Before Everything

by Victoria Redel

  With her thumb she presses the canvas, presses into the mark and feels a shape, muscular, a delicate muscularity. It’s right there next to the geometry of the barn. Had she recorded it in her sketches? No, there’s nothing in the sketches, but still Helen feels there’s something to this.

  She tries to draw back into that night. The last night they were all together. Molly driving. The field on the right, the barn. What they had agreed to do if it became necessary. Quiet chatter in the car. Out the window there was the dark mound of the field and inside Anna next to her. How often in any day she thinks, I’ve got to tell Anna. Or, without thinking, she finds her fingers dialing. Then the blow. Again. No Anna. The recognition like a full-body smack. There’d been months and months that she was exhausted all the time. Could hardly hold a brush. Like a flu, the grief. Or she’d wake, sweaty and breathless, needing Asa, the heat of him planked above her, to fuck her senselessly alive. Then it shifted, and she was painting again. But still forgetting. Every day. This will keep happening, or then—won’t it be worse?—one day it will not happen. Never to think, Let me call Anna.

  Anna had been holding her hand.

  In the car, yes, Anna’s hand between her hands.

  She’s asked Anna a question. She’s asked Anna if she, Anna, is afraid. And waiting for Anna to answer, looking out the window afraid of what Anna will say, Helen sees the horse.

  The horse, there.

  That’s what it is. What she’s been trying to see.

  In the dark, the moon-colored horse and, there, a paler colt below the horse. The colt’s head tilted to nurse. The patient mother standing close to the barn. The baby’s neck stretches long, its narrow face turned up into the mother.

  She squeezes Anna’s hand—Look, Anna—but they’re already past the barn and the horse and the baby, and the road turns through a stand of spruce.

  The brush is in Helen’s hand. “Look, Anna.” She says it out loud in her studio. Then again—“Look, Anna”—and she presses into the wet paint.

  White-throated Sparrow

  Each time Ming enters the building, she feels an actual physical tug left toward the bank of elevators up to pediatric neurosurgery. How strange, really, that her doctor’s office is in the same hospital where all those years ago Lily had surgery. And now, leaving the hospital, turning through the revolving door, she waves, positive it’s still the same squat lady guard.

  Ming walks down Second Avenue. She needs time alone before she arrives at Helen and Asa’s loft, before jumping into a swirl of conversation. The neighborhood hasn’t changed. It still seems less a neighborhood than housing for hospital personnel. Same florist. And, mid-block, there’s Lily’s Nails. She stops in front of the shop. The women inside bow and wave Come in. Ming feels a sob rise up. What had Anna said that day? Only a really small part of the story. Lily is one year from graduating college. Anna is two years dead. The new story. Ming bows and waves back.

  “I’m not well,” she practices. Too flimsy. “I’m sick.” Too dramatic. The others know she’s come into the city for an appointment, but she’s been cagey over the phone—“Something I set up, since we were getting together anyway.” She understands now Anna’s vagueness. About doctor appointments. About exhaustion, tightness in her chest. Everything that raised alarm.

  Ming already hates the attention she hasn’t even asked for. Tonight she wants to give Caroline center stage. This evening, dinner at Helen and Asa’s loft, is the after that Caroline said she would need.

  Christ! Some days that’s what it seems it’s all come to—who has center stage for grief.

  When Helen called last week, Ming was outside on the office porch. Twenty minutes, feet up on the railing. It isn’t meditation. But that’s what she jokingly calls it when she tells her secretary to take messages. She’s listening to birds. She closes her eyes. A lot of days, she can’t manage to keep them closed. She’s identified distinct birdcalls, but she’s never checked them with a book. She doesn’t care. Warbler, oriole, chickadee—she assigns names willy-nilly. She likes the texture, a sound density that starts in the tree facing the porch and radiates out. Some days she hears miles of bird sound in her body. She tries to breathe it in, as if sound might fill her. It’s not the same as the infusion the doctors are recommending, but she’s skeptical enough about medicine to think that breathing bird sound might work. She’s even found herself wanting to send a note to Anna’s Valley friends. She wants to apologize for her lawyerly dismissiveness when they suggested burning herbs.

