Let Her Be (Hush collection)

by Lisa Unger

  She was babysitting that night, fifteen to my twelve—well, not really babysitting. She was supposed to be with me, keeping an eye on things, the older, more responsible sibling. Why did she go out there in the dark? I remember hearing the door, that slapping of the screen so common in summer. The whisper of her voice. The melody of her laughter. Another tone, too, the youthful baritone of a boy. There were always boys—on the phone, sitting awkwardly in the living room with my parents. It didn’t mean much. She wasn’t allowed to have friends over when she was babysitting, but she knew I’d never tell on her.

  There was no evidence of foul play. The police ruled it an accident, a careless nighttime swim. She drowned. But who was the boy that night? We never found out. People wondered if I’d dreamed it, that other voice.

  Somehow thinking of Claire makes me remember that shadow behind Anisa again, the one who pulled her away from me. Why was there always someone taking them away? Again that ugly lash. If I let those thoughts take their course, I’ll get angrier and angrier. But I use one of Dr. Black’s mantras: I acknowledge that there is anger arising in me. I accept it and release it. At first it seemed like pure bullshit. But it actually works, most of the time.

  I creak up the stairs, down the hall to my room. I lie on my bed and scroll through Anisa’s Instagram feed—again.

  Today her blog post is about “Letting Go.”

  We cling to the past, don’t we? To versions of ourselves, to people we tried to love, to dreams we have outgrown. But there’s only one moment. Now. And the only true self exists here.

  There are prettily staged images scattered throughout the blog—a colorful stack of notebooks, a steaming cup of tea, a picture of her hand curled around a pen, poised over a blank page. More than two thousand followers have offered their “likes” on the Instagram post where she sits in half lotus, hands in prayer at her center. I used to love the soles of her feet, even when they were dirty from walking barefoot on the hardwood floor. They were always so soft.

  I stare at the slope of her shoulder, the swell of her breast, the way that wisp of hair always escapes her bun. The light touches her face, making her skin glow. I spend too many hours scrolling through her feeds, reading her words. Time I could spend moving on. Working on my novel. Getting a real job. The days seem to disappear. I lie to my shrink, to my parents, to myself about how I’m spending my time. The truth is I crawl through a digital portal and swim through the dream world there, trying to find my way back to her.

  I touch my finger to the screen. It’s cold and flat. There’s nothing there but hard glass, beneath that tiny mazes of circuitry, wires. No matter how badly I want to climb inside, I can’t.

  It’s not real. Not true. Anisa is not there.

  In the corner of the picture, I see a shadow. Someone tall and slim, unmistakably male. Must be Parker taking the photo, lucky bastard.

  Wait.

  I sit up quickly, start scrolling back through images taken on my phone.

  The whole catalog of us exists there. Funny moments, private ones, a few X-rated, the curated ones we posted on social media to show everyone how deeply we loved each other, how special we were.

  Not on here: the night I grabbed Anisa’s tender wrist too hard when she tried to leave after an argument. The day I made her cry while I grilled her, ceaselessly, possessed, about text messages that turned out to be from her cousin. The afternoon she realized that I had been following her while she was having a girls’ day with her friends. That look on her face—the disbelief, the anger and sadness. Not something I want to revisit. The night she piled all my stuff outside the door of her apartment and I banged and banged and yelled, Anisa sobbing inside, until a neighbor called the police.

  No, we don’t share those things, the ugly moments between the beautiful ones.

  There. I find it. Anisa sitting in half lotus. Same top, same strand of hair prettily falling, same light on her face.

  That shadow in the photo, slim and dark.

  The lucky bastard is me.

  Okay. What does that mean?

  Is she just recycling old images? Or—is it? Is it a sign maybe? She must know I’m watching her blog, her social feeds; it’s not the first time I’ve suspected that she’s sending me veiled messages. Which I would never say out loud, especially not to Dr. Black, because it sounds . . . batshit crazy.

  Or—is someone manufacturing these posts? Using her catalog of old photos—cropping, filtering, photoshopping. It’s all too easy to do, to create a new reality from the old.

