The Answer to Everything
Read The Answer to Everything Online
Authors: Elyse Friedman
ANSWER
TO
EVERYTHING
E
LYSE
F
RIEDMAN
P
ATRICK
C
REAN
E
DITIONS
To Daphne Floros and Max Friedman-Cole
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR
THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING
I needed a story. Something local, but juicy. And more than just newsworthy. I was holding out for gasp-worthy.
And I found it. Or rather, it found me. Yup, your humble J-school grad was pretty much handed a tale that had it all: sex and drugs (not the regular kinds), multiple deaths (untimely, natch), rich folks and rituals and loads o’ lawsuits—even a celebrity cherry on top.
My newbie journo peers might be settling for three inches of coyotes in the subway, some spry centenarian’s weightlifting regime or a bucket of campylobacter in the church supper salad, but I was planning to debut large and with oomph.
The story was mine.
I just had to figure out how to tell it.
John
Why?
That’s what they keep asking me. As if it matters, as if
why
changes anything. I don’t respond when they ask that. I don’t say a word. I’m taking a page from Eldrich.
Don’t you care about those individuals, Mr. Aarons? Don’t you feel responsible?
I feel sad, I say. It’s too bad, I say. All those people.
Answer me this: If a fool steers their Carrera into oncoming traffic, is Porsche responsible? Is Jägermeister responsible for the frat boy frozen in the snowbank? You make a product available. You can’t be held accountable for how it gets used. Farmer Jones grew a lovely fat zucchini. Does that make him responsible for some idiot’s perforated emergency-room rectum?
The world is full of humans, some of them good, most of them rotten (or rotten under the right circumstances). There are approximately 360,000 new ones each day. Plenty to go around, if you ask me. A very successful virus, if you’d like to know what I really think. Seven billion parasites, blindly, almost gleefully, defiling their host.
But back to the why of it all. I can’t speak for others. I was out of the Institute at the end (luckily, according to the attorneys). I can’t say why Eldrich did what he did. It was definitely counterproductive. Mystifying. Absurd. But I stopped
understanding Eldrich a long time ago. I have no idea why those people chose the path they chose. I suppose that on a case-by-case basis I could formulate theories—this one’s alky father/harelip/abortion, that one’s war-torn native land …
As for Amy, well, I’ll keep my opinions to myself for now. When it comes to the big why—why I started it all in the first place—I’ve been advised not to say anything just yet. When I am obliged to speak, I’m going to state plainly that I was trying to help people—that I wanted to connect with fellow Seekers who were curious about more than Brad Pitt’s offspring or how much the markets had risen or fallen on any particular day. That’s what I plan to say. I’m going to raise my right hand and swear an oath on the bible and say something just like that. It won’t hurt that Eldrich believes me, and that Amy will claim she does. It’s not like she can admit otherwise. So I’m confident I’ll be in the clear.
Here’s what I’m not going to do. I am not going to tell that old joke about the dog. Do you know it? Question:
Why does a dog lick his balls?
Answer:
Because he can
.
I knew from the beginning. I’ve always known, in the marrow of the marrow of my bones. God is. Grand. Great. Mysterious. A beautiful Rorschach of happiness for all humankind. If you open yourself to the light, you will receive it. Think of a flower blooming in time-lapse. Think of a fist relaxing and turning, making itself ready to accept.
God first visited me in the form of a bumblebee. Heavy yellow. A warm buzz in the mouth. It is my earliest memory. My mother told it always like this:
It was a humid afternoon and we were out in the yard. We didn’t have air conditioning back then. Eldrich was about two and a half. He was playing in the sprinkler with a couple of neighbourhood kids—Sergio and Anthony from next door, and Patricia, who I used to babysit. Anyway, Eldrich toddled off, wandered into the garden and just plopped himself down in the middle of the daisies. I was going to fish him out, when I saw him pick up a bumblebee—he just scooped it right up and popped it in his mouth! I almost died! You know his father was allergic to bees? I screamed and went for him, but before I could get there his little mouth opened and the bee just flew out. It kind of bounced off a couple of flowers, and then lifted up and away. It didn’t even sting
him. And it was huge. The biggest bee I’ve ever seen! I just grabbed Eldrich and held him. I swear I almost died
.
Here’s what I remember: everything is yellow and bright and shiny. The world vibrates with colour and shine. It’s like a cartoon, but more vivid. You know when sun sparkles in blue pool water? The whole world was like that. Undulating and connected. Jell-O world. Illuminated from behind. God finds me in it. God feels that I am special. I am happy. I am happier than I have ever been. I open myself up, get the yellow inside me. The buzz of life in my mouth. Now I’m being lifted and twirled. It’s Mother. It’s sky. It’s Mother. Sky. It’s blue blue and white cloud.
