It had been six months since the news of Chloe’s death broke among her friends. After one and a half years of sleeping-pill-induced coma, finally, as Chloe would have said, she’s dead. It was almost autumn now, and Grace and I were sitting on the bar counter in the middle of a party I didn’t care to know what was about, relishing the remaining, tenuous flame of summer by drinking our worries away. Technically, she was drinking out of a bottle of sweet Vermouth while I studied a plain tin of ginger ale. I the girl nerd had not been a fan of activities like this, but I thought since mother couldn’t make it to leave any money or food at home before babysitting Mrs. Breedlove’s daughter over the night, I might as well scrounge some free meal here.
“What are you doing staring at a ginger ale, just drink it,” Grace teased me gently. “Sure, sure, I’m just checking it out. Who’s coming tonight?”
“Jeremy, and some of us who played with Chloe, and some other jerks I don’t care to know,” she drawled slightly.
Since they couldn’t hold or attend a funeral, for a long while none of them knew for what reason they should gather. After all, by the time they were informed about her death, Chloe was already a pile of ash.
It wasn’t until Jeremy, son of the owner of their go-to bar, invited them to his fall break party in the group chat that they decided to come together and broach the issue.
Chloe was one of the few friends Grace really had in the junior high we attended, depending on how you define friends. Though I only knew snippets of Chloe’s life, the image of a loaded, yet clinically depressed modern damsel in distress remained vivid in my head — distress in every sense: a bipolar divorcee mother who frequently got razor blades on the floor everywhere and beat her daughter black and blue, as well as a father, who kept on doing business in New Zealand while dumping fortune after fortune on his ex-wife and daughter after he got chased down by Chloe’s mother with a kitchen knife the only time he checked on their condition.
And insofar as I knew, it wasn’t like she never tried to seek some sort of good thing. She banged her head and did triple backflip at metal shows. She consigned over thirty pounds of presents to Grace traveling back from Tokyo. She bought what they thought the cutest dog in the world, a Pomeranian she named Hope, the diva dog in every doggie pageant. And she, like most people, fell in love with someone.
“Cho-Cho, I love you. I love you today and I’ll love you tomorrow. You’ll always be my girl.” “You’re my lucky charm.”
“ I love seeing you happy. Your smile makes me smile.”
“I don’t think you understand how much you mean to me.”
All that kind of refined nonsense young romancers say during their time together that would make both of them feel shameful afterward.
And like some sort of good old platitude, love can sometimes be magic, but magic can sometimes just be an illusion. When Paul’s parents broke in at doors, love leaped out at windows. After the day we saw his mom negotiating with Mrs. Hodge in the dean’s office, I kept hearing all these things about how
Chloe was the slut chasing after Paul all the way, how he resisted but accepted reluctantly out of sheer sympathy.
I wanted to ask more about Chloe, but I was afraid to be too much of a killjoy.
“Gosh, I’m starving. I thought they would at least serve some girl scout cookies.” Grace grinned at me. “It’s not like everybody is looking for food here, honey.”
I looked around. Small clusters of boys in funky denim jackets and girls in crop-tops chatted in a clamor, with a few fits of laughter coming through randomly against the deafening disco, of which the lyrics became incomprehensible in all the thunder and echo. When I turned back Grace had finished the entire bottle of Vermouth, topping her pokal up with another.
“Slow it down, babe. They haven’t even arrived yet.”
“Don’t make a fuss, I can do way more than this.”
“Yeah, I know you big alcoholic, but still. Remember last time you asked me if I wanted your hair curler.”
“Shoot.”
That was three months ago. Her hair was tied up in a bun but she was so drunk she believed she got her bob cut back and texted me to hand her curler on. Before she blacked out she added, “It’s a damn pretty curler, I’m telling you, even prettier than I am.”
“It ain’t anything. Last year I almost threw up into a roadblock in the underground parking garage,” said she, eyes rolling and brows raising to make a dismissive grimace. Down the end of the throngs and reeling flashlights threaded toward us four or five people, all of whom were friends of Chloe’s.
Grace was just about to beckon to them when one of the girls plunged into her bosom for a hug. I was surprised, for Grace had quite some issue with body contact. I was the only one who had the privilege to walk arm-in-arm with her, drink out of the same plastic bottle of orange juice with her, and hug her like that.
She clenched that gal’s shoulders with strength just enough to push her away. Moments like this make you think she’d turn stern the next second, but I knew that’d not be the case with Grace. As I expected, the corners of her mouth were hung up by two invisible strings into a shape just right to be passed for an authentic, amiable smile, and a consoling voice slipped out of it naturally. “Come on, Chloe wouldn’t like to see this cutie face messed up by tears.”
