How to Be Brave

by E. Katherine Kottaras

  At the end, it was bruised.

  At the end, it was empty—the body, the heart, the mind.

  At the end, we had to let you go.

  We had to.

  And I’ll never be sorry enough.

  Evelyn,

  Can you hear me?

  * * *

  Dad comes home with dinner—I’m guessing French dips from the smell. He sets the bag on the dining room table. I put down my book and walk over to peek in the bag. I was right. “Thanks for bringing home food,” I say.

  Dad doesn’t look at me or say you’re welcome or even ask me if I’ve heard anything about Evelyn. He just goes into the bathroom. It’s like I’m a nonentity to him.

  When he comes back out, I say it again. “Thanks for bringing home dinner.”

  He sits down at the table, picks up a magazine.

  “Evelyn’s still in a coma.”

  He doesn’t look at me.

  “Her numbers are good, but they won’t know for sure until she wakes up.”

  He still doesn’t look at me.

  “Dad, put down the magazine and talk to me.”

  He looks up. “What do you want me to say? What do you have to say about all this?”

  “Dad, I don’t know. I just—”

  “What were you thinking? What have you been doing all this time? I thought I knew you—”

  “Dad, you do know me. I’m standing right here—”

  “But you did not think, Georgia. You have to think about what others would say. What do you think they are saying, that you hang out with people like this?”

  “Dad, what are you even talking about? I don’t care what other people are saying. I don’t have that many people, anyway.”

  “But your family.” He’s yelling now, not making any sense. “What about your family? You know what they say: It is better to lose an eye than to lose a good name.”

  “Dad, enough.” I sit down at the table. “Can we just talk, like for real, you know?”

  …

  “Dad.”

  …

  “Dad, I’m almost eighteen. I’m going to college soon. Would you talk to me? For real.”

  …

  “Dad!” I yell. “I’m not a little girl anymore. Just talk to me already!”

  I take a deep breath and lower my voice. “Here’s the thing. I was trying things, that’s all. And I’m allowed to try things. I wasn’t being stupid—I mean, not that stupid. Not like what Evelyn did.

  “But you—you can’t put all this on me. I mean, where have you been this past year? Why do you care all of a sudden? Why weren’t you caring all along?”

  My dad starts to cry, really quietly, which is weird. I’ve only seen him cry once, on that very last day when we had to disconnect Mom from the wires, when they injected her with morphine.

  He didn’t cry at the wake. He didn’t cry at the funeral.

  And I guess I should stop talking. I guess that’s enough.

  But it’s not.

  I need to say it all.

  “You should have been there for me. You should have been asking how I was doing. You should have been listening and watching. And—” I have to say it, finally. I’m shaking and now I’m crying, too, and I almost can’t say it, but then I do. “You should have made the decision to take her off the machines. You should have been the one to let her die.”

  He looks at me. “Oh, koúkla mou…”

  “Not me. Not me, Dad.”

  There. I said it.

  Finally.

  He takes my hand.

  “You’re absolutely right.” And when he says it, it’s as though he hadn’t even realized what he’d done. “I’m so sorry, Georgia.”

  “Okay, Dad.” I squeeze his hand. “It’s okay.”

  “You’re just a little girl. My little girl…”

  “No, see, here’s the thing, Dad. I’m not. I’m almost done with school and then I just have to figure out my life. I’m going to go to college and maybe I’ll drink, and I don’t know, maybe I’ll get high, and I’ll definitely date guys—no, Dad, I’ll date men—and I’ll want to move out at some point, and maybe I’ll get married, maybe I won’t, but I have to do it all. And you have to let me, but you also have to be there for me. You haven’t really been there for me, you know?”

  I say all this, and while I’m saying it, my heart is pounding pounding pounding, for it’s the first time that I’m able to say exactly what I mean to my dad, and I can see from his old, sad face that it might be too much, but then he does something that lessens the deafening pounding, something that makes it all better.

