Little Universes

by Heather Demetrios

  “I’d never let that happen,” I say. “Ever.”

  “I was just … curious,” she says.

  “You’re a Winters,” Aunt Nora says in her firm lawyer’s voice. “And my niece. And your uncle and I love you so much. It’s going to be okay, Mae. I know it doesn’t feel like that, but it will be. I promise.”

  Her voice trips, stumbling in that way all of us do now.

  Uncle Tony reaches out and squeezes Mae’s shoulder. “When we get to Boston—”

  “No.” I grab the throw pillow Mom helped me make for a YMCA quilting class my counselor made me do when I first got sober. I hold it like a shield. “I’m sorry, but we can’t leave. I mean, this is crazy. We’ve been here our whole lives. It’s our senior year—”

  “We have nowhere else to go, Nah,” Mae says. Her voice is so soft.

  All my sympathy for her suddenly evaporates. I am so fucking sick of her these days, I really am. I used to have a sister. Now I have a narc jail warden.

  “Can you just stop being logical for two-point-five seconds and have my back?”

  Nora frowns. “Hannah—”

  “I’m thinking about what makes the most sense for us,” Mae says. “We can’t stay here alone—”

  “You’re not Mom, so stop trying to be.” Her face scrunches up and, for a second, I think I’m about to make my sister cry, which is impossible, but then she nods.

  “Okay.”

  The room is very quiet. Why do rooms get so quiet after I say things?

  “I’m just trying to, like, articulate that I get a say in this. It’s not, like, Mae’s decision just because she’s smarter.”

  Nora puts a hand on my arm. “Sweetie, it’s not a decision for either of you to make. Your parents would never want you to feel that kind of pressure. Their will is very clear: If anything happened to them, they wanted you to be with us. We agreed to it years ago, back when you were both really little.”

  “So, like, legally we have to go with you?” I ask.

  I need a pill. An escape pod. What would happen if I just got up and walked out of the room—if I just decided this wasn’t happening? Is there any universe in which my opinion on the subject would count?

  “Yes,” Tony says. “Legally, you come with us. But we don’t want you to look at it that way, kiddo. We love you girls. That’s why we agreed to this. And Boston is a great city—you always have a good time when you come to visit. It’ll give you a bit of distance from all this. It can be really good to breathe new air, you know?”

  I’ve heard the word hopeless so many times in the Circle of Sad. I used it myself. Then, I didn’t know what the word really means, what it feels like to live inside these eight letters, how they circle around you, a whirlpool.

  I’m literally losing everything in my life.

  There are no tears, like usual. It’s so bad that I can’t cry. I stare at them all as my entire chest caves in on itself, as I become hollow. It burns. How can you burn when you’re empty?

  Mae stands and sits beside me, and I let her pull me against her and rub circles on my back with her palm.

  “What about the house?” I ask.

  We’ve lived here our whole lives. I learned to walk in the living room. Got my first period in the bathroom. Made soup with Mom and egg bakes with Dad and—

  Nora puts a hand on my knee. “We’re gonna have to sell it, honey.”

  Mae’s hand stops. “What?”

  For a moment, she and I look at each other and I can almost see that event horizon thing Dad tried to explain to me once—can see Mae and I building mud pies in the backyard after an unexpected spring storm, can see her across the dining room table, helping me with my math, or on the roof, pointing out stars—Cassiopeia, Ursa Minor …

  Mae turns to them, and, for once, she fails at words. “But … but … we grew up here. We can’t just … This is our … This is where—”

  “That’s what your parents wanted,” Tony says, his voice gentle. “In their will. They said they wanted the house and yoga studio sold and the money saved for you two in a small trust. College tuition, whatever you need. Fifty-fifty.”

  I wonder if they had protections in place for me, before Mae. Or if they only thought about it after. Sometimes it’s hard, knowing that they picked her. That they chose Mae to be their daughter. I was the oops baby, the mistake. I wasn’t wanted at first. Probably a worst-nightmare scenario. The way Mom tells it, they saw Mae and Dad said, “That’s her. That’s our daughter.” I once overheard Mom telling Aunt Nora that getting Mae was one of the best decisions she’d ever made, that it would have been lonely if it were “just Hannah.”

