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There’s a truth I can’t see to push out of my mind. Anytime you talk to someone, there is a part of you that should know that it could be the last conversation the two of you will have. You don’t want to obsess about that to the point that the existential dread eats you away until you cannot hold a conversation, though. And that’s bad. Not only do we as humans need social interaction, but it would also mean that whatever your last conversation was would definitely be the last. And it might not have been a good one. Or, worst of all, there would be so many opportunities for better conversations that you let slip away or were taken from you by you. It’s not worth the stress, really. Or so one might think. But at the same time, I thought I needed such awareness in the same way I needed water: it sustained me day to day but too much of it could drown me. And I had to hope that there was something in my body that would warn me long before I got to the point of fatality, even if I couldn’t see it.
I didn’t want my last conversation with Maria to be an argument and the anger with which we spat at each other towards the end. We had grown up and into ourselves together. There was a lengthy history between us that was owed a proper closing chapter. And if I didn’t go to see her, we were never going to get that.
Or that was how I justified going over to Maria’s place unannounced, pulling up to the house with my headlights off, and rummaging around in her front yard for the spare key tucked amongst the rocks. The spare key in particular felt like a sticking point. Maria had shown it to me once when things between us were better, and she wanted me to have unrestricted access to her world. And given how private Maria preferred to be, that access was one of the highest compliments I would ever receive. So when she showed me the key, I burned its placement into my mind, and that brand led my hand right to the fake rock that held the key to her door.
I turned it over with a slight tremble to my hand, worried that I was going to be mistaken and the key had been moved. But as I fumbled with the hidden door, it popped open, and a choir of angels seemed to punctuate the moment when I saw it sitting in the darkness. The key was still there. She hadn’t moved it.
And there was something comforting about that. It was a sign of trust or maybe even that there was still something between us. She didn’t hate me enough to go to these lengths to lock me out. That key represented the smallest shred of hope, but it was still hope.
I let that hope pull me inside and into the quiet mansion that felt so much colder that night than it ever had before. The occasional snore spilled into the entryway from Christian’s spot asleep on the couch. It echoed off the walls as it went, but I paid it no mind.
Some guard he was, I thought. Didn’t he say he would never let Maria speak to me again? I thought I heard him say as much, but maybe he didn’t. Maybe it was just an assumption on my part. Maybe because of the expectation that he would speak, my mind filled in the blanks his hesitation might have left open. I remembered his wide eyes as Maria and I screamed at each other. The shock filled every crevice of his face. And I understood why. That wasn’t like us. We always thought that would have bever been us, even fifteen minutes before the argument. But, as the poets say, the final sparks of a dying fire are some of the most aggressive and the brightest. Or so I think they say. I never asked them directly for their thoughts on the matter.
As I slowly wandered through her home, I faintly whispered Maria’s name. At that volume, my attempts to reach out were not exceedingly helpful, but I had to keep my voice low lest I wake up the slumbering guard. But in the silence between my calls, a familiar soft tapping caught my attention: the back door was dancing about in its frame. It had never fit properly due to some builder’s error. Consequently, if it wasn’t locked, the door couldn’t stay completely shut and became a plaything of the wind. It never left the frame though but bounced from front to back. So it was the sort of thing someone could ignore, particularly if they kept the door locked and firmly bolted into place.
But if Maria were outside, then she couldn’t lock it. So that was where she had to be.
Through the door’s glass panes, I caught a glimpse of Maria sitting at the edge of her pool with her back towards me. As she kicked her legs, I caught a glimpse of them in the water. It was odd to see her there. Maria never used the pool. She was afraid of it and kept saying if Christian didn’t like it as much as he did, she’d get it filled and paved over, but for the sake of his joy, she simply kept her distance. Christian might have been willing to overlook her fears, but I understood them. Once someone drowns or almost drowns, pools are always going to be a touchy subject. But she loved Christian too much to do anything about it. She loved him enough to suffer, and maybe that was something I should have been more concerned about.
But even after having that thought, even after that brief acknowledgment, I focused on myself and what I needed to say, for my own sake. I lost myself in my own fears and needs despite what that would mean for my friend. That was fairly shitty of me. I knew it even then. And yet, I lost myself anyway.