  For these twenty minutes, Ming makes a point of shutting off her phone. But when she felt a vibration, quick-checked, and saw HELEN, she’d picked up.

  “Caroline asked me to call.” Helen sounds careful.

  “No. What?” Ming hears three short trills of a bird.

  “It’s what you think but not what you think.”

  Ming’s default is Caroline’s sister’s suicide. There have certainly been enough practice tries for her to one time botchily succeed.

  “I guess that’s good.”

  “It seems the driver lost control. Of his truck. Elise had been doing great. A new job and everything. Caroline doesn’t want us for the funeral. But she’ll need us after.”

  Again the three trills. White-throated sparrow.

  —

  Ming walks along the gate of Gramercy Park. I’ve waited to tell them, I can wait longer, she thinks. But from the meeting today, she’s not sure what longer means. The doctor was clear—there wasn’t a timeline, or even exactly predictable markers.

  “It’s MS,” Ming practices, bonking her fingers along the park’s metal fence. A mother and two kids cut quickly in front. The woman smiles as she hurries her children. A slight twitch of the chin and Ming understands that the woman heard her talking out loud.

  She’s sorry. Mostly she feels sorry for herself, for the changes that are happening, and for suddenly not being able to read one thing about her body. This sturdy, steady body that—up until it didn’t—worked perfectly. What Anna once told her was the grand betrayal. There’s a change in her walk, numbness on her left side. Not every day. But unsteadiness, the slowing. She’s always been sturdy. She can’t read her body at all. What’s a symptom? She’s tired, but is that the tired anyone might feel? Then there’s the on-and-off blurry vision, a pressure below her ribs, and that weird electric pain that randomly shoots down her arm. It’s as if she has a stethoscope up against her body and she has no idea what anything she hears actually is.

  Today the doctor had names for everything, like that was any comfort.

  Here’s an odd comfort. She feels closer now to Anna than she’s felt in the two years since Anna died. Like she’s walked into a room Anna lived in that she hadn’t been inside before. And now she recognizes and understands what she had not fully noticed. Ming had been so focused on Anna’s getting well, on her being back in the midst of everyday life during the remissions. But Anna, Ming understands, was living a double life. That secret life with illness. And, like any clandestine life, it was a full world with its own furniture and wallpaper and doors. Its own private conversations. Every good day, every normal day, was unsteady, unbalanced by the possibility that she’d be sick again. Any random ache a sign that she might already be sick.

  These last two years what she’s mostly missed is how she felt with Anna. That with Anna she laughed more than with anyone else. Not Sebastian. Not the other friends. With Anna she was her most wayward self. With Anna she was always a teenager, the irresponsible, carefree teenager she’d been. Cautious Ming, practical Ming, with Anna she was always adventurous Ming.

  As she approaches the top of Union Square Park, she’s wobbling. She won’t be able to walk down to Helen’s. She’ll taxi. But she can’t remember the exact address, though she’s been plenty of times since Asa and Helen bought the loft. Is this the memory fog the doctor spoke about or just regular gett
ing-old brain?

  Ming wanders through Union Square, the tents of farmer stalls. She’s half looking for what she’ll bring to the loft, but mostly she needs just to slow down, rest. She won’t tell the others anything tonight. Tonight is for Caroline. And honestly, Caroline’s grief will be a small relief. Ming recognizes a vendor from up the Hudson where she lives. She’s never bothered to stop at his farm. But here the variety of greens, the Japanese radishes, the garlic scapes—the very abundance seems amazing, his produce so beautiful. She wants it all. There’s a display of locally brewed ciders and, farther down, a stand of Amish cheeses, each displayed under a mesh cap. She stops at a flower vendor, his mustache waxed into curlicues. “Good afternoon, m’lady.” The mustache, the invented accent. Such gorgeous eccentricity, being alive. He has tea roses. Buckets of sweet peas, with their gentle scent. Exorbitantly expensive. Beyond ridiculously expensive. Ming bends to the pink and purple stems of sweet pea and breathes. She stumbles over her legs, and the man braces her from falling. “Excuse me,” she says, hating how dependent she’s about to become. “No, I’m the lucky one,” he says with a bow. She asks for two bunches. He wraps three.

