He remembered when he was about eight years old, and a tornado had flattened an entire Kansas town. He and his mom were watching the news report, which showed only one house standing in the entire neighborhood amid acres and acres of rubble. “It’s a miracle,” said the weeping owner about his own survival. “My wife, she was sayin’, ‘Spare us, Lord, spare us,’ and the good Lord held us in the palm of His hand and saved us.”
In the house next door, the entire family had been killed, including a six-week-old baby.
“Why didn’t God save the neighbors?” Josh asked his mother. “Didn’t they pray?” Even then, he was cynical. “I bet the baby’s parents were praying.”
“God listens,” his mother said. “But He’s not a grocer, okay? Just because you pray for something you want doesn’t mean you’re going to get it.”
“So why pray?” asked Josh.
“Why not pray?” she answered. “Eat your broccoli.” She paused. “It’s nice to think that someone else is out there, someone who loves and understands you. And God helps us all. Just maybe not in the way you think, or the way we want Him to.”
Not exactly a passionate argument for the power of prayer. Josh was twelve when he dropped the belief of God completely. Oh, church was fine—he liked the sameness of the service, the music at Christmas and Easter. He liked that his mother was so well regarded by the other parishioners. No one ever made a fuss over her lack of a spouse, and they always told him what a good kid he was.
But for him, the experience was more about the smells of candles and lemon wax, the handshake from the pastor, who had a certain celebrity about him in his robes. Josh had taken Lauren a few times when they were engaged, and a few times afterward, before she was diagnosed. He liked the cooing of the church ladies as Stephanie introduced Lauren, and he loved seeing Lauren charm everyone.
So Josh had nothing against church. He just didn’t believe in God. Or the Great Beyond.
Until Lauren had gotten sick, that was, and then he understood. There might not be any atheists in foxholes, and there were definitely no atheists in the ICU. You can’t be an atheist when your twenty-seven-year-old spouse is fighting to breathe, her eyes wide, clawing at her throat. You can’t be an atheist when you see her intubated and still. Or when they tell you there’s no cure for what she has.
He’d prayed. He asked God to forgive his earlier lack of faith. He accepted the prayers of his mother’s church friends, the prayer chain they set up for him, the rosaries Sumi Kim (a Catholic) fervently offered, the quieter, more poetic prayers of Ben (a Buddhist). Josh begged. There was nothing pretty or ceremonial about his praying, no sir. He asked God for time, for a trial drug to work, for a miracle reversal. Of course he did.
And then, after God failed to save her, when God said no to the prayers and left Josh alone in the world, lost and stunned and bereft, he became an atheist again.
It just made more sense. If anyone deserved to live, it had been Lauren.
He looked at the clock again: 3:22. With a sigh, he got up to work and give Pebbles a snack to apologize for scaring her.
* * *
A FEW DAYS after the marathon where he so distinguished himself, he asked Sarah out for dinner. A nice restaurant, one he hadn’t ever been to before, to avoid memories of Lauren. They ordered a bottle of wine, and Josh had half a glass. He’d written up a few index cards to remind him of things to ask her, because he tended to go blank when interacting with people he wasn’t a hundred percent comfortable with.
How is your mother’s knee replacement working out?
How is your grandfather?
How was your vacation? Did you eat any good food? What was your favorite thing to do out there?
How is work going? It must be hard to deal with some situations. What do you do to relax?
And the last . . .
How are you doing without Lauren?
Chances were low that he’d manage to ask that one. But he referred to the first index card, asked, and Sarah started talking in a friendly-enough way.
Lauren was the one who’d been good at this. With her, Josh picked up on cues, listened to her talk to people, watched her face as she smiled or frowned or nodded. He always felt more present, more at ease with himself and other people when he’d been with his wife. She was the key to his being fully engaged. He remembered to nod as Sarah paused, asked a follow-up question and tried to smile at the right places. He referred to card number two, then three when her answer was brief.
They ordered their dinners; fish for him, steak for her. Card number four.
He hated that everyone looking at them would assume they were on a date. He wished he could somehow communicate that he still loved his wife, that this was her friend, that he was absolutely not interested in her that way.
The food came. He took a bite of trout. It was pretty good. “How’s your steak?” he asked Sarah.
“Good. How’s your fish?”
“Good.”
The conversation was not exactly rapier sharp. How long had they been here? Two hours? Three? He sneaked a look at his watch. Thirty-nine minutes.
Aha! He thought of something to say. “I bought a vase the other day. From Hawaii.”
“Cool. What does it look like?”
“You know. It’s . . . blue. And it has white on it. Like a cresting wave.”
“Sounds pretty.” She cut another piece of meat.
“Yes.” It was gorgeous, in fact. One of a kind, handmade on Kauai, at the same shop where he and Lauren bought a sculpture on their honeymoon.
“You guys brought me a beautiful paperweight from Hawaii.”
“Did we?” Lauren had bought dozens of gifts, it seemed.
“Yes.” Sarah poured herself a second glass of wine. “So about all the shitty things you said to me, Josh.”
“Yes. Still sorry.”
