Chapter 38: The Point of Dying

Away...

From us...

To say these words affected me would be a vast understatement. The massive upwelling that I’d seen a moment earlier in Heather’s eyes, that flood which would destroy everything around ... It suddenly burst out of the sea. Nothing prepared me for its impact. My throat constricted and suffocation beckoned, caressing me gently into blackening edges.

“Why?” I tried to ask, but the sound was grotesque, a pitiful gurgle at best.

“Shh, shhhh,” she consoled through tears, even as I struggled to make sense of what she had said. She pulled me close, cradling me against her suddenly vibrant body.

This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening.

I repeated this refrain endlessly as the world spun and the night roared. I held onto her, finding temporary safety in the sea even as she ripped me to shreds with each passing swell.

Weathered boards swept by me in the torrent, the remains of an old pier in Montauk where I used to fish ... A charter boat, captained expertly for so long through so many rough storms, now sinking beneath the surface of this rogue wave ... Photographs spun in the multitude of violent whirlpools around me: of young lovers fishing on a creek ... of red shoes in all parts of my world ... of a smiling girl who used to have blue eyes deeper than the sea herself... A girl that’s given up on being with me.

But I clung to her anyway, because my life depended on it, even as I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold on forever. She would soon be swept away, and as we’d both known on the beach back in Montauk that one night, I would have to run like hell.

And I don’t fucking know why...

The floodwaters never receded. Sometime later I was still there, and the endless ferocity of the overflow had not slowed at all. But I knew I had to do something, try to understand what I was holding onto. If there was even anything left to hold ... If not, then it would be better to just let go now, fall into the mad rush and let it cover me, drag me to the bottom ... There, maybe there, I’d find sweet release from this terror.

All of a sudden, I gasped for breath. I felt a point of warm energy coursing into me. I grabbed a hold of this lifeline, finding it somehow familiar. Bit by bit my head cleared and I climbed a little higher, out of the way of the worst of the onslaught. I waited for the warm energy to grow and shunt this nightmare all away, like it had on the pier once...

But it didn’t grow. It remained a small point, and it was only just enough to cling to, and nothing more.

It was much later when I felt steady enough to examine my situation. Heather still gripped me, her head pressed against me. The night was quieter now; the sounds of a slight valley breeze and a playful mountain stream were all I could hear. They were so banal, these noises; so indifferent to what insanity was happening on this little slab of rock on which she and I stood, close, and yet apart.

Indifferent...

Were they indifferent? Or maybe it’s exactly the opposite... Maybe the air and the water and the mountain understood perfectly well what was happening, and yet knew how meaningless such minor drama could be. How short-lived even the brightest of stars could last, compared to the work of simply going about one’s business, that of carrying fallen, dead leaves to the ocean, effortlessly and endlessly, for thousands of years. A simple task, just as meaningless as anything else ... And yet in total, this long-running act was far more consequential than two random kids struggling to figure out what they were doing, what choices they’d make out of so many unknown questions, in a small instant of time.

I took a deep breath as I saw the shattered mess of endless horizons stretching before me, all of them precipitously unfamiliar in the aftermath of equalization.

“Heather, I’m sorry...” I found myself saying, as I snapped back into my physical senses. “I’m sorry I completely flipped out there, but...”

She let out a long breath. “No, Matt ... I’m sorry. There was no way to tell you this that wouldn’t be awful for us both. It was supposed to happen tomorrow ... But the best laid plans ... I hope you can understand what I’m doing, even if I can’t explain it.”

“No, I don’t understand a single thing. You’re breaking up with me, going away or something? Not going home? What’s this about? Because right now a million possibilities are floating through my head, and every single one is ... is a...”

A nightmare...

I couldn’t voice it, though. I didn’t want to make it real.

Heather took some time to compose herself while I braced myself for what was to come, the reason why she was going to leave everything behind.

A million nightmares... It was an exaggerated number, of course. I had a much shorter list of daggers, about the same sized list that I’d built that night on the pier before Heather had revealed the secret of her parentage to me.

It wasn’t a million, no, but even if I had the time to think of that many futures for Heather, it still wouldn’t include the real path forward. Because much like that night on the old pier, I never knew what this girl was going to say next.

“I’m moving up to Maine, to live on Frej’s sister’s property. My aunt.”

Maine ... Aunt ... Moving... ?

It might as well have been the twins speaking to me in Gaeilge, for what I understood of this absurd pronouncement.

“What are you talking about?” I gasped.

“She has a small business, harvesting and selling seaweed. I’ll be working for her.”

A business, selling sea—What the hell is going on?

“What ... What about s–school? How is ... Are you serious?” I stammered, my brain completely malfunctioning in the face of the absolute absurdity of this information.

