Never Enough Time, page 17
“Sara, when did you and I start being friends?”
“You’re just setting me up to tell one of my favorite stories,” Sara says, “and I’m so damned agreeable, I’ll oblige you. But only because your mother just died.”
“I bet I know what your favorite story is,” I say, thinking that how she met Ryan must be her tried-and-true fave of faves. But Sara just looks away.
“The first time I heard you talk in class I thought you were the most stuck-up, conceited, egotistical, impossible know-all I’d ever encountered,” Sara says, sidestepping my comment. Does this mean that how she met Ryan isn’t her favorite story? Or that I’ve misinterpreted something?
She’s my best friend, but I’ve known her for less than a week, so I can’t read all the signals.
“It’s fun being a know-all,” I say, wishing to fuck I were a know-all, since then I’d know how the fuck to get out of the rushing hell of the fucking fucked sevens.
“Well, you would know,” Sara says. “You still are.”
“And yet we’re besties,” I say.
“Sometimes you sound so dated,” Sara says.
“Well, you get to hang around little kids all day. You probably know all the latest. Like plasma.”
“You really are out of it. No one’s said plasma in years.”
“So, how come you talked to me if I was so stuck up and know-all-y?”
“It was the way you said ‘Mind if I sit here?’ and plopped your tray on the table across from me in the cafeteria and started talking to me like I already was your best friend,” Sara says. “That’s why. There was something kinda irresistible about being your bestie at that moment.”
“Well, I’m glad you are. You’re the one constant in my life.”
“That and the way you won’t let go of Raj,” Sara says, and I can tell she’s already regretting saying it, because now she’s opened the Door of Raj, a door I don’t want closed.
Chapter 58
“I’ve tried explaining it to you before,” I say. “Haven’t I?”
One good thing—I’ve stopped crying. At least for this moment.
“It’s past the point of explaining,” Sara says.
“Nothing moves past that point.”
“This is what I get for trying to argue with an ex-philosopher.”
“Everyone’s a philosopher,” I say. “So I’m not ex.”
“Only an ex-philosopher would say such crap,” Sara says. “Everyone’s not a philosopher or would even want to be.”
“You can’t fool me,” I say.
Sara says nothing.
“You’re just trying to get me to not talk about Raj. Is this because you know something and you don’t want to tell me about it?”
“You’re the know-all, not me,” Sara says.
“But you’re a know-something,” I say. “Spit it out.”
“There’s nothing. You only wish there were.”
“I can tell when you’re keeping something from me,” I say, even though I can’t tell that at all. You need to know someone for more than a handful of days before you know stuff like that about them. Even then you might not know.
“It’s your mother’s funeral today, Del. Let’s just stay on topic.”
“There is no topic.” And anyway, I hate topics.
“I know you, Delaney. If you don’t do some grieving right now, today, you’re going to bottle it all up, drive yourself and me nuts, and twenty years from now we’ll be standing at someone else’s grave and you’ll be quizzing me about your mother. When what you should be doing is focusing on your mother now, while all the emotions are fresh.”
“Is this what they teach you in pediatrician school?”
“Yeah,” Sara says. “Right before they teach you about growth charts.”
“I remember my growth chart,” I say. “I was supposed to be tall, but then I didn’t turn out to be.”
“That’s because you stopped growing,” Sara says.
“Are you trying to piss me off? Because if you are, you’re doing a perfect job of it.”
“Good,” Sara says.
“Just tell me what you know about Raj and I’ll stop asking. Isn’t that what they say? Ask and it shall be given?” I sense that Sara knows something, and now’s my chance. I mean, I won’t have another chance for seven years. And then there may be no chances left. For anything.
“Who the hell said that?” Sara is definitely holding something back.
“I have no fucking clue,” I say. “Alexander Pope, Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, or L. Ron Hubbard. Aren’t they responsible for most quotes?”
“You forgot the Bible.”
“Did you get religious?”
“Hell no. But the Bible is kind of a fun book. In places.”
“Sara. Just tell me.”
“I promised Ryan I wouldn’t.”
“So there is something.” I knew it. Know-all me fucking knew it.
“I promised Ryan I’d love him forever,” I say. Isn’t that what they say in the marriage ceremony? A ceremony not unlike the one we’ve just witnessed at the grave, replete with a solemn-seeming person with a black book, a silent audience, lots of boring words that no one can concentrate on, flowers, and a meal afterward?
“That’s different,” Sara says. She looks uncomfortable as fuck now.
“We just buried my mother. I’m allowed anything I want today. It’s like a fucking holiday or my birthday or something. So I get to ask whatever I want.”
“If your mother hadn’t just died I wouldn’t even be considering telling you this.”
“But she did and you are.”
“I promised Ryan,” Sara says, but the promise has already had its bonds loosened, weakened by my pleas and the dead eerie corpse-infested cemetery we just left.
“I ran into him,” Sara says.
“You what?” I cannot believe Sara’s waited this long to tell me about it. And I don’t even know how long that wait’s been. Weeks? Months? Years?
