How to Save a Life

by Sara Zarr

  “If we talk about work, I can say it’s a business meeting and stay out longer,” he says. Whatever amount of time we were going to spend together, he wants it to be longer. Implying that he enjoys my company.

  “Oh. Like… what about work?”

  “Do you think you’d ever be interested in working for Corporate?” Ravi spins his coffee cup gently in his graceful hands.

  “Maybe. If it would get me out of Denver.”

  His cup stops. “Why do you want to get out of Denver? Especially now, with Mandy and the baby.”

  “I know. But I feel like I should. My dad did. He saw the world at my age. If I do like he did, maybe I can…” Be like him? Be with him? “I’ve been planning it.”

  “You can change your mind, though. If you want.”

  “I can?” I act shocked, drop my jaw, which makes him laugh his lovely laugh.

  “Hey,” he says, sitting up straighter, “do you want to go on a stakeout with me?”

  “I’m sorry. Did you say ‘stakeout’?”

  “I did.”

  “Okay,” I say, without any idea what he’s talking about. It doesn’t matter, because whatever it is, if it’s with him it feels like something to look forward to. It hits me how grateful I am, so unbelievably grateful, that circumstances led to my elbow strike to his face. I almost think… no. I don’t believe that stuff.

  On the way out to his car, he explains that he suspects an assistant manager at one of the stores in our region of aiding and abetting theft. “His wife comes in to say hi, and suddenly a bunch of cookbooks are missing, stuff like that.”

  “Sneaky.”

  It’s a pretty nice day—chilly, but you can definitely tell it’s more spring than winter. When we get into his car, an oldish sedan, Ravi says, “I brought you something,” while reaching behind my seat, and when he does, his shoulder is right by my face. And: chemistry. That thing that I couldn’t place almost a month ago when he came into the store and we walked through talking about shoplifters and he stepped close, that thing I felt as nostalgia, homesickness. And the first night he came in, when he apologized for surprising me at closing, that thing that made me think Dylan was looking at me. Chemistry. I must have had it with Dylan when we met—you know, how before it’s love, it’s something more basic. But I don’t remember it being like this. This intense. And one thing I’ve never understood about chemistry is if the other person feels it, too. They must, right? If it’s truly chemistry, it can’t be one-sided. If Ravi’s feeling it, he’s doing a good job of pretending not to.

  He sits up and he’s got his senior yearbook in his lap. “I thought maybe you’d want to see what you wrote to me.”

  He flips through the book, and I hope that I wrote something at least nice and at most something like he wrote in mine, something that showed maybe I thought we could be friends, too, even if I don’t actually remember him from back then.

  “Here.” He hands it over.

  I signed on the first page of the sophomore section. Raji—Have a nice summer. And I signed my name. My heart sinks. I couldn’t even get his name right?

  “Oh. Raji? Sorry.” I stare at my handwriting, loopier than it is now, neater but also kind of childish-looking. Written by the hand of the Jill I used to be. I wonder: The day I wrote on this very piece of paper, was it a good day for Dad and me? Did I tell him I loved him? Chances are more than good he told me he loved me.

  Ravi laughs. “I’m over it.” Then he leans over and flips through some more pages, and his shoulder is still magnetic, and my breath is shallow, and I don’t know if it’s chemistry or if I might be about to cry over my dad again, but it’s a buzz up the back of my neck, in my fingertips. “This is my favorite picture of you.”

  “You have a favorite picture of me?” He’s pointing to one of the candids pages. I don’t remember myself being on a candids page. But there I am, leaning against Cinders and smiling so big, like I’m in the middle of a laugh. My hair is lighter. Much lighter. I’d forgotten how light it was. When I went dark, I went dark.

  “I don’t remember that,” I say, running my finger over the Jill who would smile so big. “So, you have a favorite picture of me, and you’ve been staring at it for two years?”

  He closes the yearbook and takes it back. “No, no. It’s not like that. I only remembered that I knew you when I said your name aloud that night at the store. And I went home and looked up your picture, and it all came back.”

