The Summer We Came to Life (20 page)

NO ONE'S NOTICING THE SUNSET THIS TIME. THE silence is broken by a flick of Jesse's lighter and the crackling of cigarette paper. She takes a deep puff and inhales slowly, almost as if she will speak. But there is nothing to say to a parent who has lost a child.

“Maliheh became somebody else. She buried inside of herself and whispered all her thoughts to gestating Mina. Maybe that's why Mina was born with all the wisdom of a woman. She absorbed the profundity of a mother's heartbreak. My family intervened. They arranged our move to the United States through a cousin in Washington. Maliheh said she didn't care if we went to the bottom of the ocean. America would do.”

Arshan sits forward, rests his elbows on his knees and scratches his beard with both hands. He sighs with utter exhaustion. “So that is how we came to America. My family gave us money until I found a job. When she was eight months' pregnant, Maliheh was in a highway car accident
with my cousin. My cousin lived. Mina was born by emergency cesarean. But Maliheh died in the hospital before I could get there. They told me it was a miracle that my daughter survived. A gift from God.”

Tears spring to Arshan's eyes. He swallows hard to keep them from falling. He's waited thirty years to confess this. No turning back now. “I hated her. My infant daughter. I didn't want her. I wanted Reza, and I wanted my wife. Not a screaming baby who reminded me every day of what I had lost. I got a nanny and a job at the university into which I disappeared. Mina grew and grew. I never told her anything about her mother, and she turned out exactly like her in every way. I thought it was a trick. I thought it was my punishment. It never occurred to me that she really was a gift. Mina was a gift and a chance at redemption. And I missed it. I turned away. All of you knew my daughter better than I did. If Maliheh had lived—Maliheh wanted Mina more than anybody has ever wanted a child. Days before she died, she made me promise to be happy. So that Mina could be happy. And instead I let her be raised by strangers—” Arshan turns his head away quickly so they won't see the tears slipping past his guard.

He's not looking for comfort. He wants them to hate him. To condemn him finally for all his wrongs. The man who turned away from God. The man who could not save his son, or protect his wife, or love his daughter.

“YOU WANT ME TO MAKE IT TO RAIN FOR YOU?”

Mina doesn't answer. She's hugging her knees with her chin nestled atop, her shiny black hair hiding her face.

“Do you want to be alone?”

Mina nods without looking at me. I put my fingers to my lips and place the kiss on the part of her hair where I think her cheek must be.

JESSE'S MOVED. SHE'S KNEELING CLOSE TO ARSHAN.

“She loved you anyway. Mina adored you. And she knew you loved her. That's what's got you scareder than a sinner in a cyclone, right? Arshan, that daughter of yours was so much smarter than any of us. She told me that you were brilliant, secretly charming, and wounded. She knew you. She knew us better than we know ourselves.” Jesse wipes needlessly at her indelible eyeliner.

“Like Maliheh.”

“It wasn't your fault.” Jesse's voice is firm.

Arshan stares at the ocean, ignoring the statement.

“It wasn't your fault,” Jesse repeats. “Your wife. Your son. Your daughter. None of 'em was anybody's fault. You want to be blamed. Honey, I can tell. And Lord knows I understand.”

Arshan's eyes are like glassy marbles.

“Well, I'm sorry, but we're not going to blame you, mister. Mina loved her life. Whatever you gave her, it was enough.
So stop it. Stop blaming yourself and stop tryin' to forget them.” Jesse gently takes hold of Arshan's jaw and turns his face to hers. “Make peace while there's still time.”

A look washes over Arshan's face that I can't quite place. It's like a dawning of understanding. But the look is for Jesse, that much is certain. He's seeing Jesse anew, and wondering what happened to his faith in fate. Perhaps he'll always have his grievances with Allah, but the North Star of his youth was something he had called fate. And fate demands only that you trust and relish the present. He puts his hand on Jesse's wrist. His eyes crinkle with the echo of a smile. “Jesse, you're enough to make an old man believe in angels.”

WITHOUT WARNING, ISABEL STANDS UP AND walks away. I follow her down the beach, scanning the sands warily as the others yell after her but let her go. This is not a safe time or place for a stroll. Her feet drag and stumble across the chilly sand. She hugs herself and scratches at her shoulders. I can't make out her thoughts. They're jumbled and muted, nonsensical. She's thinking about Mina, Kendra and me, but in a repetitive fashion as if she's banging her head against a wall.

