***** Lakewood by Megan Giddings (2020)
Lakewood by Megan Giddings (2020)
Part 1
Chapter 3
Once a doctor had claimed that Deziree’s problems were psychological. Something terrible had happened to her, he speculated, and her body was working out the trauma. Therapy, some Lexapro, some exercise, she’ll be a new woman in six months. Another had said she just wanted attention. They had gone to a specialist, a woman who had to be booked eight months in advance, who was willing to acknowledge that she didn’t understand all the parts of Deziree’s illness, but that didn’t mean nothing was wrong. To make life easier, we have to agree there is no such thing as normal, the doctor had said while typing on her laptop. If you think too much about how things should be, you forget how they are (28).
Chapter 4
At the time, Lena had thought, oh yeah, it was a marketing thing. It was a job whose whole point was to get people to talk about something in hopefully the same positive way. Why wouldn’t it filter down to the way everyone spoke to each other? But listening to the three people at the table, Lena thought that maybe this was just how people in this country were starting to speak to each other now. Even when they weren’t online, people spoke as if they were bots designed to get clicks. Phrases repeated to get a person’s attention, with nothing substantial beneath them. Jokes that meant we have seen the same image on the internet. Lena’s grandmother used to say she was part of the last generation that could go for as long as 15 minutes without talking nonsense (38).
Chapter 6
Sometimes, dreams are not omens. They’re just your brain stitching things together (61).
Chapter 7
Lena touched her desk, glad Tanya couldn’t see her face. She suddenly understood the thought experiments better based on this feeling: the uncanniness of someone you love being able to abruptly articulate a secret feeling. Friendship, family, and romance breed a telepathy that comes from kinship (73).
There was something about conspiracy theories that she’d always liked. How a person’s brain could find the smallest threads to reaffirm a creative, false truth about the world. Most of her favorites were about celebrities. A child beauty queen who everyone thought was murdered had been kidnapped, brainwashed, and turned into a very religious pop star. Secret romances between teen drama stars who were now hiding their secret babies. Some of this stuff couldn’t be considered conspiracy theories, though. There were people on these boards who believed that all people had to do to stop climate change was to learn how to speak to the weather respectfully and just explain the situation (75).
Chapter 11
“Part 2 of this project is to see if intimacy increases thought receptivity,” Dr. Lisa said. She paused, as if she was fighting the urge to make a hand motion or some sort of joke. She took a deep breath and said there was a theory that sometimes, when you were bonded too closely with someone, you couldn’t truly hear or see them. Your impression of who they were and who you thought they should be was permanently in the way once intimacy was established. You see the people you don’t know well the clearest (107).
Part 2
Chapter 22
Lakewood is isolated from all major highways. You have to drive 15 miles south to connect to the interstate. The closest town is 10 miles away, but it’s really just a few streetlights, a party store, a bar called JJ’s, and a gas station surrounded by a cluster of ranch-style homes. The roads here are redder than other places. It’s mostly farmland outside of town, but there’s the woods behind Great Lakes Shipping Company, a small state park six miles outside of town, and Long Lake. The water here is terrible. I’ve become a bottled water person when I’m home. I know it’s irresponsible. And the people here are different. They’re so, so mindful. I don’t mean in like a meditation way. I mean, they’re always aware of each other, the people around them. There’s the usual Midwestern judginess, but everywhere I go I feel noticed. Some of it is the I-only-encounter-black-people-from-watching-conservative-news-stations look. But.
Could it be possible that the entire town is somehow not real? There were so many people working in the facility I was in. Is it like some sort of fucked-up Disney World? Everyone except us, the guests, were in on it. But what about Charlie, his friends? When I did a street view of Lakewood, there were the donut shops, the Methodist and Lutheran churches, the gas station where I filled up, my apartment. Maybe it wasn’t that widespread.
But my phone doesn’t let me search for research studies (210).
Chapter 23
This town is cursed, I said. Tom said I sounded like a local. You would love the way they talk about this town. Whenever something is weird, something is wrong, they talk about how a great chief once lived and loved this land and cursed it for all white men. Yes, it’s racist. But I’ve heard old white men in the donut shops using it as an explanation for why there are bad cell signals, an increasing divorce rate among young couples in the area, drugs. Why a girl was murdered here in the early 1970s. No blame on the man who did it, the father of a child the girl was babysitting. And for “the mysterious illness going around town.” It sounds like a bunch of people have summer colds, some rashes, they feel weak, headaches, and it’s all been conflated into one big illness. People here are wild.
