At school, he’s a ghost, like her. Staring through all of us. I think maybe he really does love her. I can’t wrap my mind around a drug dealer not being a totally horrible person. It goes against everything I believe. He sold drugs to my sister. And I hate him for it. But I’ve asked around, and it’s true: He’s not dealing anymore. Maybe we’re wrong to try to keep them apart. Maybe that’s why she looks so empty.
“Nah.”
She looks at me now, her eyes dull. That bright, vibrant green now a faded sage, like old paint in a doctor’s office.
“I don’t want to go,” she says.
“What if I … snuck Drew in? So you guys can be together for a little bit. Would that help?”
I will break a rule. This is how desperate I am.
She looks at me. Through me. “I don’t want to see him.”
I cross the room and sit beside her. “You broke up?”
She leans her head against the wall, closes her eyes. “He can do better.”
I snort. “You’re kidding, right? He’s a drug dealer. I know you’re feeling bad, but—”
Her eyes snap open, and the first bit of light I’ve seen in them for a while flares. “He’s wonderful.”
I flinch under that stare. Drew called me out on my observational weaknesses, and maybe those don’t only extend to my sister. Maybe I’ve spent so much time with books and telescopes that I don’t see people anymore. Don’t see them right.
“Okay. Then why don’t you want to be with him?” I say.
I am trying to know her. To ask questions. But she makes it so hard.
Nah closes her eyes. Doesn’t answer.
I squeeze her hand. “Listen. I’ve been thinking. After graduation, let’s get an apartment. In Cambridge. Ben said he could get you a job at Castaways, and there’s a really cool yoga studio nearby where I do meditation. They have a teacher training course. You’d love that. We can paint every wall a different color, like Mom always said she wanted to, but Dad said would be like putting the boardwalk in our house. What do you think?”
Her brow furrows. “You’ll be at Plebe Summer. In Annapolis.”
You know what always got me, at the end of The Little Prince? How he went back for her. For the rose. He spent all this time traveling the universe, discovering its secrets, but he wanted to go back to this rose who told him off, lied to him, was never willing to accept his help—so stubborn: Let the tigers come with their claws! Still, he was willing to be bitten by a poisonous snake, which was the only way he could return to Asteroid B-612, to their planet, so that he could be with the rose again.
I don’t know if that’s beautiful or demented. He chains himself to that little asteroid, with that rose who is going to be pricking him with her thorns for the rest of his life. But she’s all he’s got. And he’s all she’s got.
And so he goes back.
But he has to die to get to her. I think. Or at least be really, really hurt. He has to sacrifice himself.
Love is the hardest thing to understand. But also the simplest. It defies all logic.
I swallow. “I’m going to MIT. I mean, if I get in. It’s obviously really hard. I have backups—Harvard. Well, Harvard’s not a backup, but you know what I mean.”
She stares at me. “What the hell are you talking about, Mae? I told you to reschedule the interview. I thought you—are you actually being serious right now?”
I’m not a great liar, but I try anyway. To make her think I am okay with this.
“Yes. Ben goes to MIT. So … you know. If I stay here, he and I can be—”
“You are not staying in Boston for me,” she growls. “And you would never stay for some person you were dating. Not even Ben.”
“Ben’s a bonus. He’s not the reason. Seeing Nate in the astronautical program has shown me how great their—”
She grabs my arm so hard I can feel the bruise form. “I am not your fucking responsibility.”
But she is. We are taming her, and now we are responsible. Forever.
“You’re my sister,” I say, “and I love you and I think it would be really cool to have an apartment together and live near my boyfriend and Nate, too, and … MIT is amazing. I can still get into NASA this way and—”
“I don’t want to live in your stupid apartment, okay?”
Mom, a little help. Please.
“But what will you do? School’s done in six months. Are you going to stay here, live with Aunt Nora and Uncle Tony by yourself? You’d be so bored! And lonely.” And maybe still on drugs. I rest a hand on her knee. “I know everything is so bad right now. But we need a plan. What do you want?”
