A Handful of Fire

by Alexis Alvarez

  “She’s so disappointed in me.”

  “Well. Yes. She’s protecting her business and her clients, but also you, too. She could have fired you outright and, like, black-balled you or something. She didn’t do any of that. She’s keeping you on and making sure you get help. That sounds like someone who cares a hell of a lot, actually.”

  “I guess so. I just—it’s embarrassing. To be seen as weak and stupid. To be weak and stupid.”

  “You’re neither of those things.” She takes my hand and gives a quick squeeze. “What are you always telling your patients? People make mistakes. You just keep trying again and again. Don’t beat yourself up.”

  “But this is a big one.”

  “And a long time coming.” She hesitates. “You bottled everything up for so long. Maybe this is all of it coming out, exploding. Now the angry fizz is gone, and when you put yourself back together, you won’t blow up ever again. You’ll be a great therapist again.”

  “What if I don’t want to be one?” My voice is small, almost a whisper.

  “What? Why wouldn’t you want to be one? I mean, this is a setback, but it has nothing to do with your quality as a therapist. You’re fantastic with kids! You love them. This is your calling. You won awards, even! Sure, okay, you crossed professional boundaries. You know what? It happens. People, I’m sorry to be crude, but people do fuck each other in this world. Even good people make mistakes. You’re allowed to start over. Learn from the mistakes. Let them help you be better, stronger in the future.”

  I shake my head and feel a tear in my eye. “No! It’s killing me. Every time I work with another sick kid, my heart breaks all over again for what they have to endure. I put my entire self into it and I don’t get it all back. It’s tearing me up and I can’t fix it. I just wanted to fix enough kids to make up for what I did to Mani. But I’m running out of energy.”

  “Oh, Shai, no! Why would you ever feel guilty about Mani? You didn’t cause her cancer.”

  I shake my head. “Because she died, not me.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Kelsie’s voice is low. “But that wasn’t your fault.”

  “I know that. But it’s what I felt about it, okay?”

  Kelsie pats my shoulder. “Tell me.”

  I take a deep breath and sit back, regripping the cushion. Kelsie knows the main story, but I didn’t tell her all of the emotional fallout. “This is going to sound sick, but at first, in the beginning, I was happy that she had to get some extra tests. Because you know, that’s all I thought it was—her stomach was bigger than it should be, so my parents had her go in for testing.”

  “And you were happy about that… why?”

  “She was always the better one at everything, the favorite. To suddenly have her be the one who was lesser, even if it was because she was sick? This is awful, but at first… I liked it.” I sniff and wipe my nose. “And I was even mean to her. I remember this one time she was vomiting and said her stomach hurt, and she had to miss a party. I flirted with the boy who liked her, and it was a rush. Sean McAllister. I had a crush on him first, you know? And then once she found out, she decided she had a crush on him, too. And he liked her better than me. But at the party, he flirted with me. Then I went home and bragged about how Sean liked me now, not her. She cried. I was such a jerk.” I shake my head. “Later on, when they found out how serious it was, God, I was terrified. I didn’t like it then.”

  “I know, Shai. I know.” Her voice is full of sympathy. “Of course you didn’t.”

  I sigh, a deep tremulous breath. “I was so scared when they discovered that she had… the tumor. They’re supposed to be benign. They usually are! But hers – I know I told you this before, but God, hers was cancerous in the middle, when it just wasn’t supposed to be. It had somehow opened and spread, which is rare. They decided to check me, too, even though I didn’t have obvious symptoms, because we were twins, and at first I said no. Made a huge fuss, threatened to run away, even though my mom was pretty much having a nervous breakdown about Mani. I was so selfish, Kelsie! I kept making it all about me.” I take another breath. “Hers was so advanced by the time they found it, but I got lucky. And I thought that my initial feelings—maybe karma was getting even with me. I thought it was my fault.”

  “But logically you know that’s not true.” Kelsie’s voice holds a plea. “Don’t you?”

