In Five Years(63)

“Do you like the chairs? How about the kitchen? Did Greg show you the green tile sink?!”

“It’s all perfect,” I say.

“I know the stools are a little edgy for you, but I think it’s good. I think—”

“It’s perfect.”

“You always tell me I never finish anything,” she says. “I wanted to finish this. For you.”

Tears roll down my cheeks. I didn’t even know I was crying. “Bells,” I say. “It’s incredible. It’s beautiful. I could never. I would never—It’s home.”

“I know,” she says.

I want her to be here. I want us to cook in this kitchen, making a mess of materials, running to the corner store because we don’t have vanilla extract or cracked pepper. I want us to play in that closet, to have her make fun of everything I want to wear. I want her to sleep over, tucked in that bed, in safety, ensconced here. What could happen to her under my watch? What bad thing could touch her if I never, ever looked away?

But I understand she will not be. I understand, standing here now, in this manifestation of both dream and nightmare, that I will be here, in this home she built me, alone. I am here because she will not be. Because she needed to give me something to hold on to, something to protect me. A literal roof over my head. Shelter from the storm.

“I love you,” I tell her. Fiercely. “I love you so much.”

“Dannie,” she says. I hear her through the phone. Bella. My Bella. “Forever.”



Aaron leaves. I wander through the apartment, running my fingers over every surface. The green tile of the sink, the white porcelain of the tub. A claw-foot. I go through the kitchen—the cabinets stacked with pasta, wine, a bottle of Dom chilling, waiting, in the refrigerator. I go through the medicine cabinet, with my products, the closet with my clothes. I run my hand over the dresses there. One is facing out. I already know which one it’ll be. There’s a note attached: Wear this, it says. I always liked it on you.

It’s scrawled in her handwriting. Her loopy calligraphy.

I clutch it to my chest. I go to the window, right by the bed. I look out on that view. The water, the bridge, the lights. Manhattan on the water, shimmering like a promise. I think about how much life the city holds, how much heartbreak, how much love. I think about everything I have lost there, this fading island before me.





Chapter Thirty-Eight


It happens quickly and then slowly. We plummet fast, and then we exist at the bottom of the ocean for eight days, an impossible amount of time to breathe only water.

Bella stops treatment. Dr. Shaw speaks to us; he tells us what we already know, what we have seen up close with our own eyes—that there is no point anymore, that it is making her sicker, that she needs to be home. He is calm and collected, and I hate him, I want to ram him into the wall. I want to scream at him. I need someone to blame, someone to be responsible for all of this. Because who is? Fate? Is the hellscape we’ve found ourselves in the work of some form of divine intervention? What kind of monster has decided that this is the ending we deserve? That she does?

It moves upward, to her lungs. She ends up in the hospital. They remove the fluid. They send her home. She can barely breathe.

Jill isn’t there. She’s staying at a hotel in Times Square, and on Friday I find myself putting on my boots and coat and leaving Bella and Aaron alone in the apartment. I truck up to Midtown, through the lights of Broadway—all those people. They’re about to go to the theater, see a show. Maybe this is a celebratory night. A promotion, a trip to the city. They’re splurging on a feel-good musical or the latest celebrity play. They live in a different realm. We do not meet. We do not see one another anymore.

I find her at the W Hotel bar. I hadn’t really known my plan, what I was going to do once I got there—call her cell? Demand her room number? But no further steps are necessary. She’s sitting in the lobby, a vodka martini in front of her.

I know it’s vodka because it’s what Bella drinks. Jill used to let us have sips of hers when we were very young, and then make them for us later, when we were still not legal.

She has on an orange pantsuit, crepe silk, with a neck scarf, and I feel my stomach boil in anger that she had the energy to get dressed like this. That she has on accessories. That she still is able to believe it matters.

“Jill.”

She startles when she sees me. The martini wobbles.

“How— Is everything alright?”

I think about the question. I want to laugh. What possible answer is there? Her daughter is dying.

“Why aren’t you there?” I say.

She hasn’t been downtown for forty-eight hours. She calls Aaron, but she hasn’t actually made her physical presence known.

Jill opens her eyes wide. Her forehead doesn’t move. An effect of injections, of the side of medicine she is fortunate enough to elect to use while her cells are not multiplying into monsters.

I sit down next to her. I’m wearing yoga pants and an old UPenn sweatshirt, something of David’s I kept, despite.

“Do you want a drink?” she asks me. A bartender hovers at the ready.

“A gin martini,” I find myself saying. I hadn’t expected to stay. Just to say what I came to say and turn around.

My drink comes quickly. She looks at me. Does she expect me to toast her? I take a sip hastily and set it back down.