Crescendo by Amy Weiss

Author:Amy Weiss
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hay House
Published: 2017-04-19T04:00:00+00:00

The old man kneels down and plucks a daisy from its bed of grass. Each petal surrounding the yellow heart—and to the woman, there seem to be multitudes—bears a single drop of dew.

“Make a decision,” he tells her, “and the universe splits in two. In one universe you have chosen the first option, in the other the second. Take an action in the daughter universes, and they too divide. All the universes occur at the same time, parallel and yet worlds apart. All of them result in unique outcomes—or maybe not. All of them are your reality, one no less than the other.”

The woman has seen firsthand how a world can splinter, how it can divide a life into loneliness, a wife into widow. The before and the after, the source and the shard. But to inhabit them both? It cannot happen. The original one, the one with the happiness, lies broken in too many pieces.

“Say that you are getting dressed one morning, and you put on a gold locket.” The old man removes a petal from the daisy and hands it to her. The dewdrop on it is like a crystal ball. Inside it, she watches herself fastening the clasp of the necklace. “Or you decide to wear nothing around your neck but perfume.” He gives her another petal, and in this one she sees that her throat is bare.

The woman returns them both to him. Two different universes? All that has changed is her jewelry.

“Look closer,” he says.

She examines the first petal. She sees herself wearing the locket, entering a market, waiting to purchase coriander and clove. The shopkeeper notices the gold on her neck. It makes his eyes gleam. “My grandmother wore a necklace like yours,” he says to her. “My grandfather gave it to her on the day they were wed. She kept a lock of his hair inside it, and one night, when she tucked me into bed, she let me touch it. It was the closest I ever came to holding him.” The woman lingers at the register, moved to be invited inside this memory. They share a smile. She thanks the shopkeeper, leaves the store, turns right, and heads toward home.

She turns her attention to the second petal. Now she is locket-less, entering the market, waiting to make her purchase. The shopkeeper nods at her, says nothing. She leaves the store and turns right, which happens, in this scenario, to be a few minutes earlier than it had been in the previous one, and which also happens to be the precise moment when a bus climbs the curb and pins her under its wheels.

“Rather dramatic way to make your point,” she huffs.

The old man laughs and hands her another petal.

She sees herself lying underneath the wheels. With enough effort, she could try to pull herself out from under them, but that would require more than she has. She gives up. Her life flows away along with her blood.

The woman throws the petal onto the grass.

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