I was crying again.
Zoe had been silent. “I had no idea you were even dating him,” she said.
“Dating? I mean really, Zo.”
“Well, seeing him. I mean, I told you about what he did to Tim’s friend. Is he even, like, a good guy?”
“He is,” I said.
“But did you ask him about her?”
I had in my own way asked about her. And he had answered. He had said, once he hadn’t been very nice. “Did you not hear me about everything else?” I asked her. “Like all the wonderful stuff I just told you? And my subsequent despair?”
“She loves him,” Stella said. “You know what that’s like, right?”
Zoe grimaced. “I don’t know,” she said. “This just sounds like a mess.”
“True,” said Stella.
“Hello? Right here. I am my own person, you guys. Can we just stick with what’s at hand? He exists. It is not, should he exist or is it a good idea he exists, but he does and now I need to get back to him.”
Zoe turned to me. “Who are you?” she asked.
“Me. I’m me.”
“I think you’re awesome,” Stella said.
Zoe gave Stella a sideways look.
“Thanks,” I said.
“We have to trust you,” Stella said.
“She’s my sister!” Zoe told her.
“So trust her then,” Stella said. “You have a better idea?”
“Trust,” I repeated.
Oh, how I wish I could have.
We sat that way awhile, our legs crossed in front of us, the dogs these eerie silhouettes jumping and twisting against the sky, until the deep, deep cold of the grass chilled us all over. We stood and brushed ourselves off and let the dogs into the cars and then climbed in ourselves. Zoe turned the heat up as high as it would go. I felt the heat on my face. I waved bye to Stella B and then I looked at my sister. Zoe. We were so separate now.
“Tim got into Columbia.” She looked down at the wheel.
I didn’t know if I was supposed to cheer or boo.
She rubbed her hands together and then put both hands on the wheel. “I have no desire to go to Columbia,” she said.
“Really?”
She shook her head.
“Well, why are you applying, Zoe? There are a million places. You could practically go anywhere.”
She shook her head again. “I’m not.”
I squinted.
“I said I am but I’m not. I don’t want to be in a city. I don’t want to be scared all the time. And I want to be on my own.”
“That’s great, Zoe. That you know that about yourself, I mean.”
“I love Tim,” she said. “But it’s not a forever love.”
I didn’t say anything. How did she know that? How could anyone, even Zoe, possibly know that?
“Was he ever? I mean, did you ever feel that?”
She shook her head. “No.”
For me? Connor? Yes, yes, yes. Forever and ever and ever love.
“Then why?”
“He was like my best friend. He was what I needed but not really what I wanted.”
I looked at Zoe.
She was crying as she put the car in drive. “When did everything get so serious?” she asked. But she wasn’t just talking to me.
“I know.” I swallowed. I thought of Tim loading up my iPod. How he jumped up to help me as soon as I needed it. I was going to miss him. A lot.
My sister took a deep breath and let it out, moved the car gently out of the parking lot. “So sad and so serious,” she said, and then we were on the highway, heading home.
Canine Good Citizen
This is what Mabel could do: Sit politely for petting. Kindly greet a stranger. Come when she was called. Walk on a loose lead. Get taken, briefly, away from me. Sit and stay. Be polite to other dogs. Walk through a noisy crowd. Be examined. In my opinion, this made Mabel better than most people, but what it also did was get her that Canine Good Citizen certificate.
We had this stupid little ceremony after our final session at Petiquette, and we all clapped as each dog went up with his or her person to get her certificate. Samantha was first, and I watched her prance across the floor, so feminine in this bulky dog body, her fur gray and velvety, something I’d like as the material for a cape, if I ever wore a cape. And then there was Stella next to her, all sharp corners and quick movements. She was more cat than dog, on the outside anyway.
When it was Mabel’s turn, we went up together and when Esther, split ends on high alert, bent to give me the piece of paper, I burst into tears.
