I don’t turn around. “It’s okay,” I say. “I don’t, either.”
“All of this—” he says. “It’s all so wrong. None of this should be happening.”
He’s right, of course. It shouldn’t. What could we have done differently? How could we have avoided this? This impossible, unthinkable end.
I turn around. I look at him. His golden, shining face. This thing that sits between us, now made manifest.
“You should go,” I say. “Or I should.”
“I should,” he says.
“Okay.”
“Your stuff is all unpacked. Bella hired someone to do the closet. Your things are all here.”
“The closet.”
His cell phone rings then, disrupting the air molecules, disentangling us from the moment. He answers.
“Hey,” he says gently. Too gently. “Yes. Yes. We’re here. Hang on.”
He holds the phone out to me. I take it.
“Hi,” I say.
Bella’s voice is soft and bright. “Well,” she says. “Do you like it?”
I want to tell her she’s crazy, that I can’t accept this, she cannot buy and gift me an apartment. But what would be the point? Of course she can. She has. “This is insane,” I say. “I can’t believe you did this.”
“Do you like the chairs? How about the kitchen? Did Greg show you the green tile sink?!”
“It’s all perfect,” I say.
“I know the stools are a little edgy for you, but I think it’s good. I think—”
“It’s perfect.”
“You always tell me I never finish anything,” she says. “I wanted to finish this. For you.”
Tears roll down my cheeks. I didn’t even know I was crying. “Bells,” I say. “It’s incredible. It’s beautiful. I could never. I would never— It’s home.”
“I know,” she says.
I want her to be here. I want us to cook in this kitchen, making a mess of materials, running to the corner store because we don’t have vanilla extract or cracked pepper. I want us to play in that closet, to have her make fun of everything I want to wear. I want her to sleep over, tucked in that bed, in safety, ensconced here. What could happen to her under my watch? What bad thing could touch her if I never, ever looked away?
But I understand she will not be. I understand, standing here now, in this manifestation of both dream and nightmare, that I will be here, in this home she built for me, alone. I am here because she will not be. Because she needed to give me something to hold on to, something to protect me. A literal roof over my head. Shelter from the storm.
“I love you,” I tell her. Fiercely. “I love you so much.”
“Dannie,” she says. I hear her through the phone. Bella. My Bella. “Forever.”
* * *
Aaron leaves. I wander through the apartment, running my fingers over every surface. The green tile of the sink, the white porcelain of the tub. A claw-foot. I go through the kitchen—the cabinets stacked with pasta, wine, a bottle of Dom chilling, waiting, in the refrigerator. I go through the medicine cabinet with my products, the closet with my clothes. I run my hand over the dresses there. One is facing out. I already know which one it’ll be. There’s a note attached: Wear this, it says. I always liked it on you.
It’s scrawled in her handwriting. Her loopy calligraphy.
I clutch it to my chest. I go to the window, right by the bed. I look out on that view. The water, the bridge, the lights. Manhattan on the water, shimmering like a promise. I think about how much life the city holds, how much heartbreak, how much love. I think about everything I have lost there, this fading island before me.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
It happens quickly and then slowly. We plummet fast, and then we exist at the bottom of the ocean for eight days, an impossible amount of time to breathe only water.
Bella stops treatment. Dr. Shaw speaks to us; he tells us what we already know, what we have seen up close with our own eyes—that there is no point anymore, that it is making her sicker, that she needs to be home. He is calm and collected, and I hate him, I want to ram him into the wall. I want to scream at him. I need someone to blame, someone to be responsible for all of this. Because who is? Fate? Is the hellscape we’ve found ourselves in the work of some form of divine intervention? What kind of monster has decided that this is the ending we deserve? That she does?
It moves upward, to her lungs. She ends up in the hospital. They remove the fluid. They send her home. She can barely breathe.
Jill isn’t there. She’s staying at a hotel in Times Square, and on Friday I find myself putting on my boots and coat and leaving Bella and Aaron alone in the apartment. I truck up to Midtown, through the lights of Broadway—all those people. They’re about to go to the theater, see a show. Maybe this is a celebratory night. A promotion, a trip to the city. They’re splurging on a feel-good musical or the latest celebrity play. They live in a different realm. We do not meet. We do not see one another anymore.
I find her at the W Hotel bar. I hadn’t really known my plan, what I was going to do once I got there—call her cell? Demand her room number? But no further steps are necessary. She’s sitting in the lobby, a vodka martini in front of her.
I know it’s vodka because it’s what Bella drinks. Jill used to let us have sips of hers when we were very young, and then make them for us later, when we were still not legal.
She has on an orange pantsuit, crepe silk, with a neck scarf, and I feel my stomach boil in anger that she had the energy to get dressed like this. That she has on accessories. That she still is able to believe it matters.
“Jill.”
She startles when she sees me. The martini wobbles.
“How— Is everything all right?”
I think about the question. I want to laugh. What possible answer is there? Her daughter is dying.
“Why aren’t you there?” I say.
