When I was younger people told me I would regret the decisions I had made. You will regret never marrying, Helen! You will regret never having children, Helen! I suppose I only regret not knowing what it might have been like but never the choices themselves. Some women aren’t meant to do all those things. Maybe you are and maybe you aren’t. You have to figure that out for yourself.
Do I have any regrets, then? One, perhaps, and it’s a strange, strange one. It is not the obvious regret that will reveal itself to you soon enough. It’s another, smaller regret. It’s an easier one to get a handle on. I’ll tell you now because these letters allow me to tell you everything, to not keep any secrets from you. You, one of my favorite humans ever. Tied with Abe, tied with your dad, tied with your mom.
Here it is. My one regret:
I never cried.
Weird, right? To regret something so small? But I don’t know. In my whole entire life I never had a really good cry, one that lasted for hours and hurt like hell and emptied out every piece of my insides so I could start new. Your mom had a cry like that once, and I was there for it. If you ask her, she might tell you.
Here is my wish for you, Lottie. Or your next task, if that’s what you’re calling these. Whatever you call them: don’t be afraid to let yourself cry. Cry often, cry long, cry hard. Cry when you’re sad, cry when you’re happy. Cry whenever the fuck you want. Cry for me (but then stop). Cry for you. Cry for everyone in the world. In moderation, it can be the best thing for you.
Love, H.
I put the letter on my comforter.
I was already crying.
I didn’t stop for hours. I cried in my dreams, and I woke up empty and not the least bit new.
The members of the Everlife Society introduced themselves in initials: A., E., Q., and V.
A. and V. were women. E. and Q. were men. None of them was particularly welcoming, although it felt like E. imagined he was, by the way he set glasses of chocolate milk in front of the siblings. (Did he think they were six? Also, Margo was allergic to chocolate.) Nobody said anything for a long time. The chocolate milk glasses sweated onto the wood. Margo considered asking for coasters, but hey, it wasn’t her coffee table’s funeral.
Then, as if bursting, A. leaned forward and asked, “Did you really make it into the house?”
“A.,” E. said warningly.
Margo shrugged and said, “Yup,” then pointedly pushed her glass away from her.
“Tell me how you did it,” A. said.
“There was a door. We opened it,” Margo said. She was in a foul mood, woken in the middle of the night and brought to the secret headquarters of some secret group. Alvin didn’t blame her, although he did try and be a little nicer.
“We didn’t do anything special,” he added. “We just walked in.”
“Through the front door?” A. pressed.
“Didn’t I just say that?” Margo asked.
“Quite a rude little child, isn’t she?” A. whispered to Q.
Unfortunately for her, Margo had excellent hearing.
“One shouldn’t throw stones in glass houses,” Margo said. And for good measure, she added, “And I’m allergic to chocolate.”
—from Alvin Hatter and the Everlife Society
15
The morning light either reassures you or is much, much too bright. That morning it was the latter, and I stumbled downstairs with eyes red and puffy and blurred. My mother was just getting home from work; her own eyes were so tired that she couldn’t see how I was swimming through the air, drowning in it. She kissed my temple and went upstairs to bed. I made a pot of coffee and took a mug outside. I sat on the deck stairs; it was already hot and humid, but the grass was sparkling with dew.
“Make up your mind,” I whispered to the backyard.
“That’s my girl, talking to herself as usual,” Dad said. I hadn’t noticed him sitting in one of the deck chairs, on top of a towel so he didn’t get wet.
“I was talking to the grass,” I corrected him.
“Even better!”
“Why are you up so early on a Saturday?”
“I might ask you the same question.”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“Same.”
“Who won the Monopoly match last night?”
“Are you really asking a question to which you must surely know the answer?” Dad asked, getting up from his chair to join me on the steps. He put his arm around me and stole a sip of my coffee.
“The reigning champion,” I said.
“You’re looking at him.”
“How did you get so good at Monopoly?”
“Helen. She taught me everything she knew. She had a cutthroat business sense. You need one, if you get as successful as she did.”
His voice caught only the tiniest bit on her name. The tiniest hiccup in the back of his throat. It made my chest hurt.
“Mom told me about the missing week.”
“Yeah,” he said, withdrawing his arm, nodding. “She could be a real mystery, your aunt.”
“Where do you think she went?”
“I have my theories. None of them are true, I’m sure.”
“Maybe she wrote it down. She left me her journals, you know.”
“Have you read them?”
“I’m waiting for her to tell me to.”
“That’s smart,” he said. “She always had a plan, you know. She always knew what she was doing.”
“I wonder what that’s like.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself, kid. Just a skip away from the end of high school. College waiting in the distance. You’re doing pretty good from where I’m sitting.”
“I guess. I mean, I know what I’m doing and what my goals are, but . . . I guess I’m scared that I’m not going to be able to achieve them.”
“Whoa, whoa—where is this coming from?”
“It’s just . . . nothing is a given, you know? I got into school, yeah, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to be able to actually do it.”
“If anyone’s going to excel at this college thing it’s you, Lottie. You’ve been ready for college since your first day of preschool. You wouldn’t even let me walk you into the classroom, remember? I got this, Dad.”
I didn’t remember, admittedly, and that also didn’t really sound like me.
When had my anxiety kicked in? Sometime after that?
And why?
“And if I don’t? If I don’t excel? What then?”
“Then we make a nice little in-law apartment for you in the basement, and you live the rest of your days as a shut-in.”
“Dad! I’m being serious.”
“I have no doubt in your ability to kick this college’s ass, Lottie, but on the off chance it doesn’t work out, there are a hundred other paths you could take. A college degree isn’t the only thing in life. Look at your aunt Helen.”
He kissed my cheek, used my shoulder to push himself up. He went inside the house. I dumped the rest of my coffee on the grass and went inside to take a shower.
I tried to read the Ponce de León book later that day. I didn’t understand why she had wanted me to have it. I hated history, and I wasn’t particularly fond of nonfiction. I slugged through the first paragraph, and in theory it was pretty cool—it was all about an impossible quest and an unreachable dream—but the writing was so long-winded and dry that my eyes unfocused after just a few sentences.