18
Lit by the light of some far-off sun, I watch.
It has now been over a decade since I walked the shores of Jacksonville Beach as a human. I summon the most simple and beautiful July pleasures of my time on Earth, and yet they are meaningless. I whip my hands and create a bowl of the softest strawberry ice cream in the galaxy, caught in that perfect moment when it is just starting to melt, and it does nothing for me. The world is boring me to death and I’m already dead. When I am truly sad, I grant wishes and spread love. I Dreamskip to my nonexistent heart’s content, and still I am numb. The others don’t really understand why I sit here, why I still care so much. They have given up on watching their loved ones stumble in the darkness, making wrong decision after wrong decision, and are slowly moving on, evaporating into the galaxy to the Great Big Next Thing. But I will never lose faith in humanity. Never. They will find their way. This I know. And if they don’t, I will be here to nudge them in the right direction. I owe them that much.
My neighbor from India ascended not too long ago. Her sister died in a disease outbreak, and after her arrival they moved on together to the Beyond, hand in hand. My soul cried hot tears of jealousy as they left, imagining the same thing happening one day for me and Cooper, and knowing it might not be in the cards.
I saw another soul moving on recently. Her name on Earth had been Colleen Nash Nichols. She was zooming past my world in the Confluence, but I begged her to stop and give me a hug before she passed on. She paused only for a moment, some kind of apology in her eyes.
“Thank you for watching him,” I said to Cooper’s mother. She’d had Multiple Sclerosis as a human, greatly restricting her ability to move, but as a girl she’d always wanted to be a ballerina. So when I found her she was decked out in pink dance gear, pirouetting across stars and galaxies with a celestial smile on her face, her skills unmatched. No prima ballerina on any Manhattan stage would ever come close to achieving the grace she was displaying with every sashay. And now she would dance forever. “Thank you for taking care of him in my place,” I said.
She nodded with her hands in the air, said “he’s all yours now,” and vanished.
And it’s not just Colleen who is moving on. My former friends’ lives are unspooling all around me, and I want more than anything to gather them all up in my arms and carry them with me forever. But I can’t. They are moving forward, getting married and having children and moving away and leaving me behind, and their futures don’t seem to contain me in them.
Overcome with something I can’t pinpoint, I visit my Lovehall one day. I want to see my summer of love again, hug the happiness of my life. I touch a timepiece, get ready to slip back into the past. And like an apple dipped into warm caramel, I am back in my life. First I am shown a poem he wrote for me and never showed me.
I live for these coffee-stained mornings
Your breath smells bad, and I laugh like it’s cute
So tangled up in each other, we lose our phones in the sheets
And neither of us care – not while we’re lost in this heat
I didn’t know what peace was
Until I stepped into your silence
You can have the noise
I’ll take your quiet instead
So push back the meetings
Cancel real life
‘Cause this love thing is fleeting
And I just want you to be the rest of my life
Oh, Cooper. If only I had a life to share with you. If I did, I would give you everything. All of me. Forever.
Then I see him in his room not long after I died. People were starting to call him crazy for holding onto his memories, so he slammed into his room, sat down, and wrote this:
THE PSYCHO’S PRAYER
And if I am meant to live out on the edge, send me straight out to the far burning reaches of that edge, with my heart pounding and my legs dangling into the breathless depths of forever. Let me waste no time – let me smell every meal and taste every variety of wine and see every moonrise and have my heart broken and mended and cherished by many different and varied souls. Let my fear be engulfed by fire and desire and let the knowledge gained by my experiences give my heartbreak the wings to fly. Let me declare war against the world – even if I fail to conquer I will still live forever, for humanity remembers warriors, not battles.
As I watch him, I can’t help but smile. This is what I always saw in him – I am so proud. And you wondered why I always believed he was a genius capable of receiving the Muse?
Time falls backwards. Then I am shown another scene. We are sitting in a Mexican restaurant, and I have four weeks to live. It has just started raining outside. Not pouring, just a nice drizzle washing over Jax Beach, a silvery whisper against the dirty windows. A waitress is flirting with him, and even though he doesn’t really notice, I am pissed. As a human I hated being reminded of my inferiority to him, of the fact that any of these good-time blondes could probably snatch him away if he just snapped to his senses and realized what a catch he was. It made me jealous. It made me angry. It made me aroused, too. And the best/worst part of all was that he had no idea.
He looked at something and smiled, his eyes and hair sparkling under the light above us, and suddenly my mood was saved. Those eyes could save anyone, after all. I remember drifting into the golden thoughts rising up within me and thinking, right there, in that sleazy little place, that I would be happy to spend my life with him. I got the sense that everything in my life up to that point, all the heartbreak and rejection and trauma, had been worth it, because all of that had gotten me to him. Now we were young, happy, free. I wish I’d known at the time that I would never feel like this again. But in moments like these, I could swear my life would stretch on forever.
“I can’t write about love,” he said out of nowhere.