She lets go of my arm. Stares into the street.
“Nothing,” she says, soft.
She’s like George Clooney’s character in Gravity, floating off into space. Farther and farther into the darkness, with nothing but a country song to sing him to sleep.
Work the problem. I have to work the problem.
“Then I’ll want for the both of us until you decide on something,” I say. “And I want you to be happy. And healthy. And alive. You deserve good things, Nah. A good life.”
She just looks at me.
“Starting with a brownie.” You have to start somewhere. “I’m bringing you a brownie. And then you can teach me some yoga. The stuff you and Mom did. Will you? Downward cat? Or whatever it’s called?”
I haven’t seen her do yoga since the wave. Her mat is always out in her room, like she’s waiting for the right moment.
“I’m tired.” She closes her eyes and leans her head against the window seat wall.
“Then I’ll bring coffee, too,” I say. She’s not the only Winters that gets to be stubborn.
She doesn’t move. A statue.
“Okay. I’ll be back soon. Coffee, brownie, yoga. Uncle Tony said he was gonna get a tree today, too. We could decorate later, if you want. We have some of the ornaments from LA. The egg from when we all went to Prague, remember? The one you love.”
I pick up the afghan, settle it around her. She doesn’t move.
I’m halfway out the door when she says, “Mae?”
“Yes?”
Nah opens her eyes long enough to look at me. “When you get to space, will you name a star after me?”
“Of course.” I know she’s trying to reassure me that I will still be an astronaut no matter what. I don’t know how she can keep her eye on my prize and not have one of her own. “What made you think of that?”
“I was thinking. You know, in The Little Prince. That line: ‘In one of those stars I shall be living…’”
When the Little Prince leaves Earth, he tells the pilot that when he looks up at the sky at night, the prince will be in one of those stars, laughing. “I shall not leave you,” he assures the pilot.
And then a poisonous snake bites him. And he leaves Earth forever.
“Will you?” Her voice is insistent. “Name one for me?”
“Sure. We’ll name it together. When I’m up there. I’ll send you a Hubble image of it,” I say. “After you see it, you can decide if you want it to be called Nah or Hannah or maybe—”
“You’ll pick the right thing,” she says, closing her eyes again. “You always do.”
The sunlight moves across her, leaving my sister in shadows.
I stand in the doorway, watching her. “I’ll be back soon, okay?”
She doesn’t open her eyes. Already gone to the places I can’t follow. A country song, playing in the dark.
33
Mae
ISS Location: Low-Earth Orbit
Earth Date: 5 December
Earth Time (EST): 15:37
Boston is a small world.
River is on my train, her eyes closed, palms on her thighs. Outright meditating on the subway. Her hair is covered by a turban so that she looks like a young Zadie Smith, and a thick scarf with a diamond pattern is tossed around her neck like a feather boa.
Mom, you would love her.
She laughs. “Gotta get your serenity on when you can, my friend. Especially during finals season. I would tell you never to go to grad school, but I doubt NASA would like that.”
Who am I if I’m not the girl who’s going to be an astronaut? I know I can’t assume that taking Annapolis off the table means I won’t be an astronaut, but it might make it harder, and it’s already almost impossible.
I sink into the plastic groove of the chair. This tiredness, it must be what getting old feels like.
“What’s on your mind, Mae?”
I’ve only been to Dharma Bums a few times, but River’s a regular at Castaways, too, so I’ve gotten to know her a bit these past few months. She hasn’t heard the whole Winters saga, but she knows about the wave, and a little about Nah.
“My sister got out of detox last week.”
“That’s heavy.”
“Yes.” I pull at my gloves. “I’m trying to help her, but she … she’s depressed. I don’t know how to fix it. I’m not a neuroscientist. Nothing I do works. She broke up with her boyfriend. Both of them. If I could just figure out how to help her, how to fix this—”
“Then everything would be all right?” She raises an eyebrow.
