It’s pale green, with orange California poppies painted on it. Mom did that. It sits right at the end of our walkway, peeking over the fence onto the sidewalk like some nosy old broad. Our house is your typical Venice cottage, with a rickety wooden fence and a wild garden and wind chimes and gnomes, so the postbox fits right in. Kind of magical.
As I put my hand on it, I have a sudden urge to just rip the thing out of the ground and take our little friend with me. Carry it on the plane or check it as oversized luggage. This metal box that has always been filled with Yoga Journal and Scientific American and birthday cards from Gram and Papa with embarrassingly big checks inside.
I half expect it to be empty, but it’s not. There’s one thing sitting in the dark. I slip my hand in and pull it out.
I hear a wave.
The postcard is a bit banged up. The picture on the front slightly faded, like it’d been sitting out in the sun too long.
My knees buckle and then my ass is on the cold curb and now the wave is a roar.
Can you hear it? Can you hear the cars and people and houses it sweeps up with it?
My hands shake so hard that I have to put the card on my lap just to look at it properly. I stare at the beautiful cove tucked against low green hills, white sand on the beach. Crystal-clear water.
LANGKAWI: ISLAND OF LEGENDS.
Hills. There were so many hills around the beach. Why couldn’t they get to the hills?
The back has a printed GREETINGS FROM MALAYSIA centered on the card, and there’s a stamp and all the mail things. They sent it two days before the wave. Just enough time for the card to get safely out.
Dad’s handwriting—that sure hand. Cursive, of course. Always cursive. Very professorial. And a little note from Mom at the bottom in her swooping print. Blue ink, where his is black.
Hi, ladies!
Don’t mind us, we’re just over here in Paradise doing absolutely nothing and loving it. Wish you were here to soak up the sun with us—
N: you and Micah would love it.
M: Remind me to tell you a physics joke an Australian guy here told me.
Love you both from here to the farthest exoplanets—
Dad
Hi, beautiful girls! Guess what? I overcame my fear of the deep and snorkeled! I also cut off ALL MY HAIR. A German lady at our guesthouse did it. Can’t wait to show you! Be good and don’t do anything I wouldn’t.;) xo Mom
The door opens behind me.
“Nah?”
I don’t think. I just stuff the postcard down my shirt and stand, unsteady. It’s not because I don’t want to share this with her. It’s because I know that it will kill Mae, never hearing that joke Dad wanted to tell her.
I turn to face my sister.
“Yeah?”
“We have to finish packing.”
I stand. Walk. Ignore the searching look Mae gives me. Enter the almost-empty house. It echoes now, when we talk. It will be filled again, soon, with different things and people. It sold almost right away. To a nice family from Thousand Oaks. I hate them.
The things we decided to keep are in storage or in boxes going to Boston.
There has been a lot of stuff to deal with. Part of me doesn’t want to let go of a thing. Part of me wants to burn all of it.
I am so angry.
At Dad.
At Rebecca Fucking Chen.
At the wave.
At Micah for not being a little more noble.
There is one item we can’t do without: Mae and I both insist on bringing Mom’s soup pot with us. It’s my carry-on for the plane. I pack two books—The Little Prince and Mom’s copy of Acorn. Mae takes some of Dad’s physics books.
When we’ve packed the last box, it looks like the Grinch has been in here, stealing Christmas. Empty but for hooks and nails in the wall, bits of trash on the floors. It would break Mom’s heart, I bet, to see how quickly our family can disappear.
The day we leave, exactly one month after the wave—September 29—Cynthia comes to say goodbye. She takes me aside and presses a tarot deck into my hands. It’s a Rider-Waite-Smith deck, like the one I have but a different version.
“I read your mom’s cards with this the day before she left,” Cyn says. “This was the deck she bought me, years ago.”
I stare at the box, which has The Magician on the front, holding a wand up high, an infinity symbol traced over his head. As above, so below.
“Did she get Death?”
Cyn shakes her head. “She got The Fool.”
“The Fool?”
Starting a journey. I guess that makes sense.
“I’ve been thinking about it a lot,” she says. “You know what I’ve decided?”
“Huh?”
“Death is just the beginning.” She wraps her arms around me. “You have so much of her in you, honey. Don’t forget that. She was magic. So are you.”
I almost tell her what I know, about Dad, but then Micah’s there looking shattered. I let go of Cyn and follow Micah to the little wall that runs along the bike path on the beach. He sits down and pulls me onto his lap and I bury my face in his neck. I hear him sniffling, and when I look up, there are tears rolling down his cheeks and I hate the world. I hate it so much.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” he says.
He looks as lost as I feel.
“I love you,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry.”
Is this the end—the real end? I don’t want to be alone. And I can’t imagine losing him, too.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” he murmurs.
His arms tighten around me, and I can’t help but think about the stories of people whose kids or wives or parents were pulled out of their arms by the wave. It doesn’t matter how tightly you hold on to someone. Eventually you have to let go.
But I don’t know how.
We stay like that until Mae softly calls my name.
“The airport shuttle’s here,” I say.
He presses his lips to my forehead. “Call me from the airport.” My cheek. “Call me when you get in.” The tip of my nose. “Call me in the middle of the night, and every second of every day.” My lips. “Call me.”
I can taste his tears and mine. “I will.”
“I’ll be there for Christmas. And we’ll make lots of hot Los Angeles love.”
I laugh a little. “It’s a deal.”
“It’ll be perfect. Just a couple months away,” he says, his fingers trailing along my jaw. “And then you’ll come back and we’ll get our own place and … It’s just nine months, right?”
That number. Why does it have to be that exact number?
“Yeah.”
Except that the last time someone I loved got on a plane, I never saw them again. Everything feels like it’s made of glass: me and Micah, the future, my body.
I start to walk away, but he pulls me back. “You’re not just my girlfriend—you’re my family. We’ll get through this.”
Later, on the plane, I catch myself staring out the window as we fly over fields and cities and rivers and highways. Looking hard at the clouds, at the rips between the white and gray. I think I’m looking for them. I don’t know where they are, what they are. I don’t know if they were taken on purpose or not. Can they see me?