Eventually, I did find an interest outside of academics in which to “engage.” One that ended up getting me kicked out of the Westport Academy for Girls and landed me here on Isla Huesos, which some people call paradise.
I’m pretty sure the people who call Isla Huesos paradise never met my grandma.
“No,” Alex said with a laugh. “Blasphemy would be saying the light is coming from between the legs of their new mom as they’re being born into their next life. Of course, if you were Hindu, that wouldn’t be blasphemy at all.”
Grandma looked like she’d just bitten into a lemon.
“Well, Alexander Cabrero,” she said sharply. “You are not Hindu. And you may also want to remember that I’m the one making the payments on that junk heap you call a car. If you’d like me to keep on doing so, you might want to think about being a little more respectful.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” Alex murmured, looking down at the champagne puddle on the ground while, beside him, his father did the same, after quickly removing his baseball cap.
Grandma glanced over at me, seeming to force her expression into something a little softer.
“Now, Pierce,” she said. “Why don’t you come inside and say hello to Father Michaels? You won’t remember him, of course, from Grandpa’s funeral, because you were too young, but he remembers you and is so happy you’ll be joining our little parish.”
“You know what?” I said. “I’m not feeling so good.” I wasn’t making it up either. The heat was starting to feel oppressive. I wished I could undo a few of the buttons in the front of my too-tight dress. “I think I need some air.”
“Then come inside,” Grandma said, looking bewildered again. “Where it’s air-conditioned. Or it would be if your mother hadn’t opened all the doors —”
“What did I do now, Mother?” Mom appeared on the back porch and snagged a cocktail shrimp from the tray of a passing caterer. “Oh, Pierce, there you are. I was wondering where you’d disappeared to.” Then she saw my face and said, “Honey, are you all right?”
“She says she needs some fresh air,” Grandma said, still looking bewildered. “But she’s standing outside. What’s wrong with her? Did she take her medication today? Are you sure Pierce is ready to go back to school, Deb? You know how she is. Maybe she —”
“She’s fine, Mother,” Mom interrupted. To me, she said, “Pierce —”
I lifted my head. Mom’s eyes seemed darker than usual in the porch light. She looked pretty and fresh in her white jeans and loose, silky top. She looked perfect. Everything was perfect. Everything was going to be great.
“I’ve got to go,” I said, trying to keep down the panicky sob I felt rising in my throat.
“Go, then, honey,” Mom said, leaning down from the porch to press on my forehead with her hand as if she were feeling for a fever. She smelled like she always did, of her perfume and something Mom-like. Her long dark hair swept my bare shoulder as she kissed me. “It’s fine. Just don’t forget to turn on your bicycle lights so people can see you.”
“What?” Grandma sounded incredulous. “You’re just letting her go on a bike ride? But it’s the middle of the party. Her party.”
Mom ignored her.
“Don’t make any stops,” she said to me. “Stay on your bike.”
I turned around without saying another word to Alex and Uncle Chris, who were both staring at me in astonishment, and headed straight for the side yard where my new bike was parked. I didn’t look back.
“And, Pierce?” Mom called after me.
My shoulders tensed. What if what Grandma had said made her change her mind?
But all she added was “Don’t be too long. A storm is coming.”
When I beheld him in the desert vast,
“Have pity on me,” unto him I cried,
“Whiche’er you are, or shade or real man!”
DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto I
Everyone wants to believe that there’s something else — something great — waiting for them on the other side. Paradise.
Valhalla. Heaven. Their next — hopefully less horrible — life.
It’s just that I’ve been to the other side. So I know what’s there.
And it’s not paradise. At least, not right away.
It’s a truth I’ve had to bear alone, because nothing good has happened to the few people with whom I’ve shared it.
So sometimes I just have to get out before I say — or do — something I’ll regret. Otherwise, something bad will happen.
He will happen.
Mom understood. Not about him, of course — she didn’t know about him — but about my needing to get out. That’s why she let me go.
Tearing down the hill from our new house, the breeze in my hair instantly cooling me off, all I could think about was Grandma.
“Man? What man?”
That’s what Grandma said the other day at her house when I got up off the couch, where I’d been sitting watching the Weather Channel with Uncle Chris, and followed her into the kitchen to ask her about Grandpa’s funeral…more specifically, what had happened in the cemetery afterwards.
“You know,” I said. “The man I told you about. The one with the bird.”
We’d never had a chance to speak about it again. Not since the day it happened. Not only was that day supposed to be a secret — just between us girls, Mom and me — Grandma and I had never been in the same room together again, thanks to Dad.