Little Universes

by Heather Demetrios

  The day we leave, exactly one month after the wave—September 29—Cynthia comes to say goodbye. She takes me aside and presses a tarot deck into my hands. It’s a Rider-Waite-Smith deck, like the one I have but a different version.

  “I read your mom’s cards with this the day before she left,” Cyn says. “This was the deck she bought me, years ago.”

  I stare at the box, which has The Magician on the front, holding a wand up high, an infinity symbol traced over his head. As above, so below.

  “Did she get Death?”

  Cyn shakes her head. “She got The Fool.”

  “The Fool?”

  Starting a journey. I guess that makes sense.

  “I’ve been thinking about it a lot,” she says. “You know what I’ve decided?”

  “Huh?”

  “Death is just the beginning.” She wraps her arms around me. “You have so much of her in you, honey. Don’t forget that. She was magic. So are you.”

  I almost tell her what I know, about Dad, but then Micah’s there looking shattered. I let go of Cyn and follow Micah to the little wall that runs along the bike path on the beach. He sits down and pulls me onto his lap and I bury my face in his neck. I hear him sniffling, and when I look up, there are tears rolling down his cheeks and I hate the world. I hate it so much.

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” he says.

  He looks as lost as I feel.

  “I love you,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry.”

  Is this the end—the real end? I don’t want to be alone. And I can’t imagine losing him, too.

  “There’s nothing to be sorry for,” he murmurs.

  His arms tighten around me, and I can’t help but think about the stories of people whose kids or wives or parents were pulled out of their arms by the wave. It doesn’t matter how tightly you hold on to someone. Eventually you have to let go.

  But I don’t know how.

  We stay like that until Mae softly calls my name.

  “The airport shuttle’s here,” I say.

  He presses his lips to my forehead. “Call me from the airport.” My cheek. “Call me when you get in.” The tip of my nose. “Call me in the middle of the night, and every second of every day.” My lips. “Call me.”

  I can taste his tears and mine. “I will.”

  “I’ll be there for Christmas. And we’ll make lots of hot Los Angeles love.”

  I laugh a little. “It’s a deal.”

  “It’ll be perfect. Just a couple months away,” he says, his fingers trailing along my jaw. “And then you’ll come back and we’ll get our own place and … It’s just nine months, right?”

  That number. Why does it have to be that exact number?

  “Yeah.”

  Except that the last time someone I loved got on a plane, I never saw them again. Everything feels like it’s made of glass: me and Micah, the future, my body.

  I start to walk away, but he pulls me back. “You’re not just my girlfriend—you’re my family. We’ll get through this.”

  Later, on the plane, I catch myself staring out the window as we fly over fields and cities and rivers and highways. Looking hard at the clouds, at the rips between the white and gray. I think I’m looking for them. I don’t know where they are, what they are. I don’t know if they were taken on purpose or not. Can they see me?

  I catch myself looking for Micah, too.

  It feels like he’s a ghost already.

  Mae leans her head against my shoulder. “They have Toy Story. Want to watch together?” She tries to smile. “‘To infinity and beyond.’”

  Our thing.

  I look away. “Disney lied. Infinity doesn’t exist.”

  “Well, actually, if you consider—” I give her a look, and she stops.

  I don’t want to be conscious anymore. Then I have to think about new schools and a house that smells different from mine and a whole life of waking up and remembering they’re gone.

  I push an eye mask over my eyes. Mae rests her head on my shoulder, and we sleep our way across the country.

  i want to go home, but i don’t have one.

  Baggage Claim Carousel

  Logan Airport

  Boston

  12

  Hannah

  There’s a place between waking and sleeping, and I try to stay there.

  It’s warm, like bathwater. It tastes like forgetting.

  I just want to never leave, huddled under the blankets, curled in on myself. Floating.

  I have three Vicodin left of Dad’s month supply. Mae kept me from going to the boardwalk to get more from Priscilla. I need to conserve them until I find a dealer here. I had a quit attempt yesterday, but by noon I gave up. I’ll get good again—I just need to get through the next … I just need to get through.

