Nothing about that experience sounded appealing to Anne. Letting out your grief just meant making it real and unavoidable. But she said, “I’m glad you did what felt right to you.”
“Try it.”
This time, Anne couldn’t help a disbelieving laugh. “You wantmeto talk to the sky?”
“No. I want you to talk to something bigger than yourself or anyone else. I want you to see that you belong to”—Sadie flung her free arm out—“all of this. I want you to see that no matter how much you try, you can’t opt out of the gorgeous, scribbled mess of being human. Look, if it’ll make it easier on you, I’ll go first.” She didn’t wait for a response, instead turning her face to the sky. “Whoever or whatever you are, I know you’re out there. I can feel it when I’m here. I hope someday I’ll be able to take that feeling with me when I leave.”
The stars seemed to wink at them.
“Your turn,” Sadie told her.
Self-consciousness swamped Anne. “What am I supposed to say? This isn’t—normal. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be mean, but it just isn’t.”
“Let’s face it,” Sadie said affectionately. “You’re not normal. And neither am I. We’re both so much better than that.”
Not normal. On some level, she’d always feared being not normal more than anything else. To be outside what she was supposed to be, always tapping on the glass and desperate to be let in.
But she’d spent thirty years in a marriage that was nothing but tapping on glass, hadn’t she? The two of them, James and Anne, tap-tap-tapping alongside each other for all those wasted years, and never discussing it. Never acknowledging anything real.
Anne took a deep breath, then looked up at the sky and let herself get lost. It wasn’t hard. The black reach of it filled every part of her vision, an indiscriminate and impersonal void.
After a few moments, she began to speak. “It’s very hard for me to believe anyone’s out there. Up there. I haven’t since I was a little girl. But if I’m wrong, if someone reallyisthere, if you’re listening right now, if you know something—if you knew all along this was inside me—” The words began to tumble out of Anne’s mouth without her permission, distraught and pleading. “I’ve got, what, maybe twenty, twenty-five years left? And that’s if I’m lucky. Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Why didn’t anyone tell me? Why couldn’t I know I felt this way before it was almost too late?”
The stars were silent.
“I’ve always done exactly what I was supposed to do. Made sure everything was so goddamn perfect that nobody could ever find fault with me, except myself. But—but I got it all wrong, didn’t I? Even though I tried sohard.” Anne’s voice fractured at the same time as her heart. “Have I wasted the only life I’ll ever get? Did you let me do that, whoever you are? Did you think I deserved it? What did I ever do that was so terrible, so awful, that I wasn’t allowed to figure it out until the end?”
“Anne,” Sadie breathed, and there was new weight on Anne’s right shoulder as Sadie inclined her head, resting it there. “Oh, my beloved.”
Feeling ridiculous and raw, Anne stopped speaking. Hot tears brimmed in her eyes. It was difficult enough to wonder why she was beginning to realize—this—after six decades; on top of that, she really didn’t want to think about a higher power with actual intention. If some purposeful design was what had kept her from herself, that felt too horrifically cruel to even consider.
They stood there together, Sadie’s head on her shoulder, both of them looking at the sky. The sky looked back at them, heavy and silent.
After a while, Sadie lifted her head. “I think,” she said slowly, “I know exactly what you need.”
“A drink?” Anne wiped quickly at her eyes. One or three glasses of a really dry white would be extremely welcome right about now.
“No, not a drink.” Sadie took a few steps back. “This.”
Incredibly, unaccountably, she started to spin in circles, flinging her arms out wide as she turned.
Anne jumped back to avoid becoming collateral damage.
“When’s the last time you spun in circles? Fifty years or more, I’ll bet. Find that girl again with me. She’s still in there.” Sadie stopped and swayed a little. “Spin with me.”
Anne laughed at the absurdity of it. A distraction, sure, but it was working. “Yeah, right.”
“Spin with me,” Sadie repeated, holding out her hands to Anne. She clenched them multiple times in the universal sign forgrab on.
“Absolutely not. I know exactly how this ends: with me breaking my ankle an hour away from civilization. I’m too old for spinning.”
“If I’m not, you’re not. I won’t let you lose your balance. Let’s go back to your childhood. Just for a few seconds.”
“I spent my childhood sitting nicely on a plaid couch in the Greenwich Country Club.”
“You loved to swing on your backyard swing set,” Sadie insisted. “You told me. ‘The faster the better, the higher the better.’ So swing with me, just like you used to do. Right here, right now.” She clenched-unclenched her hands again, still holding them out in Anne’s direction. “Grab on. Start pumping your legs. I’m right here with you. You’re not too old. It’s not too late. Thisisn’tthe end. It’s so far from the end. You’re still here on this earth, Anne. And as long as you’re here, there’s always time.”
A pang of sudden longing wrenched in Anne’s chest. Time. She thought about her childhood swing set, the plastic red-and-blue-striped seats, remembered the hard press of the metal chains against her tightly-gripped hands. She’d always felt so happy on that swing, pumping her legs as hard as she could until she was high enough to see the roof of her house. So happy! And, of course, she’d known then, with absolute certainty, that the rest of her life would just be more and more of that feeling.