“You know what? Everything was true. About how I was pissy and jealous.” She shook her head, her eyes getting shiny. “Lauren was . . . sparkly. You know? She sparkled.”
“Yes,” Josh said. It was the perfect word for her.
“And . . . well, it wasn’t always easy to be known as ‘Lauren’s friend.’ All through elementary school, and then even more in middle school and high school, I was sort of like this . . . appendage.” She pulled a face, then did her hair swoop, and Josh felt an unexpected little sunburst of affection for her. That hair swoop gesture . . . she did that when she was nervous. Now that he had that information, it wasn’t so annoying.
“You know, it’s depressing when you’re everyone’s second choice,” Sarah continued. “I only had her. Everyone else in our circle was Lauren’s friend. I was there, and I’d known her the longest, but I wasn’t in the inner circle. Never slept over at their houses, or invited them to mine. Lauren was my best friend, and I didn’t really need anyone else, you know?”
He leaned forward, setting down his fork. “I do. I understand completely.” How shocking, that he had this in common with Sarah. He’d never wondered about Sarah’s other friends. He’d had no reason to.
She smiled sadly. “Of course you get it. So anyway, Lauren was too loyal to cut me off, but I wasn’t . . .” She shook her head, started to do another hair swoop, then stopped herself with a half smile at Josh, silently acknowledging her habit. “Whatever. Everything came easily to Lauren. Friends, guys, grades. She was so pretty and fun. Everyone wanted to be around her.”
Josh nodded. “I felt the same way. She could’ve had . . . I don’t know.” Who was that character Lauren had so crushed on? “She could’ve had Jon Snow. But she picked me, and I’m still not sure why.”
Sarah smiled. “Ah, she adored you, Josh. Right from the start.”
“And she always thought of you as her best friend. When we first started dating, she never said your name without the
title. ‘My best friend, Sarah. Sarah, my best friend.’”
Sarah wiped her eyes. “That’s nice to hear.” She swirled the remaining wine in her glass, studying the deep golden color. “When she got sick,” she said quietly, “I thought it had to be a joke. Like, if anyone should be the dying friend, it should be me. Like she was too golden to have anything but perfection.”
Josh stifled the urge to wish it had been Sarah. He’d already thought it a number of times, anyway. He felt ashamed of that, of thinking Sarah’s life was worth less. She was someone’s daughter, too. Someday, someone would love her the way he loved Lauren. She’d probably become a mom, and she’d be a really good one. He shouldn’t judge.
“I was going to dump her as a friend,” Sarah said quietly. “In college. She got into RISD . . . I didn’t get into Brown. She lived in the coolest student housing ever; I was at URI in a triple with the girl in the top bunk drunk-puking on me four nights a week. Lauren was here on the Hill, so happy and confident that the world was hers, and I felt completely unremarkable by comparison. It bugged me so much I was thinking about transferring somewhere.”
“Why didn’t you?” he asked.
Sarah shrugged. “I had a good scholarship at URI. In my mind, I was brave enough to go out west, to California or Seattle, but in reality, I was in Kingston, thirty minutes from home. Every time I saw Lauren, she was telling me how fabulous and interesting school was, how cool her professors were . . . she was majoring in clothing design originally. I don’t know if you knew that.”
“I did.”
“Yeah. So she was taking classes like History of the Little Black Dress or whatever, making her own beautiful clothes, while I was slogging through statistics taught by these sleepy adjuncts who never bothered to know my name. I didn’t even know what I wanted to major in.”
“That’s not uncommon,” Josh said. Good job, he could just about hear Lauren say. Good sympathetic listening.
“So. I was sick of her sparkliness. Her perfect life. Her happiness, honestly. I was tired of comparing myself to her and coming up short. Everything about her was cool. Her married sister, her hot brother-in-law, her field of study.” She poured the remaining wine into her glass. Her eyes filled again with tears. “I wanted something crappy to happen to her, because it seemed like nothing ever did. So you were right. I was bitter and petty.”
“Why didn’t you, um, dump her?” he asked, a little fascinated.
“Her father died. And she was completely heartbroken.” Sarah wiped her eyes carefully, so as not to smudge her mascara. “The first bad thing that ever happened to her. Mr. Carlisle . . . he was the best. I still remember her voice when she called me. I knew right then and there something horrible had happened.”
And so Josh learned that Sarah’s own father had left when she was eight, popped out a few new children with his next two wives and had to be ordered into paying child support by the court. Sarah was her mother’s only child, alone to bear the contentiousness of the divorce and the neglect from her father. When Sarah did visit her father in Arizona, she was forced to babysit her younger half brothers and a stepsister, courtesy of her father’s second wife. Sarah had adored that little girl, but once her father divorced Wife Number Two, she never saw her again.
“So her family life . . . that was just one more thing she had that I didn’t. Did you know the Carlisles ate together every night? Every night! My mom worked nights, so I always made my own dinner. Frozen pizza and shit like that.”
