Little Universes

by Heather Demetrios

  “I’m counting my fingers,” I say.

  Mae stands from where she’d been sitting in the chair next to the bed and yawns. Her short hair is sticking up in all sorts of angles, her clothes rumpled, and there are dark rings under her eyes, but she smiles when she sees me, and I smile back.

  “I’m going to get some coffee, even though caffeine intake at two in the morning is not advisable.” Mae glances at Jo, her smile turning into a little smirk. Attitude looks good on her. “She’s all yours.”

  She and Jo high-five each other as she leaves the room, then Jo crosses to my bed. She flicks her long straight bangs out of her eyes then waits there, still as the Charles on a windless day.

  “You were right,” I say. “The only thing I was hiding from was myself.”

  Jo slides her backpack off and sits on the edge of the bed. “Lay it on me, sister.”

  “When my aunt and uncle said they were leaving, that freaked me the hell out. I mean, I know they offered to let me go with them and I wouldn’t be homeless, but I felt like I’d be homeless. You know?”

  She nods. “Walk me through your thought process.”

  “Even before I saw the Realtor, I was upset. Because we graduate next month and I don’t know what to do with my life. Having a sister like Mae just makes adulting hard. Because it’s like, no matter what I do, I feel like a lame-ass failure. She’s literally going to be a rocket scientist.”

  “What Mae is going to be is irrelevant. What do you want? Who will you be?”

  I have thought this question so many times, but it’s different hearing it now, after everything that happened tonight. When I faced down the wave and decided to ride it.

  “I want to be happy.”

  “What does happy look like?”

  I close my eyes. And there it is: the little house, the garden, yoga, making soup. Kids and chili night, I put a spell on you, Drew.

  “Having a family,” I whisper. “Being a mom and just loving. Being loved. Maybe fostering some kids, like Mae was. I basically just want to be my mom—the Hannah version of her. But…”

  “But what?”

  “It’s so retrograde. I mean, who says their goal in life is to be a freaking housewife?”

  “Dude, fuck what anyone thinks.” She shakes her head. “You know, I love certain things about the time we live in. I love that even though my parents are mad conservative, they’ve had to accept I have a girlfriend. I love that I get to vote and that women can run for president. I love that Beyoncé is in the world. You know what I mean?”

  I nod.

  “But…” Jo reaches into her jacket and frowns. “Okay, this is a conversation to be had over cigarettes. Ugh.”

  I laugh. Addicts, man. We do our best.

  “But,” she continues, “what I don’t like is this intense pressure for everyone to be fucking exceptional all the time. Or, no. This idea that we aren’t already exceptional. I mean, yeah, we have to not waste our goddamn lives watching TV and shopping. That shit has to stop. But the life you’re talking about: It’s beautiful. And fuck anyone who shames you for wanting it. This one life: It’s all we get. It’s not about the likes and the degrees and the bank account. It’s about the love, man. It’s only about the love.”

  My heart breaks wide open then because I get it, I get it so hard: My mom didn’t mean that our family wouldn’t have been complete because I wasn’t enough—just Hannah. It wouldn’t have been complete because our hearts had more room in them, and that space was for Mae and for Drew and Ben and even my new baby sister, Pearl. And the little ones in my own future. I’m enough as I am, but if it were just me, I wouldn’t be truly happy. Because I want my family. I want the love.

  “Fuck, Jo. Fuck.”

  “And that, my friend, is what we call an existential mic drop,” Jo says.

  I’ve learned something the Little Prince’s thorny rose never did: A rose is beautiful whether or not anyone is admiring her, choosing her. Shakespeare said, “That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.” And it’s true. Her beauty does not increase or decrease under observation—a rose is going to bloom whether you see her or not, whether you put her in your vase or walk right on by. She is not just. She is. And that’s enough.

  Jo unzips her backpack and takes a plastic bag out. She hands it to me. Inside is an old dish towel wrapped around a bowl—the most beautiful bowl I’ve ever seen: grayish-blue pottery with gold-filled cracks all over it. Somehow delicate and strong at the same time.