  “What all came back?” I want to understand. I want to know.

  “You.” He starts the car and we pull out. “I was shy. You had a lot of personality in that class. Trust me, I’m not the only shy guy who sat there thinking he wished he were your friend.”

  We drive along. I have no idea where we’re going, which store, how far. “What kind of personality?”

  “Smart. Funny. Like I wrote in your yearbook.”

  “Was I nice?” I ask, dreading the answer.

  “Yeah,” Ravi says. “I mean, you seemed nice. And you seem nice now, so I’m sure you were.”

  “I do? How can you say that after—” Then we round a corner, and there’s the city cemetery, coming up on our left. It’s too weird. How are we driving by it right now, when I’ve managed to avoid it for almost a year? “Can we go in there?” I point to the gates.

  “Oh. Sure.” We wait to make a left, and drive on the main path, rolling hills dotted with gravestones on either side of us. “Where am I going?”

  It’s hard to remember. You’d think your body would have some sort of compass that would make you remember things like where your father is buried. If pigeons with brains the size of peas can find their way home, humans should be able to accomplish this simple task. “I think all the way to the other end, maybe.”

  Ravi drives. I try to picture where it was. There was snow on the ground then. There is now, too, but it’s patchy, and there might be new trees or bushes or something, and honestly my focus was not on landmarks at the time.

  “Pull over,” I say. “Maybe we should look on foot.”

  “Right. And… what are we looking for now?”

  I turn to him and say, steady as I can, “My dad is buried here. Somewhere. I haven’t been back since the burial. I haven’t seen the headstone.”

  Ravi holds my gaze, and if he’s stunned or horrified to hear what a terrible person I am to have gone nearly a year without paying my respects to my dead father, he doesn’t show it. “Ah. What… was his name?”

  “Gavin MacSweeney.”

  Some of the gravestones have potted clover beside them, green foil, even leprechaun cutouts. HAPPY ST. PAT’S, some of them say.

  It’s chillier than I realized, and as we walk around the cemetery for what feels like forever, I shove my hands deep into my jeans pockets and begin a kind of teeth-chattering shiver I can’t make stop. Pressure builds in my chest; we’re never going to find it. Why don’t I know where it is? What kind of a daughter am I? Mom comes every couple of weeks, I know she does, even though she stopped inviting me months ago when I yelled at her that I didn’t need to see his grave to remember that he’s gone. A tear gets out. I brush it away. Ravi is walking on the other side of the trail so we can cover more ground, and he can’t see me. Another drop rolls out, down my cheek, soon followed by one on the other side. I remember exactly how my voice sounded, saying that to my mom—a completely yelling voice, utterly lacking in anything even close to tenderness while talking about the forever gone-ness of my dear, dear, dear father, my mirror, the only person who would understand my yelling in even that moment. I’m brushing tears away every second now, wiping the back of my hand on my jeans, returning it to my pocket, taking it out again, brushing, repeat, repeat.

  “I think I found it,” Ravi calls to me from the top of a small swell of grass. Yes, it was on a hill. A view of the houses in the neighborhood below.

  By the time I get to Ravi, my teeth are rattling in my head like a machine gun; I can’t stop shaking from the c
old. My eyes are leaky faucets; the tears just come and come and come.

  GAVIN J. MACSWEENEY

  1957–2010

  LOVING FATHER AND HUSBAND

  “Not real original, is it?” I say, my voice tight with cold.

  “I think it’s good. ‘Loving father and husband’ is underrated. I mean, that’s a lot. It’s really a lot.”

  I nod. It’s everything.

  Ravi removes his suit jacket. Puts it around my shoulders, presses its warmth around me with a tight side hug. I let myself lean against him, and he circles me with his other arm, still staying to my side, rocking a little bit. And I look at the headstone, thinking, Did Dad send Ravi to me? Is that something I even remotely believe is possible? Because however he got here, Ravi has been exactly what I need, and is sticking with it like he’s on assignment from God.