Today, after work, I went running for the first time since the-I don’t know what to call it-I guess the experiment. Downtown, near the courthouse steps, people were protesting something. They were holding signs and yelling. When I got close enough, I could see one sign that read STOP HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN THE USA. They were all wearing Sharpied shirts that read Freedom from Government Tyranny. Human rights, Human dignity, they yelled. If you’re in a study, we can help you, a white man with dreadlocks yelled.
The longer I’ve been here, the better I’ve gotten at making my face a mask. I keep it polite: never react too much, especially if someone is doing or saying something that is annoying me. Whenever I’m listening to someone speak, I force myself to make my eyes a little wider. I know it makes me look younger, more innocent. And I rarely wear makeup for that reason too. Especially as a younger woman who is also a very small person, I already know most people don’t think of me as a threat. But I add to it. Smile a lot. Apologize for things I don’t need to acknowledge. Laugh often. And I make sure not to do that forced, giddy laugh people do that can sound too desperate. I try as hard as possible to laugh like I’m delighted. The cuter I am, the more agreeable I appear, the less people notice how much attention I’m paying.
It’s changed me. I can’t just be any longer. When I was at my mom’s, I noticed I was watching her, and trying to anticipate what she wanted from me. In some ways, it wasn’t that much different from when I was growing up. I realize I’ve spent most of my life watching someone, making sure I was doing everything possible to not upset her in some way. Pushing my reactions down so I didn’t add stress to the situation. Maybe that’s why college was such a relief for me. It was the first sustained amount of time I could remember when I could think about me first. When I could know who I was when I had some space.
When the protester, the white man with dreadlocks, yelled the “word” study, my eyes instantly darted with fear. My mouth started to open. I looked at their faces, hoping I would recognize them on second glance. I thought they might be observers trying to see if someone would break. I had never seen these people before in my life. One of the women shoved a flyer into my hand. I kept running. Waited until I was two blocks away to stop and read it.
Written at the top of the flyer was Stop operation lightbox!!! Below it in a much smaller font was: They have been testing on us since the Cold War. This is a human rights violation. They are tricking you into making your body trash. They are rounding up the meek and turning them into murderers. The poor, the sick, the queer, the black, the small, the victims of the great credit scam, the natives, the disabled, and using them for experiments. Wake up, America!!!!!! We are eating ourselves! Go to stoplightbox.net.
Stoplightbox.net was blocked on my phone.
Below that a drawing and a comic strip featuring Uncle Sam. The drawing showed Uncle Sam eating a person, which looked like it was modeled after Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son. I hate that painting, but this version of it made me laugh. The comic strip had Uncle Sam hitting either a husky child or a very short man with the American flag. Progress, he yelled. Next panel, the child burst like it was a piñata. After that, Uncle Sam gathered the organs. Then he labeled them. A heart was $ 1776. Intestines were only $ 74. Skeleton, $ 1.50. I did not understand what was being said here or Uncle Sam’s value system. On the back was an all-caps rant. I skimmed it, but the highlights were the US government is sewing the heads of dogs onto men. Women were being given pills to make them more subservient. New lab meat was being grown only for the rich, and the grocery- store meat was making everyone shorter. Facilities were all over the world.
Three of their flyers were taped to the lamppost next to me. Another flyer taped above that: IF YOU’RE A SUBJECT IN A RESEARCH STUDY, YOU CAN BE RESCUED. Around campus last semester, some kids had done-I guess I would call it an art project? A prank?-where they put up posters claiming squirrels weren’t real. ALL SQUIRRELS YOU SEE ARE ROBOTS! You probably remember seeing one. The website said they were vehicles for tiny aliens from a distant galaxy. I told myself it could be the same style thing. The protesters I ran past were a little too old, though, to be doing fake internet hoaxes.
I threw my flyer on the ground and ran on to the closest donut shop. Sweaty and tired and gross, I sat in a booth, ordered a glass of water and a chocolate donut. How long have you been in research studies? a woman’s voice asked. I shook my head, sure that paranoia and anxiety were making me hear things. A man said that he wasn’t in them, he just was sure they were happening in this town. He had been hearing rumors for years. I know I should’ve left immediately. But I was too curious. I wanted to know what he meant by years.
