17
Autumn is next to me. We are two dead girls sitting on one of Saturn’s moons, watching our loved ones. Humans think space is big – they say it boggles their minds. But the truth is that I know of universes that could contain universes like theirs in one grain of sand on one of their beaches, stuff galaxies like theirs through a keyhole in one of their oldest homes. (Not that houses exist in those worlds – only space and the irrelevance of time exist, so really, nothing exists at all.) There is so much humans do not understand, so much they could never hope to fathom. But then again, that is part of their beauty, isn’t? Floating in the bubbles of their ignorance and their bliss, drifting along with nary an idea of the enormity of the world they call one one-trillionth of home?
“When am I getting that book?” Lily asks Cooper as they both get ready in her enormous bathroom. They have moved into a three-story townhouse while she waits to come into a larger trust fund, and he is adjusting to old money more easily than I would have expected.
“I don’t know. You know how I feel about that.”
“No I don’t,” she says after a pause. “You never talk about this. All you do is write your little articles for the paper. But you don’t feel them. I can tell.”
This makes me remember back to a few days ago, Earth time, when she came across a notebook and brought it to him. “Cooper,” she said, “I can’t believe this.”
“What?”
“Your words…they’re electric. They jump off the page.”
“There was a thunderstorm earlier,” he said, glancing away. “That’s just the leftover static in the air that you feel.”
“Oh, come on,” she said, tapping him on the shoulder with the book, but still, he did not take her seriously. And he was not on this day, either.
“Why won’t you write?” she asked, and it made me wonder: Was it me? Was I the thing holding him back?
“I don’t know. What would I write about?”
“Whatever the hell you want to write about. You’re the one in charge, big boy.”
He smiled and considered this. Never has there been a more important moment than a human realizing that they have something to say.
So he sat down and started writing – but what came out terrified him. And I guess that’s the beautiful thing about being alive: heartbreak fades, but love lives forever.
She’s talking
I’m staring
Drifting
Thinking of you
Your firebrand eyes
The way your dignity made me want to rise
That elbow scar from that Sunday school fall
The way you were just better than them all
It’s funny where we land
Funny where I stand
Funny how I ruined
A love too strong to withstand
I wanna see the world the way you do
Your fate, I want mine to twist through
But I’m getting older without you
And it’s killing me every day
Our love was a modern tragedy
Our romance, a timeless travesty
And darling
In me it will live forever
He balled up the sheet of paper and burned it in a trashcan. I wished with everything in me to hold the paper in my hands and cry, but I didn’t have any. Still, I didn’t know what to think about this, because I was the girl with the Sunday school scar. Clearly, I was holding him back. Should I rejoice, or feel guilty?
So today, he changes course, fearful she will sense what he has written through his thoughts. And she can: women are intuitive like that.
“Try writing about yourself,” she suggests from over his shoulder.
He looks around. “But who would ever want a book about a depressed boy living in Jacksonville Beach, Florida?”
She sighs. “Good point. Write about love, then. God knows you know about that, Mr. Casanova.”
And she’s right. Cooper understands love better than most, and it still destroys him.
“You want me to write about you?” he asks, and she smiles. Obviously, she does. But she looks away. She’s also afraid of what she would read, of what ghosts his pen would dig up.
“I don’t know. What else do you love?”
“Wow,” he says. “I don’t know. I fall in love every day. That’s part of being a writer, I guess. The other day I saw an old man limp around his car, open the door for his little old wife, and then they kissed on the lips like they were the only people in the world, and it just made my heart grow too big for my ribs. I just can’t write much about any of it, for some reason.”
She stares at him, her mouth opening a bit. “God, Cooper. Take that and run with it. Put it in a bottle. Put it on a page.”
I smile at them, a useless observer. I fill with gratitude. She is pushing my boy along. She is trying to save him.
He turns and looks into the mirror, into himself. And this is where I see his path veering. I see what he can do if he rises, and then what he will do if he falls to fear. On one path lies acclaim and riches and respect. On the other is nothing. The Muse will decide all of this.
For now, Cooper falls to fear. “I don’t know. I’ll think about it.” And again, she huffs.
“So many people are counting on you to tell your story, Cooper. You know, with your talent, and your loss…something really good could come of all that.”
He sighs. “I want to be brave for them, but I can’t…something is holding me back. I just want to be strong, but I don’t know how.”
Now I am the one frowning. Where is that stupid Muse?
“How do you do this?” Autumn asks me a few hours later, as we watch Cooper and Lily tote their kids to dinner before a trip to the movies. Their boys were in a fight over a video game, and the littlest one had a runny nose and kept crying about feeling cold in his parka. Cooper and his wife were bleary-eyed and exhausted and just entering their thirties, and it was a scene of chaos that I would have done anything in the universe to be a part of. “This is making me crazy,” she says. “Gag me. If I could kill myself all over again right now, I would.”
