East Coast Girls

by Kerry Kletter

  She stumbled over to a water fountain in this strange body of hers. Cried as she drank. Tears mixed with the splash. She wiped her mouth, her eyes. Turned to her friends behind her, looking for hope, finding only more sorrow.

  “I just need a minute,” she said. She had to pull it together before she saw Henry. She was so afraid that he would sense her fear, that she would cause him distress. The doctors would say this was impossible. It worried her anyway.

  “Do you want to maybe go to the chapel?” Renee said. “It’s quiet. Might be a good place to think.”

  Hannah nodded, wiped new tears at the fleeting, absurd hope that she could pray this away with magic words. That if God existed, he might somehow...

  They located the chapel behind a simple white door, a small wooden sign above it. Hannah hesitated. “I don’t believe,” she said. “In God. I used to...”

  “You don’t have to,” Renee said. “It can be whatever you need.” She opened the door and Hannah entered.

  The room was small and dim, quiet as a cave. Rows of benches lined up in strict formation, electric candles cast their muted glow on the walls.

  Hannah slid in beside Blue, Maya beside her, Renee on the end. A bubble of silence surrounded them, the room a held breath. The profound stillness evoked in Hannah a primal sense of being supported, if not by a deity, then by a humankind that understood the need for places like this. Places to contain anguish. Built across thousands of years to carry people through.

  Hannah closed her eyes, falling into the deep quiet, letting herself be held by it, tender and raw. She became aware of a dense grief in the room, the reverberation of all the desperate prayers that had been issued from these benches. She listened, tuned to the frequency of universal despair. To her surprise, it felt like love and her chest filled with it. She felt love for all the hurting strangers who had preceded her here, for the humanity that had brought them to their knees. And somehow their love echoed back.

  She leaned into the love and the grief. Got down on her own knees, called to do so by her need to surrender to her helplessness—to send an SOS into the void and hope that it would land in the right hands. Her friends kneeled beside her. Their eyes met. They bowed their heads. Maya’s shoulder brushed against hers and Hannah edged away to give her space; but a moment later she felt Maya lean into her again and she realized it wasn’t a mistake. She leaned back.

  Hannah paused, trying to find the words for her prayer. To find an answer to her question. How could she be asked to give up hope? How could anyone know when it was time to do that? To pull the plug on a person? On a life?

  She took a breath and in her head she began. I’m not perfect, but I’m trying. I know I don’t deserve any better than anyone else. And I know you have other things, other people, to worry about. Bigger problems. But... She paused, the thought unbearable. Please don’t take anything more. Please don’t ask me to do this. I can’t. I can’t.

  Even as she prayed this, prayed as hard as she could, she heard a voice in her head just beyond her own. It was Maya’s voice, small, offstage in her mind, telling her that she would be giving up a hope, not all hope. Giving up the hope that Henry would get better, that he would get to have a real life and that she would get to share that future with him. And in that moment Hannah understood how she, just like Henry, had been stuck in a holding area between life and death. How maybe she’d conflated her aliveness with his. Maybe keeping Henry here was selfish, her way of avoiding that awful in-between place where one hope had died and another had not yet been born. Perhaps all this time she’d been keeping him stuck as well, preventing his passage to somewhere better. Was there somewhere better? Somewhere they would meet again? She knew Renee believed it. And though she was inclined to disagree, she also knew that her perspective was as limited as any other creature’s, as limited as that of the octopus who knew nothing of the craggy fisherman above him, nothing of planes swimming sharklike across the moon at night, of giant trees whose branches bobbed in a breeze.

  She thought now of the Henry she knew when they were younger, his warm, safe hugs and the way he smelled like laundry detergent and how he absently stroked her arm when they were together. The boy who used to put an extra packet of cream cheese in her bag at the bagel shop when they first met, who moved her out of the rain to kiss her, who gazed at her with such soft, loving eyes that she came to see herself through them. She asked this Henry, the Henry in the before, what he would have wanted if he knew what was coming. Twelve years kept alive. How many more would be enough? How long would he ask them to hold on? And she knew the answer clearly. It had already been too long.

