 illustration by A.J. Garces |
wasn’t exactly lost,
but I was on the wrong road. Except for it being Mother’s Day, I didn’t feel
the presence of anything ominous. I certainly didn’t feel that a mystery would
soon be revealed to me (revealed, but not explained). I was just wondering how
to find the right road.
I carry maps but rarely consult them; I like the sense of feeling my way. En
route from New Orleans to Austin, I thought I knew the number of the
Austin-bound road that goes west from I-10 at Houston. But often I blank on
numbers, even numbers I should know well. I blanked on the number of the Austin
road. That didn’t faze me; I assumed there’d be a sign that said “Austin.” But
it’s a Texas quirk that, while there are signs to Houston, Dallas, San Antonio,
and El Paso all over the state, you’ve got to be practically within sight of
the city to see an Austin highway sign. In themselves, my reluctance to use
maps, my tendency to forget numbers, and Texas’ odd attitude toward directing
travelers to its capital are unimportant; it’s just that they are three of the
essential ingredients that combined to lead me to this mystery.
As in the fairy tales of old, it is usually something seemingly insignificant
that leads a journeyer to the gateway of the Other World.
The fourth ingredient went like this:
I was west of Houston, still on I-10, before I’d given up hope of either
remembering the proper number or finding an Austin sign. I knew the Austin road
was not too far north of me, so I cruised a few exits until I selected a
two-lane heading north. This fourth ingredient wasn’t so much that particular
two-lane, as why I chose it — since I’d already cruised past at least two
perfectly adequate north-bound roads. Well, the one I chose felt right, and the
others hadn’t. This may be the most mysterious ingredient of all. For I wasn’t
feeling in the grip of any destiny — didn’t have any strange feelings at all.
There’ve been times when I’ve heard voices (yes, voices) telling me which way
to go. Scoff if you like, but it’s true. But this time I didn’t hear anything.
Apparently, I was being guided — by what, I wouldn’t venture to guess — but I
had no sensation of it. I find this both a hopeful and a disturbing fact. Just
what is doing the guiding, and why, and what is the bond between the
guider and us? In this realm there seem to be no answers.
My only conscious intention that day — besides reaching Austin sooner or
later — was to call my mother in the Bronx and wish her a happy Mother’s Day.
I wasn’t looking forward to that call. Once my mother and I had a kind of
secret code between us — we could say a few words, inconsequential to others,
but full of meaning to each other, as though we were spies or conspirators. But
things had happened four years before, and we’d lost that secret code. We still
spoke, but formally, like foreigners uncertain of the other’s language. This is
the fifth ingredient, because I kept putting off making the call.
So: five ingredients. My attitude toward maps. My forgetfulness of numbers. No
Austin sign. A feeling that I should take one road instead of another. A
discomfort about phoning my mother. Together, they formed a kind of gateway.
Isn’t this the underlying pattern of existence, some powerful aspect of life
that happens beyond our intentions and beyond analysis — and seems to possess
a sense of will that is not ours? Words like “coincidence,” “synchronicity,”
and “destiny,” are puny; after they’ve been said we don’t know any more than
before. Life just does this sort of thing. While it’s happening, it seems like
chance: When you look back, it seems purposeful. Logic can’t account for it.
Cynics say one thing, mystics another, and scientists say nothing, but none
account for it. Nevertheless, these things happen. And when they happen, we
feel touched by something larger than ourselves.
The sixth ingredient: I got hungry. Stopped at a Burger King. I’d call Mama
and have a burger. I called, and she wasn’t home. Got my burger, and sat down.
And then the mystery appeared.
A Burger King is no place for the appearance of a great mystery, is it? The
surroundings gave an almost-but-not-quite nightmarish quality to what felt like
a waking dream.
Have I neglected to mention that this was 17 years ago? I was 34 that May. The
apparition was a youth of about 15 who walked in with a roly-poly friend
slightly younger than he. The friend obviously idolized the youth, and the
youth played to him as though he were a large audience. But the youth was —
me.