I feel myself smile despite the circumstances. Leave it to Autumn to find her sense of humor completely intact even after crossing over.
Watching Cooper become a father has been the great joy of my second life, even if the children are another woman’s. When Cooper was younger he had the typical grand dreams of every young person – he was going to travel the world, earn a few million dollars, maybe win some awards at something. I was obviously a blow to his ambitions, and settling down with Lily was another move in the direction of a quiet life. He once missed the life he never got to live, but first he had one child, then two, and finally he is settling into this small life he never thought he’d want. Kids are so much more important than anything else, and that’s something he never expected he’d learn.
“How do I do what?” I ask as the boys beg Cooper for chocolate-covered raisins. He shakes his head for a moment and then reaches for his wallet. “Watch him love someone else?”
She nods.
“Because he has to. I know that now. It is the worst thing in the world, but there was never another option. I love him enough to want him to move on. I do want him to miss me, and I do want him to love me still, but…if only he knew how much more I wanted him to be happy, how much I wanted him to be free.” I look down at Cooper, looking lost and numb in the movie theater bathroom, wasting his only life away, and I frown. “It’s so senseless. Why are humans so terrified of happiness? Why do they think we want them to hold onto the sadness forever? Why do they think we need them to hold onto the grief? All I want is for him to get everything he ever wanted, and he has to let go of the grief. I just wish he was strong enough to admit that to himself, that his happiness didn’t negate my memory.”
“Ugh. That whole ‘life’ thing sure was a mess, wasn’t it?” Autumn asks, and I try to laugh.
“Yeah. I’m almost glad I’m not living!” I say, before both of us wince at the thought of our eternally twenty-something corpses rotting only miles away from our breathing loved ones, and then shut the hell up.
“If you visited them today,” she asks soon, “what would you tell them?”
“Hmm. That I’m okay.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s simple, really. I just want them to know that I’m okay up here. I want them to think about themselves, and stop missing me. God knows I miss them, but I just want them to get on with things. And my life wasn’t a waste!” I cry. “I saw so much, I did so many things, I got to make so many mistakes and leave behind so much love…I guess if I could say one thing, it would be that I’m happy, and I want them to be happy, too.” My energy smiles as I continue. “More than anything. And God, I’m so proud. Have you seen Chase’s drawings lately? He is so talented. And oh, Cooper – he doesn’t even know what a massively brave act it is, simply to get out of bed every morning when there are so many reasons not to. I’m so proud of them, but I wish they knew how desperately I want them to be freed of me – even when the selfish parts of me want them to weep forever. They think they’re holding a candle for me, but they’re burning themselves up, and they don’t even know it. I did tell my little brother some of this in a dream, and do you know what? Nobody listened to him. No one wants to hear the opinion of a human whose hope hasn’t been crushed by the world yet. Hopefulness is seen as naiveté, positivity is passé. Why are they so intent on being miserable? Why do they write off feeling emotion as being so frivolous and self-indulgent? News flash: humans were born to feel!”
“Here, here, sister.”
“What would you say?” I ask her after my rant as the sun sets on a beautiful and doomed Earth.
“That Hank had better stay the hell away from other girls – at least until the ink on my funeral program dries.”
I laugh.
“No, I’m kidding.” She pauses. “I can still remember dying like it was yesterday, you know.”
“It basically was yesterday, you newbie.”
“Let me finish! I fought really hard, and I can’t lie – I wanted to stay. I wanted to live. But when I knew that wasn’t a possibility anymore, I got so sad, but not for me. I was worried for Hank. All I wanted was for Hank to be okay. All I wanted was to tell him that I was going to be fine, and that I wanted him to move on from me.”
“I pray he will,” I said, and we join as one and fly into the sky.
To spread a little love and get my mind off things, I visit the Wishroom soon on a solo mission. The Wishroom is somewhat like a confession booth in a Catholic church, except instead of confessing your sins, you listen in on the prayers flowing up from Earth. Many humans pray, and many other humans count these people off as fools. But oh, we can feel the prayers. Every positive thought, every wish, every hopeful moment filters up to us in our world, little diamonds raining upward. And every second of that prayer rejuvenates us. We have so much to fret about up here – give us something to rejoice. Thousands and thousands of them float up into the sky all day, glittering and crying out for answers. Usually these are muted for the sake of peace of mind, but in the Wishroom they are concentrated. Because we want to help. And when you find a worthy enough wish, you do your best to grant it. We cannot do this often, but I absolutely need to feel happiness, even if it is through a human.
