High on one wall, an epic collage juxtaposed photos of Arol, Wulf, Swan, and the Farm with illustrations from back issues of the Zendik magazine. The drawing that caught my eye showed the head of a mountain goat, divided into halves: one in solid ink, one in dotted outline. It was captioned “Tomorrow’s Ghost” and titled Extinction.
From my lap I pulled a half-filled page—a printout of a piece Arol hadn’t seen yet. I was hoping she would like it and hear the plea beneath the words for a spiritual cure. She signaled me to begin. Taut with anticipation, I read her the poem.
It began: “I feel DEAD. Just chalk in my throat and cover my eyes and dull out the days as dull they go by.” It ended: “PASSION, cold passion, hot ice on my heart, burning and freezing and breaking apart, I need a new heart.”
Arol nodded. “That one’s emotionally honest. That’s how you really feel about your nowhere relationship.”
I flinched. She’d narrowed the question so quickly. Yes, the deadness I’d described had fed off my dread that the sheltering love I’d built with Amory would soon be condemned. Yes, I could twist this link to mean that loving him had dulled me. But wasn’t there more to the story? An additional thread or three? Hints at how lasting love, service to Zendik, and joyous work could interweave? A subtle pattern that Arol, with her genius for lifesaving, was uniquely suited to see?
“You know,” she continued, “if it’s hard for you to break up with him, you can just put it all on yourself. Make it all about you. Say, ‘This isn’t working for me. I need some time off.’ Or however you wanna phrase it. Don’t accuse him of doing anything wrong, don’t say it’s his fault. That way, he can’t argue.”
Though rote to most people, Arol’s advice was new to me. I’d yet to play the initiating role in a breakup. Now, with Blues Fest looming and no reprieve forthcoming, I saw that to placate Zendik I’d have to dump Amory.
That evening, I called him down to the Farmhouse office from the upstairs room—now our library—where I’d once had my bat cave. In the glow of the bulb at the foot of the steps, I improvised on Arol’s script: “Amory, I’m sorry, but I need to take a break from our relationship. With everything I’m going through right now, I could use some space to get my head straight.”
He blinked, and stepped back as if I’d hit him. He ran both hands through his cushion of hair, then let them drop to his sides and clench into fists. The same hands that weeks earlier had calmed my wasp stings.
“Does that mean we can’t have dates anymore?”
“Yes,” I said, beyond entreaty. I’d cauterized my own heart-wound hours before.
He moved to hug me.
I moved away.
To my relief, I sold well at Blues Fest. Then, a few weeks later, I pulled off the rare feat of making $300 in Asheville on a Friday when no special event swelled the modest flow of foot traffic.
Yet my triumphs felt hollow. Riding home to the Farm, I had no warm embrace to look forward to. Worse, I had no faith I would find one. The only compass I knew had steered me to Amory. It seemed that my heart had betrayed me.
Into the ruin of our love crept a desire I feared but couldn’t dispeclass="underline" to revisit the Sawtooths.
The Sawtooth range, rising from the Salmon River valley in southeastern Idaho, was the most beautiful place I’d ever been. During college, I’d spent a couple summers cooking and washing dishes at Redfish Lake Lodge, a resort at the edge of the Sawtooth Wilderness. On days off, I’d set out in search of awe: I knew nothing more sublime than gaining a saddle between two ridges and catching my first glimpse of a glacier lake, shimmering like an emerald in a colossal necklace, down the other side.
As June turned to July, my desire crystallized: I wished to sit at the rim of a crater and gaze into Sawtooth Lake—the deepest, the most serene, of all those limpid pools.
Maybe, reeling from Arol’s twin strikes against my match and my writing, I sought appeal to a quieter higher power—one who would not rush to judgment.
Admitting I wished to travel meant risking another betrayal.
When I’d left the Farm to see my mother in Brooklyn, in spring 2000, I’d been an infant Zendik—free to weigh my old life against my new one, sure to be welcomed back once I reached the right conclusion. But by summer 2002, when the Sawtooths began calling, my window for a no-fault “out” had long since closed. I was too old, in Zendik years, to dabble in the Deathculture. Should I choose to take a trip, I’d face immediate confinement behind an etheric electric fence.
I knew this because, in my two and two-thirds years at the Farm, I’d witnessed the exits of more than two dozen Zendiks. Teal, Zeta, Blayz, Estero, Lyrik, Jayd, Loria, Rebel, Owen, and Dymion were among the departed.
Some left meekly, swearing fealty. Some bristled in defiance. Some glittered with reckless flecks of nothing left to lose.
I wasn’t nasty to Zendiks on their way out. From most I kept my distance; a few I hugged goodbye. Always, I caught the scent of living death. Always, I saw a noose close, a neck snap, a heart stop—leaving behind a zombie marionette. I felt certain, after Zeta left the Farm, that she would never laugh again.
Still. I had to see the Sawtooths.
I called my brother in Idaho and told him I’d leave the next day—July 10. I couldn’t set an arrival date, since I didn’t yet know how I’d cover the 2,250 miles between the Farm and Boise. I planned to be gone two weeks.
Tarrow—who’d never risked an “out” herself—suggested I take a pretend journey instead. “Can’t you stay home and play out the fantasy in your imagination?”
Rave, ever the optimist, insisted I had an eminently curable self-esteem deficit. “You do great selling, and then—bam!—you lose it again. You have to believe in yourself, Helen!”
Riven dismissed the news with a weary shrug. “It takes work to survive, wherever you are. I guess if you want, you can learn that the hard way.”
That night, after dinner, I retreated to my latest dorm, the Potato Shed, to prepare for my trip. I’d have to trim my needs to fit my medium-size backpack, stow any loose belongings under my bed in banana boxes, and wrestle the bulky sleeping bag I’d found in the barn into a bedroll I could strap to my pack.
My bed was a mess of unmade decisions when Amory appeared at the foot of the ladder to the loft above me. I started. Was he choosing to brave my electric fence? Unable to sense it? Brows raised in wary hope, he stuttered out that he’d come to say goodbye.
I nodded, saying nothing.
He stepped past the ladder. “Can I give you a hug? This one last time?”
A defensive pulse erupted in my chest, frying any urge I might have felt toward tenderness. I couldn’t soften now. Come morning, I’d enter a war zone.
“No,” I said. His face crumpled. He turned and left the shed.
What if I’d said yes? Would I have dissolved in tears? Let him comfort me? Let his warm hands stroke my wild head? Would he have offered to leave with me? Would I have agreed?
I’d steal my final glimpse of him the next morning. He’d be amid the group in the living room, winning an approving nod and smile from Arol for revealing that he, like Wulf, had encountered Science of Mind as a child. I would think, It’s a good thing I’m going. I must have been keeping him from coming into his own.
I would be wrong. Within a month or so of my departure for Idaho, he, too, would be gone.
By the time I’d subdued the sleeping bag and zipped up my backpack, mine was the only lamp still lit. My roommates were asleep or on dates. Even the creature who nightly scratched and scuffled within our walls had fallen silent.