“Hanalei Bay?”
“I’m checking out Maui this year.”
“I miss your hospitality tips.”
Mom sighs. “I know our last conversation didn’t end how you wanted it to,” she says.
“You get what you get,” I say.
I had called my mom again a few weeks after the psychic’s death-date delivery, this time with a request for help, which was foolish in hindsight. My mom was still her Taurean self. Back then I hung up and resolved to not call for a while, not because I was mad but because I wanted to let her get used to not hearing from me. I realize how misguided that was. I can’t prepare her for my sudden death by ignoring her.
“Well, if you’re really calling for ideas, I have lots for you. Is business slow?” my mother asks.
“No, not at all. Business is great,” I say.
I feel slightly guilty, but it’s not hard to hold back the psychic’s prediction from my mother. It would be sadistic to say, Hey, Mom, guess what? I’m gonna die tomorrow. Especially if she refused to hear it for the second time. Instead we chat about hospitality for a few minutes, and it’s nice to forget death and my plans.
“Well, baby girl, it’s always good to hear your voice. I’ve got to head across the island for my shift.”
“It was great to catch up,” I say.
“It was. How about you don’t let another few months go by?”
“Sure,” I lie, grief gripping me by the throat. “Goodbye, Mom.”
I fight the urge to say something—anything—to keep her on the phone. Instead I wait for her to hang up, knowing I can’t do it myself. I put my phone away and gather my flower purchases to take up to the cashier stand. Still nothing from Eric.
“End of those pretty pink begonias,” the owner says. “You sure you don’t want to grab some more? They’re gonna die in this heat here.”
“Why not?”
If I can’t save myself, maybe I can save some begonias.
For a long time, when I thought about death, I thought of my sister. During a trip to the Southold Book Cottage to pick up new stock for the Stars Harbor library, I spotted a nonfiction book about the afterlife. I devoured it in one night. It made me laugh out loud, in the dark, alone in my bed. And that was better than crying.
It also made me curious. Since it was unlikely I would see death coming, what might I expect in the moments after it took hold of me? A computer doesn’t shut down in an instant, and if you think it does, try shutting down with thirty-five tabs open and ten apps running. It takes longer to shut every process down, one by one.
I found other nonfiction titles about the afterlife as told by those lucky enough to come back to detail the journey for the uninitiated. Their accounts were astonishingly similar, as well as incredibly personal. The most common theme was being reunited with a beloved family member in a serene setting. If I imagine my crossover scenario, I expect to see Andi by the water as we have a conversation that’s open and honest and leads to a beautiful connection while watching the sunset.
At home, I wait for the gate to open and watch the Victorian house that Andi, Eric, and I built appear on the horizon. I admit it isn’t just the begonias that help me cheat death. Stars Harbor is my refusal to die, at least in one sense of the word. I accept that my body will expire tomorrow, and yet I will also live on with this business I created. To ensure that, I need one thing. One final piece of the puzzle.
FARAH
I have never been so terrified to be alone with Aimee—never felt anything but excited—yet after my reading and the threat of having to yell out my deepest desire over a bluff, I’m on edge. My secret is already out in the universe in some sense, and although Rini would never tell anyone, there’s no way to take it back. Maybe that’s a good thing, I think now as Aimee and I walk side by side along the bluff after the failed Sun Worship exercise. It will force me back to myself.
An ugly flower of doubt bloomed weeks ago, and since then I’ve been carrying a level of uncertainty I’ve never experienced in my life. I knew I would be a doctor in elementary school and never veered from the course. Within a month of meeting Joe, it became inevitable that we’d hit the appropriate dating milestones before getting married in three to five years. I’ve always been able to lock in on the long road ahead. Now all I see is what’s right in front of me and that’s Aimee. It’s disorienting.
“Should we go back?” Aimee asks.
“No, let’s keep going. Walk a little farther along the bluff.”
The force of my own assertion surprises me. It sounds like the old Farah, clear and direct. Not the waffling one who has been off-kilter for the last few weeks, since the dream. Rini called it a vision, but I still blush at the obscenity of it.
While I slept one night, I imagined Aimee in my office. She was laid bare in a thin paper gown on my exam table. Like a good doctor, I told her everything I was going to do before I did it, but my words sounded like a phone-sex operator, not a seasoned OB. For her part, Aimee consented with small nods and soft moans. Her body melted under my fingers. When I woke up, I still ached for her, but it was Joe next to me. He was happy to finish the job.
The next time I saw Aimee after that night, I flushed with shame. Fifteen minutes into the playdate that day, I pretended I’d been called to the hospital for an emergency. At home I locked myself in the bathroom and cried until my three-year-old shrieked because the stinky in his diaper was burning.
While I smeared diaper cream on him, I reminded myself the dream wasn’t real. I’d never once had a thought that crossed the line at work, let alone taken an action that was questionable. Aimee hadn’t been a patient in eight years, not since she became my friend in our postpartum Baby Yoga class. I drew that line even though technically there was no conflict. It would have been weird, and I don’t come anywhere near “weird.”
Defending my reputation as a doctor as a result of this fantasy had been much easier than looking at what my marriage might be lacking. Joe and I were great partners, but we’d lost a deeper connection years ago. We weren’t even best friends like we’d been when we dated. Aimee had taken that spot. And now she was igniting the passion Joe and I had lost too.
Unlike Aimee, who had divulged some of her same-sexcapades, I’d never kissed a girl in my whole life. Never felt that kind of desire.
Rini suggested my whole world was about to change this weekend, but she was wrong. My whole world changed weeks ago, when I had that dream, but now Rini warned that the planet of communication would push me to tell Aimee. Even though I don’t believe in astrology I swear that, post–Sun Worship, I can feel the planetary pull.
“I want to walk and talk,” I say to Aimee.
“Okay, we can FaceTime the kids when we get back.”
At her prompting, I check my phone. There’s a text message from my husband.
“Joe’s on the road,” I say absentmindedly.
Aimee links her arm in mine. “Our time alone is limited,” she laughs.
She doesn’t know it’s not a joke for me and that now there’s a clock ticking in my head. Following my feelings would lead me away from the trappings of the nice life I have with my family—a penthouse apartment, a summer home in Southampton, two kids in great private schools.
In the hospital, impossible choices are decided in a split second, but in my life I seem to do nothing but delay. I can feel patience being sucked out of the air around me, like when I say I’m bored hanging around the nurses’ station waiting for mothers to progress in labor and the universe retaliates by having them dilate to ten centimeters in the same hour.