My first real taste.
If it hadn’t been for inconsiderate slobs in the laundry room, none of this would have happened. If it hadn’t been for brown eyes and curly hair and the initial irresistibility of a certain acerbic asshole …
The first time I saw John Aarons was in a photograph. The Fine Arts Department was having its year-end exhibit, and I had wandered in to check it out on my lunch break. Visual Arts had taken over the Janine & Jeremy Goldstein Hall with a combination painting, drawing and photography show. Most of the stuff was crap—clunky or derivative. There were maybe a few items that fell into the technically-competent-but-totally-uninspired category. And then his installation, the only thing that showed any originality at all.
According to the artist’s statement, he’d been working on it since the idea came to him when he was thirteen years old, on vacation with his parents. It was a series of photographs of people taking photographs of people in front of the world’s most famous landmarks and tourist sites. He had taken hundreds of pictures of people taking pictures of people in front of Niagara Falls, the Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge and many other familiar spots. He claimed to have worked an entire
year on a paper route in order to save enough money to fly to Egypt to take photos of people taking photos of people in front of the pyramids. I thought it was interesting. In a simple way it seemed to say a lot about our relationship with awe and mystery. And it was fascinating to see how sometimes the landmark in the background seemed cheapened by the tourists posing in front of it, and how sometimes the dignity and power of the thing seemed magnified. I thought it was pretty great, especially for a student piece. It was the only exhibit I lingered in front of and the only artist’s statement I made it all the way through that day—a straightforward description of the project, mercifully free of art speak. There was a small portrait at the bottom, a sel-fie that showed a cute young guy with a sly smile—eyes hidden behind vintage Ray-Bans.
It was taken in front of the Sphinx.
Come
Come to me now
And rest
You are tired
So tired
A bird with no shore
A wheel turning and turning
Your struggle has not been worthwhile
But it will be worthwhile
The fruit can be yours
But you must first plant the seed
Come to me now
Begin
theanswertoeverything.org
“To live without meaning is the greatest challenge and the highest art.” Who said that? Was it Sartre? Spinoza? Whoever dreamed it up, I think he may have been mistaken. I’ve had no trouble living without meaning. Living without money, on the other hand, has tested my mettle over the years. I am a resourceful type, though, and have always managed to fill my belly.
Art openings were a good bet. The fancier the gallery, the finer the spread. But even tiny joints on Queen Street would cube up some Costco cheddar and dump a box of Triscuits on a plate. You ingest a pound of cheese, it’ll carry you through to the next morning. Book launches were also a solid source of nutrition and absurdly frequent—at least three a week once you got on the right mailing lists. You sometimes had to endure live readings by obscure/windy authors, but if you timed it right, not so much. I once dined modestly for several days on foodstuffs pilfered from a buffet table in the Reference Library during the Toronto Book Awards ceremony. While the crowd listened to our deputy mayor intone on matters civic, I filled my ironic, 100 percent plastic “Ceci n’est pas une plastic bag” bag with a half-tray of vegetarian sushi, a monstrous brie
wedge and enough fresh broccoli florets to steam for dinner that night (thank you, authors who set their stories in Toronto).
In the afternoon, I often sampled my way through Whole Foods—a few grapes or cherries here, a handful or three of bulk cashews there. Customer Appreciation Day at the various big banks or Seniors Day at the drugstore yielded coffee and cake or cookies. I’ll never forget this one grey granny giving me the hairy eyeball and waving a palsied digit in reprimand as I sword-swallowed a row of Arrowroot biscuits by the blood pressure monitor.
Open houses were reliably fruitful. While the real estate–mad inhabitants of Toronto checked out the coffered ceilings, front-loading washer-dryer and other features and finishes, I was checking out (and helping myself to) the contents of the stainless-steel refrigerator.
In summer, I ate locally and organically, harvesting veggie riches from various backyard and community gardens. And I found the rooftop bar at the Park Hyatt to be a very pleasant place. They served trays of premium toasted almonds, spicy olives and dried plantain, which you could inhale while waiting for your elusive friend, who never arrived. I’d use that tactic at restaurants too, downing a basket of bread and butter or, if I was lucky, humus, while repeatedly checking my watch and glancing anxiously at the door whenever somebody entered. When the carbs had been consumed, I would receive a call on my cell phone (my ex’s, defunct, battery dead) indicating some kind of emergency and quickly mutter my harried apologies to the server as I swept past and out. When all else failed I invoked the old standby of inviting a flush friend out for a
meal, dropping hints of impecuniousness during the repast and then high-tailing it to the bathroom as the cheque arrived.