The Atlas of Love

by Laurie Frankel

  Brent Haddon echoed, “When sad things happen, it’s a tragedy. When funny things happen, it’s a comedy.”

  “When there’s lots of sex, it’s a romance,” Pete Fansom piped in from the back.

  By the fourth week of summer term, engaged, creative insight is a lot to ask. But I pressed them. The vast majority of stories are none of the above I insisted. Endings are ambiguous. Mostly we see how quick bright things come to confusion. So often, characters go from a state of being settled, where they more or less feel they understand and have a handle on things, to being sadder, more confused, more at sea, more unsure. And then it ends. Obviously, literature is like this because life is too.

  With film, it’s easier. In most genres, we know how movies will end. The joy is watching those ends play out. The joy is we know when we watch movies that all the angst, indecision, misery, heartache, injustice, and torture will turn out okay. Most movies aren’t tragedies. Most movies are redemptive. We see their characters going through the hard parts knowing that it will turn out well for them, that they will learn from their pain what they wouldn’t without it. And it is nice to see this play out and to live vicariously, for a few hours, a life where, unlike yours, this is the case. My hip, savvy students named exceptions—there are lots, of course—but we noted they were exceptions indeed. So my gripe was that it seemed unfair that though my life was very filmic (dying relatives, rare diseases, blood feuds, warrantless arrests), my ending wouldn’t be.

  “Maybe it will be,” said Ethan on the way back to the hospital after class.

  “No it won’t. It can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I can’t even imagine it. That all this mess, this heartbreak, this anger and fear could mean something good and useful? No way. Even in my fantasy, I can’t write this so it all works out. There’s too many pieces. It’s too big. That’s my point—it’s only in the movies that it all comes together in the end, and you realize it was worth it, and you learn important somethings and become a better person. I don’t see how that could happen here.”

  “Of course you don’t,” said Ethan. “Not now. But it’s not over yet. You won’t know until the end.”

  “I don’t get to see the end. I’m not an omniscient narrator. This is first person all the way.”

  “Clearly.”

  “At the end, I’ll be dead.”

  “This is not a tragedy, Janey,” Ethan said, suddenly serious.

  “How do you know?” I whispered.

  “It has none of the markings. It doesn’t feel like tragedy. It feels like trial, but not tragedy.”

  “Life doesn’t work like that. Literature doesn’t even work like that.”

  “In this case,” he promised, “it does. It will.”

  When I got home after the hospital, Katie was standing in the middle of our living room, looking lost.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “How was your trip?”

  “Great. How’s Atlas?”

  “Responding evidently. You can go visit anytime.”

  “How’s your grandma?”

  “Also better, thanks.”

  “I’m on my way to the hospital in just a sec.”

  “Good. Atlas could use more company. I’ll join you again later.”

  “Yeah, for sure. We should get a pizza and a movie or something tonight.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Uh, Janey?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Where’s our furniture?”

  There was a note of course. There usually is in the movies. No loose ends here. In fairness though, I knew the contents before I even found the letter, and though it offered explanation, it lacked reasons or even reason. Worst of all, it was from Daniel. Even via letter, evidently, Jill wasn’t speaking to me. To us.

  Dear K&J,

  Don’t worry—everything’s fine. But this arrangement, if it was ever working, isn’t anymore. Jill is moving in with me. We belong together—we know that now. As you can see, we have already moved most of her stuff. We know much of the furniture was shared, but we feel that Atlas should have as many remnants of home as possible to ease the transition. Of course, Atlas will be with us, and I know you would want him to be as comfortable as possible. We will be in touch soon and let you know where we are and how to contact us but not yet. I think we all agree we could all use some space. I have learned, more than you can know but as you will observe, what problems time and distance can mend.

  See you soon,

  Dan (and Jill)

  “What an asshole,” said Katie.

  Then the blessed phone rang. We both leapt for it, afraid it was the hospital and things had turned for the worse again, afraid it was Jill calling to regret, apologize, make amends, afraid it was the police and they had decided to arrest me after all. But instead it was my father calling to tell me that my grandmother had died.

