A. Rolland: Of Breakable Things

“Remember the time she told us to bring umbrellas to class?” It was an incident difficult to forget. On the morning after Liv’s warning, a pipe burst in the ceiling, drenching anyone who had not believed her.

Miss Petra pointed to the chair that had once belonged to Liv. “In the midst of the chaos, she popped open her umbrella and grinned at me.”

“Liv knows things. So when she told me suicide would ruin everything, I listened, even though I didn’t agree.”

“Didn’t agree with what?”

“With her argument. She said I was lucky.” Alex exhaled loudly through her lips.

“She had a point.”

Alex shook her head. “I lived in a house with a man who never spoke to me. I used to think that one day it would change.” She’d thought perhaps the hatred would subside, but instead it resiliently clung to the stale reek of his whiskey-soaked existence. It grew each time he noticed her and glared at her, and it gathered in corners of the house like dust until it became visible, tangible, and sickening. “One time I knocked over a glass vase trying to make my own breakfast. I was maybe six or seven. He came into the kitchen, noticed me on a chair surrounded by a sea of glass, and just turned around and walked away. Oh, he threw the broom at me, though.”

“I’m sure Liv was referring to a luckier aspect of your life.”

Chase? If luck was so manipulative, she didn’t want it. Luck had allowed her to dance in circles around Chase for sixteen years, ignoring the feelings that clouded their air like pollen in the spring. Luck would not have allowed Chase to leave the traces of his feelings behind him after death in the form of tiny white papers. Luck would not create more pieces for Alex to pick up.

If she had been truly lucky, Alex never would have found the confessions strewn across her bedroom like confetti. In the eye of the snowstorm of paper, there was an open note that read:

A long time ago you told me that you would never make plans for your life because it would be like breaking promises to yourself. So I’ll make them for you. We’ll do everything in the world together. And you know I never break a promise.

Chase

P.S. We need to talk about what happened the other night.

What was all this? Alex had lowered her body to the floor, surrounded by what she momentarily presumed to be a sick joke. Maybe the notes were left by one of Chase’s brothers. Probably Jonas. He was mean enough to do it.

But on an old concert ticket, she recognized Chase’s handwriting:

This ticket seemed symbolic since this concert was entitled “Love and Memories.” My favorite part of the concert was definitely watching you push your way to the front of the stage only to be escorted back to our dinky lawn seats by security. The disappointment on your face was adorably cute. I promise in the future, I’ll get you backstage somehow.

She found the next note attached to a photograph taken when she and Chase were six, grinning so widely their eyes were mere slits while they sat on a porch of a Cracker Barrel:

Ah, the Lasalle family vacations. I remember rocking in those chairs with you and the only thought going through my head was, “I hope the tooth fairy can find me in Virginia.” So simple. So happy. I promise in the future, we will grow old enough that sitting in rocking chairs is actually cool. You can trip me with your walking stick and I’ll hide your dentures. We’ll laugh for another seventy years together.

Attached to a baseball memento:

The Baseball Hall of Fame. We were nine. It was the last place you wanted to be, but you sucked it up and smiled all day. I was so proud of you until I found out that my mother bribed you with a trip to New York to visit the American Girl store if you behaved during the trip. You’re such a brat. You may not want to visit American Girl anymore, but you never did get your trip to NYC. I promise I’ll take you there and we’ll go ice skating, and see the huge Christmas tree from Home Alone 2, and stay at the Plaza Hotel, “New York’s most exciting hotel experience.”

And a driver’s ed brochure:

Remember when I tried to teach you how to drive a stick shift in the parking lot of the Parrish Park Shopping Center? You stalled out, grinded gears, gave me whiplash, and made me laugh harder than I ever thought possible. And then the cops found us and took us home because we were only twelve. You still cannot drive stick to save your life. I promise you I will help you to perfect those skills.

Attached to a figurine of Cinderella’s castle:

My favorite moment in Florida was probably when you jumped into my lap during the Jaws ride at Universal Studios … or seeing Jonas throw up after riding the Teacups. It’s a tie. You said that one day you’d live in Cinderella’s castle. I told you that I would buy it for you. Somehow I promise to find a way.

The notes went on and on. So many promises attached to so many memories. They were dreams she’d never dared to imagine for herself because she wouldn’t live long enough for them to come true. Her body was too frail. But Chase was always true to his word, so when he said something, she believed it. She even believed the note that said he loved her.

That was luck? Hardly.

Because reading and believing Chase’s promises, the highest point in her pitiful life, was immediately followed by the lowest. Because she was wiping tears of happiness from her face at the same moment the Lasalle family van was smashed into a highway barrier by a Mack truck.

There were many adjectives people used to describe Alex Ash’s life. Lucky was never one of them.

Alex gestured to the word under which Miss Petra had drawn several emphatic lines. MIND. “If the life I have left is mental, what happens if my mind isn’t all there?” She searched for the right words. She’d spent the last year of her pathetic life in a drug-induced haze. “My mind is more than a little bit cracked.”

Miss Petra wiped the chalk from her hands. “Well, my dear, that’s kind of the purpose of our meeting here. You can leave it all behind you, you know.”

“Leave what?”

“Everything. Including the things that made your mind so fragile. Your mind can’t be damaged if it doesn’t exist, and thus you can’t feel pain.”

Alex mulled over the idea. No more sadness. No more regret. The offer was certainly tempting. She studied the door at the front of the room. It practically bulged from the force of the light behind it. Was it that easy?

“On the flip side,” Miss Petra added, “to be rid of pain is to be rid of its source as well.”

The source?

“What made you feel that life was no longer worth living?”

Alex suddenly understood. Her losses hovered around her, expanding into the air like smoke rings. “I wouldn’t remember any of it?”

“You can’t have a memory without a mind.”

“None of my life? Nothing about him .”

Another head shake.

“No,” Alex replied softly, “I would rather live without Chase than lose what I remember of him.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“You know, most people would consider you to be rather lucky to have something to make this decision so easy. You need to look deeper than the surface. You might not have been able to keep your body forever, or to keep Chase, but the things that exist forever are never in tangible form.”

Miss Petra walked swiftly to the back of the room and stood next to a door with an EXIT sign above it, a door Alex hadn’t noticed until now. There was no bright light behind this one. “Let me be clear. If what you said is true, then you are making the choice to keep living as who you are. You aren’t ready to give up your memories or, ultimately, the life you had. Therefore, you live as Alex Ash, with whatever life you have left in your mind.”