Little Universes

by Heather Demetrios

  Her skin goes blotchy. “I don’t want that. Call them back, Mae. I didn’t ask for that!”

  “If you had cancer, like Annie did, I’d stay. This is the same thing. Like Aunt Nora said, you have a disease. You’re sick. And if we don’t treat it, you could die. Or at least have a really awful life.”

  “You are making too big a deal of this!” Hannah says. “Seriously. Like, I’m sorry I didn’t come home one night—ground me or whatever. I don’t need this, like, this fucking intervention, and I don’t need you to give up your dreams, and this is so stupid, it’s just so—”

  Aunt Nora stands. “This isn’t about last night. It’s about all the weeks before that.”

  “But we’ll start with last night,” Uncle Tony says. He shoves his hands in his pockets. “You didn’t even call, Hannah. Your sister’s birthday, the first without your parents. We couldn’t believe it. Thought something terrible had to have happened for you to pull something like that. Didn’t want to worry Mae because she was already so upset about your dad, so we tried to handle it on our own. Your phone was off. I was getting ready to call the cops this morning, but then Mae told us about the pills. We were terrified. You were out in a snowstorm, on drugs. And then, considering who you were with—”

  Nah throws a look of pure hatred toward the chairs Nate and I sit in by the fireplace. “You don’t know Drew at all. You’re just judging him because he’s not like you, all brilliant and—”

  “We’re judging him because he sold you drugs, Hannah,” Nate says.

  “Not in forever!”

  Nate rolls his eyes. “Forever? Considering you’ve known him for about a month, that means he sold you some, what, last week?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Hey.” Aunt Nora glares at Nah. “There’s no excuse for that. Your cousin loves you. That’s why he’s here. I’m sure there are a lot more things Nate would rather be doing.”

  “Then he should go do them,” she snaps.

  Who is this girl? Where is my sister, who rubbed Mom’s lotion into my hands when I was sad?

  Aunt Nora seems to read my mind.

  “She’s in withdrawal. They said she’d be … irritable. Among other things.”

  Nah gives an inarticulate growl. “I don’t appreciate being talked about like I’m not here.”

  “And none of us appreciate being talked to like we’re the enemy,” Aunt Nora says. “We have to make some decisions about next steps. All of us.”

  She looks around, and I swear we’re suddenly in a courtroom and she’s about to give one of her opening statements. She’s decided Hannah is guilty, and now there will be consequences.

  “What are her options?” Nate asks.

  “They want me to go to fucking rehab,” Nah says. “Just because I came home one time on something—”

  “It wasn’t just one time,” Uncle Tony says. “You already admitted that at the hospital. You’ve relapsed, and we have to—”

  “Let’s see both of your parents die in a tsunami and see how you cope, Tony,” she says.

  He gives her a hard stare. “Let’s see you watch your daughter die of leukemia and see how you cope.”

  All of us flinch—Nah included.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers.

  “Do you see what this shit turns you into?” Uncle Tony says. “Do you know how lucky you are to be alive?”

  “Tony.” Aunt Nora gives a slight shake of her head, and he stands and crosses to the far side of the room, stares out the window. His hands are shaking. He’s not mad, I realize: He’s scared.

  He doesn’t want to go to another funeral.

  Nah’s hand floats to her stomach. I can see my sister retreating to wherever she goes when she thinks about the clinic.

  “It helped last time, when you did the outpatient program,” I tell her. “People often have to go more than once. When I was doing research—”

  “I don’t want to hear about your goddamn research, Mae!”

  “Hannah, you have a serious addiction,” Aunt Nora says. “You’ve already been in detox and outpatient group therapy this year alone. On top of that, you’ve suffered enormous trauma losing your parents, and the move, not to mention—”

  She stops, uncertain, and Hannah stares at me.

  “You told them about the clinic?”

  “I had to, Nah. The secrets aren’t helping.”

  “That wasn’t your story to tell. Mom and Dad said that all of this was my story to tell!”

  “When they were HERE,” I yell. Then I remember that I have to be calm under pressure. I take a breath. “They said that because they knew and they could help. But now they’re gone, and Aunt Nora and Uncle Tony have their job.”