 

I dance around her, as though I can stop her slow procession to the water. I'm in front of her, then behind, then racing along the beach looking for help, then back at her side. But of course I'm not there. Not in any way that can save my friend. It's like putting out your hands to stop a rainstorm. And I don't even have hands.

Isabel's mind finally settles on a memory, and grabs hold of it to steady her courage for her first steps into the water.
The memory is beautiful—it's the dock, the lake house that summer we were eleven. It's the same as Mina's world, but complete and alive. The clouds cast shadows across the trees full of twittering birds, and the swaying grasses reveal scampering squirrels. I get swept up into it, too, lost in the details of a happier day.

Isabel remembers herself linking arms with Kendra to walk up to the house. She finds her mother on the porch laughing with Lynette, who pours them fresh glasses of pink lemonade. Isabel smiles, remembering how the ice sounded in the glasses; how the grass tickled her ankles as they walked back down the hill.

She sees Mina and me in the water in front of the dock, talking solemnly. Then Mina points and waves and Isabel feels the cold lemonade splash her toes when she waves back. Kendra scolds her, but they both laugh. Isabel is blissfully, simply, happy in a world that is whole and makes perfect sense.

At the instant Isabel's head dips beneath the surface, a set of waves rolls in fast, knocking her off her feet. She thrashes about, tossing and turning as if having a nightmare. But she doesn't have enough air in her lungs to keep up the fight.

In her mind's eye, Isabel continues to approach the dock, but there is a shift, like a photograph catching fire. Suddenly it is just Mina on the dock, an adult Mina, standing in her yellow sundress.

I can hear Isabel whimpering aloud in the water. The water looks red, like blood filtering through an aquarium.

But it isn't Isabel that's whimpering.

SHIT. WHERE AM I?

“Samantha,” I hear Mina say, “look.”

I see Kendra sobbing in her sleep. She's curled up in a ball amongst the twisted sheets, grabbing her midsection. The whimpering was hers, but now they become the cries and groans of earthquake victims. Her face is contorted in pain, and sweat forms a dark halo on her pillow.

“What happened?” I ask Mina.

“The sheets. Look closer.”

Kendra's legs are curled up tight, but now I see a foot peeking out of the bedclothes. It's sticky with blood.

Panicked, I try to pin down Kendra's thoughts. She's flashing through the horrors of the day in her mind.

She sees herself at work, held together by sheer will. She sees the wobble in her stilettos as she opens the clinic door. She hears the echoes of the counseling session.
Irreversible. Decision to live with. Emotional trauma. Risk of surgery.

She remembers the cream tile of the ceiling, the nurse
clutching her hand with latex gloves. The tense murmurs coming from the doctor. Kendra remembers how the numbness in her pelvis spread to her heart. She sees the blood on the doctor's gloves, remembers the flecks of hazel in the nurse's eyes above her mask.

Michael was there in the waiting room. He smiled when she came out and she wanted to stab him for it. He took her home in a cab, not even a town car. He'd brought his briefcase with him, work to do at Kendra's bedside presumably. Kendra didn't cry in the car; she's proud of herself for it. She molded her face like plaster of Paris and kept it dry all the way back to SoHo. She watched the dogged New York hustle outside the window and tried to find a metaphor in it that would give her strength. It worked.

When the doorman opened the cab door and saw Kendra's cracking plaster of Paris face, she gave him a tiny nod and he understood. He stepped back and Kendra got out and shut the cab door before Michael knew what was happening. The doorman strode forward and tapped on the window for the cab driver to drive away. Kendra bargained with her stilettos.
Just let me make it inside.

She stumbled through the lobby and barely let the elevator doors shut before she sank to the carpet.

Kendra sees herself crawl into bed and pass out from the pain. She woke up several times to the disturbing feeling of warm blood pumping from between her legs, but she was too weak to move.

Kendra thinks she's going to bleed to death. Alone.

But now her thoughts turn a particular shade of indigo, and the roaring sound of waves rushes in the distance.

Kendra moans. She's whispering something on repeat:

“Isabel.”