  “My sponsor gave this to me the day I quit the shit for good—a little over six years ago,” Jo says. “It’s from Japan.” She reaches out and traces the tip of her finger along one of the cracks. “It’s a style called kintsukuroi. When pottery breaks, the potter puts it back together with gold instead of throwing the pieces away and starting over. It makes the piece even more beautiful—and much more valuable.”

  It hits me then, a memory of my mom singing along to Leonard Cohen in the kitchen while she makes soup: There’s a crack in everything … that’s how the light gets in.

  I hold the bowl between my palms, the gold blurring as my eyes fill.

  You are enough.

  I start to hand her the bowl, but she shakes her head. “It’s yours now.”

  “But I fucked up.”

  Jo nods. “Yeah, you did. C’est la goddamn vie. Remember, it’s progress, not perfection.” She rests her hand over mine. “Relapsing is a bitch, but you’re gonna be okay.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I talked to your paramedics. They said you thanked them. Usually, addicts are pissed as hell when they get woken up. They don’t care that you just saved their life—fuck you because you ruined their high.” She shakes her head. “One time, my mom woke me up—she had Naloxone in the house—and that’s exactly what I said to her: Fuck you. To my own mom. For saving my life! But the last time I overdosed, I said thank you. I was so goddamn grateful to be alive. I haven’t used since.”

  She hands me one more thing—a pamphlet about the Pink House. Jo had told me a bit about it—a rambling Victorian sober house, absolutely pink, in Cambridge’s weirdo community, with ten bedrooms, all occupied by female-identifying former addicts. Jo runs the place.

  “One of my girls is moving out,” she says. “In June. I think this could be a good place for you to land while you figure out next steps. You can get a job, get involved. We have daily meetings. Support. A great kitchen with a big-ass soup pot. Even a poetry night.” She smiles. “Think about it.”

  I stare at her. This isn’t just a lifeline, it’s an entire rescue operation.

  “Yes,” I say. “Yes.”

  “This isn’t some Disney happy ending,” she warns. “You’re gonna be working your ass off to get your shit together.”

  “I’m ready.” I hold the little pamphlet to my chest. “Thank you.”

  “Thank yourself.” Jo grins, then stands and crosses to the doorway. She pulls open the door, then turns around and holds up a finger. “Day one.”

  I nod. “Day one.”

  I finally understand the ending of The Little Prince. All my life I thought he had to die so that he could leave his body, which he said was too heavy to take with him the distance he needed to go. He couldn’t leave Earth and get back to his asteroid otherwise. I thought it was like going to Heaven. But now I realize what he was trying to tell the pilot: Sometimes to find your way back home, you need to surrender the person you no longer are so that you can step into the person you’re supposed to become.

  I shall look as if I were dead, he said, and that will not be true.

  That will not be true.

  * * *

  Drew is curled up on a couch in the waiting room, sleeping.

  The TV mounted to the wall across from him is playing a rerun of Golden Girls on mute. (Life goals.)

  It’s three in the morning, and the room is empty.

  I cross to him, kneel down.

  I have brushed
my teeth and washed my face and changed into the clean clothes Aunt Nora brought for me. I am wearing Mom’s rose perfume. I don’t want him to remember me covered in vomit, topless because another guy took off my shirt, surrounded by paramedics.

  I watch Drew sleep for a little bit. Those dark lashes against pale skin. His hair longer than usual, messy. Raven’s wings.

  He’s kicked off his shoes and there’s a little hole in his sock and I decide that if the stars are aligned for us, and even if they aren’t, I am going to buy him socks. He deserves some taking care of. This boy who has been so abandoned, orphaned not by a wave, but by his parents’ addiction and indifference. Mae’s the numbers nerd, but I know this much: When love is one-sided, the math doesn’t check out. I don’t want to only take. I want to start giving, too. Micah said he couldn’t carry me. Drew said he could. Whether it’s Drew I spend my life with, or someone I haven’t met yet, I know this: I want to be in the kind of relationship where we carry each other.

