Make Room for Love

Chapter 17

17

Isabel had either the best or the worst sense of timing. She’d come out with her feelings to Mira right before the most unbearable day of the year. Maybe the honesty had been necessary, or maybe she’d just made Mira uneasy for no good reason. Either way, she was too frozen now to feel anything at all.

She was exhausted as she trudged up the stairs to the apartment. It had been a day of work like any other. She had called her parents during her lunch break and replied to the few texts she’d gotten. She hadn’t had the appetite to eat. What she wanted was to sleep and only wake up when it didn’t hurt anymore, and she might be waiting a long time for that.

It was only five o’clock, though the sky was already dark. She just wanted the day to be over. At least Mira wouldn’t be home for another few hours. Her union meeting was tonight.

No.The lights were on, and Mira was in the kitchen. She turned around when the door opened, and it was clear from her expression—serious, hesitant—that she knew. Isabel had mentioned the date to her just once, and she had remembered.

“Good evening,” Mira said. “I made dinner, if you’d like to have some. But I understand if you’d rather be alone.”

Isabel came closer to crying than she had all day. After doing so many things to drive Mira away, she still had no idea what she’d done to deserve Mira’s kindness. But her body acted of its own accord. She dropped her backpack on the floor and staggered to the dining table.

Deserving or not, she couldn’t spend tonight alone.

She sat down, still in her dirty work clothes, and put her face in her hands. Part of her was where she had been two years ago. Getting the call that Alexa and James had been in an accident. Sitting in the car to the hospital, shaking as the heavy rain blurred everything around her.

Mira’s hand was soft on her shoulder. Isabel came back to herself, sitting at her dining table, the scent of something delicious wafting from the stove. She was suddenly weak with hunger.

“Do you want dinner?” Mira asked.

“I should shower and change.” But Isabel didn’t stand up, didn’t move. The candles flickered in the menorah on the windowsill. Mira must have lit them right before Isabel came home.

“You can do that after you eat.” Mira set something in front of her. It was a bowl of stew, thick and colorful with white beans and vegetables: winter squash, greens, carrots. A mug of green tea followed.

Isabel’s vision blurred from tears. Maybe she wouldn’t have the strength to hold them back in front of Mira. Maybe she didn’t want to bother trying anymore.

“There’s something else,” Mira said. She took a casserole dish from the oven and set it on a trivet on the table.

“What is that?” Isabel’s throat was tight.

“I made noodle kugel. My mom made it for my aunt Miriam’s yahrzeit, which is her death anniversary, every year after we attended services. It’s one of maybe three things she ever cooked. But, um, I thought you might…”

“Your mom also lost her sister?” Isabel almost couldn’t say it aloud. Mira nodded.

Isabel was fighting a losing battle. A tear rolled down her face. She numbly wiped it away in full view of Mira.

“You should eat,” Mira said.

Her gentle voice was a balm. Isabel picked up her spoon and started eating mechanically. The stew was hearty and filling, and it warmed her through. Her hopelessness was loosening its grip.

Mira put a plate of the beige noodle pudding, studded with what looked like raisins, in front of her. Isabel glanced up. “You should eat, too,” she said, trying to regain some control over the situation.

“I will. Do you want me to stay?”

Isabel nodded. Please.

Mira sat down. They ate in silence. Returning to a dark, empty apartment would have been unthinkably awful. Isabel was quietly overwhelmed by gratitude. Mira’s kindness went far beyond a simple favor that could be repaid.

Mira said, “Will you tell me about her sometime? It doesn’t have to be now.”

Isabel nodded again, not trusting herself to speak. Out of all the things she hated about losing Alexa, one of the worst was knowing her memories were fading with time. Eventually, they’d slip away, and she would never have new ones to take their place.

On her own, there was only so much she could do to hold on to her memories. What Isabel needed was someone to listen. She was desperate for it, even more than she’d realized, and Mira had sensed it in her and understood.

Isabel took a bite of noodle kugel. It was creamy, rich, and shockingly sweet, totally incongruous with the rest of her dinner. “Oh my god, that’s sweet,” she said. “Sorry. It’s good. I just wasn’t expecting that.”

“Is it?” Mira looked puzzled. “You know, I never really thought about that. I guess it is.”

Isabel remembered that Mira took her coffee and tea with a small mountain of sugar each time, and she smiled in spite of everything. “It’s delicious. Thank you.” She tried to convey what she couldn’t find the words for yet: She was grateful that Mira had remembered, grateful for Mira’s care, grateful that Mira had seen what Isabel would never admit to needing.

She said, “I can tell you about Alexa now. If you want.”

“Please.”

Isabel was going to fall apart completely once she started talking. Maybe that was nothing to be ashamed of. Mira had cried in front of her weeks ago at the dinner table, and Isabel hadn’t thought she was weak. There was no reason why Isabel should be too proud to do the same thing.