“Well, not everything. But some things.”
She cocks her head to the side. “How are you, Mae?”
“Me? I’m fine. But Hannah—”
“Mae.” Her voice is soft. “How are you?”
I swallow. “I feel … like I’m on a spaceship with a hole in it.”
River nods as she runs her fingers through the ends of her scarf. “I think everyone feels that way, at one point or another. The First Noble Truth, and all.”
Life is suffering. These Buddhists don’t go for the happily ever after. I think that is why I like so many of them. Normal people don’t talk this way, but I have never been good around normal people. It’s nice not to talk about TV or celebrities or diets.
“I keep trying to make sense of everything,” I say. “But I can’t. All the ways I know don’t work. This guy in her life—he’s a jerk, but he said something that was right. That I don’t know my sister. And so I’ve been trying this past week—asking her questions. Just sitting with her. Trying to understand her. But it’s not working. Nothing makes her happy.”
“Ever heard of hungry ghosts?”
I shake my head. “Buddhist thing?”
“Buddhist thing.” The train stops, and River glances at the door. “You on for a little longer?”
I nod. “I’m meeting Ben at Castaways.”
“Okay, then.”
River shifts so she’s facing me better. The people around us have earbuds in or are reading books or tablets. Someone is talking loudly on their phone. Something about broken Christmas lights and a cat. All of us bundled in coats and scarves even though it’s stuffy in here, holding bags from holiday shopping or backpacks heavy with books for finals studying. The floor is wet with melted snow. This is a good place for a dharma bomb to go off.
“In Tibetan Buddhism, hungry ghosts are these demons who keep trying to fill the holes inside them with people and things and experiences, but nothing ever satisfies,” she says. “Never fills the hole. Never gives them lasting happiness. It’s a fucked-up, never-ending cycle of misery. They live with the illusion that happiness comes from outside themselves, so they keep looking for the thing that will give it to them. Until they realize there is nothing in this world that will give them happiness, they will keep starving.”
I stare at her. “Like in Bleach.”
“What’s that?”
“This manga series I love. There are these monsters that the main character has to fight—they’re called Hollows. Ghosts who haven’t passed over. They terrorize the living because they have unfinished business, and they roam around, trying to feed their souls, but it doesn’t work, and then Reapers have to kill them for good or send them to a better place.”
“Cool. When I’m done reading about gender constructs in the eighteenth century, I’ll have to check it out.” I laugh. Wow, am I glad I chose the sciences. “Yeah—hungry ghosts are definitely hollow. That’s a good way of thinking about it. It’s like when you’re sad, and you think a new girlfriend or a new haircut or outfit will make you happier. But you get those things, and you still feel empty inside. Our suffering comes because we think people or things are for keeps. They’re not. Or we think they’ll solve our problems. They won’t.”
“My sister’s a hungry ghost,” I say. “I think she’s been one for a long time.” I frown. “But I don’t understand why. I mean, it would almost make sense if I were the one with the problems—being a foster kid, all that. Hannah had this perfect life—my parents, good school, money. She’s so pretty. When she’s not on pills, she’s really funny and weird, but good weird. I know she has depression—even before my parents died, I knew that. I just don’t understand why. Or how to convert her sadness into something like happiness.”
“You can’t make her better, Mae. That’s Hannah’s job.”
The train lurches to another stop—I glance at the sign on the platform. One more.
“But she can’t do her job—of getting better. She needs help. She needs me. Or … someone. Something. I don’t know.”
I feel like I’m saying Ben’s favorite words more and more these days. I hate that I can know so much about astrophysics and so little about human beings. Drew was right about me getting an A in AP Psych, but I don’t know how that happened.
“Do you think you can control what’s going on inside her?” River asks. “Or that you can fill the hollowness she’s experiencing?”
“No. But I can show her how to do that—like meditation, right? Or figure out who can help her. I can’t just accept my sister’s depression, or addiction. Then I’d be accepting Hannah ruining her life. Wasting it. My parents—if they saw what was happening to her … I can’t give up on her. That would be wrong. Selfish.”