  French Doors

  Tessa stands in the doorway, holding the last cardboard box. She takes in the open French doors of her bedroom. French doors and a tiny balcony! In Brooklyn! She can’t quite believe how awesome her bedroom is, and her awesome roommates and the awesome kitchen with the shelf of mason jars used as cups and the ridiculously awesome internship she’s landed. Ridic. She’s described to her moms that the other interns are all seniors; one’s even out of college. But at the interview they were all over Tessa’s programming skills. Tessa’s confident she’s got the chops for the work.

  Life is amazing. Life is so totally, perfectly amazing.

  Ridic.

  Not to mention that there’s a Thai restaurant, a falafel shop, and a café with gluten-free muffins on the block.

  On the block where she has an apartment in Brooklyn, New York!

  Amazing.

  She should probably tell her moms to stop unpacking her duffel. At least keep them from making her bed. They always want to do so much for her. Sometimes, honestly, it’s a burden. Hello, I’m not five years old. But they actually look kind of stupid happy stretching the fitted sheet over the mattress. If it makes them this happy to shake the pillows into flowered cases, who is she to argue?

  “Aren’t you going to be late?”

  “I called Helen. They know we’ll be late. They’ve all moved kids in.”

  Molly takes a picture of Tessa holding the box. Then wiggles her fingers, motioning Tessa and Serena over to the French doors to take another.

  “Everyone gets being late as long as I show up with proof.”

  Tessa puts down the box and wraps her arms around Serena. They act up for the camera. Tessa’s T-shirt rides up, showing her flawless skin.

  “You’re going to be okay?” Molly asks, though she promised on the drive down that she wouldn’t ask stupid questions or choke up. “You’re going to take care of yourself?”

  But it’s not Tessa who’s brought on Molly’s tears. It’s Anna. Who won’t be at Helen’s to see the photograph. Who won’t point to Tessa’s loving smile. Who won’t tease Molly, Remember your massive panic over Tessa’s Magic Marker doom tattoo? Who never needed proof that Tessa would be fine.

  “Mom.” Tessa good-naturedly stretches out the vowel. Nothing like a little mock annoyance. “Nope, I’m going to starve this summer because I don’t know how to feed myself and probably get lost on the subway and maybe join a cult that regularly sacrifices young women and kittens, and oh, yeah, I forgot, my bosses are both meth addicts, and they said it’s a job requirement.”

  Serena kisses Tessa twice on her temple. And Molly clicks that photograph, too.

  “We’re on our way, honey. Just humor us for five more minutes.”

  Lilacs

  “There’s another thing I’ve been waiting to tell you until we were all together,” Caroline says. So far she’s only told Danny. “You’re under stress, baby,” he said when she told him that next morning, and when she barked, “Don’t call me baby,” it only seemed to prove his point.

  She knew what she’d seen. And even Danny admitted he’d woken and heard singing, two voices singing.

  “That night I went outside after Danny had gone up to bed. For no reason other than that it was warm enough to sit on the patio, which is really the only thing I’ll miss when the house gets sold. The patio when the lilacs are in bloom. Especially at night, the night fragrance, that’s what I’ll miss. I heard footsteps. I assumed it was Danny coming out to bug me with another million annoying questions about why I wasn’t sleeping. I turned, ready to snip at him, but it was Anna. ‘I thought I should come by,’ Anna said.

  “It was so weird,” Caroline says. “It was just Anna. Anna wearing her boots, those red cowboy boots. They clipped against the slate, and I realized those boots always made that clippy sound. And her voice. It was exactly Anna’s voice, even that gravel thing that rasps at the ends of certain words. I’m not sure I’d ever been specifically conscious of it, but you know what I mean? It was Anna before. Just her in a pair of brown leggings, a T-shirt, and her red cowboy boots.

  “‘Oh, Anna,’ I said, and started to say how beautiful she looked, but she cut me off.