  I zoom in on the photo and see that she’s wearing the Tiffany infinity necklace I bought her for our first anniversary. The sight of it sends a jolt through me.

  Our first anniversary. One year—it made our love seem so real. I knew we weren’t ready for the big step. We were still living in our separate apartments. Her job in finance kept her exhausted, run ragged. I was working for a temp agency—publishing my short fiction in small journals, working on my novel—heavily subsidized by my parents.

  Even though I knew it wasn’t time for a ring, I wanted so much to get her something in that little blue box. I could afford only the smallest version of the necklace, in sterling. Still, I made my point. Infinity, forever.

  She loved it, of course. And made a big fuss over it, posted it all over her feed. All the world, our world, gushed at the sweetness.

  That Will. He’s a keeper.

  I stare at the image on the screen. So is it the old photo? Or is she still wearing the necklace?

  My phone rings then, startling me so badly that I throw it in the air. It lands on the bed beside me with a thud. Her image disappears.

  Emily’s face, nestled against Anisa’s, appears in its place. I remember taking that picture of them. One of our many joyful outings together—this one for frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity. They both have chocolate lips and big smiles. Afterward we walked forever in Central Park. We were a cozy little threesome, like something out of a Victorian novel. Anisa and I were the young lovers, accompanied by the doting sister, cousin, ward, whatever. She, this attentive third, was a sweet, lovely thing—but just that much less lovely than the heroine of the story. Poor Emily.

  “Hey,” I answer.

  “You have my notebook?” She sounds annoyed, as if it’s something I did to keep her looped into me. I should have just left it. “You didn’t—”

  “Read it? Yes, and now I know all your secrets, Emily.”

  There’s a leaden silence.

  “Just kidding,” I say, eliciting a relieved sigh. “Come on. I would never. I tried to catch you.”

  I hear the wail of a siren in the background of the call.

  “I’m in your neighborhood,” she says. “Can I stop by for it?”

  “Sure.”

  Why would she be on the Upper East Side? I wonder. And did I tell her I was staying with my parents?

  But how can we keep any of this straight anymore? What we said, what we posted, what other people posted about us on their feeds. A chaotic mishmash of almost-true gossip and fake news, of rumor and posturing. Anisa and I had a couple of parties here while my parents were away. Most of her friends thought it was my place; I never cleared it up unless pressed. It’s a family home, I might say if questioned. Oh, wow, is the normal response. Translation: I knew you couldn’t afford a place like this.

  I try to tidy up, my head spinning with thoughts of Anisa, that photograph. That shadow. Me or the elusive Parker? The infinity necklace.

  When Emily knocks on the door, I let her inside. She’s let her hair down, taken off her glasses. There’s something so delicate about a redhead, isn’t there? Anisa used to say that Emily had fairy-princess hair—all gold and white highlights. Anisa was right. Emily’s curls shine in the foyer light.

  I’m practically bursting to tell her about my Instagram discovery. But I know what everyone thinks of me. When you stalk a young woman and then try to kill yourself, you lose all your credibility. It’s hard to convinc
e people that you’re on solid ground.

  Anything I say on this topic is going to sound crazy.

  Maybe I am crazy.

  How are you supposed to know these things? So I just hand her the notebook and hope she’ll leave quickly. I want to get back to my internet sleuthing. She flips through the pages as if she could tell by looking if I’ve been snooping. She tucks it possessively into her satchel.

  “I’m sorry about today,” I say. “I didn’t mean—”

  She smiles, lifts a hand. Her glitter nail polish is chipped. “It’s okay. I know you loved her, Will.”

  Love her. I still love her—wildly, madly, deeply. As much as ever.

  You don’t stop loving someone just because they stopped loving you. It would be a lot easier if you could. Emily’s kindness makes me turn away from her; I don’t deserve it.

  I wait for her to move to the door. In fact, I’m still standing by it, gripping the handle. But she stays rooted, her brow wrinkled; she chews at the corner of her thumbnail. “I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

  Hope wells. I almost leap on her with what I’ve just discovered, but I stay quiet. Instead of leaving, she moves into the living room and sits on the old sofa, places her bag on the floor.

