The Summer We Came to Life (15 page)

I WOKE UP AND NEARLY BOUNCED OUT OF BED. A smile reached across my face so wide it made my jaw hurt. I felt like a balloon pumped full of helium. I gave a little Jesse cha-cha-cha wiggle of my butt that shook loose a giggle.

Isabel opened one eye and caught me smiling with my hands cupped to my cheeks. She promptly closed the eye.

I couldn't get the Lynette-Cornell story out of my head. It had reignited all my Remy daydreams.
I'm gonna marry that man, world be damned.
The thought triggered an avalanche of giddiness. I wanted to call Remy and set the date right then and there. What was I waiting for? I put a hand at my hip and got a flash of his strong hands sliding up my waist. I put a hand to my lips and was nearly knocked over by a vision of Remy leaning in to kiss me. Then I thought of the fifty other things I liked about him—his friends, his nice clothes, his smile—

“You're in a good mood,” Isabel said in a tone like pickle
brine. There was a smile waiting in the wings, though. I could tell.

“What was so bad about marrying Remy again?” I said, and laughed.

“Oh, come on.” The smile would not be making an appearance after all. I stopped smiling, too.

Isabel waited for a response. Then she understood. “Ah, you've been inspired by Lynette's story of true love.”

“Well, it just goes to show that when two people are meant to be together, they can overcome anything.” I folded my arms across my chest.

“No, I think the story means you should avoid years of wasting your life with the wrong man—the rich guy who cheats on you—then having to divorce him and live with your parents till you find the right one,” Isabel said, and rolled away from me.

I stood and looked at Isabel's back.

“What? Didn't hear that part?” Isabel rolled back over. She propped her head up on one hand and looked at me. She must have seen the drop in my demeanor because now she looked sorry.

I sat down on a chair, utterly deflated. “Maybe Remy and I would be happy. He's so stable. He could jump-start my photography. He's famous—”

“Oh, sweet pea. I love you. I adore you. But you are the worst picker of men.”

“Look who's talking.”

“Okay, I'll give you that one. You are the best at picking men as adventures, as lovers, as life lessons, and stories for when we're old and gray. The professional skydiver? A Dutch DJ in Argentina? I admire your flair. I do businessmen and bankers, you do kite surfers and famous French directors. But hon, I know how you love to daydream. I suspect you think of marrying Remy as a ready-made adventure, as the answer
to turning thirty.” Isabel paused to take a breath. “But I think you're in over your head.”

“So, then it doesn't work out. So what? It's a fifty-fifty shot.”

“Yeah, so what, Sam, so then you'll be divorced and
forty
.”

I looked at her in surprise. “I thought you were the one that didn't care about getting older—”

“I
do
do a good job of putting on that show, don't I?”

We looked at each other and said nothing.

Finally, I ventured a grin. “So, feminism dies at thirty? We'll have to break the bad news to your mom and Lynette.”

“Ha!” Isabel snorted. “We'll blame the hormones. Suddenly all babies start looking cute. Puppies and babies. We're genetically programmed. It isn't fair.”

“Isabel, whatamIgonnado?” I said quietly.

“Well,
we
are going to go swimming with the Garifuna princesses. And remember that everything's going to be just fine and you'll make the right decision. But either way, you'll remember—” Isabel snapped her finger so I looked at her and stopped staring off into space “—you'll remember that at least we'll always have each other. Me, you, Kendra. And Mina.” She pointed at Mina's journal on the nightstand.

Then she lumbered off to the bathroom.

I resumed staring off into space. Something she'd said…

 

“Puppies and babies,” Remy said, and tweaked my nose.

“Excuse me?” Remy and I were walking down the boulevard, licking ice-cream cones. We were the consummate couple in love, out for a stroll on a windy afternoon.

“Your friend. She can't help it. All women think about are puppies and babies.”

I nearly spit out my mouthful of hazelnut ice cream. “That's what you got out of my explanation of Kendra's
argument with Michael? Kendra is the VP of sales. She manages a dozen multimillion-dollar accounts. I tell you that she wishes her boyfriend would appreciate her more and make a little more effort at romance, and all you can say is
puppies and babies?
”

Remy chuckled and made a motion with his thumb.

“Tweak my nose one more time, mister—”

“Okay, oui. Yes. The boyfriend should be more romantic. Silly Americans with their work ethic. They should learn from the French man. Woo the woman and she will stop worrying about mistresses and babies. For a little while.”

I stopped strolling. “That is your view of relationships? After all the strong women in my life I've told you about? Lynette, Jesse, Isabel and Kendra. They all have successful careers and somehow still make time for their family and for love and romance. You can't be serious—”

Remy had taken two steps without me. Now he looked back. And cocked his concealed weapon—that sexy, laughing smile of his. A weapon without a permit this time. But then he ceremoniously dropped his ice-cream cone into a trash bin and swept me up in his arms.

