Beyond the Point(117)
“You’re feeling what everyone is feeling. You’re just brave enough to express it.”
“How can Hannah be so calm? I just want to hit something. To tear something apart. I’m so angry.”
“Hannah will get there. It might just take some time.”
“I found out a few weeks ago that John Collins was paroled,” Avery admitted. “And then, after that, I found out the guy that I’d been dating for a year was engaged to someone else the whole time.
“And, meanwhile, everyone keeps saying these are supposed to be the best years of our lives. College. Our twenties. But that can’t be true! It just can’t. And do you want to know the worst part?”
“Tell me the worst part,” said Wendy.
“Hannah . . . Hannah has to stand out there smiling at her husband’s funeral! And this whole time, I’ve been coming back into this closet and checking my phone because even though I know he’s a liar and horrible, I miss Noah so much. And I just want him to call and tell me that he still loves me, even though I know that’s never going to happen. What’s wrong with me?”
She looked up at Wendy, waiting for her to give her some Bible lesson, some thinly veiled offer to pray. Avery wished that someone else had come into the closet, because Wendy’s green eyes were just too intense. She wanted Wendy to say that nothing was wrong, and that it was all Noah’s fault, and that Avery deserved better. Instead, Wendy sighed and clasped her hands together on her lap.
“You know, we’re not all that different, you and me.”
Avery laughed, looking at Wendy’s short haircut and patent-leather shoes. “I don’t mean to laugh, Wendy, but I highly doubt that.”
Wendy raised an eyebrow. “You’d be surprised. I wasn’t always married with kids.”
Avery paused to consider that. It was odd to try to picture Wendy at twenty-four, but of course, at some point, she had been.
“When I was twenty-six, Mark and I—we were both really struggling. Our marriage was falling apart because I’d realized that he was never going to be enough for me. But I knew that if we got a divorce, I was going to be just as lonely—I’d been with enough men to know that the other guys didn’t have what I wanted either.”
“And what was it you wanted?”
“That’s easy,” said Wendy. “I wanted everything. I wanted great sex and movie-grade romance and love and electric connection, twenty-four/seven. I wanted perfection. But it turns out, here on earth, we don’t get perfection; we get people.”
“And people suck.”
“And even the ones that don’t suck let us down,” said Wendy, her voice softening. “I know Noah hurt you. But you have to know that even the best relationship isn’t going to fully give you what you’re looking for. Look at Hannah. She had it. And now it’s gone. The point of life isn’t to quench our thirst, it’s to realize we’re thirsty for something that we can’t find here.”
Avery allowed her breathing to slow down. She imagined Hannah standing out there, still smiling, still forced to shake hands with every person who had ever known Tim. Hannah was so gracious and so beautiful in the midst of her pain. And here she was, throwing a tantrum. Like a child.
“How do I go back out there?” Avery said finally.
“With your chin up. You’re the bravest one in this room, Avery, because you’re actually being honest about how messed up things are. But you can’t stay in here forever.”
“I can’t?” Avery laughed through tears.
“Don’t think so.”
There was no voice. No angel coming down on the clouds. But in that moment, a quiet peace washed over Avery’s body. If Wendy was here, still loving her after that display of insanity, then maybe there really was hope. For the first time in two years, the knot in her stomach unraveled. The tears in her eyes dried up. And suddenly, she found she had the strength to grab Wendy’s hand and stand up off the floor. The coats she’d pulled off their hangers were in a pile at their feet. Now she looked at them and laughed.
“Don’t worry,” Wendy said, pointing to the other side of the closet. “Mine’s over there. You didn’t ruin it.”
One by one, she and Wendy put the coats on hangers and back on the rack.
Maybe this is faith, Avery decided as they worked in silence.
Maybe faith was having the humility to scream at God and the audacity to get up off the floor.
36
December 6, 2006 // Interstate 95
They’d been on the highway for several hours now, riding in silence. Hannah hadn’t slept at all the night before. The funeral had completely exhausted her, but when she closed her eyes, all she could see was some imaginary slum in Samarra, Tim’s body falling on the body of his soldier, and bullets ripping his insides apart. When Hannah was alone, the gagging set in. She forgot to swallow, and when she did swallow, even the saliva threatened to come back up. There was no place she could get comfortable. Not on the bed. Not on the floor. Not on the balcony overlooking Washington, DC. She’d imagined Lincoln’s statue, staring over the reflecting pool, with his words from the Gettysburg Address engraved around him.
We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.
What did that even mean?