The average person is most interested in someone who might give them attention. They would notice me if I turned my head or was obviously eavesdropping. I pulled out my phone, opened the notes section. The man said he had heard stories since he was a boy: You don’t ever go to the basement of the old hospital. He said colored people were always coming and going. The woman said Colored? in an I-beg-your-pardon way. It made me like her. I always like anyone who hears something racist and can immediately react, not get caught in the processing loop of what-the-fuck-did-I-just-hear. I wanted to see who they were, so I posed and took a selfie. Took another (213-7).
Chapter 25
I went to the tree I thought was in the photo of my grandmother. Long grass, small flowers. The big tree cast a shadow, the blades moved with the wind, and my brain convinced me for a small gorgeous moment she was there. The moment after, when it was clearly only a tree, the shadow of its leaves in the bright-lit night, was one of the worst for me in a long time. It was as if I had lost her again. Feeling like that is why I try as much as I can to not think about her. I have understood since I was a child that life is deeply unfair. Life’s meanness is nothing. I’ve spent years now convincing myself that although something is unfair, it can still be worthwhile. My mother is healthy. Her laugh is different now. There's no hesitation, no sourness. But this year has been a test (226-7).
Maybe the hypothesis is how much do people value money over themselves (229)?
Chapter 30
Do you still believe me? I asked my mom.
She squeezed my shoulder. I will always believe you.
You have to, though, I said, you’re my mom. Deziree shook her head, reminded me that a lot of parents are not like that. People feel more loyalty to how they think things should be than to other people, including their family. I thought maybe she was talking about Grandma, but I didn’t understand the context. There was so much between them that I didn’t know, don’t want to know. But now, I think maybe Deziree was already seeing things clearer than I was (265).
Deziree says it takes time, but one day, you’ll get used to living without certainty. You’ll accept here are times you’ll never get a clear answer to. Instead of it being the center of your life, eventually it’ll be something you rarely think about. It’ll be in the margins of your life. I want to believe her (267).
Part 1
Chapter 3
Once a doctor had claimed that Deziree’s problems were psychological. Something terrible had happened to her, he speculated, and her body was working out the trauma. Therapy, some Lexapro, some exercise, she’ll be a new woman in six months. Another had said she just wanted attention. They had gone to a specialist, a woman who had to be booked eight months in advance, who was willing to acknowledge that she didn’t understand all the parts of Deziree’s illness, but that didn’t mean nothing was wrong. To make life easier, we have to agree there is no such thing as normal, the doctor had said while typing on her laptop. If you think too much about how things should be, you forget how they are (28).
Chapter 4
At the time, Lena had thought, oh yeah, it was a marketing thing. It was a job whose whole point was to get people to talk about something in hopefully the same positive way. Why wouldn’t it filter down to the way everyone spoke to each other? But listening to the three people at the table, Lena thought that maybe this was just how people in this country were starting to speak to each other now. Even when they weren’t online, people spoke as if they were bots designed to get clicks. Phrases repeated to get a person’s attention, with nothing substantial beneath them. Jokes that meant we have seen the same image on the internet. Lena’s grandmother used to say she was part of the last generation that could go for as long as 15 minutes without talking nonsense (38).
Chapter 6
Sometimes, dreams are not omens. They’re just your brain stitching things together (61).
Chapter 7
Lena touched her desk, glad Tanya couldn’t see her face. She suddenly understood the thought experiments better based on this feeling: the uncanniness of someone you love being able to abruptly articulate a secret feeling. Friendship, family, and romance breed a telepathy that comes from kinship (73).
There was something about conspiracy theories that she’d always liked. How a person’s brain could find the smallest threads to reaffirm a creative, false truth about the world. Most of her favorites were about celebrities. A child beauty queen who everyone thought was murdered had been kidnapped, brainwashed, and turned into a very religious pop star. Secret romances between teen drama stars who were now hiding their secret babies. Some of this stuff couldn’t be considered conspiracy theories, though. There were people on these boards who believed that all people had to do to stop climate change was to learn how to speak to the weather respectfully and just explain the situation (75).