River’s quiet for a moment. Twists a silver ring around her middle finger. When she looks up at me, her eyes have a slight mist over them.
“My brother died a few years ago,” she says. “Heroin overdose.”
People say things to me: I’m sorry, Oh my god, I didn’t know. Silence, I have learned, is golden. I rest my hand over hers. River’s fingers tighten around mine.
I am so afraid I will have to say those same words to someone someday: My sister. Died. Overdose.
“I spent years trying to help him. In and out of rehab,” she says, her voice quiet beneath the roar of the train as it crosses the Charles, where, even in this cold, there are rowers pushing through the midnight-blue water. “My parents went completely broke. I’d get calls in the middle of the night to come pick him up in these shady-ass places. He’d cry, you know? Feel so bad. Wanted to get better. Couldn’t. Manipulated us. God, he was so good at that. You never knew when he was lying or telling the truth. My parents actually gave him opiates once because he convinced them he’d kill himself if they didn’t give him his stash back. He overdosed more times than I can count. I carried Naloxone in my purse—we all did—just in case he ODed when we were around. I had to use it twice.”
“She’s not at that point yet,” I say.
But I have it in my purse, too. I did my research. It’s the only drug that can counteract the effects of an opiate overdose.
“And I hope she never will be. But I hear myself in you, Mae. I hear myself living in constant fear. That I was going to lose him, that it was my fault. That I could fix him or find the answers he was looking for. And the fear of losing him—it made me a hungry ghost. Because I thought that without him, I’d die, too. In our practice, we call this clinging. We cling to the things and people we love because we think they are the source of happiness and light and life for us. But this isn’t true. It can’t be. Becaus
e nothing and no one lasts forever. You know this more than maybe anyone I’ve met. When we cling, we set ourselves up for so much unnecessary suffering. I was holding on so tight—but in the end, I lost him anyway.”
River rests a hand on my arm. “You’ve got to let go of what you had as a family—before the pills, before the wave. Honor it, but let it go. You can’t hold on to the past, Mae. It’s gone. Something new will grow in its place, but you have to make space for it. At the same time, you can’t live in the future. Because then you miss out on now. And now is the only thing you’re guaranteed. You’re a scientist, you know this stuff: It’s the nature of existence. Everything winks out. Including, someday, you. We have to be okay in the face of that.”
“I can’t lose her,” I say, my voice breaking.
The smile River gives me is kind, a smile from the other side of a journey I don’t want to be on.
“My love, she was never yours to begin with.” She reaches out, wipes my tears away.
Somehow, in the past few months, I’ve learned how to cry.
“You’re telling me to give up on her,” I say. “Give up responsibility. So I just let my sister be addicted so I can live my great life in the present moment and enjoy her for the short time we have?”
She shakes her head. “It sounds like apathy, like we choose inaction, but that’s not what I’m saying. The chaos of life is still there, and we are still living and hoping and dreaming and loving and helping. But we aren’t ruled by the chaos, by our fear of what might happen in the future. And we don’t believe the lie that we can somehow control the chaos. That’s impossible—it’s chaos: by definition, not controllable. And once you realize that you, Mae Winters, can’t control the outcome of your sister’s addiction, there’s freedom—in the chaos, you can be free. To show up for this day, this moment, this sister. Right here, right now. You can’t control this ride—hers or yours. But how you take the ride, that’s up to you.”
“But what if … what if you’re all alone on the ride?”
River’s eyes stay on mine as she speaks, and it makes me feel like a captain on a boat, steering toward a distant horizon. “You’re not alone, Mae. Not really. Your love for your sister, your parents—my love for my brother—and the love they have for us: That’s for keeps, my friend. No matter what happens, through all the impermanence of things, that’s for keeps. It’s what makes the ride worth taking—even if there’s sometimes an empty seat next to you.”
Little Universes Page 29