I tell you, I am one thousand years old now. I am like Nana. I cry when I see anything that might have made a person struggle. An old lady crossing the street. A little kid pressing super hard on her crayons. A man with one leg. A movie with a star-crossed love . . . pretty much anything.
My parents were there. They were both madly clapping as if I were, I don’t know . . . on the field. Scoring a goal, say. There they were, cheering for us.
And when Greta and Zoe came out from so-not-getting-a-certificate-probably-never-would, the whole girl band plus the dad celebrated by stopping off for ice cream on the way home. Have you seen a dog eat an ice cream cone? It’s pretty hilarious and wonderful.
“Strawberry,” I ordered.
“Ecch,” said Stella. “So girly.”
Connor. He was everywhere, in everything about me. Like in the DNA, as Mr. Hallibrand used to say. DNA. I licked my strawberry cone, felt my bag stir a little. One day soon, it would be gone. This was just a holding pattern until I was healthy enough that they could hook everything up inside. Connor was right. I’d be scarred, but this would all be gone. I would still have scars and complications, I was told, but it would almost be as if it had never happened.
So where were Connor’s scars? Where do they go when they’re not, as Stella says, making the body more interesting?
We were there. Together. I know that we were. But when would the golden boy with this golden dog be back?
I just had no idea.
Butterfly
In the end, I stuck with the sick children idea. I wanted to be able to sit down and have Mabel sit next to me, and I wanted to hold some bald little boy’s teeny hand and say, No matter what, it’s going to be all right. It would be a lie and it would not be a lie.
And so I did. Just before the holidays, I went back there. With Mabel.
“While I can’t say I’m enjoying reliving pulling up to this place for the thirty thousandth time, I am enjoying that you are going in there as a healthy person and coming out in an hour,” my dad said when he dropped us off.
Full circle, as they say.
“Me too,” is what I said out loud, and I think my voice wobbled a bit.
“I’ll be around the corner. In the café that is not the hospital cafeteria,” he said. “That coffee was so shitty.”
“Yeah, well, the morphine was pretty subpar as well.”
“Touché,” he said as I went into the back and clicked on Mabel’s leash.
“Ready?” I asked her. “See you soon, Dad.”
“Yes.” He looked down at his hands or at the keys in his hands. “Soon.”
Mabel jumped out and then we were in the lobby, where I showed our documents, and then we were on the elevator headed up to the twelfth floor.
The elevator dinged and Mabel and I stepped out. Those same orange chairs where Connor had told me about the girl he’d watched be killed. Back when that story was the story of someone else.
I looked out the window. The scaffolding from the construction was down, and the piles of dirt were just little anthills now. How long before you can actually tell what a building will be? Because I still had no idea what was being built here.
I walked to the nurses’ station, strung with paper candy canes and Santa’s hats, and blinking red and green lights. Everything was both cheerful and dark, the way Christmastime always seems to me. Mabel’s nails click
ed along the hallway. It reminded me a little of going back to camp as a counselor. Like I could see everything I used to do and love: the gum tree, the archery targets fastened to bales of hay, the plaques in the auditorium with all our names. I was there to tell the campers what those things were and how to see them and use them now.
Really, all those things were far behind me and so were these bright fluorescent lights, the old people slumped in wheelchairs, the empty gurneys, the doors slightly ajar, where I could see people crying and holding hands.
Click click went Mabel’s nails. It was hard not to remember Verlaine’s footsteps, headed toward my room.
“Look at you!” It was Alexis, who had been there when they’d put in my central line. “Lizzie!”
My hand fluttered up to my chest. It happened practically automatically. I thought I was just another patient to her. One of so many. But maybe she remembered everyone. Maybe they all did. We were their campers.
“And who’s this?”
“This is Mabel,” I said. I was being talked to as if I were twelve. Ah, well, I suppose I would always be sick to these nurses. I couldn’t really blame them.
“Hello, Mabel!” She came out from the nurses’ station and bent down. She held out her hand for her paw, and Mabel gave it to her.
“She just got her certificate!”