Chapter 11
“Part 2 of this project is to see if intimacy increases thought receptivity,” Dr. Lisa said. She paused, as if she was fighting the urge to make a hand motion or some sort of joke. She took a deep breath and said there was a theory that sometimes, when you were bonded too closely with someone, you couldn’t truly hear or see them. Your impression of who they were and who you thought they should be was permanently in the way once intimacy was established. You see the people you don’t know well the clearest (107).
Part 2
Chapter 22
Lakewood is isolated from all major highways. You have to drive 15 miles south to connect to the interstate. The closest town is 10 miles away, but it’s really just a few streetlights, a party store, a bar called JJ’s, and a gas station surrounded by a cluster of ranch-style homes. The roads here are redder than other places. It’s mostly farmland outside of town, but there’s the woods behind Great Lakes Shipping Company, a small state park six miles outside of town, and Long Lake. The water here is terrible. I’ve become a bottled water person when I’m home. I know it’s irresponsible. And the people here are different. They’re so, so mindful. I don’t mean in like a meditation way. I mean, they’re always aware of each other, the people around them. There’s the usual Midwestern judginess, but everywhere I go I feel noticed. Some of it is the I-only-encounter-black-people-from-watching-conservative-news-stations look. But.
Could it be possible that the entire town is somehow not real? There were so many people working in the facility I was in. Is it like some sort of fucked-up Disney World? Everyone except us, the guests, were in on it. But what about Charlie, his friends? When I did a street view of Lakewood, there were the donut shops, the Methodist and Lutheran churches, the gas station where I filled up, my apartment. Maybe it wasn’t that widespread.
But my phone doesn’t let me search for research studies (210).
Chapter 23
This town is cursed, I said. Tom said I sounded like a local. You would love the way they talk about this town. Whenever something is weird, something is wrong, they talk about how a great chief once lived and loved this land and cursed it for all white men. Yes, it’s racist. But I’ve heard old white men in the donut shops using it as an explanation for why there are bad cell signals, an increasing divorce rate among young couples in the area, drugs. Why a girl was murdered here in the early 1970s. No blame on the man who did it, the father of a child the girl was babysitting. And for “the mysterious illness going around town.” It sounds like a bunch of people have summer colds, some rashes, they feel weak, headaches, and it’s all been conflated into one big illness. People here are wild.
Today, after work, I went running for the first time since the-I don’t know what to call it-I guess the experiment. Downtown, near the courthouse steps, people were protesting something. They were holding signs and yelling. When I got close enough, I could see one sign that read STOP HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN THE USA. They were all wearing Sharpied shirts that read Freedom from Government Tyranny. Human rights, Human dignity, they yelled. If you’re in a study, we can help you, a white man with dreadlocks yelled.
The longer I’ve been here, the better I’ve gotten at making my face a mask. I keep it polite: never react too much, especially if someone is doing or saying something that is annoying me. Whenever I’m listening to someone speak, I force myself to make my eyes a little wider. I know it makes me look younger, more innocent. And I rarely wear makeup for that reason too. Especially as a younger woman who is also a very small person, I already know most people don’t think of me as a threat. But I add to it. Smile a lot. Apologize for things I don’t need to acknowledge. Laugh often. And I make sure not to do that forced, giddy laugh people do that can sound too desperate. I try as hard as possible to laugh like I’m delighted. The cuter I am, the more agreeable I appear, the less people notice how much attention I’m paying.
It’s changed me. I can’t just be any longer. When I was at my mom’s, I noticed I was watching her, and trying to anticipate what she wanted from me. In some ways, it wasn’t that much different from when I was growing up. I realize I’ve spent most of my life watching someone, making sure I was doing everything possible to not upset her in some way. Pushing my reactions down so I didn’t add stress to the situation. Maybe that’s why college was such a relief for me. It was the first sustained amount of time I could remember when I could think about me first. When I could know who I was when I had some space.
When the protester, the white man with dreadlocks, yelled the “word” study, my eyes instantly darted with fear. My mouth started to open. I looked at their faces, hoping I would recognize them on second glance. I thought they might be observers trying to see if someone would break. I had never seen these people before in my life. One of the women shoved a flyer into my hand. I kept running. Waited until I was two blocks away to stop and read it.