She hasn’t been downtown for forty-eight hours. She calls Aaron, but she hasn’t actually made her physical presence known.
Jill opens her eyes wide. Her forehead doesn’t move. An effect of injections, of the side of medicine she is fortunate enough to elect to use while her cells are not multiplying into monsters.
I sit down next to her. I’m wearing yoga pants and an old UPenn sweatshirt, something of David’s I kept, despite.
“Do you want a drink?” she asks me. A bartender hovers at the ready.
“A gin martini,” I find myself saying. I hadn’t expected to stay. Just to say what I came to say and turn around.
My drink comes quickly. She looks at me. Does she expect me to toast her? I take a sip hastily and set it back down.
“Why are you here?” I ask her. The same question, a different angle. Why are you here, in this city? Why are you here, at this hotel where your daughter is not?
“I want to be close,” she says. She states it matter-of-factly. No emotion.
“She’s—” I start, but I can’t. “She needs you there.”
Jill shakes her head. “I’m just in the way,” she says.
She’s been ordering delivery to the apartment, sending in maid service. On Monday, she came with flowers and wanted to know where the cutting shears were.
“I don’t understand,” I say. “Frederick. Where is he?”
“France,” she says simply.
I want to scream. I want to throttle her. I want to understand how, how, how. It’s Bella.
I take another sip.
“I remember when you and Bella met,” she says. “It was love at first sight.”
“That park,” I tell her.
Bella and I didn’t meet at school, but instead at a park in Cherry Hill. We had gone for a Fourth of July picnic. My cousins lived out in New Jersey and they were hosting. We rarely visited them. They were conservative to our Reform and had a lot of opinions on the level of Jewish we were. But for some reason we weren’t at the beach, so we went.
Separately, Bella and he
r family were at that same park, although they, like us, were setting up shop in a home twenty-five miles from there. They’d come for Frederick’s work—some kind of company barbecue. We met by a tree. She was wearing a blue lace dress and white sneakers, and her hair was in a red headband. It was a lot for a little girl from France. I remember thinking she had an accent, but she didn’t, not really. I had just never heard anyone speak who wasn’t from Philadelphia before.
“She couldn’t stop talking about you. I was afraid she’d never see you again, so we put her in Harriton.”
I look up at her. “What do you mean, you put her in Harriton?”
“We weren’t sure she’d make any friends. But as soon as she met you, we knew we couldn’t separate you. Your mother said you were starting Harriton in the fall, and we enrolled her.”
“Because of me?”
Jill sighs. She adjusts the scarf at her neck. “I’ve been less than a great mother, I know that. Less than good, even. Sometimes, I think the only thing I did right was give her you.”
I feel the tears in my eyes spring up. They sting. Tiny bees in the lids. “She needs you,” I say.
Jill shakes her head. “You know her so much better than I do. What could I possibly give her now?”
I lean forward. I put a hand on her hand. She’s startled by the contact. I wonder when the last time anyone touched her was.
“You.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Jill comes home with me. She lingers at the door, and I hear Bella: “Dannie? Who is it?”
“It’s Mom,” Jill says.
I leave them be.
I go out. I walk. When my mom calls, I answer.
“Dannie,” she says. “How is she?”
And then, as soon as I hear her voice, I start to cry. I cry for my best friend, who, in an apartment above, is fighting for the right to breathe. I cry for my mother, who knows this loss all too intimately. The wrong kind. The kind you should never have to bear. I cry for a relationship I’ve lost, a marriage, a future that will never be.
“Oh, darling,” she says. “Oh, I know.”
“David and I broke up,” I tell her.
“You did,” she says. She does not seem surprised. It is barely a question: “What happened?”
“We never got married,” I tell her.
“No,” she says. “I suppose you didn’t.”
There is silence for a moment.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well,” she says. “That’s better than some alternatives. Do you need help?”
It’s just a simple question, one she has asked me over and over again throughout the course of my life. Do you need help with homework? Do you need help with that car payment? Do you need help carrying that laundry basket up the stairs?
I have been asked if I’ve needed help so many times that I have been allowed to forget the question, the significance of it. I see, now, the way the love in my life has woven into a tapestry that I’ve been blessed enough to get to ignore. But not now, not anymore.
“Yes,” I tell her.
She says she will email David, she will make sure we get refunds where we can. She will handle the returns and the calls. She is my mother. She will help. That is what she does.
I go back upstairs. Jill is gone. Aaron is in the other room, maybe, working. I do not see him. At the door to the bedroom, I see that Bella is awake.
“Dannie,” she whispers. Her voice is light.
“Yes?”
“Come up,” she says.
I do. I come around to the other side of the bed, getting in next to her. It hurts for me to look at her. She’s all bones. Gone are her curves, her flesh, the softness and mystery that has been her familiar body for so long.
“Your mom left?” I ask.
“Thank you,” she says.
I don’t answer. Just thread my fingers through hers.
“Do you remember,” she says, “the stars?”
At first I think she means the beach at night, maybe. Or that she doesn’t mean anything. That she’s seeing something I can’t now.
“The stars?”
