Sara Benincasa - Great

By the time we reached East Hampton proper, I was utterly nauseous. At first I blamed it on the bus ride, but I knew that the bus wasn’t the problem. Because it wasn’t just nausea that had me in its grip; it was fear.

I’ve spent a lot of my life, at least since I was about eleven or twelve, trying as hard as I could to be nothing like my mother. But when the Jitney dropped us off and I called a cab to pick me up, I felt a kind of panic I’d never experienced before. My heart was beating very fast, and I was sweating buckets. My teeth were chattering, but I wasn’t cold. I actually felt as if I were overheating. It was the most uncomfortable feeling in the world, and all I could think was, I have to get to Jacinta’s house. I have to get to Jacinta’s house. Everything will be fine if I just get to Jacinta’s house .

I did what my mother’s expensive, superstar private yoga teacher taught her to do: deep breathing. You breathe in for four, hold for seven, and then out for eight. You’ve got to get the breath down into your belly for it to work—at least, that’s what the yoga teacher said. So I did it, and it helped. But it didn’t stop the panic—it just made it more bearable.

When the cab driver arrived, he looked at me with concern.

“You okay?” he asked. I must’ve been as pale as Jacinta was on a normal day.

“I’m fine,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Just a little tired.”

When we drove down the street, I expected to see police cars parked in the driveway and Jacinta being led off in handcuffs, but that wasn’t the case. In the late-afternoon sun, everything looked perfect. Not a blade of grass out of place. And the street was utterly quiet—no sound of lawn mowers buzzing or hedge clippers swishing, no groan of the weed whacker, no little kids out playing. Nothing. Perfect and complete quiet. And yet, I still couldn’t fully relax. I rang Jacinta’s bell several times, but I couldn’t detect any movement inside the house. Maybe the police had already taken her in?

I walked into my house and kicked off my sandals. Upstairs, I ripped off my Marc Jacobs dress and threw it on the floor. I changed back into the outfit I’d worn on my trip from Chicago: the Cure T-shirt with a belt, the old Docs. It felt like slipping back into my real skin instead of the plastic facsimile I’d been wearing all summer long. I yanked my two suitcases out of the closet and started throwing clothes in as fast as I could. I left the Marc Jacobs dresses hanging in the closet, except for the one I’d tossed on the floor. All the while, my nerves jittered.

Immediately after I finished packing, I began to feel a little dizzy. I realized I hadn’t eaten anything since Kix with Jacinta hours ago. It was five o’clock now. I went downstairs and made myself a BLT. I walked out onto the back deck to eat it, and that’s when I saw something floating along the gentle current in Jacinta’s river pool.

I couldn’t have said what it was from where I stood, just that it was something that wasn’t a raft or a pool toy. I could’ve just let it be, but my gut told me to investigate. I was about thirty yards from the pool when I dropped my sandwich and began to run.

And then I was there at the poolside, staring down at Jacinta’s naked body floating facedown in the water like a waterlogged angel.

I knew she was dead. I knew it the way I’d known I shouldn’t leave her that morning. But I had to do something. Anything. I had to act.

And so I pulled her out of the water, her long, lean body topped by a soaking mess of white-blond hair. She was cold and limp, and even as I lay her down to begin CPR—something I’d learned in health class the previous year—I knew it wasn’t going to work. There’s the kind of dead from which you can bring someone back, when a heart stops for a brief collection of moments because of trauma or sickness, and you can shock it or pound it back to life. And then there’s the kind of dead that’s just final, from which there is no return, when the spirit or soul or whatever you want to call it has completely left the body. When you’re alone with the body, you can feel the absence of something, some intangible presence that indicates personhood. I was alone with Jacinta’s body, breathing into her mouth, pumping her chest, but Jacinta wasn’t there with me. Jacinta was gone.

And then I did something that still doesn’t make sense to me.

I sat down next to her, cross-legged, and put her head in my lap. I stroked her hair and rocked back and forth gently, and I said, “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.” I didn’t weep. I didn’t scream. Over and over again, I told myself and the shell of my friend that it was okay. It was okay. It was okay.

That’s when I saw the pink envelope lying in the grass.

It was addressed to me.

They ask a lot of questions, police officers. Sometimes they ask questions that make sense, like how well did you know the deceased. And sometimes they ask questions that seem completely random, like what kind of sandwich were you eating, and where did you get it. I guess some of it is just them trying to make small talk, and some of it is them trying to figure out if you’re telling the truth.

They showed up pretty quickly after I called them—three squad cars and an ambulance. The emergency workers ran over to Jacinta and tried to revive her, even though I’d said she was dead when I called 911. Maybe they were just following protocol. It seemed a little silly to me. But they didn’t keep at it long. Pretty soon they stopped and got out a body bag, started doing paperwork. You could tell they’d seen this sort of thing before.

I didn’t cry, not then. I was numb. The thought crossed my mind that I ought to tell them about Delilah Fairweather, that she was the girl driving the car last night, not Jacinta. But I didn’t say it. I don’t know why.

I told them what they wanted to hear. I did not tell them about the pink envelope. I’d hidden that in my boot even before I called 911. It was for me, anyway, not for them. If Jacinta had wanted to say anything to them before she killed herself, she would have called them. But she hadn’t, of course, and instead waited for Delilah to do the right thing.

The cops said I could go home, and that’s when Jeff Byron pulled up. He got out of the car and ran toward me, and he tried to say something to me, but I wouldn’t listen. I felt nothing but revulsion when he grabbed my arm. I shook his hand off like it was burning hot. I think he was going to follow me across the lawn, but one of the cops said something to him quietly, and Jeff just stood there and watched me go. I could feel his eyes boring into my back as I opened the sliding glass door to the kitchen and shut it behind me. It was nearly dark outside now.

I stood in the front room, looking through the window and watching as the ambulance pulled away, Jacinta’s body stowed in the back. The cops followed. Jeff stood by his car for a long moment, staring at the house, before getting in and driving off. That’s when my cell phone rang.

It was my mother.

I picked up. I picked up because I’d forgotten I wasn’t talking to her, and because it seemed like the normal and proper response to one’s phone ringing. It rings, you answer. That’s how it works. I went through the motions as if I were a machine set to automatic mode.

“Hello?” I said. It sounded to me as if my voice were coming from very far away.

“Darling!” my mother chirped. Her voice betrayed not a hint of sadness or remorse.

“Mom?”

“Yes, it’s Mom, sweetie. You have been so tough to reach today!”

“Oh,” I said. I had the feeling that if I were up to having normal emotions, I’d be confused. Instead I just listened.