  “Dylan wanted me to come here with him,” I say. “I could never do it. I don’t know why. It just seemed like he wanted this big, dramatic… I don’t know what. It felt like everyone wanted to tell me what to do and how to feel and ways to cope.”

  Ravi is quiet. He drops one arm, leaves the other around my shoulders.

  “It probably sounds weird,” I continue, “but it’s like my grief is all I have left of my dad. It’s private. I save up my crying for the middle of the night, when no one can hear. So it can belong to me only.”

  “That doesn’t sound weird.”

  We stay there awhile, until I worry about Ravi getting too cold without his jacket.

  It isn’t until we’re back in the car and driving out of the cemetery that Ravi says, “So, maybe you’ve mentioned him before, but I’m not sure…. Dylan is…”

  I swallow, look out the window, finger the edges of the yearbook now on my lap. “My boyfriend.”

  “Oh.”

  Oh.

  Mandy

  Jill’s getting anxious about the watch. There’s only so much longer I can tell her I’m still writing the letter to my mother. Two nights ago she came into my room, late, midnight, and sat on my bed in the dark, talking low. She said we have to mail it by Friday. Tomorrow. That we’re just lucky my mother hasn’t called again, and we can’t wait anymore. “Unless you decide you want to go ahead and tell my mom about it,” she said.

  “No,” I whispered.

  “I get it. You don’t want her to think you messed up. You didn’t, okay, Mands?”

  Mands. No one ever gave me that nickname before. I didn’t know what to say to that.

  Jill nudged my arm. “It’s really not a big deal. We can go tell her right now if you want. She’s down in her office. No secrets, no worries.”

  If this were only about me wanting Robin to think of me a certain way, Jill would be right. But the part I can’t tell her is that I might need the money. I can’t tell Robin I want to keep the baby and then expect her to write me a check. Even I’m not that stupid about how the world works. The watch is all I have. That, and the baby. But without the watch I don’t have the baby, because without money I can’t do anything, and I won’t go back to Council Bluffs, no matter what. No matter what.

  “No,” I told Jill. And I felt bad lying to her, but I said, “We’ll mail it by Friday. I promise.”

  Last night we had dinner early; Robin had to go to a meeting, again, afterward. “A few more days of this,” Robin said, “then it’s all over. As soon as I present the feasibility study, my part is done and we can focus on… everything else.” Meaning me, the baby, the decisions we haven’t made, the conversations we haven’t had. Since dinner was early, Jill ate with us instead of running right off to work. She looked a little bit like she’d been crying—by now I’ve seen her cry enough to know her different faces—but she sounded and acted happy.

  “Still soup?” she asked. We’ve been eating this soup since Sunday.

  “Unless you’d like to whip up a rack of lamb,” Robin said, putting out bowls.

  “It’s good,” Jill said. “Just eternal.” She looked at me, then, and made a face. Like we’re friends, or sisters. No secrets, no worries might be true, but also having a secret together has made us closer.

  She took the newspaper from the top of the recycling bin in the corner of the kitchen. “I think that’s yesterday’s,” Robin said, putting out spoons, napkins.

  “That’s what I want. I’m testing the wisdom of the universe.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Oh, this argument I got into with someone from work who totally believes in astrology. I want to see if yesterday’s horoscope came true.” She flipped through the pages and read aloud: “ ‘You’re not as clever as you think you are, Aries.’ That one’s for the baby.” She leaned over and said to my stomach, “Not as clever as you think! We’re onto you! Okay, now me. Capricorn. ‘Don’t let what you think you know…’ ” Jill kept reading silently.

  “Go on,” Robin said, laughing. “That sounds like you, all right.”

  “This is obviously b.s.”

  “Oh!” Robin turned to me, suddenly, from the stove. “Do you realize your due date is right around Mac’s birthday? April second. Wouldn’t it be something if she was born on his birthday?” She sounded far away. “Wouldn’t it, Jill?”

