Winnie spent the remainder of the evening in the company of Netflix. For a few brief moments, she was not alone in her apartment, but she was in 19th century England, navigating the social circles of the royal crown and seducing the charming lord of the manor. But as the clock struck midnight, she faced the inevitable dreaded end – the black screen. There was nothing lonelier than seeing herself on her sofa in the reflection of her television once it was turned off – a reminder that she had, in fact, not traveled to 19th century England, and had never ventured out from underneath the ratty blanket tugged snug under her chin.
The spectacle of voices and parties that filled her apartment dissolved into the hum of the refrigerator. She stared at her reflection – a half-eaten plate of food on the ottoman in front of her. An empty orange juice bottle on the end table, her shoes haphazardly thrown upon the hardwood floor.
She would happily clean her apartment if there was a chance someone else would see it, but that seemed unlikely. There was no reason to clean the house when she wasn’t having guests, no reason to shop for clothes when she wasn’t going out, and no reason to work out if no one was going to see her naked. Loneliness doesn’t happen all at once. It creeps up on you. This wasn’t how humans were supposed to live – each one of us divided by walls from everyone else. The Geneva Convention determined solitary confinement was cruel and unusual punishment, why was she doing it to herself? This wasn’t part of the plan. Not that her life had to have a plan, but she did feel it had a purpose.
When Winnie was seven years old, she collapsed on the playground. Within 12 hours, she was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. The most terrifying aspect of this diagnosis had nothing to do with a lack of insulin in her blood, it was the future of finger pricks. Like any seven-year-old girl, she had a fear of needles, and the idea that she’d have to face multiple lancet pricks every day was nearly too much to bear. But children put a great deal of trust in adults, and the adults in her life constantly reassured her that these fleeting moments of pain were for her own good – that they were necessary and prudent in the big picture – in the long-term plan for her health. It didn’t matter that, if at the time, she did not understand the first thing about islet cells, insulin, or glucose, she did trust her parents.
This notion, that everything is part of a larger plan, is a cornerstone of religious faith. It imbues the world with meaning. Trials and tribulations are more easily swallowed if we imagine they happen for a reason. She felt she was meant to suffer as a child, as it taught her empathy. God gave her particular gifts, and she was meant to live a life helping others. She knew this deep in her soul. What she didn’t know, and the question that weighed on her presently was whether there was someone meant for her – or was she doomed to a life of loneliness? She often thought she’d never marry, but her true fear was marrying the wrong man. For there are, at least, benefits of solitude that temper the pain of loneliness… but to spend a life with someone and still be lonely, all the while being robbed of the benefits of solitude, she couldn’t imagine.
Did so-called soul mates exist?
She felt her mind stirring and her pulse quicken as she stared into the fairy lights that adorned her wall, these were the first two signs of an impending panic attack. Panic attacks had become a regular part of her life ever since middle school. As such, she had developed a well-tested and highly effective manner for dealing with them: she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and began to pray.
Prayer had been a part of life for as long as she could remember. She did not pray to receive particular things, nor for certain events to happen, but rather she asked God for wisdom and strength. She was, for all her life, naturally diffident and often lacked the requisite confidence to face even the most routine of activities like a job interview, a speech in front of the class, or an oral exam. This was of little consequence however because she believed in something bigger than herself. So, when it came to tackling life’s challenges, her strength was not the relevant variable, rather it was the strength of her belief.
So, she sat with eyes closed, breathing steady, looking inward so deep that it became looking outward. Whether or not she was actually communicating with God, there was no disputing there was a conversation going on in her head.
It is surprising what one can accomplish when they believe they are in conversation with the creator of the Universe. Winnie was valedictorian of her school. Granted, this was Yazoo, Mississippi, but her grades and test scores would likely have gotten her into an Ivy League University. She chose Holy Trinity for a number of reasons, it was her parents’ college and was affiliated with her church, but there was a more subtle, if not deeper, reason: she did not feel responsible for her success – that was God’s doing, and she felt compelled to honor the one that deserved the credit.
Her prayer assuaged her panic – as it always did. Whether it provided any answers was a matter of debate, for the “answers” she received did not come to her in the form of language – they were merely feelings that enveloped her and ultimately moved the needle of her heart’s internal compass. But of course, her heart and brain were often at odds.
So, when she stood up to lumber to the bathroom, her heart was calmed but her mind was still spinning. But at least it was a more thoughtful, focused, and controllable spin.