And then I see it—Kendra's fever-fueled nightmare. She sees Isabel sinking in the water like a shiny penny in a vat
of oil. The dark shadows of the sea are stealing her away, pulling at her hair, handcuffing her wrists and ankles.

Now Kendra's mind fills with a vision of Mina standing on a dock, her yellow sundress whipping in the wind, watching in terror at dark waters rising around her.

The worlds are colliding.

THE DOCK IS DRY AND HOT BENEATH MY LEGS. I am sitting on the dock.

“What happened?” I ask frantically. “Go back! I have to go back!”

Mina is staring at the sun, a sentinel presiding over her placid world. The water is slack, the clouds inert again. “They're in trouble, Sam. Should I bring them here?”

I suck in a breath and hear my heart jackhammering in the sudden silence. The water at my feet is like impenetrable glass, my reflection a photograph frozen in time.

But we're not frozen. I'm not frozen. I remember my epiphany on the dock about saving Mina, and a new understanding hits me like a kick to the chest. It's not just Mina I'm supposed to save.

I died for this moment. I died for my three best friends, for the chance to give them a future together. I've glimpsed the secret behind the curtain. In trying to find a way to stay
connected to Mina, I stumbled upon a path to connect us all forever. I stumbled upon the path between life and death.

I'm going to save you all, I promise.

I stand up face to face with Mina. She is uncertain, waiting. “An infinite ocean of possible worlds, Mina. We create our world, then mistake it for a script, indelible. We are so much more powerful than that. Miracles happen every day. What are they really? Instances where people believed in the impossible and saw it come true.” We are stronger than death if we believe it. All that exists is belief and love.

The space between Mina and me begins to shimmer. The clouds fade to a blanket of white, the water brims with diamonds blotting together. The world is filling with light. Mina's face gleams like glitter let loose on a breeze. “Are you ready?” I ask her.

I put out my hands. Mina steps forward to take them and looks into my eyes with the same mischievous twinkle of a kindergartner I once knew.

I brace myself for what comes next. I have to believe. I have to believe that I can do it. That is the most important thing. My job. My responsibility. It wasn't a mistake, all the preparation for Mina's death. It wasn't a mistake that I had to die to find Mina in her strange world.

Everything was training, leading up to this moment. This moment in which we are all on the brink and we all need saving. The moment when everything would depend on me.

There is a sound like aquarium glass groaning. It will fracture at any moment and all will be lost to the depths of the sea.

It's time.

“What do you think we're supposed to do, Sammy?” Mina asks.

“JUMP.”

Christmas Eve
Samantha

You're gone. You've really gone and left us alone in this big black hole.

I'm supposed to keep writing you, like we promised, but my broken heart doesn't know what to say.

By the time we got there today, you were pretty out of it. You asked me where all the “other worlds” are. Even though Kendra looked at me like I was a lunatic, I tried to explain where they could be hiding, in different dimensions millimeters away.

You asked me what world I would choose. If I would choose one with my mother.

I would choose you, Mina. You, Kendra, Isabel, and me. Every roll of the dice, I would choose a world with all of you.

ISABEL. ISABEL, ISABEL, ISABEL. SHE'S RUNNING past me in the grass, a flash of chestnut-colored hair and giggles. “This way, Sammy!” How old is she? Seven, maybe? She turns back and wags a little finger at me. “You're too slow, Sammy. Sloooowpoke Samantha.” She pokes me and takes off running.

 

Kendra. Kendra. KendraKendra.

“Samantha, I can't. I have to study.” Kendra has on those ridiculous horn-rimmed glasses. That means it's our sophomore year of high school.

“Those aren't even prescription glasses, you dork.”

Kendra shoots me the look of an exasperated librarian before smiling.

 

Mina? Mina. Mina!

“Samantha, do you think we'll be okay without mothers?”

I remember that sleepover. I remember those unicorn pajamas.

I pat Mina on the shoulder. “Of course, silly. We have each other instead.”

 

KendraMinaIsabel. IsabelKendraMina. Isabel. Kendra. Mina. The names swirl in the turquoise light all around me. No, it isn't light.

 

It's water. It's ocean water. I'm back in the raging sea, the day I went swimming with Isabel.