Here Without You
Reid: Jesus.
Brooke: She says she’s always liked me because I don’t take shit off anyone, lol.
Reid: Haha. Truth.
Reid: So have you heard anything more about Paper Oceans?
Brooke: Yeah. Janelle got the call earlier today – they’ve officially offered it to me. But I’d have to be in Australia all of June. I can’t do it.
Reid: Brooke. This is your CAREER. Say yes. I’ll take him in June. I’ll probably be done filming by then. If not, it’ll be a small overlap. He and the au pair we’re hiring can come to New York with me. It’ll be fine.
Reid: Unless you want to do Life’s a Beach instead …
Reid: I’ve heard that Xavier guy is an exceptional kisser …
Reid: And Stan is a gem of a producer and not at all egocentric …
Brooke: I’m crying. Holy shit. Are you sure? Are you SURE?
Reid: YES. We’ll be fine here without you. This is going to be his life. He’ll adjust. I can do this. And yes, I even promise to call on the all-knowing and ever-powerful Graham if I need advice.
Brooke: Is it okay if I kind of love you right now?
Reid: Yeah. Is it okay if I thank you for letting me knock you up?
Brooke: God, we’re weird.
Reid: Hell yeah we are.
27
DORI
‘Hey, Deb.’ I lean to kiss her temple and she blinks, but her fixed expression otherwise remains like the face of an impassive wax figure. ‘I thought you might be getting tired of tulips, and also, one of Dad’s rosebushes bloomed. They’re pink – which I know you think is such a cliché flower colour. But they smell so good that I didn’t think you’d mind.’
Depositing last week’s purple tulips in the trash can, I rinse and fill the vase in her bathroom sink. It’s been five weeks since I’ve seen my sister.
Five weeks since we buried Esther. Four weeks since Reid and I were in San Francisco. Three weeks since I’ve spoken to him. Two weeks since he stopped texting and leaving voicemails.
‘I like Cal. My roommate, Shayma, is from Louisiana. You’d love her. She’s a business major, but she does community outreach projects with me.’
Shayma hadn’t asked about Reid – or the fact that I hadn’t mentioned him in a while – until a couple of days ago. When I told her I hadn’t had a chance to talk to him in a few days, she pursed her lips and said um-hmm, but nothing more.
‘I’m taking all intro classes this semester, but most of my professors are pretty cool. And you were right – the campus is one funky place. There’s a full-scale T-rex model in the Life Science building. The grounds are beautiful, but the architecture is all over the place. And there’s tons of activist history intact – like the building that’s missing an outside handle because during protests fifty years ago, students chained the doors shut, and the administration took one handle off so they couldn’t do it again. In the upper plaza, student groups hand out flyers and sell things to raise money for charity. Sometimes, opposing groups have tables feet apart, but everybody stays remarkably civil.’
Running a brush through Deb’s short hair, I recall what it looked like before her accident. She had beautiful shoulder-length hair, chestnut with auburn highlights she did herself. Now it’s short, dull and frizzy; I make a mental note to bring conditioner with me next time. The bare spots from her surgeries have finally grown back in, though the surgical scar will remain a sort of odd, random part at the back of her head.
‘Berkeley feels like a small town, even though it’s not. It’s definitely not like LA or San Francisco – which you can see from certain spots on campus, if the fog hasn’t rolled in.’
Deb’s chair is positioned so she can ‘see’ the view from her window, which is no more or less ridiculous than me taking her for a stroll in the grounds. My parents insist there is no proof that she’s totally oblivious to what goes on around her, because her brain registers some activity. In some ways, this is more horrifying than if she’d remained medically unresponsive, because no one can assure us that she isn’t aware to some degree and simply unable to respond, though her doctors continue to reiterate that her brain activity is too inconsequential to represent comprehension.
My parents continue to hear what they want to hear.
I continue to speak to my sister because I have to talk to someone.
‘I haven’t spoken to Reid in a while. I miss him. Sometimes it feels like my heart is going to burst, and I almost want it to.’
When I was very young, I had chronic ear infections and a grandma with unconventional ideas about what constituted a helpful story. ‘Back in my day, there were no antibiotics for such things,’ she told me during one particularly excruciating episode. ‘Your eardrum just swelled up till it popped.’
‘Oh, Mother! Don’t tell her your horror stories!’ Mom said, aghast.
‘Well, after it popped, it stopped hurting!’ Grandma huffed. ‘Problem solved.’
I keep waiting for my heart to pop.
‘He has a son. River. He thinks that’s why I stopped talking to him – he thinks I’m angry he kept it from me. He doesn’t understand how easily I could forgive and understand that choice. It’s true that when he told me, and I looked at his picture on Reid’s phone, that was when I felt myself detaching. But anger wasn’t the reason for that.’
I place a blanket over Deb’s lap and take a light sweater from her closet. Clothing her is very much like dressing an infant on the cusp of being a toddler – she doesn’t help, but she doesn’t fight against me as I bend her elbow gently and pull her arm through the sweater.