“I spent years trying to help him. In and out of rehab,” she says, her voice quiet beneath the roar of the train as it crosses the Charles, where, even in this cold, there are rowers pushing through the midnight-blue water. “My parents went completely broke. I’d get calls in the middle of the night to come pick him up in these shady-ass places. He’d cry, you know? Feel so bad. Wanted to get better. Couldn’t. Manipulated us. God, he was so good at that. You never knew when he was lying or telling the truth. My parents actually gave him opiates once because he convinced them he’d kill himself if they didn’t give him his stash back. He overdosed more times than I can count. I carried Naloxone in my purse—we all did—just in case he ODed when we were around. I had to use it twice.”
“She’s not at that point yet,” I say.
But I have it in my purse, too. I did my research. It’s the only drug that can counteract the effects of an opiate overdose.
“And I hope she never will be. But I hear myself in you, Mae. I hear myself living in constant fear. That I was going to lose him, that it was my fault. That I could fix him or find the answers he was looking for. And the fear of losing him—it made me a hungry ghost. Because I thought that without him, I’d die, too. In our practice, we call this clinging. We cling to the things and people we love because we think they are the source of happiness and light and life for us. But this isn’t true. It can’t be. Because nothing and no one lasts forever. You know this more than maybe anyone I’ve met. When we cling, we set ourselves up for so much unnecessary suffering. I was holding on so tight—but in the end, I lost him anyway.”
River rests a hand on my arm. “You’ve got to let go of what you had as a family—before the pills, before the wave. Honor it, but let it go. You can’t hold on to the past, Mae. It’s gone. Something new will grow in its place, but you have to make space for it. At the same time, you can’t live in the future. Because then you miss out on now. And now is the only thing you’re guaranteed. You’re a scientist, you know this stuff: It’s the nature of existence. Everything winks out. Including, someday, you. We have to be okay in the face of that.”
“I can’t lose her,” I say, my voice breaking.
The smile River gives me is kind, a smile from the other side of a journey I don’t want to be on.
“My love, she was never yours to begin with.” She reaches out, wipes my tears away.
Somehow, in the past few months, I’ve learned how to cry.
“You’re telling me to give up on her,” I say. “Give up responsibility. So I just let my sister be addicted so I can live my great life in the present moment and enjoy her for the short time we have?”
She shakes her head. “It sounds like apathy, like we choose inaction, but that’s not what I’m saying. The chaos of life is still there, and we are still living and hoping and dreaming and loving and helping. But we aren’t ruled by the chaos, by our fear of what might happen in the future. And we don’t believe the lie that we can somehow control the chaos. That’s impossible—it’s chaos: by definition, not controllable. And once you realize that you, Mae Winters, can’t control the outcome of your sister’s addiction, there’s freedom—in the chaos, you can be free. To show up for this day, this moment, this sister. Right here, right now. You can’t control this ride—hers or yours. But how you take the ride, that’s up to you.”
“But what if … what if you’re all alone on the ride?”
River’s eyes stay on mine as she speaks, and it makes me feel like a captain on a boat, steering toward a distant horizon. “You’re not alone, Mae. Not really. Your love for your sister, your parents—my love for my brother—and the love they have for us: That’s for keeps, my friend. No matter what happens, through all the impermanence of things, that’s for keeps. It’s what makes the ride worth taking—even if there’s sometimes an empty seat next to you.”
The train slows and she raises her hands to adjust her scarf, and I see those words tattooed on the sides: ONLY LOVE.
“Hah-vahd,” the announcer calls over the speaker.
“Your stop,” she says.
I stand, unsteady.
“I’m trying to understand,” I say. “But if I took your advice in space, I’d die. Control is very important to the mission. I really don’t see the practical applications of this philosophy.”
River leans back, gestures to the train car enclosing us. “Just ride the ride—you’ll get it.”
Zen people are infuriating. No answers, just more questions.
When I get to Castaways, Ben takes one look at me and turns toward the huge vat of coffee behind him. It’s interesting to me that the name of this place is how I feel: like a castaway, a survivor of an ocean catastrophe, who has washed up on this strange shore—this new life that looks nothing like my old one. I don’t know if I’m waiting to be rescued, or if I already have been, and I just don’t know it. Sometimes it feels like I’m shooting up flares, and Ben is the one who sees them.
He fills a cup with steaming coffee, then slides the mug across the counter toward me. Our fingers touch, and it’s the first time I’ve felt warm all day.
How do I keep Ben from turning me into a hungry ghost? I don’t want to be like Hannah, shredded to pieces by these boys. And if something happens to Ben, or we break up, I don’t want to feel hollow after. I don’t want to kid myself into thinking he can make me feel whole.
I pull my skin away from his, from those fingers that are trying to intertwine with mine as he hands me my cup of coffee.
“Thanks,” I say.
A look of confusion crosses his face, but he leans across the counter anyway and kisses my forehead. “I missed you.”
It’s been days since we’ve seen each other. I can’t leave the house all the time and go off with my boyfriend while my sister’s holed up in her room, hurting.
“I missed you, too. I can’t stay long.”
The coffee tastes bitter today. Too strong. Or maybe I’m just getting weak.
“I’m off in a couple hours. We could—”
I shake my head. “I have to get home.”
“Okay.” I can hear disappointment, frustration, worry. Fear. Love.
I think about what River said, how nothing is for keeps, but that we also have to ride the ride and be all in with life. But this is cognitive dissonance: She’s telling me I have to both hold on and let go at the same time. Impossible.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m really out of my element here. I’m a better lab partner than girlfriend.”
Ben runs a finger across the counter’s scarred wood, watching me. Those three words I haven’t said hover in the air between us. Ten days since my birthday, since that night he climbed through my window.
“I get that you’re worried about Hannah,” he finally says. “And you should be. It’s really scary, what’s going on with her. And you’re a great sister. I don’t want to stand in the way of that.”
“Thank you.” I rest my hand on his arm, and it feels so good to touch him. I think the social scientists are correct about the need for human contact. “I know I’m not being fair—trying to be with you and sort this out all at the same time.”