“What?”
“I just can’t do it. Or couldn’t, until now, at least. When I was little I decided love wasn’t real, because of issues with my parents and everything, and, yeah…I promised myself I’d never write about things that weren’t real. But sitting here, with you…I know it’s real.”
“Go on.”
He smiled. It was sad and beautiful. “My parents’ marriage was a wreck and I let it sink me. All I ever saw was heartbreak and depression and broken vows and icy words exchanged over dinner tables. Thank you for showing me that love could stick. Thanks for being…my exception.”
Time blurs and spins like a VHS tape hitting a rough patch, and then I am shown something I never knew about: Cooper’s last moments with his childhood dog, Hadley. Cooper was a quiet, strange boy, and sometimes she was his only friend. They formed a bond neither of them could explain, but both of them understood. And when her first grey hairs started popping up, he was terrified. How would he navigate the world without the only constant in his life?
The end has come now, and he is keeping watch by her side. As her breath slows and grows ragged, his dread and sorrow increase. She looks up at him with one last look of longing, and he hugs her with all the love in the world. Then she is gone, and he is on his own again.
Up here, back in my Lovehall, I reach over and pet Hadley as we watch the world, and she barks and wags her reddish tail. Down on Earth, Cooper looks around for a moment and wonders where that familiar sound just came from, his memory filling with echoes of slobbery kisses and soft fur and a love that didn’t ask for anything in return. He smiles. Hadley runs off into a field. And for a moment, I swear I have a beating heart again.
~
The next year or so is a happy one. I fly with Autumn, and then sink into the oceans with her. And soon I am sent the single most honorable quest I have found here: I am assembling a family.
I found her an ocean away, while playing with Autumn. I felt a strange connection with her, a connection I still cannot quite explain, just like Cooper and Hadley. I love human children, the dazzling and innocent wonders they create with their imaginations before they let their hearts die. No galactic entity I have ever encountered could come close to creating the beauty of a four-year-old with a box of crayons and a sunny afternoon. But still, this girl is special. She is three. Her name is Phan. She happens to have a cleft lip and a mother who did not want her. The birth mother was too ashamed to have a “disabled” child, so she abandoned her. And I know her next stop in this strange and circuitous road humans call life.
Cooper and Lily have had a rough few months. He was fine for a bit, but he is suddenly depressed again, and she does not know exactly why. She can guess, though, and that guess devastates her. She found a bottle of whiskey and a Xanax in his bathroom drawer last month, and they had a knock down screaming match that lasted into the early hours of the morning. She still loves him, though, and she is also hoping for a girl. She told her friend that a new baby would give Cooper purpose and light a fire under him again. He doesn’t need to work because of her trust fund, but still: he is wasting his own life, and they both know it. They have two boys now, and they’ve been trying for a third child, hoping to paint an extra bedroom pink. It just won’t happen, though, and doctors say there is a slim chance for them. Not even I can help with things like that. So eight months ago, the Nichols family called an adoption agency and said they were ready to head to Asia to find a child they bonded with.
The social workers found Phan by the fire station in Hanoi one breezy morning, just lying there like a loaf of bread. She has been in the orphanage for two years now, and according to the odds, she will never be adopted because of her age and her cleft lip. People want healthy, easy babies – starter babies. Not defective ones. Phan is sweet-tempered, but she has a fiery streak, and she will be a nightmare as a teenager. I can see that far ahead. But Cooper can handle scarred, strong girls. That much I know.
She is in the back of the orphanage, in a dirty windowless room where they put the kids they think nobody will want. The ones who are too old, the ones with disfigurements and disabilities, the ones who have been so damaged by their previous lives that they sit and stare at walls all day. They are all put in “the room,” as they call it. Society treats Phan like she is broken because of her lip, but I know the truth. She is fire. She is me. And so I intervene.
Cooper and Lily wander the orphanage on their search, trying not to take in the horrific conditions of the orphanage. Three babies to a hot crib in a sweltering, windowless room with cracked plaster walls, and so on. I try not to observe them too much as a couple – it is still too hard – but he is so good to her, and it murders me. I wonder how much he thinks of me, and I cannot tell. So I stopped wondering – or tried to, at least. You know how that goes. Healing a broken heart is not much easier for the dead than it is for the living.
The orphanage director waves and holds up her arms from across the room, silently asking if they have found a child they connect with. Both of them sort of shrug and shake their heads in the saddest way. The one he will name Summer is only one room over, and yet the director is not even going to show her to him, because she is broken. Scarred. Ugly. Unfixable, right? Who wants a broken baby? Who would love someone with a scar?
But I know Cooper. I know he will wait for the quiet one. The one whose shy smile will sink into him, wreck him, and then piece him back together again.
He passes the door where little Phan waits for her father. From a million miles and a lifetime away, I close my eyes. A breeze blows open the door. And Cooper turns and walks inside to meet the daughter he will name Summer Jackson Nichols – SJ for short.