  Thirty-five

  Jews bury their dead almost immediately—in the ground within twenty-four hours if possible—no doubt a very reasonable practice in a hot climate in a time before full body refrigerators but something of a hardship now. The business of funeral, food, and forum are welcome distractions I guess, but really, honestly, who has the energy, the will, the focus at that point? My grandmother wouldn’t have cared I told myself. I didn’t care. It was too much to deal with, to process, to matter. And it left almost no time at all to say goodbye. My mother’s argument though was that my grandmother would have wanted things done the proper way and that someday I would cherish a week’s worth of sitting around listening to people reminisce about a woman I did not yet acknowledge as gone.

  Over protestations, Katie drove me home. She did not judge me fit to drive or to be alone and reasoned that she was going to have to come up the next day for the funeral anyway. For mile after mile, we talked over and over and around Atlas and Jill and Daniel and us and not about my grandmother at all. Hours later, at my parents’ middle-of-the-night kitchen table, the four of us sat around eating chocolate cake, talking wedding plans, and indulging in more distraction and denial. Later still, towards morning, I rolled over from a not quite sleep into a not quite dawn and realized, sinkingly, that I hadn’t gotten anyone to cover my class in the morning. I called Ethan, full of apologies for waking him up, and asked if he could combine it with his again or at least tell them what was going on. “I can’t,” he said, full of sleep. “I’ve got a funeral to go to tomorrow.”

  He drove up with Jason and Lucas and Peter. Nico was there too, without Caroline, and at one point when I looked up, I saw Diane alone in the back. My mother looked back at them all and whispered into my hair, “You’ve got quite a group of people who love you back there.” I didn’t respond because opening my mouth would have released howling that would not have stopped. And because it was rude to admit that my friends didn’t matter to me without my family—without my grandmother and without Atlas.

  I cannot tell about the ceremony because I do not remember it at all, so hard was I squeezing shut my eyes and reining in my head. Graveside was short and garish with sun, blooming things, and fiercely good weather insistent on lightening the proceedings. Someone passed around the Mourners’ Kaddish in phonetic Hebrew so that we all could say it, but I did not. Everyone was supposed to throw dirt on the coffin, but I declined that too. Then we were meant to watch as they lowered it into the ground though I looked carefully at my feet in the grass instead. I did hear my mother wailing, surrounded by her friends. I did notice when Ethan came over and put his arms around me from behind, but I pretended not to and held very still and tried not to move or even acknowledge him at all, but he didn’t seem to care about my show of apathy. I also noticed as we were walking away that the guys in overalls, who couldn’t possibly still be called gravediggers but could not have looked more the part had they the RSC costume shop at their disposal, were already, already!, shoveling the rest of the dirt over, filling the hole left by my grandmother. As if that w
ere possible. And finally, as I got in the car, they were using a strange dolly and strap and pulley apparatus to lower an enormous lid over the entire grave. Dropped only the last inches into new dirt, its thud shook the ground even from thirty feet away. It was that heavy. To keep her in I guess so that even if she became a vampire she couldn’t escape. Then I was sick on the floor of the car.

  At my parents’ house, deli platters had mysteriously appeared. And, as Nick Carraway puts it, amid the welcome confusion of cups and cakes a certain physical decency established itself. People moved on. They thought: at least that’s over with. They thought: lovely ceremony, I wonder what’s for dessert. They turned to each other and said: how sad for the family, now what’s new with you. This is how it is. It didn’t make me mad. In fact, if someone had asked me to reminisce or tell stories about my grandmother, I might have been sick again. So I was grateful. Sitting alone out back in the sun, my strategy was, if I’m very quiet, maybe no one will want to talk to me.

  Katie came out and sat down next to me, handed me some kind of soda, a sandwich, and a cookie, and showed me her phone. Two missed calls from Jill. Atlas! I panicked, retched again.

  “Okay fine,” she said, “you don’t have to eat anything. But at least drink the soda.”

  “Did you call her back? Maybe it’s Atlas.”

  “I tried but she’s not picking up. If it were bad though, she’d have left a message.”

  I was unconvinced but accepted this because, really, what else could I do.

  “You should go inside,” I told Katie. “Eat something.”

  “I’m fine here with you.”

  “I just want to be alone,” I said.

  “No one will find us back here.”

  “No, I mean alone.”

  “We are alone,” said Katie.

  I accepted this too. Same reason.

  We sat for a while in the sun. I ripped out fistfuls of grass and made a little pile. Katie inspected the tan she was getting around her sandals that made her toes look dirty. Then the back door opened, and I didn’t even look up because there really was no one I wanted to see, but it was even worse than that.

  “How is neither one of you answering your phone?” Jill began.

  “You came!” Katie observed.

  “Which I would have told you had you answered your phone.”

  “I had it off for the ceremony. Why didn’t you text me?”

  “I was driving.”

  “You could have pulled over.”

  “I was in a hurry. I was late.”

  “You missed the service.”

  “There was a long line at the border.”

  “You could have texted me then.”

  “In line?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I didn’t think of it. I was distracted.”

  “I called you back.”

  “Really? I didn’t hear the phone ring.”

  “Did you have music on really loud?”

  “Not that loud. I was—”

  “How is Atlas?” I interrupted.

  Jill looked at me like she’d forgotten I was there. Jill looked at me like she’d forgotten if she were talking to me or not. “Seems the same to me. But they say they’re satisfied with his response to the drugs so far.”

  “He’s by himself?” We were all here.

  “Daniel’s with him.”

  “Alone?” Katie and I shrieked together.

  “Not alone. With a whole hospital staff. Besides, he has to get to know his son.”

  I accepted this too. Same reason.

  “I’m really sorry,” Jill said finally. Finally.

  “It’s about time,” I said.

  “No, not about that,” she snapped and then softened. “I’m really sorry about your grandmother. She was an amazing woman. An amazing grandmother. An amazing great-grandmother.”

  “Oh,” I said. Then, “Thanks.” Then, slowly, “Thank you for coming up. It’s good you’re here. She’d have wanted you here.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Jill. “Of course I came; of course I’m here.”

  Towards dusk, we were between waves. Jill went home to be with Atlas and check on Daniel. It was nice of her, I supposed, to drive all the way up just to turn around and drive all the way back. Lots of people who had been over all day went home finally. And the folks who had been at work all day—come home, had dinner, and put their kids to bed—were on their way over. My parents had a lot of friends. My grandmother had a lot of friends. The presence of all these people maybe should have been comforting. But it wasn’t.

  My mother called me up to her room.

  “I found this at the house.” The house. My grandmother’s apartment. How had it become the house so quickly? She held out a wooden box tied tightly with a white ribbon, beautiful, but with a Post-it note on the top with my name scrawled on it in my grandmother’s absent handwriting.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know. You have to open it.”

  I turned it over and over. Shook it. Turned it over again. “Maybe not yet.”

  My mother shrugged. Understood. Was too tired to care. Something.

  “This is what she left me?”

  “There are a thousand things at the house. You’re welcome to anything. I know there was some jewelry, some china, some silver she wanted you to have. We’ll have to go through everything eventually. Sort it out.”

  “But this must have been the thing she most wanted me to have.”

  “Maybe it was just on her mind. It’s probably a note to herself to remember to give it to you the next time she saw you.”

  “Maybe.”

  Is death always sudden? By definition?

  Ethan and I took advantage of the lull and went for a quick run. So I didn’t explode. The sun was thinking about setting. It was nearly cool with a nice breeze, good summer smells, a whole world out there that kept on spinning evidently. We ran by people living normal lives—grilling, gardening, playing with kids, standing by mailboxes talking to neighbors, reading books on porches—and above all I envied them their normalcy. Their grandmothers had not died; their babies had not nearly died as well, had not been stolen away by their best friends.