“Yeah,” Sara says in that very slight English accent she’s got. It suits her. Goes with the braids and her flawless dark skin.
“Where?”
“In town.”
“Here? In the city?”
“In London.”
“And?”
“That’s all. I saw him on the street. We recognized each other. We said hello. And then I had to get back to the office.”
“You are fucking kidding me,” I say. “You ran into Raj and you just said hello and then went back to work?”
“I had appointments.”
“Did he ask about me?”
“Delaney.” Sara can’t even look at me. And there’s a good chance I’m going to start crying again.
Word of advice—don’t ever go to your mother’s funeral and then find out your best friend saw your lost love. It’s not a good feeling. The one I have, I mean.
“Mom!” Chloe runs out onto the terrace and bashes into her mother, my best friend, the woman who saw Raj and then had to get back to her appointments.
“Mom! Auntie Del! They just brought out the most luscious desserts. You have to come back in.”
“I’m not hungry,” I say.
“You will be when you see these desserts,” Chloe says. “They’re stupendous.”
I wonder if Disney has ever thought about a remake of Pollyanna, because Chloe would be perfect for the lead role. If I were going to be here, in this time, in this existence, tomorrow, I’d give Disney a ring or whatever it is they’ve got now and suggest this.
“Let’s go back in,” Sara says, and I understand what she means: topic closed.
Chapter 59
The desserts are very quite luscious, and I eat two of them, a chocolate something and a sugary sparkly something with fruit in the center.
I’ve stopped crying again. Not just because I’m eating, not just because I’m not drinking, but because obviously Raj didn’t ask about me or Sara would’ve said he had.
He doesn’t even remember me. If this is because, for him, he and I happened almost thirty years ago or because I’m unmemorable or because his memory’s failing or because I was not all that important to him ever and certainly not now . . . There’s no way to know any of this, and Sara gave me a look that said If you ask one more thing about Raj, I’ll kill you with my penetrating gaze and no one will ever know why you died.
The after party is starting to break up. People are leaving, I’m accepting people’s condolences, whatever the fuck condolences are. I guess they’re kind of the counterpoint to congratulations, which is what you’d get at your wedding.
Here, at a funeral, there’s no way to directly congratulate the corpse—you know, on having made the big transition successfully—so you have to go for the next-best thing, which is to condole the main mourner, who, in this case, is me.
I’m not much of a main mourner. It’s not the role I was born for. Although I have no fucking clue what role I was born for. Unless adventurer on the path of the sevens is the role I was born for. Which it seems it might be.
“Delaney,” says the old man who I almost can accept as my father, “do you think we can talk?” He’s come over to where I’m standing, hugging people I don’t know and accepting their heartfelt sadness at my mother’s death.
Well, this is a loaded fucking question. We could never talk, so why should we be able to do that now? But all the burying, crying, alcohol, and sugar have combined to make me receptive to his overture.
“Sure,” I say. “Let’s go outside.”
I very nicely Westchesterally excuse myself from the departing funeralgoers and go out onto the terrace, the scene of the late aborted Raj discussion, with my father.
It looks like it’s going to rain, even though the rest of the day’s been quite pretty. It should’ve rained earlier, at the grave, because that would’ve made it even more macabre, more creepy, more death than it was. Funeral it up for all it’s worth.
My father and I stand side by side on the terrace, which overlooks nothing particularly interesting, unless some mown grass and a barn is interesting, which, to me, it isn’t. He doesn’t talk and neither do I.
Minutes pass. Then hours. Then days and weeks and years and decades and millennia. Or maybe fifteen or twenty seconds. Time has lost its grip on itself as its grip on me tightens.
Silence stretches time out or makes it less bearable. Or more bearable. Depending.
“Delaney,” my father says.
“What is it you want to say?” Now I sound like my mother. When she was alive, I mean. What must she sound like now? But this is the kind of phrase she’d throw at me over dinner, when she’d decided that I was keeping something from her, which I probably was. Which I often did.
“I don’t know,” my father says. “I just wanted to see if you’re okay.”
“I’m okay,” I say. My lying skills, honed during my teenage years, are still intact.
“I didn’t mean for all this to happen,” he says.
“It’s okay,” I say, and I’m shocked that I mean it. But I do. It is okay.
I haven’t seen my father in decades—and even though it’s only been days, it feels like decades—we never had a companionable relationship or really any relationship, and I know almost nothing about him, the father, and even less about him, the person.
“I never wanted to hurt anyone,” he says.
“I understand,” I say. I do.
“Marissa feels bad as well,” he says. “Thank you for being so kind to her.”
“It’s okay,” I say. I wish I’d been kinder to her, to my mother, to everyone.
“Do you think we might see you more often now?” His voice cracks.
That’s when the sky turns black and the rain starts pummeling us. Yet neither of us moves to go back inside.
“I hope so,” I say, knowing that I’m making a promise I may never be able to keep, because in seven years, when I’m here again, he may be gone. I may be gone.
And then I understand that both of us could be gone seven minutes from now. Seven seconds. Seven breaths. Seven raindrops.
“Dad,” I say, and I hug him while he puts his arms around me.
