And Sometimes Why

by Rebecca Johnson

  “Darius?” she whispered.

  He stood up slowly, as if his coat—inappropriately thin for the cold night—were weighted. His hair appeared grayer, thinner at the top, and the skin around his eyes looked delicate and creased, like crumpled tissue paper. He looked embarrassed at finding her with another man. “Hi,” he said wearily.

  Sophia hugged him. There was a strange new smell to him. Something unpleasant, like food gone off. Snow, predicted all week, began to fall. Coleman shivered and adjusted his leather gloves.

  “Darius, this is Coleman Kramer,” Sophia spoke, sensing Coleman’s desire to leave.

  Darius held out an ungloved hand. Coleman hesitated, then stuck his own gloved one into his. Watching the two men appraise each other, Sophia felt acutely aware of their differences.

  “Do you mind?” she said to Coleman.

  “Of course not.” He kissed her cheek chastely. “I’ll see you next week.”

  Sophia wondered if she would ever see him again.

  “Seems like a nice fellow,” Darius observed flatly.

  Sophia smiled at the choice of words. “I only met him tonight,” she answered, shivering slightly at the snow and the ready way she distanced herself from him. Darius looked relieved.

  “Do you have a bag?” she asked.

  He glanced at a small black vinyl bag on the ground but made no effort to pick it up. Sophia bent over and grabbed its handle. The weight surprised her.

  “My God,” she said, “what’s in here?”

  Darius looked stricken by the question. “Can we go upstairs?” he asked.

  “Is Helen okay?” Sophia asked.

  Darius lifted his eyes to the windows of the building, as if he were trying to guess which apartment belonged to her.

  Sophia suddenly felt like she couldn’t breathe. “Who is taking care of Helen?”

  “She died two days ago.”

  Sophia had known the news was coming for the last seven months. She had tried hard to prepare herself. But the shock of the actual news was like a physical blow. She gasped, raised her hands as if to beat the air, dropped them, and burst into tears. How could she not have known? She had lived the last twenty-four hours as if it were a day like any other. Had drunk her morning coffee, read the newspaper, taken a yoga class, shopped for food, finished a biography on Benjamin Franklin, gone to a new art class, and had drinks with a man she seriously considered having sex with, and all the while her husband was flying across the country, holding this terrible news in his head. She leaned her body against his and cursed her blasphemous heart.

  They might have stayed that way for hours, covered in a mantilla of white, lacy snowflakes, had a restaurant delivery man dressed in white pants, white cap, and a puffy down jacket not approached them.

  “You order?” the man asked, looking from one to the other. In his hand he held a white plastic bag printed with I NY; inside was a paper bag folded once and stapled shut. Darius, who hadn’t eaten for twelve hours, realized he was suddenly ravenous. “How much?” he asked, and then tipped the man twenty dollars to make up for stealing someone else’s food. Sophia watched him bike away, his tracks a graceful arabesque on the white of the street.

  “Your food will get cold.” She opened her purse to look for keys. Darius leaned down to pick up his black bag and the bag of food.

  Inside the apartment, he put the bags on the dining-room table and sat down. Sophia got him a plate and watched him eat. “I want to know everything,” she said when he was done.

  It was a heart attack. Darius had been home, grading papers downstairs, when the monitor went off. “The doctors said to watch for random electrical impulses that would cause the heart to beat funny. In the hospital I’d seen her EKG go wild and then calm down several times. It would drive me crazy, because nobody would come to check on her after it happened—they said it was normal but I always thought they were just waiting for her to die. So when the alarm went off—”

  “What time was that?” Sophia interrupted.

  “Around four o’clock.”

  Seven o’clock New York time. She would have just met Micheline.

  “I went in and counted to thirty, like they told me to. When the pulse didn’t come back, I used the defibrillator.” He shook his head. “When the medics came, they said her heart was too weak and couldn’t take the shock.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?” she asked.

  “I tried, but I kept getting the machine. I sent Miranda an e-mail, but I didn’t want to leave a message for you.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “I had her cremated.”

  “Why?” Sophia’s eyes filled with tears. Nothing left of her golden child but ashes?

  “It’s what she wanted. Remember? After my mother died? We weren’t sure what to do. Miranda said, ‘I want to be buried.’ Helen said, ‘I want to be cremated.’ She said we should scatter her ashes off Point Dume in the ocean, but I didn’t want to do it without you.” Sophia didn’t remember the conversation, but she believed him. It was the kind of thing Helen would have said.

