The Law of Loving Others (21 page)

ANNIE was back in town and when I asked if she'd come to the hospital with me she said
yes, of course
, and offered to drive. I didn't tell her about what happened with Daniel or Phil. I couldn't bring myself to utter the words out loud, as if the moment the words left my mouth, they'd become crystallized and somehow even more true.

We were in her mother's car—a long silver Caravan that was probably ten years old. It had a CD player and glove compartment stuffed with vinyl books bulging with discs, old mixes that we made or CDs that Annie loved when she was a kid. I flipped through the pages, shrieking every so often when I came across an album I was particularly nostalgic for. “Is it okay if we talk about stupid stuff?” Annie asked. We were driving west toward Rockland County. It was noon on a Wednesday, and the road was empty ahead of us, the sun a vivid yellow, slanting through the bare branches and onto the evenly paved highway.

“Please,” I said. “Of course. All I want to do is talk about stupid stuff.”

“I just don't want you to feel like I'm babbling away about these things that are pretty inconsequential when you have real shit going on.”

“It's not like that,” I said. “I promise. I want to be distracted and not think about all this stuff anyway.”

Annie had been in Colorado, skiing with Henry and his family, and apparently they kept bumping into a family friend, Tessa, who Henry had dated every summer at camp until just before sophomore year. She said Tessa just always seemed to be around, and how it seemed so obvious there was still something between the two of them. And later, back at home, Annie had opened up Henry's desk drawer and found a picture of them together after some camp formal. She felt sick to her stomach seeing the way he'd looked at her. They hadn't been together in over a year, but was he
really
over it?

The story continued for a long while and I felt so relieved to be able to talk to Annie this way—to just listen and empathize, to be able to offer even the
slightest
bit of helpful advice.

“Think about the way you feel about Alex,” I said, referring to her ninth grade boyfriend, who'd broken her heart. “Maybe there's some nostalgia and Alex will always occupy this specific place in your memory, in your thoughts or whatever, but Henry's the one you
want
to be with.”

“You're right,” Annie said, “I do.”

We put on the
Almost Famous
soundtrack, sang along to “Tiny Dancer,”
and reenacted the scene where the band is on a small plane and they're caught in an electrical storm and think they're about to die. One by one the characters began to shout out all their secrets.

“I once hit a man in Dearborn, Michigan!” Annie yelled.

“I'm gay!” I cried.

“I slept with Marna!”

“My mom is in a mental hospital!” I yelled, breaking character.

“Oh, Emma,” she said, “stop.” She lowered the music.

“I just want to warn you,” I said, “I don't know what my mother's going to be like in there. I'm just saying, I hope she isn't—”

“Stop,” Annie said. “It doesn't matter, whatever she's like, it's fine.”

MY mother was meeting with a doctor when we got there, so Annie and I sat down in the dining hall, and picked at a big plastic bowl filled with pretzel Goldfish. There were squares of origami paper littered throughout the room on tabletops. They were in loud, bright colors: pinks and yellows, some gold and shimmery.

“I used to love origami,” Annie said.

“You and me both.”

But I couldn't remember how to make anything—none of those dainty cranes or butterflies, so I made a fortune teller instead. I folded the paper into one triangle and then another, labeled the sleeves with colors and numbers, wrote my hidden messages beneath them. I put my fingers into the folds and asked Annie to choose. Her possible futures: 

You and Henry will live happily ever after.

You and I will live happily ever after.

You will get five hundred followers on Twitter.

You will get a five on your American History AP test.

You will get a perfect score on your SATs and will get into every college you apply to.

“I love them, I love them all!” Annie squealed. And I thought about how easy it was to view someone else's future in a way that was so optimistic and full of hope. Why did it feel impossible to do the same about my own?

My mother came out a little while later. She looked good—a lot better than the last time I saw her here before I'd left for Florida, but there was still something glazed, a little bit far away, in her eyes. She was wearing a purple cardigan that I'd packed for her when she first got here, which somehow felt like forever ago.

“Mom, I brought Annie with me. I hope that's okay.” She didn't say anything but Annie stood up and they embraced each other. Annie towered over her, which she had ever since the summer after eighth grade. I watched as my mother rubbed Annie's back, just once, but it felt like such a sweet, loaded gesture.