  I reach out, but before I even touch him, he takes a deep breath, my wrist so close to his nose, drenched in my rose scent.

  “Hannah,” he murmurs, still asleep.

  For a minute, just a minute, I see him as an old man, with thick gray hair and a sweater and glasses slipping down his nose. My heart gets ten sizes bigger. Then it breaks into dozens or maybe hundreds of pieces. Because I know what’s going to happen when he wakes up, what I’m going to say, and I hate it. I wonder if you can do kintsukuroi with hearts, too. Fill all the cracks in with gold.

  Drew opens his eyes. Blinks.

  He sits up and we look at each other for the longest time, all these months apart somehow having made the current between us stronger, and I throw my arms around him, hug him so, so tight. Drew presses his hand against the back of my head, wraps his other arm around my waist, and lets out a long, slow breath. Being in his arms is like lying on the beach, soaking up all that warm sand after a cold swim.

  Maybe I don’t have to do what I came here to do. Maybe I can stay on this beach a little longer. Forever, even.

  When I let go, he pulls me close to him on the hard, dirty hospital couch, and I tell him about what I learned under the wave, about Mom and her boat pose, about being enough. He listens, those gray-and-gold eyes of his never leaving mine. They are almost the same color as the Japanese pottery Jo gave me.

  “I love you,” I say, when I’m finished. “Not just because you helped save my life tonight, but because you help save my life every night—you make me want to do right by the miracle.”

  I pause.

  “But?” The light in his eyes dims a little.

  Why do I have to keep hurting the people who care about me the most?

  “I can’t be with you.”

  Drew looks away, and I’m not sure what kind of calculus he’s doing, but the way he bites his lip reminds me of Mae, working her problems. After a minute, he turns back to me. Nods once.

  “I get it,” he says. “You’ve got a lot to figure out. Right now. But when you’re ready, in the future, you and I—”

  “I don’t know, Drew. I can’t promise you anything. I have so much work to do. Jo’s not kidding. This was my last chance. I know it. I can’t screw up again. I have to be like Mae—I have to be focused on the mission.”

  There will be other waves. Different waves. I have to be ready. To not reach for a bottle of pills when they come.

  “I know you’re scared,” he says. “I am, too. You died tonight. For a minute. I could feel you go. And I…” His voice shakes. “I understood the wave a lot better.” He rests his cheek against mine. “Please don’t go away again.”

  I run my hand through his hair. “I heard you tell me to come back. That’s part of why I’m here right now.”

  “Then I don’t understand why you think I’m not good for you.” He leans back, his face a misery of confusion. “I can help. On this … this mission. I want to be here for you, to be with you, through whatever shit comes our way.”

  I want to give in, so bad, but somewhere Dad says: We can do impossible things.

  I’m still mad at you, I remind him. But he’s right.

  “I want to be with you so much, God, so much,” I say, “but I don’t think I can become the person I need to be—or get back to who I maybe always was—if I’m all tangled up in you. I’ve been basing my future around other people—working with Mom at the yoga studio, moving in with Micah. I need to see what it feels like to base my future around me. And I don’t know who I’ll be at the end of that.”

  “You’ll be you. And I’ll be me.”

  I knew this would be hard. But it’s so much worse than hard.

  “This feeling—of us. Of this being it. I had that with Micah, too.” I grip Drew’s hand. “It was different—not like this, not so … certain feeling. But I really thought he and I would be together for good, you know? And now he’s gone.” The tears come, and I just let them run down my face. “Anything can happen. We might change—get older and not fit anymore. Or you might meet someone not all fucked-up—”

  “I want you, Hannah,” Drew says.

  I look down at our hands, and I can almost see what they will look like with paper-thin old-person skin, age spots, gnarled knuckles.

  “You get to be happy,” he says. “You don’t have to punish yourself.”

  I trace the lines of this face that is so special to me. “I’m not—I promise. I want the love. Big, big love. Family. All of it. When the time is right. I don’t want to be alone forever—but I need to be right now.”