“I’m not going back, not for now anyway.”

“You won’t finish the year?”

“No.”

“Can you even do that?”

As if that matters to her...

“I’m not concerned about that right now,” she murmured.

Heather’s voice was becoming more and more soothed with each statement, so incongruously calm as she painted in the details of the destruction ahead. I could tell that this was no whim she’d decided on. Sure, maybe she’d just told her parents recently, and bought the car ... And maybe she’d only decided last night to come up to the concert, but clearly the seed of this demolition was sown long ago. Perhaps on the pier that foggy night when she wrestled with her past, or ... maybe even when she first found me there and said those two words to me, so long ago...

No, this was no whim; the confidence in her soul was evident, now that the wave had crested. Despite the obvious anguish she was feeling at whatever this would mean for us, she was not going to undo any of it. What was broken, would remain so. Irreversibly.

Her conviction notwithstanding, my own world continued to crumble around me. In fact, the conviction made it worse. You can talk someone out of a whim...

But this is delusional! Dropping out of school, to go gather ... kelp? This has to be one of her elaborate jokes!

Abruptly I sank down to sit on the flat stone, feeling dizzy again. Heather joined me and I looked at her, my sight unsteady. Whatever little bit of composure I’d just found disappeared.

“Tell me you’re just kidding with me,” I wheezed.

She took my face in her hands, transfixing me with those eyes. Everything that had been swept away in the flood was now floating around in there, devastated.

“I’m not kidding,” she breathed.

I sat there, open mouthed, for quite a long time. Heather was crying again, still holding my face as she pressed her forehead to mine.

“Please, don’t do this!” I begged. “Don’t go!”

“I’m going, Matt.”

“Heather, I don’t understand! I’m not sure what you’re telling me!” I cried. “Why? Why am I not in the picture anymore?”

“Because I need to start over, rebuild myself from the beginning.”

“Rebuild? You’re amazing just like you are!”

“I have to do this, Matt. I wish I could say I don’t, but I’d be lying to you. And to myself ... I’ve built everything in my life with random pieces, a bit of this, a bit of that. But now I can see a better place, a better me ... I just need time to find the way there. I can’t keep going with who I was, not after seeing everything I’ve seen so differently this past month. I have to do this. And the only way it’ll work is if ... if I let you go. And if you let me go. It’s the only way, now. I’m not right anymore. I have to fix myself, now, or there won’t be anything left to fix later. The panic attacks, they just keep getting worse. I have to do something!”

“But have you gone to a doctor? There has to be a way to fix this!”

“There is, Matt.”

“In Maine? Is there a doctor up there that you’re going to see?”

“I’m going there to figure it out. I don’t know exactly how yet, but I know I have to start there.”

I shook my head, as the tears flowed without hesitation. “How long? How long will you be up there?”

She took several breaths before answering. “I don’t know.”

“When will I see you again?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? But we can talk on the phone, right?” I asked, clinging to the disintegrating edge of my world. It was hopeless, though. I already knew the answer. She shook her head in confirmation.

She’s going to leave me, completely...

Heather pulled me into a tight embrace and held me for some time.

“Matt,” she finally whispered. “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. But I hope you find a way to trust me ... If you trust me, we’ll meet on the other side someday ... I’ll never stop loving you. I know that, but if I want it to be everything I know it can be, I have to do this. I’m breaking apart. When I found out about Frej, you were there for me, like no one else on earth would’ve been. That changed my world, and you saved me. But it was just for a little while, because now everything in my mind is a crooked mess. I need to go make it right.”

“Why can’t we fix this together?” I pleaded. “Whatever it is, we can do it!”

She shook her head. “I can’t Matt. I’ve been trying for months, but I’m lost. I’m so out of my depth that it’s literally driving me crazy. So I don’t want to fix it. I want to let it all fall apart, and then, only then, maybe I can figure it out. Look at me ... Please, look at me!”

Heather pushed her face close to mine and gazed into me with frightening force. I couldn’t tear myself away, and suddenly I saw an enormous ocean in my mind.

Everything snapped into clarity. Within this vast and endless sphere of water, an immense, complicated net swayed gently in the pelagic currents.

It was, at that moment, the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen...

But it was incomplete, and in places irreparable, stretched too tightly in all directions to close the rips and holes. And even as I watched, I noticed that it was all unraveling ... A fatal fault was working its way across and down the seine, started by the cut of one little thread in the corner, a slice made by the propeller of a familiar looking charter boat that was now capsized nearby. It was causing a seismic wave of disruption in the lattice, warping the weft, and it was impossible to stop it now. Hopeless...

The vision breathed...