That gal’s boyfriend led us to the round tufted tuxedo sofas in the center. As soon as we settled down, I slid into the corner and probed at the basket of potato chips on the Formica table in the middle. The boy wrapped his mouth around the lip of a bottle of jennessee whiskey like a tilapia securing a baited hook.
“I still can’t understand. She was just asking if anyone cared to join her to metal show and then two days later, she swallowed two hundred sleeping pills down her throat.”
When I heard that I thought Dude, you don’t blame depressives for not informing you before committing suicide. He must have realized he had said something silly before long and so joined the waves of bottles and tumblers rising here and subsiding there.
“What about Hope? Has anyone checked on Hope?”
“Has anyone been to Mrs. Braverman’s?”
The questions popped up seem like some magical mute button as they went speechless in sync. “Hey kids!” An unfamiliar male voice cut through the silence.
I assumed it was Jeremy for sure, because he was wearing a mirage-grey boiler suit and a hefty grey-brown cropped trucker with a huge “FEAR OF GOD” in Bahnschrift emblazoned on the rear, and I knew he was a senior at USC. He perched on the right arm of a black, upholstered vinyl barrel chair opposite to me and set two six-pack Budweiser on the Formica polygon table.
Grace gave the beers a bemused gaze.
“Get some Vodka here, Jeremy.”
“Uh-uh. Nobody is up for Vodka tonight. Today’s not the day.”
“You’ll need some tonight. Get me one and get yourself one. ”
“Why?”
“Go get some first.”
When he came back, Grace topped his glass and then hers.
“Drink it.”
“What?”
“Just drink.”
As Jeremy approached the bottom of the glass, Grace paused for a moment. I could see her body vibrating simultaneously with her breath. She then grabbed his glass and topped it again.
“Drink some more.”
“Why? What’s the matter?”
“Or I should drink some more.” She seemed to be talking to both Jeremy and herself.
After she gulped down to the bottom, her words started to drift into the sullen air with a metallic hardness until Jeremy slumped into the sofa in the middle of the couple, his hands sticking up in mid-air over the back of the sofa, and after another long silence, Grace headed toward the Ladies.
At the time I felt something was wrong with Grace but decided to finish the basket of chips first before the others would notice it. Thanks to all the hubbub and loudspeakers around, nobody could hear me crush the chips like a hamster, though I knew that’s mostly because they didn’t give a shit about the chips. When I walked up and rubbed my palms against one another to get rid of the pepper powder, the boy drinking the Budweiser seemed to believe I was to join them and moved over for me to sit.
“I’m Abigail.” I preempted so I could get this done quickly.
I didn’t catch his name but that didn’t matter. Friendly, He handed me one Budweiser, and so we small-talked until we got to the point where I had to pour myself drinks to fill in the silence.
It was still early, speaking from the world of a bar. Not many were twirling around on the dance floor.
“Call some more people here. I’m not charging.” Jeremy finally spoke. “For Chloe’s sake.”
I sipped at the beer slowly, feigning attention to them sending public invitation posts on Instagram till my drinking lasted a legit amount of time for me to tip-toe to the Ladies.
There was only some rustling from one of the cubicles. One wouldn’t be able to tell whether Grace was really crying in there or not but I was ninety-percent sure she was. She has a particular silent way of crying, shedding two streams of tears without wincing or sobbing.
Only a light shade of surprise flickered across her face when she stepped across to the line of sinks. “I ordered you something to eat. It’s gonna be here in twenty minutes.”
“You did?” My eyes glistened while I produced a goofy “aww” like an animal. “But, you ok, honey?”
“Yeah, right.”
“One can’t understand why there are pains money can’t solve till you know about her, right?” I attempted to sound her out.
Grace peered at my face in the sink mirror.
“You know why she named her dog Hope?
I shook my head. “But it’s a beautiful name.”
“It is. It’s a phonetic pun, actually. She used to say ‘It’s fine, it’s fine. Look at me, I still have Hope’”.
She stood there in an expressionless trance, kneading her forehead. The end-tilting, bristling lashes of hers cast two tiny shadows on her eyes as she dropped them.
When we came out the scene was already a lot livelier, an almost festive air, I would say. The folks with us were holding long, thin bottles of Vodka high in the air, pouring and dividing the liquid into tiny blue cups in front of a bunch of dice rollers and a medium-sized roulette wheel. I turned my head around and saw her face radiating an unaccountable enthusiasm. Later when I sat back in the corner putting the poor amount of chips offered there into my mouth she was whooping the loudest whoop amid the group for somebody to drink.
