Before Everything

by Victoria Redel

  “Whoa. Force of nature, this little woman. I suppose no one messes with her. And now here’s two more Anna’s asked for. The first by the one and only Laura Nyro. For those of us who’ve needed it.”

  His hands started jazzy and loose on the keyboard, and Anna drifted over to her microphone. The band hung back, listened while Vince and Anna sang “Gonna Take a Miracle.” And they slid right into John Prine’s “Angel from Montgomery.” All of her struggle to stay alive pressed up in Anna’s throat.

  Ming and Sebastian danced, Sebastian fitting his South American rhythms effortlessly to the song’s country beat. Danny hugged Caroline from behind as she swayed and cried, singing along on the chorus, Just give me one thing that I can hold on to. To believe in this livin’ is just a hard way to go, her unmiked voice braiding with Vince’s and Anna’s.

  Helen came up behind Serena and Molly and put her arms around them. “Damn,” she whispered.

  Molly turned her teary face to Helen’s so they were wet cheek to wet cheek. “She really knows how to mess with a crowd.”

  Fathers

  Three weeks later Vince Welnick killed himself. Cut his own throat. As gory and violent as they come.

  “I know it’s not all about me,” Molly nervously joked. “Still, it kind of changes the vibe of our wedding album.”

  “It explains how damaged he was that night,” Anna said.

  “People get really lost sometimes,” Helen said.

  But they all admitted it was the girl they kept remembering. Her stringy blond hair. The swimmy underwater motion of her young body as she danced. Or how, at the end of the night, Ming found the girl curled on a pile of cushions in a corner of the log house, and then Danny and Sebastian walked her around and around the tent as the guests filtered out and the inn crew broke down all the tables and chairs.

  6

  Black Ice

  Outside was noisy. Ice pelleted the tall windows. Crack and snap of trees. Something big hit the roof. The plan to stay the night had always been the plan, but now it seemed like foresight. Out there was a treacherous mess. Black ice, the interstate impossible.

  And though Molly had earlier announced she needed to switch plans and drive home given the Tessa concerns, the others vetoed her leaving.

  “You’re staying,” Ming said with finality. “You’ll wind up dead in a crash first. No surprise disasters. That’s more than the rest of us can bear right now. So chill out.”

  Anyway, inside was downright cozy. Lamplit. The woodstove stoked. Reuben had stacked plenty of wood before leaving for his house.

  “And we can drink,” Caroline trilled, pouring Molly a full glass of cabernet. Fixed a seltzer with lime wedges for Helen. “Or at least some of us still can.”

  Restore

  “I’m all lid.” Helen pinched the skin above her eyes. “Remind me why we’re against the knife.”

  Finally in comfy sweats and oversize T-shirts, the women grouped close to the bathroom mirror. Crow’s-feet, they agreed, made the disaster around the eyes sound cuter than it truly was.

  “It’s all about revive, reverse, restore,” Ming said, offering a tube that promoted cellular growth.

  “Try this.” Caroline dabbed a pot of eye cream and patted in circles close to her lashes. “And it better do all that and more, given what I paid for it.”

  “I’m ravaged with lines, but every second of sun was worth it.” Molly stuck two fingers into the pot of cream.

  Molly borrowed Caroline’s toothbrush. Like back in the day. But back in the day they’d crashed, sleeping two girls, even three, to a bed, a mom popping her head in the door, feigning surprise: “How many of you can fit on that bed?” Another girl dreamed easily on a beanbag. Back in the day, it was all easy sleep.

  Tonight Helen will sleep the night with Anna. The other women have divvied up the spare bedrooms. Ming and Caroline brought their own pillows. Everyone has sleep issues. Melatonin, or a half of something prescribed, but surely still there will be middle-of-the-night reading. They’ve confessed to snoring. Mornings arrived earlier and earlier.

  Man

  Then there was a man.

  The women froze, but he seemed even more surprised to see them sprawled on the couches. “I just thought I’d stop back.” His voice faltered. Shaggy, wet, he dripped all over the dark pine floor.

