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  I am at least a good enough daughter not to answer Mel’s question truthfully. No, I don’t need you here. I don’t want you here either. I’m fine by myself. In fact, I prefer it. And please, no need to enlist my father for parent duty again. The only thing Buddy’s good for is fixing appliances. The air-conditioning in the carriage house works fine, despite the sweat dampening the fabric of my black dress, despite the open window of my bedroom letting all the cool air out so that I can feel the stifling hot air. Suffer.

  “You should go to England,” I tell my mother, walking away. “I’m fine.”

  I’m not fine. Soon, the tears will come. I can sense them building in the pit of my stomach, coating the belly full of candy. They will come when I am alone in the dark, in my own bed, with no one to comfort me. I will mourn Laura then, in private. A Category 5 hurricane is building in my heart and soul, but right now it’s offshore, waiting to make landfall, waiting to crush me. I will stock up on supplies beforehand, cigarettes and novels and candy, maybe a glow stick to shine on the walls, to ferret out Laura’s ghost.

  Code

  DR. TURNER SITS ON THE LIVING ROOM SOFA, WEARING an elegant black suit, her legs crossed in executive high school principal pose. To look at her is to see the face of upper-middle-class D.C.—the Gold Coast, African American version. There’s her fine, tailored suit. Her lovely mocha skin and perfectly coiffed hair. Her iron will and tender brown eyes. When she speaks, it’s like hearing the Future Ph.D. Educator version of her daughter Niecy. “I wanted to check in on you before the service. How are you hanging in there, honey?” Only because she’s my best friend’s mother am I exempt, at least today, from the frown she reserves for the C- students at her school who are wasting their potential. “Is there anything we can do for you?”

  Don’t let Jamal leave D.C. for college in Atlanta this fall. Please. I’ll have no one left.

  “I’m fine,” I mumble.

  Like Dr. Turner hasn’t done enough already. She’s been at Jim’s house round the clock since hearing the news, overseeing funeral arrangements and food preparation, comforting Jim. Those two go way back. Their committees are the political past, present and future of D.C.’s drive for home rule, to make the District an official State of the Union.

  Dr. Turner stands up from the sofa and, like Niecy, reaches to smother me in a hug, whether I like it or not. I do feel her warmth, even through the air-conditioning and my sweaty clothes. She says, “When all this is over, you and I are going to sit down and have a talk. Understand? About this situation, about your schoolwork, your future . . .” Her voice drags off as she chokes up. When she regains her composure, she adds, “I’m going to let you slide through this last week of school, but don’t think you and I will not be addressing the serious issue of your academic performance, and your future, once we get through this.”

  You’d think it would be a perk for your best friend’s mother to also be your high school principal, but it’s not. I won’t bother dropping in the news that I intend to drop out. No need for a future discussion about my academic performance, Dr. Turner. ’Cuz I ain’t goin’ back.

  “Miles, I want you to know that the guest room at our house is all yours this summer, whenever you want or need it. We’re here for you. All you have to do is let me know when to come by to get you. I have plenty of D.C. statehood committee work to keep you busy, to keep your mind engaged on something hopeful rather than all this sadness, if I can tempt you?”

  The offer tempts not. I might agree with her political platform, but I will never spend the night in their family’s guest room, despite the many invitations. Me in one room, Jamal sleeping in the next room, playing Morse code against the wall divide? Forget about it. Jamal may BFF love me, but he doesn’t understand my secret code like Laura did. He couldn’t handle it if he did.

  “I’ll think about it,” I say. I already have. No. “Thank you for the offer.”

  As Dr. Turner leaves to go back to the main house, Mel takes her place standing in front of me. She wants me to fall apart in her arms, I know it. “How are you hanging in there, honey?” Mel asks, imitating Dr. Turner’s inflection. “Maternal” and “instinct” are not two words that necessarily go together for Mel, but she learns by example from Dr. Turner, on occasion.

  I’m about to tell her I’m fine, again, but she falls apart instead, bursting into tears, grabbing my plus-size self to her compact frame. She sobs, “I don’t know how I’m going to get through this. I can’t believe this is happening to me again.”

