“Me, too,” I said, relieved the story was over. Before she could ask me anything else, I turned the conversation back to her. “Why are you asking me this stuff now?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. She seemed tentative, which was rare for her. “I guess I’m trying to figure out where I went wrong. Why did you go to college and find a husband and have two kids and I became a stripper who doesn’t know what love is? You’re healthy and I’m dying. You made it out and I didn’t.”
“Ana, you’ve had a wonderful life. I mean are having. You are having a wonderful, interesting life. My life is boring compared to yours. And you’re not a stripper anymore, you’re a healer. You changed.” I was defiant. “You. Changed.”
Ana shook her head. “It seems like I changed, but I didn’t. I was never healed. I became a healer to heal myself, but it didn’t work. You—you healed. I think you know what love is.”
I could see her holding back tears now. She closed her eyes to stop herself. The breeze blew my hair into my face, which made me feel guilty again for having it.
“It’s not fair,” she said, so softly I could barely hear. And then louder, “It’s not fair.” And then she dropped her head back and screamed, “It’s not faaaair!” When she looked at me, the sadness was gone from her face. The sun flashed in her eyes like two fireballs. She was back to being angry.
“Maybe,” I began helpfully, “we can think of some of your favorite things, and we can spend the next few months doing those things.”
“Like a bucket list? I don’t think that’s going to help,” she said. “This is a time for action, Nan. For justice. I will not resign myself to victimhood. I will deliver justice to this island with all the energy I have left until my flame peters out. And I’m going to do a great fucking job.”
Ana stood. She stripped off the kimono and all she was wearing was underwear, and for some reason her fake breasts seemed so depressing to me, even more depressing than her bald head. She jumped into the shallow Jacuzzi with a splash and stayed underwater for a long time, almost long enough to make me worried, but then she popped back up again. She stayed very still, not rubbing her eyes and not blinking, and her skin was so pale and so new and so oddly unblemished, and other than her worried, angry face, Ana looked like an innocent baby in a bathtub.
?
While I cleaned the cake dish and then the other dishes piled in the sink and then the rest of the kitchen, Ana sat back down on the couch with a yellow legal pad. She seemed peppier now, humming as she wrote. She’d even lit a stick of incense. Smoke rose in one thin, unperturbed line. When the ashes crumbled onto the Buddha’s head, I usefully went to wipe him down.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“But you like things tidy,” I said, sponging the rest.
“I don’t care anymore.”
“Well, I care for you.” One more wipe of the sponge and I looked at her. She was back in the black kimono, writing with a huge pencil, the kind children buy at Disneyland that’s almost too fat for them to grip. It said I HAWAII in the pattern of a circular staircase.
“What are you writing?”
“My bucket list.”
“Oh, Ana, that’s wonderful,” I said, picking one of her afghans up off the floor. “I’m happy to go with you wherever you want to go. Maybe not skydiving, but I’ll do anything else.”
“Good,” she said, “because I might need you when I get weaker.”
“Good,” I said, “because I’m good at being needed.”
And then the overwhelming feeling of wanting to be near her. Near her now, just in case, and I went and put my arms around her. “No peeking,” she said, and covered the legal pad with her hand. But I had already seen a little. BUCKET at the top, and #1: Gregory.
I didn’t want to invade her privacy but I also did so badly. “Who’s Gregory?”
“Peeker!” Ana hit my hand with her pencil.
“Sorry.”
“Gregory’s an old lover.”
“You want to see him before you die?”
“Yes,” she said, writing something else.
“You’re not going to do anything bad to him, are you?”
“Nothing he doesn’t deserve.”
This was not what I wanted to hear. “Ana.”
“Nan,” she said, “I already explained this to you. It’s for the greater good. If you’re going to judge me, I will go on without you.”
The thought of her going on without me was unbearable. “I’m trying not to judge you, Ana. I’m just—this is very hard for me to understand.”
Ana sighed. She was annoyed with me. “Nothing has changed, Nan. This is like the sandwiches. And the tarot stand. And the ‘You are loved.’ It’s good. It’s all good. It’s all part of the same Karma Factory, don’t you see?”
I added the afghan to the ordered stack I was now making, and asked the question I really didn’t want to know the answer to. “What are you planning to do to Gregory?”
Ana groaned. “Nan, what you should be asking is what Gregory did to me.”
“What did he do to you?”
“He cheated on me.”
“Ugh,” I said, thinking of Chuck. Chuck at Costco right now in his polyester work slacks. I wondered if he was back to drinking at lunch already.
And then it hit me. How had it taken this long?
“What?” Ana asked, sensing I had had an important thought.
“If Chuck is drinking again, he’s going to cheat on me again. It’s inevitable.” I must have looked horrified, because that’s how I felt.
“Totally inevitable.” Ana yawned. “It’s a trip when you can see the future, isn’t it?”
Did Chuck work with any blondes at this new Costco? How did I not know the answer to that? I was so na?ve.
“Men are disappointing,” I said.
“All people, sooner or later, will disappoint you,” Ana said, looking at the space above my head.
I hoped Ana didn’t think I was one of those people. For good measure, I reassured her. “I won’t disappoint you, Ana.”
Her sly smile, her black eyes on me, and then the slow knowing blink that marked her understanding. Every time it felt like being laid bare.
“Who else has disappointed you, Nan? And what would you do to them if you had the balls to do it?”
I forced a laugh. “Everyone’s disappointing me lately. Chuck, the boys. The boys,” I rolled my eyes, “lit a shed on fire.” It was a relief to tell her this, and it was even more of a relief when she said, “Oh, Nan, you’ve been experiencing pain.”
“Yes,” I said, as though just realizing it myself, “I have been in pain.”
Ana put her legal pad facedown on the table and nestled her head in my lap and petted my knee, and I put my hand on her shoulder because touching her head felt too intrusive and it also scared me a little. “I’ve been in pain, too,” she whispered. And then, “Do you think it’s fair?”
Right as I said, “Life isn’t fair,” I realized this was something my mother used to tell me all the time.
“Exactly.” Ana sighed. Her breath hot on my knee. “And why should we accept that? Doesn’t it seem kind of passive and wrong?”