  “Anna,” he said softly.

  “She’s resting, Jarrett,” Ming clipped.

  Oh. Jarrett. The others relaxed. This was just Jarrett, from the band, the one who played lead guitar.

  “I’d like a moment alone with Anna.”

  “She’s wiped out from all the company today.” Ming remained firm.

  “That’s why I came back. Just to play for her. Some songs to help her sleep.” He seemed unbudgeable. And lost. Wet beard, wet wool plaid jacket, water puddled by his work boots. Like a derailed Paul Bunyan. No, a drenched Cowardly Lion.

  “We’re spending the night, Jarrett.” Molly stepped in. “Swing by tomorrow, Jarrett.” Her voice set at another assertive register, kind and limit-setting—her shrink voice—the way she repeated his name, Jarrett, asserted professional control.

  “Maybe just one song.” Jarrett looked like he might cry. Actually, he looked like he’d been crying for a while already.

  They knew that Anna would have invited him in. Made room for his big wet self to soak the couch. Poured him a glass of wine. Let him stumblingly talk about his feelings. Play the guitar. Did that mean they had to?

  Molly pulled up from the couch and walked over to where Jarrett stood.

  “Tomorrow.” She reached her hand to his shoulder. He crumpled when she touched him. This broad, solid man, his whole body seemed to break apart at her touch, and then, out from him, a ragged, wounded sound. Crying like braying? Like falling rock? Like something trapped? Like something none of the women had heard before.

  After Molly had guided Jarrett out the door, after Ming had checked on Anna, after Caroline had topped glasses of wine or seltzer, the four women were quiet. Not a good quiet. Not a relieved quiet after the all-day scurry—boosting, hosting, fending off—and definitely not the quiet of being alone together they’d been waiting for all day. It was emergency quiet. They couldn’t shake that desperate vision of Jarrett soaked and dripping, that primitive sound that issued from him or the way he toppled, disassembling like Jenga blocks. The four of them not so much speechless as adrift. Each alone, shipwrecked. Then they gathered themselves and clambered back to one another.

  Caroline lifted her glass. “You’re practically a national hero, Molly, pushing that lumberjack out the door.”

  Molly took a grateful, thirsty drink of cabernet.

  There was a rush of agreement.

  Praise for Molly.

  Praise for Ming for remembering that Jarrett’s name was Jarrett.

  Praise for all of them for not screaming and having massive heart attacks when he suddenly appeared. “Like Bigfoot from the wild,” Helen said.

  Praise just to hear their voices together in the room.

  “He’s definitely in love with Anna.”

  “The whole band is Anna gaga.”

  “Has there actually been some hanky-panky romance Anna’s never copped to?”

  “Who exactly was that Betsy from work?”

  “Did anyone else see how deftly Caroline managed the crazy neighbor chick?”

  “Crazy, right?”

  “Certifiable.”

  “No more chanting ever.”

  “And we’ve got to talk about the prayer flags.”

  “Can they be globally outlawed?”

  “Except for maybe in Dharamsala.”

  Hunger

  “Hey.”

  Like that, Anna. Awake, up on her own, angled against the bathroom door frame. Flushed, wisps of hair loosed from her braid, soft aro
und her face.

  “Any food left?” She looked beautiful. Maybe it was just edema puffing her, but tonight she had no lines.

  “See?” Helen nudged Ming. Forget Reuben’s assholic sign on the fridge. “She’s still interested.”

  Reheated eggplant parm. Salmon. Goat cheese and crackers. The possibility of her asking this very question was what the jammed fridge was all about.

  Suddenly they were all ravenous.

  Ming lit candles.

  “Tell me about Tessa,” Anna asked Molly as she walked unaided to the long farm table. “Is there any ice cream left?” she asked, and—like that!—five pints appeared before her.

  “It’s more than weed. I’m scared it’s really serious, what’s going on with Tess.” Molly sat beside Anna as the feast assembled on the other side of the kitchen island. Happy for time alone with her. Molly tried to fit everything in before the others came to the table. “I feel something’s seriously off.”