  “I brought her,” he gestured to the bag on the table.

  “You’re joking.”

  “I didn’t want to leave her.”

  She couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry until she saw her husband’s guilt-stricken face. “You did the right thing.”

  “Thank you.”

  Neither of them said anything for a long time, or so it seemed to Sophia. Then again, it could have been only a minute. Time was bending in odd, hallucinogenic ways. Finally, Darius reached into his pocket and pulled out a cassette tape.

  “I thought you might want to hear it,” he said.

  Sophia glanced at the clock. It was two-thirty in the morning. She put the tape in the stereo, pressed Play, and sat next to him on the couch. He put his arm around her. She leaned her head against his shoulder.

  —Hi, Helen. Us again.

  —Your loser friends.

  —Speak for yourself.

  —Oh, believe me, I am.

  —This is Magda, Siri, and Anya. Louisa would be here, but she says she’s working on her college essay.

  —Insert awkward pause here because the deadline was two weeks ago.

  —Maybe she got an extension.

  —Right.

  —Every college has the same question. Write about an experience that had a profound impact on your life. I started to write about my parents’ divorce, but when I read it over, it sounded so whiny. “And then my dad wasn’t there when I woke up, and my mother was crying all the time.” Boo-hoo. Like anyone cares. I hate to say it, but your accident is the most interesting thing that happened to me.

  —Which is kind of pathetic, because it didn’t even happen to you.

  —Um. Okay. Maybe you shouldn’t be calling me pathetic in front of Helen?

  —I didn’t say you were pathetic. I said the behavior was.

  —Guys. Can we?

  —Anyway. I brought my essay and thought I’d read it to you. Do you guys mind?

  —Go ahead.

  —No, I mean, do you mind leaving the room?

  —This is ridiculous. Why are we here if it’s just going to be the Magda show?

  —That’s not fair.

  —Do me a favor? Lose my phone number. P.S. If Helen were around, I really do not think she would be friends with you anymore, either.

  Sound of door slamming.

  —God. I mean, really. I think she’s just jealous. About me getting into Stanford early acceptance. The best she’s hoping for is UC Santa Cruz, which is a perfectly fine school. I so don’t look down on her for going there, but I also don’t see why we can’t be honest. Santa Cruz is not Stanford. It just isn’t. And I don’t see why it’s a crime for me to be a little proud of my accomplishment.

  —Magda.

  —Siri, if you want to say something, you can.

  —No, no, it’s okay. I’m going to see if I can find Anya.

  Sound of
door closing.

  —Why does Siri always have to be such a Goody Two-shoes? Conflict is normal. That’s what my mom, the shrink, says. But not in this group. The first sign of trouble and, bam, every body’s out the door. I mean, if someone had asked me a year ago who my best friends are, I would have said you, Louisa, Anya, and Siri. I’m sorry, I really don’t mean to cry. I know that you are the one who has suffered. It’s just, I don’t know, everything has fallen apart. I know Siri would say I am gossiping and focusing on the negative, but the truth is, Louisa has a drug problem. Every weekend she does X with those kids from Pacific Palisades and I’ve even heard rumors that she’s selling it. I’m not judging her for that. I don’t care that people do drugs but, I mean, her grades have gone to shit. She has a whole different set of friends. She barely even goes to school anymore, and if she gets caught selling, she could go to jail. Her mother actually called me and started crying on the phone because she didn’t know what to do. And all that stuff about Anya being jealous of me? I don’t really think that’s true. What I think is, Anya is sick. Really sick. She looks like a Holocaust victim. She must weigh ninety pounds. When she first started losing the weight, every one kept saying how great she looked, but then it got to a point where it was scary. Her arms are, like, pipe cleaners. The last time we met at Java Juice to plan the next tape, I went to the bathroom after her, and it totally smelled like vomit. When you look at her arms, it’s like she’s growing fur, which you usually can’t tell, because she mostly wears long-sleeve shirts, but last week, I could see a little bit under the sleeve. That’s what happens when a body gets too skinny—it starts growing extra hair to keep warm. If she keeps this up, she won’t be going to college, because she’s going to be dead.

