Chapter Twenty #5
It was dusk and the rising moon was silver. The air was still and thin, air they could disappear into. Be careful, be ready, beware, that’s what her mother had whispered through the window glass. Even when she couldn’t hear, Ava could read her lips.
We fly together.
It was the September equinox, the season when lives come full circle, when one journey ends, and another begins.
There were women at the windows in the hospital buildings, locked in their rooms, who watched them escape.
Some were writing poems about them, some were offering up prayers, all were wishing them the best as they leapt from the window.
It was perfect weather, but anyone could tell it would be winter soon enough.
Jack had been chased off by a gardener, but he was there in the bushes, waiting for her.
The ground was hard as they tumbled down. There were purple asters that looked black in the dim light. They rose up and, without stopping for a breath, they ran along, with Jack leading the way. The taxi driver was napping until Lauren and Ava tumbled into the car, with Jack jumping in after them.
“Hey,” the driver said, alarmed. “Is that a wolf?”
“He’s a dog,” Lauren assured the driver.
“I’ve seen dogs.” The driver was hesitant as he eyed the creature in the backseat.
“Well, now you’re seeing another,” Lauren said. She handed over a second twenty. That should be enough to shut him up. “Take us to Cambridge.”
The cabbie did exactly as he was asked to do, speeding off along the dark road.
Lauren and Ava rolled down the windows and closed their eyes and imagined they were flying.
All the trees were black, and the moon was rising in the sky.
They weren’t ghosts locked away; they were very much alive.
They called out with joy when they passed over the Cambridge city line and threw their arms around one another.
At Lilith House, they went into the garden and sat on the bench. They were all alone, and the house was dark. Lauren had forgotten to turn on any lamps.
“Did you do all this so I’ll forgive you?” Ava asked.
“Have you forgiven me?”
“I was always going to. No matter what.”
Lauren had the scissors given to her by the nurse, and she now carefully trimmed the ends of Ava’s hair so it would be less choppy and uneven.
When she was done, there was Ava, still so beautiful she didn’t look human.
She looked like a fairy in an underground world where she would always be safe from human cruelty.
They might have cried, but they didn’t. Instead, they went into the kitchen, and Lauren fixed tomato sandwiches, and she watched Ava eat as if she’d been starved.
Lauren thought of the poet outside on good behavior.
She thought of the lawn where patients had once played tennis with their psychiatrists, then had tea parties inside large white tents that were set up beneath the darkening sky.
Lauren wished the poet’s fate would change, but as they had sat together on the bench smoking cigarettes in the dim light, Lauren knew that it wouldn’t.
Some people had the chance to fly away, and others didn’t, and it wasn’t fair, but it was true all the same.
“I dreamed of Jamie all the while I was there,” Ava told Lauren.
It was a waking vision, one she had in hallways and in the doctor’s office and while she looked out the window.
“He’d buried his heart under an apple tree, and I couldn’t find it.
Then you came and we dug beneath the tree together.
But the ground was bleeding, and we still couldn’t find it. Maybe he doesn’t have one after all.”
That was when Lauren knew she had a rare opportunity. She could undo what had been done.
“He has a heart,” she told Ava. “He broke up with you because his family threatened to have your scholarship ended if he didn’t. I was afraid to tell you. I thought you might get yourself thrown out of school.”
Ava didn’t have to think twice. “Go find him,” she said. She was owed that at least. “Get him back.”
And that was what Lauren did, returning to North Cambridge and knocking on his door.
At first, Jamie didn’t speak to her; he tried to close the door, but she used all her strength to keep it open so he would listen.
At last, when he was made to understand what had happened, he grabbed his coat.
He and Lauren rushed to Lilith House together, not saying a word.
They were two headstrong people who wanted the best for someone they loved.
They didn’t even hate each other anymore.
By the time they arrived, the hour was late.
Lauren went to wake Ava, who had fallen asleep on the couch.
They looked out the window together, and there Jamie was, wearing his black coat, his hands stuffed in his pockets.
He looked worried as he paced back and forth.
He was remorseful and nervous, but he had come for her, and it was true, he’d had a heart all along.