Josh made a noncommittal noise. He and his mom had eaten together every night, too, and at least once a week with the Kims. Once in a while, his mom would go out with her friends or attend a lecture, in which case the Kims had him sleep over and treated him like their own son. From the age of eight until fourteen, he’d spent every afternoon at their house, fixing things in the basement with Ben, cooking with and being spoiled by Sumi.
The image of Sarah opening a cardboard box and eating pizza alone was awfully sad.
They ordered dessert, and the evening, which had been dragging earlier, was now quite . . . pleasant. Interesting. There was something to be said for this after all, this . . . interaction. Mining of information.
“Something happened to Lauren after her dad died,” Sarah said. “She grew up, I think.”
Josh nodded. “I thought so, too.” He hesitated, feeling slightly guilty. “The first time I met her, I thought she was a twit.”
“Are you serious?” Sarah exclaimed. “I thought it was love at first sight!”
“Second sight,” he admitted. “And I think you’re right. She had an easy life, and she was missing a little . . .” He paused to find the right word.
“Gravitas?”
“Yes. Exactly.” Was he gossiping about his wife? He pushed his fork into the unnecessary whipped cream that accompanied his cheesecake, making a pattern and then smoothing it out and repeating the motion carefully, finding peace in the repetition. “But the next time we met, she was different. There was more . . . there was more to her. And she was only eighteen that first time. She had the right to be . . . young. Carefree. Goofy.”
Sarah nodded and wiped her eyes, managing a smile. “She was awesome when she was goofy.”
That was the truth. Lauren could make everyone laugh, herself most of all. How many nights had she fallen asleep giggling at her own joke, or starting a tickle war with him? She’d laughed in her dreams, even. “What were some of the goofy things you guys did together?” he asked.
“Oh, God. We used to write romance stories in school about our teachers and pass them back and forth. We’d torture Jen if I was sleeping over, spying on her, hiding in her closet to scare her later. Lauren loved talking in an accent with strangers. Russian was her best, I think.”
He hadn’t known that. The little tidbits were better than the dessert. Things he could take home later and play over and over. He felt unexpectedly grateful to Sarah, sharing all these prized memories.
The server came over, asked if they’d like more coffee. “Just the check, thanks,” Sarah said, so that was the end of the evening, he guessed. It was strangely disappointing. He’d never enjoyed Sarah so much, this different, more honest side of her (and yes, hearing stories about Lauren).
“How are you doing with the letters?” Sarah asked when the server left.
He was silent a minute, considering his answer. “They’re . . . they’re good. They help.”
She waited for more, but he didn’t offer anything else. “Asmaa told me about the children’s garden, and how you’re volunteering there. Lauren would really like that.”
His throat tightened at her words. “Thanks,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.
“You made her so happy, Josh.”
He looked at the crisscrosses in the whipped cream, then smoothed them out and remade them, more carefully this time.
It’s okay to show how you feel, Lauren had told him on more than on occasion, especially after her diagnosis. You’ll be surprised at how kind most people are.
Easier said than done. But he forced himself to look at Sarah and gave a nod, abruptly glad that their dinner was over.
21
Joshua
Still damn month seven because time seemed frozen, letter number seven
September
IT WAS ONLY a few sentences, but those sentences made his joints zing with adrenaline and a little horror.
My sweet darling Josh, hello!
I have a wicked fun thing for you this month. You ready?
See a medium.
Oh, come on! Why not? It’ll be fun. You know you want to see if there’s a GB, my darling atheist. Give it a shot! You never know. Maybe I’ll appear and we can sneak off for a paranormal shag. Or maybe I’ll be busy doing angelic, miraculous things and you won’t hear from me. If that’s the case, know that I’m doing THE LORD’S WORK saving
children from being hit by buses, rescuing kittens, etc.
But I know what I believe: I believe in you and me. Forever.
I love you.
Lauren
She had to be kidding.
She wasn’t kidding.
This . . . okay, he would need help for this one. His mother was out; being Lutheran, her religious focus had been on ideas such as Jesus died horribly for you, you wretch, and therefore you should make casseroles for potluck suppers. Mrs. Kim, though, was a hard-core Catholic and had saints for every occasion.
He picked up his phone and called their landline, since they were of the demographic who only turned their cell phones on if they wanted to make a call. “Ben? Hi, it’s Joshua.”
“Hello, son. What’s new?”
“Um . . . do you know any . . . uh . . . any mediums?”
There was a long pause. “I think you better talk to Sumi,” he said. “She loves that crazy woman on TV. The one with the hair?”
“Yeah. Lauren did, too.” Which is probably why she gave him this ridiculous task.
“Hang on, Josh.” He passed the phone to his wife, saying, “Josh wants to see a medium.”
Sumi squealed with joy. “Oh, my darling, this is wonderful! Wonderful! I’m sure Lauren will come through for you, sweetheart, she loved you so! Loves you. You won’t regret this, these people, they’ve been blessed with a gift, it’s amazing, do you watch Long Island Medium? Or Mama Medium? They’re so gifted! I’ve been to a few of these, so I’ll send you a list, okay? Oh, this makes me so happy! So happy, Joshie. It will comfort you. You should take your mother! Wouldn’t that be fun?”
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