Feebly, I laughed. “Yeah, I can definitely imagine him being like that.”
“And he’s… he’s my little brother, you know,” Jay stammered, pressing his hand over his eyes so I wouldn’t see him cry, although I could still glimpse the tears as they glided down his jaw. “I’m sorry. I just… I really miss him. It’s been two years, and I don’t even know who he’ll be after everything. I have this terrible vision in my head that I’ll go to pick him up from Hive and I won’t recognize him. He will know me and call out to me, but I won’tknowhim.” Wiping down his face, he looked at me. “Is that strange? Am I messed up for thinking this?”
Deep inside me, there was a wild, wrenching ache, and for once, I let myself feel it. I did not try to tamp it down. I did not try to run away from it.It’s okay to feel your emotions as they come,Kai had told me once, and I had listened. And I would keep listening until I no longer felt the need to resist the humanity of my body.
When I was finally able to, I answered, “I think the situation is very strange. So it’s okay to have strange feelings about it.”
Jay nodded rapidly, regaining some of his composure. “Yeah, I guess so,” he exhaled. “Our dad, you know, he’s beside himself. I think he would like to meet you, to hear what you have to say. You can come by the restaurant any time you want. You’ll be welcome, I promise.”
“Thank you, Jay,” I sighed, clutching the front of my sweater. “I don’t know what to say.”
He gave me a small, strained smile, picking the envelope up from the table for the first time since I had placed it there next to his beer. “I think I should be the one thanking you,” he said. “For reaching out. For making me talk about it. I think it’s good to talk about it. I think it’s important.”
“Yes,” I agreed, feeling exonerated, freed, forgiving, forgiven at last. “I think it’s important too.”
???
After we said our goodbyes, I got into the car and drove for three hours straight without stopping. I told myself I would not stop until I saw something that made sense to me.
It was miles and miles out of the city that the air started to clear. A crisp, after-rain chill fell over the windshield, and clusters of trees began lining the road in their bewitching autumn beauty. At the first glimpse of a mountain, silhouetted gray against the black night sky, a grand freeing sensation washed over me, as though all the doors of life were suddenly flung open for me and I could go anywhere I wanted in the world.
On the car’s dashboard, which was connected to my phone, a message popped up from Theo:I’m off work. Want to get dinner or something?
When I stopped at a gas station to treat myself to a strawberry popsicle from the mini-market there, I replied:Sorry. Not really in town. I’ll call you in the morning.
Within seconds a series of question marks appeared on the messaging interface. I locked the screen and slipped the phone back into my pocket.Poor Theo,I sighed to myself.He must think I’m insane.
And maybe I was a little.
Life, my life, had broken free of its laws and constraints. I could be anyone now. I could be a very strange woman who let herself love and went to the countryside in the middle of the night to stare at the trees and felt absolutely nothing about this strangeness. Was it bad to be like this? Was it good? It didn’t matter. So long as I was free. So long as I was able to live in my own skin.
I drove for another five minutes before a little field covered in grass opened up by the side of the provincial road. I stopped under the yellow luminescence of an old streetlight, got out of the car, had the rest of my popsicle, which was surprisingly flavorful, and then walked for a bit, my nose streaming from the cold, or maybe just from the change of air quality.
It was quiet and dark, and I should be scared, but I wasn’t. The night smelled fresh and damp. Pretty little fireflies were flickering in the distance, and the ground was firm where I stepped. When I got tired, I lay down on the dew-freckled grass with my raincoat still on and an arm folded under my head like a pillow.
The stars weren’t visible, but the moon was. Slight, silver grin precious like a wedding ring. I had the sense that if I stretched out my hand, I could pick it up and bend it around my finger.
The sky is closer here, I remembered Kai saying, and it was.
In my chest, my heart felt light, lifting, rising up to the grinning moon, to a realm of soul and spirit. But my bones became heavy and sank deep into the soil. They grew roots, long and meddling, which too sprouted new growth, a continuous network of life that reached all the way down to the center of the earth until its force and mine became exchangeable. Life collapsing into life. If I kept very still, I could even feel it moving, relentless, ancient, the earth turning slowly,slowlyon its axis.
It was very easy then to be alive and human. Easy and powerful, to be a part of the all-encompassing grandness of existence. Right here, on this strange, sick, beautiful world, where we were all connected.
Kai
When I first started dreaming of her, I accepted it as a mere manifestation of guilt.
I had buried Kate, I had mourned her, I had gone through the Program to escape her, and now, five years after the accident, almost as many years as she and I had spent together, I was starting to forget her. And so this other woman, this nameless, faceless dream creature, was set out to haunt me, waking me up in the middle of the night, my body throbbing for her as if to say,Already? Already you dream of someone else? Already you’re moving on from the person you used to call your wife? That is how deep your love and devotion run?
And I could try to give myself excuses, nice, neat windows to escape from. For one thing, Kate would have never called me the love of her life, and I would certainly never call her mine. We were only nineteen when we met, children basically. But then her dad died around the same time my mom lost her battle with cancer, and we bonded over our grief, our simultaneous confrontations with mortal fragility, the daunting impermanence of life.
Suddenly we found ourselves craving stability, reassurance, something that proved life was in our control and that we, young and powerful, were conquering it instead of the other way around. And then, before we knew it, we were twenty-two and exchanging vows.
But for every window I opened for myself, a door was shut in return, a reminder that although our love had not been extraordinary, it had still been love. And, in any case, there were other degrees of closeness. Respect and appreciation and fondness, which would have been enough for us had we been a little less young and tender-hearted to settle for something that wasn’t quite love.
Not that any of this mattered in the end. When I lost Kate, I still felt as though a part of my body was ripped away from me. Life, it seemed, was a series of losses, and I had never been very good at losing.
For days I couldn’t get out of bed. For days I kept obsessing over all the things I could have done differently. All the affection I had in my heart and had subconsciously been saving for someone else I could have given to her. I could have loved her better, deeper. I could have fought for us, kept her by my side. And then maybe she would still be here, falling asleep on the sofa with her glasses on.