“I was teasing, ma chérie. Teasing. You shouldn't be so cute when you're mad if you don't want men to tease you.”

He kissed me, but I resisted valiantly. It was so hard to stay mad, with the warmth of his body coursing into mine and his arms encircling me in a sepia-toned postcard of Parisian romance. With our foreheads touching, we heard a whimper. Around the corner bounded a golden retriever puppy with its female owner. The woman called after the scampering puppy but only laughed when the leash jerked her hand. On her hip, she bounced a rosy-cheeked toddler.

Remy turned back to meet my eyes and to his credit did nothing but raise one eyebrow.

I burst out laughing and kissed him hard on the lips.

The consummate couple in love on a windy afternoon.

 

Gulp. I reached for Mina's journal and took out the leaf. As I lifted it, dried brown pieces flittered onto the pages. The leaf was no longer soft and velvety, just lifeless.

There was no magic in the leaf.

There was just a lost soul who had no idea what to do without the advice of her best friend.

December 5
Samantha

We're losing you. Today you didn't seem “there.” I know it's the medication. I know it's the pain. I'd be the biggest whiner, I bet, in your shoes. But not you. You're too good, too patient. Your pain tolerance for life is admirable, my friend, but baffling. Why aren't you angry? Mina, none of this makes any sense. Of all the people in the world, you're in the top tier. These are the days that a just God seems like an absurd notion.

Dammit! I cannot cry anymore today.

Let's keep on keeping on, shall we?

Locality: it means that if you want to communicate with or affect anybody or anything, you have to do something to the distance between you and it, whether by sound waves, by throwing something, by a laser of light, whatever. It's based on the idea that “I” am separate from everything else.

Einstein treasured the idea of locality, and tried to prove it true. In the end, locality was proven wrong. Turns out “Spooky action at a distance” (Einstein's words) does happen. Spirit mediums and Buddhists were right all along.

There is theoretically no reason why you can't communicate with me from anywhere. But it might be up to you. Maybe we don't hear from the deceased because they don't want to hear from us. So get angry, Mina. Don't disconnect. Don't accept. Don't go quietly. Don't forget about me.

THE GARIFUNA GIRLS WERE NOWHERE TO BE seen when Isabel and I walked onto the sand. But Jesse was there, set up in her chair with a magazine. Next to her Arshan pored over a science journal with a Hi-Liter. Cornell and Lynette stood by the edge of the water.

“Whoa, you guys are up early,” I said, and sat down in the shade of the umbrella.

“Well, it's our last day, isn't it? No breakfast yet, though, girls,” Jesse said without looking up from her
Vogue
.

“I'm not hungry.” Isabel threw her fuchsia towel on the blanket.

“The wonders never cease,” Jesse said.

“It's probably only because I'm still full of your famous Mai Tais, Mother. Ready, Sammy?”

I was looking back at the palm grove. Ahari was in his usual position. Watching me. This time he raised a hand. First he held it out toward us, like signaling to stop. Then he turned his hand around, almost as if beckoning me to him.

“Sam?”

I glanced at Isabel and when I looked back at the spot where Ahari stood, his hands hung motionless by his side. He continued to stare.

“It's creepy the way he watches us,” Isabel whispered. “You ready to go in the water?”

I shook off the eerie feeling. “Ready, Freddy.”

“Dork,” Isabel said.

“Nerd.”

Jesse shook her head as we headed for the ocean. We passed Lynette and Cornell on their way back to the blanket.

“The waves are much bigger today. Don't go out too far,” Lynette advised.

I looked past her. She was right. They looked like waves from a surf magazine. Hawaii Five-O. “Don't worry, we're just going to get wet enough to cool off.”

Isabel grabbed my elbow. “My feet are burning off. Let's go!”

We took off running, my metallic gold swimsuit glittering in the sun.

I let out a loud laugh, happy to release the tension from my conversation with Isabel. She held tight to my hand as we charged into the water and dove in unison under a wave. We came up sputtering and laughing.

“Why don't you move back to D.C.?” Isabel asked with a salty smile. “Everything is better when we live in the same city.”

I dipped my head backward into the water to smooth my hair out.

“Watch out,” Isabel said.

“Huh?” I couldn't hear with my ears underwater and got pummeled. I came out of the whitewash coughing.

“Blech. I just swallowed a crap-load of water. That can
not
be good, considering the first night's fiasco.”

Isabel laughed and swam over. “Did you hear what I said?”