Written at the top of the flyer was Stop operation lightbox!!! Below it in a much smaller font was: They have been testing on us since the Cold War. This is a human rights violation. They are tricking you into making your body trash. They are rounding up the meek and turning them into murderers. The poor, the sick, the queer, the black, the small, the victims of the great credit scam, the natives, the disabled, and using them for experiments. Wake up, America!!!!!! We are eating ourselves! Go to stoplightbox.net.
Stoplightbox.net was blocked on my phone.
Below that a drawing and a comic strip featuring Uncle Sam. The drawing showed Uncle Sam eating a person, which looked like it was modeled after Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son. I hate that painting, but this version of it made me laugh. The comic strip had Uncle Sam hitting either a husky child or a very short man with the American flag. Progress, he yelled. Next panel, the child burst like it was a piñata. After that, Uncle Sam gathered the organs. Then he labeled them. A heart was $ 1776. Intestines were only $ 74. Skeleton, $ 1.50. I did not understand what was being said here or Uncle Sam’s value system. On the back was an all-caps rant. I skimmed it, but the highlights were the US government is sewing the heads of dogs onto men. Women were being given pills to make them more subservient. New lab meat was being grown only for the rich, and the grocery- store meat was making everyone shorter. Facilities were all over the world.
Three of their flyers were taped to the lamppost next to me. Another flyer taped above that: IF YOU’RE A SUBJECT IN A RESEARCH STUDY, YOU CAN BE RESCUED. Around campus last semester, some kids had done-I guess I would call it an art project? A prank?-where they put up posters claiming squirrels weren’t real. ALL SQUIRRELS YOU SEE ARE ROBOTS! You probably remember seeing one. The website said they were vehicles for tiny aliens from a distant galaxy. I told myself it could be the same style thing. The protesters I ran past were a little too old, though, to be doing fake internet hoaxes.
I threw my flyer on the ground and ran on to the closest donut shop. Sweaty and tired and gross, I sat in a booth, ordered a glass of water and a chocolate donut. How long have you been in research studies? a woman’s voice asked. I shook my head, sure that paranoia and anxiety were making me hear things. A man said that he wasn’t in them, he just was sure they were happening in this town. He had been hearing rumors for years. I know I should’ve left immediately. But I was too curious. I wanted to know what he meant by years.
The average person is most interested in someone who might give them attention. They would notice me if I turned my head or was obviously eavesdropping. I pulled out my phone, opened the notes section. The man said he had heard stories since he was a boy: You don’t ever go to the basement of the old hospital. He said colored people were always coming and going. The woman said Colored? in an I-beg-your-pardon way. It made me like her. I always like anyone who hears something racist and can immediately react, not get caught in the processing loop of what-the-fuck-did-I-just-hear. I wanted to see who they were, so I posed and took a selfie. Took another (213-7).
Chapter 25
I went to the tree I thought was in the photo of my grandmother. Long grass, small flowers. The big tree cast a shadow, the blades moved with the wind, and my brain convinced me for a small gorgeous moment she was there. The moment after, when it was clearly only a tree, the shadow of its leaves in the bright-lit night, was one of the worst for me in a long time. It was as if I had lost her again. Feeling like that is why I try as much as I can to not think about her. I have understood since I was a child that life is deeply unfair. Life’s meanness is nothing. I’ve spent years now convincing myself that although something is unfair, it can still be worthwhile. My mother is healthy. Her laugh is different now. There's no hesitation, no sourness. But this year has been a test (226-7).
Maybe the hypothesis is how much do people value money over themselves (229)?
Chapter 30
Do you still believe me? I asked my mom.
She squeezed my shoulder. I will always believe you.
You have to, though, I said, you’re my mom. Deziree shook her head, reminded me that a lot of parents are not like that. People feel more loyalty to how they think things should be than to other people, including their family. I thought maybe she was talking about Grandma, but I didn’t understand the context. There was so much between them that I didn’t know, don’t want to know. But now, I think maybe Deziree was already seeing things clearer than I was (265).
Deziree says it takes time, but one day, you’ll get used to living without certainty. You’ll accept here are times you’ll never get a clear answer to. Instead of it being the center of your life, eventually it’ll be something you rarely think about. It’ll be in the margins of your life. I want to believe her (267).