  That’s me: Just Hannah.

  I shake my head a little because everything in me is getting bad, really dark, and I can’t go there, not unless I can pop this pill in my mouth without anyone noticing.

  An acorn comes to me, the sort of one Yoko would write, not like my one-liners:

  Get a cardboard box

  Open it

  Stare at it until your heart stops

  I curl into a fetal position, my eyes on the wall. Mae starts rubbing my back again. Nora and Tony keep talking: “… Thanksgiving at the Cape, ice-skating on Boston Common, Red Sox games…”

  And I think: I want a wave to swallow me up, too.

  10

  Mae

  ISS Location: Low-Earth Orbit

  Earth Date: 22 September

  Earth Time (PST): 13:45

  Nobody likes a sad astronaut.

  Most people didn’t know that when Neil Armstrong went up to the moon, he was still grieving the death of his little kid. It didn’t fit the hopeful narrative, so they cut it out.

  Before today, the day of my parents’ funeral, I would have said for certain that death is the end of a human’s existence, at least as this life-form. I know that this wanting there to be an afterlife is a cultural response to grief: It’s anthropology—not physics. And yet.

  I can feel them.

  Almost as if they were standing right behind me.

  How would I be able to feel them if they were really gone?

  Maybe it’s what Stephen Hawking was talking about in his last paper, on memory and black holes. About the possibility that the “hairs” of light surrounding black holes can actually encode information before things pass into the black hole. Before, we always assumed that whatever falls into a black hole would be swallowed up, all data erased so that it’s nothing more than pure energy. But if it’s true that these beams of light are actually encoding the information of the matter that passes through, saving the data for all time, the same thing might happen when we die.

  Death is the ultimate black hole.

  Which means it’s possible that Hawking discovered a theory for immortality before his own all-systems fail in his last days on Earth. Not, of course, a Philosopher’s Stone kind of immortality, but it might be possible that whatever is left of my parents is somehow being saved for all time in what amounts to a giant cosmological database. Dad’s theory on quintessence, Mom’s memories of the day she and Dad picked me up from social services, all the things they ever wanted to say to us and didn’t. Perhaps all of it’s still out there, somehow. Maybe that light at the end of the tunnel people like to talk about is just those hairs encoding everything we are before we’re nothing at all.

  Most likely, this thought process is a stage of grief, demonstrating that I am just as susceptible as every human who has ever grieved to magical thinking. Dad would be so disappointed.

  We’re holding the memorial under the rotunda at the beautiful library in downtown Los Angeles that Mom had once said was her church, and that Nah and I practically grew up in. It’s an art deco masterpiece, full of beautiful chandeliers and murals and wood paneling and marble.

  A podium beneath the exquisitely painted ceiling has been placed before rows of already-full chairs, and behind it sits a projector screen on a stand. Gram, Papa, Aunt Nora, Uncle Tony, and our cousin Nate are ga
thered near the podium, going over last-minute details. Various relatives from both sides have flown in from Boston—Mom’s Greek side and Dad’s Mayflower crew.

  Cynthia glides over in one of her gauzy sundresses straight from 1969. This one is dark purple. She’s laden down with amethysts that hang from her neck, and her burgundy hair is in a Frida-inspired braid—she and Mom did an online tutorial to figure it out last year. The ribbons woven into her hair are sage green, Mom’s favorite color.

  “Mis hijas,” she says, wrapping her arms around us both.

  I breathe in her lavender scent, and I suppose there is some truth to the calming effects of certain essential oils.

  “She’s here,” Cynthia says, leaning back. “I can feel her. Can you?”

  “I can’t tell what’s her and what’s me,” Nah says.

  Maybe Nah is undergoing the same grief psychosis as me.

  “That’s because she’s a part of you,” Cyn says.

  But she’s not a part of me. Not technically. We don’t share blood, DNA. I didn’t grow inside her.

  “It might feel like we feel them,” I say. “But I think it’s a game our minds are playing. Some sort of defense mechanism against grief—”

  “Mae.” Hannah shakes her head. “You can’t prove everything.”