  And I know Siri is, like, an angel and every thing, but all that God and Buddha shit is driving me crazy. I mean, if she was talking about Jesus, people would think she was a freak and they’d be worried, but because it’s Buddha and she wears tie-dyed skirts, it’s, like, oh, that’s cool. But whenever you try to talk to her about a feeling, she’s like, it’s in God’s hands. It’s God’s way. Ours is not to question. Like it was God’s way for your accident to happen and, I’m sorry, I don’t accept that. I don’t believe in God, but if I did, I’d have to seriously question why He or She or whatever you want to call “It” would let something like that happen to someone like you, because I can see now what a cool person you were, Helen. I mean, I always knew it and I guess I was kind of jealous of you because you had the gift. Everybody liked you. I know I sound like I am sucking up, but what would be the point of sucking up to you now? Look at your own family. When I heard that your sister had moved to Alaska and your mother had moved to New York, I have to say, I was shocked. I mean, I knew your parents fought sometimes—whose don’t?—but they seemed solid. Without you, I guess every thing fell apart. You were, like, the sun. You kept things in orbit. Only we didn’t know it. We thought we were our own galaxies, but it turned out there was a universe and you were at the center. Okay, now, I am crying too much and I think I should stop. Actually, Helen, I think this is going to be my last tape. The problem is, every time I start talking into the microphone, I just get really sad and I am always depressed for a few days afterwards. My shrink—Shit. Oh, well. I guess it’s not that big of a deal. I’m seeing a shrink now. I know I swore I would never do it, but that was just adolescent rebellion by a shrink’s daughter. She’s the one who made me do it. She said she was really worried about me and she knows what depression looks like and she made me take some dumb test that was, like, Have you lost interest in the things that used to give you plea sure? Are you tired all the time? Do you think about killing yourself? Of course I answered yes to every thing. I mean, I’m sad. My best friend is in a coma. It’s normal I would be sad! It’s not as bad as I thought it would be. Boyd, he lets me call him that instead of Dr. Davis, thinks that making these tapes is keeping the accident too alive in my mind. He thinks I need to move on. He says I can keep you in a room and go there to mourn, but I shouldn’t live in that room. It’s funny, because I always thought compartmentalization was unhealthy, but he says no, they’ve been rethinking that and it can actually be healthy. He’s pretty cool. And did I mention he’s hot? I know, how clichéd, falling for your shrink, but he’s married with two little kids, so don’t worry, no chance of anything happening there. Still, a girl can dream. Did I mention that Boyd is practically the one who got me into Stanford? When school started in the fall, I guess I slacked off a little. I know it was supposed to be my senior year and really great and all that but, I don’t know, I just found it hard to get out of bed. I guess I didn’t actually go to school that much because I didn’t really pass any of my classes. Well, the nice teachers gave me incompletes, but basically I was toast. I mean, I couldn’t even fill out my application, except for the essay I wrote about you, which every body agreed was kind of brilliant. So Boyd wrote a letter to the school explaining the situation and asking if they could just consider my transcript up until the point of the accident. Luckily, I had taken an early version of the SATs just as a warm-up, and they were able to use that score. Mrs. Buttsucker, the college counselor, says she thinks Boyd’s letter is what got me in. It made me “angular,” she said. That’s the new word. Angular. It’s not enough to be a smart, all-around good person anymore. You’ve got to have an angle. So I guess I have you to thank for making me angular. I’m sorry I have blabbed on so much. It’s amazing how much easier it is to talk when nobody is around. Before, I always felt kind of self-conscious around every one. Today, every thing just flowed. So, Helen, just because I am saying good-bye, it doesn’t mean I don’t love you and think of you all the time. I do. I don’t know if you can hear me or if every thing is just kind of hollow, and I don’t know what would be better. But if you’re in there and all you have is your past to think about, well, you’re probably kind of lucky, because you were just awesome.

  About the Author

  Rebecca Johnson has been a contributing editor to Vogue for the last twelve years. Her extensive career in journalism also includes writing “Talk of the Town” columns for a year at The New Yorker and working as a contributing editor at Talk magazine. She lives in Brooklyn and Bedford, New York, with her husband, two children, and three stepchildren.

  A NOTE ON TYPE

  The text of this book is set in Fournier,

  based on designs by

  PIERRE SIMON FOURNIER

  from around 1742 in his

  Manuel Typographique.

  This book was designed by

  NICOLE LAROCHE.

  This book was printed and bound by

  R. R. Donnelley

  at Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania.