The Careful Undressing of Love

by Corey Ann Haydu

  I don’t sleep, but I watch Charlotte drift off and Delilah, too, and Isla and I sit cross-legged, knee to knee, and take shots. We make our way through her flask first, then tackle everything else. I think she was already a little buzzed when she arrived. I think she has been a little buzzed for days or weeks.

  I’m jealous.

  I notice scratches on Delilah’s wrists. They are long and fresh and they frighten me and also make sense to me.

  I don’t mention them.

  I open a bottle of red wine.

  I wonder whether they’d take a picture of us now, the reporters and tourists, whether they’d want to see us like this. Unshowered in accidentally matching jean shorts and black long-sleeved shirts. Our eyes are puffy; our skin is blemished. Even the garden is a wasteland. There are nails and screws where the bench used to be and not a flower to be found.

  “I can’t do this forever,” Isla says in the thick of the night. Her voice is sloppy and overloud. My heart won’t stop pounding, thinking of things that could happen to Cruz, wondering what’s happening with Roger.

  Forever is starting to sound awful. It is too long. Even the night is too long. I take another shot of vodka.

  • • •

  When Delilah wakes up from her dream, she shakes Charlotte awake, too.

  “Sacrifice,” Delilah says. Her eyes are a little crazed, but all our eyes are a little crazed. “Angelika keeps telling us to sacrifice and it keeps not working but that’s because we’re the ones who have to be sacrificed.”

  There is a quietness that is quieter than other silences. There is a line between what feels crazy and what feels acceptable, and when it’s blurry, the world is a scarier place. There is a time of night when you haven’t slept and anything seems possible. There is a kind of sadness that feels so heavy and tight that you would do absolutely anything to not carry it anymore.

  We are in that quietness, on that blurry line, at that particular time of night, stuck in that exact feeling.

  We are woozy and wild from drinking and grieving.

  We are Devonairre Street Girls. We are finding out what that really means.

  “I tried that,” Charlotte says. “I gave up myself to save Cruz and it didn’t—well.” They look at me and I burn red.

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” Delilah says.

  “I know what you’re talking about,” Isla says. She is stony and the spark of Isla Rodriguez seems to have flickered out.

  I know what she’s talking about, too. I’ve seen it on her wrists.

  Charlotte looks confused still.

  “What are you most scared of in the world?” Delilah asks. “It used to be drowning, for me, until Jack died.”

  “And now?” I ask, but I know the answer because it’s what I’m most scared of, too.

  “Living this life. Losing everyone I love forever, over and over.”

  I see Charlotte swallow and Isla sit up straighter.

  “We could save them,” Delilah says.

  “Delilah,” Charlotte says.

  “Angelika has been trying to tell me,” Delilah says. “She’s been trying to make it clear. And I’ve been stuck on all the simple things. Following the little, easy rules and missing the bigger picture.”

  Charlotte shakes her head and I know how much she’s given up, but I also have to hate her for the ways she’s lucky, for loving Nisha, for not having to live the life the rest of us would live.

  If we live.

  Isla’s fingers twitch. I think I will see those twitching fingers for the rest of my life, however long it is, in my head. Isla’s fingers twitch and Devonairre Street starts to wake up and I realize it’s a Tuesday and we will have to make it through another Minute of Silence and another and another. All those minutes of silence that do nothing at all.

  Charlotte clears her throat. She doesn’t like how hard we’re thinking, how drunk we are, how unslept and wide-eyed and sorrowful we’ve become.

  “You can’t sacrifice your whole future,” she says, like a graduation speaker who doesn’t know that we’ve been asked not to return to school, who doesn’t know that at best we’ll be graduating in our kitchens or in this no-longer-a-garden garden.

  “What future?” Isla says. She gestures at the street, at the burnt ground, at our long hair and vanished dreams. She gestures at Angelika’s building, standing tall like a threat of who we will someday become, of the very best the world has to offer a Devonairre Street Girl.

  I let myself see Future Lorna one more time—pouring wine and making spaghetti in a kitchen in California, Cruz rubbing my shoulders, the windows wide-open because that’s how we like them, not because anyone has died. Future Lorna with her short hair and white linen dress and unmade bed and anonymous smile.

  I watch her. I linger on her. I let her go.

  Grab, grasp, gone.

  35.

  They found out about Roger so more reporters and photographers are taking over the street. I swear they look pleased at the turn of events.

  ANOTHER CURSED TRAGEDY IMMINENT, one headline online reads.

  CURSE UNDENIABLE? another asks.

  THE MOST DANGEROUS LOVE.

  DEVONAIRRE STREET: FROM URBAN MYTH TO FRIGHTENING REALITY.

  We continue our drinking at my apartment and shut the curtains. We can hear the street below. I peek out the window at the Minute of Silence to watch everyone go still. Angelika lowers her head. She is stuck on her stoop, waiting for us to do something to save everyone.

  And save ourselves.

  Every hour I text my mother, but the texting gets harder the more I drink. Soon my messages to her are mostly gibberish. But she only ever responds with two words. No mprovement. No improvement. No improvement.

  “My mother won’t survive losing him,” I say.

  Isla ravages our apartment and finds new liquors. One whiskey is dark and stranger than the others. Stronger. Uglier. We know the taste.

  “That’s it,” Delilah says. She smiles and I remember for a minute how beautiful she used to be, before. How alive. “That’s Jack’s drink.”

  We all relax, like we have solved the last great mystery of the world just in time.

  • • •

  “Should we leave behind notes?” Isla asks. I am so drunk my head is rolling from one side to the other.

  “I have to leave a note,” Charlotte says. It’s the first time Charlotte has said anything but no. She’s drunk, too, beyond drunk. She keeps mumbling Nisha’s name over and over like it might conjure her up. Her eyelids flutter, but she doesn’t pass out.

  “This!” I say. I have a million thoughts in my head but it’s so hard to get them out. I blow air through my lips and they trill and I try again. “This is how an idea becomes something more. Than an idea. This is how something ugly is beautiful.”

  It was good in my head, but muddled coming out. Some of the words were too wobbly. Others were too slurry. I don’t think anyone got all of it.

  “Okay, Lorna,” Delilah says. She is not as drunk as the rest of us. I look at her forearms again, and I think maybe she doesn’t have to be.

  “No!” I say. I want her to get it. If this is it, I want to see the look on Delilah’s face again, the one where she understands me and I understand her and we are LornaCruzCharlotteDelilahIsla.

  Cruz Cruz Cruz, my mind says. Mom Mom Mom. Roger Roger. Jack. Dad. The names are keeping a beat in my head so strong I forget that I was saying something until I remember again. “No,” I try. “What I’m saying? I’m saying is this. This is how it feels. This is how you get to the end of the world.” My head rolls and I feel an almost-lightness at the idea of the world ending. I have felt so small and trapped for so many weeks, and for the last few hours I have felt something else. Large and magical. Strong and powerful and free.

  “I don’t need to w
rite a note,” Isla says. She used to do everything we did, our Isla, but not anymore.

  Charlotte and I get paper and write sloppy drunk notes to Nisha and Cruz.

  Delilah pours more of Jack’s whiskey in each of our glasses, and it goes down harsh and warm and mean.

  • • •

  We leave the apartment and it’s hard to walk so I slide down the stairs of our stoop like I used to do when I was little. Charlotte cracks up and Isla doesn’t. Delilah leads the way because that is what Delilah does now.