  Aunt Nora’s face softens. “Honey, your parents were right not to gossip about you. But they also had to hold a lot on their own, and I’m not sure that was such a good thing. Your mom especially, what with everything we all know now about your father. If she’d told me about this earlier, about everything you were dealing with, I could have helped.”

  I burst into tears. All of it coming up, like the wave: the truth about Dad and how hurt Mom must have been, her holding so much inside her, and Nah being so sick and me loving Ben but being too scared to tell him, and not going to Annapolis.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  I don’t know what I’m apologizing for. I don’t think it matters.

  Nate wraps his arms around me, then pulls me onto his lap like I’m a little girl and it’s embarrassing but nice to cry into a T-shirt that says STRING THEORY with an illustration of a cat tangled up in a ball of yarn.

  I can hear Hannah crying, too, but I don’t look.

  “Good, Buzz. Let all that shit out,” he murmurs.

  It does feel good. Like someone released a pressure valve I didn’t know I had. I wish I could cry more. I see why people do it now.

  “Mae,” Hannah says. “I … I’m sorry. I am. I really am.”

  I look up at her. She’s a little blurry.

  “Then let us help you,” I say.

  “The doctors at the ER recommended Hannah do an intensive inpatient program,” Aunt Nora says. “There’s one out in Belmont. But we’ll do the detox first and the outpatient program at Boston Children’s. If that goes well, then the inpatient rehab won’t be necessary—other than detox, Hannah will be home with us each night.”

  “It’s Thanksgiving in three days,” Nah says. “Can’t I do all this after?”

  She doesn’t say: our first without them.

  Aunt Nora’s eyes well up. “Sweetie, we want you to have a lot more Thanksgivings. That’s why we’re doing this. You know we can’t wait on the detox.”

  “What exactly … How does this detox thing work?” Nate asks.

  Uncle Tony tries to explain, because Nah has gone silent, into herself. Every now and then, one of her legs kicks out, an involuntary spasm. I read about this—it’s where the phrase kicking the habit comes from. Nah has done detox before, but she refused to ever talk about it with me. Just said it was worse than death.

  But we know better now. Nothing can be worse than that.

  Uncle Tony tells Nate the things I read about online. Detox is basically three or four days of Nah battling her own body. Like a knock-down, drag-out under her skin. Either she kicks the habit, or the habit kicks her.

  “I don’t need that,” Nah insists. “The pills just help me feel normal. I don’t even get high anymore when I take them, not really. If I can just get some Suboxone to taper off—”

  “The fact they make you feel normal means you’re addicted,” Aunt Nora says.

  It’s true. The more opiates you have in your system, the more dependent the brain gets on those chemicals, and the opiates begin to have a normalizing effect.

  “You heard what the doctor said: This can cause brain damage, Hannah,” Uncle Tony says. “A stroke. Heart and cognitive defects. You don’t get that Suboxa stuff, whatever it’s called, until
you’ve detoxed. It won’t work otherwise, the doctor said that. We have to get you back to normal before you—”

  My sister explodes.

  “There IS NO GETTING BACK TO NORMAL. My parents are dead. There is no normal, not ever again. So don’t fucking sit there and tell me that I’m gonna go to detox or rehab or whatever and then everything will be great, because it won’t.”

  Uncle Tony goes red in the face, but Aunt Nora puts a hand on his arm and I think he literally bites his tongue. I bet he’s drawn blood.

  I stand and cross the room. Sit down next to her. “The pills won’t bring them back,” I say. “I know sometimes they help you forget how bad it is—but isn’t everything worse, when the pill wears off? Worse than before you took them?”

  Her eyes fill. “You don’t understand.”

  I stare at her. “How can you say that, Nah? I lost them, too.”

  “But you don’t know what it’s like to be me,” she says. Great, big fat tears roll down her face. “You have a future, a life. I have nothing. I’m probably not even going to graduate. I have lost everything. Everything in less than a year.”

  “You have me,” I say. “You will always have me.”

  “I won’t. You’ll be gone by July first.”

