The Collective(7)

I delete the text. Hand her back the phone. My voice is calm and quiet and feels as though it’s coming from somewhere else. “You know crazy when you see it, huh? You can diagnose these things?”

Her mouth is still open, her eyes aimed at the floor like a chastised kid.

“Look at me.”

She does. Her eyes are hard and defiant—at least they seem that way to me.

There’s part of me that understands. This girl is eighteen years old. Nineteen tops, meaning that she was around thirteen years old when Emily was killed, and likely didn’t follow the news. In other words, like most of the teenagers snapping and GIFing and spreading the video around, she has no idea of the backstory. But that doesn’t make me any less angry.

I can feel Luke behind me, his weight shifting. “I’m a human being,” I tell the waitress quietly. “I am not your entertainment.”

There may be a change in those eyes, a softening. But I’m not sure. It’s probably my imagination. Luke hands me my purse and phone, which is still powered off. I may never turn it on again.

I head out the door with him close behind me. For the length of the cab ride back to his apartment, we barely say a word.


LUKE’S APARTMENT IS in a Brooklyn Heights brownstone—a lovely place, but small and with thin walls. He bought it a couple of years after graduating NYU and, despite his success, has never thought of upsizing. (“I like it here,” he says. “It’s home.”) So while it goes unsaid that I’ll be crashing on Luke’s couch tonight, it also goes unsaid that I need to be very quiet about it. His girlfriend, Nora, who spends most nights here, is an attorney with a morning commute. She needs her sleep. I get that. What I’m not quite prepared for is that he’s already made up the couch for me, sheets tucked neatly over the cushions, two fluffy pillows resting on a pale blue comforter. My throat clenches up and my vision blurs a little. When I thank him, it comes out the thinnest of whispers. “You’re so good to me.”

Luke waves it off. “I’m out of pancake mix, but I do have eggs and toast,” he whispers. “I can make it for you now. Or do you want to sleep first? Have breakfast in the morning, which is, of course, in about five minutes . . .” He turns to look at me, but I’m already on the couch. “I guess you want to sleep,” he says.

I grab his wrist. Pull him next to me. I don’t want to cry.

Luke puts his arm around me. “You want to listen?” He says it very softly.

I want it more than anything. A tear rolls down my cheek. Then another. He lies back on the couch, his head against the pillows. He pulls me to him.

“But . . . Nora . . .”

“She doesn’t mind,” he says. “She understands.”

I wipe the tears from my face, but more follow. He’s doing this because he feels as though he owes me. I know that. I’m taking advantage of him, of the fact of his being alive. It’s not right. But I’m not a good enough person to pull away.

“It’s okay,” Luke whispers. “It’s okay, Cam.”

Will I ever be whole again? Will I ever be normal? I rest my head on his chest, and as he strokes my hair, I find it. The heartbeat. My daughter’s heartbeat.

I fall asleep listening to it, forgetting my troubles, marveling at its strength.





Three


It was my decision to donate Emily’s organs. It made Matt feel squeamish, I think, but I didn’t care. He owed it to me. It had been him, after all, who let Emily go to the fraternity party. As she lay in the hospital, slowly slipping out of even the artificial life the ventilator could provide, we agreed to donate her lenses, liver, kidneys, and heart.

I was told they all went to patients who needed them. But Luke, the heart recipient, was the only one to write me a letter. I wrote him back, and then we spoke on the phone. A friendship was born. Or, as Matt used to call it, an addiction.

Matt’s description may have been accurate, I don’t know. I do remember Luke’s and my first meeting—at the Applebee’s in Woodbury Commons, an enormous outlet complex off the New York Thruway, with a parking lot bigger than the entire town I live in. Luke chose the place, claiming it was a halfway point, though I knew from the map he had to travel a lot farther. I tried to tell him we could meet in the city, but he wouldn’t hear of it. “It’s the least I could . . .” he started. Then he stopped—embarrassed, I suppose, by his own indebtedness.

At any rate, we drank a couple of beers and talked about things I no longer remember. The weather, maybe? The news? What I do recall is the feel of the conversation—like a job interview you know you’ve aced, and you can’t wait to get past the formalities and go to work.

I could have watched him move and speak for hours, if only to marvel at the livingness of him, my daughter’s living, beating heart.

While we were waiting for his Uber to arrive, he asked if I wanted to listen to it and of course I said yes. The disparity in our heights made it easy, as though it had been planned. All I had to do was move closer and my ear was to his chest. When I put my arms around him, it was so satisfying, the final piece fitting into the jigsaw puzzle.

Maybe it was an addiction. Maybe it is.

When I wake up in the morning, my head is still resting on Luke’s chest and I realize I’ve been dreaming about my Emily. In the dream, we’ve been climbing a mountain. The air is thin and our breath is heavy, but we’re smiling, covered in sweat, both of our hearts beating so hard, it’s all we can hear. Almost there, Mom, Emily says. Soon we’ll be able to jump off together.