They sit on the dock. Do you remember anything I told you last night? Harper asks. Thanh says, Tell me. We have a son, Harper says. His name is William. Your mother picked that. William. She wanted him to have a name. In case. We’ll call when we get to the mainland. We’ll get the first flight. If there are no flights, we’ll rent a car. We could swim, Thanh says. That’s a terrible idea, Harper says. He puts his arms around Thanh. Breathes into his hair. It will be okay, Harper says. It may not be okay, Thanh says. I don’t know if I can do this. Why did we want to do this? Harper says, Look. He points. There, far away, are the lights of the mainland. Closer: light moving over the water. The light becomes a boat and then the boat comes close enough that the pilot can throw a rope to Harper. He pulls the boat in. A man steps off. He looks at Harper, at Thanh, a little puzzled. This is the bridegroom. He says, “Were you waiting for me?” Thanh begins to laugh, but Harper throws his arms open wide and embraces David. Welcomes him. Then David goes up the beach to the house. His shadow trails behind him, catches on beach grass and little pebbles. What kind of person is he? Not a good one, but he is loved by Fleur and what does it matter to Thanh and Harper anyway? Even caterers get married. There’s no law against it. They get on the boat and ride back to the mainland. Fish swim up under the glass bottom, toward the light. Harper pays the pilot of the boat, whose name is Richard, a hundred bucks to take them to the airport. By the time they are on the prop plane that will take them to Charlotte where they will catch another flight to Boston, Thanh is undergoing a hangover of supernatural proportions. The hangover renders him incapable of thought. This is a mercy. Waiting for flights, Harper talks to Han, and once to Naomi. Thanh and Harper hold hands in the cab all the way to Children’s Hospital, and Han meets them in the main lobby. “Come up,” she says. “Come up and meet your son.”
On an island, Fleur and David marry each other. There is cake. The wedding gift, which cost too much money, is opened. Days go by. Months go by. Years. Sometimes Thanh remembers Bad Claw, the procession of wedding dresses, the caterers, the boat coming toward the island. The place where he picked up a pebble. Sometimes Thanh wonders. Was this it, the thing that he had wished for, even as he had tried to wish for nothing at all? Was it this moment? Or was it this? Or this. Brief joys. The shadow of the valley of the shadow. Even here, even here, he wondered. Perhaps it was.
There is a day when they are able to bring the boy, their son, home from the NICU. They have prepared his room. There has been time, after all, a surplus of time to outfit the room with the usual things. A crib. Soft animals. A rug. A chair. A light.
One day the crib is too small. The boy learns to walk. Naomi graduates. Sometimes she takes the boy to the zoo or to museums. One day she says to Thanh, Sometimes I forget that he didn’t die. Things were so bad for so long. Sometimes I think that he did die, and this is another boy entirely. I love him with all my heart, but sometimes I can’t stop crying about the other one. Do you ever feel that way? Harper still works too much. Sometimes he tells the boy the story about how he was born, and the island, and the wedding. How Harper’s wedding ring fit over his wrist. How Harper, wearing a wedding dress, rode over in a glass-bottomed boat, and was told that their son was born. Han gets older. She says, Sometimes I think that when I am dead and a ghost I will go back to that hospital. I spent so long there. I will be a ghost who washes her hands and waits. I won’t know where else to haunt. The boy grows up. He is the same boy, even if sometimes it is hard to believe this could be true. Thanh and Harper stay married. The boy is loved. The loved one suffers. All loved ones suffer. Love is not enough to prevent this. Love is not enough. Love is enough. The thing that you wished for. Was this it?
Here endeth the lesson.
The New Boyfriend
Ainslie doesn’t rip open presents. She’s always been careful with her things, even the things that don’t matter. Immy is a ripper, but this is not Immy’s present, not Immy’s birthday. Sometimes Immy thinks that this may not be Immy’s life. Better luck next time around, Immy, she tells herself.
Ainslie scores under the tape with a fingernail, then carefully teases the pink wrapping paper out from under the coffin-shaped box.
Ainslie’s new Boyfriend is in there.
Ainslie’s birthday, this year, is just Ainslie and her bestest, oldest friends. Just Ainslie, Sky, Elin, and Immy. No family allowed. No boys.
Earlier there was sushi and cake and lots of pictures to put up online so that everyone will know how much fun they are having.
No presents, Ainslie said, but of course Immy and Elin and Sky bring presents. No one ever means it when they say that. Not even Ainslie, who already has everything.
It’s normal to want to give your best friend something because you love her. Because you want her to know that you love her. It isn’t a competition. Ainslie loves Elin and Immy and Sky equally, even if Immy and Ainslie have been friends longest.
Immy’s heart isn’t as big as Ainslie’s heart. Immy loves Ainslie best. She also hates her best. She’s had a lot of practice at both.
They’re in the sunroom. As if you could keep the sun in a room, Immy thinks. Well, if you could, Ainslie’s mother probably would.
But the sun has gone down. The world is night, and it belongs to all of them, even if it belongs to Ainslie most of all. Ainslie’s brought out dozens of pillar candles, a small forest of mirrored candelabras, both of her Boyfriends. They both wear little birthday hats, because that’s the thing about Boyfriends, according to Elin, who has a lot of opinions and isn’t shy about sharing them. You can’t take them too seriously.
Of course anyone can have an opinion. Immy has plenty. In her opinion, in order not to take a Boyfriend seriously, you have to have a Boyfriend in the first place, and only Ainslie has one. (Two.) (Three.)
Creatures of the night in silly hats, Vampire Boyfriend (Oliver) and Werewolf Boyfriend (Alan) lounge on candy-striped settees and gaze with identical longing at their girlfriend, Ainslie. Immy decides against having a second piece of cake. One piece of cake really ought to be enough for anyone.
And yet, there on the floor, right under the cake (plenty left, Immy, why not have another piece, really?) and the candelabras, right there under everyone’s noses, the new Boyfriend has been waiting all this time. Immy knew, right away, as soon as she came into the sunroom, exactly which Boyfriend it would be.
It’s dark inside the box, of course. Night wrapped up in pink paper. Are his eyes open or closed? Can he hear them talking? Love will wake him.
Love, oh love. Terrible, wonderful love.
Ainslie lifts the lid of the coffin, and white rose petals spill out, all over the floor, and—“Oh,” Sky says. “He’s, um, he’s gorgeous.”
Real rose petals, real and crushed and bruised. Probably not the best packing material, but oh, what a smell is filling the room.