“Gin, yes . . .” Junilla said.
“Or a love letter . . .” Leonilla backed her up.
“But not a goldfish!”
“It is a love letter,” I blurted out. Suddenly my voice trembled. “Or maybe not really. Well, actually, basically it is.” And before I knew it, I told the two women my story. I told them how your last words had prematurely ended the world, and how your last phone call had offered sufficient justification to try and bring you Bubbles—an impossible quest in an impossible world as a last impossible token of my love for you, because nothing was right in the world without you anyway, at least not for me, and never could be again. It didn’t come as a relief to talk about it, my heart didn’t feel an ounce lighter. I only realized I was crying when Dawnie caught my tears in the 7-Up bottle, making Bubbles think it was raining and to everyone’s surprise, urging him to somersault playfully.
“Poor thing,” Leonilla said, shaking her head.
“Poor, poor thing,” Junilla put it more strongly.
“A goldfish in a bottle . . .”
“Forever trapped in the same circle . . .”
“The same, depressing circle . . .”
“You should let go of her,” Junilla said decidedly. But how, how, how could I ever let go of you, when there wasn’t a moment that passed without me wishing I could hold you close to me—so that, just for a short while, the world would no longer be upside-down? On an impulse, I pressed Dawnie close to me, and there and then, I was overwhelmed by grief and I cried, inconsolable and heart-broken. Not just because of the void you had left behind, but also because I now had to fill it with someone else. When a person’s dreams are taken away from them, they will desperately cling to new ones, no matter how empty those dreams are.
Oh, Sophie, I miss you so much.
“Things change, sweetheart, that’s just the way it is,” Junilla said, laying a frail hand on my heaving shoulders.
“It’s better to be prepared for change,” Leonilla said.
“So that it doesn’t take you by surprise when it comes.”
“Take the world, for instance,” Leonilla declared.
“The Earth!” Junilla emphasized. “What if the Earth, every once in a while, simply lets go? Takes a good look at what it’s got, shivers, and shakes it all off?” And the old woman shivered after her own words.
“It’s a good thing we were prepared,” Leonilla said, giving a disconcerting yank on the flaxen rope entering the trailer through the window.
“Were we ever,” Junilla confirmed. “We’re packing our bags!”
My eyes hot and wet, I stared at the trapdoor in the floor. “Where are you going?”
“Haven’t you seen all those falling stars at night?” Junilla asked. “It must be wonderful down there!”
“Oh, yes, wonderful!” Leonilla said. “Miraculous, I’d say.”
“That’s where we’re going!”
Dawnie’s little voice was almost lost amidst the lively exclamations of the old women when she peered around the 7-Up bottle and said, “My Mommy is a falling star, too.”
There was a brief silence. “Really?” Leonilla responded. “How wonderful for her! That means you get to make a wish, my dear.”
Dawnie’s eyes widened and she writhed in embarrassment. “Can I . . . can I come with you?”
“But of course, darling!” Junilla said. “If Toby here doesn’t mind . . .”
I nodded mutely, swallowing back fresh tears.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Junilla sighed. “Why won’t you just let go?”
“Nothing is worth clinging on to like that,” Leonilla said.
And then, shaking her head, “A goldfish in a bottle . . .”
Right then I lost track of whether we were talking about Bubbles, about you, or about me, and whether or not it made any difference.
All the times I had come in here before were like drops of honey sticking to my fingertips as I jammed the gangway between the final oak tree and the kitchen window frame. Mad with lust as a teenager in love sneaking through your bedroom window, whispering so your parents wouldn’t hear us. Shaking with laughter as I carried you across the backdoor threshold after a morning stroll filled with calm nonsense out by the lake. With leaden feet after more new tales I knew to be lies, still desperately trying to believe them—because after all, lies are meant to fill a void and I didn’t want you to have to live with a void. And now with your decision to go on without me heaped in the palms of my hands, and the power to reconsider in yours.
My heart leapt into my throat when I saw the white-painted, mirrored letters on the window in the façade:
HELP
So you were still alive. Your house hung upside-down and it was a ruin of crumbling memories, but you were still alive.
“Sophie.”
I stood on the ceiling of what remained of the kitchen and listened to the inverted silence.
And then, a landslide: “Toby?”
My name.
Your voice.
I clambered through the door into the living room. I found more ravages of tumbled furniture, piled up all the way to the sagging floorboards. But you had cleared the middle of the ceiling and there you were, lying on the couch.
“It’s really you,” you said, trying to push yourself up.
I shrugged, embarrassed. “Of course.”
“I thought you were dead.”
I took the 7-Up bottle from my backpack and held it up. “I brought Bubbles for you.”
Your incredulous gaze moved from the goldfish inside the bottle to me. “But how did you get all the way . . .”
I shrugged again.
You grinned. “You’re insane, aren’t you?”
“You know that.”
Your universe.
My universe.
I descended as you rose and I folded you—the fragile reality that was you—in my arms. You pressed stiffly against me and we sank down onto the couch. Your smell—evidently and impossibly Sophie—was so overwhelming and carried so much weight that I had to surrender to it utterly, no matter what might come after. It drove me mad. It didn’t matter. And so I buried my face in your neck and inhaled your scent like a drug, immersing myself greedily in your presence. We lay there like that for a long time, intimately entangled, in a perfect, pure state of being.
“Everything okay?” I asked, moist lips against your earlobe.
“Yes. I think so, yes.” Hot air from your innermost self in my hair. “I think my kneecap’s broken. And my back hurts really bad.”
“Were you in bed?”
“Underneath it.”
“It’s okay. I’m here now.” I caressed the gossamer, downy hairs behind your ear, the curve of your neck.
“Toby.”
“Sssh.”
“But . . .”
“It’s okay.”
“Everything is truly, seriously fucked up, isn’t it?”
I pushed gently away from you so I could look you in the eye. “You called me.”
“Yes.”
“Sophie.”
You let go of me and hoisted yourself up, because you couldn’t handle the situation.
But I clasped your hand and said, “I’ve missed you, Sophie.”
“Stop it.” A tear trickled down your cheek. “I’m so worried about Mom and Dad. I haven’t heard from them. I haven’t seen anyone since it happened, not a single soul. Do you know if help is coming?”
I felt myself growing faint inside. “I came, didn’t I?”
You looked at me for a long time. “I’m sorry about how it all turned out.”
“Yeah. Me too,” I said. “I liked it better when everything was still right-side up. Made it a lot easier to see each other.”
“Toby.”
“Well, sorry—” My voice shook, looking for purchase. “—I just don’t know how to deal with it. Everything has changed now, right? Can’t we . . .”