Sisterhood Everlasting

  When Jones woke to a car alarm in the middle of the night, he looked at Carmen staring wide-eyed at the ceiling.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Tibby wants me to go to someplace in Pennsylvania on April second. If I go to New Orleans, I won’t be able to get back in time.”

  “If you go to New Orleans?” He didn’t even question the notion of how Tibby could ask her to go someplace.

  “Yeah, if I go.”

  “You have to go.”

  “I don’t have to go.”

  Jones lifted his head and propped it on his hand, looking at her in disbelief. “It would be career suicide not to. I mean, think of it. How would your reps feel? Do you think you’ll be getting any more calls like this again?”

  Carmen clamped her molars together. She could have these childish run-ins with Jones all she liked, but she could hear herself on the phone with her mother in the morning. Her mother would be saying, “You don’t have to go,” and Carmen would be saying, “It would be career suicide, Mom. What would my reps think?”

  “Work’s not the only thing in life,” Carmen said petulantly.

  “Of course it’s not. But this is a once-in-a-career opportunity, and what would you be missing it for? What do you think you are going to find in Pennsylvania? You’re not going to find Tibby, if that’s what you’re hoping for.”

  Carmen turned on her pillow to face away from him. She stuffed her arms under her pillow. She didn’t want to admit to herself that she was even more afraid of Pennsylvania than she was of New Orleans. She didn’t want him to see her cry anymore.

  “You can go to Pennsylvania after you get back,” he added in a softer voice. “After the wedding. Tibby wouldn’t expect you to miss a casting meeting with one of the top directors in the world. She wouldn’t want to get in the way of your wedding.” He touched Carmen’s shoulder blade. “These are important things. She would understand.”

  Tibby would understand what was important. Carmen agreed with that part. Tibby always understood. But as she struggled to see Tibby’s face in her mind, Carmen also knew what was important, and it wasn’t either of the things he said.

  I’ll let you be in my dreams

  if I can be in yours.

  —Bob Dylan

  Bridget woke the next morning to the sound of crying. She realized that there were tears on her face and there was panic in her chest but that the sobs didn’t belong to her. She couldn’t remember where she was. She gaped at the ceiling, trying to remember. Her mind spun through a series of beds in Mission apartments, at Perry and Violet’s place, at the Sea Star Inn. She had to sit up and look around before her mind finally and fully joined her body in Australia. The sobs were Bailey’s, coming from downstairs. She could hear Brian’s soothing voice, trying to comfort her.

  Bridget dressed quickly. When she arrived in the kitchen, Bailey was still clutching the glass jar where the lightning bugs had been and sobbing. Brian cast Bridget a drowning look.

  Bailey sat in her high chair, holding up the jar so Bridget could see it, but she was incapable of forming any words. After Bridget had released the bugs the night before, she’d put some grass back into the jar and returned it to Bailey’s crib.

  Bridget pulled a chair close. “The bugs went away?” she said.

  Bailey nodded. The look on her face rent Bridget’s heart and she began questioning everything she had done. She tried to identify the moment when she’d done the worst wrong. It often happened without clear warning. Was it the moment of abandon when she’d begun grabbing living things from the sky? Was the worst wrong opening the jar and letting them go? Had she sided with bugs against a child? Was the worst wrong returning the empty jar to Bailey’s arms?

  “We don’t know how they escaped, but they did,” Brian said. “They flew away.” Bridget couldn’t tell if there was a note of accusation in his voice.

  Bailey nodded.

  “I told her they’re happy in the sky,” Brian continued, “but she’s still feeling sad.”

  Bailey was listening carefully. The sobs had stopped, but her face was still stricken, wet with tears and her runny nose.

  “I’m sorry they went away,” Bridget said. She understood Bailey wasn’t looking for an explanation. Bailey didn’t need Bridget to tell her they hadn’t gotten out by themselves, and that if she’d left them in there they would have died. She put her hands out and lifted Bailey from her chair.

