Before Everything

by Victoria Redel

  —

  Years later at the Bengal Tiger, over Helen’s spring break, she told Caroline that Molly had a girlfriend.

  Caroline held a forkful of saag paneer midway to her stunned, open mouth. “As in lesbian?”

  “Yup, as in totally, completely lesbo.” Helen sounded so easy with what Caroline was having trouble wrapping her mind around.

  “But wait?” Caroline said. “She didn’t cut off all that beautiful hair?”

  Helen’s abrupt laugh blew out the votive candle on their cloth-covered table.

  “I’m tempted to tell you she’s gone all butch with a crew cut, a biker jacket, and a trucker wallet. But Molly’s still her long-haired self. She’s still her same gorgeous, irresistible Molly. She just likes women.”

  How long had it been since Caroline had seen Molly? More than three years. What else had changed in her friend? Things had certainly changed in Caroline’s life. Molly didn’t even know about Elise’s psychotic break. Or Caroline’s subsequent panic attacks. Caroline dropped out of school, waking anxious and hiding out in her parents’ home. As if Elise’s break were contagious. She spent three years helping Elise and waiting for her own crack-up. She’d just begun driving again. She’d even driven Helen to dinner.

  “Would Molly think it was weird if I called?”

  “Oh, my God, call her. Please.”

  She missed Molly. She wouldn’t have been embarrassed in front of Molly. Molly might have called her a nervous Nellie, but she’d have said it with love. She could see how Molly would wrinkle her nose and say, Don’t worry, you’ve never been at all like Elise. You’re really normal. This is just a temporary bout of weirdness. She missed Molly, and she missed being a part of the larger group, which she learned from Helen still hung out together, even traveling to get to know one another’s college friends. She’d given up the solidity of this. For what? Even if Molly’s changes had scared Caroline back in high school, now Caroline understood that they were all changing all the time. That was a given. The beauty of these friends was just that—they actually wanted to stay with one another through all the changes.

  “Are you sure Molly won’t think my call’s too late?”

  “We’d all be thrilled, because Molly would finally shut up about how hurt she is that you abandoned her for being a raging teenage slut.”

  “Well, she was.” Caroline gave her best shoulder shimmy.

  “Oh, she still is. But now she’s a madly-in-love lesbian slut.”

  —

  Caroline looked at her phone, the icon circling as it tried to connect. The screen said ICE. Danny was her “In Case of Emergency.” Not even his name on the screen, just ICE. She wanted to hear his voice. Needed it. She’d been able to stay steady because Danny was so solid. She wasn’t that same panicked girl she’d been, partly because Danny was a rock. He called her his wild thing, and compared to him she was a little wild. Her friends called Danny the good man. Good man sounded boring. Her life still sounded boring compared to the others’. But it was Molly who said that Caroline had to stop caring what things sounded like.

  “It keeps failing,” she said to no one now. Caroline pressed REDIAL. She felt a thickening and constriction in her throat.

  “Try the porch.” Helen came close, rubbing her own phone like a rabbit’s foot. “I got bars.”

  The Old Friends

  Nothing went unnoticed.

  What are you doing?

  You don’t even wear lipstick!

  That’s the exact shag haircut you had in tenth grade.

  Only now gray streaks instead of that Sun In bleach catastrophe.

  You couldn’t get away with anything. Which was, of course, horrible and the very best thing about having been friends forever.

  1976, Acid

  “Save us,” Anna says, climbing barefoot into Helen’s car. “We’re in a full-blown nightmare.” The whole drive back to Helen’s house, Anna and Ming alternating in breathless thanking Helen for saving them, for being a really good person and actually a perfect friend, and really, “Thank you, you saved us,” until Helen says shut up or she’d kick their barefoot tripping asses onto Hastings Road.

  They’d taken the hits with plans to wander to the Farm and be there by the time the acid kicked in. The girls all call it the Farm, but it was really an estate, not exactly abandoned but the stone mansion unlived in for years, a few pieces of furniture sheet-draped and a caretaker left to manage the grounds. The Farm was behind Caroline’s house. She’d shown them the break in a back fence. It was a magical place in the middle of their town of tidy lawns. A pond, a rose garden gone wild, and a maze of rocks and flowering shrubs. But beyond the derelict formal gardens, the land went wilder, high grasses unmowed, blackberry tangles, and a pine forest with a soft, needled floor. The girls make a show of hiding from the caretaker, but they know he watches them. He seems not to care that they act like the place is theirs.

  For Ming and Anna, tripping at the Farm on a gorgeous day had seemed like a perfect plan. Pretty much perfectly thought out, pretty much a guarantee for a magical experience. But after they’d dropped, Ming’s father had had one of his Chinese conniptions, claiming Ming had no sense of family priorities. He yelled that she behaved like every foolish American girl. No honor for parents. No respect. All the yelling meant that Ming was to stay in and clean her room and take a verbal practice section of the college exam. And then, because she’d not obeyed with instant politeness, she needed to continue with additional house chores. Mostly Anna stayed put, hiding in Ming’s room tripping her brains out until Ming had done the final obeisance, which involved kneeling before her father and asking forgiveness.

