“Yes,” I say. “I’m actually about to drop dead. That’s why you’re here.”
“That’s why I’m here?” he says. He doesn’t hug me. He runs his hands through his mop of hair and looks around. “You’re dying?” he says. He licks his lips nervously. “Shouldn’t you be in the hospital? Who’s taking care of you?” He looks up and down the street, like he’s hoping a team of doctors and medical professionals with their stethoscopes will step out from behind the shrubbery and tell him everything is under control. I almost want to laugh.
“No, honey. There’s no need for hospitals. I’m dying,” I say. “Perfectly normal thing to do at the end of life. Come and sit with me. I’m so glad to see you.”
“Aunt Blix, I think we need to get you to a doctor.”
“The hell. No doctors, darling.”
“But doctors could help you!”
“I’ve been dying for some time now, and I have no intention of seeing doctors now. Sit here, please. Hold my hand.”
He looks so sad, so frightened. Like if he could, he’d rewind the tape, spool himself walking backward down the street, back down the subway steps, back into the subway car, perhaps all the way back to the airport and maybe even back to Africa, the plane flying in reverse. But he sits, perched on the steps, and I take his hand in mine, and he lets me hold it there. I flow an abundance of love and energy to him.
Ah, my grandnephew. How we loved each other when he was a little kid, but as can so easily happen with distance and time, things went bad between us later. I remember that he came to visit Houndy and me when he was about nineteen and full of himself. I was shocked at the change in him. He was so much his mother’s son at that point—arrogant and judgmental, challenging me about all my beliefs, laughing at us for being old hippies, as he called us.
Even worse, I felt the first inklings of a brittle vanity in him, as though appearances were all that mattered, in the same way Wendy was renovating our old mansion without curiosity for the past or any attention to the details that made the old house beautiful. Just pave over what you don’t appreciate. That’s what my family seems to say.
And mock in others whatever you yourself don’t understand.
But now maybe we have another chance. Clearly that’s what his presence here means.
“Well, then—what?” he says. “What can I do?”
“You can ease me over to the other side,” I say. “That’s what I’m hoping you’ll do.”
“Wait. Does my mom know how sick you are?”
“No. Nobody in the family knows. That’s the way I wanted it. But now you’re going to be here, and I hope you’re going to stay with me while it happens. And it’s going to be the kindest thing you could ever do for me.”
“I can’t. I don’t—”
“Shush. Yes, you can. Everything is going to be fine,” I tell him. “Whether you know it or not, you were sent here, and now that you’re here, you can stay with me while I go. It might take a few days, but it’s coming soon. And, sweetheart, this is going to be good for you. Something elemental about life that you need to know.”
His beautiful face looks so uncertain. I almost want to reach over and pinch his cheeks between my fingers like I did when he was small. “But—when?” he says. “I mean, what’s going to happen?”
“Well, that’s what we don’t know. I thought it would be by now. But it hasn’t. I think I must have been waiting for you. The universe has sent you.”
His shoulders slump. I close my eyes and surround him in white light so that I can forgive him for being his mother’s son. He’s a child, a novice, what J.K. Rowling would label a muggle. Unsuitable for the task at hand, but maybe he’ll get there.
“Here. Let’s begin with this. Walk me inside the house,” I say.
“Okay,” he says and manages to support my arm as we slowly walk up the stairs. It’s funny how I’d come down these steps all alone—slowly, but still—but now I have to lean on him to get back up. I stop when I need to, which is about a million times, because this may be my last look at this beautiful scene, at my life here that I have loved with all my heart.
“Do you—do you think you’re going to suffer?” he says.
“Oh, my darling, I have decided not to suffer,” I tell him. “Suffering is optional.”
We get to the top of the steps, and he opens the big wooden door. I see our reflection briefly in the pane of glass as it catches us in the sunlight when it swings open. The smells of breakfast, of the parquet floors, the curtains blowing. The wind chimes tinkle above us, a comfort.
“It’s really going to be all right,” I tell him. “I’m not scared, and I don’t want you to be scared either.”
SIXTEEN
MARNIE
Summer has turned to September, which in Jacksonville means it’s Summer 2.0. The days are still bright and hot, the nights are filled with the electric sounds of buzzing insects and flashes of heat lightning, the air is still as humid as the inside of a dog’s mouth, and—yes, I’m still living with my parents and hanging out with Natalie and Brian and the baby.
And now there’s Jeremy.
We go running on the beach; we play cards with my parents; we cruise around in his car like we did in high school. It’s like when we were teenagers, except for the stunning fact that we’re adults so we also have sex now.
There is something so sweet and uncomplicated about these days—being with a guy who speaks your same language, who knows all the old jokes, who loved you even when you had braces and hair tinted green from chlorine.
We know the smell of each other’s houses. Which cabinet holds the drinking glasses and which drawer has the flatware. He already likes my family. I already like his mom.
Sometimes these days it’s already noon before I think of Noah.
Another good thing is that Jeremy has asked me to work with him in his office, which has happily put aside forever the talk of me having to be a dining room manager at the Crab & Clam House. So now three days a week—the days I’m not helping Natalie with the baby—I put on a skirt and blouse and little heels and go play receptionist, sitting there in his tastefully appointed office talking on the telephone and ushering in his patients.
His patients tell me they all love him because apparently he’s simply magic with his hands, as one woman put it. He makes back pain and knee pain vanish.
I felt a little pang of jealousy when she said that, which for me is a sure sign that I’m falling for him. After all, he’s in that exam room looking at women’s bodies, and not only that, thinking about how their muscles and tendons could be made to feel better. And I get to be the one he sleeps with!
I feel a little bit of a thrill when I see him do all the things he used to do—the way he flips his hair out of his eyes, that nose-wrinkling thing, and how sometimes he rubs his hands together when he’s anticipating something wonderful. He has never really appreciated deep, long kisses—but he’s the master of divine mini-kisses, all along my jawline, a whole trail of kisses.
What can I say? I know it’s way too soon to make any huge pronouncements—I’m not crazy or anything—but, as Natalie keeps pointing out to me, he and I seem more and more like a couple every single day.