  I follow her and sink into the overstuffed chair on the other side of the coffee table. This furniture, it’s been here since I was a kid. A lot of it belonged to my grandmother. There are pieces—a shaky secretary, an ancient chifforobe—that haven’t been moved in half a century. There’s a portrait of Claire and me as children hanging over the fireplace. My parents were good about stuff like that—some people want to forget. But they wanted to remember her well, with joy, once the shock and the most brutal phases of grief and loss had passed. We talk about her openly now, allowing ourselves to remember, even when it’s painful.

  “Did you know that Anisa just kind of bailed on her place?” Emily says. “She didn’t tell the landlord. She just packed her clothes, left most of her furniture. She just stopped paying.”

  I didn’t know that. I haven’t seen or spoken to the real flesh-and-blood Anisa since she saved my life. I went straight from the hospital to the facility upstate, finally ending up here at my parents’ place, where I tried to piece my life back together. Am trying to piece my life back together. Am supposed to be trying to do that.

  “It just doesn’t seem like her to do something so irresponsible, does it?”

  I shrug, shake my head. Anisa, truth be told, could be a little irresponsible. She was prone to racking up debt on luxury goods like Gucci totes and Prada shoes, and then she’d eat ramen noodles for a month to pay it off. (What do you think about that, Parker Pinches Pennies? Little Miss Minimalist would do just about anything for a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes.) She could swing it because she made a fortune at that detested finance job, but she wasn’t much of a saver. She’d pretend to have the flu—like really play the role for her boss—to spend a few days with me when I was between temp jobs. We’d stay in bed, order in, watch rom-coms.

  “And her job,” Emily goes on. “She didn’t love it. Finance was not her calling. But she left without notice. Again, not really like her. She respected her boss, was happy with the day-to-day. Or so she said.”

  That was true. She didn’t hate her Wall Street job as much as she said. She had the rare mind that was excited by both art and numbers. She was a poet, and she could rock a spreadsheet like nobody’s business.

  “I think she was happy,” Emily says. “Happyish? As happy as any of us are.”

  Yes. But. There was a subliminal current of unhappiness there, a skein of dissatisfaction.

  Is this it? Do you think this is it? she would ask me sometimes—in quiet moments after we’d made love, or walking through the park, moments when I was vibrating with happiness. I hope so, I’d answer. Writing. Loving her. Making a home in this frenetic candy store of a city. What else might there be? She’d drift away from me a little in those moments, as if we were on different wavelengths.

  I think about Dr. Black, something he said coming back to me.

  People walk away from their lives all the time. Make big sudden changes. It’s not a crime.

  Emily and I sit with all of it a moment, our two different versions of Anisa. Was she Emily’s friend, my girlfriend? Yes. But she was also herself, unknown in some ways to both of us. I accept that now, when I couldn’t before. That’s progress, I think.

  The big grandfather clock that my mother hates, and that my father winds and winds, ticks off time. It’s aggressive. Never lets you forget the passing seconds.

  “I don’t want it to seem like I’m not happy for her.” Emily rubs at the bottom of her eyes. “I mean . . .” A sigh, an imploring lift of her gaze. “I’m jealous, okay? Everyone is. I thought it was that. Sour grapes, you know?”

  Again, I stay quiet.

  “But I guess you’re right. There is something off about it—the whole thing. The pictures. Even her words. Maybe it doesn’t—sound like her.”

  My thumb finds the scar on the opposite arm. It’s still tender. Ugly. Frankenstein’s monster, I am stitched together. Less than the sum of my parts.

  Before I can think better of it, I tell Emily about the Instagram post, about the old picture in my photo albums, the infinity necklace. It comes out in a tumble, sounding manic and off.

  I wait for her to regret her decision to come, to share, to listen. I wait for her body language to close up before she scurries for the door, eager to get away from the shiftless, postsuicidal stalker that I am. But she just nods thoughtfully when I’m done, touches her collarbone.

  “Show me,” she says.