  “Sweetheart, slow down. Remember us back then. You got to try and remember how off we were,” Anna said, spoon deep in the chocolate chocolate-chip ice cream.

  “It’s helpful to have you remind me. This kid thing is tough.”

  “You didn’t have the best parenting model,” Caroline said as she sat down and spread goat cheese on two crackers. Molly felt electricity snap down her back as the others nodded.

  “Yeah. I didn’t have the best blueprint to follow.” It always stung to realize they’d noticed even half of the damage.

  “I’m happy we got this night,” Anna said and worked her spoon around the softened outer circle of the pint of butter pecan.

  They couldn’t stop watching her eat.

  “I’d decided to stop,” she said. “But I woke up craving ice cream. What the hell, there’s always tomorrow to get serious about the hereafter.”

  Caroline laughed. “You’re wicked.”

  “You bet. Right to the edge of no return, Carrie.”

  “What are you trying to be?” Helen slapped her hands over her face. “The Joan Rivers of hospice?”

  Anna nudged Helen. “Come on, Heli, don’t be your old party-pooper good girl. Have a little fun with me.”

  “I wish I could.” Helen peeked through her fingers, then let her hands sift down. “Do you actually feel this easy?” There was no anger in the question. She didn’t feel the anger she’d felt all day.

  “It’s the oddest thing. I spent all those years refusing to be defined by illness. I was so insistent, so ferocious about it. Now I see I wasn’t. I have the sweetest life. The kids. My family. All of you.”

  “Do you feel ready?” Molly asked.

  “It’s not a matter of being ready. Who’d ever be ready to give all this sweetness up? It’s that I’m not really here anymore.”

  “But you say you’re happy to be with us tonight,” Helen said. She was so relieved that they were all finally together talking. Not about kids. But this.

  “I don’t know how to explain it. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s bittersweet.” Ming licked the spoon’s metal. She made no attempt to wipe the tears off her face.

  “Just sweet,” Anna said, and picked up the next pint of vanilla bean.

  On the Bright Side

  She’ll never have to floss again.

  Or shave her legs.

  Art History 4

  Helen had always loved that The Last Supper had been painted on the monastery’s refectory wall, that the monks of Santa Maria delle Grazie dined each day among da Vinci’s twelve apostles. As if the apostles and Christ were right there at a table behind the monks. And all the men were in various states of response to Christ’s question. She loved the painting’s movement, the control of the essential drama. Helen’s Supper will be five braless middle-age women at a cluttered late-night table—pints of ice cream, bottles of seltzer and wine—talking like they have for decades. Instead of da Vinci’s bucolic landscape out the rear windows, Helen will create this furious storm, wind and ice unrelenting. The danger will be entirely outdoors. In the warm light of the house, the women will gather to eat and talk. Layers of history. Secrets. The old hurts and alliances out on the table among the plates and glasses. The women animated, teasing one another, threading from one story to another, like there is no tomorrow.

  Bloom

  “Tell me all about Lily, Ming.” Anna wanted to know, but she mostly wanted to drift. They were still at the long wooden table. She couldn’t imagine being able to get up from the table. She closed her eyes. Lily in college, who could have guessed that? She thought she nodded. Now honors. Oh, Lily. Every day earned her name—great durable bloomer. “And if that wasn’t enough,” Anna heard Ming say. Ming described Sebastian fitting the Subaru with special adjustments. Lily passed her driving test on the first try. “And there’s a boy at school. She wanted me to tell you that, Anna.” Then Anna was driving with Lily on a narrow road. It was summer. Lily was driving, saying, “He’s crazy about me.” Bright orange tiger lilies clustered abundantly on grassy slopes. They were looking for the pond. The pond was sheeted in ice. “We’ll swim in High Pond,” she said to Lily.

  Somewhere nearby Ming shouted, “Grab a blanket! Quick! Something bad is happening! Anna’s shivering like crazy!”

