Chapter Twenty
“Greetings from a human being of the Earth. Please contact.” —Gujarati greeting
“Bella, you have to.” My dad’s voice had gone from pleading to firm. He opened a window, and cold Earth air flowed in. It had become stuffy and stagnant in there.
“Can you close that?”
It had been nearly two weeks, and I’d barely gotten out of bed, in spite of the begging by both of my parents and my friends.
I was missing school, so what. Only Maurice seemed to understand the need for this cocoon, possibly permanent.
Sandrine was in one, also. We were each in our own, though.
I hadn’t seen her again since that night.
I tucked my chin into my flannel top to ward off the winter that was now marching through my window.
I’d been wearing the same two sets of pajamas on grief rotation.
Everyone had gone back to school after vacation, but I couldn’t.
I missed five days of school, then six, then seven.
Addy brought my schoolwork to the house, but it just piled up, a mountain I didn’t care about.
My mouth felt thick, my hair lank. I was shivering, too cold, piled with blankets, then sweating, too hot, kicking them off.
This was all a fever, and my body ached.
It was so heavy. Didn’t my father understand how heavy it was?
How impossible it would be to drag around?
I couldn’t face winter, and what it had become.
“I’m not closing that,” he said. “And I’m insisting that you get out of bed. You need to stand up, and walk, and move. One place, choose one place that’s not bed.”
I groaned.
“One place.”
“Fine. Fine! Sandrine’s,” I said. Even I noticed it. I didn’t say Maurice’s. It was Sandrine I needed.
Her hair was greasy; so was mine. I wore pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt; she wore a pajama top and sweatpants. She looked like shit, and so did I, and we held each other like two crying magnets, while Maurice hunted for the Kleenex box.
“Sandrine.” My eyes begged. I had to confess to her. I needed absolution. She knew what I’d done, I was pretty sure. Maurice was being too kind and gentle to admit it. “I’m so sorry. Please, please forgive me.”
She scrunched her red, swollen eyes. “For what?”
Maybe you hadn’t told her. “It was my fault. I broke up with him. Sort of. I wasn’t sure if I did. But he was talking about moving, and he wanted to live here so bad, and…I got so mad, and we had a fight, and he said he was just going to go—”
“It wasn’t your fault! That was such bullshit, him maybe moving to Phoenix. You had a fight, but he loved you. I seriously doubt—”
“I didn’t hear from him. Or call him. Like, a whole day.” How could I explain? I didn’t need to be certain you loved me; I needed to be certain that you knew, without any doubt, that I loved you. That our goodbye, our permanent one, was what it should be.
“Margaret. You know how he was about arguing. He was probably giving you a little space before you talked. That whole moving thing—it was going to be impossible for him to tell her what he had to. He was working on it, but it was so hard! It wasn’t your fault; it was mine.
Mine! Right before he died, he called me, Margaret.
He called and I told him I was just heading in the drive-through; could I call him later?
Taco Time! Fucking Taco Time! What if he was telling me he wasn’t feeling well? I could have saved him. It was me.”
“No, Sandrine, no. It wasn’t your fault.”
Our eyes begged each other. We needed a forgiveness that only one person could give.
We needed an answer. My text to you, your call to Sandrine…Between us, we held a shared desperation.
We played out the familiar cycle: sob until exhaustion, quiet, repeat.
In the quiet, Maurice started up Mario Kart and handed us controllers.
He turned down the twinkly circus music, and we did not taunt each other or cheer in victory.
We zoomed silently around in a pretend world, thankful for life on a different planet, even a cartoon one.
“No,” I told my father.
“You’re getting out of bed again. You’re going to work. Today.”
I took the covers down from my face. “Seriously?”
“Work. I mean it.” His eyes looked almost mad. He’d gone from all that kindness to regular old Dad again. “One pizza. That’s it. You can do one.”
“I can’t.” I put the covers over my head. I couldn’t, okay? Aside from the one trip to see Sandrine, I’d barely been downstairs. Maybe to get water in the middle of the night, because that’s when I was awake. The moon out the window wrecked me, again and again.
“Goddamn it, Margaret! You’re doing one fucking pizza. I don’t want to hear any more.”
I felt a familiar thin spiral of rage rise.
I wanted to unleash it at him. I mean, really?
He wanted me to deliver pizza right now?