Soon I got very drowsy. I wasn’t sure why. I thought I might have mixed two different drinks together because they shared almost identical colors. My eyelids kept drooping onto the bottom of my eye sockets, and the heat coming over my face from my gut numbed my senses. I closed my eyes to resume and opened at intervals to maintain consciousness.
The sixth to seventh time I lifted my lids I caught a glimpse of Grace’s silhouette heaving in a dimness like a beast on the prowl. The sight of her somehow woke me up and stirred me to stand up erect.
“How dare you!”
I recognized the guy in Ralph Lauren polo shirt and plaid cargo shorts she shouted at as Chloe’s ex-boyfriend, Paul. Grace used to tell me he tended to bum drinks off them, but they couldn’t do anything to him before Chloe. I braced myself.
“How do you still have face to come here?”
“What, where am I, your home?”
“Where were you when she traveled all the way from the sanatorium toting the pair of fucking Air Jordan you wanted here? Where were you when that lunatic mother of yours told Mrs. Hodge she’s a whore? You told everybody she’s the one who seduced you and begged to be with you. You fucking lying asshole!”
“Oh, come on, why am I listening to this bullshit.”
Grace persisted. “The only time you showed up in the sanatorium you told her to recoup your train fare, you said you borrowed money for the tickets, didn’t you?”
“I don’t want to beat woman.”
Grace stood still like a time bomb for a few seconds. Then she scooped the emptied Vermouth bottle up and pelted Paul with it. He ducked in time but was immediately lunged at by the boys together with us. Quick of eye and deft of hand, I nudged my way through and yanked Grace out of there with arms clasped around her dainty neck. I didn’t see her expression clearly.
For a while we simply sat beside the counter, me tapping her back rhythmically. Out of a sudden, she slapped herself with her right hand. The clear snap joined our backdrop seamlessly, as the swarm behind scurried in all quarters alongside an incessant thudding interspersed with howling, thumping, roaring, and swearing till the police arrived. I grabbed two handfuls of the newly served chicken wings into a plastic bag before boarding the police car.
After a twenty-minute lecture on underage drinking, the police officer started in a monotonous tone: “who started it?”
Two lines of tear traveled down Grace’s cheeks, but this time accompanied by a delicate, cartoonish whimper that’s clearly not hers.
“He slapped me.” She rubbed the welt on her face, enlarging the line of tear stain into an irregular trapezoid. “I said he failed his girlfriend and he just slapped me. She’s passed away now, for god sake!” She cried like a tragic theater protagonist to me, but I guessed the authentic welt and the pair of deerlet eyes looked too honest to disbelieve.
Red-faced, Paul protested: “Sir, you can’t just believe in her! You’ll need witnesses! Everybody saw, she literally threw a wine bottle at me!”
I didn’t know what lying to the police meant for a citizen, and the police officer didn’t seem to be a gullible one as well. His suits indicated to me he could be some Chief Constable, or at least a small local manager. But as I held back my laughter, I instinctively ran up and cuddled Grace’s head into my bosom. “Nonsense, who else here could beat her up like this?” I stroked her welt: “This was what everybody saw!”
The officer held a sheet of paper and a ballpoint with absolute weariness before our theater parody. I couldn’t tell if that came from his boredom into our issue or his sleepiness. Maybe both
“Why do you say he failed his girlfriend?”
“He sucked up her wallet and left her in depression with nobody to turn to.” Grace darted into the officer’s eyes from under my forearms like a wronged orphan defending herself against abuses from villain grown-ups.
A meditative face hung on the officer’s face as he twirled the ballpoint around his fingers. “You do have some guts, huh, young man?” Grinning lopsidedly, he stamped the sheet of paper.
About five minutes later, all of us set off for home, except for Jeremy. When I uncoiled slowly to get up, Grace pulled me back to my seat.
“Damn it, I can’t change delivery address now. Are you still hungry?”
“Forget it, I’ve been too hungry to feel anything now,” I confessed.
Then I heard Jeremy saying: “Uncle Fred, could you please don’t tell my mom and dad.” He clung to Fred’s bureau with his back towards me, but there was a particular lilt in his voice which made me imagine a mischievous, child-like expression on his face.
“Good kid, getting me trouble right out of school, huh?”
Jeremy didn’t answer.
“How’s your school going?”
“I’m graduating magna cum laude next year.”
“Magna cum laude?”
“Aye.” Jeremy beamed at him.
“Alrighty. Attaboy,” Fred signed, shaking his head. His eyes widened, and he suddenly noticed and turned toward me.
“What’s your name? I’ve never seen you around here.”
