At least she wasn’t gone. At least she was still in a place where work could be done.
“Why?”
“She had a massive heart attack, Isla. Mom found her this morning in the bathroom.”
“Is she going to be okay?”
I hung up. I couldn’t listen to my father cry like that.
She remained in the ICU for two more days. Dad would call me with updates, asking me if I wanted to drive down and see her. Telling me he would come get me if I was too upset to drive.
I went to my classes, took vigorous notes, and even ate meals regularly. I had a sudden, voracious appetite. The more terrified I was at the thought of seeing her, the hungrier I became. I went to the dining hall and made two waffles for breakfast, stuffing large bites in while the syrup dripped down the sides of my mouth. Was I crying yet? I couldn’t feel any wetness. Just the syrup. I slid my fingers down my cheeks and rubbed them together with disappointing stickiness. Where were the tears?
Dad called again.
“Isla . . . honey. I know it’s hard, believe me. I don’t know how”—his voice cracked—“but she would want you here.”
I left the dorms and sat in my car. I put the keys in the ignition and then put my head back. Every time I closed my eyes, I pictured her covered in tubes. Puffy from the IV fluids. The mechanical sounds all around her, the cyclic beeps that dehumanized her. I couldn’t see her like that. I wanted to see her how I last saw her. Holding my hand, her palm soft and smooth, head bent down at her church. She had insisted I go with her before I went back for the semester. The pastor had said a prayer, but I wasn’t listening at all to it. I was listening to her steady breathing, louder than I remembered it being but still gentle. Her light-pink dress suit made her look angelic, youthful. My hand rested in hers and she let it stay there.
I let the tears slide down, a warm relief. As if she had forgiven me with each one that hit my upper lip, a salty blip. When I returned to my room, the phone rang.
“She’s . . . she’s starting to pull through. I don’t want to get your hopes up but—the doctors say she may have turned a corner.”
I didn’t have to see Dad’s face. I knew he was smiling.
CHAPTER 32
ISLA
2006
Marlow clapped her hands with delight as she blew the candles out. For a second, I saw her as a little girl, the pleasing eagerness all over again.
The smoke circled my nostrils and made me hungrier for the cheap, chocolate grocery store cake.
“It’s not my birthday, though,” she said, tapping both hands over her cheeks.
“We celebrate you,” chimed Moni.
I slid the knife over the thick blue-and-white frosting, cutting into the “G” in “Good Luck Marlow!”
It was her last night at home. She was moving to Europe for the summer. The Vogue cover in January had made history; she was the youngest American ever to grace it. She was the epitome of a natural beauty. The photo chosen for the cover was a close-up of her face, hair brushed across her forehead, hand loosely curled under her chin. There was nothing else for her to lean on in the photo. No heavy makeup, couture outfit, or jewelry. Only her presence could tell the story. She was completely isolated in it, a lone figure who invited herself inside everyone who cast their eyes on her.
The five of us sat around the table, each with a spongy, dark piece of cake, the sugar thick in the back of our throats. With her gone, the outline of our family, the rope that had encircled us, would be breaking.
Dad did his fatherly rites and hugged her, wished her well, telling her how proud she had made all of us. I watched Mom do the same, but hers was rigid and obligatory. She looked so . . . relieved that she was going to be out of sight for a while, a reprieve from the tension she carried in her forehead whenever Marlow entered the room.
Moni pulled Marlow aside and put her hands on her face. She whispered in Korean, as Marlow nodded. They embraced and Marlow’s lip quivered.
She was not the same Moni. Not the one we had before the heart attack back in March. This one was fainter, her edges no longer sharp and quick. She conserved herself for the essentials and did not cook as often. She had survived but she had been replaced. Death was too strong of a word but, in a way, there had been one. A small loss that each one of us felt.
A week after Moni had started to recover in the ICU, I got an email from Sawyer. It was the first time he had made any sort of communication with me since that night. I felt numb when I saw the email appear in my inbox. I placed the cursor over it, ready to delete it. Whatever he had to say would not be enough.
But I read it.
Isla,
I heard from Ada about Moni. I’m so sorry. I hope she is getting better every day. Please know that she and your family are in my prayers. I hope you are okay considering. I don’t know what else to write. I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
When I had finished reading it once, I deleted it. I didn’t want to read it over and over again. I didn’t want to agonize over every word, wondering if he had agonized as much over writing each one. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. He had written it twice. Was one for Moni and one for me? Was I owed more than that?
I spent the rest of the semester keeping my head in my art history textbooks, studying slides with intensity—the glazed pigments of Botticelli and the dead yet smug eyes of Jan van Eyck’s subjects. I was deep in everything fifteenth-century art and wanted nothing to do with the edged words of his email.
Oliver brought a joint one weekend. I took it without hesitation, burning my throat and coughing from the excess. Sometime after, I heard Oliver say something about Sawyer, how he had started seeing some Cal Tech girl. I took another hit, my head and body agile as I swung my arms to the music and tossed my head. I felt the tongue of my RA, who I had been friendly with, his mouth forceful. My head suddenly throbbed and I sat up quickly. Oliver ran after me, patting my back and saying something about how he thought the guy was a creep. The next day, the RA asked me if I wanted to go get something to eat sometime.
We went to a movie after meeting up a few times. Once for coffee, the other for sandwiches. We sat in the back of the second-run theater, where tickets were half off. He was deeply engrossed in Angelina Jolie as we watched her and Ethan Hawke in a car chase scene in Taking Lives. I went to go get extra butter for the popcorn. I watched as the yellow liquid oozed over the kernels, dissolving the ones at the top.
There were a few more dates after that. He slept over a couple times and then the semester was over. We had each other’s numbers and he called me once. He texted a week after I was home for the summer. I didn’t respond. I never saw the RA again; he dropped out that fall.
I got a summer internship at a gallery in Saint Paul thanks to one of Dad’s colleagues in the fine arts department. When I wasn’t there, I was spending as much time with Moni as I could. Helping her water her plants and holding her arm as we went on her daily walk.
I sat on the front porch one afternoon in early August. I thought about whether I wanted to stay in the dorms or move to my own apartment. I sipped on an iced tea, the outside of the glass getting slippery from the humidity. I wiped my hand on my shorts when he appeared across the street. I didn’t know when he had gotten home or why he was here.
He asked to see Moni and I let him go inside. A half hour passed and then he came back out.
“She looks . . . better than I thought. I don’t know if that’s a good thing. But, well . . .” He sat down next to me.
