In Five Years

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Jill comes home with me. She lingers at the door, and I hear Bella: “Dannie? Who is it?”

“It’s Mom,” Jill says.

I leave them be.

I go out. I walk. When my mom calls, I answer.

“Dannie,” she says. “How is she?”

And then, as soon as I hear her voice, I start to cry. I cry for my best friend, who in an apartment above, is fighting for the right to breathe. I cry for my mother, who knows this loss all too intimately. The wrong kind. The kind you should never have to bear. I cry for a relationship I’ve lost, a marriage, a future that will never be.

“Oh, darling,” she says. “Oh, I know.”

“David and I broke up,” I tell her.

“You did,” she says. She does not seem surprised. It is barely a question: “What happened?”

“We never got married,” I tell her.

“No,” she says. “I suppose you didn’t.”

There is silence for a moment.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Well,” she says. “That’s better than some alternatives. Do you need help?”

It’s just a simple question, one she has asked me over and over again throughout the course of my life. Do you need help with homework? Do you need help with that car payment? Do you need help carrying that laundry basket up the stairs?

I have been asked if I’ve needed help so many times that I have been allowed to forget the question, the significance of it. I see, now, the way the love in my life has woven into a tapestry that I’ve been blessed enough to get to ignore. But not now, not anymore.

“Yes,” I tell her.

She says she will email David, she will make sure we get refunds where we can. She will handle the returns and the calls. She is my mother. She will help. That is what she does.

I go back upstairs. Jill is gone. Aaron is in the other room, maybe, working. I do not see him. At the door to the bedroom, I see that Bella is awake.

“Dannie,” she whispers. Her voice is light.

“Yes?”

“Come up,” she says.

I do. I come around the other side of the bed, getting in next to her. It hurts for me to look at her. She’s all bones. Gone are her curves, her flesh, the softness and mystery that has been her familiar body for so long.

“Your mom left?” I ask.

“Thank you,” she says.

I don’t answer. Just thread my fingers through hers.

“Do you remember,” she says. “The stars?”

At first I think she means the beach at night, maybe. Or that she doesn’t mean anything. That she’s seeing something I can’t now.

“The stars?”

“Your room,” she says.

“The stick-ons,” I say. “My ceiling.”

“Do you remember how we used to count them?”

“We never got there,” I say. “We couldn’t tell them apart.”

“I miss that.”

I take her whole hand in mine now. I want to take her whole body, too. To hold her. To press her close to me, where she can’t go anywhere.

“Dannie,” she says. “We need to talk about this.”

I don’t say anything. I can feel the tears running down my cheeks. Everything feels wet. Wet and cold — damp — we’ll never get dry.

“What?” I say, stupidly. Desperately.

“That I’m dying.”

I turn to her, because she can barely move anymore. Her eyes look into mine. Those same eyes. The eyes I have loved for so long. They are still there. She’s still in there. It’s impossible to think she won’t be.

But she won’t be. Soon, she won’t be. She is dying. And I cannot deny her this, this honesty.

“I don’t like it,” I say. “It’s bad policy.”

She laughs, and then starts coughing. Her lungs are full.

“I’m sorry,” I say. I check her pain pump. I give her a minute.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“No, Bella, please.”

“No,” she says. “I am. I wanted to be here for you for all of it.”

“But you have,” I say. “You’ve been here for everything.”

“Not everything,” she whispers. I feel her search for my hand under the sheets. I give it to her. “Love,” she says.

I think about David, in our old shared apartment, and Bella’s words: Because that’s the way you love me.

“You’ve never had it,” she says. “I want the real thing for you.”

“You’re wrong,” I tell her.

“I’m not,” she says. “You’ve never really been in love. You’ve never really had your heart broken.”

I think about Bella at the park, Bella at school, Bella at the beach. Bella lying on the floor of my first New York City apartment. Bella with a bottle of wine in the rain. Bella on the fire escape at 3 a.m. Bella’s voice on New Year’s Eve, cracking through the Parisian phone. Bella. Always.

“Yes,” I whisper. “I have.”

Her breath catches, and she looks at me. I see it all. The cascade of our friendship. The decades of time. The decades to come — more, even, without her.

“It’s not fair,” she says.

“No,” I say. “It’s not.”

I feel her exhaustion move over both of us like a wave. It drags us under. Her hand softens in mine.