My therapist, Jennifer—not Jen, never Jen—I made the mistake once and was sharply corrected. The woman has framed quotes on the wall (“Life begins after coffee,” and “I’m not weird I’m limited edition”), so I’m not sure what kind of gravitas she thinks her full name adds. Anyway, Jennifer has tricks for coping with this kind of anxious spiraling, but deep belly breaths and mantras don’t stand a chance tonight. I started seeing Jennifer a few years ago, shortly after the Thanksgiving I spent puking up rosé and spilling my guts to Chantal. I didn’t want to talk to a therapist; I thought that panic attack had just been a blip on an otherwise (fairly successful!) path to pushing Sam Florek out of my heart and mind, but Chantal was insistent. “This shit is above my pay grade, P,” she’d told me with trademark blunt force.
Chantal and I met as interns at the city magazine where she is now the entertainment editor. We bonded over the peculiar business of fact-checking restaurant reviews (So the halibut is coated in a pine nut dust, not a pistachio crust?) and the editor in chief’s farcical obsession with tennis. The moment that solidified our friendship was during a story meeting that the editor literally began with the words, “I’ve been thinking a lot about tennis,” and then turned to Chantal, who was the only Black person in the entire office, and said, “You must be great at tennis.” Her face remained perfectly composed when she replied that she did not play, while at the same time I blurted, “Are you kidding?”
Chantal is my closest girlfriend, not that there’s much competition. My reluctance to share embarrassing or intimate parts of myself with other women makes them suspicious of me. For instance: Chantal knew I grew up with a cottage and that I hung around with the boys next door, but she had no idea about the extent of my relationship with Sam—or how it ended in a messy explosion that left no survivors. I think the fact that I’d kept such a fundamental piece of my history from her was more shocking than the story of what happened all those years ago.
“You do understand what it means to have friends, right?” she’d asked me after I told her the horrible truth. Considering that my two closest friends no longer speak to me, the answer probably should have been Not really.
But I have been a good friend to Chantal. I’m the person she calls to bitch about work or her future mother-in-law, who is continually suggesting Chantal relax her hair for the wedding. Chantal has no interest in wedding-y things, except for having a big dance party, an open bar, and a killer dress, which, fair, but since the event needs to come together somehow, I’ve become the default planner, putting together Pinterest boards with decor inspo. I’m reliable. I’m a good listener. I’m the one who knows what cool new restaurant has the hottest chef. I make excellent Manhattans. I am fun! I just don’t want to talk about what keeps me awake at night. I don’t want to reveal how I’m beginning to question whether climbing the ladder has made me happy, how sometimes I long to write but can’t seem to find the courage, or how lonely I sometimes feel. Chantal is the only person who can pull it out of me.
Of course, my reluctance to discuss Sam with Chantal has nothing to do with whether or not I think about him. Of course I do. But I try not to, and I don’t stumble very often. I haven’t had a panic attack since I started seeing Jennifer. I like to think I’ve grown over the last decade. I like to think I’ve moved on. Still, every once in a while, the sun will shimmer off Lake Ontario in a way that reminds me of the cottage, and I’m right back on the raft with him.
* * *
MY HANDS ARE shaking so badly when I fill out the forms at the rental car counter that I’m surprised the clerk hands over the keys. Brenda was understanding when I called to ask for the rest of the week off—I told her there had been a death in the family, and while it was technically a lie, Sue was like family. At least she had been at one time.
I probably hadn’t needed to stretch the truth, though. I have taken precisely one day off this year for an extended Valentine’s spa weekend with Chantal—we have marked the holiday together since we were both single, and no boyfriend or fiancé will put an end to the tradition.
I briefly consider not telling Chantal where I’m going, but then I have visions of getting in an accident and no one knowing why I was on the highway far from the city. So I write a quick text from the rental car lot, adding a few I’m totally fine exclamation points before I hit send: Your party was so much fun!!! (Too much fun! Shouldn’t have had that last spritz!) Heading out of town for a few days for a funeral. Sam’s mom.
Her text buzzes seconds later: THE Sam??? Are you OK?
The answer is no.
I’ll be fine, I write back.
My phone starts vibrating as soon as I hit send, but I let Chantal’s call go to voicemail. I’m so low on sleep, I’m running purely on adrenaline and the two vats of coffee I drank at this morning’s interview with a full-of-himself wallpaper designer. I really don’t want to talk.
In the time it takes me to navigate through the city streets and onto the 401, my bowels are in such tight knots that I need to pull into a Tim Hortons off the highway for an emergency bathroom break.
I’m still shaky when I get back in the car, bottle of water and raisin-bran muffin in hand, but a surreal kind of calm comes over me as I drive further north. Eventually, rocky outcrops of Canadian Shield granite erupt from the land, and roadside signs for live bait and chip trucks emerge from the scrub. It’s been so long since I’ve traveled this route, yet it’s all so familiar—like I’m driving back into another part of my life.
The last time I made this trip was Thanksgiving weekend. I was alone then, too, racing up in the used Toyota I’d bought with my tip money. I didn’t stop the entire four-hour drive. It had been three agonizing months since I’d seen Sam, and I was desperate for him to wrap his arms around me, to feel enveloped by his body, to tell him the truth.
Could I have known how that weekend would give me both the greatest and most terrible moments of my life? How rapidly things would go very, very badly? That I would never see Sam again? My mistake had come months earlier, but could I have prevented the aftershocks that caused the most severe destruction?
My stomach takes a roller-coaster ride as soon as I spot a glimpse of the lake’s southern end, and I take deep breaths iiiiiin one, two, three, four and ooouuuut one, two, three, four all the way to the Cedar Grove Motel on the outskirts of town.
It’s late afternoon by the time I check in. I buy a copy of the local paper from the elderly man at the lobby desk and move the car in front of room 106. It’s clean and nondescript. A generic print of a deer in a forest hanging over the bed and a frayed polyester quilt that was probably burgundy at the beginning of its long life are the only doses of color.
I hang up the black sheath dress I’ve brought for the funeral and sit on the edge of the bed, tapping my fingers on my thighs and looking out the window. The north end of the lake, town dock, and public beach are just visible. I feel itchy. It seems wrong to be so close to the water but not go to the cottage. I’ve packed my bathing suit and towel so I could walk over to the beach, but all I want to do is dive off the end of my dock. There’s just one problem: It’s not my dock anymore.
4
Summer, Seventeen Years Ago
I’d never had a boy in my bedroom until that first evening when Charlie dropped Sam off on the doorstep of our cottage. As soon as we were alone, I was tongue-tied with nerves. Sam didn’t seem to have the same problem.
“So what kind of name is Persephone?” he asked, stuffing a third Oreo into his mouth. We were sitting on the floor, door open at Mom’s insistence. Given how sullen he was when we met, he was a lot chattier than I expected. Within minutes I learned he had lived next door all his life, he was also starting eighth grade in the fall, and that he liked Weezer well enough, but the shirt was actually a hand-me-down from his brother. “Almost all my clothes are,” he explained matter-of-factly.
Mom hadn’t looked happy when I asked if Sam could stay for the evening. “I don’t know if that’s the best idea, Persephone,” she said slowly, right in front of him, then turned to Dad for his input. I think it was less about Sam’s boy-ness and more that Mom wanted to keep me away from other teenagers for at least two months before we went back to the city.