I tightened my arms across my chest. “What will hurt, Ana?”
“No,” she said, snuggling her shoulder blades back into the pillows. “You don’t want to know.”
“Tell me,” I said.
She shrugged. “Fine. Here it is. Ready?” She left a healthy pause, and then she said, “You are not who you think you are.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You are not who you think you are.” Her whole body was still. Only her mouth moved. “I might have lied to you, Nan, but I don’t lie to myself. I know who I am.”
“So do I,” I said because it was the only thing to say.
Ana didn’t move, didn’t blink.
And that’s when I realized that this—her silence—was her power. It was Ana’s most powerful card, and she played it all the time. Doing absolutely nothing made her seem smart when she didn’t know what to say. It made her seem strong when she was lost. It was a way to intimidate with zero effort—if you were scared. If you were in awe, her silence made her wise. These blank spaces were Ana’s genius. You filled them in with your favorite obsessions, never noticing you had done all the work. When she said nothing, you assumed there were a million interesting thoughts in her head, and that she was holding them back for a reason, a reason that you were too blind or too dumb to understand, when in reality she was probably thinking about what she’d have for lunch.
We were staring each other down, neither of us moving, neither of us blinking. Looking into her eyes like that, I thought I saw so many emotions pass across her face. She was angry. She was sad. She was deeply depressed. She was hideous. She was beautiful, especially in this light. She was lost. But she was right. She was nothing. She was a mirror. She was me.
I blinked first.
The smile that spread across her face so slowly. All those sparkling fake teeth.
“I know you hate me now, Nan. I get it,” she said. She was speaking in her wise yoga teacher voice, the one that made you want to trust her. “And I’m sorry.” She sighed. “I’m sorry for the pain I’ve caused you.”
I said nothing. I stayed still.
“Do you forgive me?”
Nothing.
“Can you forgive me?”
Stay still.
“Which brings me to a bigger question.” She lifted her finger.
“What?” I blurted out.
She pointed to her heart. She laid her palm across it. “Can we be forgiven?”
“I don’t know, Ana, can we be forgiven?” I said this like she was taunting me at the playground. Why I became such a child around her, I’m still not sure.
“I’m asking you,” she said.
I went from child at the playground to child in the classroom. I was buying time. “By who? Who are we asking to forgive us?”
“Everyone. For everything. Can we wipe the slate clean? Can we wash our sins away? Can we be forgiven?”
Why did I feel like she was outsmarting me again? And why was I still here? I didn’t have to be here. I could leave.
“You wanna know what I think?” she asked.
I wanted to know so badly.
“I think you don’t know the answer,” she said.
I didn’t speak, didn’t move, didn’t breathe.
Neither did she.
Again, I was the first to blink.
Outside, the palm trees slow-danced in the easy Hawaiian breeze. I looked for the red bird but didn’t see it. There were other birds, maybe chirping, but I couldn’t hear them over the humming and beeping of hospital machinery outside the room, and the episode of Wheel of Fortune, which was broadcasting at low volume on her personal TV. I looked at the door. From the doorknob to the wall, a row of tiny ants. And this was the thing about Hawaii. You couldn’t get away from nature if you tried. Not even here, in the hospital, where the goal was to defy the natural hazards of life and living. Seal the doors and anti-bacterialize your hands at every station and still you lose.
I looked at my feet. My Tevas planted on the mint-green floor. A stain one tile away.
The ants moving in a line across the door.
When I looked at her again, I flinched. Maybe because it hurt to say the words.
“I’m leaving you now, Ana.”
“Wait,” she said. Was there a tear in her eye? “I never read your cards. Don’t you want to know how it ends?”
“No one knows how it ends.” I swallowed. Salt at the corners of my eyes. “Anything could happen.”
“No,” she said. “With me, anything could happen. With you, we know not much will happen. We know how it will end. It will be just like it is now, but in the future. Nothing will change.” Ana clasped her hands in prayer in front of her chest slowly, very slowly, so she wouldn’t disturb the IV. “I want you to know something.”
I waited. She was making me wait again. I was letting her do it.
“I want you to know,” she said, “that every time I look at my shadow, I will think of you.”
I walked to the door. It felt good to move. I turned. I said it in her yoga teacher voice. “Good-bye, Ana.”
She refused to cry. She was telling herself to hold on. I knew she would miss me.
I waited.
She placed two loving hands on her heart. She swallowed her tears again. She bowed. “Good-bye, sister.”
41
“I already called the San Diego store,” Chuck said. “They said they would take me back.”
“When did you call?”
“A month ago.”
“So you’ve been wanting to leave.”
“It seems wrong, doesn’t it?” He motioned at the backdrop. “It’s so nice here.”
“I know,” I said. “But I guess that doesn’t matter.”
The Hawaiian sunset, neon pink like her hair. How the light here was like butter, the air like a warm hug. Here was the jungle that surrounded us, and the grass we called ours rolling softly up the hill, and the debris from the storm reminding us that nothing was ours, not really.
?
The boys weren’t exactly stoked, but they agreed it was better than the alternative. I told Cam that Tom was welcome to visit anytime.
“We’ll take him surfing,” Jed said.
“Dude, we only went surfing once here. That is so lame.”
“Dude,” Jed said, “we are the lamest.”
The Clairemont coach would let them play in the last few games. “However,” I told them, “if you light anything else on fire, you’re grounded until college.”
Their arson charge was dropped to a fourth-degree misdemeanor. We paid the fine. They would pay us back by doing yard work around the house in San Diego.
Chuck and I realized we were sending a mixed message by letting them burn the shed, but we let them do it anyway.
Together, we stood on the lanai and watched the fire engulf the air. It was mesmerizing.
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