  She wordlessly took the jar from Bailey’s hands and put it on the counter. She folded Bailey into her side, held her firmly with one arm and stroked her head with the other as she walked back and forth across the kitchen. After two or three laps, Bailey gave the weight of her head to Bridget’s shoulder.

  Brian sent her a grateful look and tiptoed back to his office. Bridget didn’t stop walking. She moved from stroking Bailey’s head to stroking her back. She made the laps bigger.

  Bailey wiped off her nose on Bridget’s shirt, and Bridget felt strangely grateful for it. Bridget felt the violent hitch in Bailey’s breathing begin to smooth out. After some time Bailey put her thumb in her mouth and got heavier.

  When the loop grew to include the entire ground floor of the house and the front porch, Bridget began to understand the deeper thing Bailey was crying for. She wondered about the words Brian might have used. They probably involved going away and maybe even being in the sky, and Bridget was sure they were bewildering to Bailey and signaled nothing more than pure loss.

  Bridget went out to the porch and lowered onto a wicker chair in the soft shade. She continued to rub Bailey’s back as she felt Bailey’s body settle deeply into hers.

  She’d thought Bailey had fallen asleep until Bailey sat up on her lap. She took her thumb out of her mouth and formulated a question.

  “Catch a-a-a-again?”

  Bridget sighed. She was greatly tempted to tell Bailey they would catch more tonight. They could easily catch a dozen in their jar. They could catch them every night if they wanted to.

  But Bridget thought again about the moment of worst wrong, such an unassuming juncture that she often swanned right past it. There was no way she was putting them through that again.

  “They are always in the sky. In the summertime you can see them,” Bridget said quietly. “Everywhere you go.”

  Bailey lay back down on her again, and Bridget resumed stroking her back.

  Bridget had imagined it was better if the thing you loved just disappeared. But maybe Bailey would have been better off if she could have seen and known what happened. Either way, she and Bailey were the same. They were both broken in the same place.

  I know how you feel, Bridget thought. And it wasn’t just Tibby. She had lost her mother too.

  The day Lena returned from Greece to nothing and no one, there was a letter waiting for her. She knew instantly who it was from by the way her name looked in the particular way he wrote it. It had been forwarded from her parents’ address.

  Dear Lena, it began in his beloved handwriting. You said not to call, so I decided to write.

  The momentary ecstasy at seeing her name in his writing again was quickly replaced by a pang of dread.

  With a girded heart she scanned the letter for the explanations and mollification regarding Harriet. On the phone he’d said they weren’t married, but that was kind of a cop-out. He and Harriet lived together in an extravagant house and Harriet wore a big fat sapphire on her marriage finger. You didn’t do that if you weren’t planning to get married. At least, a girl like Harriet didn’t; Lena felt pretty sure of that.

  Lena looked through the neat lines for the apologetic language, the stilted sorrow for the ending of her hopes, such as they were, and the exhortation for friendship in the future. He’d say that they were like family, that he really cared for her and blah, blah, blah. This was exactly the conversation she didn’t want to have and the one he was surely eager for. But when she paused her brain and actually read the words, she saw that they were nothing
like that.

  As I walked along the river on my way home from work yesterday, I had a memory of Tibby, and I wanted to tell it to you.

  Do you remember that August, almost ten years ago, when you and your friends came to Santorini to look for your lost pants? Bridget saw me first on a street in the village and recognized me, I think. But it was Tibby who chased me down. I don’t know if they even told you about it.

  Tibby said, “Lena is here, did you know that?” and I told her that I didn’t. I was startled to hear it and startled to see her. She introduced herself, but I already knew who she was. “Do you want to see her?” Tibby asked.

  She had so much intensity and sweetness in her demeanor. I was a coward at first. “Does she want to see me?” I asked.

