Page 72 of That Birthday in Barbados
I look at him for a stretch of silence before I finally admit, “The thing is I really want to.”
And with that, he hooks an arm around my waist and pulls me to him. I anchor my legs around his hips, my arms around his neck and kiss him with all the heat and longing welling up inside me. In a little while, he takes my hand and swims us both back to the beach where it is a really good thing there is no one else around.
Chapter Thirty-five
“You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
?David Foster Wallace
Nicole
THE LAPTOP SITS on the table in the apartment’s small kitchen. She opens the lid and clicks on the email provider, waiting while the icon circles and opens. She hits Compose and types in her mom’s email address. She clicks on the body of the message.
She picks up her phone and opens the Notes app. Inside the Passwords folder, she scrolls down to the short list of accounts that represent the financial status of her life. There aren’t many. But for the few she has, she types each one into the email. Bank name. Routing number. Account number.
Shetypes in her login info for the bank’s website, double-checking the password.
She scans her Notes for the name of her insurance company, finds it near the bottom of the list and types that in too.
She logs in into her bank account, waiting for the password to register. Once inside, she clicks on checking – there’s nothing in savings – and frowns at the abysmal balance. Enough to pay her bills, anyway. She makes an electronic payment for the past month’s electricity. She pays the rent on her apartment with a check – it’s five days late – tucks it inside an envelope, seals it and puts a stamp in the right-hand corner. The cable bill is also due. She pays that online with her checking account, and by the time she’s done, the balance is $9.97.
Sad to think that’s what’s left of a lifetime of work through age thirty-eight, but that is the reality of it and further proof that her decision is the right one.
A Facebook notification pops up on the screen. She clicks and makes it go away. Facebook is for people with things to show the world they are proud of, grateful for. Nicole has nothing to be proud of, and for the things she was once grateful for, she has destroyed any hope of ever having them again.
She closes the laptop, and if she had expected to feel sad, she doesn’t. Finally, she knows she is making a choice that will be for the good of everyone in her life. She has not made it lightly, but she knows it is the right one.
Secure in this truth, she turns off the lights in the kitchen, flicks off the lamps in the small living room, walks into her bedroom and closes the door with a quiet but final click.
Chapter Thirty-six
“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”
?Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Catherine
THE PHONE WAKES me.
My ringtone is Church Bells, and the dong, dong, dong, rouses me with the thought thatI am in Florence, Italy. I chose the sound because it is a good memory, a time in my twenties when Nicole and I did a rail pass across Italy and France. We had both loved coming awake to the chorus of church bells audible through a cracked window.
I turn over, force my eyes open. Is it morning?
But as I raise up on one elbow, feeling the warmth of Anders sleeping next to me, I come back to where I am. I have the horrible realization that something is wrong. I fumble for the phone, trying to focus on the lit screen. The time says 1:55 AM above my mom’s cell number.
Suddenly anxious, I tap the answer icon. “Mom? Are you okay? Is Dad?”
But my mother cuts me off before I can finish. “Catherine.” She cannot go on beyond this, her sobs robbing her of words.
“What is it, Mom? You’re scaring me.”
By now, Anders is awake too. He is sitting up, his hand on my shoulder.
My mother’s crying is unlike anything I have ever heard from her. It is the gut-wrenching sound of a broken heart. Tears stream down myface. “Mom, what is it?”
“I’m in the airport on the way to West Palm Beach. Your sister is in the hospital there.” An awful, long silence follows the words. And then, “Oh, Cat. Dear God. She tried to kill herself tonight.”
“What?”