  No! she thought, a howl in her chest. Please no.

  She couldn’t take it. It was too much. God help me, she thought. The primal wail. Her body racking. I can’t. Please God, I can’t. Her pain was a universe, her whole being made only of sorrow.

  She felt a hand on each shoulder. Maya on one side, Blue on the other. And she wanted to say, Please make it stop, please if you love me, please help me. But she understood that this was what was happening, what had to happen, and no one could change it. She sat up, wiped her cheeks, forced her breath to slow and regulate. “I have to go,” she whispered. “I need to see him.”

  She walked out, moving down the hall as fast as she could. Her grief was giant and unwieldy, like airplane wings careening and crashing into everything she passed. She could almost feel the strangers walking by sensing what it was, stepping out of the way of it.

  They took the elevator up to the fourth floor. Buzzed into the ICU. Entered the awful theater of urgency, of patients tubed and wired like aliens in purgatorial rooms, the beeps and sighs of machines, the low murmur of doctors and nurses talking over the terrifying undercurrent of the lottery, of maybe life, maybe death.

  Vivian was standing at the nurses’ station. She turned and saw them, her shoulders sagging with exhaustion, an almost ancient sadness in her eyes.

  Hannah ran to her and Vivian held out her arms, hugged her tight.

  “I get it,” Hannah said into the cloth of her shirt. “I understand now. We have to let him go.”

  “Yes,” Vivian said, and Hannah could hear the choke in her voice. “Yes, sweet girl, we do.”

  She stepped back, took Hannah’s face in her hands and gave a determined nod, as if summoning courage for them both. Then she held out her hand to the others. “My girls,” she said, “I’m so glad you’re here.” She hugged them all. “I think I’m going to go to the chapel for a bit. Take as long as you need.”

  But I need forever, Hannah thought.

  Together the girls walked to Henry’s room.

  She looked at Maya, saw the helplessness in her eyes.

  “He’s still here,” Hannah said. “Right now. That’s what I keep telling myself.”

  But she knew that soon there would be an empty bed, eventually taken by someone else’s loved one, another set of family and friends gathered around. How could it be? Her brain wanted to shut it down and so she did.

  She went to Henry, took his hand in both of hers. She watched as each of her friends bent down to him, put their lips tenderly on his forehead, told him goodbye. Maya put her hand on top of hers. On the other side of the bed, Blue and Renee added their hands, as well.

  They sat like that for a few moments, quiet and sad and together.

  “Did you know sea otters hold hands while they sleep?” Renee said. “It’s so they don’t float away from each other.”

  “I like that,” Maya said, squeezing.

  “Me too,” Hannah said.

  “We’ll be right outside if you need us,” Maya said.

  Hannah nodded, watched them go with the awful understanding that it was time. She sat alone with Henry, the sky at the window dressed in mourning black, the room mostly dark but for a soft shell of light over Henry’s head, the dull glow of machinery. A hollow, st
erile quality to the air, as if life had already been suctioned out of it. She took in Henry’s beautiful face, the way his hair, in need of a trim, curled near his ears. She traced his big hands, put her head on his chest—the safest place she had ever known.

  He was her first love, her first experience of tenderness and also of ecstasy. He had taught her how to drive, fixed her computer when it broke, listened to all her sorrows and dreams. He was her person, her one. After that nightmare night he’d become even more her safest place, in some way her imaginary friend, the one who never got mad, who never hurt her, who would never leave, a benevolent and steady presence in her life like Renee’s Jesus. Without him she would be untethered.

  She climbed into his bed, lay on top of him. Sobbed quietly so that he wouldn’t know. Just in case. Just in case he was still in there, she didn’t want to frighten him. She wanted to scream, Why? Why? and Fight! Fight! And against those words another voice in her head said, Maybe this happened because he knows you’ll be okay now, maybe he was waiting for that, maybe he sensed that it was time for both of you to let go. She didn’t want that and yet she understood. Even as she grieved, she understood.