  “It’s comforting, all these normal people with their normal lives,” I said, breathing hard, on our cool-down walk home.

  “What do you mean?”

  I explained about how their grandmothers were alive, their babies not taken from them.

  “Their grandmothers probably aren’t alive,” said Ethan.

  “What do you mean? Look at them. They’re very happy.”

  “Who?”

  “Them.” I waved absently at the people. At that moment, they included only an elderly woman on a porch swing doing what looked like the crossword.

  “I am pretty certain her grandmother is dead,” said Ethan.

  “Then why is she so happy?”

  “What makes you think she is?”

  “She’s whistling.”

  “Maybe it’s just a thing she does.”

  “I guess.”

  “Also, it probably didn’t happen yesterday.”

  “And wasn’t so sudden.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I think it wouldn’t be so hard if we had had more warning. If it wasn’t so out of the blue. She was totally fine in the morning and then by afternoon she was dead.”

  Ethan had stopped walking and was looking at me, hands on hips, like I was crazy.

  “Janey,” he said slowly, “I told my class last week there was a good chance I would have to miss some of this week for a funeral. I gave them their final assignment early and everything.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Sweetie . . .” He had never called me that before, so I knew this wasn’t going to be good. “She was eighty-seven. She had lung cancer. She talked about dying and told you her final wishes and everything. You seemed so . . . broken when you came home. I just figured . . . it
wouldn’t be long.”

  I was shocked, stunned. “But they said she’d be fine.”

  “Who did?”

  And suddenly I couldn’t remember. “But I wasn’t by her bedside. She hadn’t taken a turn for the worse. She hadn’t slipped into a coma. She didn’t get rushed back to the hospital.”

  “Sometimes it doesn’t work like that.”

  “I didn’t get to say goodbye.”

  “You did,” said Ethan, but I wasn’t convinced. “In lots of ways, she was lucky. It was fast. She was sleeping. She didn’t suffer much. She missed the misery of watching her family watch her die. I can’t imagine it wasn’t better this way.”

  “So . . . what? She was old. She died in her sleep. This is a blessing? I should feel grateful?”

  “It’s very sad and very terrible for you, Janey. You will miss her. Her absence will be huge. But she didn’t have to linger in pain. She knew it was coming but didn’t have to live with that knowledge very long. And that is a kind of blessing.”

  I couldn’t look at him. “She didn’t know it was coming. She wrote herself a note to give me a package the next time she saw me.”

  “What was it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We walked in silence the rest of the way. Just as I was going into the house, he grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

  “Janey, I’m sorry. I was trying to make you feel better, not worse. I don’t know what I’m saying. I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m just talking.”

  “It’s fine,” I said.

  “I only meant—You said you envied how happy everyone else seemed, and I only meant everyone’s lost someone they loved and recovered from it. You will too. Atlas and your grandmother.”

  “I haven’t lost Atlas,” I said.

  “That’s not what I meant. Look, I’m just making things worse. I’m sorry. That’s all I wanted to say.”

  He tried to hug me, but I pulled away and went inside to take a shower.

  Late that night, I took my grandmother’s box into the bathroom. Katie and I were together in the double bed in the guest room. I didn’t want to disturb her. But also, suddenly, I had to know. I closed the toilet lid, sat down on it, and tried to hold in my hands the last present she’d ever give me, her last intention on my behalf, but it kept slipping away—not the box itself, just my head around the moment. I put the Post-it note carefully into the pocket of my robe. I untied the ribbon and put it away as well. The lid was on a hinge. I rocked it gently gently slowly carefully back and looked inside. There was another note. It was in its own tiny envelope, like a gift card. It had my name again on the outside. Inside was a small square of green and white paper, folded neatly in half. It looked like it used to be wrapping paper. On it, in my grandmother’s scrawling hand, it said cheerfully, “See? I told you so. You’ll have to pass these on for me. Miss you, honey! Guess who?”