  I can’t tell him how much I want that big love with him. Or that I want to do right by the miracle together. It wouldn’t be fair to make him wait. Or to make a promise I don’t know if I can keep.

  We are quiet. For a long time. There is only the soft, strange sounds a hospital makes late at night, and the air conditioner, and Drew’s breath, and mine.

  “Okay,” he finally says. He lets go of my hands. So quiet: “Okay.”

  I brush my lips against his, quick, then stand. “I have to go now.”

  Before I take back everything I said. Before I throw myself into his arms and never, ever leave. I have to go. Now.

  He doesn’t get up, just nods. I stand. Cross the room, sail away from the only port I’ve had in this storm. I am pushing out into unknown waters. I pull open the door and, just as it’s about to close behind me, I hear him.

  “Hannah.”

  I turn. Drew holds up the Chariot card I gave him all those months ago. He’s been keeping it in his pocket, all this time. I never knew.

  “You said the cards don’t lie.”

  I see us in his kitchen, me pointing to that card.

  So, the Chariot is about perseverance. To not give up on this thing you want, even if it seems impossible. It’s all about creating a big change in your life. So whatever this thing you want is, you’re going to have to be all in …

  That slow smile of his spreads across his face. The hurt is still there, the longing. The terror of the past night, and all the nights before and to come.

  But those are just cracks that let the light in.

  It is so bright.

  47

  Mae

  ISS Location: Low-Earth Orbit

  Earth Date: 10 June

  Earth Time (PST): 11:15

  The Three Sisters in Orion’s Belt was one of the first constellations I ever learned. They’re super bright, very easy to locate.

  The sisters help you orient yourself.

  Dad holds my hand up to the sky and traces my finger across its surface.

  “Orion’s the Hunter,” he says. “There’s his bow and arrow. See? And there’s his head. His chest. And those three bright stars—that’s his belt.”

  “To keep his pants up?”

  Dad laughs. “Maybe. But, in ancient times, a belt could be very valuable—made of gold and jewels, even. So that belt is probably very precious to Orion. In fact, the Arabic word for the stars in the be
lt means ‘string of pearls.’”

  “That’s a pretty fancy belt.”

  “It is, indeed. Many people call Orion’s Belt the Three Sisters. I think I like that better.”

  “Me, too,” I decide.

  He presses my finger against each one, and I swear I feel the white-hot heat of those blazing pearls all the way down here on the beach.

  “Alnitak. Alnilam. Mintaka. Whenever you’re lost in the sky, just look for them. They’ll help you find your way.”

  Hannah and I have asked Rebecca Chen to bring Pearl to the children’s room in the central library in downtown LA, just off the atrium where we had Mom and Dad’s memorial service. We arrived early and chose a table in a little corner, where hopefully no one will bother us. I have no idea what to expect—not a confrontation, I don’t think. We’re here to see Pearl, not get into it with our dad’s … with Rebecca. But still.

  Aunt Nora is at a nearby cafe, waiting for us.

  We’re sitting at a small wooden table by the picture books. I have been slowly spinning the globe that is on the table for the past fifteen minutes, my fingers running over the bump of Malaysia, traveling across the sea to Boston, across America to Los Angeles.

  I am nervous.

  “We should have played poker,” I say.

  “What?”

  “American astronauts always play poker just before they board the spacecraft. It’s good luck, which no one believes in, but maybe they do a little because everyone plays the game. They can’t stop until the commander plays the worst hand.”

  “Why does he have to play the worst hand?” she asks.

  “So he or she uses up all their bad luck for the day.”

  “I don’t know how to play poker.”

  “Neither do I. But it can’t be that hard.” I frown. “They probably don’t have cards here, though.”

  “Well, shit,” Nah says.

  I hold up the stuffed Buzz Lightyear I got Pearl. “But I think we’re okay, because they also always bring a stuffed toy on board.”

  “Are you admitting to me that the smartest people in the world—and I’m including you in this, sister—are superstitious?”