  This is what he does:

  He places his hand on mine.

  “To kseri, koúkla mou,” he says. “Katalaveno óla.”

  I know, my child. I understand it all.

  And I really think he does.

  * * *

  Tonight, it’s like this:

  After dinner I ask him to teach me to flambé.

  He protests at first, says it’s been years,

  too long to remember,

  but then he smiles at the thought

  at the memory

  at the prospect

  of returning to a place

  where he hasn’t been

  for a very long time.

  We heat the oil

  add the cheese

  and the brandy, and

  he tells me to light it.

  The flames rise high

  blue and gold and bright

  in this small, dark kitchen

  in this warm, spring night.

  My father and I together,

  staring into the sun.

  * * *

  Evelyn’s mom calls at around midnight. Evelyn’s okay. She’s awake and talking and groggy and in a terrible state, but she’s alive, and she’s going to be okay.

  She’s going to be okay.

  15

  Sunday morning, ten A.M.

  Today’s the day to do it.

  I pick up the phone and dial his number.

  It rings and rings.

  He answers.

  “Hello?”

  Deep breath.

  “Hi, Daniel. This is Georgia.”

  “Oh, hi!” I can hear him smile through the phone. Isn’t that a funny thing? Even in just two little words, you can tell. The tenor of the voice is so specific that that particular emotion can travel across time and distance through invisible airwaves into the human ear, into the human heart.

  I do #13, again.

  And he says yes.

  We’re going to meet (today!) for lunch and a movie and maybe something after.

  I text Liss.

  She texts right back with cheers and hoorays.

  Time to go tell Evelyn.

  Time to do something right.

  * * *

  I’m back at the hospital, back at the land of the almost dead, but now this girl Evelyn, who I’ve known for less than eight months, who texted me in what could have been her very last moment on this earth, is awake and alive and looking at me.

  She’s only barely alive, though, her arms nearly as thin as the metal rail that separates us, her eyes hollow and red and fixated on her own woven hands.

  An IV drips into her veins. The machine behind her head announces the beep beep beep of her pulse. Tulips wilt next to her.

  She’s waiting for me to say something.

  I don’t know what to say.

  At first, I stumble. I say things like “I’m glad you’re okay” and “How’s the food?” and “When will you get out of here?”

  She gives me stilted answers like “Yeah, me too” and “Sucks big-time” and “Not for a few weeks, probably, I don’t know.”

  I don’t know what to say.

  So finally, I say this:

  “I’m horribly pissed at you for doing what you did.”

  Evelyn turns her empty eyes to look at me. It’s the first time she’s looking at me.

  “Thanks,�
� she says. “Real nice. Way to get mad at a sick person.”

  “That’s not what I mean.” I stumble again. I want to get this right. I need to get this right.

  I reach into my bag and pull out my mom’s letter. I unfold it. It’s crinkled and worn from me opening and closing it so much. Besides Liss, I haven’t shown it to anyone else, not even my dad.

  I hand it to Evelyn. I let her read it.

  She looks back at me, her eyes wide and empty, her skin tight and pale. “What does this have to do with me?”

  “My mom charged me with this directive to do everything she didn’t do, and I’m sort of pissed at her, too, for not doing it herself. She could have done it. She could have controlled her sugar and eaten right and walked more like she said she was going to, but she never did. Instead, she let herself gain weight and she didn’t control her sugar and then she left my dad and me with the final decision to let her go. There’s this 0.0001 percent chance that she could have fought the sepsis and maybe woken up and maybe lived to still be my mother, but she had signed these papers saying that if there seemed to be no chance of her living a healthy life that we should pull the plug. And it was supposed to be my dad’s decision. He had power of attorney. But he froze. He was lost and sad and he didn’t really understand, maybe, you know, everything that was happening, everything the doctors were saying. He looked at me and he said, ‘What do you want to do?’ He made me decide. I was sixteen. Fucking sixteen. I shouldn’t have had to decide whether my mother lives or dies.