  I nod. “Sure, I know it, but I don’t feel it. And you know, I was messed up afterwards, and the thing that helped me back to sanity was therapy. That’s why I went into it myself. And that’s why I need to keep helping kids.”

  “So that’s why you said you can’t switch careers.”

  “Yes. It feels necessary. To make up for hurting Mani, and myself, I need to help as many other kids as I can.”

  “But if being a therapist is no longer the right fit for you, then you need to move on. New career. New start. Do you think your sister would want you to suffer?”

  “No. Of course not.” I shake my head. “She wouldn’t. But I mean, I’m not suffering in my job. Except that I sort of trashed it.” I wipe my eyes again. “I do want to move on to something new.”

  “You’ve helped so many kids, Shai. Now it’s time to take the time to help yourself. Because you can’t do it just by helping others. You need to actually hold your own hand, okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So—what would you want to do, if you could do anything? Be anything?”

  I bite my lip. “Keep writing more books. I want to keep helping people, I just need a break from doing it one on one like this. I think I can use my knowledge and skills in a different way.”

  “So, do it.”

  “Easier said than done.” But I know it’s what I want; what I need.

  “Okay, but it’s also easier to do this than to go back to your job, if it’s that rough on your spirit. Right?”

  “Can you be my therapist?” I rest my head on her shoulder.

  She smiles. “I can be your friend.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  “I need to tell you. I saw Gabriel at the beach.” Her voice is tentative.

  I sit back, upright and alert. “You did?” My heart starts pounding.

  “I told him about Mani, Shai. He freaked out. I pretty much called him out as a complete asshole. I don’t know if it was the right thing, and I’m sorry, but I felt he needed to hear it. But now he needs to hear from you. Whether you feel like forgiving him or killing him, you need to see him face to face and do it. You know?”

  “Forgive him?” My voice rises. “You think that’s possible? I thought you hated him now.”

  “I do hate him, right now, because he hurt you. I think he’s a fucking asshole douche. But I also know that life is strange and complicated, and people are, too. And that sometimes…”

  I bite my lip. “Sometimes what?” I’m clenching my fingers on the pillow, soaking up her words.

  She shrugs. “I don’t know. From the outside looking in, like an Allison perspective, it looks like you made huge, incredible mistakes, or that maybe you’re a bad therapist. But I know you from the inside, and I see what happened. It’s not like how it looks, not really. Maybe the same thing happened to him? Maybe this was his explosion, too, and he’s ready to be fixed for good.”

  “Yeah?” I’m spellbound.

  She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I’m just saying, that when you see how precious and fragile life is, you don’t want to pass up any chances at happiness. Even if it means forgiving something that isn’t forgivable. Because in the big picture, if you fast forward to better times, maybe fifty years in the future? Maybe this thing that’s so huge and bleak right now will be just one more memory, a dark spot in an otherwise bright and brilliant life.”

  My voice cracks. “But how do you get past the spot?”

  “My life isn’t easy, either.” She pauses. “Paul and I? We’ve said some terrible things to each other in the stress over Anna and her treatment. We’re volatile in t
he ugliest way. I mean, we say wicked, horrible things. Gut-punching words, worse than the worst bullies. We find the weak spots and dig in our thumbs until blood comes out. We’ve bashed each other into oblivion, tried to crush each other with our words. But under it there was still enough love to make us dig our fingernails in and hang on, and keep forgiving, and forgiving and forgiving, even when we couldn’t. Because we needed to, for our future and Anna’s future.” She blinks and nods.

  “I thought you guys were such a team.” I’m shocked at her disclosure.

  “Well, we are. Sometimes.” She takes a deep breath and gives a shaky smile. “Most of the time. But in the gaps, we’re fucking broken as hell, Shai. Some days the only thing holding us together is duct tape and hope. There are times when we’ve hated each other.”

  She laughs. “But we keep going until we’re a team again, because the other option is far worse. And someday, I believe it, this will be behind us and we’ll be happy again. For richer or for poorer. In sickness and in health. Our anger, our words, they’re our sickness. Anna had cancer, and we had anger. But she’s healing, and so can we. We can’t give up so easily. Don’t give up until it’s the last, best option for happiness.”