I may be crazy but I’m not kidding. I mean, literally, he was my double. He
looked, dressed, moved, and spoke, almost exactly as I did when I was his age
— and, more or less, as I still do. His eyebrows were a little thicker, his
hands seemed a little stronger, his teeth were straighter. The duplication
wasn’t exact, but close enough to be a twin. His facial expressions were mine
— I recognized them from my mirror and from home movies. What seemed strangest
was the way he used his hands. My hands are always in motion when I speak, and
they are motions very particular to me — a kind of signature, if you like. His
hands moved exactly as mine. I’d never seen that before. He wore a long-sleeved
shirt, the cut that I usually wear, and a white T-shirt underneath, as I
usually do, no matter how hot it is (and it was hot). And his top three or four
shirt buttons were unbuttoned, as mine usually are. And he was my height. And
had my eyes. And his walk was mine. It was me.
He noticed me looking at him, then looked away and seemed not to notice. I
looked away too. I didn’t want to be intrusive. But long ago, first because of
a life of minor crime and then because of my curiosity as a writer, I’d learned
to study things carefully with my side-vision while seeming to be looking at
something else in front of me. (It’s also a skill taught in advanced martial
arts, I’ve since discovered.) So I studied him carefully without looking
directly at him. He was me, alright.
I wondered why he didn’t recognize himself in me as well. Then I realized two
things. One, that I was sitting still and he was in animated conversation. He
might see that I wore my clothing and my hair as he did (we had on practically
the same shirt), but my hands were still and his were not, and that made a
difference. And it hit me that he had no way of knowing what he’d look like
when he was 34, while I remembered very clearly what I looked like when I was
15-ish. I sensed that he was aware of me, if only because I was studying him.
He had the street-thing I have, that sense of what people in a room are really
paying attention to — you needed it, where I grew up, or you didn’t survive
well. But I assumed that he’d filed me away as just some strange cat over in
the corner whom he didn’t have to worry about.
But I was worrying about him. I can’t express the unworldly sensation of
seeing one’s double — especially a young double. I’m a religious person, and
in certain situations I find myself asking (only half in jest), “What could God
possibly be thinking of?” I neither expect nor get an answer, but the question
somehow centers me. And in that Burger King, of all places, I was asking it
very earnestly. For instance, in addition to my six ingredients, how many other
ingredients had directed him to that Burger King during the very half hour
that, against all likelihood, I would also be there?
Some pretty girls came in. He knew them, but they were obviously affluent and
he obviously wasn’t, and the banter was the ritualized exchange of people who
watch each other carefully but from different worlds. He pretended they weren’t
important to him, but they were; for their part, they treated him dismissively
on the surface but actually very carefully, and with respect. Me, I was in a
kind of trance. Here was this impossible double. Different history. Different
geography. Different DNA. Different era. Different ethnicity (I’m Sicilian and
he was Mexican). But my double nonetheless. As I was his.
I have no explanation. But the fact that it was so — that fact, in the flesh,
meant that there was something operative in existence that neither our science
nor our philosophy has even attempted to encompass.
Because I am not a chosen one. By which I mean: If he and I are each other’s
double, then other people (perhaps you) have doubles — just as unlikely, but
just as real.
I had no idea what to make of it then, and have no idea what to make of it
now. He watched me carefully as I left — which meant he’d been aware of me all
along, watching me sideways as I’d watched him. Which, in turn, meant to me
that he was really my double — in the cut of his mind as much as in the
cut of his clothes and his features.
That was 17 years ago. Today he’s roughly the age I was then. A month doesn’t
go by that I don’t think of him. Did he become a writer? Did he take some of
the paths I almost did — criminal, family man, cop (yes, I almost became a cop
once), priest (that, too)? Are each of us living out a fate the other missed?
If he’s still alive (and I was almost killed several times at that age), he’s
out there somewhere. Which is to say, I’m out there somewhere, living an
entirely different, unknowable life. As you may be. What could God be thinking
of?
This article appears in January 17 • 1997 and January 17 • 1997 (Cover).