Rage would feel good. I was so pissed. Furious.
He couldn’t really be mad, could he? Was he that heartless?
I sat up. His face was unshaven, his hair sporting more new strands of silver, and he was already in his Papa Angelo’s sweatshirt, his daily winter uniform.
He was mad. He actually was. His jaw had that tightness I knew so well; his eyes had that glare.
He was so frustrated with me. God! Just lying here, after—no.
It struck me. Understanding hit. It wasn’t me he was mad at.
I realized it, all at once, that some people had anger and only anger—their sadness was anger, and their worry was anger, and their guilt was anger, and their shame was.
They had all the feelings to choose from, and they picked anger, like I sometimes picked fear.
Right then, his love was even anger. It wasn’t okay.
It didn’t excuse it. He was responsible for it, and how it made people feel; I’m not saying otherwise. I just saw it, is all.
Plus, I was too exhausted to fight him. I groaned.
“It’ll be good for you.” He actually seemed to believe that pizza could cure most anything. That pizza could save you. Yeah, right. “Two o’clock. George will pick you up.”
I didn’t shower. I pulled on some soft sweatpants, a T-shirt, and my puffiest parka to shelter me from…everything, really. I pulled the hood up.
“Margaret?” Mom said, but I ignored her. She was in on this, I was sure.
The afternoon, being outside in it, was a shock.
When I went to see Sandrine a few days ago, I saw nothing, but now I noticed that the neighbor’s Santa was gone, and all the other decorations and lights, too.
I shoved the thought away, how time had already moved forward.
George sat in his old brown Subaru by the curb.
Maybe Dad needed to give him a raise to replace it, but, too, George was the kind of guy who kept things.
His best friends were from the sixth grade, and he’d had his favorite shirts forever.
He tried to make his belongings last. He couldn’t care less about material possessions, but he did care about our planet.
His girlfriend, Cora, was the same way. Their little house was the kind that birds decided to make nests at.
There was always a sweet circle of branches harboring tiny eggs in their flowerpots and trees and the eaves of their roof.
He leaned over the passenger seat and opened the door. “You look like shit,” he said kindly. If it doesn’t seem kind, you don’t have brothers, probably. It was downright loving.
“Fuck off,” I said. Which was all of the above and more. I was so grateful for him. For him and Arthur and Maurice. For Cora and Maeve and my nieces and nephew, for my whole family, but I couldn’t think about that now. I’d lose it for sure.
George snapped off the music. He understood what music could do. I stared at all the crap in his console cubby. His Discover Pass, which gave you access to Washington parks; a phone cord; thermal gloves; a protein bar, and the wrapper of a protein bar.
He tossed me the gloves. It was true—it was freezing out there. I hadn’t brought a hat or gloves, and my socks were the little ankle ones from summer, the first I’d grabbed. The gloves fit, like, well a glove. They were probably Cora’s. We all expected them to be getting engaged any day now.
“Seat belt,” he commanded.
We drove to Papa Angelo’s. This seemed so cruel.
I slumped down in my seat and waited for George to come back with our delivery.
I made the mistake of looking out the window, and I saw Papa Angelo’s, and the table you and I sat at when we went, and I saw the kitchen door that you popped out of that day, when you and Dad were in the kitchen.
I spotted the back of Maurice’s head, too.
He’d gone back to work there for a while.
The plans for the band were on hold, because Sandrine herself was on hold.
You were like a brother to her, entwined in her songs, too, and her creative joy, her creative spark, had been snuffed out by grief and guilt.
I got it, you know. I couldn’t even listen to music, let alone make it.
But right then, the sight of Maurice led to thoughts of Sandrine, and those led to you, of course.
Our meeting on the mountain, dancing as she sang at the concerts, the way she’d ruffle your hair, and you’d swat her hand. Oh, God.
I wished there were only those beautiful-but-painful memories.
Instead, there they were, shoving in again, all ugly and cruel.
The unanswered questions of my text and Sandrine’s phone call.
The awful possibility that you had left without being sure of my love.
Was this what they meant by needing closure?
What a silly and insubstantial word. It sounded as quiet as the back cover of a book shutting, when the absence of it was a tormenting, taunting noise that never stopped.
George was back, quick. He tossed me the padded, insulated delivery bag. It warmed my lap. My fingers felt its edges, its thickness. “Just one?”