There are three billion men on the planet, I know a couple hundred.
She began brushing her teeth.
That puts the odds of actually meeting my so-called soulmate at about one in… ten million.
She inspected some impossibly small minutia on her face.
And how many dates would it take to find that one? She couldn’t bear the “getting to know you” phase. She didn’t want to spend three dates to realize they don’t like the same movies and wouldn’t even know what funny was unless a laugh track told them. This is to say nothing of religion and politics.
One in ten million… Slightly better than winning the lottery… but considerably worse than being hit by lightning.
She finally climbed into bed.
If you really wanted to meet your soulmate, you’d need a twist of fate… some sort of divine intervention…
She turned out the light, her face blank and mind in deep thought.
And closed her eyes.
The moonlight shone through the Tudor window, putting cool white criss cross diamonds on her quilt, spilling over onto the floor.
The faint hum of her refrigerator quietly resonated through the humid summer air.
The warm glow of fairy lights lit up her living room.
In the corner of her kitchen, a small goldfish stared out its bowl at her.
And she drifted off to sleep.
1 am, 2 am, 3 am all passed without incident. But 4 am was different. This was when it happened. What exactly ‘it’ is, is a matter of some controversy, but one’s opinion on this matter will be entirely dependent upon the question “Do you believe in magic?”
Of course, everyone believes in some kind of magic: they may feel their spouse’s smile is “pure magic” or Grandma’s living room is magical at Christmas time. But most magic involves something that is not entirely understood. For most of us, this includes mobile phones, airplanes, and television. As Arthur C. Clarke famously stated: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” But we at least are confident that someone understands these things. The joy of actual magic is the feeling that no one understands it. Humans enjoy this feeling so much we pay good money to emulate it at magic shows. It delights our minds in a way nothing else can.
Tragedy is often even more difficult to understand than delight, and the mysteries of the Universe are filled with both. One can understand the genetic errors present in a cell that led to cancer, but it doesn’t help you understand why it struck your father. Indeed, some events are so random that they almost yearn for meaning. Consider the following: for billions of years, the Earth has been constantly pelted with cosmic rays: fragments of atoms produced in the explosions of supernovas. This was a matter of almost no consequence until, in 1971, humans invented the microprocessor, an invention so minute and delicate that a single fragment of an atom from another solar system could flip a single bit on the circuit board, turn a one into a zero, and in a modern car without proper hardware redundancies, could cause a case of sudden acceleration, resulting in the death of a driver. It’s almost impossible to imagine something so small, insignificant, and random as a fragment of an atom from another galaxy, having such a profound effect on a human life. But many scientists are almost certain it has done exactly this. .
But even knowing how it happens still doesn’t explain why. Was there a reason that the particle fragment of an atom took the path it did? Why was the car on that particular road at that exact time of day?
When tornadoes strike homes, insurance companies, perhaps the world’s leading experts on probability, have decided to classify these events, for want of a better definition, as “Acts of God.” Adults have no more understanding as to why their house was destroyed by a tornado as seven-year-old Winnie understood why she had to get pricked with a needle every few hours. But the idea that it was part of a larger plan made both infinitely more palatable.
This particular “Act of God” struck Winnie’s electrical box. At 4:12 am, a spark of blue lightning emanated from behind the breakers. The “how” definition involved a wire overheating and melting the insulation, sending an arc of electricity to the ground wire, cracking like a lightning bolt, waking Winnie from her slumber to a house of complete darkness—no more fairy lights – no hum of the refrigerator. Her power was out and the electrical box smoking.
She rose from bed, bare feet on the hardwood floor. The unpleasant smell of burnt plastic in her nostrils.
She struggled to get her bearings. She wanted to go to sleep and deal with this in the morning, but once she fully regained consciousness, falling back to sleep with the smell of burnt plastic in the air didn’t seem prudent. She had read about electrical fires in walls before. So, fetching matches from the drawer, she lit the cinnamon candle on her end table and carried it to her refrigerator, retrieving a note held up by a magnet: 24-hour maintenance emergency: Rowan Collins.
She studied the name in the flickering light and weighed her options.
It was one thing to have him in her apartment in the light of day, but quite another in the still of the night with nothing but flickering candlelight dancing on the walls. The intimacy of this environment was overwhelming. Before she knew it, her fingers were dialing the number.