  “You can try. You should try.”

  Cyn gets that smile, the one that makes her look like the goddess cards on Mom’s altar. “Spirit doesn’t fit in a beaker or a test tube, hija.”

  I wish Dad were here. You can’t reason with a coven.

  Later, when Nah and I are alone again, I watch Cyn do all the things Mom would do: check to make sure the coffee’s hot, rearrange the food. Discreetly throw out the daisies Mom hates from the flower arrangements people brought.

  “I need a drink,” Nah says.

  She keeps scratching at her arms, pulling on her hair, like she wants to peel herself off her bones.

  I can’t believe we’re here again, so soon.

  I look up at her. Wait until she meets my eyes. They flit away, almost immediately. This is a very bad sign. Avoiding eye contact almost always means she’s using.

  “Please don’t make me do this on my own, Nah.”

  Her skin goes blotchy, a sure sign of an increase in epinephrine. “What the hell does that mean? I’m here, wearing this shitty black dress—”

  But Aunt Nora is motioning us over, and I start walking toward the podium. Then I stop. Turn.

  My sister stands behind me, motionless. There are enough reasons to cry today. I don’t need to add to them.

  I walk back to where she’s frozen still. “I’m sorry.”

  It’s possible I am being too hard on her. I need to find a way to speak her language.

  “What’s a tarot card for us?” I ask.

  Hannah smiles a little. Just a little, but it’s something. She cocks her head to the side. “The Two of Cups. It’s about relationships. Leaning on each other.”

  “Okay. Then let’s … Two of Cups the shit out of today.”

  She laughs a little. “I can’t believe you just cursed in church.”

  “The library understands. It’s a special occasion.” I hold out my hand and she takes it.

  “I’m sorry about the playlist,” she says.

  “It’s okay. I understand.”

  I’d asked Nah to make one of her famous playlists for the slideshow I put together of Mom and Dad. That was going to be her contribution to the funeral. When she’s not on pills, Hannah is the family DJ. She would make Mae Is Stressed About AP Tests playlists that had funny things like the Cookie Monster song on it. Or a Dad Has Physicist Enemies playlist, where it was just all the villain songs from movies. Mom got a playlist called Music Smudgefest after some famous lady came to her studio and was totally awful. Micah got Surfer Boy playlists with songs about the ocean.

  But Hannah’s on pills, which means no playlists, not even for today. Opiates aren’t good for creativity. They aren’t good for anything but relieving physical pain and ruining lives.

  We walk toward our family.

  I’ve always liked Nora. She’s got Mom’s brown eyes, like good soil in the garden. When the Karalis women cry, their skin gets all blotchy. Aunt Nora and Hannah look like checkered picnic blankets right now. It’s Hannah who really looks like my mother. Except for the eyes—she has Dad’s eyes. So green. Sometimes, if I look quickly, I could swear she’s Mom, back from the bottom of the ocean.

  Uncle Tony is Boston Italian, the odd one out, with his thick North End accent and insistence on lasagna at Thanksgiving. He’s stocky and usually jovial, but he doesn’t muster up a fake smile now, and I really love that about him. Nate is a sophomore at MIT. Nah gets annoyed with us sometimes, when we’re together. Says no one can get a word in unless they understand quantum mechanics. That is probably true.

  “Hey, Buzz,” he says, sliding an arm around my shoulders. “Fucking sucks.”

  Nate’s been calling me Buzz—after Buzz Lightyear, of course—since we were kids. My parents picked up the habit, too. I hope Nate calls me this forever, for all the times they can’t.

  “Yes,” I say. “It does.”

  He’s wearing skinny jeans and a blouse trimmed with lace and pearl buttons, and his dark brown eyes stand out even more with his mascara.

  “I hope your mascara’s waterproof,” Hannah says.

  “Of course.” He picks up her hand and studies her nails. I never paint mine, but she always has a different color. “I’m giving you a mani when we get home.”

  “Don’t you know chipped polish is all the rage here in LA?”