“I’m so sorry,” he says. “For everything.”
“So am I,” I say.
I look past Dad’s shoulder and see Marissa standing at the glass doors, watching us, waiting.
Dad and I let go of each other and go back inside, where only Marissa, Ryan, Sara, and Chloe still are. The rest of the funeral party’s gone. The tables have been cleared and the staff is busy, getting ready for the next group of condolers or congratulators or revelers.
“You’re all wet!” Chloe, ever the master of ceremonies, says to me.
I am indeed.
Chapter 60
After we get back to the house and I change out of my sopping wet corporate black funeral getup and into a comfy pair of pajama bottoms and a nondescript roomy gray pullover, Chloe brings me a book—they still have books?—and says, “Read to me.”
Ryan and Sara have disappeared, and I suspect they’re busy plying away at their preferred activity. They’re staying in my parents’ old bedroom—I guess what I mean is my mother’s bedroom, although now it’s not hers anymore. I don’t think.
“Read to me,” Chloe says as she snuggles up alongside me on the sofa—a sofa that wasn’t present when I was a teenager, but that looks good in the den, which is where we are, since the living room started feeling like it was having its own funeral. The den is cozier, and always was.
“Okay,” I say. I look at the book Chloe’s given me and realize where she got it from—the shelf just behind us. It’s an old childhood favorite of mine, but maybe it’s not what kids these days like.
“You sure?” I say, pointing to the cover. “We could read something else instead.”
“Fuck yeah, I’m sure,” Chloe says in her extra adorable way, with the Brit accent and all. She’s really a great kid.
“If I had a kid, I’d like it to be you,” I say.
“You say that all the time, Auntie Del,” Chloe says. “If I could have another mother, I’d want it to be you too.”
“Well, be glad I’m not,” I say. “Or I might not want to read to you.”
“My mom is so great,” Chloe says.
“I agree with you on that. We’ve been best friends for a long time.”
“Start reading!” Chloe says, and pounds on the book’s cover to make her point.
“The Path of the Mystic,” I say, reading the title.
“That’s so romantic!” Chloe says, and swoons a little to prove how romantic she thinks it is.
“Are you absolutely one hundred and fifty-eleven percent certain you want me to read this book?”
“One hundred and fifty-twelve percent certain! Read it already!”
“The Path of the Mystic, by Claire Deckard.”
“Stop stop stop. Stop just for a second,” Chloe says. “Let’s let the title and author sink in. You know, to really completely get into the mood.”
“The romantic mood?”
“It’s romantic and mysterious. And mystic,” Chloe says. She’s leaning on my shoulder and staring at the title page of the book. “Mom says that you’re a mystic, Auntie Del. Are you?”
I laugh at this absurd comment.
“But what is a mystic?” Chloe won’t let it go.
“Let’s find out,” I say, and start reading. “Chapter one. Amy—”
“Oh! I love that name—Amy. It’s the best name! When I have a daughter, she’s going to be Amy.”
“I thought you wanted me to read.”
“While I comment,” Chloe says. “Isn’t that my job?”
“It is,” I say. “Amy Neville was born one minute too late,” I read, wondering if I were born seven minutes too late. This book was a childhood favorite, but I don’t remember much of it.
“I was born right on time,” Chloe says. “According to my horoscope.”
“How do you know about that?”
“Don’t be silly, Auntie Del. You had it cast for me.”
“When was that?” I say, a bit relieved that I have time for the foolery of horoscopes when I’m not busy analyzing investments or going to graveyards.
“On my seventh birthday, silly. Of course.”
Yeah. Of course.
“Shall I read some more or should we talk horoscopes?”
“Read!” Chloe says as she points at the page.
“Amy Neville was born one minute too late.”
Chloe sighs. I might sigh a bit myself.
“But she didn’t realize it until much later.”
“Babies don’t realize anything,” Chloe says.
“Maybe,” I say. “But maybe they do. It’s kinda hard to talk to a baby. We don’t speak their language. Amy didn’t realize this one particular thing.”
“I guess not.”
“No. Shall I continue?”
“Stop asking! Read!”
“But she didn’t realize it until much later. When Amy was seven years old . . .” I look away from the page.
“Auntie Del, how come you stopped reading?”
How can I explain this to a kid? Although maybe she’ll understand in a way that an adult can’t.
“Chloe, can I tell you a secret?”
Chloe takes her head off my shoulder and sits up, then leans forward. She’s all attention now.
“Does that mean yes?”
“Yes yes yes yes! I love secrets!” Chloe claps her hands and encourages me with encouragement gestures.
“Seven years ago was yesterday for me.”
Chloe’s still poised, ready to hear my amazing secret. As if that isn’t amazing enough.
“And?” Chloe says.
“And the day before that was fourteen years ago. And three days ago I was twenty-one years younger.”
“My mom warned me about this,” Chloe says as she sighs once again.
Chapter 61
“What exactly did Sara say about this?”
“That every once in a while you start in with the path of the sevens or something like that, and that now that I’m old enough, you might try it out on me.”
