Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares [86]
Tibby occasionally looks up, I think, and sees the sun the way it might come down to reach her, glowing gold and refracted. Now she knows the secrets they have down there that we don’t understand.
I think there are other things of mine down there in the ancient city, and they all happen to have a common quality: that I lost them and wish for them. Under there is a life I could have had, but don’t, and it’s going on without me in it.
In reality I guess you would say it’s me who goes on without Tibby, but I can’t quite seem to do that. It feels more like she’s gone somewhere without me.
Not only did Lena write the letter quickly, she didn’t overconsider the introduction, conclusion, or sign-off. She copied his closing: Your old friend, Lena. And not only that, she stuck it in an envelope as soon as she’d finished it, sealed it, put two stamps on it, and delivered it to the mailbox around the corner before she could fail to do so.
It was a blessing and also a curse of handwritten letters that, unlike email, you couldn’t obsessively reread what you’d written after you’d sent it. You couldn’t attempt to unsend it. Once you’d sent it, it was gone. It was an object that no longer belonged to you, but belonged to your recipient to do with what he would. You tended to remember the feeling of what you’d said more than the words. You gave the object away, and left yourself with the memory. That was what it was to give.
After the lightning-bug incident, Bailey could not be detached from Bridget. She sat on Bridget’s lap through dinner. She wanted Bridget to read her bedtime story. She wanted Bridget’s kisses right after Brian’s.
Bridget went to bed early as usual. She lay in bed and listened to the rain start up. She felt sad but serene. Her limbs were heavy and quiet. Far from agitated, she imagined it would take a crane through the roof to get her out of bed.
She thought about Eric and the way he had looked when she’d walked away from him down Pine Street. She thought of Carmen and Lena on the last terrible day in Greece when they couldn’t let their eyes meet and said things to one another that were supposed to pass for a long goodbye.
She tried to picture them in their lives. Carmen in her glitzy loft with her cappuccino machine that cost more than all of Bridget’s possessions put together. Was the cappuccino machine offering Carmen any comfort? Maybe it was. Maybe Carmen understood something Bridget had simply missed.
She pictured Lena in her dark, quiet little room. So dark you couldn’t grow a plant, the only window thick with chicken wire. She pictured Lena drawing her feet until the drawing was so real there were four feet and you couldn’t tell the difference. And here Bridget could barely muster a scribble. Maybe Lena understood something too.
For the first time Bridget felt a vague longing to talk to them, a hope that they were doing better than she was. It was a strange tingling she had that made her think of phantom limb syndrome, but the tingling was rooted much deeper. She felt like parts of her soul were missing, had left her body long ago. It had happened not in Greece three months ago, but long before that. It was in Greece that she’d realized those parts had left her and were not coming back.
Her mind turned to Eric again, when she heard a flutter of feet down the hallway. She sat up, feeling an unexpected surge of adrenaline. Had Bailey climbed out of her crib? Was she okay?
So maybe it wouldn’t take a crane, Bridget recognized ruefully with her feet planted on the floor, as her door pushed open and a small figure crossed her room with the grace of an insect. Bailey appeared at the side of her bed, too short to climb up on her own. She raised her arms to be lifted, and Bridget obliged her.
Bailey crawled under the covers and molded her body against Bridget’s. In some wonder Bridget heard the crinkle of Bailey’s diaper, smelled her zincy ointment, and felt the moistness of her toes, which