  My mom opens the door with hope in her eyes, and I fly into her arms. She looks old, but she smells the same, her own mom smell, and I bury my head in her shoulder. “Mom, I missed you so much.”

  She strokes my hair, one soft pat, then leads me inside. “You just saw me last week! Come in, Mija. It’s cold out here.”

  My dad shuffles into the front room from the kitchen, carrying his Time Magazine and wearing his burgundy house slippers, the ones he repaired with a rubber band and silver tape. “Papa!” I roll my eyes. “You have to stop wearing those.”

  My mom laughs as my dad places the Time on the coffee table and gives me a squeeze. “He won’t get rid of them! I buy him new ones, and he hides them. Hides them, can you imagine? He even gave a pair to Mr. Cardwell down the block.” She snorts, and I laugh. “Shai. You look pretty.”

  She touches my arm. Her eyes search mine. When did she get so small? She didn’t look this tiny last week. She looms large in my mind, but she’s fragile, she and Dad. Glass ornaments. Her skin is brown paper on her hands, her blue veins tracing paths that disappear into her sleeves.

  We eat my dad’s posole, the recipe he’s been making for years. Later, my mom sits with me in the living room while I pour out my sadness into her hands. She listens, and when I lean in for a hug, it’s the most comforting thing I’ve felt in a long time. “Shai. I’m so sorry your relationship didn’t work out. You know your dad and I are proud of you, no matter what happens with your job. You know that, right?” Her voice is determined.

  “I know I do know that.” After things ended with Gabriel, so ugly and broken, I started fixing things. My job… my career path… and my family. Maybe I wasn’t going to get Gabriel, maybe life wasn’t going to give me Michael, but I had people who loved me, even if we were broken right now. We were worth fixing. Like I’m worth fixing.

  So I went to their house and went into their lives, and we went back into each other’s hearts. Or at least we started.

  I don’t know what to say now, though. We need to address the big thing, and I don’t know how. I look at a picture of me and Mani. Pictures of the two of us are all over. Our smiles, unfaded, our exuberant youth, forever frozen. When I visited last week, for the first time in months, Mom and Dad were overjoyed to see me, and we talked about life, jobs… but not the important things.

  So I blurt it out. “I thought you liked her better. That you wished it was me that died. What you said that night.”

  “Oh, Shai, no.” My mom’s voice cracks. “No. That night when you…” She touches my face, traces along the scar, her finger soft. I let her; I need the touch. “I didn’t mean to make you think what you thought. I meant that Mani would have wanted better for you. I wanted to say that Mani was still part of you, and that you should honor both of your lives by living yours well, not ruining it. It came out all wrong. I’m so, so sorry. Your dad and I did it all wrong, that night, afterwards. We were lost, Shai. So broken. We just didn’t know how. We didn’t know.” She rests her palm on my cheek.

  “I thought you wanted her instead.” My voice is small, like a petulant child. But I lean into her hand, needing to soak up her words through my skin. I need to hear this, to let it sink into my soul.

  “We wanted both of you.” Her voice was fierce. “And we lost you both. I want you back, baby. I want you back. I miss you so, so much. Come back into our lives, Shai. We only want you back. I don’t want to have two missing girls. I love you. I’ve never stopped loving you.”

  I look at her face, at her eyes, and know it’s true. There are years we wasted in our own grief and our own ruminations, and it’s a tragedy that we lost so much time. But there’s more ahead of us—time we can use to build ladders to climb out of this pit. She just didn’t know how.

  I get it. I know something about not knowing how. But there’s a way to move through it. Sometimes you just have to think about the future, and remember that you can build it into something glorious.

  “Well, I’m here now,” I say, wiping my eyes. “I’m here now. Let’s start again.” I take her hand, and even though it’s delicate and old, it’s still strong. It’s still my mom’s hand. Now that I have her again, I’m not going to let her go. “Let’s start again.”

