On my classmates’ Instagrams, the earthquake had already become a meme. This weird earthquake expert interviewed on the news had gone viral, and now the whole thing was an enormous internet joke. Whenever I opened Instagram, it made me want to scream.
I burrowed deeper under the covers, until I felt the edge of the bed with my toes, until the duvet was over my head, and I was breathing in my own warm breath. You could die like this. Suffocate from the carbon dioxide expelled by your own body. The idea sent a shiver through me. All I had to do was stay like this long enough and the nightmare would be over.
And then I was ashamed I’d ever had that thought.
“Mom,” I whispered. “I miss you.”
No one had warned me grief would be like this. I ached so much that it felt like a vital part of me had been removed. And I didn’t know how I was still living and breathing without it. Without her.
There, in the privacy of her childhood bedroom, I fell quietly to pieces, sobbing into her pillow with my jaw locked open, the tears hot and salty and never ending.
The things I was feeling didn’t have words, didn’t have a name.
I poked a tunnel in the covers, the cold air rushing in, clearing my head, and suddenly I was exhausted. It seemed impossible that, a week ago, I’d been concerned with nothing, with yearbook headlines and shoplifted erasers. That the chasm between one Wednesday and another could stretch so wide.
Chapter 5
I DROWNED IN MY GRIEF, and when I was done drowning, when I bobbed to the surface of that summer, it was already over.
The backyard pool was my refuge. I sat out there every afternoon, reading the childhood classics from my mother’s bookshelf, trying to lose myself in Narnia and Xanth and Tortall.
Instead, I lost May, June, July, and the better part of August. I was sleepy all of the time, which was a new and surprising side effect of my chronic sadness. I had trouble concentrating on people, conversations, meals. And I cried at the drop of a hat. I used to be the stoic one, dry-eyed during death scenes on our favorite TV shows, making fun of my mom for needing a tissue. Now, I wept unexpectedly during breakup scenes in cheesy movies and sad songs on old playlists. I even cried over the scent of Kérastase shampoo in the shower, which my mom always brought home from the salon and had gifted to my grandmother at Christmas. No matter what I was doing, I was moments away from tears. They hovered just beneath the surface, along with the French for Hello, my name is Sasha and the catchy lyrics of a pop song that was getting beaten to death on the radio.
On the upside, my grandparents weren’t around that much. They kept busy, too busy, which I knew was their way of coping. They filled the painful hours with trivial commitments, and I was strangely grateful for it, since it meant that having me around was less of an inconvenience.
I hid on a different floor when the maid came twice a month, and I felt impossibly awkward whenever I ran into her and she asked if I needed anything. Even after a summer together, Eleanor and Joel still felt like strangers, whose lives and habits baffled me. Once, in search of a Band-Aid, I’d caught my grandfather on the floor of their bedroom, doing push-ups in his underwear. Another time, I’d opened the freezer and found it full of my grandmother’s face creams. And so I tiptoed around them in a cloud of grief, while they fluttered around me in one of cautious politeness.
It wasn’t until the end of August that everything seemed to click back into focus. I brought my book out to the pool as usual, but everything felt different, clearer, like life was starting over again, the way Fitzgerald always claimed it did in the fall.
My grandmother was at Zumba, and my grandfather was at the office, doing lawyering. I had therapy later—that summer it seemed I was always in the waiting room of that unpleasantly cold medical center, pretending to be occupied on my phone while my grandmother leafed through celebrity magazines.
I made progress in the therapy sessions, googling late into the night to figure out what I should say so my grandparents didn’t worry. I didn’t want them to think that they were stuck with some depressing, broken person moping around their life.
That afternoon, like every other, I got out a plastic float and propped my book on my chest, squinting at it through my sunglasses.
It was incredibly peaceful, having the entire pool to myself. And then there was the view. In the bright morning sunshine, the ocean was everywhere. It was as though we were floating in it, suspended in glass. The air carried a salty tang, and seagulls screeched and swooped overhead.
This sun-bleached stretch reminded me of the book I was reading, set on the French Riviera, of the poolside parties at an Art Deco chateau. I closed my eyes and imagined I was there, a raucous 1930s soiree all around me, with glamorous actresses sipping cocktails and sad-eyed young artists memorizing every detail.
Except, the way I imagined it, I wasn’t one of the gorgeous women. I was one of the artists, collecting it all. I pictured myself reaching for my camera, capturing those wild parties. Which was a good feeling, because I hadn’t wanted to photograph anything in a long time. Not since the first public exhibition of my work had been my mother’s funeral.
I got out of the pool to make some lunch, and Pearl trailed after me, letting out a string of insistent whines and then racing up and down the hallway. It was pretty cute.
“Um, hi,” I said. “Do you want to go for a walk?”
She went crazy, taking off toward the front door.
“Guess that’s a yes,” I mumbled.
I could walk a dog. I was capable of that much, I told myself. So I scooped her up and clipped on her leash, letting her lead me around the neighborhood. I hadn’t been outside much, hadn’t left the house unless it was absolutely necessary. My mother’s room—now mine—felt like enough world, and when I got restless there was always the kitchen and the backyard. Seeing just how far in every direction my new life extended, that there was an entire town full of people just beyond the walls of my grandparents’ house, startled me.
A shirtless older gentleman was backing a golf cart out of his driveway, his face shadowed by a baseball cap. Long-haired blond boys played a game of street hockey at the end of a cul-de-sac. An Asian grandmother in an enormous sun visor, Darth Vader style, power-walked down the opposite side of the street.
I didn’t recognize any of them. We were neighbors, I guessed, but it didn’t feel like it, and I wondered if it ever would.
Eventually, Pearl dragged me back toward the house, stopping to roll around on someone’s lawn. Their grass was freshly cut, and the little green shavings stuck to her white fluff like spikes. She stared up at me, panting in a way that seemed like smiling.
“You look like a tiny dragon,” I said, bending down to brush her off. She whined, hating it. I wasn’t sure what kind of dog she was. My grandparents had rescued her from a shelter where my grandmother did a lot of fund-raising, and their thoughts were: part Maltese, part Bichon. My thoughts were: part dandelion, part hyperactive marshmallow.
“Hey,” someone called, startling me.
It was a boy around my age, with dark curly hair and a varsity jacket, although he didn’t look like much of an athlete. He was standing on the curb, two houses down from my grandparents’ place, carrying a grocery bag full of snacks. He had on a pair of neon-green wayfarers, which he pushed up into his hair, squinting at me.