Chapter Thirty-Six
Thirty-Six
“I let myself in with my key and watered all your plants,” Mari said a week later, when I finally got to go home from the hospital. “Even the one on top of your fridge, which is a bitch to get to, I don’t know why you’d put one up there.”
I appreciated everything, of course—the way she’d taken care of my place while I was gone, the way she’d brought me clothes and books to read in the hospital, even though I couldn’t focus.
The way she was with me now, stepping back into my apartment for the first time since the incident.
It just felt so surreal, even parking in the familiar lot, going up the stairs to my familiar door, seeing my living room and kitchen and everything just how I’d left it.
“That one’s fake,” I said.
“Why would you have a fake plant among all the real ones?”
“My parents gave it to me,” I said.
“Well, good job, I guess. It looks very convincing.”
I loved my apartment. I’d decorated it with art I’d bought at local street fairs mixed with the kind of cheesy museum prints that I’d thought were the height of sophistication in college, but I didn’t care, they still brought me joy now.
Rooftops in Paris by Van Gogh. Two Ballet Dancers in a Dressing Room by Degas.
Young Woman in White Reading by Renoir. I’d bought a juicer on a whim two years ago and I still thought fresh-squeezed orange juice was one of life’s greatest pleasures.
My mattress was the absolute perfect amount of firmness, and I had framed pictures propped up on my dresser of me as a kid with my parents, of me and Mari together at the botanical gardens, even a shot of the sky through two buildings I had to walk through to get to work that I saw every morning, and one day just thought looked especially beautiful. It really was the smallest things.
But I suddenly felt homesick for another apartment, one with a garage downstairs and shelves with books wedged in sideways and a spiral staircase and a bedroom I had to partially stoop in.
I felt homesick for a person, and I’d been feeling it the past week, had been hoping it would go away.
Dreams always faded, didn’t they? They disappeared into smoke, the details getting fuzzier until you couldn’t make them out at all.
I wanted this one to fade, so I could get back to my normal life.
I was terrified that it would fade, and I really would lose him forever.
Mari had handed me the plastic bag filled with effects from the hospital, and I pulled out the blue-purple dress, leaving it folded on my kitchen counter.
One of the gauzy sleeves was ripped, and there was dried blood on the back of the collar, so I knew I should throw it away.
But it was hard to part with, this artifact that had been in both my worlds.
“Indigo,” I said, touching the dress. “I guess you would call this color indigo.”
Eventually, I’d told Mari all about my coma dream.
Not every single part, but the broad strokes of it.
She’d found it fascinating, but I could tell she was responding to it as a dream, like if I’d described a vivid sex fantasy or a made-up scenario where a famous actor wanted to be your friend or how you’d once imagined keeping a wild animal as a pet.
The sex details were definitely the ones she most wanted, but they felt too private.
They felt too important. The sex had been incredible, and I knew I could share the most salacious bits with Mari and she’d make the right approving sounds of about time or get it, girl.
But I also knew that there was no way to convey how it had all made me feel, how I’d never felt like that with anyone before, how I knew I never would again.
You’ve ruined me. I had been ruined. And for what, if it hadn’t even been real?
There was something different about my dress, and I unfolded it, shaking it out. “Where’s the bow?” I asked.
“The what?”
“There’s supposed to be a string that ties around the waist.” My heart was beating faster, remembering when Eamonn had pointed out that it had come undone, when he’d pulled it all the way off himself, discarded it on the floor. Where had it gone?
“It probably came off in the scuffle,” Mari said, reaching behind me for a granola bar out of my pantry.
We’d always been like this, treating each other’s places like they were extensions of our own, so it didn’t bother me that she was taking food without asking so much as that I really needed her to think, to pay attention.
“Or else it got lost at the hospital when they packaged up your stuff. Does it matter? That dress is done for anyway.”
“Could you look for it at the hospital? See if it’s in the lost and found somewhere?”
Mari held her hand over her mouth as she swallowed a bite. “I doubt they would keep a string,” she said. “It probably went right into the trash, it’d be long gone by now.”
“Please, Mari,” I said. “Could you just check?”
My expression must’ve shown actual panic, because she set her granola bar down on the counter, coming over to rub my back. “Hey,” she said. “What’s this about? Is it about him?”
I buried my face in my hands, starting to cry even though I really hadn’t wanted to.
I’d cried in front of Mari countless times, and I’d cried about this every single night since I’d woken up.
I just hadn’t wanted to cry about this in front of her, hadn’t wanted her to know the extent of how fucked up I was over it.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “How did I know about that type of car? I swear I couldn’t have told you about an ’87 Renault Five if you’d put a gun to my head. Cher’s Heart of Stone did come out after 1987, did you know that? Why would I know that? Why would I know the words to ‘Molly Malone’?”
“Isn’t that a common folk song?” Mari asked. “Surely someone sings it in a movie. I’m almost positive I’ve seen it in a movie.”
That had always been Mari’s theory, that everything in the dream had been parts of my subconscious floating up.
It made some sense. I’d had that thought while I was in it—that the only reason I met Eamonn was because I’d just heard about him from his brother, that I’d been thinking about Ireland because of that date.
The doctor had come in to talk about a vegan diet, so I’d made Eamonn a vegetarian.
Mari had braided my hair, so I’d given myself the same hairstyle after my shower.
Even that feeling of Eamonn holding my wrists, holding me down.
I’d been actually restrained in a hospital bed.
It was eerie to think about, but in a way it was an explanation.
“I just don’t know how I can go on like this,” I said.
“I feel like I’m going out of my mind. But worse than that, because I don’t feel out of touch at all.
I feel like I’ve just gone through the hardest breakup of my life, an impossible breakup where nothing even happened.
I’m not angry or jealous or regretful or bitter, I’m just…
sad. And there’s nowhere for it to go. I can’t lurk on his social media or pump mutual friends for information, I’ll never worry about running into him when I’m out at the grocery store or the library picking up books.
I can’t talk to him. I can barely even talk about him. ”
Mari handed me a paper towel so I could blow my nose. “Sounds ideal,” she said. “A clean break.”
I knew what she meant, and maybe in time I’d feel the same way. But for now, it didn’t provide me any comfort.
“Leap Year,” Mari said suddenly. “That’s where you would’ve heard the song. That guy with the van, he starts singing it, right before he…”
She trailed off, as if realizing whatever she was about to say wasn’t going to be helpful. She resumed rubbing my back until eventually my tears petered out to a few random sniffles.
“You’ve just gone through a really traumatic thing,” she said.
“And it’s amazing, that you’re still here, that you’re okay.
You’ll probably be dealing with the whiplash of that for a while.
Hell, I feel like I’m still dealing with it, and it didn’t even happen to me.
For some reason your brain gave you this whole wild adventure, this romantic interlude.
Do you remember one of the last things you said to me that night, before you were attacked? ”
I’d been over and over that night in my head, examining every detail, but I knew it was a rhetorical question so I didn’t bother to answer.
“You told me you were going to stop wanting things. Maybe this was your brain’s way of telling you that it’s okay to dream, that adventure and romance are things that you’re allowed to want. That you should travel more, date more, have more fun, whatever.”
I gave a disgusting, phlegmy laugh that had me wiping at my nose with the paper towel again. “After I replace my driver’s license, deal with my bank, work out my short-term disability with the law firm, make all my follow-up doctor’s appointments…”
“Well, sure,” Mari said, grabbing another granola bar and setting it down for me on the counter. She filled a glass with water from the fridge, slid it over to me. “But fuck it, Jess. You’re thirty-seven years old and you’re alive.”