The visit passed quickly. We all sat down at the table and spent the next hour folding and twisting the squares of paper, constructing miniature creatures, flowers and trees, a pineapple. My mother surprised me, her deft, gifted fingers moved so quickly, so expertly, and I thought of her playing the piano so beautifully all through the years of my childhood.

ANNIE and I spent the next twenty-four hours together. After the hospital we stopped and got Thai food, then went back to her house. Then we got into her bed and watched a marathon of
America's Next Top Model
. We hadn't done this—spent all this time together, alone—in so long. It felt like the most perfect way to spend the night. At some point I got a text from Phil:
Should I not have said that?
I silenced my phone, slid it back into the pocket of my sweatshirt. It wasn't just that I felt guilty about Daniel. I felt embarrassed too that I had handled all of it so badly, and it was just a sign of my immaturity. I imagined Phil saying he didn't want to get involved in my high school drama. I didn't want to tell him what had happened and yet I couldn't bring myself to act normally and just text him back.

ANNIE'S mother knocked on the door and simultaneously opened it—this was something my mother always did too, and Annie and I constantly complained about it.
What's the point of knocking if you're just going to open it anyway?
I'd ask.

Annie's mother smiled, maybe beamed, when she saw me.

“Emma!” she said, clearly pleased. “Look at this. Everything's as it should be—you guys in bed together, some awful TV show on in the background—it's almost as though you never went to boarding school!”

ANNIE drove me home the next evening. It was just before six and the sky was dusky and blue, the sun quietly receding. That lonely time of day. My father was in the kitchen making dinner and I could smell the onions and peppers cooking, sizzling with cumin or chili powder. I went into my bedroom and closed the door. I needed to lie down—I was feeling so adrift and untethered, dizzy with anxiety. Maybe it was saying goodbye to Annie, or Daniel having gone, but suddenly my heart was beating wildly, pounding against my chest, as if it was trying desperately to get my attention.

It was happening again. I thought in Florida that this phase of acute anxiety had passed, but it struck me in that moment that maybe it never really would. I felt a wave of dread and something like terror as I imagined the next years of my life, constantly punctuated with this kind of panic. How would I ever be happy if I was always anticipating this feeling, wherever I was, no matter what I was doing?

I felt nauseous and somehow lost. Where the fuck was I? Was this what it felt like to lose touch with reality? Was I delusional? Was I one of those people who heard voices, who was commanded to do horrible, inexplicable things like drive a station wagon full of children into a river? What was happening? I wanted to call Daniel's mother, but I couldn't, not anymore.

Some toxic combination of guilt and panic was coursing through my body like an autoimmune disease and I wanted it out. The only way I could think of was through that cigarette lighter, the heat of the flame against my skin. But I wouldn't do it, didn't want any more scars, any more evidence of pain.

My father knocked on the door. I didn't know how to tell him that I needed him without telling him that I needed him.

“Yeah?”

“Dinner's ready,” he said. “I made chicken fajitas.”

“Okay.” My voice was muffled beneath a pillow.

“You all right?”

I didn't answer.

“Can I come in for a second?”

The lights were off in my room, the screen saver on my old desktop computer aglow, a cube of colors against a black sky, morphing into one shape and then another. I'd been feeling so angry at my father and I didn't quite know why, but I was buckling under the weight of it now.

“Dad,” I said finally, “I'm freaking out. I'm really freaking out.”

Aside from brief hugs that my father and I had given each other when I was coming or going from school, we hadn't really touched in years. There'd always been something stiff about our interactions, some reserved quality between us. (This was always something about Daniel and his family that I'd been envious of, the way there seemed to be an easiness between them, their affection flowing so freely.) It had been years since I'd allowed myself to be so openly emotional in front of my father, and finally I started to cry, really weep, and collapse into his arms.

“I know it's so hard,” he said, “and I'm sorry if sometimes I don't acknowledge how difficult all of this is. It's such a struggle, I know, but we'll be okay. We just will. There isn't any other option.”

“I just want everything to go back to normal,” I said. “I just want to feel normal.”

Everything seemed so off, so skewed, as if I was in some weird version of my own life. As if I was trying to find the right setting on the television, and each button I pressed left the screen a little distorted, a little more out of focus.