  “It would.” Then Jill got up and decided she needed to go straight to work after all, leaving the newspaper in a pile at her place at the table. On her way out, she said, “Mom, try to stay up, I want to talk to you about something when I get home,” and I don’t mean to be paranoid, but it sounded like the thing she wanted to talk about was me. Otherwise why would she say it like that? “Something” instead of “work” or “school” or normal things. Maybe she’d figured out from her laptop what I’d been looking at about the value of the watch and where I could get money for it. I’d cleared all my history, but she could know something I don’t know about computers.

  The truth is that earlier yesterday I was a little calmer. More sure about staying here and following through with all my plans. Confident that Robin and I would work it out, and everything would be all right somehow. But when Jill said that, I knew she was going to tell on me for taking something that wasn’t mine, trying to get away with something. That I might be a thief. That I might wind up stealing from them.

  Then this morning they both acted normal and I thought, No, Jill didn’t tell. Maybe I’ll stay. It’s so hard to know what to do, and I go back and forth like that, all day, every day, since Monday after Dr. Yee. I look at Jill and Robin and think, Yes, I can trust them; this is a good situation. Then I see Robin at her computer and think maybe she’s not doing work for her meeting, maybe she’s e-mailing lawyers.

  I picture it all:

  Me at the hospital. Giving birth. It hurting and taking a long time. Robin will be there helping, but it’s only because she wants this so bad, this life in me, someone to give her love to who is new and isn’t ruined like I am. And the baby will come out, and Robin will hold her, and she and Dr. Yee will whisper and take my daughter away.

  And disappear.

  Then it’s me. Alone.

  The nurse will say, “Mrs. MacSweeney packed your bag for you, and here it is. So you don’t have to go back to the house for it.”

  It will be like at the train station in Omaha when the taxi driver left me and I walked through the snow and the dark, only this time I won’t even have my baby, or anywhere to go.

  That is how it’s going to happen, I just know. That’s how my life has been. That’s how it will be, unless I do something different.

  So all of that means this is my last day here.

  At breakfast this morning I took in every detail to remember in a week, in a year, in twenty years: how Jill looks before she puts on her eyeliner, the way she stands in the middle of the kitchen eating her peanut butter toast instead of sitting at the table, because she’s always in a hurry. The sound of Robin’s feet on the stairs and how they’re different from Jill’s—lighter and more cheerful.

  Robin had to rush out, too.<
br />
  “This is the last day,” she said to me, touching my head, like she does sometimes. I closed my eyes and felt each fingertip. “After tonight I’m done. If they need anything else from me, they’ll have to get it by phone. Okay? I promise.”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “We’ll talk about everything tomorrow.” I gave her my most convincing smile and reached up from where I was in the kitchen chair and put my arms around her neck. Powder, coffee.

  Remember this, I think.

  Jill

  All day Thursday I can’t shake a peculiar feeling. Mrs. Espinoza has the window cracked, and there’s a spring breeze that’s almost warm, smelling at once carbon-y and grassy, old snow and new plants, growth, life. Everything’s off somehow, unsettled. It feels almost like: the future has already happened. Graduation is over, Dylan has gone off to college, Mandy’s had the baby, and I can see my mom holding her, gazing at her. The only thing I can’t clearly see about the future is what I’m doing in it. I sort of picture myself in Denver. Which is all wrong.

  Spring fever. Senioritis, maybe. Confusion about Ravi, certainly.

  Meanwhile I have to plan a surprise party, call Annalee about work, and get that damn watch back to Iowa no later than tomorrow. And PS, I also have be at school and perform my trained-monkey-high-schooler duties: showing up on time, paying attention or pretending to, and somehow not checking out before it’s all over. Just because I’m not going straight to college doesn’t mean I want crappy grades for my last semester of high school.

  But, something’s got to go, and I’m afraid it will be government and chem, a.k.a. the latter half of my day of learning.

  In English while we’re supposed to be writing, I make a checklist, try to break it down to one thing at a time. Dylan, who sits two seats ahead and one row over from me, casts a look back every now and then, and I can tell that he can tell that whatever I’m writing in my notebook, it ain’t an essay about William Faulkner.