The Summer We Came to Life. Deborah Cloyed
to know it.
Could Isabel really not get how abominable it would be to vacation without Mina? It wasn’t the first time we’d broached the subject. After the funeral, when I was packing for France, I assumed it a nonissue, but both Kendra and Isabel mused about a summer trip in her memory, reminiscing how Mina always loved Paris. How could they not see it as a betrayal? Why didn’t they understand that without Mina, everything was irrevocably different?
But I knew why.
I ran my fingers along my scalp and looked out at the night sky over my latest hometown. The stars were mostly obscured—by smog, by lights, by all the aggregate effects of human inhabitance—just like that night in Paris, the summer before we left for college.
Isabel’s mother, Jesse, found a great apartment for rent in the bohemian neighborhood of Montmartre, and we arrived in July to a charming albeit sweltering abode bearing fuzzy wallpaper.
We had a longstanding tradition for the first night, what we playfully called The Opening Ceremony. We cooked a meal together and christened our new temporary home with a night of dancing, storytelling and laughter. It was supposed to remind us that the traveling was important but the company was what really mattered.
That first night in Paris, the sweaty kitchen was already overcrowded by Isabel, Kendra and their two moms. Mina and I took off to explore the apartment complex, and stumbled upon a door that led to the roof.
The view was so breathtaking we both gripped the railing and gasped theatrically at the same time, which made us burst out laughing.
“We are some lucky bastards,” I said.
Mina shook her head and chuckled. I remember exactly how she looked, lit up by the tangled string of lights dangling behind her. Her hair—that I was infinitely and eternally jealous of—dark, full and shiny, no taming or wrestling necessary. And only she could wear a cotton skirt and a T-shirt and look glamorous.
She didn’t answer, I remember. She looked away and down, snagged by a sound from below. The apartment was directly beneath us. With the windows wide-open, voices drifted up lazily, without much gusto. But at that moment the crescendo of mothers and daughters roaring in laughter had rushed over us.
“Are we?” Mina said, asking the few stars that had wriggled free of the city haze as much as she was asking me. “Are we so lucky?”
I put my hand on Mina’s shoulder. I’d let the stars answer. Mina’s mother died in a car accident when she was eight months’ pregnant. Her whole life, Mina heard what a miracle it was she was born at all. But it’s hard to hold on to gratitude for a lifetime. Especially when it feels more like loss.
It’s kind of like the balls of candy wrapper foil Lynette, Kendra’s mother, kept for each of us on her windowsill. Every holiday we added a layer, Lynette’s version of tick marks on a doorframe. Mina was like that about her mother. She just kept adding to a ball of mismatched feelings, wrapping layers as the years passed.
My mother bailed on my dad and me. It provided an iron stratum of anger that prevented feeling much of anything else about her.
Mina always knew what I was thinking. At that moment, on a rooftop in Paris, without even a glance at my hardening face, she put her hand over mine.
“We are lucky bastards.”
On a cold, hard floor in Tegucigalpa, I looked down at my empty hands lying in my lap, then up at my empty apartment in the middle of nowhere. And then I cried as loud as I wanted. There was nobody to hear.
October 27
Samantha
Our research is not “going nowhere.” We’ll just dig deeper.
The essential problem, Mina, is this:
Nobody knows what consciousness is or exactly how it arises and functions.
Scientists don’t really have a clue what’s happening at a fundamental level of reality. They have fancy equations that explain everything from particle interaction to black holes, but the “how” is linguistically and conceptually challenging, to say the least.
Light really does behave as both a wave and a particle. Matter and energy are interchangeable. Particles really can influence each other at opposite ends of the earth instantaneously. A single electron does somehow go through two holes at once to interfere with itself.
It is the “how” of envisioning such things, and the metaphysical implications, that are disturbing.
Or encouraging.
Mina, this is gonna work. I promise I’ll find you.
Sleep tight.
—Sam.
CHAPTER
3
I WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING TO THE SOUND of fluttering pages. I wrested my heavy head from the air mattress in pursuit of the source.
Mina’s journal lay open, its pages oscillating. I watched it for a second, mesmerized, then smacked it still and dragged it over.
But then I couldn’t help thumbing through the pages myself, touching Mina’s elegant script and grinning sheepishly at my surplus of graphs and exclamation points. Page after page I read the words I’d read a thousand times. Luv, Sam. Always, Mina. I’ll find you. Promise me.
In the margins were notes I’d added after her death, next to specific tasks we’d planned. I landed on a page from October, where I’d rambled on about Amit Goswami’s Physics of the Soul and consciousness. I’d boldly listed methods of communication Goswami mentioned. The first thing on the list was automatic writing.
I closed the journal.
I lay back on the air mattress and clenched and unclenched my hands at my sides. My mind drifted to a night in my second month in Paris. I watched myself slip out of bed, leaving Remy snoring upon his Egyptian cotton sheets, and walk onto his balcony in the middle of the night. High above the rain-soaked streets, I watched my shaky hand hover over a blank page in the journal, willing every part of my soul to disband or vibrate or do whatever it was supposed to do to connect with Mina’s. I envisioned her—down to the tiny scar on her cheekbone. I conjured her seven different ways of laughing. I replayed our favorite memories. Then I brushed away every sound and image like sweeping a storefront, and waited.
I didn’t even realize I was sobbing until Remy appeared like a ghost on the balcony. When our eyes met, it would be hard to say who was more startled. Without a word, he took off the plush bathrobe he was wearing and wrapped it tight around my shoulders. Then, with a cooing “silly girl,” he took the journal and the pen away, and led me back to bed.
The air mattress protested as I lifted my arms and hugged myself. I had no desire whatsoever to roller-skate that day.
And then my phone rang.
CHAPTER
4
“ET TU, JESSE?” I QUIPPED, HOPING IT WOULD make me sound less like the puddle of misery I was that morning. Isabel’s mother had absolutely no tolerance for misery.
“Samantha, get that tush o’ yours out of bed this instant!” She took a loud slurp of something for emphasis, and I imagined a mocha frappuccino.
“Jesse—”
“Don’t Jesse me, sister, get out your calendar and tell me if you prefer Monday or Tuesday.”
“I don’t get it.”
“We’re comin’, honey. All of us.”
I sat up so fast my butt smacked the floor through the air mattress. “What? Didn’t you talk to Isabel?”
“You bet I did. And Kendra and her mama, too. If ever there was a need for a Honduran vacation, this is it, kiddo.”
“Are you talking