  Because that’s what Laura’s death is all about—Mel. I say, “You’ll feel better when you get to London. You love it there. You thrive there, you always say.”

  I’ll feel better when she gets to London, when I can have the house to myself, when I can sleep through half the day, chain-smoke, read as many paperback novels and engage in as little human interaction as possible, without her complaint. Then I will figure out how I will make it through the rest of my life missing Laura.

  Mel nods, sniffs onto my shoulder. “You’re tougher than me, Miles. You’ll be okay once I’m gone.” I know she’s trying to convince herself, not me, that it’s okay for her to go. She lifts her head from my shoulder and faces me, gently rubbing her hand along my double chin. “You know how much I love you, right?”

  Sure I do. But what’s love got to do with it?

  High Mourning

  I AM HIGH.

  As the Jesuit priest, a theology professor and longtime friend of Jim’s from the university, orates about God offering the opportunity for repentance in ways we do not know or comprehend, I swear I hear Laura laughing. She’s as high as me, only her high is a physical instead of mental space. She’s nestled inside a shelf at the top of the fifteen-foot, custom-built bookcase in the library room of Jim’s house, over the shelf of leather-bound Shakespeare volumes. She has a gleam in her blue eyes and a book on her lap. I think she’s reading a Dan Brown. Rebel! She smiles down at me where I’m sitting in a foldout wooden chair at the back row of seats set up for her funeral service.

  A gay father and lapsed Catholic plus a daughter’s suicide have equaled no church gathering. But I respect that Jim chose to hold the service in Laura’s favorite room in this house, the one without the portraits of Revolutionary generals and their sallow-skinned wives, the one without the framed pictures of presidents and ambassadors who have dined here, the one without the Renaissance tapestries, Oriental vases, and Persian rugs. This is where Laura would want us to be, in the one room that’s all about the imagination and not about the exquisite old-money taste. The furniture has been cleared for the service, replaced with aisles of chairs, bathed in the bright light that refuses to subside even on this dark day. What remains are the bookcases that stand for walls, holding the room up with what must be thousands of volumes. Sliding ladders run across the width of the bookcases, our favored amusement park rides when Laura and I were little.

  Only I can see her smile. Only I can hear her laugh. “Repentance?” Laura calls down to me. “For whom?”

  For these people, I mouth at her, gesturing to the mourners sitting around me. Repent, so that they can feel better. Repent, so they don’t have to wonder why. What was Laura’s deep, dark secret that compelled her to take her own life?

  Only Laura and I know. She carried no deep, dark secret. No secret love affair gone wrong, no acts of shame or hate by or upon her, no heinous crime she needed to hide. She did not kill herself as a means of escaping something. She simply chose not to live. There’s a difference. I understand that difference because she and I are the same. We want the same things. She blazes the trail for us, fearless of the unknown, while I cling to the safe and familiar, to living.

  I look around at the mourners, truly a rainbow coalition of faces that only Jim could assemble. There are the Congressmen, diplomats and socialites who are Jim’s Georgetown neighbors, corporate representatives from the many companies on which Jim serves as a board member, and a solid turnout of Afri
can American faces, D.C. people who are Jim’s friends from the many civic organizations he belongs to; D.C. may be 70 percent black, but Georgetown gatherings don’t necessarily reflect that. I see a small group of student and teacher representatives from the LGBT-youth high school that Jim funds, and an army of pretty white girls from Laura’s posh private girls’ school. The private-school girls are straight-haired, skinny fashionista clones who look like their every mood is accessorized; today their lip gloss is in the shade of Sad.

  I can’t look at Jim. To look into his gray eyes and see his suffering, to acknowledge it, would crash me down from this high. I will not be denied. I am not denied. Right now I am surrounded by faces marked with tears and stoicism, but I feel great. Powerful. Perfect.