“Abigail, sir. I’m Grace’s classmate. We were in the same junior high, actually. We just didn’t know each other very much.”
Yes, how could I possibly know my single-parent poor nerdy life borne so many parallels with Grace’s stunning, privileged debutante life? That she, like me, deemed herself guilty, the burden to her parents, the root of all quarrels, threats, and violence? That if we never ever existed everybody would be much happier, and things would be much easier to handle? That the Harvard brother she lived and played with didn’t share the same mother with her? That she’s forbidden to be named after her dad’s mother cuz the grandparents preferred the first wife over the second? That she, like me, would open her eyes to the darkness of night in stubborn silence.
“Right, you guys all grown up, heading to high schools now. It’s just that Grace used to bring another girl around.”
His eyes met ours within the awkwardness of the moment.
“I’m sorry for mentioning that.”
“Uncle Fred, do you know anything,” asked Jeremy.
“Anything? I’m afraid I know as much as you do, kid.”
“But you must have been at Braverman’s, you must know something.”
“I was there, but it’s just that, it’s a very simple case. I’m sorry.” Fred opened and shut his mouth.
“If anything, I know her mom’s moving now.”
“Mrs. Braverman?”
“Yes.”
“But where can she go?”
Nowhere, I supposed privately.
I perched on the steps outside the police station together with Grace, waiting for her to get a Uber. The neighborhood around, already sound asleep, was fenced by slim, neat rows of black bars inside which grew a line of coral roses facing inward — except for this particular one poking out of the space between two of the bars, its gauzy petals fully disclosed to us. It appeared crimson at night, and as I regarded it, somehow it occurred to me it’s gonna wither very soon in late October.
“Is Fred really Jeremy’s uncle.”
“You mean, biological uncle?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Nah, no way. His uncle is my dad’s colleague.”
“He works for the Congress as well?”
“I would think so.”
That reminded me of a time we were asked to fill out some private info forms in junior high. Lots of them were asking and looking around for what we wrote on the horizontal line after “parent occupation”. I asked Grace later what that was for. She said political parent are always better than business parent, and that’s why. So I asked what she had written.
“Cadre. I said my dad was a cadre.” She had told me.
We smirked at each other.
“Which legislative branch are they working for?” I asked.
“Who knows. Who cares. You really not hungry?”
“For sure.”
Together we watched the stars fade. The crescent beyond us sank onto the navy-blue velvet sea after it. The night breeze ruffled that solitary rose into dancing cha-cha.
“No,” she suddenly blurted, “I’ll get you something to eat.” She pulled me by my wrist and we wandered around till she discovered a 24-hour convenient store nearby. When we boarded the Uber car, I gave a chock-full bag of snack boxes and packages a tug.
“Abby.”
“What?”
“Promise me not to commit suicide no matter what happens.”
I thought I should respond with something like “Sure”, but didn’t really feel like saying it. I saw the rationality in it, but rationality alone couldn’t constitute a promise. I dropped my eyes, truncating a strawberry-flavored Pocky stick with my teeth.
“You are going to a great college, for sure. And your mom won’t be babysitting on the side very soon.”
“Probably.”
“You know, Chloe used to ask us if we could help bring Hope out of the house if she’s not gonna live long, and we laughed it off. We laughed it off.” She paused. “All that time, all that time I fixated on my own things I didn’t even realize she was leaving me. She struggled, and I didn’t even pay attention.”
Grace had had numerous hangovers in the sixteen years she’d been alive, but none of them culminated as memorable as the morning after the midterm of her last semester in junior high. It had been some time since their last conversation, which started with Chloe asking to see Grace for the very last time and ended with Grace responding “Stop joking”. She went on reviewing algebra and achieved an A plus on her midterm. In the next week, she woke up one morning and cried herself to sleep again.
“I thought if I understood why she did it I wouldn’t feel so sad. But now I that I understood — ” My brows knitted automatically. “What difference does that make?”
She thought over it intently for a minute.
“I don’t know. I just think of her more often. I wonder what we would do together everytime I go somewhere new. She was sweet…and smart, she spoke Japanese. You’d have liked her if you knew her.”
I held a ripped Pocky package to her chin and poked one stick at her lips. “Sure I would, I’d love to know her even now.”
She gnawed the stick away. She pinched at another one with thumb and index finger and wedged half of it in between the periphery of her lips. She draws her teeth and bit away one stick after another.
Crunch-crunch-crunch, crunch-crunch-crunch.
A few months later Jeremy brought Hope to LA, and Grace told me about it exclaiming “Hope is enjoying her life now”.
And I commented: “Well, Hope has hope now.”
