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She turns the tv on first, some trashy reality show she can’t stand.
Sets the kettle to boil, two mugs on the table. One with two sugar cubes.
Beatrice navigates the kitchen, always walking around tight spaces like they’re already occupied.
“Sorry,” she whispers when she feels a gentle hand at the small of her back, silently asking her to move out of the way.
She leans against the table, elbows digging into the wood in a way she would have been chastised for as a child. The mug warms her hands. She takes small, dainty sips. Enjoys the bitter taste that coats her tongue.
Gross, she can almost hear Ava saying. Fresh bread and caramel, corrects Beatrice, full bodied, like coffee.
Sometimes she finds herself running old conversations through her mind, over and over again like a record. She once read that everytime someone recollects a memory, they’re really remembering the last time they remembered. That’s why details become fuzzy over time. Why things get lost. It is when she catches herself speaking aloud that she always stops, wanting to savor the memory instead and save it for a special occasion, afraid that she too will forget one day.
It is why she knows which channel to turn on or how she liked her tea or why Beatrice only sleeps on the left side of the bed.
It is also why she never answers the phone. Camila’s voice reminds her of silence so deafening it's no wonder people made up a god to pray to, a reason to talk and not feel alone. The minutes ticking by while Beatrice just sits there. Camila, always so kind and reassuring, gently plying Beatrice away.
(Bea, we need to go, she says.
There’s nowhere to go, Beatrice whispers.)
Beatrice blinks. Her tea is cold. The television is asking her if she’s still watching.
She looks at the landline, the light flashing red. Three voicemails, press one to listen. She presses two and deletes them instead.
-
The ticket is crumpled in her hand. She tries to smooth it over, again and again. Tries to make it look new.
The attendant at the front looks bored when she finally hands it over, like he doesn’t know the turmoil she’s going through. Like he doesn’t care. This is his job, his reality. He takes tickets, rips the stub off. He doesn’t know that Beatrice has spent days walking up to the building, once even getting in line, only to turn right back around, her fingers worrying the edges of the ticket each time.
She closes her eyes and now Beatrice stands barefoot over salt. It’s in her hair and on her face, atop the same rock her and Ava sat on in Switzerland in the same village at the same hour and nothing’s the same. The sun is almost blinding and Beatrice looks at it directly hoping to catch a glimpse of the warmth it used to make her feel. Smiles and the smell of lemon and an arm that always curled around her at night, a hand that always seemed to catch hers if only for the briefest moment. That’s what those were. Moments. All scattered in the air and in their room and completely around them until Beatrice couldn’t breathe, eat, think, without them. Can a star take the shape of a person? Can its light be a source of life so powerful it makes everyone around her want to be that way too? Yes, Beatrice thinks. It can and it had.
She opens her eyes. The attendant is holding out the stub. She grasps its wrinkled edges, murmurs a quick thank you. Beatrice is here because Ava asked her to live but by leaving she has made it so that Beatrice never will. I can’t, I won’t wasn’t a threat, it was a promise. It wasn’t a warning, it was a guarantee. And it all began the moment Ava finally decided to listen to her.
Beatrice makes her way through the crowds, says her excuse me’s and slowly nudges her way forward until she finds it.
She sits and waits and watches. There is a famous painting by Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino in Vatican City, in which Raffaello has captured light itself. The one Beatrice looks at now is a fake, of course. A copy. Still, it garners a crowd all the same.
This used to be her favorite painting, her favorite story. It speaks of a future kingdom that can only come through death, and then later, resurrection. Bystanders will coo at it, trace the mountain tops with an index finger, marvel at holiness itself floating high in the clouds, a reminder that gravity is the only thing that separates the living from heaven and that if we look up, if we squint, we might just catch a glimpse of the thread that connects it all. Beatrice wonders how these people would react if they actually saw someone fly. Would they have a stupid, giddy smile on their face? Would their eyes become soft and dewy? Would they watch her, the Halo fluttering strong like a heartbeat, steady like a stream, and have only thoughts of belonging? No. No they wouldn’t. People praise because they want. Because there is an expectation of something to be received from fealty. Beatrice looked at Ava because she simply could not look away.