She braced herself. Where would she even start? In some of Isabel’s oldest baby photos, three-year-old Alexa had held her infant sister with tenderness and wonder. Alexa had simply always been there, until she wasn’t anymore.

“She was the first person I came out to, when I was thirteen,” Isabel said. That was as good of a place to begin as any. “Even then, I acted like I wasn’t scared of anything, but I was. She asked me if I was sure, and I said yes, and she told me that she was so happy for me and I knew I was going to be fine. And she came with me when I told my parents. They weren’t happy about it at first, and Alexa argued with them nonstop about it. She really went to bat for me.”

A few tears fell. “She always did that for me. My parents didn’t like it when I dropped out of college, and she stood up for me then, too. And I was working a second job and scraping by because I didn’t want to ask my parents to live with them, and she’d come over with groceries and we’d cook together?—”

Big, heaving sobs rose in her, and she let herself cry, throwing herself into the bottomless pit of grief. It was perversely, overwhelmingly good to let go. She cried and cried, and Mira pushed a box of tissues toward her—the same tissue box she’d once given Mira—and she blew her nose and wiped her disgusting face and kept crying.

When she’d run out of tears, she was light and unmoored, as though a terrible weight had been lifted from her. Her nose still leaked, and her throat ached. When was the last time she’d felt so unburdened in the last two years?

She had rarely cried in the first few months. Between helping her parents with funeral arrangements and trying to win the union election at work, it had been a matter of treading water so she wouldn’t drown. After that, the wellspring of tears had frozen solid. She had thought she was sparing Reina. So much for that. After Reina had left, Isabel had occasionally cried at home, curling up in embarrassment from ingrained habit even though there had been no one to see.

None of those times had been as cathartic as today. She was a mess, utterly broken down. And Mira was still here with her.

Last year, she had worked a ten-hour day, returned to the apartment, and collapsed in her bed. She hadn’t said anything to Reina, and Reina, following her lead, hadn’t brought it up. Everyone grieved differently. That was what well-meaning people said. So what if Isabel didn’t want to talk about it?

But all it had taken was a few questions from Mira for her to pour everything out. The dam holding back her grief had been so fragile.

Isabel shoved those thoughts aside. She couldn’t get in the habit of comparing Mira to her ex. She would never have that kind of future with Mira.

“I’m so sorry, Isabel,” Mira said. “Alexa sounds like an extraordinary person.”

Isabel took a shuddering breath. “She was the one who taught me what it meant to take care of other people. It was in everything she did for our parents and grandparents, and her patients, and for Grace.”

“And she took good care of you, too.”

Isabel nodded. It was a bittersweet truth. No one had ever taken care of her the way Alexa had, and no one ever would again. She was the one caring for her parents now. She’d been older and more financially stable than Reina, and she’d played the role she needed to. Taking care of people, accepting responsibility—that was what being an adult meant, didn’t it? That was what being the oldest daughter meant, and the title was now Isabel’s alone. “I just wish I could be nearly as good as Alexa,” Isabel said. “I wish I could be for Grace what she was for the two of us. I wish—” She sobbed again.

Mira put a tentative hand on her shoulder. It was what Isabel needed, and it wasn’t enough. She wanted Mira to hold her, and that was more frightening than any fantasy she’d ever had about holding Mira.

She wept. Mira rubbed slow circles over her shoulder and back. She told Mira how happy she’d been at Alexa’s wedding to James, the love of her life and one of the few straight men Isabel liked. How Alexa had given her strength when she’d nearly quit her apprenticeship out of justified rage, and how proud Alexa had been when she had turned out as a journeywoman at last. How Alexa had always been there to talk, no matter what time of night it was, no matter how busy and sleep-deprived med school and her residency had made her. Sometimes Isabel still felt the vestigial instinct to pick up her phone and call her sister.

Mira listened. It was so simple, and it meant everything. She didn’t pretend things were fine or ever would be. She didn’t try to tame Isabel’s uncontrollable, unbearable grief. She just listened.

Isabel had another bowl of vegetable stew, and another big slice of kugel, and a few more mugs of tea. At some point, Mira dragged her chair closer and slung her arm over Isabel’s shoulders, and Isabel cautiously let herself relax into the touch, into Mira’s soft cardigan and the familiar coconut scent of her hair, into her warmth. It was as close as she would ever get to Mira holding her.

At last, she was emptied out, light as air. “Thank you,” she mumbled, as though she could thank Mira enough. She didn’t want to imagine looking back on this after she’d put herself together again.

“I should be thanking you.” Mira was rubbing her shoulder. “I’m so grateful you told me these stories. I wish I could have met her.”

Isabel hadn’t allowed herself to imagine it. In another world, she would be introducing Mira as her partner to Alexa, and the two of them would be sisters-in-law, and… Apparently Isabel wasn’t done crying.

“Me too,” she said, through her fresh tears.