  “Forgive me, Papa.” Ming demonstrates, kneeling on Helen’s kitchen floor and kissing Helen’s fingers. “I am not a worthy daughter.”

  Helen practically wets her pants as Ming describes vacuuming her bedroom with Anna curled on the bed terrified of getting sucked into the hose like a piece of lint.

  “It wasn’t funny,” Anna says. “None of it’s funny.” But it is funny Helen insists, especially when Ming admits she scored her highest on the practice test, particularly on the analogy section, which, despite swearing she’ll never ever trip again, makes it something to consider.

  Helen spreads blankets out in the backyard. “It’s not the Farm, but hey.” Helen’s parents are away for the weekend, so, as she declares, everything’s copacetic. The girls sprawl on blankets watching wind tousle the high crown of trees in the yard. Except for the trails Ming and Anna describe tracing their hands in the air, Helen’s pretty much keeping pace with their descriptions of shadow and light playing through the trees.

  “You’re like a natural high!” Anna shouts when Helen instructs them to squint and see how the tree arbor shimmers like a glittery web. And it’s Helen who finds three ladybugs in the grass, their mystical insect doubles.

  “Promise me.” Anna rises up on her elbows to stare hard at Helen. “You don’t need to do this. I don’t want you to ever trip.”

  Helen gives Anna her fiercest glare. Followed by the finger. Because—fuck you, she has no interest in taking acid. Fuck you—Anna knows that. Fuck you—right now, right here—even with Ming and Anna in their simpering state pledging to never do a drug again, it looks like fun, and—a final major fuck-you—why should Helen always be the one who does the saving?

  Press

  She’d known all day. One look at Helen and Anna knew. Anna saw her friend in the cream-colored dress, the lily of the valley tied with rough twine to hold in her paint-stained hands. Helen looking at Asa, who looked back at Helen. I do. I do. This would happen. In early-evening light, the achingly crisp summer light. Anna knew all this, and she knew, too, that Helen wanted to tell Anna, here, right now. Anna, I need to tell you something before I tell the others, she might begin. Or, Anna, I have a secret you’ll like. Instead, pressing thumbs alon
g the arch of Anna’s left foot, Helen stalled, waiting for some exact moment that might have pivot. Was it that she imagined that it would be enough to stir Anna, that Anna couldn’t resist wanting to be there with Helen when she had been with Helen for practically everything new that had ever mattered in their lives? Or Helen waited because she was scared it wouldn’t matter. Not the light. Not the slight pooling fabric at the back hem. Smell these, Anna, lily of the valley, our favorites! But there was something more. Oh, there it was. Helen wants forgiveness. This unfolding newness, this hopeful wanting when Anna has stopped wanting. Helen wants forgiveness for wanting a future. Helen’s fingers circled tentatively along the tendons and bones of Anna’s foot. Oh, it was true they had both loved lily of the valley, the tiny white bell and the wide green leaves like a girl’s spring dress. Go have your new, Anna thought, and closed her eyes. There was only one secret that mattered, and she turned again to the child of her child that she had begun seeing in her mind.

  Lesson

  They were talking, but mostly just watching Anna sleep. Ming started to shake. Molly linked her arm under Ming’s and guided her out of the room before the deep, guttural racking began.

  Hospital 101

  Asa found it beyond annoying that Anna’s room was always packed with visitors, and beyond beyond annoying was how hard the visitors worked to keep everything upbeat, then huddled somberly outside her room hanging on every word of the on-call doctor. As if he actually knew anything.

  Asa came in at night to read the newspaper and share a Kit Kat bar.

  “I’ve had an idea for you,” Anna said.

  “You’ve got way too much time on your hands. You clearly have to do something with your life.”

  He was glad for her delighted yelp. Any dose of dark humor was better than all the treacly concern he heard from her visitors.

  “You need to meet my Helen.”

  “That’s the geeky tall one who naps with you?” Asa’s chair was pulled bedside, his boots wedged up against the metal rungs.

  “Wow, and you think I have too much time? Yeah, she’s my oldest best friend and your future wife.”

  Asa couldn’t understand why it was so hard for people to understand he wasn’t looking for a new wife, let alone a girlfriend. His friends, out-of-nowhere high-school classmates, the parents of his children’s friends—all had suggestions. Yesterday his mother’s surgeon actually handed him her niece’s phone number. Young, old, American, Argentinean, with offspring or dusty-egged—everyone had the great lady for him.

  And now Anna.

  “Thanks, but I hang around oncology to prey on the terminally ill. Excellent for one-night stands.”

  “That’s grief talking. Wait till you meet my Helen.”

  “You’re wrong, Anna. You don’t know me.” He tore open the wrapper, bit into the center of the candy bar.

  “Actually, I really do, Asa. Which is why I’m allowing you to have a chance with my best friend.”

  What

  Something else in the fridge had gone bad. Hopefully the taped-up NO MORE FOOD sign meant this was Reuben’s final, full-on excavation to figure out what needed tossing. It falls on him. This and the mortgage, every electric bill and house repair. Note to self: need a quote on the porch decking. He was the go-to guy. Conversations with Kate from hospice. Every two seconds family, friends checking in, “What’s the plan?”

