“Whatever it is, but you don’t want me there having a panic attack. I’d ruin the whole mood.”
“We’ll stick together. We can do our dance, and then you won’t need to panic.” One time, when it was just the two of us, we made up a dance in which we wore hats that we pulled down until they nearly covered our faces, and then we threw them up in the air. We might have been drunk when we invented that dance, but we could be drunk again, I tell him. I pick his Hawaiian shirt out of his closet, which contains exactly three shirts, all meticulously hung up and evenly spaced.
“You look devastating in this shirt, and you know you do. So you can put on that and your straw hat, and we’ll dance and drink. People need you there. If you’re not there, I’ll have to answer the question all night long: Where is Patrick? Where’s Patrick? Think of how that’s going to be for me. It’s going to ruin my whole evening having to explain your absence.”
He just keeps looking at me sadly and shaking his head.
“Patrick,” I say. “Honey. We can’t undo the scars and the burns. We can’t go back to that day, so we just have to figure out how to move forward from it.”
I go over and gently touch his face, touch the place on his cheek that is nearly sunken in, and the smooth, bright part near his eye where the skin was stretched taut. I take his hand and hold on to it.
He is silent, unmoving, while I do this. A praying mantis of a man.
“Can’t we find a way together to be in the world in spite of the fire?”
He tilts his head back and closes his eyes. And I take his hand, and very carefully, slowly, drag it over to Cassandra, where she is resting beneath my shirt, and I lift my shirt ever so gently, and place his hand on this ball of tumor that even Houndy doesn’t want to look at or touch. I wrap his hand around Cassandra, and I tell him her name. I am terrified that he will pull away, that he’ll recoil, that I’ll see the horror in his eyes before he turns away.
Instead, what flickers across his face is compassion. He doesn’t move his hand. He says, “Oh, Blix,” like a slow exhale.
“We are all broken,” I say to him. “And we all still have to dance.”
He sucks his breath in. “I scare children, for God’s sake.”
“And yet we still have to dance.”
“I-I don’t know.”
“Also. I didn’t want to have to bring out the big guns here, but I think this really is a wake. I think tonight is the night I’m going to die.”
“Damn it, Blix. What are you talking about?”
“I have some evidence I’m not going to go into. But I’m just saying you might want to come and hang out. Otherwise, I’ll have to haunt you for the rest of time.”
And then I kiss him and kiss him, kiss all the scarred-over parts of his face, kiss his eyelids and his forehead, and then I go back upstairs, and I am not surprised—not a bit surprised—when an hour later he shows up to the party, and we slow dance together, him in his Hawaiian shirt and sweatpants and me in my spangles and sequins, with Cassandra bouncing around like a baby in a pouch.
The tiki torches by then are bright flames against the dark night sky, and people are gathered around the fire pit, where Houndy is cooking the lobsters he and Harry somehow got from the sea today. Jessica comes out with pots of melted butter, and Sammy, recently returned from his visit to his father, is playing his guitar in the corner. There are clusters of people everywhere, people playing music and people just talking, and oh, so many people, and Lola is bobbing here and there, putting out platters of things, pouring more wine. There’s a keg in the corner, and Harry is pumping it like it’s a musical instrument.
I am twirling around in the middle of everything—very slowly, very gently—and I am smiling when it happens. Smiling, as if life is just going to continue in this iridescent way, and I will always be a body, and Houndy will always have a body, and we have time for so many more wakes before the very end comes.
But no. There’s a sudden commotion next to the fire pit, and at first I think too many people are trying to put too much wood on it. But no—somebody is down on the ground, and others are gathered around, and somebody says, “Quick! Call nine one one!”
Lola turns to find me, and when our eyes meet, I know the very worst has happened. “Houndy,” she mouths to me.
And it’s true. I push through the crowds, and there he is. My Houndy.
Lying on the ground on his back and he is not breathing, and by the time I get there he is already dead, but no one knows that yet, only I know it because I see his spirit leaving, and I can see his face growing more gray, the pink of him vanishing like a magician’s trick, and somebody pushes me aside and does CPR on him—for the second time, I’m told—and Houndy is gone from his body, but part of him is still there with me. I feel him leaving, feel him slipping away, but first he’s drifting around telling me he loves me, and then soon he’s small enough that he can fit in the folds of my shawl, where I will hold on to him forever.
People are all murmuring, the crowd is like a tide, bending and waving, and gathering and subsiding. There are hands on me, people trying to lead me away from him, and good luck to them, because I can’t be led anywhere. And then there is the sound of a siren, and the pounding of boots on the roof, as EMTs come and do their work, bending over him, coaxing him into coming back, trying to use their machines to persuade him. But he’s in my shawl, I want to tell them. He’s not where they can reach him, not really.
Lola leads me away, but I insist on going in the ambulance. It’s too hard, she says, but I am firm about this. I need to go. And she says she’ll come, too, in that case. We have to be there with Houndy, even though it’s not Houndy. Not anymore.
Houndy/not Houndy.
I pass everyone on the way down, take hold of their hands, look deep in their eyes, and see all the love reflected back. All the amazing, smashing love. The universe of stars. The dance of summer.
The angel of death, you messed everything up. You came for the wrong person.
Somewhere, I know, a baby must be being born—a life arriving and a life leaving. And I feel both things, the joy of both. Houndy is gazing at me through the mists, Houndy so close he can still reach out and touch me. He’s sorry. He’s happy but he’s sorry.
And me saying, don’t worry I’m coming soon please wait for me Houndy love wait because I’ll be there I promise.
FOURTEEN
MARNIE
I text Brian as the ambulance pulls up.
“It’s okay, it’s going to be okay,” I hear myself saying. Two EMTs jump out and come inside the building to Natalie, who is now panting with each contraction and swaying on the bench just slightly. Her lips look a little white to me, and sweat is pouring off her forehead even though she’s shivering.
It’s hard for me to let go of her, but these guys know what they’re doing. They squat down next to her and take her pulse and blood pressure, and ask a lot of questions. “When is the baby due? When did you last eat? What hospital are you using? How far apart are the contractions? When did your water break?” And then they put her on a stretcher and take her inside the back of the ambulance, and one EMT slaps an oxygen monitor on her finger, and the other starts an IV. The radio crackles news of other people, but they are intent on Natalie. One of them talks into the handset for a minute, but I can’t pay attention to what he’s saying.