Her Name in the Sky

by Kelly Quindlen

and for just this moment, for just this second of her life, she feels whole, she feels at ease, she feels like she could exist in this cocoon of time forever and ever. She looks at Baker, standing there with her long brown hair falling over her shoulders and her dark chicory eyes blessing everyone around her, and tenderness pours forth from Hannah’s chest like light from a broken vessel.

Are you scared that this is the one catch, the one thing that throws everything we’ve ever learned about God and religion into doubt?

Hannah knows that she and Baker are outside of time. She can tell by the whisper of the air and the pattern of the stars, by the swell of her heart and the immediacy of her pain. They are the only two humans on the earth tonight, she and Baker, and Hannah knows this.

“I don’t want to feel this way.”

And there on the beach, with the sand, the sky, and the water as their witnesses, Baker kisses her back, and Hannah hopes desperately that the crashing of the waves is a celebration rather than a condemnation.

They kiss each other beautifully but brokenly, each kiss imparting wishes and prayers and shame, their tears mixing on each other’s mouths, and in a startling moment of clarity Hannah feels God there with her, pounding in her heart, flowing through her body and blood, but whether in jubilation or admonition, she doesn’t know.

Tears bleed out of her eyes again, water and salt collecting on her face just as they did on Christ’s face when he wept in the garden, just as they did on Eve’s face when she wept beyond the garden.

and Baker looks at Hannah with such shy wonder that Hannah smiles, maybe out of nervousness or maybe out of shock, or maybe even out of joy, and then Baker’s mouth upturns with the shadow of a smile, too, and Baker looks down at her hand like she can’t believe it’s connected to her body.

Something in the room, some invisible line between them, has broken. Hannah can almost see it: a vine that had once connected them, had once wrapped them together, now lies, butchered, on the floor.