“How great,” Alexis said.
“We’re just here to say hi. My job—our job—is at the children’s hospital.”
By now some of the nurses had gathered around, some I recognized, some I didn’t.
“That’s really great!”
“Doesn’t start for a few weeks, though,” I said. “After the holidays.”
“Hi, Lizzie.” Collette. She was shuffling around the counters and emptied a few cups filled with paper clips and pens and other office stuff.
Collette.
“You look great. How are you feeling?” She came out from behind the nurses’ station and squatted. But more to talk to me.
She held out her hand. On her palm was a plastic barrette. It was purple. It was shaped as a butterfly.
“I found this in your room when you were gone. I don’t know why, but I saved it. It was so sweet and it reminded me of you. And it made me think of you flying away from here. Maybe I just knew you’d be back. Or that Connor would be.”
Just the name made everyone freeze a moment, but I didn’t say anything.
I shook my head. “That’s not mine.”
“No?” she said.
I shook my head. I remembered those barrettes. Red and yellow and purple, all over that little girl’s head. “That’s Thelma’s daughter’s,” I said.
She nodded, looking down. “Well, I guess I saved it for you for some reason. Would you like it?”
“Yes,” I said. I remembered her peering around the curtain. Thelma’s daughter who was now only her father’s daughter.
Collette pressed the barrette into my palm, and we both stood up.
There was an old lady struggling to walk along the hallway. She waved slowly at us as she passed.
I put it in my pocket.
The butterfly.
“Thank you!” I told the nurses as I waved good-bye and heading back to the elevators with Mabel. I couldn’t breathe. I had thought I would visit with everyone and bring Mabel to see some of the patients, but I couldn’t stay another moment. And as I headed down from twelve, dinging past each floor, I fingered the barrette in my pocket. I’ll keep it for you, Thelma, I thought. It was a dumb thought, but it was the one I was having. Then there was a slight jolt in the elevator, as if Thelma was answering me. Or, I thought more realistically, it was some random malfunction that was going to trap me there in that hospital forever, but then—open sesame—we were in the lobby and then we were out the door fast, I don’t remember my feet even touching ground, and then we were around the corner at the café with the decent coffee. There was my father hunched over the newspaper, eating a scone, crumbs on his cable-knit sweater. He looked up at me and I felt in my pocket for the hard plastic and the raised little bumps along the bow-like wings. I have it, Thelma, I thought as I waved to my dad that we were done and ready to go home.
Out of the Blue
I think, when I look back, this is a story about two people who never thought they could be loved back. And this is the story of those two people loving each other back and back and back.
It’s a miracle, actually, that Connor showed up in the hospital just when I happened to be there, needing him. I can’t speak for Connor anymore. I think I know what he’d say about all this, but you just never know what’s going on with people, even the ones close up next to you. This is my superpower. That I understand all that now. Able to leap tall buildings with all my . . . empathy.
The butterfly stayed in my pocket, everywhere. It was there when I went grocery shopping with my mother and when I went to school and when I was alone in my room doing homework on that dumb study buddy. I could feel it always and it was there too when Michael L and his new girlfriend Genevieve (eye roll: of course she’s French) and I went for flowers to take to Dee-Dee on her opening night, just before school ended for the holidays. I felt for it in my pocket and through the whole show. And can I just say? Dee-Dee was amazing. Over-the-top fantastic. Who cares she spent four months in character? Pretending. Who doesn’t? Really. Tell me someone who doesn’t pretend.
I hugged her crazily backstage. Deedeedeedeeee. I said. Dee. I was so proud to be her friend. She’d been busy and I’d been sick and maybe we’d meet back at the beginning again. Or maybe it would just be this. I’m still not sure. But Michael L and Gene-vieve and Lydia and I leaned against the bike racks anyway, lingering until Dee and Kenickie came out the side entrance like movie stars after the show. Her parents were there waiting, but we just wanted to wave to them and blow them kisses. Dee-Dee had her arms full of roses. Who knew which ones were even ours?