  She remembered. The exact date that Plebe Summer begins. I didn’t think she was ever really listening when I talked about school stuff, but she was.

  “I told you, I’m not going,” I say. “There are tons of schools here. You have me. Always.”

  For just a second, her eyes soften a bit, but then she sets her chin. Stubborn. “Mae, you knew my boyfriend was cheating on me, and you didn’t tell me. I get you thought you were helping me, but you weren’t. And now I can’t trust you. So what makes you think I’ll want to spend another second under any roof with you once we graduate?”

  This is her addiction talking. I know that. But what if it’s not? What if I gave up Annapolis for nothing?

  “Enough. Enough of this.” Aunt Nora’s voice is trembling. “Do you know what I would give to have my sister back? To be sitting on that couch with her?”

  She kneels on the rug in front of us, her hair a mess of black tangles. Nah looks like a carbon copy of Mom, almost, but Aunt Nora looks like her, too.

  “My sister is dead.”

  This woman in front of me: This is how I would be, if I lost Nah.

  “I have to remind myself of this every morning when I wake up,” she says, “because I forget. I wake up and I think, I have to tell Lila I had the most awful dream about her. This horrible wave, and I was searching in the rubble, looking and looking … and then I remember.”

  She clasps her hands together, tight, like she’s praying, but there’s no one to pray to.

  “And I tell myself, I have to tell myself: Lila is dead. My sister is dead.

  “Sometimes I’m angry at her. I told you, Li. I told you not to go. Because I did, and she went anyway. Stubborn as hell. Hannah, you’re just like her.”

  Aunt Nora starts to cry, and Uncle Tony sits on the couch near her, his own face crumpling. Nate comes over, too, kneels beside her, his hand on her arm, the bangles from India he’s wearing jangling quietly.

  “It does something to you, being furious with your dead sister first thing in the morning.” Aunt Nora shakes her head, wipes her runny nose with the back of her hand. “It’s hardest around nine at night, though. That was our time. I would call her and she’d be making dinner. I’d be cleaning up. Sometimes the old grandfather clock downstairs chimes and I reach for the phone. Isn’t that strange? I still reach for her.”

  She takes in a shuddering breath. Looks from Nah to me.

  “When the sky is dark and the moon is out, I’m not angry at her anymore,” she whispers. “I just want her help. I don’t think I believe in anything—an After. But I still tell her, every night: Help your girls, Li. Help them find their way back to each other.”

  She grabs our hands. “It’s not good when sisters don’t stay up together late at night. When they stop giggling and having secrets together. It’s not good when they don’t knowingly catch each other’s eyes or borrow each other’s clothes or do each other’s makeup. I would give anything to be able to walk down a hallway, open a door, and see my sister’s face. You both lost so much. But you have each other. Don’t let the wave take that, too.”

  Hannah lets out a shuddering sob, her shoulders caving in. I wrap an arm around her and she falls into me, her head in my lap, like she did with Mom. I rub slow circles over her back, my palm against her thin shirt.

  Aunt Nora stands, kisses us both on the head, then motions for Nate and Uncle Tony to follow her out of the room.

  I run my hand through Nah’s hair, just like Mom used to. The fire Nate built crackles, the sound a soothing background against Nah’s broken heart.

  “I tried,” she sobs. “I tried to quit, but then they found Mom’s … Mom’s body, and I … I just couldn’t, Mae. I can’t…”

  “That’s part of why I didn’t tell you,” I say. “About Micah. I should have. I just didn’t want to make it worse.”

  “I give up, Mae.” Nah looks up at me with tearstained eyes. “I give up.”

  I don’t know what this means. Giving up.

  “It’s not even December yet,” I say. “We can get you tutors, get your grades up. You know, Scott Kelly was like you—not really into school. And now he’s the American record holder for most days in space. I’m sure—”

  She sits up. Wipes at her eyes. “I wasn’t … Never mind.”

  I don’t know what she wants. How to talk to her. To this person who craves nothing but pills and silence.

  “What do you want, Nah? Right now. In your life. What do you want? Because I know that if we can figure that out, we can fix this. We can.”

