You, Me, and Infinity

Chapter Nineteen

Silhouette of male and female: Pictures of Earth

It had happened at nine p.m. or so that night.

This is what Sandrine told me after I made it to Maurice’s place.

Told is maybe the wrong word. She wailed the information into my shoulder as we held each other.

I can’t remember how I got to their place.

My car, or maybe Mom drove me. The details fell away, same as those leaves on the huge maples on the UW campus, leaving the bare branches on trees that are still alive, though they don’t look it.

Nine at night. You and your mom had eaten dinner kind of late, because you’d just gotten back from getting a haircut.

Everything seemed normal. You did the dishes, and your mom started watching a movie.

But then Janite heard a sound, a thump, a crash, falling, and there you were, in your room on the floor.

The paramedics came, and they brought you to Harborview Emergency, but it was possible you were already gone by then.

Janite. I couldn’t imagine her pain. You were her one and only.

You were her everything. At that moment, she was with your aunt Gwen in North Bend, and Sandrine was leaving shortly to join them.

She didn’t invite me to come, and I didn’t ask.

They were your family, and I was…I wasn’t sure.

We’d broken up, sort of. Maybe we had, maybe not.

I didn’t know where I belonged, or if I belonged anywhere.

It was so strange—if you were there, you’d say, and I’d say, that we were the most important people to each other, even if you did move to Arizona.

We were crucial, we were the ones to each other, but not now. Now what we were was not family.

Nine o’clock. That whole night, while I was tumbling with thoughts about you moving to Phoenix, about you and your mom, and breaking up, you were having your last hours.

And when I couldn’t sleep, when I was tossing and turning, you were on the floor, and in an ambulance, and in a hospital, and I never even knew.

I sent you that text an hour and nineteen minutes before your heart stopped.

Did you get it? Did you ever see that I was sorry, and that I loved you?

God, please, please have read it! I needed to know.

Please. Did the stress of our breakup contribute?

Did I cause this? Was this my fault? God, I just needed to talk with you!

I wanted to ask Sandrine if you’d told her about our breakup, but it wasn’t the time.

This was urgent, though. Like, the most essential thing.

I desperately needed to tell you things I couldn’t tell you anymore.

That none of it mattered. That I was such a fool.

So brave about breaking up, losing you, when you were still in this world.

So righteous and cavalier, and it seemed so pointless.

I needed to take it back. My words. I needed to do it over.

My mind swirled and looped, and returned again to the start.

Did you ever see that I was sorry and that I loved you?

Love. That I love you. I couldn’t stand that you might not have known that before you left.

I needed, so very, very badly, to be sure you did.

Do you see how many times I used that word need? God, I already needed a word bigger than need—do you see? And we hadn’t even gotten to the point yet where I had to do something about it. The something that would bring me here, right now.

Sandrine was searching for her keys. They were in her hand, but she couldn’t find them.

Things were chaotic. Maurice had to remind her that she was still in her pajama top, that she should bring a coat, and was she safe to drive?

He was going to stay with me and take me home and meet her later.

Did she need food? No one cared about food.

The sun had come up. I’d been there longer than I’d realized. Time shrank; time expanded. Time seemed like a weird thing that was impossible to understand. Sandrine left, and Maurice and I were at his place together.

“Did this really happen?” I asked him.

“It did. I’m so sorry, it did.”

“Tell me what happened,” I said. “He was eating dinner, and then what?” I wanted more details.

Did you have your phone with you? Did you see my text?

I wanted to know if you were okay. Okay in death, I mean.

If you’d been in pain. Physical or emotional.

If your heart, your emotional heart, not your actual heart, had been all right. At peace, I guess.

“She heard him fall.”

“What else?”

“They took him to the hospital. But he was probably already gone.”

I sobbed, my body racked. I bent over with the agony of it.

“It was my fault,” I wailed. “I’d broken up with him. I think I did. I was mad, about him maybe moving. Did he tell Sandrine?”