  They snap our photograph, the people on the street, and the rest of them hand us red candles, already lit, and shake their heads at how much we’ve ruined. We hold the candles and hope we can keep them upright. We march past them all—the people who want to be us and the people who want to destroy us and the people who want to judge us and condemn us and make symbols of us. We follow Delilah past them all. Some of them I’ve known my whole life but today they are blurs, everything is a blur, and we find ourselves at the building at the far end of Devonairre Street where it stops being Devonairre Street. There’s a rooftop my father loved, and from up there you can see the whole street and so much of Brooklyn and parts of the city and maybe even farther on a clear day.

  We make it to the top, past hotel guests who must think we are drunk, which we are, and dirty, which we are.

  And desperate. We are so desperate.

  We make it to the top and look out at everything we are ready to leave behind.

  This is what we were always meant to do, we Devonairre Street Girls. This is what sacrifice meant; this is why the Curse hasn’t been broken.

  My father is the one who told me love is the only thing worth living for.

  “That’s why you can’t believe those kooks,” he said.

  But I believe them now and, if love is the only thing worth living for, I shouldn’t be living. I open my mouth to say these things to Charlotte and Isla and Delilah, to tell them I am sure now, I get it, I see what we are doing, and I just need one or two more shots of Jack’s whiskey and then I can jump, we can all jump, we can end this thing, like Delilah said we could.

  I feel a surge of love for them all, for Charlotte’s braids and her unlucky luck and Delilah’s sayings and the way grief changed the shape of her face and the tone of her voice, and for Isla and her sureness and the way she grew up to be so much stronger than the rest of us. I love them all so much, and that, at least, is a safe kind of love.

  My heart twists.

  I need more to drink.

  The sun’s bright and it’s waking me up and so is the way I love them but I have to do this because I have another text from Mom saying ICU and I have the image of Cruz’s shoulders and sad, scared eyes in my head, realizing what my loving him was going to do to him.

  I’m still embarrassed by the way he folded over himself when we couldn’t make our bodies fit together right. Love is too uncomfortable, too vulnerable, too dangerous in every way.

  I think back to the day our fathers died: It was a day a lot like today, just over seven years ago, and we met on the sidewalk and held each other and I liked it so much I felt a little guilty.

  I remember wanting to pull him closer and I remember a feeling I couldn’t quite identify at the time but I can now.

  A feeling of Yes.

  I loved him then, I think, and I smile a sad sort of smile.

  Delilah’s handing the bottle to Charlotte, and Isla is eyeing the edge of the building. I don’t want to look; I only want to leap. One more shot, I think. Or two. Then I’ll be able to do it.

  I really did love Cruz in that moment, I think, in that embrace and the shared pain and the way I wanted to kiss him even though it had never occurred to me before and the way I felt a sureness in the midst of so much doubt. I loved him then like I do now.

  Love is a fever, and I was feverish. Love is a certainty, and I was certain.

  Isla inches closer to the edge.

  I’ve loved him a long time.

  My mind is slow, but starting to shift around itself. It is looking for something.

  I felt the Yes over five years ago.

  I fell in love over five years ago.

  My mind is so slow, and I have loved Cruz for more than five years and he isn’t dead, he is right on the street, locked in his room, waiting for something awful to happen, but nothing awful has happened.

  And then something has.

  Isla jumps.

  Isla, who has always been last in line, who has always watched us and imitated us and waited for us to decide how to be Devonairre Street Girls, jumps. Without waiting. Without letting us decide it’s time. Without watching us do it first.

  Isla jumps.

  I must scream, “No.” We must all scream and fall to the ground.

  We don’t jump after her. Even Delilah is grounded, trying to grab on to the roof as if it might catapult her off for thinking of this terrible plan. We reach for the ground first, for our knees second, and for each other third.

  LornaCruzCharlotteDelilah—

  And then a new moment of silence.

  epilogue

  Our new California home is the first one completed in a subdivision that could be any subdivision. Mom has told me the name a dozen times, but I can’t hold on to the words, they are so vague and nondescript.

  I am having trouble holding on to much of anything.