  She pulls the backs of her hands across her eyes, smearing eye liner and mascara. “I think that’s the problem. Part of it. I don’t want anything. I don’t feel anything. Everything I planned for—working with Mom at the studio, just being in LA and with Micah … it’s all gone.”

  “Well, you could work at a studio here. Or go to yoga school. Are there yoga schools? You could—”

  “It’s not … Without her … I can’t. I don’t even care, Mae. You don’t get it. I don’t care about anything.”

  I remember that Mom told me something they would say at Al-Anon meetings she and Dad went to, the meetings for people who love someone with an addiction. They would say Just for today. And this sounds like what River was talking about at Dharma Bums, about being in the present, riding the ride.

  “Then don’t think about the future,” I say. “Just think about now. This … moment. We can go moment by moment. I took a meditation class with Ben, and the teacher, River, she said all you need to worry about is the breath you’re taking right now. So just … take a breath. Then another. And once you’re off the pills for good, then maybe you’ll want things again. Other things.”

  “You sound like Mom,” she says.

  “I do?” This makes me warm, fills me up. I smile. “Then things are much worse than I thought.”

  She laughs a little. “Yeah, who would have thought you’d turn into some guru?”

  That laugh is a good sound.

  “Mom and Dad are gone, but we’re still here, Nah.” I rest my hand on her knee. “We’re still here. And no matter what happens, no matter how bad it gets, we can’t give up. We have to do right by the miracle.”

  She stares at me, a little spark of light finally coming into her eyes. “Do right by the miracle.”

  As much as I hate my dad right now, I owe him one for that bit of light.

  I nod. “Something Dad said in one of his talks.”

  “Dad said that?”

  “Yeah. Last year. That Big Questions conference in Dallas.”

  Her eyes fill, face crumbling a little. “I didn’t know.”

  “That’s okay. Dad said a lot of things.” I swallow. “He didn’t take
his own advice, though.”

  She shakes her head. “No.”

  “Aunt Nora says Mom knew. About … Rebecca.”

  Nah closes her eyes. “So she died knowing he didn’t love her anymore.”

  I dig my fingernails into my jeans. “She died knowing we loved her. Fuck him.”

  She stares at me. Smiles. “Yeah. Fuck him.”

  It doesn’t make me feel better. To hate him. How do you unlove someone?

  She stands. “Still. Maybe he was right. About the miracle.”

  “You’ll go—to detox?”

  Three days of hell that will feel like three years.

  My sister nods, then looks up past the ceiling, like she can see all the way through the atmosphere. “I’m still really mad at you.”

  And even though he’s not there, even though he’s just matter at the bottom of the ocean now, or in the belly of a shark, I know exactly who she’s talking to. And I feel the same way.

  30

  Mae

  ISS Location: Low-Earth Orbit

  Earth Date: 28 November

  Earth Time (EST): 17:32

  A supermassive black hole is big enough to hold the mass of four million suns. There’s a black hole at the center of our galaxy, but Earth is a safe distance from it, so we don’t get pulled in. But I can’t maintain a “safe distance” from my sister. She is the black hole that we orbit.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson says that black holes could possibly be tunnels through the universe. I’m hoping we can get to the other side of this black hole. Back to the Hannah I knew without pills.

  Today is Thanksgiving, the first without Mom and Dad, and the first without Nah, too.

  Because my sister is in detox.

  In a place with bright fluorescent lights and no sharp objects and strangers who don’t know that after the big dinner we’re supposed to all eat Mom’s homemade cinnamon ice cream sundaes and watch at least one Harry Potter movie (this year we’re on the third one, which is all of our favorites, and I bet Dad would have insisted we watch the fourth, too). Nate and Dad are supposed to argue about the aeronautical challenges of Quidditch, and Mom will decry the stereotype of Professor Trelawney and how it gives everyone the wrong idea about people like Mom and her coven, as Dad calls Cyn and Mom’s tarot friends. And Nah is supposed to be curled up on the couch with Micah, not some horrible Drug Boy who only wears black and probably secretly roots for the Yankees. And me? I’m just taking it all in.