“I didn’t hear anything about that, Margaret. He never said, as far as I know. It wasn’t your fault. It was his heart…”

Your heart. Didn’t Maurice hear what I said?

My body shook with something more violent than a gentle word like sorrow.

More violent than a word like grief, even.

And then I’d calm, and Maurice and I would sit silently together.

He looked like a ghost, white-faced, his eyes vacant as he stared at a vague place on the wall.

Then my mind would swirl, and then I needed to ask Maurice what happened again, and I would sob again, and then I’d calm again.

How many times would I go through that cycle before it became real? Many. Many, many times.

Maurice took me home. I got in bed. My mother sat beside me and rubbed my back. I wanted this and didn’t want it. It was a comfort and a distraction from the puzzle my mind was desperately trying to work out.

“Did he know I love him?” I asked her.

“Of course he did. Of course,” she said, and rocked me.

It didn’t seem like an of course. The idea that I could never be certain of that was intolerable, a life sentence.

My body felt too heavy to move. It seemed possible that I might stay in bed forever.

I left only to pee, trudging to the bathroom, avoiding that wrecked creature in the mirror, slinking back to bed.

Exhausting. And the idea of food, even the toast my mother brought, was revolting.

“Bella.” There was Dad. I sort of sat up, and he held me, and the sobbing started anew.

But then came this horrible sound. A deep, choking cry.

My father, in tears. “He’s just a kid,” he said, or tried to.

It seemed like a miracle, his grief over you, but I didn’t care about the miracle.

We didn’t need it. We needed a different one altogether, a much larger and more impossible one.

“It’s going to be okay,” he said again and again, but of course, it wasn’t going to be, at least not entirely, and not for a long time.

George arrived, Arthur. Then Addy and Priya and Maddie. I felt like a washcloth, wrung out again and again and again, sobbing, rest, sobbing, rest. They sat with the lump that was me.

“It’s my fault,” I said to Addy.

“No, Margaret. No. It’s no one’s fault.”

“It is. If I hadn’t…”

“No. It’s not true. Listen to me.” She made me look at her. “This is not your fault or anyone else’s.”

Her words bounced off a shut door inside me that I was sure was permanent. It was. It was my fault.

After I ran to throw up, she brought me a cool, wet towel.

How had she known to do this? My mom had given it to her.

I couldn’t see it then, but they, my family and friends, were each a thread, woven together, working together, creating a blanket to hold me.

Or a parachute. Something strong and lifesaving as I plummeted.

Maurice—I had to talk to Maurice again. He was the one connected to Sandrine who was connected to Janite, your family, who might have more information. What information, though? Information, like this was a mistake. Information that would make this make sense. Finally, Maurice called me back.

“Have you heard anything?”

It was urgent—to know everything it was possible to know. It seemed like something could happen then; I’m not sure what. Something not this.

“Not really. Just, they think it was hypertrophic—”

“Wait. Let me write this down.” I searched madly for a pen and wrote on the back of an AP Lit paper. “Hyper what?”

“Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. A genetic disorder. Janite thinks maybe his dad had the same thing. No one knew. He never had any symptoms.”

“His dad…” I’d forgotten about him. I’d forgotten about all the other people in your life besides Janite and Sandrine, Aunt Gwen and me.

All the people who also had to hear this news came rushing in.

Your relatives in New Mexico, your friends from California, but oh, God, Chester and Lily, Santiago, Norty, Ben, and Rainey.

Your friends from work, from school. Your teachers and neighbors. Mrs. Fosmire, even.

Frank. I’d forgotten about Frank.

A sound escaped my throat. A cry of pain and disbelief. Unbelievable sorrow.

“His grandma was going to come. Fly here? But there’s no real need. Janite…She doesn’t want to have any kind of service. Aunt Gwen is trying to change her mind, telling her it’s for other people, too, but she doesn’t want to press right now, obviously.”