  Temperature

  It was fast, the shaking. Like a leaf. Literally. She was leaf thin. Brittle. Anna tried to speak, but her mouth couldn’t make words. Her teeth sounded like they were breaking.

  “She’s burning up.” Molly lifted Anna like a child in her arms. Carried her into the bedroom.

  “It’s freezing.” The words came out jumbled. Anna looked up at Molly. She shivered so violently that all the skin on her face trembled. Like it might come off in sheets. Was this all from ice cream? Should they have considered that ice cream was dangerous? They circled close. But when they wrapped her in blankets, she kicked out of the blankets. Her body thrashed with a force they hadn’t seen all day. They didn’t want to put up the rails because she would crash against them.

  “It isn’t a seizure,” Ming assured them. At least not like any she’d seen with Lily.

  They bracketed the bed. Put hands on Anna to keep her jerking body from spraining. Reuben had said to call if something went horribly wrong. Where did this fall on the scale of wrong? The women made eye contact across the bed. What if it was happening? If this was it. If this was dying. On their watch.

  Tylenol? Was it against a rule to give Tylenol for the fever? Were there hospice rules?

  “I’ll call John.” Helen had Connie’s number.

  “Don’t.” It was Anna. Her voice bleary and far away. But her voice. “Don’t call anyone. This happens. Then it stops.”

  “Can we do anything for you, honey?”

  “Talk about warm places.”

  Sleepover

  “Anna,” Ming said, “remember windsurfing.”

  Helen spooned behind Anna. Caroline slid in front. Helen scooched forward until the backs of Anna’s legs penciled against hers.

  Ming put up the rails to hold the three of them on the bed. Anna was a sliver between Helen and Caroline. They were afraid to press too tight. The sound of her teeth, beyond chatter.

  “Tell them the story.” Anna’s voice reedlike up between them.

  But they all knew the story. It was one of the hospital stories, a story Anna liked to be told waking up out of a neutropenic fever or in the jangly, crawling-out-of-her-skin hours coming off medications. A beach in Spain where Ming, Sebastian, Anna, and Reuben once vacationed with their kids. It had been told and told again during treatment. By now they’d all memorized Ming’s version, Reuben’s version, and even the kids’ versions. Of course, there was Helen’s annoyed version about having been excluded, since the trip was planned for a time she couldn’t have possibly joined. Caroline, who also hadn’t been on the trip, told a version to a nu
rse when Anna, hallucinating on medications, insisted Caroline’s family had been on the trip. They all could describe that winding coastal drive, the sheer cliffs, and every one of the kids carsick. Domino vomiting. How much vomit could there be in one car? They all described how Sebastian and Reuben were idiotically determined to drive the coast and then turn up to Seville, where Sebastian’s cousin lived, until Ming and Anna, hours beyond furious, revolted and they stopped in Tarifa, which turned out to be the windsurfing mecca of Spain. Not just windsurfing, there were coves for naked windsurfing, which, yes, over the course of three days all of them, even Ming with her well-known modesty, tried. Then there was Azul, the hotel and café where Sebastian and the very handsome chef Roberto made dueling paellas and lamb roasts and, after dinner, Anna sang “Hotel California” with Roberto and his band.

  “Anna, remember those gorgeous blue tiles in the lobby?” Ming said. Ming folded laundry she’d collected and washed earlier in the day. She kept asking Anna to remember. A trellis of orange flowers. The smell of jasmine. Sebastian’s cousin furious that they blew off the visit to her in Seville. The children, a happy band of sand-encrusted savages that roamed in a pack.

  Ming described the lopsided bundles of driftwood the kids dragged up and the dry vanilla scent from the wood-fired stove. And how, on their last night, Chef Roberto and Anna sang flamenco.

  “He had such a thing for you, Anna.” Ming reached over and put her hand against Anna’s forehead.

  “So what’s new?” Molly said. “Did you see the band tonight? They’re all in love with you, Anna.”

  “Anna, remember I said Reuben would forgive you if you strayed? He’d have to, Anna. That flamenco was so sexy, and Roberto was that gorgeous.”