  I look her up on Facebook, and when I see that she’s checked into the Metro Café two miles away, I don’t hesitate. I drive there and park and go inside. Ignoring the low chatter, clinking bustle, and the aroma of freshly ground coffee, I stand in the doorway and scan the room.

  I spot Arielle sitting alone, near a window. Her eyes look reddish and her movements are jerky, stiff. It’s not her usual lithe, catlike gestures, her honeyed glances. She taps at her phone, then tosses it to the table and wipes at her nose.

  I sit down across from her at her small two-person table, and she reacts when she sees me, puts a hand on her purse, acts like she’s going to stand up.

  “Sit back down,” I snap. My voice is cold. “We need to talk.”

  She swallows and leans back in her chair a fraction, her hand still on her purse. “What do you want?” Her voice is hoarse. She pushes her coffee cup back, and I notice a red lipstick smear on the white ceramic.

  “Why did you do it? You own me an explanation.”

  “I don’t owe you anything. You stole Gabriel from me.” She crosses her legs and puts her hand on top of her phone, but doesn’t look at the screen.

  “He took himself away from you,” I correct. “Because you’re unkind and unpleasant. Which you showed in full with your little trick.”

  She touches her cup and doesn’t look at me. “Whatever.”

  “Yeah, whatever. Where did you even get that stick? Is it yours? Are you pregnant?” My voice raises. Thank God it can’t be Gabriel’s.

  “That’s none of your business,” she says, then her face crumples. She grabs the café napkin and dabs at her mascara.

  “Are you? You have a hell of a lot of nerve pretending I was cheating on him, when you were the one doing it!” My voice raises.

  “You’re so righteous,” she snaps, glaring at me. “So smart. Perfect Shai. Pretty Shai. Smart, brilliant, Save The World Shai. You were so obvious, all falling over him all the time. What I didn’t expect was that he’d fall, too.”

  “You don’t even care about him. And Michael. I do.”

  “He’s not mine!” She practically shouts it. “I don’t know what to do with kids.” She puts a hand on her stomach and lowers her voice. “I have no idea.”

  The server comes by and speaks before he notices our expressions. When he does, the look on his face—of startled dismay—could be funny another day. “More decaf?” he manages. Arielle shakes her head and he disappears.

  “You’re a terrible person,” I hiss. I’m not a therapist now, I’m Shai: a
ngry, honest, raw. “You’re going to be a horrible mother unless you fix yourself the fuck up, and fast.” It’s not a nice thing to say, but fuck nice. I need to get this out.

  She crosses her arms. “I don’t even know if I’m going to keep it. So you can keep your superior opinions to yourself.” Her lip quivers.

  “Do you always take the easy way out?” I’m enraged. “Do you have any clue how many women in the world are dying for a child, and here you are blithely talking about tossing one away? Jesus!” I bang on the table.

  She flinches, then settles back into her seat. “I don’t know what to do,” she says. “I never wanted to hurt anyone, not really. I just was so angry that he left me.” She sniffles and wipes her nose with the café napkin.

  “But you didn’t even love him.” I think the anguish I feel comes out in my voice.

  She shrugs. “He was good to me. And,” she touches her stomach again, “the father wants nothing to do with me, once he found out. That made me mad. That I was going to be alone, and you and Gabe weren’t. So I… did what I did. I was just so angry. I guess if I couldn’t be happy, I didn’t want anyone to be.” She curls her index finger through the handle of her coffee cup and looks down into it, as if the cloudy surface will tell her something critical. “I’m all alone.”

  “What you did was unforgivable. You’re just mean. No wonder you’re alone.”

  “It just sort of happened. When I think about it now, it’s like a movie, someone else doing it.” She shakes her head. She sounds confused, like a person waking from a coma to find that a decade has passed.

  I have no sympathy. “Oh, did you just sort of cheat on Gabriel, too?”

  “We were on a break.” She sniffs. “We were like that, on again, off again. I knew we’d get back together. Thomas was just a distraction while I was waiting, every time I had to wait. But then I found out about being pregnant. And Thomas told me never to speak to him again. Said it wasn’t his. It can’t be anyone else’s, though.”