A service? A funeral, oh my God. I couldn’t imagine it. I had no idea what this would even look like. It made me think awful things, like you as a body. Like where you were now. Like where you would be.

“What about Frank?” I asked. Now I saw you, taking Frank’s paw and dancing with him. Singing to him. Keep on riding, riding, riding. The “Frank and Jesse James” song that Frank was named for. My heart clutched. Frank had lost Jesse, and now you.

“We picked him up. He’s here at Gwen’s. Hey, I have to go,” Maurice said. “I’ll call when I can.”

Maurice hung up. One by one, everyone left.

George and Arthur, Addy and Priya and Maddie.

I heard my sister-in-law, Maeve, downstairs at one point.

My mom appeared and disappeared. It was one day and hundreds of days.

A new world, one that existed for so many people, a world that I never had any clue about before.

People went through this, people went through it every day, and how?

Even Frank had. How did they survive it?

So many people, every person who has ever loved.

Dogs and elephants and crows and monkeys and giraffes and dolphins, every animal who has ever loved, too.

I thought of the Earth held aloft by love, and I thought of the Earth still spinning in spite of sorrow.

“Bella, you need to eat,” my dad said. He was holding a bowl, a napkin, a spoon. “This is the only thing I could get down after your grandma died.”

“What is that?” It looked like food you gave prisoners. A smeary something. A cosmos in a bowl.

“Cream of Wheat.”

“Gross, Dad.”

It wasn’t, though. It was kind of delicious.

A soft nothingness, barely sweet. A food that could sneak up on you as food.

I had a few bites, and then remembered that you couldn’t eat.

You wouldn’t eat again. You ate a last food—I wondered what it was.

I hoped so bad it was delicious. But more, it seemed wrong, to feed myself.

“I’m just going to sit here,” Dad said, and he did.

In the hard, straight chair by my desk. It was dark now, and he stayed in place, his big body a guardian there.

I could hear my mother talking on the phone downstairs, too softly to hear.

My parents were being parents, and now that made me choke up. “You want a light on?” he asked.

“Uh-uh.”

“Okay. You try and get some rest.” He was quiet. I was. He stayed for a long time in that hard chair, until he was convinced I was asleep, I think. He shut the door quietly behind him.

I was alone.

I felt more terrified and more alone than I ever had in my life.

Death was a thing that really happened. The forever-gone of it was.

I saw you again and again on my sidewalk, those white puffs from our exhales, our breath, your breathing, your alive breathing.

I tried and tried to remember which shirt you were wearing, but it wouldn’t come, and I couldn’t ask you, and now every piece of history known to just us two would only be known, or not, by me.

I hadn’t forgotten your last words to me, though.

I’m just going to go. They circled round my mind, taunting cruelly.

Oh, they were vicious, and the ways I replayed them were cruel in a different way.

I’m just going to go, you’d said. And I’d replied, No, no, please don’t.

We can work this out. I love you. I love you forever.

It was such a relief to imagine this. It actually gave me peace, until I remembered it wasn’t real.

This is strange, but you seemed very close to me still. Were you? Because it felt like you were right there somehow. Just around. Nearby. Why you were gone and not gone—it was incomprehensible, and I felt furious, too. It was so wrong. You were so young.

It was New Year’s Eve. I’d forgotten that until it somehow became midnight, and there was the explosion of fireworks, crack-crack, boom!

A whistle and shriek and burnout that sounded like a comet, a falling rocket.

I heard the silly tweets of horns from neighbors on their porch.

In grief world there were no horns, but in regular world there were.

It was a cruel marker. A definite, noisy, attention-getting before and after, impossible to ignore. Last year, this year. Last year, you were alive, and this year, you weren’t. I’d been shoved over it, unwillingly. Every year, I’d remember that marker.

I saw the flash of red from a firework, heard the pop, pop, pop, boom! The red flash looked like the light of an ambulance.

“Where are you?” I begged you for an answer to that, but it never came.