Juxtaposed with the Honduran sea and palm trees, I had a vision of ultraconservative Washington, a million yuppies running around in business suits. “I can't move back to D.C., Belly. I'd fit in there now like Laffy Taffy in a dentist's office. Now that you're laid off, why don't we go somewhere like Indonesia? Well, unless I marry Remy, I guess.”

So misleading, Isabel's delicate hands. I knew what was coming, as I watched her swish her dainty fingers across the surface of the water. I squinted past her across the shimmering ocean, felt the undertow tug me off balance, when I knew I should get ready to stand my ground.

On cue, Isabel flipped her hair over her shoulder and glared at me. “Sam, he asked you to marry him spur of the moment, with a two-bit ring.”

I braced my feet in the shifting sand. Each side of my split personality had an entirely different life plan, and it was getting exhausting defending them both. “Like I said, I thought it was romantic.”

Isabel pursed her lips. “Or arrogant. Let's see.” She counted on her manicured fingers. “Forty-three. Bachelor. Playboy. Domineering. And suspiciously good in bed.” She held out her palm, five fingers splayed. “Do these sound like good qualities in a husband?”

I smacked her hand and laughed. I couldn't help myself. “Doesn't sound so bad to me.”

Isabel rolled her eyes but quickly turned serious. “Ok, but what about your life? Your dreams became my own, you know.”

I never thought about it that way. But, yes, somewhere along the way, four little girls had aligned their hopes, invested in one another's plans. “But dreams age and wrinkle, too. At what point does a starving artist just become a failure?”

I hid my welling eyes by looking away at an oncoming wave. It looked monstrous from our vantage point, hungry.

As I turned back again, Isabel adopted a soothing tone. “Don't give up. It just takes time. Less time if you'd stop running away.”

She was right. But if Remy wanted to hand me a perfect new life on a silver platter—“Wouldn't marrying someone like Remy be faster?”

“Duck.”

“What?” I said before getting smacked in the head by a wave and dragged into a thirty-second washing machine of water. A laugh waited at my lips right up until the instant I realized I couldn't touch bottom.

 

Jesse looked up the moment Isabel and I went under the wave. “Should we call them in?” she asked Arshan.

“Eh?” Arshan grunted, absorbed in his research journal.

Jesse looked at Lynette, who didn't look the least bit concerned. Well, Jesse Brighton wasn't about to start worrying if nobody else was worrying.

She pushed her sunglasses back up her nose and flipped a page in her gossip magazine. Blue fingernail polish was back in. “Even with women Demi Moore's age.”
Ha! What happens after Demi Moore's age? You decide cracked old toenails are hot?
Jesse craned her neck to see Lynette's toenails. Gleaming fire-engine red.
Thatta girl.

“What?” Lynette said, catching her.

“Nothing.”

Lynette looked out at the ocean.
I told them not to go so far out.
She looked back at Jesse, who was absorbed in her magazine and didn't seem worried
. They'll be fine.

 

At last I made it to the surface. I groped for sand with my toes, feeling only a vortex trying to suck me back under. So I treaded water, exhausted, and whipped my head side to side
looking for Isabel. There was nothing to see but water and clouds, and flashes of me somewhere in between.

A new wave had me in its talons. Panic reigned as I tried to swim forward only to watch the beach slip farther away. Defeated, I ducked under the wave and let it barrel over me, let it yank me back two yards by my heels. Then I decided to fight. I scissor kicked my legs and dug my hands into the water as though I was clawing my way out of an avalanche. It took about a millisecond to realize I had not a smidgen of control over my locomotion.

When I was sure I wouldn't last another second, I inexplicably shot to the surface again. The instant my face emerged from the sea, I opened my mouth, gagged on acid water, and screamed, “Isabel—”

 

Jesse and Lynette heard the scream at the same time. Jesse jumped up and knocked her drink onto Cornell.

“Damn, Jesse. What the—”

Lynette and Jesse were already running for the water. Arshan jumped up and ran after them. Cornell caught up to them at the water's edge.

“What happened? Where'd they go?” Cornell bellowed, grabbing Jesse's arm.

“They're out there!” Jesse wailed, wrenching her arm free and splashing into the water up to her waist.

Arshan rushed into the sea past her. He collided with the first wall of waves.

Jesse yelled for him to stop and pointed. They watched my head bobbing on the surface a long way out. Arshan plunged awkwardly in my direction.

Jesse said, “Wait. They're too far out. You won't make it.” She scanned the beach for assistance but saw no one. Then she thought she saw a shadow in the palm trees that might be Ahari, standing, watching. She squinted her eyes and swore she could make out—

“There!” Lynette spotted Isabel burst from the whitewash only to land in the path of the next gobbling wave.