Stella B got in early to Princeton. Princeton. I couldn’t imagine her going away. I bought her tiger ears and a tiger tail and also, I made her a CD.
My music. Sad and pretty.
I lay on my bed and watched Frog and listened. I drew a crescent moon. I pasted on two magazine hands. People help the people, I wrote. I cut out and then pasted on the teeniest yellow bird.
My people. Angus and Julia Stone: “Good-bye to my Santa Monica dream . . . You will tell me stories of the sea, and the ones you left behind.” Birdy: “People help the people, and if you’re homesick, give me your hand and I’ll hold it.” The Beatles: “There are places I remember . . .”
All these words saying, softly, everything I want to say. To Stella, to Connor, wherever he was out there, whatever he was doing. To the world. To Dee and Lydia, to Zoe. Tim. “And you laugh like you’ve never been lonely.” That’s what Ben Howard sings. “’Cause it’s just the bones you’re made of.”
All the music. To anyone in the world who has ever held my hand.
Stella was wearing her tiger tail and ears when we went hiking together at Great Falls with the dogs. It was one of those freakishly beautiful and mild January days, the kind you only get one or two of but you can rely on arriving every year. My butterfly was in my pocket then, too. Butterfly in pocket and Stella in front, her little tail twitching as she climbed, sun shining down in those crazy rays of light.
And that’s when Connor finally called.
“Oh my God,” I said to Stella. “It’s Connor.” I sort of lamely held out my hand with the ringing phone.
“Did you think he’d disappear forever? Are you going to answer?”
“Hi.” I said, answering.
I barely had service and I stopped along the rocks, looking out onto the crashing water. Someone was actually kayaking in there. In a wet suit, with a helmet, navigating the insane waves all alone.
“Can we meet?” Connor said.
We hadn’t spoken for what? Two months. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Who’s this?” Below the crash and spray of the w
ater. The man—I think it was a man—with his double paddle held high. Connor couldn’t be serious. Not even a hello. Not even an I’m sorry. Nothing.
“Seriously.”
“I’m not home now.” I was angry now and I watched Stella stop and turn, her black fleece covered in gray hair. (The fleece was Stella’s only concession to hiking; her Docs were her only hiking boots.) Her stupid ears that pressed down her spiky hair made her smudged eyes look sort of perfect silhouetted against the extra-sharp winter sun.
“Can we meet at Fletcher’s?”
“No! You can’t just call out of the blue, Connor. I was so worried!”
“Why not? Why can’t I? I haven’t exactly been on spring break here, Liz.”
“Not even a letter! I’ve been so worried. And so sad.” I paused. “And so pissed! We had this amazing night and then you totally ditched.”
“I’m sorry.”
I was silent.
“It wasn’t like that at all. I didn’t ditch. I didn’t.”
“Anyway, I’m with Stella, like, on this mountain right now.”
“This is not a mountain!” screamed Stella.
“Okay, on some cliff. Anyway, I’m not home!” Inside? I wanted to meet him. I wanted to do whatever he said. But that was no way to be. I couldn’t keep . . . unlocking my turtle shell. One day it just wouldn’t fasten on again, and I’d be stuck full-on without my . . . exoskeleton.
“Where are you guys?”
“Great Falls,” I said. It was actually not at all far from Fletcher’s Cove, but I didn’t say this.
“Lizzie,” he said. It was only my name, but in it was all these different emotions at once. A prism in a word.
“I’ll try,” I said. “I’m trying. Give me an hour.”
“I’ll be there in less than twenty minutes, waiting,” he told me, and then he clicked off.
And then he was gone again. I looked out at the crashing water, but I didn’t move to leave. I wanted to see him and I wanted to never see him again. What would happen if I just didn’t go? How long would he actually wait for me?
“Well?” Stella said.
“B,” I said, as if this was a name I had always called her. “I’m so sorry. But I think we have one more stop.”
We Were Never Here Page 21
