Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares [52]
“Is that a lemon tree?” Carmen asked, pointing out the window.
“Yes.”
“That’s the great thing about living in California, isn’t it?” Carmen knew she was talking too fast. She suffered the length of the pause and felt herself grow a pair of antennae in the meantime.
“I suppose it is.”
After a while Carmen shut up and let the TV take over. No wonder Jones had gone into the business.
As Carmen spread the noodle casserole around on her plate she let her mind turn to Bridget. She’d calculated the distance from Fresno to San Francisco on a map online. She imagined she might call, she’d thought about it a lot, but now that she was here she knew she wouldn’t. If she could have thought of the first sentence to say, she might have, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t ask Bee how she was. She couldn’t mention what she was up to. Every casual opening seemed intolerably phony, and the deeper conversation was impossible.
“We can spend tomorrow at the movie theater,” Jones mentioned to her later, after they’d said goodnight to his parents.
On their way upstairs to the bedrooms Carmen noticed there was a picture in the stairwell that must have been of Jones with his older brother. It was the only picture of the deceased brother she had seen so far in the house. The two boys were sitting at a picnic table, with big slices of watermelon on their plates. Jones looked about seven. Carmen paused to look at it, but Jones didn’t wait for her. He kept going up the stairs. She stared at his back and wondered if he or his parents ever talked about his brother anymore. She tried to picture such a conversation at the dinner table, with the TV going.
Carmen had often wondered how it turned out, the Jones style of mourning. Maybe now she knew.
Bridget woke on Stinson Beach sometime after the sun rose. She sat up and looked at the waves. She imagined each one coming at her, like the bar of a swinging trapeze, toward her and away, toward her and away, inviting her to come in and take hold. She could do that. She could walk right in and keep going, swinging from one wave to the next. Tibby had done it. Why not her?
She thought of Tabitha the nurse. Now, this was a somber choice. It was the mother of somber choices, by which you could take care of all the smaller somber choices at once.
Tabitha would be disappointed in her, and strangely, it was Nurse Tabitha’s disapprobation that got to her more than her father’s or Carmen’s or Lena’s or Eric’s.
I wouldn’t do that to you, she thought, as she had thought before.
The morning sun was burning a hole in the top of her head. So much for sun; why didn’t it ever rain here? For the first time in her life she wished for a crashing, brawling East Coast–style thunderstorm.
She opened her pack and took out the envelope Tibby had left for her. She wasn’t supposed to open it for another two weeks, but that was bullshit. Tibby didn’t get to decide anything anymore. If she’d wanted the rights of friendship, she should have stuck around for them. Bridget considered tossing it in the water unread, but she couldn’t make herself do it.
She tore it open. Inside was a letter and another sealed envelope marked with another later date. She unfolded the letter.
Dearest Honey Bee,
I’m trying to picture you reading this. Somewhere in the sunshine, at least a week or two before the date I wrote on the envelope.
I know you feel abandoned by me, and I understand. You’ve probably gotten to the point of feeling mad at me, and if you haven’t, you will. Or you ought to. You trusted me to be around and I’m not. And God, I would give anything if I could be. Please believe that. The thought of missing out on the later life of my magnificent friend Bee is almost more than I can take. Everything feels like more than I can take right now.
Of all of us, I suspect this is hardest on you, and I wish I could cushion it. I wish I could make you feel as strong and as loved as you are. You’ll find your way, because of that, and because you have the thing that so often wavered in me. You have faith. Not in God necessarily,