  I hear the door open—it creaks, this strange, new door in my strange new room.

  “Nah?”

  I don’t say anything, just scoot closer to the wall. Mae lies down and throws an arm over me.

  “I feel like I’m in a black hole,” I say. This is speaking Mae’s language.

  “Did you know that a black hole is actually a collapsed star?” she says. I shake my head. “To escape it, you’d have to travel FASTER than the speed of light. Which is really fast.”

  “How fast?”

  “Six hundred seventy million miles per hour.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Right?” she says. “That’s why a black hole is black—not even the light can escape it.”

  Mae sits up, pulling her knees against her chest. She’s wearing her favorite striped vintage pajamas, with embroidered roses stitched along the collar. “I keep thinking about Dad’s book. How he’s not going to write it.”

  I’m scared to touch on Dad. I think I kind of hate him now.

  “Maybe you can write it yourself someday.”

  She bites her lip. “I’m not going into theoretical studies, though. I mean, maybe on the side, but when you’re in the space program, you give up a research career.” She brightens a little. “Maybe I could talk to Becca—you know, his research assistant. We could cowrite it, maybe. I bet she has all his notes. She’s super into axions.”

  I close my eyes. I could tell her. I should tell her. I think Mae was pissed about not being asked to go to the clinic with me. About being left out of something so important. I don’t want her to feel like I’m hiding something from her. But when I look at my sister in the dim light of my room, I see a spark in her eyes that hasn’t been there for a month.

  “What about Tim? He worked with Dad longer,” I say. “Or one of the MacDougal genius guys.”

  “MacArthur. It’s a MacArthur Fellowship.”

  “Okay, whatever—you know what I mean. Get the most qualified person. Not some assistant.”

  She nods. Then, because she’s Mae: “Hey, you want to know what I just read?”

  “Huh.”

  “Apparently, one of the prettiest things in space is when the astronauts dump their urine and it flash freezes. So when the sun hits the drops of urine, they’re like these diamonds floating in the sky.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “But kind of awesome.”

  We’re silent for a while, each lost in our own thoughts.

  “I haven’t been able to cry,” Mae whispers.

  The hurt in her voice carves out my insides.

  “I know,” I say. “It’s okay. People, like, deal in different ways. You know?”

  Like with prescription drugs you stole from your dead father. I want to tell her about Mom doing a headstand in my room, but I don’t want her to tell me I imagined it. That it’s not possible.

  She nods. “I feel like … I think it’s a distinct possibility there’s something wrong with me. Just a hypothesis. I need to conduct some experiments.”

  I sit up on my elbow. Mae is talking about feelings. This is … unprecedented.

  “There’s nothing wrong with you.” I sit up al
l the way, cross my legs. “You came out fucking great. I’m the one with struggles. You know that.”

  She shakes her head. “My parents died and I only cried once, when I was making the soup. I’m fucked-up.”

  She never curses. This is serious.

  I rest a hand on her knee. “Are you sad?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then you’re reacting in a totally normal way. Not everyone is a shit-show crier like me. If you’re sad, we can rule out total psychosis.” She laughs a little—my work here is done. Almost. I grab the bottle of Mom’s lotion off my bedside table. “Hold out your hand.”

  She smiles. Runs a finger over the bottle. How many times did we see Mom hit the pump of this Jergens bottle after cooking in the kitchen, or gardening?

  I squeeze a dollop onto her palm, then rub it into her skin, which is so translucent you can see bright blue veins running beneath it, like rivers on a map. My skin is darker, olive. Light, but with a dash of Mediterranean.

  “Magic potion,” I say. “Remember how she used to stand by the kitchen window and rub it onto her hands for the longest time?”

  “And she’d be playing Joni Mitchell or Enya.”

  “Yeah.”