  “But I did. I decided that I couldn’t watch her like that anymore. I decided that she needed to rest. I read her letter over and over and then I told my dad to tell the doctors. I told my dad she had to die.”

  Evelyn looks back at the letter. I’m not sure if she’s listening. I’m not sure if she can hear me.

  “And, look. I can’t make the decision for you. But I can tell you this…” I lean closer to her. “You have to live. You have people who love you. You have no other choice.” I reach across the cold metal rail for her hand. Static pierces our skin, and we both pull back from the shock.

  “No, you can’t make the choice for me.”

  She hands the letter back to me.

  “You’re right,” I say. “You’re totally right. I don’t have the right to be angry with you, and I can’t tell you what to do, or how to live your life.”

  She gives me a cold, blank stare.

  “All I can do is tell you that I’m here for you.”

  She turns her head away from me.

  “Look, I was a bitch for not calling you back,” I say. “I have very few people in my life. To be honest, I don’t know you very well. But I like you. I want to be your friend for real. You’re weird and funny and you made me do things I wouldn’t have done on my own, and I never said thank you for that. So thank you.”

  Nothing.

  “We’re all allowed to fuck up, you know. We all get to make mistakes.”

  Still no words.

  Just her and me and a crumpled letter. Wilting flowers.

  She stares out the window, at the brick buildings blocking our view of the lake.

  “What song is playing in your head right now?”

  Evelyn looks at me and cracks a small smile.

  “Beatles, of course. ‘Julia.’” And then she sings a line for me. “‘Half of what I say is meaningless—’”

  “When you get out of here,” I say, “will you finish the list with Liss and me?”

  Evelyn doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, she closes her eyes, and I think maybe she’s fallen asleep. Her breath is steady and full, like that of a child.

  After a few long, heavy minutes, she opens her eyes.

  She lets me take her hand. Her skin is cold, and I can feel her bones under the thin flesh.

  “Yes,” she says. “I’d really, really love to.”

  * * *

  On the way out of the hospital, I check my phone. There are three texts from Daniel:

  Text #1: How’s Evelyn? Let me know.

  Text #2: Movies are too asocial. Let’s do something else.

  Text #3: You’re downtown, right? Shall we meet at the aquarium? Do you like fish?

  The first thing I notice is that he’s a hypergrammatical texter, just like me.

  The second thing I notice is that he wants to go to the aquarium.

  He’s a big dork, just like me.

  Siiigh.

  I text back: Yes. That sounds perfect. Fish are fine, but I mostly love the sea horses.

  Him: We’ll find the sea horses first. We’ll search for the pregnant fathers. Maybe we’ll witness a live birth. Maybe we’ll be asked to be godparents.

  Oh, he’s ridiculously, incredibly, wonderfully awesome.

  Me: I’m naming my sea horse Vincent. He’ll become a well-known master of maritime watercolors.

  I write this as a reference to one of Marquez’s lectures where he showed us a bunch of Van Gogh paintings of sailboats. Crossing fingers he gets it.

  Him: Here’s hoping he doesn’t drink too much and cut off his own fin.

  YES.

  Me: Nice.

  Him: Scaling back on the fish puns so soon?

  Me: Oh my Cod. You are too much.

  Him: See you soon.

  YES. YES. YES.

  * * *

  We meet out front and wait in the long line of tourists and families, and at first it’s incredibly awkward, but then I ask him about college and then about his dad, and then we find our way to reciting Marquezisms and bands we like, and we both relax a bit, and I sort of have to pinch myself that this is really happening, that I’m really on a date with Daniel Antell. We make our way in and shuffle through the throngs of people. We visit the sharks and the jellies, the eels and piranhas. We find our sea horse family and name the smallest ones after some of our favorite artists—Frida (for Kahlo), Andy (for Warhol), Keith (for Haring), and, of course, little Vince.