Trust me!

... and then faded away.

I floated there for a time, realizing how little I knew of things.

“I have to go away,” she murmured gently. “And I don’t want to drag you down with me, if—I don’t ... Do you see?”

I shuddered. “Heather ... What if you never come back?”

She looked away and breathed out heavily. “There is no coming back for me, Matt.”

“Oh god, what are you saying?” I wailed. “That we won’t ever be together again? Or worse?”

“I’m not saying that. We can be together again, someday. Nothing is impossible...”

“But how can you say that? You just said you’re not coming back! You don’t even know how long it’ll take to do whatever you’re trying to do. I won’t be able talk to you, for what, months? More? What if at the end of this, you don’t—”

I couldn’t say it though.

Heather caressed my face so gently. “Because it’s up to you. It’ll depend on you: if you want to be with me.”

Up to me ... How is it up to me... ?

How! You’re the one who’s deciding this!

I have no choice!

My mind screeched at me as I felt the dizziness return. I stood up, struggling for air. I wanted to scream, as the uncertainty of everything I thought I knew pressed in from all sides. The foundations of my own life were shaking now. At any moment, life could change, so unexpectedly, impossibly, irrationally...

Heather is leaving me ... Maybe forever ... And I still have no idea why.

“Do you remember the night we first kissed?” she asked, remaining seated.

“Are you fucking kidding me? I’ll remember that for as long as I live!”

“Do you remember me telling you what I was thinking that night?”

I turned away from her as I fought to recall everything she’d ever said about that incredible night. But it immediately became clear exactly which words I was to recollect.

“You said it was like everything you’d ever done in your life came down to that one moment,” I echoed.

Heather was standing right behind me now, her voice seemingly inside my head.

“And that is the absolute truth. You’ve changed me, forever, Matt. I’ve told you before, I am eternally in your debt. I know this all hurts you like nothing else right now, because it hurts me just as much. But in the end, this is a leap of faith that I have to take. And I’m just going to trust like crazy that you take the leap with me. Like that night on the pier, when we jumped into the water.”

I remembered that so well ... We’d stood on the edge of the railing, not long after making love, and leapt into the water far below, holding hands. The world was so free, so wild that night...

“But that time ... we both jumped, Heather,” I muttered. “Both of us, together.”

“Jump with me, then!” she cried softly, her tone completely unsteady with overwhelming feeling.

I swallowed back the hope that flared at her words. “I—No ... I can’t go to Maine, drop out of school,” I murmured. “My parents would kill me.”

“That’s not what I mean!” she pressed. “I’m asking you to trust me. Jump with me, but in your own way. And we’ll meet in the water again, someday. And it’ll be worth waiting for, I know it will!”

I was shaking my head. “I don’t get it, Heather. I’m sorry, but I don’t.”

I felt her move even closer, a desperate energy almost crackling from her.

“Because I can’t—You can’t explain something like this! You can’t talk about some things without messing—”

Heather caught herself, seemingly on the edge of losing control of her thoughts. It was a frightening moment, feeling her on the cusp of some breaking point.

“I’m sorry, Matt,” she said, more calmly again. “I have to trust too. But I will tell you this, and just hope that—”

Again she paused, taking another breath before continuing. She spoke in almost a whisper now, as if she was sharing the deepest of secrets.

“I know it might seem like I’m doing this for some selfish reason ... But if you believe nothing else I’ve ever told you since I first said ‘Any luck?’ to you on the pier a few years ago, then please believe it when I say that I’m doing this for you. For you, and...”

I held my breath...

As she spoke the next two words, my mind found them as well. Two obvious words, forgotten by the fool, dredged up by the wave, and now spoken by the sea...

For Lara. “For Lara.”

It was like a lightning bolt from clear mountain air. For a long while, I stood there, my horizon lines suddenly imploding inward from forgotten dimensions, a mess of dizzying perspectives all falling and collapsing upon each other, unfathomable but now converging into focus ... The tumult then settled, leaving a perfect circle...

Lara... !

I’d been so caught up in Heather’s stunning revelation that I’d excluded everyone else in the world from my consideration. I hadn’t given a thought to anyone besides myself.

Not even Lara ... Not even my veritable twin.

Oh god ... Not even Truth!

I had no idea where the calm voice came from, but it was truly unexpected: Stop thinking of yourself, you selfish fool...

I steadied myself on Heather’s shoulder as I tried to keep from falling over.

Truth... How easily we forget about things. How myopic, aye, even blind we become to the things that once were so dear to us ... I couldn’t even see what was right in front of my nose, and yet I was searching for answers for which no one even knew the questions?

How pathetic... It was almost enough to make me laugh right then.