 

The water was torrential. They stood anchored in fear, a row of bronze soldiers affixed to a slab. Jesse pointed as my red hair started to cut sideways through the whitewash.

All four of them watched in shock as I swam into the wave for Isabel and we joined hands for a fleeting second before being dashed into the grave beneath the shimmering surface.

 

We're really going to drown.

My assessment was not a scream. At first, when we crashed back under the water and I lost hold of Isabel's hand, I'd shrieked inside my skull and thrashed about like a reeling centipede. Now, the realization of real impending death was more of an incredulous observation. With the new stillness of thought, I listened to myself drown. I experienced my underwater undulations like a dance.

In a world without water, my body would be performing an exquisite ballet in zero gravity. My arms flailed and arced, my fingers grasped at nothing. I executed somersaults in four directions, an elegant marionette on bouncing strings. My body flowed left and right in graceful suspension.

Mina, are you watching?

 

“Isabel!” Jesse's bloodcurdling scream scurried across the sea. She ran deeper into the water and Arshan lunged after her.

A wave overtook them both. When they came up, Jesse was choking, sobbing. Arshan moved to comfort her, but another wave took aim at their heads. As the wave curled closer, Isabel's body appeared at its rim.

“My God,” Jesse gasped, and raised her hands.

The sea dumped Isabel into her mother's arms and all three tumbled into the surf and disappeared from sight.

Lynette screeched and sobbed, jumping up and down and clawing at Cornell's arm, inwardly bargaining with the sea, with the world, with God, with fate.
Please.
When Arshan came up with Isabel's limp body in his arms and they began wading toward her, Lynette ran. She ran smack into them and hugged them so hard they all fell back into the water again. Isabel came to and coughed.

“You're okay baby,” Jesse said, pulling her daughter to her feet in the shallows. “You're okay. See? Stand up now, sugar.”

Isabel let out a strangled laugh as though shocked to be alive. Everything was surreal, happening in slow motion. Jesse grabbed her cheeks and kissed her on the lips. Isabel was so weak, she slipped through Jesse's embrace and fell to her knees. Arshan gripped her shoulders and, with Jesse's help, they carried her half-conscious to the beach.

Lynette turned from them, and let out a low wail. She waded back into the water to look for me.

Cornell stood by her side, ready to catch his wife in his arms whenever she realized I was gone.

 

Under the water, I was sad.
So, we were wrong, Em? In the end we all go alone?
I always hated being wrong. Pretty flashes of light appeared in the TV-screen static behind my eyelids. I thought about everyone on the beach, overcome by guilt. It wasn't fair to put them through more death.
Forgive me
, I thought, over and over.

But where was Mina? As the water tossed me to and fro, I pictured Mina's gaunt face the morning of her death. I remembered how calm she was, making jokes to soothe us, whispering in my ear to remember our plan. I held her hand until the last second and everyone said she looked at peace.

I didn't feel peace. I was angry. All that worrying over
the rest of my life. How foolish that it was all for naught. But the fact that I was going into the unknown alone felt like betrayal. Every time I'd tried to contact Mina—every silly experiment we'd devised—came back to taunt me. How stupid we were. And the maple leaves? Wishful thinking.
This
was reality. This was where the path reached the cliff. Again, I envisioned Mina the morning she died, her skeleton hands, her collarbone like dried-up fish. The end was pain, injustice, loneliness—

“Come here, Sammy.”

The memory vanished and I heard Mina's voice strikingly clear, with none of the echo of recollection.

“Samantha,” she said, as her dark eyes appeared in the rushing gray of the sea.

I felt that I was falling, tipping forward into Mina's ink-black eyes. Inside those eyes was everything. And nothing. The ocean's roar finally stopped.

December 20
Samantha

Thank you, Mina Bahrami, for being my best friend. Thank you for every respite of laughter, every gift of comfort. The world will never be as fun, as whole, as alive or as joyous without you. You made me who I am—for better or worse, perhaps—but certainly the better for knowing you. Even now, I can't imagine a world where I can't search your eyes for approval or solace, can't hear your careful, Samantha-tailored opinions, can't grab a hold of your chuckling to snap me out of myself. I only wish I could help you more, do more for you in these days of sorrow. I don't know what lies ahead, Mina. Every book, every philosopher, every religion, every physicist says something different. The only thing I could find in common was talk of light, of a
field of light encompassing “everything that is,” deconstructed into the pieces we experience as reality during life.

The Higgs Field. Everything, they say, has really only ever been
one
thing: light, or a sea, or a being—however you want to envision it—dancing with itself.

Now that doesn't sound so bad, does it, my beloved friend?

All I know is that I will miss you every day. Every single day.