  And their children. It didn’t matter that the children were not children. They were their children. Anna and Reuben told the three of them together. First all those years ago. And then two weekends ago—has it been only two?—Reuben looked right through the etch of panic on each of their faces and said, “We all need to agree. This is Mom’s choice.”

  Now ten times a day, “What’s happening now, Dad?”

  “Okay, enough. Each of you tell me something,” Anna insisted that Saturday after they’d all had a massive family cry. “Something good about your lives, your work. Let’s just have no more big feelings for a little bit,” she’d said.

  Reuben was amazed how the kids complied, perched on their chairs like schoolchildren eagerly reporting on projects. Julian, their first, blushed as he quoted the famous food critic who’d written not only that Julian’s restaurant was stellar but that he was Vermont’s Alice Waters. The twins waited till Julian finished describing the new plans he had for the restaurant. Then Andy was overflowing, excitedly describing the commission he’d landed. “It’s huge, Mom.” A couple’s house on the Oregon coast. Their Boston town house. “Mom, these people, they’re crazy rich. Rich and with taste. I’m not just building all the furniture for the two residences—I’ve been hired to do all the interior wood design and restoration for both houses. I’m busy with this project for four years at the least.”

  “I’m good, too, Mom,” Harper started, then crumpled like she’d suddenly been gut-punched. But when Reuben put his arm around her, Harper straightened up and pushed him away.

  “I’m good,” she tried again. She gripped her fists in her lap. She was a nurse, first year on the NICU. Harper described a baby born at twenty-six weeks who’d finally gone home with his parents. After three months. “We threw him a good-bye party,” she said. “His name’s Nino, but we all call him Hercules.”

  “Hercules.” Anna laughed. “That’s quite a wonderful name. What about you?” And she turned to Reuben.

  His first sound was more a grunt of air than words. He’d been holding his breath while the kids spoke. He mumbled something about starting his indoor seedlings—peas, onions, and tomatoes.

  “Every year you love getting the garden started.” Anna smiled, keeping him steady and bolstered for the children.

  Now Reuben opened the freezer door. More food. Packed in. Wrapped, labeled. Eggplant parm. Broccoli and mushroom quiche. It’s there to soothe everyone else. Today, tomorrow, even after, it will get eaten.

  Then, out of nowhere the other day, Anna told him he should marry Kate. “You’ve definitely noticed her,” Anna teased. “I know your taste.”

  “Wow, now here’s an excellent line,” he shot back. “‘My dying wife thinks I should date you.’” He was taking apart the four-poster bed. She’d refused the hospital bed until she could no longer refuse. “I’m a real catch, Anna,” he said.

  “You are a catch, Reuben. You’re my only regret,” Anna said. “I should never have let us separate.”

  “Please, we both screwed up.”

  Still, it felt good to hear Anna say, “I abandoned you first.”

  How sorry and petty a thing was vindication. The ice trays needed filling.

  2

  Assessment

  “You’ve done well, Anna.”

  The doctor’s broad fingers were light on her wrist. Her eyes took in the rail on the mechanical bed. The gray plastic commode in the corner.

  “I wish I’d done better.”

  Prayer

  Someone had ringed the house in prayer flags.

  Jesus.

  “This kind of nonsense makes Anna want to puke,” Helen said.

  “Forget puke,” Molly said. “It’s made her want to die.”

  “And now I understand why,” said Helen.

  All the women laughed so hard they could barely catch a breath. Bundled close to one another, they moved in a pod toward where sunlight quilted on the ground.

  “Who’s done this?” Molly demanded. They stood halfway up the long drive, looking back at the dark-stained house. Colorful handmade flags were strung along the A-frame roofline. Embroidered and painted words of encouragement. A Rumi poem stitched across two joined flags.

  “It’s these local women.” Helen spun in a circle as if she’d catch an intruder. “The hospice, these flags. It’s basically all their fault.”

  “Helen, you’ve certifiably flipped.” Ming was laughing so hard she could barely speak.

&n
bsp; Caroline managed, “No, Ming, now we understand. Helen’s right. They’re killing her, New Age style. Alert the authorities.”

  “Officer, Officer!” Molly waved her arms.

  “I’m going to pee my pants,” Helen squealed. “You’ve got to stop.”

  “Kegel, woman, Kegel,” Molly commanded. They couldn’t stop. The quips and puns. Laughing, leaning on each other for support. They couldn’t bear to stop. Halfway up the hill, the four women looked back at the decorated house where Anna had asked to be alone with Reuben and the doctor.

  More

  “Of course,” the doctor said. “We can try that, Anna.”

  The doctor, John, biked with Reuben on weekends when the weather was warm. His wife, Connie, was one of Anna’s closest local friends. They lived two roads over. Through the years John had been called for any number of middle-of-the-night emergencies. He’d risen from bed, Connie calling after him, “Tell her I’ll be by in the morning to get the kids for school.”

  But when he was in the room with Anna, John always stayed the doctor she needed him to be.

  Now, this afternoon, she’d asked him to try to turn off her device.

  “What if the pacemaker keeps shocking me back as my heart slows?” Anna said.