All Our Pretty Songs

“You better not be alluding to my earthy indigenous spirituality,” he says. “Or else I might make you regret your return to the world of the living.”

“What,” I say, not so much a question but an irritated protest. There’s a tube coming out of my arm and the pee smell is real, although as far as I can tell it isn’t coming from me. The blue dress is real, too, and I can feel that it’s open at the back because the sheets are scratchy against my bare skin, and I remember where they have dresses like this. It’s not a dress. I am wearing a smock. “Holy shit. Am I in a hospital? How did I get in a hospital?” I try to sit up, and pain shoots through my entire body. “Fuck!” I yell.

“That’s my girl,” Raoul says. “Do you remember anything?”

“I remember—I got on the bus—” I stop and think. Raoul took me to the bus. I got on the bus to find Aurora. I got off the bus and ate a hot dog. I went to hell. I cut off Aurora’s hair. “I ate a hot dog,” I tell him.

“Not recently, you didn’t.”

“I ate a hot dog this morning. This afternoon. Maybe yesterday. I had some enchiladas. Last night. What day is it?”

Raoul’s expression is unreadable. “The day after Halloween. A factory worker found you passed out on the sidewalk in front of an abandoned building and called 911 this morning. When they brought you in you were dehydrated and starving and you had pretty much no skin left on your feet. Any of this ring a bell?”

Ortiz’s Meats. “It wasn’t an abandoned building. It was a club.”

“I’m telling you what the doctor told me.”

Something he told me is wrong and I think about what it is. “Wait. How am I starving? I ate today. Yesterday. Recently.”

“The doctor said you hadn’t eaten anything for at least five or six days.”

“Raoul, that’s impossible, you know that. You saw me yesterday. The day before yesterday. I mean, I don’t think I ate breakfast—”

“I’m telling you what the doctor told me,” he says again. “She asked me if you had spent the last week walking here barefoot from Mexico and I said I didn’t think so but that you were a pretty unpredictable kind of person.”

I ignore this. “How did you get here?”

“They found my phone number in your pocket and called me when you were admitted.”

“Oh shit, my mom—”

“Is trying to get Aurora’s mom on a plane. She’s pretty pissed, so I’d spend the next few hours composing a very comprehensive apology.”

“Cass went up to Maia’s?”

“I guess so.”

“So it’s, like, a big deal that I ran away.”

“Yes. A very big deal.”

“Oh.”

“A very comprehensive apology.”

“I brought your rosary back.”

“I know.”

“Can I see Aurora? Is she awake?”

Raoul pauses. “Aurora isn’t here.”

“She’s in a different hospital?”

“You were alone when they found you.”

I stare at him, my mouth open. “Raoul. She was with me. I went down there and I got her. I brought her back. She was here. In the hospital. I thought it was a dream, but she was here. We could find her. That couldn’t have been that long ago, when I saw her. She didn’t mean—she couldn’t have meant to leave. I carried her. I carried her the whole way.”

Raoul doesn’t say anything. He watches whatever is moving across my face now, and when I start to cry for what feels like the thousandth time in a month he takes my hand and kisses my knuckles, the way Aurora did, and holds my fist, there, against his mouth, the way Jack used to. I cry for me, for her, for Jack, for Cass and Maia. For her dad. For all of us. For how stupid I was, down there in the dark, thinking my own love was enough to trump the past. They didn’t stop me from leaving because it had never been me they wanted anyway. Because they knew she was already theirs. You will not thank me. When I’m done crying I sit for a long time, holding Raoul’s hand and hiccupping. “That fucking bitch,” I whisper. But I don’t mean it, and he knows it. The whole of my life stretches out in front of me, the life that is starting now, the life that does not have Aurora in it, and I turn my face away from the emptiness before I start crying again.

“What was the point? What was the point of going after her?”

“What is ever the point of love?” I shake my head. He smiles, a smile with so much sadness in it I don’t know where to look. “You did good,” he says. He takes something out of his pocket and hands it to me. The soft leather is familiar. Cass’s amulet. They must have taken it off when I got here. I loop the cord around my neck again and stare at it.

“So much for that,” I say.

“You’re here,” he says. “You’re alive. You went there and you came back.” If I look at him I will cry more and I am so tired of crying, tired of myself, tired of my own stupid hope-filled heart. I touch his beanie.

“I knew it was the one with the red hat.”

“Well, obviously,” he says. “I wouldn’t settle for less.”

“Can you hand me the remote control,” I say, and he does.

When Cass comes there is a lot of shouting. “What the fuck were you thinking,” she yells, over and over again, until one of the nurses comes in and coldly tells her if she doesn’t calm down she will have to leave. Maia is a trembling wraith in Cass’s wake, wobbly but, as far as I can tell, sober. They won’t look at each other. I can’t even imagine what the plane ride was like. They probably sat in separate aisles. Cass subsides at last, explains to me in a low voice the numerous ways in which I have fucked up. I can feel my heart coming apart in my chest. Aurora. Aurora.

“You’re one to talk,” I say, when I can’t take it any more. Cass stops short. Maia sits on the edge of my bed and takes my hand.

“You saw her.” I nod. “I did a really bad job.” I nod again. She looks at Cass and snorts softly through her nose. “You were always the lucky one,” she says without rancor. “You could take and take and it always worked out for you.”

“You had everything,” Cass says. “Everything. You had love. You had money. You had a home.”

“You have a daughter,” Maia says. Cass winces.

“So do you,” I say.

“I’m sorry,” Maia says. “For what it’s worth. You have no idea how sorry I am.”

Cass sits next to Maia and puts a chin on her shoulder. Maia starts but doesn’t push her away. They look down at me, sad and solemn. I wonder if Aurora and I look like that; if we’ll look like them when we’re the same age, our eyes full of stories, lines at the corners, grey in our hair. They loved each other once, and then they fucked it up, and now here I am fucking it up again. Whether any of us gets a second chance is anybody’s guess. Aurora, why’d you leave me here with the two of them, I think. Aurora. Come back. Come home.

I turn my face to the wall, close my eyes. “I think she should rest,” Raoul says. “We can talk later.” Maia and Cass stand up. Raoul touches my shoulder, leans forward to kiss my hair. “Don’t forget,” he murmurs, too low for Cass and Maia to hear. “You are still loved. You are anchored here by love.” I cover his hand with mine and sink back into sleep.

In my dream the three of us are sitting at the edge of the black river. Aurora is skipping stones. Jack has his guitar, strums quietly. The bone trees clack behind us. The dog howls. We’re alone. No Minos, no old gods, no bloody-limbed girls. “I don’t see how you can like it here,” I say to Aurora. Her short hair suits her. She looks different, fiercer, somehow more herself.

“It’s what you make of it.” She reaches forward to touch the water. I cry out in protest, but she ignores me