Louise is quiet for a moment. “Being sick gets really old. I can’t travel anymore. I’m hooked up to a machine half the week. The second I break a single drop of sweat we have to take my temperature. I want to feel like a human being. And I think death is maybe the last human milestone I have on the horizon.”
“I—I’ve never thought about it that way.”
“And you shouldn’t have to,” Louise says gruffly. “You have a long life ahead of you, Gem. The only point I’m trying to make is that the end isn’t the thing you should be scared of. Life has too much joy and awe in store for you.” At this, she seeks out my eyesbeneath the radioactive green light in the sky, and I can’t bear to look at her. “You know? Those things us geezers like to call blessings?”
I make a show of looking around the Racine cornfield. “Thisis a blessing?” I joke.
“Yes,” she harrumphs. “You are blessed by my presence. The point is, I’d be more scared of missing out onthat. It’s impossible to regret dying, but it’s real easy to regret the way you live.”
“Do you have any regrets?” I ask.
Louise sighs. “Plenty.” She waves a hand glittering with colorful jewelry. “But most of all, I wish I had known that Alfie would be leaving first. I miss him—so much. We always thought I would be the first to go. I wouldn’t have gotten so caught up in treatment, in feeling sorry for myself. I would have soaked in every single day we had together.”
Green and purple slash through the sky, rivers of liquid color.
It’s a sight you could wait an entire lifetime to see.
For some reason, beneath the majesty of the Northern Lights, all I can feel is lucky. Which is especially cruel, because my luck may have run out.
“Sometimes I don’t know why I got lucky, and others didn’t. Like I don’t know what to do with” —I wave my hands around helplessly, my voice splintering down the middle— “this time I’ve been given.”
The complicated guilt tints every day that I wake up with a life to live, knowing that others weren’t so fortunate. How do you make your life worthwhile for the Universe to have spared? Is there some complex equation that is always being calculated, determining if you’re living your life properly, keeping a recurrence at bay?
“Listen, Gem, you never need to ask that question.” Louise pulls my hands out of the air and holds them between hercracked palms. The green and purple sky is reflected in her eyes. “What happens to us is random, not controlled or inflicted by God. No forcedecidesto mutate our cells, it just happens. The Universe, God, whatever you want to call it, doesn’t deal in reward and punishment.”
It’s hard not to feel punished. “That’s not very Catholic of you,” I say through a sniffle.
Louise waves a hand. “I stopped believing in heaven and hell a while ago. The big guy in the sky and I have made peace. I don’t question cancer, and He doesn’t expect me to forsake this life I have now. If all we have is now, that’s eternal, in its own way.”
I nod, blinking back tears, and roll my lips between my teeth.
“Did I miss anything?” Alma ambles back from the gas station, sucking on the dregs of an XL slushie.
“Nope.” I smile, subtly wiping my eyes. “Just enjoying the moment.”
The three ofus sit in a cornfield in Racine for another hour, until the last light has moved on from the sky.
“I didn’t think I would ever see those,” Louise says when we finally start packing up, her voice trembling with sincerity.
“Well, apparently, this is a good year for the Northern Lights.” I fold our blankets and put them back in the trunk. “There might be another night next week we can see them again, if the weather is clear enough.”
Louise just smiles, and lets Alma transfer her back to the car seat.
Once the car is packed up and we’re back on the empty, midnight road, Louise announces, “If nothing else comes out of this wedding but the Northern Lights, then I’ll still be happy.”
“Come on, the wedding will be fun,” I say to her. And to myself.
“I thought paying for the wedding would bring us closer together, but I’m starting to think Penelope would respond better to tough love.” Louise sighs. “She’s awful, isn’t she?” Louise asks Alma and I.
“She was actually the only friend who came to visit me after my surgery,” I defend.
Louise cranes her neck in the front seat to give me a dark look. “That says more about your friends as a whole than Penelope as an individual.”
We finish the drive in silence, listening toRumorsone more time, back to front. (“My favorite way,” Louise says. “Who doesn’t want to start with ‘Silver Springs’?”)
Alma pulls into Louise’s carport, and I help Louise out of her seat.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, for the rehearsal dinner,” I say. “Today? I think it’s after midnight.” Louise smiles. “And don’t worry too much about Pen. She’s just busy, things will be better once the stress of the wedding is done.”
