The River at Night(73)

Pia whitened, tossed the bagel on her plate. “Do I think about her? Jesus, Rachel, did you really just ask me that?” She shook her head, disgusted. “And of course I dream about her. I’m covering her face with those leaves and stones, over and over again. . . .” She launched herself off the couch, snatched her rain slicker off a hook by the door, and threw it on. “I’m going for a walk.”

Rachel and I exchanged a glance. “Pia, it’s a hurricane. Sixty-mile-an-hour winds.”

“So I’ll go by myself.”

I jumped up and slipped on my coat over my pajamas; Rachel did the same. Oddly, Pia’s desire to go for a walk in a storm comforted me. A touch of normalcy; Pia out the door, full steam ahead.

Head down, she marched out onto the patio, where—-momentarily knocked off-balance by the wind—she put her shoulders into it and soldiered off into the deluge toward the crashing waves.

Clasping her hood tight to her neck, Rachel called out, “Pia, what the fuck are you doing?” Barefoot, we sprinted after her, the soft sand dragging us back.

I could tell she was crying, even turned away from us, even with all that rain and wind. “I was going to train for this ironwoman thing, but I don’t feel like iron,” Pia choked out. “I’m a piece of marshmallow shit.”

“Well, we all can’t be—” I started.

She whipped around to face us. “I can’t forgive myself!” she cried. “I keep looking for ways to tell myself it’s all right, like it was just chance and shit happens and life is hard like that and tragic, but I can’t! I killed her, you guys, you know it, and I’ll understand, you know I’ll understand if you never want to see me again or hang out or whatever, because things will never be right, never—”

“Hey, Pia, come on.” Rachel rested her hand on Pia’s shoulder. Pia wrenched herself away.

I blinked in the torrential rain, trying to see my friends’ faces, but they were ghostly washed-out ovals. I thought about Pia at Sandra’s funeral, how she had kept herself together better than any of us. It worried me more than if she had fallen apart.

“She saw through all of our bullshit, you know,” Pia said. “Especially mine. All my jumping out of planes and shit, she knew I was trying to prove I’m Superwoman, when I’m not brave at all. I’m more scared all the time than anyone I know.”

“We’re all scared, Pia—”

“And Rachel—she knew you were a softy underneath all your tough crap. She saw that. And you were there for her with the cancer thing, and I just wasn’t. I was fucking off somewhere in New Zealand or wherever. And Wini? You?” Pia looked at me, stricken. “With Marcus? I don’t even know where I was. . . .”

“She loved you, Pia,” Rachel called out into the wind. “She loved all the adventures you dreamed up and dragged us to. Come on, you know that! She was game. Always. Especially this time. Nobody wanted to be there with us on that river more than she did.”

The rain slammed at us sideways. “Did you see her mother’s face at the funeral? When she looked at me?” Pia pushed her sopping--wet bangs away from her eyes. “Did you see her face?”

We had. There was no forgiveness. All horror.

“And her kids, now, with no mother . . .” She seemed to crumple before us.

“You inspired her,” I shouted, the wind sucking at my words. “She told me she was going to leave Jeff. You inspired her to be brave. She didn’t get the chance, but her mind was made up.”

“Oh, God.” Pia covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, dear God.”

She turned away from us and started to walk toward the pounding surf, but Rachel and I threw our arms around her and dragged her back, made her stay. We pulled her long, tall self down toward us and locked her in like that, until we became a solid unit of three, the rain drumming so hard on our backs it felt like a blessing.

? ? ?

The next morning, Rachel told us she had decided to become certified in neonatal care. She’d had it with car crashes and heart attacks and wanted to be around “new beginnings.” As Pia and I congratulated her, I wondered what my big news was and realized it wasn’t anything I could put into words. I had no grand announcements. I hadn’t quit my job or found a new one. Couldn’t recall the last time someone had winked at me on Match.com. If anything, there was an absence: Richard’s ghost. He was simply gone from the apartment when I returned after our trip. The whole place felt lighter and full of air.

But I did have news, something precious and private. Being alone has a whole different flavor for me now. Solitude has turned into someplace I find sustenance instead of despair. No doubt the terrors will return, along with the old version of loneliness, the kind that guts me and sends me tumbling into the void, but for now it’s not the case. I know now that more marvels than we can possibly imagine exist on earth—the trick is remembering this every day.

As I listened to my friends talk about their plans that Sunday morning, I couldn’t wait to go home and free my paintings from the back corner of my closet where I’d tossed them in a fit of self-loathing the day Richard left; gaze into them—maybe find something beautiful in there to celebrate—maybe tear them all up and start over again. Either would be fine. I couldn’t wait to hug my sweet fat Ziggy, feel his hot heart beating close to mine, stroke his cat head full of dreams of a freshly opened tuna can or of the chase and the kill.