  I move over to sit beside her on the saggy sofa, and she dons her reading glasses. She stares at my phone, scrolling, flipping back and forth between apps.

  “It does look like the same photo, Will,” she says. “I mean, it’s possible that it’s just really similar. She’s still wearing the necklace, maybe—she loved it. She loved you. And how many different ways are there to sit in lotus? But—the hair, the shirt, the light . . .”

  Emily pulls out her laptop.

  And over the next couple of hours, together, we analyze Anisa’s feed, comparing images with photos each of us has on our separate devices. I am comforted by the presence of someone sane. It’s not just me banging around the inside of my own head, analyzing, questioning, doubting.

  We scroll through the feeds of Anisa’s friends going back two years. Many of the pictures on her new feed can be sourced from elsewhere—the yoga studio where she subbed Sunday morning classes, a cooking class she took here in the city, photos snapped by friends.

  We search some of the phrases in her blog that seem especially not like Anisa and find that much of what’s there is a patchwork quilt of Zen memes, self-help books, Buddhist texts, sound bites from popular new age writers and thinkers like Eckhart Tolle, Gary Zukav, Michael Singer—even Jung, Einstein, Thich Nhat Hanh, Gandhi.

  While I brew coffee, Emily makes some phone calls. Because no one is going to talk to me about Anisa. I hear the soft rise and fall of her voice from the kitchen.

  Yeah, but actually speak to her, I mean. Like hear her voice.

  When was that?

  Are you sure? No. Okay.

  Yeah, of course. Think about it.

  When I come back with our mugs, she sits staring at the portrait of me and my sister, her face unreadable.

  “Is that your sister?” she asks gently. “The one who drowned?”

  “Claire,” I say. “Yes.”

  She’s quiet a moment, seems to be considering her words.

  “Did you ever notice how much she looks like Anisa?”

  I hadn’t noticed at first. We are not quick to notice these deep psychological burdens, the secret machinations of our inner pain, and how they manifest themselves in our choices, are we? It was my mother who went sheet white when I brought Anisa home, quickly recovering, effusing warm smiles and opening welcoming arms
. Only later did I find her crying in front of our portrait. Their coloring is not the same. It’s all in the shape of the eyes, the mouth, the dimple in her chin. Something ghostly in the essence—not knowable, untouchable.

  “Only later,” I say. “After my mother pointed it out.”

  She looks back and forth—to my face, back to the portrait.

  “You still look the same.” She smiles at me. “Same killer cheekbones, regal nose, and serious dark eyes. You were an old soul.”

  “So they tell me.”

  I hand her a cup of coffee, and she takes it, puts it down on the coaster.

  “So,” she says. “I think I was the last one to talk to Anisa.”

  I settle in across from her.

  “Brianna hasn’t spoken to her since February of last year,” she goes on. “Brent—you know Brent—has lost his phone since she left. So he doesn’t have a log of their calls. Just a few texts.”

  She looks down studiously at the notes she’s scribbled in that Moleskine with just a few pages left blank. “Chloe can’t remember but thinks it was sometime after—you know, what happened.” She casts an apologetic look in my direction.

  “Anisa mentioned Parker to Chloe. But like Brianna thought, Chloe also said Anisa didn’t seem that into him. Anisa billed him as some extreme early retirement guy—one of those geeks who lives on like ten percent of his income and tries to retire by thirty.”

  “That tracks. Parker Pinches Pennies or whatever,” I say.

  “According to Chloe, Anisa found that really annoying. Said he was cheap. A freeloader, basically.”

  She really did hate cheap people; it was kind of a pet peeve. She was unfailingly generous—showering me and all her friends with expensive gifts, picking up the tab at tony restaurants.

  Outside someone leans on a car horn. Some shouting follows. Then things go quiet again.

  “I probably shouldn’t say this.” Emily takes a sip of her coffee, closes up her notebook. “I always figured you two would get back together—even after all the drama.”

  My heart clenches a little.

  “That’s a romantic notion. If I was her friend?” I say. “I’d have told her to run and not look back. I was not my best self.”