I slipped out into the night air, taking only a step in her direction. “Should I be concerned?” I asked her.
Maria hummed as if to say she was not entirely sure what I meant. And fair enough, I wasn’t clear. Or maybe I was too far away for her to hear me. Either way, I was in the wrong.
I repeated, “Should I be concerned that your feet are in the water?”
She shrugged, and I kept studying her.
“Feet aren’t involved in drowning, Jessica,” she said. “Technically. I mean, maybe they are. But I suppose that having your entire body in the water, deep enough that you cannot pull yourself to the surface, your feet would have to be there too.”
You could be submerged in the water upside down, I wanted to say, but I didn’t say it. It felt like a hair split, an argument started in bad faith. So at first, I said nothing. I just lingered by the door, lest I startle her and cause her to fall in. Maria’s body was broader than mine and heavier, so if she fell in, I wouldn’t be able to pull her out on my own. I could have called out to Christian, but I didn’t want his help or to have him around. Consequently, it was far better to be cautious.
“You seem so unhappy,” I said.
She shrugged.
Fair enough, I supposed. She was always unhappy. I always felt this dull melancholy about her, and when I told her about it once, she asked me if I was an empath. It was a logical conclusion, but I didn’t suppose one had to be an empath to feel it. One only had to be willing to, and many weren’t. Many saw all that she had achieved and focused only on that. They saw the reasons for the joy and never realized what was missing. But I could see those gaps, the holes in the family portraits that also did not exist. I could feel how her hugs lingered a bit too long, and while I thought that only happened with me, in time, I learned it was how she hugged everyone. It was a silent plea no one noticed. She needed love and care. She hardly ever got it, not in the way she needed it.
There were so many times I wanted to ask her what specifically she needed from those things. I wanted to ask what specific variety or brand did she require because I would give it to her. All she had to do was ask. I wanted her to ask, but she didn’t. My question, my need to know this about her, was constantly set aside or dodged. The subject was always changed whenever we got too close. And I could tell myself that it was about social norms or prescriptions. That this question was so intimate that it could only be asked in certain contexts which never came, but I wasn’t so sure anymore. This was likely my last time to ask, and I was struggling to put the words together. So maybe that was the real problem.
Maria broke the silence. “I wanted you to think I was a good person,” she finally said.
“I do think that,” I assured her.
She sighed. “I know. It fixed nothing.”
Such a simple observation, and yet, it had the power to shake both of us to the core. I took it as permission to join her at the edge of the pool. And as I came around, I saw the bottle of whiskey nestled in between her legs. It was still shut, its wax seal uncompromised. She didn’t drink. If she was about to start, then maybe I needed to say something. But I said nothing.
Maria looked up towards the moon and bathed her face in the moon’s light glow. She was beautiful, but she wouldn’t believe me if I told her. And if she did, she’d probably tell me that it didn’t matter in the slightest, now did it? It didn’t change anything. It didn’t heal anything within her. It wouldn’t bring her father back. Nothing would.
That was the real problem, some would say. The world was ready to bow down at her feet, and it meant nothing. Their sentiments, platitudes, and accolades meant nothing. It did nothing for her. But she expected something else. We all expect something else: to be fixed or healed. We always hoped for something else, and that hope kept us going. And yet, it never happened that way. Our hope wasn’t the author of our lives.
I slipped off my shoes and rolled up the legs of my jeans before dipping my legs into the water beside hers.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked her.
She chuckled darkly. “I don’t know. I really don’t.”
The chill of the pool water shot up my back, and I did my best to ignore it, staring into the water lit up by frosted pool lights. I could handle the chill. It was better than leaving, which I didn’t want to do because I suspected that much like the sparkle of celebrity status could not fix Maria and the trauma she had from losing her family, there was nothing I could offer that could fix our friendship. It was too broken. Its cracks were too numerous and deep for any putty to seal them.
This could very well have been it, then, I thought to myself bitterly. This could have been the last night of our friendship, the last night we would ever be in each other’s company. And if we had some sort of relationship after this, it would be a poor copy of what we once had before. It would be more of a monument or commemoration than it would be a replacement. There would be no replacement.
Once we left this pool, we would have to grieve, and as Maria had shown me time and time again, grieving was hard.