“Does it...make you feel better?” he asks, shifting sideways so he can face me straight on.
I pause for a moment. “No.” Then I turn my head and look at him before quickly turning away. I don’t like his look. It’s a complex mix of concern, sorrow and frustration.
“I’m worried it’s making things worse, Tegan.”
Anger burns in my belly. The last thing I should have to do is explain myself. Especially after what he’s done to us, to me. “How could anything make this worse?” My voice is low, unsteady.
“You know what I mean,” he says.
“Obviously I don’t.” I slam the box of photos on the coffee table and stand up so quickly I feel woozy.
“Hey, hey, Tegan,” he soothes, and I know if I were still on the couch he’d reach for me. But I’m just out of his grasp, and neither of us tries to close the distance. “I want to understand. I’m just trying to help.”
How do you explain that if you could, you’d cut your chest open and pour the ashes right inside so they could forever lie next to your heart? Like a blanket to smother the chill of sorrow. You can’t, so you don’t.
Gabe and I are the only ones who know exactly what’s in the necklace. Well, us and the funeral director, who filled it at my request. Close to my heart. It’s the only way I can keep breathing.
“I’m going to bed,” I say. My muscles ache as I walk slowly to the bedroom, making the space between us even greater. I’m so fragile these days, paper-thin. Even though I’m only halfway through my twenties, I feel more like a ninety-year-old. Probably because for the past couple of months I’ve done little aside from move in a daze from couch, to bed and back.
I barely remember what it feels like to get up and get ready for work. To enjoy takeout during one of the nature shows Gabe loves to watch, to shop for shoes or bags or the very short dresses Anna likes to fill her closet with, hopeful for date nights. I forget what it’s like to have a purpose that gets me up each morning.
These days I care little about what’s happening beyond my four apartment walls. I don’t remember what fresh air smells like, except for when Mom opens one of the apartment windows, touting fresh air as effective an elixir as anything else. The late winter chill that tickles my senses always feels good, but I don’t want to feel good. Not yet. It has only been seventy-nine days. So I ask her to shut the window and she sighs, but she always does it. That’s the thing about going through something like this. People will do anything to try and make you happy again; they’ll give you whatever you want. Except that the thing you really want you can never have again, and no one can bring it back.
“I’ll come with you,” Gabe says, from behind me.
“You don’t have to,” I reply, although I don’t mean it. As much as I am still so angry with Gabe, still full of rage and blame, I don’t like to sleep alone.
“I want to.”
“Fine,” I say, pushing the door to our bedroom open. As I do, I glance into the guest room to my right. The door is supposed to be closed—I’ve been quite clear about that—but it’s wide-open. Beckoning me.
The pile of baby blankets rests on the dresser, which would have doubled as a change table to save precious space in our not-so-spacious apartment. My mom must have forgotten to close the door when she left. Casting my eyes around the dim room, the bile rises in the back of my throat. Pushed up against one wall, the crib is still covered by a white sheet, with the mobile—plush baseballs and baseball bats, which Gabe had picked out as soon as we found out it was a boy—creating a peak in the sheet’s middle like a circus tent. In another corner I see the cradle, which Gabe had restored beautifully, waiting for a final coat of stain. Even though we still had months to go, we had been ready for our boy’s arrival.
Feeling sick, I turn away and shut the door firmly. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll agree to the crib being taken apart. It will have been eighty days, nearly three months, and I know I’ll soon have to accept no baby will ever sleep here, gazing with wide, curious eyes as the mobile circles soothingly overhead.
As I settle into our bed, pulling the sheets—which smell clean and fresh, thanks to Gabe, or my mom, or someone else who takes care of the things I no longer seem able to—up to my chin, I try to pretend none of it happened.
But the nightmares won’t let me forget, not even while I sleep.
Anna has her hands on her tiny hips in a way that looks more cutesy than angry, despite her best efforts. Her nearly black, almond-shaped eyes narrow. “I’m not taking no for an answer,” she says. I pull the duvet over my head, and weakly fight her as she pulls it down again. “You have to eat,” she continues. “Lunch. I promise.” She makes an air cross over her chest, eyes earnest. “Only for lunch and then you can come right back here to bed.”
“Anna, stop,” I say, finally allowing her to strip me of the covers. The flannel pajamas I’m wearing are rumpled and smell like they need a wash. “I don’t want to go out.”
She sits on the bed beside me, her lithe body barely making a dent in the mattress, and crosses her arms. “Listen, I promised your mom I’d get you to eat today so don’t make me look bad, okay?” When I say nothing, keeping my eyes on the ceiling, she bends toward me and kisses me on the cheek. “Besides, Gabe would be pissed if I let you stay in bed all day. Best-friend duties and all that.”
“Well, it doesn’t really matter what Gabe wants, does it?” My voice is sharp, but frustratingly weak. Anna sighs, looking ready to argue some more, but then waves her hands about like she’s trying to shoo a fly away.
“Scootch over then,” she says. I don’t move. “Come on, Teg. Scootch.”
I shift my body over the foot or so she needs to lay her petite frame beside me. It forces me onto Gabe’s side of the bed, which is cold. Anna’s thick, silky black hair tickles the side of my face, but I don’t move away. Head to head, her feet only reach the middle of my calves.
“Look,” she begins, “I know the last thing you want to do is go out there. To see people all happy and shit. I get it. And I’d be exactly the same way.” She rolls toward me, but not without difficulty. I’ve spent so much time on this mattress, wishing I’d disappear if I lay still enough, that I’ve left a hollow the length and shape of my body. A depression to match my depression.
She sinks her elbow into the mattress’s pillow top, above the hollow, and rests her head in her palm. “But it’s been three months, Teg. You’ve not even left the apartment. You’ve lost so much weight you look like a freakin’ supermodel, and, no, that is not a compliment. There’s a hole in this mattress so big we’ll have to call the firemen to rescue you...by the way, let me make that call if we have to, okay?” Anna winks and I smile despite myself. “As your best friend, it’s my job to make you do the things you don’t want to do because they’re good for you. I would expect nothing less from you.”
It’s essentially the same speech she’s been giving me for the past month. She’s made it her mission to get me out of my apartment for something other than a doctor’s appointment—because no one else has been able to, including Gabe, my brothers or our parents—and I have a feeling she isn’t going to relent anytime soon. I stare up at the ceiling again, at the small crack running from the light fixture over our bed to the corner where a cobweb dangles, swaying in the current of warm, forced air coming from the vent. If I could only shrink and suspend myself from that cobweb, out of sight...
“And as my zu mu always says, talk does not cook rice. So please, get out of this freaking bed, okay?” Anna is endlessly quoting her Chinese grandmother, who seems to have a proverb for any situation one could think up.
“Tegan, I love you.”
“I know.”
“Then