She nodded as if to say: that’s a great question. “Well, I guess I mean that in a way, I feel I deserved cancer. I know—it sounds so self-flagellating. But deeply, that’s how I feel. I…let’s just say I haven’t always been an outstanding citizen. When I was younger…well…” She sighed. Then she tucked her short black hair with the neon pink shock behind her ear, and I wondered what it was like to wear a wig all the time. “The point is that moving forward, I’m going to be as good as I can be. For the rest of my life. Because karma works both ways. You do bad, you get bad. You do good, you get good. I mean, right? It’s pretty simple. It’s almost like a little game.”
We were quiet for a few moments while Ana poured the steaming water into our mugs from a high angle like a bartender, and then it dawned on me that maybe in her mysterious younger years she’d actually been a bartender. The idea of a checkered past made her more intriguing than she already was, and so unlike the water polo moms in San Diego, whose entire past, present, and future existed safely within the same four freeway exits.
“Because the worst thing would be if the cancer came back,” she went on. “Death, obviously, is the worst thing. And I’m not ready to die yet. So,” she shrugged, “I’m working the universe.”
I’d never heard anyone talk about karma in this way. Which—of course I hadn’t. I didn’t know anyone who talked about karma at all. But I thought it made sense. I mean, in theory.
“So I’ve been thinking about how to be more compassionate,” she said. “Which is something we should all do anyway, but I’m trying to step it up. I want to do good in bigger ways. I’m not sure exactly how yet, but I have some ideas.” She rubbed her hands together, and I was even more intrigued.
“So far, I’ve been doing small things, like opening the door for people and smiling at people, which is just common courtesy. It’s not groundbreaking. I was probably doing a lot of that stuff before.” She looked at the welcome basket. “But like this, for example,” she said. “Would I have given you this soap before? I don’t know. Maybe. But honestly, maybe not.” She laughed a deeper laugh than her usual chuckle. “I’m covering all my bases.”
“Thank you again,” I said, absentmindedly tugging my tea bag.
“No,” she said, “thank you. You might be saving me from death right now.”
?
After tea, Ana showed me her bedroom. Clean and colorful with her bed low to the ground like everything else. A tattered hardcover book on the floor because she had no nightstand. On the windowsill were three baby succulents. “And that’s my snake.” She pointed to the terrarium I hadn’t seen behind me. “If anyone asks, she’s a lizard. Snakes aren’t allowed in Hawaii.” The snake was black and white and moving. “Portico gets excited when I come in here, don’t you, Portico?” she cooed.
“Portico?”
“It’s not a symbolic name,” she said. “It’s just a good word. I like the way it rolls off my tongue.”
“Por-ti-co,” I said phonetically.
“Exactly.” She put her hands on her hips and looked at the tank. “I’ve thought about turning her in,” she said, “since I’m being good now. But I’m not sure my god cares about the snake law.”
I nodded in a way that said: Okay, uh-huh, tell me more.
And she did.
She told me that she didn’t mean God like crucifix-goatee-capital-G God. But that she believed in a greater something, you know? Something beyond herself. She said, “And if you didn’t make the sun rise this morning, Nancy, then you believe in something greater than yourself, too.”
Ana’s lowercased god was nature, really. She saw her in the clouds, and yes of course it was a her, and she’d even given her a little nickname, which was Celia. Because Celia sounded like “ceiling,” and the ultimate ceiling—“obvious!”—was the sky.
When she asked me if I believed in anything, I said I didn’t know. “You can borrow Celia until you figure it out, if you want,” she said. She told me she used to not know either, but cancer had changed that. She saw her life clearly now. Of course I was glad I hadn’t gotten cancer, but I envied her clarity.
When Ana looked out the window, I watched her, wondering what it was that she saw so clearly. It turned out to be simple. “The Jacuzzi is calling us,” she said. “I’ll change and meet you out there.”
?
The plastic Jacuzzi was set right on the ocean. It was like heaven. All that horizon, and the waves crashing against the rock wall, spraying me a little, just enough. I was happy she’d left me to undress alone. I lowered myself in, let my body melt into the heat. I looked at the palm trees moving in the wind and I thought: This. This is it. This is what living is like.
Ana appeared in a red suit, the same red as my nails. “How is it?” she asked.
“Divine.”
“Good word,” she said, enthusiastic, and it pleased me to know that I had pleased her.
She sat on the edge and put her feet in. She tipped her head back and let out a long guttural sigh and kept going until there was no more air left in her lungs. Looking up at the sky, she said, “When I’m feeling in the zone, Celia isn’t just a metaphor for clouds. She’s literally in the clouds.”
I thought of the boys when they were younger, finding trains and horses in the clouds. They seemed to find whatever thing they were obsessed with at the moment.
“See that one?” Ana pointed. “It looks like a plus sign. It means I’m doing a good job at being good now.” She smiled, blinked her eyes slowly. Her head was lazily slung to one side.
After a short silence, I told Ana that this was a beautiful spot. And that her house was so charming. She looked longingly at the house and said, “I wish it were mine.” It turned out she was taking care of it for her friend Eunice, who lived at a nursing home now. Ana was a “permanent house sitter, basically,” and this was perfect, except for the fact that Eunice was now thinking of selling, which would mess everything up.
When she was done talking, Ana looked at my face and then at my shoulders, and then she rolled her shoulders back, broadening her chest. I didn’t look at her breasts. “How are you feeling right now, Nancy?”
“Great,” I said. Because that’s how it went, didn’t it? Question: How are you feeling? Answer: Great. But something about being with Ana made this pleasantry seem wrong.
Slowly, she stood. “Will you do something for me?”
I said, “Sure”—of course I did—and then Ana told me to get ready because this was an odd request. “Just lie down however you’re comfortable on the ground.”
I looked at the ground, which didn’t look comfortable at all. “That is an odd request,” I said, laughing to make light of it.
I felt self-conscious getting out of the Jacuzzi. I thought my breasts were going to pop out of my suit. I also thought I might faint. I pulled the deep V up again and collapsed a little too quickly onto the ground. My eyelids were sweating, and Ana was standing over me now, studying my body. What was she looking for? Was I doing it right? Water dripped from her suit. She tapped her lips with her pointer finger.
“See how close your arms are to your body, and how your legs are pressed together so tightly?”
I raised my chin to look at my body. Good, I looked thin from this angle.
“Just the way you’ve organized yourself says so much. Your tightness, how compact you’ve made yourself, how little room you’re taking up in the world. Really, how little room you might be settling for. I hope that doesn’t offend you. All I’m saying is that it seems like you might be feeling tense.”
I moved my arms farther away from me.