“We live in America.”
“That we do, Sailor. That we do. But wherever in the world we live, something’s gonna get us in the end. Something gets us every time.”
I hadn’t known then how to argue his point.
I should have tried harder.
“You never touch this stuff,” he said now, holding up the bottle of whiskey. “Right?”
I shook my head.
“Besides that one time, I mean,” he said.
“That was the only time.”
“Good,” he said. “Good.” He twisted the top back onto the bottle and picked up his glass. “You have a couple minutes? I have some things to show you.”
“Sure.”
He gestured toward the dining table where some papers were spread out. He said, “Sit with me.”
In front of me were documents from my soon-to-be college, thanking us for our payment in full for the first two semesters. There was an envelope with my social security card and my birth certificate. I didn’t know he had them. “And this,” he said, “is the information for your new bank account. It looks like a lot of money. It is a lot of money. But it will run out. After you’re gone, no more four-dollar coffee. This is food and bus-fare money. Textbooks and simple clothing.”
My heart pounded. My eyes burned. He was all I had.
“Here is your new ATM card. The code is four-oh-seven-three. Write that down somewhere.”
“I can just use my normal card,” I said. “From the account I share with you.” I looked again at the dollar amount on the statement. It was more money than I had ever seen belong to us. “I don’t need all this.”
“You do,” he said. Then he paused and cleared his throat. “You will.”
“But all I care about is having you.”
He leaned back in his chair. Took off his glasses. Cleaned them. Put them back on.
“Sailor.”
His eyes were yellow as daisies. He’d been coughing up blood. He looked like a skeleton, sitting there next to me.
He shook his head and said, “You’ve always been a smart girl.”
It was a summer of trying not to think too deeply. A summer of pretending that the end wasn’t coming. A summer when I got lost in time, when I rarely knew what day it was, rarely cared about the hour. A summer so bright and warm it made me believe the heat would linger, that there would always be more days, that blood on handkerchiefs was an exercise in stain removal and not a sign of oblivion.
It was a summer of denial. Of learning what Mabel’s body could do for mine, what mine could do for hers. A summer spent in her white bed, her hair fanned over the pillow. A summer spent on my red rug, sunshine on our faces. A summer when love was everything, and we didn’t talk about college or geography, and we rode buses and hopped in cars and walked city blocks in our sandals.
Tourists descended onto our beach, sat in our usual places, so we borrowed Ana’s car and crossed the Golden Gate to find a tiny piece of ocean to have for ourselves. We ate fish-and-chips in a dark pub that belonged in a different country, and we collected beach glass instead of shells, and we kissed in the redwoods, we kissed in the water, we kissed in movie theaters all over the city during matinees and late-night showings. We kissed in bookstores and record stores and dressing rooms. We kissed outside of the Lexington because we were too young to get in. We looked inside its doors at all the women there with short hair and long hair, lipstick and tattoos, tight dresses and tight jeans, button-ups and camisoles, and we pictured ourselves among them.
We didn’t talk about Mabel’s departure, which was to come half a month before mine. We didn’t talk about the blood on the handkerchiefs or the coughs that ricocheted from the back of my house. I didn’t tell her about the paperwork and the new ATM card, and I barely thought about them—only when I found myself without Mabel, only in the darkest and most silent hours—and when I did, I pushed the thoughts away.
But it turns out that even the fiercest denial can’t stop time. And there we were, at her house. There, in her foyer, were the suitcases and duffel bags she’d packed when I wasn’t looking. They’d be loading the car the next morning. Ana and Javier invited me to come on the round-trip drive to Los Angeles, but I couldn’t bear the thought of returning without her, the only backseat passenger, and Mabel looked relieved when I said no.
“I think I would have cried the whole way,” she told me in her room that night. “I might cry the whole way anyway, but if I’m alone you won’t have to watch me do it.”
I tried to smile but I failed. The trouble with denial is that when the truth comes, you aren’t ready.