  “‘Can we sing?’” Anna said.

  Caroline watches her friends’ faces as she describes how the two of them went right into the usual songs, things they’d worked out harmonies for back in high school. “Heart of Gold,” “Natural Woman,” and, of course, most of Joni’s Blue.

  “Every time I started to ask how this was happening or why, Anna shook her head.

  “So I stopped asking. And at some point—pretty early, actually—it seemed completely normal, singing ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ with Anna. More normal, really, than that she’s dead, which never in these two years has seemed normal or possible to me. We sang for a long time. Not just Blue, we were like a jukebox of seventies classics. Songs neither of us had sung for years. Loggins and Messina. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. We were laughing ’cause we couldn’t believe that we could pull up all the lyrics even on ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.’ We were having the best time. We sounded pretty awful. We didn’t care that we sounded like shit trying to hit those harmonies. We were belting it out, leaning in close like we were on the same mike. And that was another thing. She smelled like that coconut body lotion. Remember when she was into that? Skin Trip. ‘Carrie,’ she says all of a sudden. You know how she calls me Carrie. None of you do. No one else ever has. ‘Carrie, I’ll take care of her. She’s going to be great.’ Then she walks away. Walks down the patio stairs onto the lawn. I didn’t know what to do. Follow her? I wanted her to stop. I said, ‘Wait, Anna. Who are you talking about?’ She was at the edge of our yard, the place where my kids used to hide out in the bushes. She turns and looks at me. With such kindness. Even in the darkness, I saw how she looked at me. Such kindness. ‘Oh, Carrie,’ she said. ‘Here we go.’

  “And then, just then, the phone rang inside the house.

  “I looked at Anna, a what’s-going-on? look.

  “‘You can believe what they tell you,’ Anna said.”

  The rest of what Caroline describes she’s already told all of them on those first days after. Danny shouting for her. Her running inside. What the police said about the accident. Elise’s death had been instant. She hadn’t suffered, they said.

  “I waited to tell all of you when we were together. Anna was with me. She came to be with me, to help me with Elise. So now, go ahead. You can all tell me I’m bonkers. But it’s what happened.”

  “I want that dream.” Helen folds her hands over her face. “Please tell it to us again.”

  3

  August, Starfish

  Then, of course, the house. It was time for t
he house. Reuben called, and they’d all shown up. Had he possibly thought otherwise? They’d promised they would. Not just Ming and Molly and Caroline and Helen, but Connie and Layla. Others from the Valley keep walking in the back door.

  “We’ll make it a party,” Helen says when Reuben calls. “We always do.”

  Now Reuben stands outside on the porch, his hand resting on a stack of labeled plastic containers. Inside, it’s noisy. As it had been, that March and April. All the women. All through the house. Rooms alive with conversation. All their conversation. They never stop. News of kids. Who’s up to what. The back-and-forth. Questions of people who know what to ask one another. Answers that assume everyone knows the backstories.

  It’s a good thing, all this talk. He knows it helps.

  Still, Reuben is glad to stand outside and listen from the fringes. To take a moment to admire all the damn work he’s completed in the last four weeks. The new porch railing is smooth and sturdy as he leans back against it.

  A shambles? A hazard? What’s worse than a wreck? Whatever it was called, if the house has a chance of ever selling in this terrible market or, as it turns out, even renting, it had to be fixed. Needed work two years ago. Then the house stood empty. Stunning, really, how quickly an unoccupied house breaks down. It’s not that he locked the door and left the place to mice for the last two years while he tried to patch up his own life. Managing the heating alone takes time. Not to mention money. Not to mention the February burst pipe, the rotted pipes, the broken refrigerator. Not to mention the roof. Or the March basement flood and the mildew reek through August. That’s what the kids don’t understand. A museum of childhood, that’s what they seem to want. It doesn’t matter that they’re grown up. Apartments, jobs, romances, tangible forays into adulthood. He’s so proud of how they have managed the loss together. And now there’s a grandchild in the mix. Exactly, they argue, turning his practicality into sentimentality, we want to be able to come back for holidays with all our children.