  When I came into this house and saw the somber people gathered, I could not absorb their grief, share it. I immediately darted up to Laura’s room. I found her secret stash, no problem. I’m sure she left the stash behind for me. Taped inside the hollow underbelly of her box-spring mattress, I liberated and took as my inheritance her plastic baggie of Oxys and Percs and Vikes, some purchased illicitly, but most procured blatantly, from prescriptions left behind by aching houseguests or depressed live-in maids. I found the one Oxy20 in the whole bag. I know she saved it for me. Because a single crushed Oxy equals a dosage of several Percs, and bestows upon its (ab)user a high that’s just too rapturous; Laura and I considered too deep an attachment to Oxys beneath us. We saved them for Special Occasions Only. Laura must have known I’d need to be Special Occasion uplifted today, but not 40-high. I had just enough time to remove the time-release outer coating from the pill. I crushed, I snorted, I conquered. I returned downstairs right as the service began.

  Professor Jesuit intones, “We pray for the forgiveness of the deceased and the comfort of mourners. We ask that God will reward our faith on the day when all will be made new again.”

  What can be made new again if Laura is not here to experience it?

  Professor Jesuit rambles on about God and forgiveness, but I am not bored. I am floating through time and space, watching a beautiful movie of Laura’s and my lives together. We are six, holding hands across the swings as Jim and Mel, behind us, push us higher and higher, sunlight bursting through our movements. We are eleven, reading Forever aloud to one another in her bedroom on a snow day, giggling. We are fourteen, floating side by side on rafts at the lake under a cloudy sky, at a distance from the other summer campers so we can sneak a smoke. We are seventeen, high up in the tree house, high on Percs, riding out a rainstorm, content to fall together into silent, sweet lethargy, our bodies gliding away from us as our minds settle into emptiness. We own the world and nothing can go wrong.

  In our beautiful movie, I can edit out the scenes where I missed that something was wrong with Laura. She knew the movie was ending long before I did. That’s why she came back to me this spring. She was saying good-bye.

  I am warm and I am cold and I am completely relaxed. I float down from the movie to scratch my stomach. Oxys and Percs make me itch, and I neglected to take a Benadryl to offset the histamine release from the pharm. I scratch my jelly belly in circles, hard and soft, hard and soft. It’s a game.

  Why does everyone here look so sad? I’m sure they’re looking at me strangely. Am I smiling? I think I am but I can’t feel my own face. I only feel the happy surging through my veins.

  Jamal, sitting next to me, must know I am high. He grabs my hand that’s moved to scratch my arm. He clamps our joined hands in the space between our thighs, to keep my hand still, locked in his. I turn my neck to look at his face—dark and beautiful, just like my movie—and see he’s shaking his head at me, a warning. Now I feel my face again. It’s alive. The corners of my lips turn down, out of the smile. Jamal squeezes my hand. I did good. Much better.

  I sit calmly through the remainder of the service, God redemption forgiveness, tingly floaty tingly floaty, inthenameofthefatherthesonandtheholyghost, hot cold hot cold, Jesus Christ eternal life, happy happy happy. Laura Laura Laura. Share this with me.

  The Cookies Are Divine

  WE HAVE NO BODY TO VIEW, NO PROCESSIONAL TRIP TO A cemetery. Laura always planned things through, and that didn’t change with her death. She asked for cremation and no burial. She who had everything was at heart a minimalist.

  Instead, we have cookies after the service. The dining room is set up with a large buffet of catered food—light salads, polite sandwiches with the bread crusts cut off and cucumbers inside, the edamame Laura loved to nibble, set out in the beautiful bowls she brought back from Japan. No one appears to be eating much besides the sweets. Perhaps when an elderly person dies the mourners can reflect on that person’s life with a celebration of food and memories, but that is not the case here. I don’t hear anyone talking about Laura, no exchange of smiles and laughter—Remember that time when she . . . ? I hear chatter, but it’s soft, humble. Or maybe I’m too high to properly distinguish the mourners’ conversations over their tea and coffee cups. The spread of food is mostly a waste, but the caffeinated drinks appear to be a hit. I’m not the only person here who wants to jolt away the numb.