  There are white walls and white countertops and no furniture at all, save for a long white table that Mom bought yesterday along with two white chairs to sit at either end.

  She stands at the shiny white counter and chops avocados and tomatoes and cucumbers, which she has done every night for two weeks. There are no groceries in the fridge. We don’t order takeout. We don’t use the stove. We eat the food she makes—fresh and clean and new—and when we are done we throw the garbage down a chute and it vanishes and we are unburdened.

  That is Mom’s word for what we are. Unburdened.

  “These avocados,” Mom says when we sit down to eat. “Glorious.”

  I think the salad might be good with a squirt of lemon, but I know better than to suggest it.

  “What do you think of the name Diana?” Mom asks, a smile on her face. She threw our licenses away.

  I don’t respond. My back hurts since we haven’t bought beds yet. We sleep on the floor and look up at the stars through the skylights in our bedrooms.

  They are bright, here. They are plentiful.

  We’ll never want for stars or avocados again.

  I have a new wardrobe of sundresses and tops that billow. Loose shorts. Bright-colored cardigans. Skirts that reach all the way to my ankles. None of it feels quite right, but it doesn’t feel wrong, either.

  “Don’t bring anything,” Mom said. “We’ll buy new.” She took me out of my funeral wool before I could make it to the church for my nineteenth funeral. She dressed me in a light blue sundress with polka dots around the bottom. She tore the tag off with her teeth before I’d even tried it on. It didn’t quite fit.

  I barely noticed.

  We left behind our suitcases, our dishes, our lemons, our loves, our street.

  It was cold on the plane, but I didn’t care. I let my arms goose-bump and by the time we landed in California it was warm and sunny and I was supposed to forget all about things like wool and winter and Isla and Cruz.

  “Sometimes there’s nothing to salvage,” Mom said when I begged her not to take us away. She took my shoulders and looked me right in the eyes when she whispered, “When there’s nothing left to salvage, we have to save ourselves.”

  No one else has moved into the subdivision yet. Most of the homes aren’t finished, so for this one moment in time we are on our own. Mom told me the history of the land, but I chose to forget it. The soil is sandy and full of rocks. I have no instinct for what grows here. />
  I don’t want to know what this place used to be. I will pretend it didn’t exist until the moment we stepped foot on the California pavement.

  I will pretend I didn’t exist until that step, too.

  There are no neighbors on stoops, no ice-cream trucks, no screeching sirens. There’s only the sound of the ocean, which we can see from the living room windows, washing away the shores, cleaning away the remnants of each and every day.

  We watch it for hours at a time.

  I sometimes forget where we are and strain for a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty. When it’s not there I feel sad for a second, before getting lost, too, in the predictable rhythm, the unexpected color, the mysterious and new green-blue of it.

  We eat off paper plates with plastic forks and knives and drink clear Solo cups of cool water.

  “We could have a glass of wine on the porch when we’re done eating,” Mom says. She has one bottle of Chardonnay from a local Monterey vineyard in the fridge—a gift from the realtor I think—and she hasn’t touched it yet. I didn’t think it was for us to share.

  “I’m not thirsty,” I say, although thirst was never the reason for the drinking.

  It’s been two weeks and I swear I’m still jet-lagged, but Mom says that’s impossible. She adjusted to the time change right away, like she’d thrown away Brooklyn time the way she threw away everything else.

  I can’t shake the image of her, my phone in one of her hands, hers in the other, dropping them like pennies in a fountain in the trash can outside the airport.

  I made a wish on the phones, like I would have on a penny.

  “How will Roger get in touch?” I asked, when what I really meant was how will Cruz.

  “There is no Roger in California,” Mom said, and my heart shook at what that meant about LornaCruzCharlotteDelilah.

  Isla.

  “What do you think of your middle name?” Mom asks, slipping the last delicate bite of avocado into her mouth, smiling at the fresh green taste. She keeps looking at me in a way I don’t recognize, but I think it might be love.