  We head up to a large, open amphitheater on the top floor where the dolphins are leaping and dancing, midshow. Even though it’s crazy crowded, we find a few open seats in the back. Behind the dolphins’ pool is a wide wall of windows that looks east, onto Lake Michigan.

  There are little kids behind us, crying because they want to sit down, so we give them our seats and make our way down to the lowest level, where we are in an underwater cave. We crowd in to the window to see the dolphins and belugas. Little kids squeeze in front of us, and the crush of adults behind us pushes us together so that I have to angle in front of him, my back against his chest. I want to look at the dolphins’ dance, now even more beautiful from this underwater perspective, but I’m blinded by the touch of his body that is so close to mine. I turn my chin to look at him, and he smiles. There’s no way I’m drooling on him this time.

  “Should we get out of here?” he asks.

  I nod, even though I can’t imagine any other place I’d rather be.

  We make our way out of the crowded museum to the balcony, where the wind from the lake is whipping my hair. The show inside has ended, but we can still see the shadows of the dolphins through the amphitheater windows. It’s such an odd thing, to see dolphins so close to a Midwestern lake.

  “It must be so confusing for them,” I say. “To swim in that pool and never get to see the ocean anymore. They must wonder where the waves are. They must wonder about the sunset. I mean, it’s so sad, right? From this angle, they never get to see it—only the sunrise.”

  I feel like I’m rambling, filling the empty air between us with random thoughts, when he leans down and kisses me softly. It takes me by surprise at first, and I pull back. But then I take a deep breath. And I return the kiss. The wind whips wildly around us.

  It’s such a good first date.

  We head south under the shadow of Soldier Field alongside Burnham Harbor, where we make fun of boat names (Baby Tonga, Sail-la-Vie, and The Other Woman). We come upon Sled Hill, right below the stadium. During the winter it�
�s packed with lines of kids all waiting their turns to fly down the snow, but now it’s quiet and empty, just a few sunbathers burning their skin. We climb to the top, a good thirty feet or so, take a seat. The skyline is beautiful from up here, and it’s not quite as windy as down by the aquarium.

  I think he’s going to kiss me again.

  So I kiss him first.

  And it’s so good.

  “What do you want to do now?” he asks.

  I tell him about the list (most of it). I tell him that I want to run down the hill, but I also tell him I don’t know how. “I’m just freaking scared,” I say.

  “What are you scared of?”

  I don’t really want to let him know that I’m a big wimp and I’m pretty much afraid of everything, but I’m the one who started this stupid conversation, so now I have to say it. “Well, first of all, I’m scared of heights.”

  “Um…” He laughs. “This is a hill, not a mountain.”

  “Yeah, okay. Well, then I’m just scared of the downward perpetual motion. Of falling, plain and simple. Of tumbling down and hurting myself. Of spraining an ankle or busting a knee or something.”

  “Anything else?” He smiles.

  “Well, no. I think that’s it.” I punch him lightly in the arm. “What about you? Aren’t you scared of anything?”

  His face changes. The smile that I love so much disappears. “Sure.” He shrugs.

  “Like what?”

  “Losing my dad.”

  I nod. “Yeah. I was scared of that too, for my mom. I’m not scared of dying, though,” I say. “It’s worse being left behind, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know yet.” He pauses for a moment, looking out at the lake, and then the smile returns. “But both scenarios have to be much worse than running down this hill, which will take all of six seconds.”

  I laugh.

  “So why do you want to do it so badly, then?” he asks. “Why is this hill calling out to you?”

  I have to think about this. I remember my father, when I was younger, telling me about his childhood in Greece, about how he used to run in the mountains, up and down the hills, that he was a mountain goat, a child of the woods, free and fearless. I don’t ever remember feeling that way as a child. I’m a city mouse. I know nothing about running outside, let alone down a hill.