  And who doesn’t love cookies—tray after tray of delicate Italian butter cookies; ghraybeh, the Lebanese sugar cookies that were Laura’s favorites; and an impressive assortment of homemade sweets contributed by the guests. I sample each variety. All these fancy cookies, but the universal truth remains the same: There is no substitute for the wholesome goodness that is chocolate chip cookies. I can picture the Georgetown society ladies arriving with their Saran-wrapped plates: Jim. Darling. I’m so sorry about your beloved daughter killing herself. Here are some chocolate chip cookies our cook made. The secret ingredient is cardamom. Delicious, no?

  We stand at opposite corners of the dining room, Jim and me, the two pillars of Laura’s life. I feel like I should go over to him, touch him, talk to him, tell him I’m sorry, but I can’t. I don’t. The food rises high between us, buffering all these people, the fillers of Laura’s life. The gathered surround Jim, offering solace, but I remain alone, observing. If Jim notices me at all, I’m sure it’s to think, That weirdo. Maybe now I can finally let her go. There’s no more reason for her to stay.

  My feet are lodged to the floor in the remote corner of this expansive room. My head is dizzy and my body wants to sway. I yearn to take a very long nap. I place one hand against the wall to prop me up. I need something or someone to hold me steady. But all I have are cookies.

  Professor Jesuit approaches me, looking old and kindly, which I hate. I look down, concentrate on the plate in my hand and the Oxy tingle-buzz coursing through my fingers. I have nothing to say to God’s handyman. Although if I did, I might inform him that I’ve given the matter substantial thought, and I’ve resigned myself to the possibility that I am doomed to an afterlife of eternal hellfire, and I’m okay with it, really I am. It’s not like I even believe in God, but still, I imagine Him and me in a powwow on Judgment Day. Saint Peter or whomever has the day off so God himself is going down the checklist for my entrance to Heaven. He goes: Well, Miles, you smoked like a chimney and indulged in way too many trans-fatty foods, and for Christ’s sake, you were high at your own cousin’s funeral, but otherwise, you did all right in life. Didn’t hurt anybody but yourself. Paid your taxes. Recycled. Helped little old ladies cross the street. (Didn’t you?) But I don’t know . . . those snarky comments, that vile cynicism during times of crisis. I’m not so sure I like it. I will then have to set Him straight. Hey, Big Guy, get some perspective. Who gave us a world of Holocaust, AIDS, global terrorism, famine, ecological disaster, bigotry, genocide, warfare—shall I keep going down the list? Maybe it’s ME who should be judging YOU, and not the other way around. So step aside from those pearly gates to Heaven or Hell, whichever the case may be, bucko. Let me through to Laura. We’re not scared of You.

  Professor Jesuit passes me by. Minion.

  The cookie plate in my hand mesmerizes me with swirls of
color and texture, rainbow sprinkles and cinnamon rays and powdered sugar dust, and I must look up again because the cookies are dizzying me. I raise my eyes from their plate reverie, but my view of the mourners has clouded over, gone mute. My eyes lock with Jim’s across the room, and in that flash instant, no one exists in this room besides the two of us. In that brief moment, our eyes remember a shared lifetime of Laura, and I see his chest suddenly heave, trying to contain a sob—he who has remained stoic and gracious throughout the afternoon, comforting all those who are trying to comfort him. It’s like electricity passes between us, because I feel the heave in my chest as well, and tears well in my eyes. The plate trembles in my weak fingers and I must look back down again, return to my cookie-plate trance, steady my hand. To hold the moment any longer would mean neither of us could remain in this room, finish this gathering of mourning.

  Jim’s probably more of a weirdo even than me, in my opinion, but God can take note. I am not without empathy. I know what it is like to be Miles right now, a freak high on sugar and so much more, but I do wonder how it must feel to be Jim in this moment, too. He’s a seventy-two-year-old man who marched for civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, but chose to focus the latter part of his life on raising a child. What will the latter-latter part of his life now be? A philanthropist born into extreme privilege because his great-grandfather invented an appliance still used in most First World households, Jim parlayed his wealth and privilege for relatively modest selfish purpose—a grand house, grand trips—while choosing to funnel the bulk of his time and money into activism, into his hometown. And now to have his lifetime of giving come down to this one day. His cherished daughter, his one best accomplishment, took away the fundamental gift he had created for her. Life.