  And Tibby fixed me with quite a look. She was weighing my character at that moment, and I would have believed her judgment over anyone else’s. “Do you want to see her?” she said again.

  I remember standing in the middle of the street, and there was Tibby right up in my face and Bee standing in puzzlement with her hands on her hips a few yards away. I could see the conflict with Bee. She didn’t know if she would be betraying you by coming closer or by staying away.

  Seeing those girls, I knew you better. I understood you in a new way. After all that had happened earlier that summer, I guess I wondered about you: do you even want to be loved? And when I saw them, I knew you did.

  So there was Tibby, a stranger who didn’t feel like a stranger, putting it to me. I wanted to hide from her, but I couldn’t. I looked at her and said, “Of course I do. More than anything else.”

  And so Tibby considered me and then nodded. She said, “You should come to the house this afternoon.” And I did.

  In the morning and evenings here in London I like to walk to and from work alone, in part because I’m never actually alone. I always seem to walk with someone, either living or gone.

  Often I walk with my father, though I have almost no true memory of him. He’s my adviser, fixed and principled, the man who tells me to do the right thing and knows I know what it is, regardless of any seeming complication. Occasionally it’s my mother. My memory of her is no better, so I fabricate. I project her, as an analyst might say. She looks or sounds different at different times, changing according to my needs, I suppose. She is my empathizer.

  On lesser days, when I’m surface bound, it’s one of my colleagues or my secretary. Often it’s a friend, Yusuf or Daniel from the old flat. Today, yesterday, the day before, maybe tomorrow, I walk with Tibby.

  Lena didn’t stare at the letter for hours at a time in her customary way. She didn’t think, obsess, wonder, or tremble. Well, she did all of those things, but she was suddenly invested with some larger power. She sat down and wrote him back.

  Having grown up perched over the Caldera, do you ever think of the lost city that supposedly slid into the sea?

  I seem to think of it and dream of it all the time these days. I know it’s infantile, but I imagine that Tibby was swimming out there, searching for our lost pants, and found the trick way in, and she’s there, and it’s beautiful and everything is slow and still and quiet, as I always wish the world to be.

  That’s my projection, as your analyst would say, I guess, and it keeps me company. Our pants do happen to be there too, and Tibby found them, so according to our old myth, she has us with her.

  Tibby occasionally looks up, I think, and sees the sun the way it might come down to reach her, glowing gold and refracted. Now she knows the secrets they have down there that we don’t understand.

  I think there are other things of mine down there in the ancient city, and they all happen to have a common quality: that I lost them and wish for them. Under there is a life I could have had, but don’t, and it’s going on without me in it.

  In reality I guess you would say it’s me who goes on without Tibby, but I can’t quite seem to do that. It feels more like she’s gone somewhere without me.

  Not only did Lena write the letter quickly, she didn’t overconsider the introduction, conclusion, or sign-off. She copied his closing: Your old friend, Lena. And not only that, she stuck it in an envelope as soon as she’d finished it, sealed it, put two stamps on it, and delivered it to the mailbox around the corner before she could fail to do so.

  It was a blessing and also a curse of handwritten letters that, unlike email, you couldn’t obsessively reread what you’d written after you’d sent it. You couldn’t attempt to unsend it. Once you’d sent it, it was gone. It was an object that no longer belonged to you, but belonged to your recipient to do with what he would. You tended to remember the feeling of what you’d said more than the words. You gave the object away, and left yourself with the memory. That was what it was to give.

  After the lightning-bug incident, Bailey could not be detached from Bridget. She sat on Bridget’s lap through dinner. She wanted Bridget to read her bedtime story. She wanted Bridget’s kisses right after Brian’s.

  Bridget went to bed early as usual. She lay in bed and listened to the rain start up. She felt sad but serene. Her limbs were heavy and quiet. Far from agitated, she imagined it would take a crane through the roof to get her out of bed.