  She stayed like that for a long time, touching and pressing her body against his, memorizing the feel of him, his strong and steady heart, still here, still beating. She was ripped. She was full of love. She held on and held on and held on. She kissed his cheeks, sniffed for the sleep smell at his neck, but it was already gone, replaced by something medicinal.

  It was too much. Too much. He was all she knew.

  Finally, reluctantly, she climbed off. She sat beside him again, watched him breathe, memorizing each rise and fall of his chest. Stroked his arms, his hair. I love you, I love you, I love you. She raised his hand to her forehead and pressed it against her, imprinting its warmth there.

  From the doorway, Vivian’s soft voice. “Hi,” she said.

  Hannah looked up to see her enter. “Hi,” she whispered back.

  “Are you okay?”

  Hannah shook her head, no, new tears brimming. “Are you?”

  Vivian shrugged, gave a sad smile as she moved into the chair across from Hannah. “We’re setting him free,” she said. Her eyes welled. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to.” She looked so old in the fragile light, as if loss made gravity stronger, stretching faces, casting shadows. She caressed Henry’s face and Hannah imagined how many times she must have done that when he was just a newborn in her arms.

  “The doctor will be in soon,” Vivian said.

  “I can go,” Hannah said, though it was the last thing she wanted. “If you want to be alone.”

  Vivian reached across Henry’s chest. “Stay,” she said, grabbing Hannah’s hand and squeezing. “He would want you here. I want you here. It won’t be much longer.”

  A nurse came in quietly, double-checked if they were ready. A morphine drip and sedative were added, explained. The nurse’s kindness brought on fresh tears. They waited. Hannah clung to each moment. Even as she suffered in the terrible anticipation, it seemed better than the finality. She forced herself to watch when the nurse unplugged the respirator, to bear witness to the end of everything that mattered to her. It was suddenly strikingly quiet. Her hand left Vivian’s, found Henry’s again. She watched his peaceful, undisturbed face. I love you, Henry, she thought. It’s going to be okay now. His body gave a small shudder beneath her hand.

  “He’s going,” Vivian said.

  They each kissed his face and Hannah clutched his hand tight so he would know she was there.

  “Goodbye, Henry,” she whispered.

  Goodbye.

  EPILOGUE

  They buried Henry on a quiet blue day in July amid mourners whose grief had been suspended for so many years it became relief. The four of them seemed to inhabit their own atmosphere, private and removed. Maya did not recognize herself as she moved through the ceremony, how subdued she could be. Beside her, Hannah was stoic, her shoulders pushed back as though she were once again at the bow of that whale-watching boat, at war with a fear that extended in every direction and beyond the horizon. Blue and Renee were calm, quiet presences throughout and, like Maya, watchful as spotters should Hannah fall apart. She did not.

  When it was Maya’s turn to say goodbye, she approached the casket, put her hands on the wood and imagined it as a small ship taking Henry on an adventure into another world. An ache of grief, pure and uncomplicated, filled her, felt not entirely bad, somehow satisfying in its truthfulness. It was as if memory had finally attached to some free-floating torment she’d been wrestling with, made it into an enemy more knowable and defined. For twelve years Henry had become something bigger and more nebulous in her mind, lived inside her as a formless accusation, an abrasion of guilt on her conscience. Now that he was gone, she could remember him as more than the constant quiet reminder of that night; she could remember him as her friend.

  There would be no return to innocence. If she’d hoped, which of course she had, that the damage those men had inflicted would die with him, she was quick to realize it would not. It would never be fully gone for her, for any of them. It would sometimes be bigger and sometimes be smaller, but it was impossible to remove the psychic shrapnel of that singular bullet. Their bodies absorbed it, functioned around it.

  And maybe innocence was overrated and resilience the opposite. Maybe there was beauty, not in suffering itself, but in the depth of intimacy it fostered with other people. Maybe that was the trade. She could tell herself that anyway. She could make it be real.