  My sister’s hands are small, but her fingers are long and thin. Elegant and scholarly. Not stubby like mine. Her nails aren’t bitten and covered in chipped black paint like mine, either. They are neatly filed, bare with little half-moons peeking over the cuticles.

  “Remember how Mom and Dad were always trying to get you to take piano lessons, because of your fingers?” I say.

  She snorts. “And they didn’t give up until I proved that proficiency in math does not guarantee musical aptitude.”

  Finished, I reach over and press the bottle once more, creamy white Jergens spreading onto my palm.

  “Why Jergens?” Mae asks. “Always this cheap drugstore stuff.”

  Original scent. Cherry almond essence. She never switched it up.

  “It’s what Yia-yia used,” I say. “Her whole life, after she came to America. When she died, I remember Mom going into her bathroom at the nursing home and taking out the bottle. She was kind of hugging it to her chest. She told me how, when she was little, Yia-yia used to give Mom manicures, and she’d always rub this lotion on her hands first.”

  “I never knew that,” Mae says. She runs her fingers over her palms. “Mom painted my nails the night Riley left for China. Do you remember? Each nail a different color.”

  I nod. “Breakup nails.” I look down at my hands, at the chipped polish, the nails I’ve bitten so much they bleed. “What’s gonna happen to us?”

  “It’s already happening,” she says softly.

  “God, I miss Micah so much. And I saw him just, like, twenty-four hours ago.”

  I don’t remember what it’s like to be mad at him. Absence maybe does make the heart grow fonder. I don’t know.

  “You guys have been together for three years—you have nothing to worry about.” Mae’s lips turn up a little. “He worships you.”

  I give her a sly glance. “Maybe you’ll find a nice Boston boy. Or girl.”

  She shakes her head. “No. I have to stay focused. There’s no point. I’m joining the military in July.”

  I never thought about it that way, but she’s right. If Mae gets into Annapolis, which she will, she’ll be in the navy for the next nine years. Then she’ll be in Houston or wherever astronauts live these days. Russia, maybe. God, that’s far.

  It hits me then. I haven’t just lost my parents and Micah. I’ve lost Mae, too. Somehow in all of this, I’d forgotten that there are more goodbyes.

  I slide my hand under my pillow, touch the tiny envelope of pills. Later. I will be able to float later.

  “Sometimes I … It feels like they’re … here. Sort of. Can you…” I take a breath. “I know you don’t believe in this stuff, but—can you feel them?”

  She looks up at me. “Yes.”

  I blink. “Really?”

  I thought my sister would give me that look. The science one.

  She nods. “But I still think that’s just our imaginations playing tricks on us.”

  “Where do you think they are now?” I ask.

  Mom believed in Something Else. I do, too—I just don’t quite know what it is. It’s the feeling I get when I go to Saint Cecelia’s and light candles with Gram or when we’re doing Kirtan chanting at the yoga studio. Places Something Else lives full-time.

  “I think they’re somewhere in Malaysia. Decomposing.” She looks stricken. “Sorry. I just mean—”

  I shake my head. “I know what you mean. But you’re wrong. They’re out there—their essence, spirit, something is out there. A knowing thing. A remembering thing.” I rest my palm against the place in the middle of my chest where I feel Something Else. “I think we all have a part of that—in us. Our soul, maybe, or just. I don’t know. Carl Jung called it a collective unconscious. I read that in one of Mom’s books. Like all of humanity has this giant spirit hive mind we can tap into.”

  She raises her eyebrows. “I didn’t know you read Jung.”

  There’s a lot people don’t know about me. Don’t see. I just shrug. “He’s cool.”

  “Stephen Hawking thinks it’s possible we … encrypt ourselves on the universe when we go. I mean, this is a really simplified explanation. He wasn’t able to prove that, though, and now he’s gone. So it’s possible you and Carl Jung are a little correct.”

  I roll my eyes. “But only if you can prove it.”

  “Well, if you can’t prove it, it’s just a theory. It might be workable, but it’s still not conclusive.”

