Nyala was looking at me with sympathy. "You can't. Some things must be carried, and that's just the way it goes. It's not for us to know the why. Listen, baby, life is a series of things we choose and things we carry." She stood up, grabbing a rag on the table in front of her and wiping her hands clean before coming to sit next to me on the settee. "The things we choose, well, those are ours. But we don't get a vote on the things we carry. Some are heavier than others, some we can put down eventually, and some are ours to keep. We don't have a choice in the burdens we're given to bear, but we do have a choice in how we hold them. We can strap them to our backs and walk through the world hunched over under the weight like someone who should spend his or her days in a bell tower. Or we can stand tall and straight like one of those African queens carrying a woven basket on her head." She straightened her spine and held her head high, demonstrating her words, and then she smiled gently. "No, baby, we don't get to choose what we carry, but we do get to choose the grace with which we carry it."
I let out a small sniffle, a tear streaking down my cheek. I smiled and swiped at it.
"Now, are you Quasimodo or are you a queen?" she asked.
I laughed softly, wiping at another tear. "I want to be a queen."
Nyala gave me a dazzling smile. "Good. Then stand tall. Stake your claim, my love. Ryan—or any man for that matter—would be lucky to have you, brave, beautiful girl." She stood up and returned to her sculpture.
"Even if I'm a queen, I'm still difficult to love," I insisted.
"I don't find you difficult to love. I find it quite easy actually."
I smiled. "That's because you just . . . accept me."
"Maybe he wants to accept you, too."
"I shouldn't let him." I want to let him. I want to let him so much.
"It might not be your choice. And, baby girl, the ones who see what we carry and want us anyway, those are the ones to hold on to."
"How could it ever end well, Ny?" I asked.
"Oh, Lily. Happily ever after doesn't mean a lifetime of perfection. I don't think anyone believes that happily ever after means there are no unhappy days, even unhappy years. It means loving forever, despite all the many reasons it's easier not to."
I sighed loudly again, thinking that Ryan didn't know the extent of what he might be dealing with, what forever might mean between the two of us. "Oh, the angst," Nyala said and laughed. "I should write this into one of my novels."
I gave her a mock stern look and then smiled. "I should write a novel of my own. I obviously have the imagination for it."
Nyala nodded. "You have the heart of an artist. It's why so many of us lose our minds."
I laughed. "What?"
"No, it's true. Go into any institution in the world and take a poll. I don't have any scientific data to support it, but from my personal observation, the majority of crazy people are artists. They're more sensitive souls—they have to be to create art others respond to. But it means they're more easily broken."
I shook my head, smiling. "I'm not an artist."
"Maybe you just haven't found your art yet." She pulled her head back and gave her clay an assessing look and then went back to work. "Think about what it means to be a writer, for example—you have to create an entire world in your head and then fashion characters so believable you know their every thought, their every dream, every intention, every potential, every motivation. You have to live in their head enough to understand them, to tell their story. You have to make them so believable that sane humans actually fall in love with that character. Or mourn their losses, or feel anger on their behalf, feel authentic emotion for them. I think a writer needs to be at least partially crazy to manage something like that."
Yes. Yes, that's exactly how it could be for me in my own mind. I should never, ever try my hand at writing because I had no problem going there. My problem was that I would stay there. And I wouldn't know whether the world I'd suddenly found myself in was real or not real. That's what it was like to go crazy—like jumping straight into a novel. In any case . . . "I think most authors would say they have a vivid imagination," I corrected.
She snapped her fingers, a small bit of clay flying away from her hand. "Yes! And you and I have the most vivid imaginations of all. Next time one of us sees a person who isn't there, or knows all the thoughts and feelings of a vision, we'll say about the other, ‘Isn't her imagination particularly vivid?’ What a wonder! What a marvel! It's not just vivid, it's strikingly vivid. Astonishingly vivid. The most vivid of all."
I laughed, my soul feeling lighter. Nyala somehow managed that. Always. I guess some people might call her crazy—and there were times when she sunk into a dark abyss where only she went—but I called her my miracle. She was somehow able to magically change my outlook on an entire situation, to provide that tiny shift in perception that gave me hope to rise above the problem. And it always felt right because she was able to put voice to that which was already in my heart. How she did that, I wasn't sure, but if that didn't speak of miracles, I didn't know what did.
"Those quacks and pill pushers might try to diagnose us with something else, but Lily, girl, our real diagnosis is a particularly vivid imagination. And we both know it." She gave me a big grin.
Oh, if only that were true. Still, sometimes you had to laugh. And that's just what I did, collapsing back on the couch.
**********
I felt a little bit better when I left Nyala deep in her clay, although seeing Ryan at the aquarium still weighed heavily on my heart. As I walked, I pulled out my phone to call my grandmother. She answered on the second ring. "Hello, darling."
"Hi, Grandma. I just wanted to let you know I'm headed home."