  She thought about Eric and the way he had looked when she’d walked away from him down Pine Street. She thought of Carmen and Lena on the last terrible day in Greece when they couldn’t let their eyes meet and said things to one another that were supposed to pass for a long goodbye.

  She tried to picture them in their lives. Carmen in her glitzy loft with her cappuccino machine that cost more than all of Bridget’s possessions put together. Was the cappuccino machine offering Carmen any comfort? Maybe it was. Maybe Carmen understood something Bridget had simply missed.

  She pictured Lena in her dark, quiet little room. So dark you couldn’t grow a plant, the only window thick with chicken wire. She pictured Lena drawing her feet until the drawing was so real there were four feet and you couldn’t tell the difference. And here Bridget could barely muster a scribble. Maybe Lena understood something too.

  For the first time Bridget felt a vague longing to talk to them, a hope that they were doing better than she was. It was a strange tingling she had that made her think of phantom limb syndrome, but the tingling was rooted much deeper. She felt like parts of her soul were missing, had left her body long ago. It had happened not in Greece three months ago, but long before that. It was in Greece that she’d realized those parts had left her and were not coming back.

  Her mind turned to Eric again, when she heard a flutter of feet down the hallway. She sat up, feeling an unexpected surge of adrenaline. Had Bailey climbed out of her crib? Was she okay?

  So maybe it wouldn’t take a crane, Bridget recognized ruefully with her feet planted on the floor, as her door pushed open and a small figure crossed her room with the grace of an insect. Bailey appeared at the side of her bed, too short to climb up on her own. She raised her arms to be lifted, and Bridget obliged her.

  Bailey crawled under the covers and molded her body against Bridget’s. In some wonder Bridget heard the crinkle of Bailey’s diaper, smelled her zincy ointment, and felt the moistness of her toes, which only came down to the top of Bridget’s thigh. Bailey put her thumb in her mouth and closed her eyes.

  Afraid of breaking this spell, Bridget barely breathed. She put her arm around Bailey, wanting to hold her, but afraid to burden her with any weight.

  The rain pounded on the roof and trickled down the window. Bailey snorted and twitched and drooled and finally passed into such a deep stage of sleep, Bridget supposed she could dangle her by the ankles without waking her.

  It wasn’t a spell, Bridget realized, gathering Bailey closer. She needed a mother. Like all of us, Bridget thought. And like most of us, Bailey wanted to sleep in proximity to another warm body.

  Bridget lay awake, but she wasn’t restless. There weren’t as many places to go as there were thoughts to think.

  Sometime in the early
-morning hours, Bridget felt Tibby’s presence again. Not in the form of this look-alike old playmate, but separate from her. In Bridget’s half-dream, Tibby seemed to lie in a symmetrical curve on the other side of Bailey, so that their knees practically touched under Bailey’s feet. This time she took the form of a mother.

  Honey,

  you cannot wrestle a dove.

  —The Shins

  Nearly every aspect of the wedding planning had been a cheerful and much-needed distraction for Carmen until now. Now she sat at the kitchen table in her loft, bouncing her leg, staring at the pile of invitations, unable to pick up her pen.

  Until now she’d been pleased with the invitations. They were expensively engraved, just the right shade of ecru, and one hundred percent tasteful. With the help of these invitations, she’d managed to waste at least four evenings, addressing them during the time when she otherwise might have had to spare a thought for how her life was going to feel the day after her meticulously planned honeymoon came to an end.

  But when it came to the last two invitations, her pen dried up and her energy left her. She’d invited Lena’s parents. She’d even invited Effie. Now she had to invite Lena. She’d invited Bee’s dad and her brother and Violet, even though she felt pretty sure they wouldn’t come. Now she had to invite Bee.

  She knocked her pen against the metal table. The plan had been to call them first, resume contact before the invitations arrived, but she hadn’t done that. The plan then became to write a little note in each of their invitations acknowledging, at least, how strange and difficult this was, but she hadn’t managed that either.