  “Ah.” He nods sagely. “Of course. Us Bostonians are so provincial, you know.”

  I appreciate Nate for not being saccharine or using a grief voice. It is an actual tone of voice I am becoming familiar with. Hushed, underscored by a pitying whine.

  Hannah starts to cry. I don’t know why, maybe because Nate isn’t being grief-strange. My cousin drops his arm from around my shoulders and places his palms on her cheeks.

  “You are going to be okay. Not for a long time, but someday,” he murmurs, the way you speak to a spooked horse, an agitated dog.

  Nate’s sister died when we were little, so he knows. I remember how awful it was, watching Annie waste away at Boston Children’s, her little head shaved, the cancer eating through her day by day.

  Nah swallows. “Promise?”

  He holds up a pinkie and hooks hers with it. “Promise.”

  “This family has such shitty fucking luck, I can’t even,” Nah says.

  Micah comes up behind my sister and wraps his arms around her waist. He doesn’t say anything, just buries his nose in her neck. That anger in her dissolves, like he’s a chemical solution pouring into her. It’s always been this way. Hannah’s got that Karalis fire and Micah’s all water.

  She reaches back with her hand and rests it on his tanned neck. “My Temperance card,” she murmurs.

  “Which one is that again?” I ask.

  She smiles just a little. “Balance of energies.” Fire and water.

  When we told Micah they were dead, he tried so hard not to cry, not to turn into water. Because they were his parents, too. His family.

  We sit. The slideshow starts playing, with “Starman” in the background. A picture of Dad and me comes up, early on. I love this one. We’re at the Kennedy Space Center and I’m sitting on his shoulders, looking up at the Atlantis shuttle. I’m pointing my little finger at it, my mouth in this huge O. Nate squeezes my knee, and I give him a wobbly smile.

  Hannah bolts up and leaves about halfway through the slideshow, when it shows our favorite picture of Mom: Nah had caught her dancing in a rare thunderstorm, her mouth eating the sky. I think maybe I should follow my sister, but then Micah gets up, so I stay.

  I want a Micah. Someone who will come find me when I run away. I might have had that once with Riley, but he’s on the other side of the world. Literally. His family moved to China
. It’s hard to have a boyfriend or girlfriend who lives in a different day than you.

  Maybe I’ll be like Dr. Stone in Gravity when she says that she has no one to pray for her and that she can’t even pray for herself because no one taught her to pray and now I’m realizing that no one has taught me to pray except Gram that one time but I wasn’t paying attention and so what if I’m in space in a Soyuz with no thrust and I can’t get back to Earth?

  They will ask me about this, about the wave, at my astronaut interview. At the psych eval. They’ll be worried I’ll be like Dr. Stone and have to reconcile with the death of a loved one while in imminent danger in space. And then they’ll reject me. And I will never see the Ganges from four hundred kilometers above Earth.

  I want to cry so bad, but tears won’t come. I am wrong—there’s something wrong with me. Who doesn’t cry at their parents’ funeral? This might be something that comes up in the psych eval, too.

  After the service, I hurry to the bathroom. When I get into a stall, away from all the staring eyes, the grief voices, I pinch my skin, hard, and the pain zings up my arm, but my eyes stay dry.

  “Those poor girls,” someone says as the bathroom door opens.

  I go still, trapped in the stall.

  “Hannah’s the spitting image of Lila. I almost thought it was her!”

  “Isn’t she? It’s uncanny how much they look alike,” another woman says. “Except for the eyes, of course. All Greg there. And Mae … Can you imagine being orphaned twice? Jesus.”

  “Oh God, the whole thing is so horrible.”

  There’s the sound of running water and the whine of the paper towel dispenser. How can they talk about us like this while they redo their makeup, like we’re small talk, the weather?

  “But do you think this is a little easier for Mae, though—dealing, I mean? That sounds bad! But you know what I mean? They weren’t really her parents. But Hannah…”

  They weren’t really her parents. Is that why Uncle Tony made sure to say that the inheritance would be split fifty-fifty? Would he have felt the need to say that if I weren’t adopted? Does everyone in my extended family see me like these women do?