“I don’t know. I guess so.” I am suddenly so very tired. I don’t want her to see me this way, on the verge of tears. A gecko runs across the top of the deck and stops to look at me, then hurries off, on a mission to catch mosquitoes. I give him my blessing and try to pull myself together.
“Whoo! God, what a time this has been!” Blix is saying. “I think I’ve danced with everything on two legs tonight. And if there’d been some cats and dogs around, I probably would have danced with them as well.” She comes over and stands next to me, yawning and stretching her arms up in the air.
“Oh fuck it,” she says. “Can’t we just be honest, you and me? You don’t have to answer that, because I’m going to tell you anyway. My grandnephew is a major dick. There. We probably should have done him in right when he arrived and we found out he was still breathing.”
“Maybe so.” I scrape the railing with my manicured fingernail. The insects are screeching from the swamp below.
“He’s got some work to do on himself. Some work on his auras, that’s for sure.”
I don’t want to look at her; it already feels like her eyes are boring right through me. But when I do finally turn toward her, the kindness in her face almost levels me.
“I think what happened is that he just had a really bad panic attack today,” I tell her, “and that was probably because he didn’t drink enough water. Anyway, he’s said he’s sorry, so I think we’re going to be okay.”
“Do you now?” she says. Her eyes are twinkling. “Well! Let’s go with that as the official version, then.”
“We’ve talked it out in the meadow and we’re going on the honeymoon, which will be nice. We’re really good when we’re traveling together, and then when we come back, it’ll just be our same life, living together like we’ve been doing already, and we’ll settle down—” I stop, remembering how she hates the settling-down concept.
She puts her hand on my arm. “Well, it is going to be all right, darling, but maybe not for the reasons you think. I hope you’ll listen to me because I don’t have a lot of time. You need to forget what society has told you about life and expectations, and don’t let anybody make you pretend. You are enough, just the way you are—do you hear me? You have many gifts. Many, many gifts.”
To my horror, I burst into tears. “Oh yeah. I’m just fantastic. You have to be a special kind of fantastic for a guy to decide on the wedding day that he’s not going to go through with it.”
She smiles and pats my cheek. “Now, now. Don’t turn on yourself because of him acting like a jerk. Your life is going to be so big, Marnie. Such a big, inclusive, loving heart song of a life you’ve got in store! You’re not going to give a shit about this guy. Trust me.”
“I don’t think I want a big life,” I blubber at her, and she says, “Oh, my, my, my,” and folds me into her massive, soft bosom and we sway back and forth, kind of to the music that’s playing inside but kind of not. “I just want to be ordinary,” I say into her scarves and beads. “Can’t I be ordinary?”
“Oh, my sweet girl. Oh my goodness. No, you can’t be ordinary. Oh heavens no. I feel like I’m standing in front of a magnificent giraffe, and she’s saying to me, ‘Why do I have to be a giraffe? I don’t think I’m going to go around giraffing anymore.’ But that’s just the way it is: you’re a wonderful, incredible giraffe, and you’ve got a life to lead that’s going to take you to amazing places.” She squeezes me and then lets me go. “You know, sometimes I wish I wasn’t at the end of life, because I just want to stick around and watch your creations. All of them.”
“Wait. What do you mean, the end of life? Are you dying?” I dab at my eyes with a handkerchief she produces.
She gets a funny look on her face, and I’m sorry I asked the question. Of course. Noah told me she’s eighty-five. Any way you look at it, that’s got to be pretty near the end of life.
“Hey, so listen, Ms. Giraffe, I came out here to tell you good-bye because I’ve got to go back to the hotel now,” she says. “My plane leaves early in the morning, and Houndy called me to say that he’s invited about twenty people over for lobsters tomorrow night. He can’t help himself.” Then she smiles at me. The wind blows some sparkles around.
“And you,” she says. “You’ve got some miracles to perform, honey child. Please try to remember that for me, okay? The world needs your miracles.”
“I don’t know how to perform miracles,” I tell her.
“Well, then you better start practicing. Words are a good first step. They have a lot of power. You can summon things by believing in them. First you visualize them being true, and then they come true. You’ll see.” She kisses me on both cheeks and then she heads through the door, but when she gets there she turns around and says, “Oh, I meant to tell you. You need a mantra to help you. You can borrow mine, if you want: ‘Whatever happens, love that.’”
When I get back inside, Noah comes over to me and holds out his arms, and we finally dance.
I put my head on his shoulder, and I say, “Are you feeling a little better? Did you get something to eat?” This is probably a very wifely thing to say, and I realize he’s probably resenting the hell out of it.
“Yes,” he says in a weary voice. “Yes, I’m better. I ate some protein.”
I feel so careful around him. “Good. And you were singing a lot, you and Whipple. That must have been okay, right?”
Then who knows what makes me brave enough to say this—maybe it’s all the alcohol I’ve had, or Blix’s words, or the fact that I’m feeling disconnected from reality—but I say the scary thing: “What’s next, do you think?”
“I dunno. The honeymoon?”
“Okay,” I say. “What about tonight?”
“What do you mean? Tonight we’re going to the hotel and we’re going to have great sex and sleep late. Like newlyweds.”
There are some other things I want to know. Like, is he going to be my husband? And am I really his wife? Are those words we can use? He puts his arms around me and we slow dance to another song, and then they turn the lights on, and I see that Noah’s eyes have no light in them. The air around him is a muddy beige I’ve never noticed before.
So I guess my first miracle will have to be to try to light him back up.
FIVE
BLIX
It’s a week after the wedding and I’m back home now. My tumor wakes me up before sunrise. It is thrumming right below the surface of my skin, like something alive, running under its own power.
Hi, love, it says. What shall we do today?
“Sweetheart,” I say to it. “I was hoping for just a little more sleep this morning. Would you very much mind if we did that—and then later we can talk and do whatever you want.”
The tumor hardly ever goes for this kind of reasoning. And why should it? It knows I’m at its mercy. I’ve made friends with it because I don’t believe in that whole battle metaphor for disease. You always read about that in obituaries, you know—“So and so battled cancer for five years” or worse, “He lost his battle with cancer.” I do not believe cancer appreciates that kind of thinking. And anyway, I’ve made nice with trouble my whole life, and I’ve noticed that what happens is that problems just curl right up like declawed kittens and nestle at your feet and fall asleep. Later, you look down, and they’ve wandered off somewhere. You bid them a fond farewell and get back to what you wanted to do in the first place.
In the interest of friendliness, I have given my tumor a name: Cassandra. She was the prophet nobody believed.