  That night after the funeral, they crashed at Hannah’s apartment and stayed up late sharing warm, funny memories of Henry. Maya tried not to think about anything but the present—not the eviction notice awaiting her, not Andy back in Montauk, not the yawning future or how little she understood of what she would do about any of it. For the next few days at least, she’d be staying on with Hannah to make sure she was okay.

  * * *

  The following day the four of them woke up late to the sun banging at the windows. Blue and Renee brought their bags down to the rental car and hugged Maya and Hannah goodbye.

  Blue was, more than anything, relieved to be going home. It had all been so much and she needed time alone to process. Still, she was happy to have the company of Renee for several hours as she drove her back to Connecticut. She’d send a service to pick up Renee’s car at Nana’s, have it delivered to Renee’s house. They were both too drained to take on the extra drive time themselves.

  They were not suddenly back to being best friends. The deep trust they once shared had been shattered, for Blue, on that night long ago. Even if she wanted it to, her heart would not open too wide for Renee. But she was beginning to understand that life had a lot of pain and loss in it, so when the potential for repair was there, she should try to take it. She would leave space for something new to grow, not expect too much, nor dismiss the possibility of what could be.

  When they reached Renee’s, Blue parked the car and they sat for a moment.

  “I wish we could just keep driving,” Renee said.

  “I can take a few more spins around the block,” Blue offered.

  Renee smiled sadly. “Not far enough.” She flipped the visor mirror down and began to fix her hair. Her dress, the one she’d worn the day she arrived in Montauk, was wrinkled, her face drawn from sleeplessness, her makeup faded, and yet somehow she looked younger, or at least less guarded. She pulled out her lipstick, then sighed. “Hopeless,” she said as she shoved it back into her purse without bothering to reapply it.

  She glanced up at the house she shared with Darrin and back to Blue as if reminding herself there was someone there, more in her life than just him. “You think I should leave him, don’t you?”

  “You’re asking my opinion on a love relationship?” Blue replied with a laugh. “I don’t know what you should do.”

 
“Part of me thinks I should just run. The other part of me thinks that’s what I always do. I don’t know which instinct is right. Either could be.”

  “I guess you’ll know what you’re going to do when you do it,” Blue said.

  Renee nodded. “Yeah. We’ll see what he says when I confront him.” She puffed up her cheeks, blew her bangs up on a big exhale. “This should be fun. I haven’t even told him I’m pregnant yet.”

  “Good luck,” Blue said. “You’ve got this. Let me know how it goes.”

  Renee climbed out of the car, ducked her head back in, smiled. “Thanks.”

  As Blue drove back to Manhattan, she imagined what was happening inside that house, whether Renee had walked in and confronted Darrin or whether she had paused just outside the door, pulled out her compact, reapplied her lipstick, put on her Renee smile, and said nothing. Blue was sure she knew what she would do if it were her, but everyone was always sure what they would do in a hypothetical.

  It was almost evening by the time she reached the city and dropped off the car. She walked into her apartment, set down her bag in the empty foyer, and realized, not for the first time, how much she hated living there. And, too, how easy it would be to forget that, to once again be habituated into the familiarities of her life, accustomed to her misery. She called in sick the next three days and wandered her hallways, staring at the walls and out the window and in the mirror. She drank too much and got high and checked Jack’s social media channels a dozen times a day and felt shame about it and reprimanded herself for being a stalker and then kept doing it anyway. She didn’t know what she was looking for there.

  The following week an offer came in on Nana’s house for higher than what she’d asked. Blue took it off the market instead and turned in her two weeks’ notice.

  In September she packed up her stuff and left the city behind.

  Early fall settled over Montauk, blowing in waves the color of dolphins and winds like chilled glass. Blue turned the corner onto Nana’s street, now her street, with the last of her belongings. Fear zapped her in intermittent surges. What was she going to do out here? She had no plan, no direction. She’d been rash making so many drastic changes at once. It was so unlike her. But death had been undraped from denial in the days after Henry’s funeral. And death did that—it made you scramble for life. Grab without thinking.