  Sometimes my genius sister can be pretty dense.

  I run my finger over the charm that used to be Mom’s—a blue-and-white circle, smaller than a penny. It’s this Greek thing, supposed to be protection against the evil eye. Mae would never wear something superstitious, but it makes me feel closer to Mom. I don’t know why she didn’t wear it in Malaysia. Maybe she was afraid it’d get lost when she was swimming. Maybe it would have protected her somehow.

  “Mae, I know you’re a scientist. I get that. But you can’t tell me you don’t believe there is something, anything, out there. People have pretty much proven the existence of ghosts. And Mom’s intuition—I mean, how could she know things were going to happen before they did? And remember how Yia-yia would always know she was going to get a letter in the mail and from who and then it would be there, in her mailbox? Or, like, how the cards are always right? Something is behind all that. I mean, look how complex we are. You can’t simply evolve into something that composes a symphony or choreographs a ballet.”

  “You’re talking about ‘God.’”

  “Not God with a capital G. But a knowing … presence. Something so much more evolved than us that we don’t even have words to describe it—you know?”

  “Like colors?”

  “Huh?”

  She scoots closer. “There is so much we can’t view with the naked human eye. We can’t see infrared or ultraviolet—which means we only see a fraction of the colors in the universe, unless we have the aid of scientific instruments. But those colors—they’re there, even though we can’t see them.”

  “I guess that’s what I mean. Yeah.”

  Mae’s quiet for a moment. She’s got her thinking face on. “Sometimes I think about how there are billions of galaxies in the universe—maybe more. And my mind short-circuits, just trying to imagine that. We’ll only ever get to see the tiniest FRACTION of it. Or I think about how our individual lives seem so important, but we’re just blips on the timeline of human existence.”

  “But blips matter. Think about the Butterfly Effect—how one tiny act somewhere on Earth can change the whole course of history.”

  Mae smiles. “You sound like Mom.”

  “You sound like Dad.”

  These were the kinds of talks that we used to have around the dinner table—never arguing, just passionate c
onversation and lots of questions.

  I lie down, stare at the ceiling. This one doesn’t have cracks.

  “We’ll never see them again,” I whisper.

  Mae lies down next to me and slips her fingers through mine. “No.”

  And I think, with her here, with the possibility of Something Else: Maybe I don’t need the pills. After these ones, I mean. Maybe I can stop.

  We fall asleep, hand in hand, curled against each other, like twins in a womb. When I wake up, Mae is gone.

  So are my pills.

  This right here, this is the Three of Swords card, each blade sticking into a heart: Betrayal.

  Here I thought we were having a moment, and all she was trying to do was steal my fucking pills. Did she lie awake, waiting to make sure I was asleep?

  I throw off the covers, ready to tear into her, but then I stop, because I can already see how this will play out. This argument in which I try to reason with the Queen of Swords—the embodiment of logic—about how it was wrong of her to flush her sister’s stolen opiates down the toilet.

  I’m tired of losing things: pills, pride, people.

  There is no point arguing, defending yourself. Everyone just decides who you are—that you’re a zero, a druggie—and nothing you do or say changes that. Once you get labeled an addict, that’s it. You’re fucked for life. That’s why at meetings they don’t let you say, Hi, I’m Hannah and I WAS an addict. No. You have to say, I AM an addict.

  They never let you fucking forget.

  At Al-Anon, where the parents go to bitch about us losers, I heard they have this saying, this fucked-up joke: How do you know an addict is lying?… Because she’s talking.

  So maybe it doesn’t matter, the trying. No one’s gonna believe me anyway.

  13

  Mae

  ISS Location: Low-Earth Orbit

  Earth Date: 2 October

  Earth Time (EST): 21:30

  It’s cold in Boston.

  And beautiful.

  The leaves on the trees are russet, scarlet, gold. People wear scarves and wool coats now that it’s getting colder, and they walk quickly, with a lot of purpose. They have stiff upper lips.