer camp for bunnies run by wolves.

  Cass and Tabby and I walked in along the chipped wall of the open corridor, past the “library” with its mucky keyboards and its paltry offering of decaying books and its more generous offering of mildewed wall-to-wall carpeting. As we passed the tall windows, covered with smudged handprints, I caught a glimpse of myself then and before. There was a reflection of Nat, the solid-looking individual in a pinstripe skirt suit, a peach blouse, and a pillbox hat. And looking out through her reflection was small Natalia Peña: heavy bangs, sullen expression, wide and wary eyes, a lively sense of mischief wrapped in a livelier sense of insecurity. The sight of her was a numbers problem I couldn’t solve. I knew who she was, and I knew in theory I should miss her and feel some fondness for her, but mostly she struck me as a stranger: that bundle of raw emotions, hurting all the time and always wanting things she couldn’t have. A canopy bed. A puppy. A trip to the beach. A father.