In Five Years

Chapter Thirty-Eight

It happens quickly and then slowly. We plummet fast, and then we exist at the bottom of the ocean for eight days, an impossible amount of time to breathe only water.

Bella stops treatment. Dr. Shaw speaks to us; he tells us what we already know, what we have seen up close with our own eyes — that there is no point anymore, that it is making her sicker, that she needs to be home. He is calm and collected, and I hate him, I want to ram him into the wall. I want to scream at him. I need someone to blame, someone to be responsible for all of this. Because who is? Fate? Is the hellscape we’ve found ourselves in the work of some form of divine intervention? What kind of monster has decided that this is the ending we deserve? That she does?

It moves upward, to her lungs. She ends up in the hospital. They remove the fluid. They send her home. She can barely breathe.

Jill isn’t there. She’s staying at a hotel in Times Square, and on Friday I find myself putting on my boots and coat and leaving Bella and Aaron alone in the apartment. I truck up to Midtown, through the lights of Broadway — all those people. They’re about to go to the theater, see a show. Maybe this is a celebratory night. A promotion, a trip to the city. They’re splurging on a feel-good musical or the latest celebrity play. They live in a different realm. We do not meet. We do not see one another anymore.

I find her at the W Hotel bar. I hadn’t really known my plan, what I was going to do once I got there — call her cell? Demand her room number? But no further steps are necessary. She’s sitting in the lobby, a vodka martini in front of her.

I know it’s vodka because it’s what Bella drinks. Jill used to let us have sips of hers when we were very young, and then make them for us later, when we were still not legal.

She has on an orange pantsuit, crepe silk, with a neck scarf, and I feel my stomach boil in anger that she had the energy to get dressed like this. That she has on accessories. That she still is able to believe it matters.

“Jill.”

She startles when she sees me. The martini wobbles.

“How— Is everything alright?”

I think about the question. I want to laugh. What possible answer is there? Her daughter is dying.

“Why aren’t you there?” I say.

She hasn’t been downtown for forty-eight hours. She calls Aaron, but she hasn’t actually made her physical presence known.

Jill opens her eyes wide. Her forehead doesn’t move. An effect of injections, of the side of medicine she is fortunate enough to elect to use while her cells are not multiplying into monsters.

I sit down next to her. I’m wearing yoga pants and an old UPenn sweatshirt, something of David’s I kept, despite.

“Do you want a drink?” she asks me. A bartender hovers at the ready.

“A gin martini,” I find myself saying. I hadn’t expected to stay. Just to say what I came to say and turn around.

My drink comes quickly. She looks at me. Does she expect me to toast her? I take a sip hastily and set it back down.

“Why are you here?” I ask her. The same question, a different angle. Why are you here, in this city? Why are you here, at this hotel where your daughter is not?

“I want to be close,” she says. She states it matter-of-factly. No emotion.

“She’s—” I start, but I can’t. “She needs you there.”

Jill shakes her head. “I’m just in the way,” she says.

She’s been ordering delivery to the apartment, sending in maid service. On Monday, she came with flowers and wanted to know where the cutting sheers were.

“I don’t understand,” I say. “Frederick. Where is he?”

“France,” she says, simply.

I want to scream. I want to throttle her. I want to understand how, how, how. It’s Bella.

I take another sip.

“I remember when you and Bella met,” she says. “It was love at first sight.”

“That park,” I tell her.

Bella and I didn’t meet at school, but instead at a park in Cherry Hill. We had gone for a Fourth of July picnic. My cousins lived out in New Jersey and they were hosting. We rarely visited them. They were conservative to our reformed and had a lot of opinions on the level of Jewish we were. But for some reason we weren’t at the beach, so we went.

Separately, Bella and her family were at that same park, although they, like us, were setting up shop in a home twenty-five miles from there. They’d come for Frederick’s work — some kind of company barbecue. We met by a tree. She was wearing a blue lace dress and white sneakers, and her hair was in a red headband. It was a lot for a little girl from France. I remember thinking she had an accent, but she didn’t, not really. I just never heard anyone speak who wasn’t from Philadelphia before.

“She couldn’t stop talking about you. I was afraid she’d never see you again, so we put her in Harriton.”

I look up at her. “What do you mean, you put her in Harriton?”

“We weren’t sure she’d make any friends. But as soon as she met you, we knew we couldn’t separate you. Your mother said you were starting Harriton in the fall, and we enrolled her.”

“Because of me?”

Jill sighs. She adjusts the scarf at her neck. “I’ve been less than a great mother, I know that. Less than good, even. Sometimes, I think the only thing I did right was give her you.”

I feel the tears in my eyes spring up. They sting. Tiny bees in the lids. “She needs you,” I say.

Jill shakes her head. “You know her so much better than I do. What could I possibly give her now?”

I lean forward. I put a hand on her hand. She’s startled by the contact. I wonder when the last time anyone touched her was.

“You.”