Mae turns to them, and, for once, she fails at words. “But … but … we grew up here. We can’t just … This is our … This is where—”
“That’s what your parents wanted,” Tony says, his voice gentle. “In their will. They said they wanted the house and yoga studio sold and the money saved for you two in a small trust. College tuition, whatever you need. Fifty-fifty.”
I wonder if they had protections in place for me, before Mae. Or if they only thought about it after. Sometimes it’s hard, knowing that they picked her. That they chose Mae to be their daughter. I was the oops baby, the mistake. I wasn’t wanted at first. Probably a worst-nightmare scenario. The way Mom tells it, they saw Mae and Dad said, “That’s her. That’s our daughter.” I once overheard Mom telling Aunt Nora that getting Mae was one of the best decisions she’d ever made, that it would have been lonely if it were “just Hannah.”
That’s me: Just Hannah.
I shake my head a little because everything in me is getting bad, really dark, and I can’t go there, not unless I can pop this pill in my mouth without anyone noticing.
An acorn comes to me, the sort of one Yoko would write, not like my one-liners:
Get a cardboard box
Open it
Stare at it until your heart stops
I curl into a fetal position, my eyes on the wall. Mae starts rubbing my back again. Nora and Tony keep talking: “… Thanksgiving at the Cape, ice-skating on Boston Common, Red Sox games…”
And I think: I want a wave to swallow me up, too.
10
Mae
ISS Location: Low-Earth Orbit
Earth Date: 22 September
Earth Time (PST): 13:45
Nobody likes a sad astronaut.
Most people didn’t know that when Neil Armstrong went up to the moon, he was still grieving the death of his little kid. It didn’t fit the hopeful narrative, so they cut it out.
Before today, the day of my parents’ funeral, I would have said for certain that death is the end of a human’s existence, at least as this life-form. I know that this wanting there to be an afterlife is a cultural response to grief: It’s anthropology—not physics. And yet.
I can feel them.
Almost as if they were standing right behind me.
How would I be able to feel them if they were really gone?
Maybe it’s what Stephen Hawking was talking about in his last paper, on memory and black holes. About the possibility that the “hairs” of light surrounding black holes can actually encode information before things pass into the black hole. Before, we always assumed that whatever falls into a black hole would be swallowed up, all data erased so that it’s nothing more than pure energy. But if it’s true that these beams of light are actually encoding the information of the matter that passes through, saving the data for all time, the same thing might happen when we die.
Death is the ultimate black hole.
Which means it’s possible that Hawking discovered a theory for immortality before his own all-systems fail in his last days on Earth. Not, of course, a Philosopher’s Stone kind of immortality, but it might be possible that whatever is left of my parents is somehow being saved for all time in what amounts to a giant cosmological database. Dad’s theory on quintessence, Mom’s memories of the day she and Dad picked me up from social services, all the things they ever wanted to say to us and didn’t. Perhaps all of it’s still out there, somehow. Maybe that light at the end of the tunnel people like to talk about is just those hairs encoding everything we are before we’re nothing at all.
Most likely, this thought process is a stage of grief, demonstrating that I am just as susceptible as every human who has ever grieved to magical thinking. Dad would be so disappointed.
We’re holding the memorial under the rotunda at the beautiful library in downtown Los Angeles that Mom had once said was her church, and that Nah and I practically grew up in. It’s an art deco masterpiece, full of beautiful chandeliers and murals and wood paneling and marble.
A podium beneath the exquisitely painted ceiling has been placed before rows of already-full chairs, and behind it sits a projector screen on a stand. Gram, Papa, Aunt Nora, Uncle Tony, and our cousin Nate are gathered near the podium, going over last-minute details. Various relatives from both sides have flown in from Boston—Mom’s Greek side and Dad’s Mayflower crew.
Cynthia glides over in one of her gauzy sundresses straight from 1969. This one is dark purple. She’s laden down with amethysts that hang from her neck, and her burgundy hair is in a Frida-inspired braid—she and Mom did an online tutorial to figure it out last year. The ribbons woven into her hair are sage green, Mom’s favorite color.
“Mis hijas,” she says, wrapping her arms around us both.
I breathe in her lavender scent, and I suppose there is some truth to the calming effects of certain essential oils.
“She’s here,” Cynthia says, leaning back. “I can feel her. Can you?”
“I can’t tell what’s her and what’s me,” Nah says.
Maybe Nah is undergoing the same grief psychosis as me.
“That’s because she’s a part of you,” Cyn says.
But she’s not a part of me. Not technically. We don’t share blood, DNA. I didn’t grow inside her.
“It might feel like we feel them,” I say. “But I think it’s a game our minds are playing. Some sort of defense mechanism against grief—”
“Mae.” Hannah shakes her head. “You can’t prove everything.”
“You can try. You should try.”
Cyn gets that smile, the one that makes her look like the goddess cards on Mom’s altar. “Spirit doesn’t fit in a beaker or a test tube, hija.”
I wish Dad were here. You can’t reason with a coven.
Later, when Nah and I are alone again, I watch Cyn do all the things Mom would do: check to make sure the coffee’s hot, rearrange the food. Discreetly throw out the daisies Mom hates from the flower arrangements people brought.
“I need a drink,” Nah says.
She keeps scratching at her arms, pulling on her hair, like she wants to peel herself off her bones.
I can’t believe we’re here again, so soon.
I look up at her. Wait until she meets my eyes. They flit away, almost immediately. This is a very bad sign. Avoiding eye contact almost always means she’s using.
“Please don’t make me do this on my own, Nah.”
Her skin goes blotchy, a sure sign of an increase in epinephrine. “What the hell does that mean? I’m here, wearing this shitty black dress—”
But Aunt Nora is motioning us over, and I start walking toward the podium. Then I stop. Turn.
My sister stands behind me, motionless. There are enough reasons to cry today. I don’t need to add to them.
I walk back to where she’s frozen still. “I’m sorry.”
It’s possible I am being too hard on her. I need to find a way to speak her language.
“What’s a tarot card for us?” I ask.
Hannah smiles a little. Just a little, but it’s something. She cocks her head to the side. “The Two of Cups. It’s about relationships. Leaning on each other.”