“Your room,” she says.
“The stick-ons,” I say. “My ceiling.”
“Do you remember how we used to count them?”
“We never got there,” I say. “We couldn’t tell them apart.”
“I miss that.”
I take her whole hand in mine now. I want to take her whole body, too. To hold her. To press her close to me, where she can’t go anywhere.
“Dannie,” she says. “We need to talk about this.”
I don’t say anything. I can feel the tears running down my cheeks. Everything feels wet. Wet and cold—damp—we’ll never get dry.
“What?” I say, stupidly. Desperately.
“That I’m dying.”
I turn to her, because she can barely move anymore. Her eyes look into mine. Those same eyes. The eyes I have loved for so long. They are still there. She’s still in there. It’s impossible to think she won’t be.
But she won’t be. Soon, she won’t be. She is dying. And I cannot deny her this, this honesty.
“I don’t like it,” I say. “It’s bad policy.”
She laughs, and then starts coughing. Her lungs are full.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I check her pain pump. I give her a minute.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“No, Bella, please.”
“No,” she says. “I am. I wanted to be here for you for all of it.”
“But you have,” I say. “You’ve been here for everything.”
“Not everything,” she whispers. I feel her search for my hand under the sheets. I give it to her. “Love,” she says.
I think about David, in our old shared apartment, and Bella’s words: Because that’s the way you love me.
“You’ve never had it,” she says. “I want the real thing for you.”
“You’re wrong,” I tell her.
“I’m not,” she says. “You’ve never really been in love. You’ve never really had your heart broken.”
I think about Bella at the park, Bella at school, Bella at the beach. Bella lying on the floor of my first New York City apartment. Bella with a bottle of wine in the rain. Bella on the fire escape at 3 a.m. Bella’s voice on New Year’s Eve, cracking through the Parisian phone. Bella. Always.
“Yes,” I whisper. “I have.”
Her breath catches, and she looks at me. I see it all. The cascade of our friendship. The decades of time. The decades to come—more, even, without her.
“It’s not fair,” she says.
“No,” I say. “It’s not.”
I feel her exhaustion move over both of us like a wave. It drags us under. Her hand softens in mine.
Chapter Forty
It happens on Thursday. I am asleep. Aaron is on the couch. Jill and the nurse are beside her. Those impossibly long, gruesome final moments—I miss them. I am in the apartment twenty feet away, not by her side. By the time I am awake, she is gone.
Jill plans the funeral. Frederick flies in. They obsess about the flowers. Frederick wants a cathedral. An eight-piece orchestra. Where do you find a full gospel choir in Manhattan?
“This isn’t right,” Aaron says. We are in her apartment, late at night, two days after she has left us. We are drinking wine. Too much wine. I haven’t been sober in forty-eight hours. “This isn’t what she would want.” He means the funeral, I think, although maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he means the whole thing. He would be right.
“So we should plan what she would,” I say, deciding for him. “Let’s throw our own.”
“Celebration of life?”
I stick my tongue out at the word. I don’t want to celebrate. This is all unfair. This is all not what should have been.
But Bella loved her life, every last moment of it. She loved the way she lived it. She loved her art and her travel and her croque monsieur.
She loved Paris for the weekend and Morocco for the week and Long Island at sunset. She loved her friends; she loved them gathered; she loved running around the room, topping up glasses, and making everyone promise to stay long into the night. She would want this.
“Yes,” I say. “Okay.”
“Where?”
Somewhere high, somewhere above, somewhere with a terrace. Somewhere with a view of the city she loved.
“Do you still have those keys?” I ask Aaron.
* * *
Two days later. December 15. We get through the funeral. Through the relatives and the speeches. We get through being relegated, if not to the back, then to the side. Are you family?
We get through the logistics. The stone, the fire, the documents. We get through the paperwork and the emails and the phone calls. What? people say. No. How could it be? I didn’t even know she was sick.
Frederick will keep the gallery open. They’ll find someone to run it. It will still bear her name. The apartment isn’t the only thing you finished, I want to tell her. Why didn’t I see it? The way she ran that place. Why didn’t I tell her? I want to tell her now, taking inventory of her life, that I see all of it—all of her completion.
We gather at dusk. Berg and Carl, from our twenties in New York. Morgan and Ariel. The gallery girls. Two friends from Paris, and a few girlfriends from college. The guys from a reading series she used to participate in. These people who have all loved her, appreciated her, and saw different parts of her flourishing, pulsing soul.
We gather on that slice of terrace, shivering, coats bundled, but needing to be outside, to be in the air. Morgan refills my wineglass. Ariel clears her throat.
“I’d like to read something,” she says.
“Of course,” I tell her.
We gather in a little horseshoe. Spread out.
Of the two, Ariel is shier, a little more reserved than Morgan. She begins.
“Bella sent me this poem about a month ago. She asked me to read it. She was a great artist, but she was also a really great writer. Was—” She shakes her head. “Anyway, I wanted to share it tonight.”
She clears her throat. She begins to read:
In Five Years Page 19