Once you travel to the Wishroom you soar up and into the booth, and then you scan the most urgent wishes of humans down on Earth in real time, like a bus driver listening to radio chatter. In the first Wish I see a vision of a boy, all of twenty-six, who was made into a man by the death of his older brother a few years before. His brother was his hero, but the boy will never forget the final frame of his brother’s life. The night before the older brother’s risky surgery, the boy came over to eat steak and drink beer and try to not mention the fear that was suffocating all of them. They never had an especially physical relationship, and when the night was over, the boy lingered by the door, unsure of how to say goodbye. Finally the brother passed by on the way to the bathroom, glanced over, and smiled “see ya, loser,” a common term of endearment between the two. The little brother stood against the door after it was closed, wanting with everything within him to go back in and give his brother a hug, just in case. But he couldn’t, and so he walked to his car and went home. His brother was dead sixteen hours later.
And this was the boy’s wish: Oh, God, why didn’t I give him that stupid hug?
I cannot just sit and watch all this suffering. So I call on the soul of the brother, who is naturally still up here, having died so young. He rejoices at our connection, and I watch him lean down and finally give his brother that hug as he jogs one cool evening. “See ya, loser,” the brother smiles, before disappearing into a cosmic sunset.
The other wishes are similar.
I wish I could’ve saved you on that refugee raft, but the waves were too big and the water took you away and I didn’t know what to do…
I wish I would’ve told you how much I loved you, and how much I cherished that night in Aunt Jodi’s cabin, and now you’ll never know…
I wish I would’ve given you that birthday party before your mother won custody of you and moved you away to Oregon…
One wish is particularly soul-destroying. I see it rising from a teenaged boy staring at an online photo of an attractive boy with brown hair.
I wish I could’ve been stronger and been open about our love before that night when your dad called you a faggot and you drove off that bridge and ended it all. And now nobody will ever know about us. Our love followed you to the grave, and now I’ll never be able to take it back…
It is all too much, even for me, so I shift to somewhere where the less intense wishes come in:
I want him to text me so badly, why does he see every girl in the world but me…
Please don’t let my teacher know I’ve been forging Mom’s signature on my worksheets, every time I ask her to sign, she’s passed out drunk…
Give me that fucking promotion, I need to impress my wife with that new Jacuzzi before the bitch leaves me…
If I get anything less than a B on this test, I swear I am going to go ape shit, so please help me ace it…I’ll listen to my mom for a year, I swear…
God, please let the rains come, please please please, I won’t be able to feed the kids if this crop doesn’t pan out…
I pause at that one, making a note to visit Thailand later and do some work on my own. But right now I am honing in on another voice, a sadder one. She is wishing while she is awake, so I can help in real time. Her name is Taryn. She is in a wheelchair due to a childhood accident, and her father made her go to a dance, to be “normal.” But this is a “normal” that nobody in the world would want. She is in the corner by a water fountain, alone, and she is crying silently. I hone in on her frequency and listen to her thoughts:
Please don’t make them be mean to me, God…this is the best dress I have, I know I look like a bulldog, but I tried, God, I tried…if nobody asks me to dance I’m going to wheel myself off the dock tonight…
Now I know why her thoughts have come to me. I sink into that gym and warm her from within. I am particularly suited to assist her, since I know exactly how she was treated. As a human I was ostracized because of a facial scar and a stomach tube, and so I understand. She is a rock sticking out of the sea, so I try to help.
I scan the room and find a sweet but slightly aloof popular boy, Evan. He reminds me of someone my heart aches for every day. I plant the seed in his head, and then I wait. And soon he takes the bait.
Evan stills. The crowd parts, and Taryn’s breath hitches. Evan appears above her, and everything in her melts into a puddle. This is not about getting her attention – this is about showing this precious girl that she is enough. That she is worth the trouble.
Evan bends down and holds out his hand. “Hey. I don’t know you that well, but…you look really classy and pretty. Would you like to, um, dance?”
Taryn smiles, swept forward on the winds of this teenage dream. Not one soul, ever, has told her that she is classy or pretty. It is amazing how high humans can rise, once they have been given words to rise to.
She takes Evan’s hand, and he somewhat awkwardly pulls her wheelchair out onto the floor. Together they dance as Taylor Swift sings about dark rooms just for you. And then I do something else: I give her a first kiss she will never forget.
An idea comes to Evan, as if from nowhere. He screws up his face and bends down to kiss Taryn. It is on the forehead, but she will remember it forever, as any girl should. But this first kiss is different: it will be her first and last kiss. Every human should feel the triumph of love, but the horrible truth is that not all of them actually get to. In forty-five years, when Taryn dies from a bedsore infection at sixty-three, Evan’s will be the last face she sees swimming in her thoughts before she slips away into the beyond. In her entire life, she will have never dated, never married, never known the touch of a lover at night, never blushed as the man she loved planted a kiss on her cheek at their child’s wedding. This middle school kiss I am sending her will be the only kiss she ever gets. The saddest truth is that some humans are never loved at all – that is why small moments of generosity are so fantastically important. So go hug someone – it could mean so much more to them than you could ever know, and yours could be the last face they ever think of.
I soar out of this temporal, eternal kiss and leave them to their moment. And just like that, I am given a little more strength to deal with being desperately in love with someone who doesn’t even know I exist.