Breathe, you damned fool...

An interminable amount of time passed as I reexamined what I knew, what I’d heard, and what I’d seen.

Slowly I turned to Heather, putting everything I had into getting control of my insides. It took a while, but I finally was able to speak again.

“Tell me, please. I know you can’t explain, not for real, but try. At least give me that much.”

“I can’t. You know I don’t believe in hints.”

I gaped at her. “Hints? Come on, Heather, this isn’t some treasure hunt! This is my fricking sanity at this point! Please, you have to give me something to go on, so I can know what you’re doing!”

Heather considered me for a very long time. I could see the machinations whirring, already rebuilding something new. Several times she seemed about to give up and shut away her secrets forever.

“You have to promise me something then,” she finally said.

I sighed. “What?”

“I won’t tell you what it is. But you have to promise that you’ll do it.”

“How can I promise something before hearing what it is?”

“A leap of faith, Matt. That’s how. It’s coming, one way or another.”

Now it was my turn to consider her for a while. More than once I was about to break down and plead with her again, unwilling to go down this uncertain path of unknown guarantees. But in the end...

“I promise,” I finally breathed, feeling my stomach twist up. “Whatever it is, I’ll do it, I swear. Now please, tell me!”

Heather nodded and then looked at the stream beside us. For a time, she only watched the rushing water. “We’re never going to have Truth, not as the people we are right now.”

“Never?” I said. “Why would you say that?”

“You know why. You and Lara know exactly why.”

I considered for a bit. “The twins are leaving in a couple months,” I whispered. “And we can tell our parents ... I think they’d—”

“It’s not the twins. And it’s not our friends, our parents, our classmates, or even society that’s the problem...”

I tried to make sense of her words, feeling immense frustration bubbling up as months of lies and deceits suddenly started rearing their heads, unbidden.

Of course it’s all of those people! They make us wear these damned masks, the ones we had to put on when we hid all this away!

“No, it’s not any of them,” she said, countering my thoughts.

“But then there’s no one left,” I cried, suddenly uncertain.

Heather smiled emotionally. “Isn’t there, though?”

Obviously not!

Then the obvious struck me like an arrow.

Damn it...

Heather caught me in her arms as a sudden dizziness took over my head. I was losing what little energy I had gained. Her voice came into my ears, ethereal and calm. Even as she spoke the words, I could barely keep hold of them in my mind anymore.

“We can’t change the world, Matt. We can’t even change each other. We can only change ourselves. That’s the only way we’ll ever find Truth. If the circle is going to marry the line someday, then I need to find the line. And you and Lara need to find the circle. The true circle. And start over. Otherwise this will all go wrong. We have to be who we really are for this to even have a chance at working. And even then, it’s only a chance. But it’s something.”

A great shiver started in the back of my neck and exploded through my body.

We have to change ourselves ... Rebuild ... I have to do this too, whatever it is...

“Sit with me,” Heather said quietly.

I followed her down to the ground, where we sat facing each other. She pressed her forehead to mine, and for a time we didn’t move. The crumbling of the wide world continued unabated, but I was able to find a little bit of calmness within me.

“It’s now or never for me, Matt,” Heather whispered. “I don’t know why all this has affected me so much, but it has. Maybe if it had been you and Lara out on the pier, together, that first day we met ... Maybe if I’d known about Frej since I was young ... Maybe then the world would be different now. Or maybe not ... It doesn’t matter, though. I have to clear it all out.”

I took a deep breath. “What if it’s all for nothing? What if when we see you again, we’ve changed? Look at Lara ... She’s so close with Tommy. I wouldn’t be surprised if, you know...”

“I know, and it’s amazing, what they have together. How close they’ve become. Their devotion to each other makes me cry sometimes, in happiness. How she takes care of him ... And you’re right, it could all be different tomorrow, for any of us. But see, it doesn’t matter! I still have to do this, so that whatever happens, I can be a better person for it. I’m not expecting anything. Least of all do I want you to wait for me, to press pause for me. I’d be happy to find you and Lara with love and joy in your lives someday. That’s all I want.”

“Even if that love is not with you?” I asked hoarsely.

“Even if. And I’ve always felt that, Matt, long before tonight. Because that’s your choice. You decide that for yourself, and Lara herself. And if you find something beautiful, then I’m happy for you.”

Would I be happy for her, if she found love out there without me?

“I can’t say I understand that, Heather, and I don’t think I can talk about it anymore right now, because it’s ripping me apart. I just know I’m going to have to trust you and hope that someday I can understand it.”

She caressed my face gently for a time. “You can, Matt. You just have to see things from the other side. Get rid of everything you’re told to think and feel, and see what really is.”