In Five Years

by Rebecca Serle

The future is the one thing you can count on not abandoning you, kid, he’d said. The future always finds you. Stand still, and it will find you. The way the land just has to run to sea. —MARIANNE WIGGINS, EVIDENCE OF THINGS UNSEEN

This is what I’ve always wanted. To be somewhere that stops at nothing. To be surrounded by the pace and rhythm of greatness.

“I think sacrifice is in direct opposition to manifestation. If you want your dreams you should look for abundance, not scarcity.”

No one who has lost a sibling at twelve can say with a straight face: everything happens for a reason.

This form of fun does not come naturally to me, and therefore feels impossible to engage in. I am constantly trying to learn the rules, only to realize that the people who win don’t seem to follow any.

look at her. Bella. My Bella. She looks so radiant, so high on love. How can I tell her that it’s her? That she’s the reason.

We rarely make it through a meal without her repurposing some memory. She is so sentimental. Sometimes I think about our old age and it seems intolerable to have to sift through that much history. We have twenty-five years now, and there’s already too much to pull from, too much to make her weepy. Old age is going to be brutal.

oof

I’ve thought about my vision less and less. We’re building the right future now, the one that we’ve been working toward. All evidence is on our side that that version will be the one we’re living come December. I’m not worried.

There is just the fading of light, a slight blue on the disappearing horizon.

There’s something about being the first one awake that feels precious, rare. I feel accomplished before I’ve even had my first cup of coffee. The whole day is better.

sitting back at the wheel, mouth open, singing, and I think that I never want to be without her—and then, that I never want to share her. That she belongs to me. That we belong to each other.

I’m struck, not by the silence but by the crash of the ocean—the sense of peace I feel in nature, I feel here.

To whatever beyond has brought forth this reality. For a moment, I don’t remember the future I once saw. I am overcome by the one that is solidly, undeniably present here.

He doesn’t have to say anything more. I’m a lawyer. I know what words mean, what silences mean, what repetition means. And I know, there in black and white, what he thinks. What he suspects. Maybe, even, what he already knows. They were right.

Here is the thing no one tells you about cancer: they ease you into it. After the initial shock, after the diagnosis and the terror, they put you on the slow conveyor belt. They start you off nice and easy. You want some lemon water with that chemo? You got it. Radiation? No problem, everyone does it, it’s practically weed. We’ll serve you those chemicals with a smile. You’ll love them, you’ll see.

I have the feeling that I do not want to understand; I just want him to cease speaking. If he stops speaking, none of it is true.

October hangs a whisper away—the promise of only more darkness.

“Litigating is bending the law to your will, it’s deception, it’s all about perception. Can you convince a jury? Can you make people feel? In deal making, nothing is above the law. The written words are what matters. Everything is there in black and white.”

“But you need to listen to me. I love her. That’s the long and short of it. I don’t think I could live with myself if I bailed now, but that’s not even relevant because, like I said, I love her. This isn’t like anything I’ve ever had before. This is real. I’m here.”

“And she’s spontaneous in the way people aren’t anymore. She lives for now.”

We are like constellations passing each other, seeing each other’s light but in the distance. It feels impossible how much space there can be in this intimacy, how much privacy.

the thing that lives between the parts, the thing that makes it possible not to be one, but to be different, to be two.

Because that is what I feel: angry. And for the first time since her diagnosis, I let it take over. I let the righteous indignation burn a hole through me, through her, through this godforsaken chemical den.

“You mistake love. You think it has to have a future in order to matter, but it doesn’t. It’s the only thing that does not need to become at all. It matters only insofar as it exists. Here. Now. Love doesn’t require a future.”

“You’re still you, she’s still her. You still have emotions. You’ll still fight. You can try and be perfect, but it will backfire. Just keep being here, instead.”

But there is so much space out here. It feels like there is room—to not have to store every single piece of off-season clothing under your bed. Maybe even to make a mistake.

The world now, in light of this news, should slow down, stop spinning. The taxis should sputter still, the music on the street should stretch until silent. But I’m not. I’ve been waiting.

that blindsides. And what is cancer if not that? If not the manifestation of everything I’ve spent my life trying to ward off. But Bella. It should have been me. If this is my story, then it should have been mine.

And in that moment it’s true. It’s true because it has to be. It’s true because there are no other options. Despite that chemo hasn’t kept it at bay. Despite that it’s spread to her abdomen. Despite. Despite. Despite.

“But even that, as we know, is not enough. All the preparedness in the world cannot stop the unexpected from happening. Truly great lawyers know every inch of their deal, but often they make decisions based on something else—the presence of an unknown force that, if listened to, will betray exactly the way the tide is turning.

But the thing about parallel tracks is you can be inches apart, or miles. And lately it feels like the width between David and me is extraordinary. We just didn’t notice because we were still looking at the same horizon. But it dawns on me that I want someone in my way. I want us to collide.

If you can reach out and hold the other person’s hand, does the distance matter? Is simply being able to see someone valuable?

But I was wrong. I wasn’t the strong one, she was. Because this is what it feels like—to take a risk, to step out of line, to make decisions not based on fact but on feeling. And it hurts. It feels like a tornado raging inside my soul. It feels like I may not survive it.

stay long enough to try and capture it, bottle it, and tuck it away. Save enough of it to last, enough of it for a lifetime. Love doesn’t require a future.

I want her to be here. I want us to cook in this kitchen, making a mess of materials, running to the corner store because we don’t have vanilla extract or cracked pepper. I want us to play in that closet, to have her make fun of everything I want to wear. I want her to sleep over, tucked in that bed, in safety, ensconced here. What could happen to her under my watch? What bad thing could touch her if I never, ever looked away?

Manhattan on the water, shimmering like a promise. I think about how much life the city holds, how much heartbreak, how much love. I think about everything I have lost there, this fading island before me.

need someone to blame, someone to be responsible for all of this. Because who is? Fate? Is the hellscape we’ve found ourselves in the work of some form of divine intervention? What kind of monster has decided that this is the ending we deserve?

have been asked if I’ve needed help so many times that I have been allowed to forget the question, the significance of it. I see, now, the way the love in my life has woven into a tapestry that I’ve been blessed enough to get to ignore. But not now, not anymore.

But Bella loved her life, every last moment of it. She loved the way she lived it. She loved her art and her travel and her croque monsieur. She loved Paris for the weekend and Morocco for the week and Long Island at sunset. She loved her friends; she loved them gathered; she loved running around the room, topping up glasses, and making everyone promise to stay long into the night. She would want this.

“Get home safe,” I say. And then he is gone. I stare at the door a long time. I wonder whether I will see him tomorrow, or whether I will get a text, an excuse. Whether this is the beginning of goodbye for us, too. I do not know. I have no idea what happens now.