How many nights did Beatrice lay awake, a heated body next to hers that burned brighter than any sun, the kind that for all its expanse cannot ever come near what Beatrice has already known? Had known. Ava was always a deep sleeper, so sound and so restful compared to Beatrice and her achy back, that creaky mattress that gave away her every twitch. Beatrice was awake for all of it, her mind lost in the proceedings of the day and what was to surely follow. Because Ava never listened to her, not when Beatrice wanted her to and not when it mattered. She would have dreams of Ava running headfirst into trouble. A leg stuck in a wall made it so that Ava could not run away. A skull cracked and pleading through layers of clothes, Beatrice holding her upright. The Halo giving out and Ava plummeting hundreds of feet in the air. It was during these particularly vivid hallucinations that Beatrice would reach out for Ave, her knuckles running over a spine, an arm, the nape of a neck, sometimes only a wrist. Whatever Beatrice could reach to remind her that Ava was well, alive and breathing. And then Beatrice would open her eyes and the real nightmare would begin. She’s in Switzerland in the same village at the same hour atop the same rock but it is not their apartment she has woken up in. It is not their bed she has made. These visions are merely memories that taunt her, a life she was willing to fight and claw her way through in a way she has only ever known. Beatrice is being haunted by a specter, by her memories, by the figure of a woman that perturbs her every waking hour. The ghost of a touch when she’s alone in the kitchen pouring two cups of tea. When she hears her name called out in the mornings before she’s awake enough to remember she lives alone. When she’s walking the streets of Switzerland and sees the flash of golden brown hair, her heart in her throat beating so hard it threatens to come out. Beatrice, ordinarily contained, has become a woman unleashed and it all started that fateful night. No, not that one.
(Do you believe me?
I think you’re thoughtless and self-centered. But dishonest? Beatrice shakes her head softly.
Thank you, she says, and then she smiles. The corner of her mouth pulled up just so. Her eyes lighting up when they catch Beatrice’s own smaller smile, only a little shy because no one has ever looked at her like that.
What? Beatrice can’t help but ask.)
Pain is what made me a sister warrior, she had said. It was everyone but you, she had said. Regression is, by definition, to go backwards. To return to a former state. A measurement of one's value. Beatrice never felt the need to measure herself around Ava. If there was ever a time that Beatrice didn’t think of herself as an asset, something people could use, it was always around her. Only her. Because Ava never thought before she spoke, never took the time to wonder if what she was about to say was in any way appropriate and it was so goddamn invigorating. Listening to her, how unbound she was, how uncaring. It was terrifying and exhilarating and everything Beatrice was always warned about. Bad omens come in threes, they say. The first time they locked eyes, a teasing smile tugging at the corner of Ava’s mouth, so tempting Beatrice had to look away. That’s one. The first night they shared a bed, Beatrice frozen in place. Ava had slowly crept her way over. A hand touching a wrist, her foot swiping over an ankle. Beatrice, so accustomed to her habit, found herself riddled with debauching thoughts, like what it would feel like to have her arms wrapped so securely around another, feel a patch of skin brush against hers. A neck or a spine or, god forbid, a thigh. Ava had no qualms about any of those things. She had rolled over, an arm lazily swung over her waist, her half asleep form a stranger to the disastrous thoughts going through Beatrice’s mind. That’s two. She really should have stopped there. Because absolutely nothing could have prepared her for the third. It was devastating and depraved and the most holy thing to have ever touched her lips. Her vows call for chastity but there was nothing sexual about the way Ava breathed life into her. They call for obedience and in that moment, Beatrice submitted in the only way she knew how. She cradled an angel's face between both hands and swore fealty and in that single act she called for her vows to be revoked and replaced by the only divine being Beatrice had ever truly laid eyes on.
Nothing else mattered in that moment. Not the battle raging on, not the cries for help from her sisters, not even the mission she had dedicated her life to. Regression is, by definition, to revert, but with every swipe of her tongue, Beatrice pressed prayers into a wanting mouth and realized with sober clarity that regression can sometimes be a form of growth. What no one tells you about war is that you can return with two working legs, two working arms, you can return with all your faculties intact but that does not mean you have returned whole. Sometimes it means you don’t return at all. Pain is what made her a sister warrior and pain is what took it away.
Beatrice is unshaken and she is unbothered and she is coiled and wound. Can all these things be true at once? She’s free, she keeps telling herself. She freed her . No. That’s not what happened. She condemned her. These are the lies Beatrice tells herself. She murmurs them in the middle of the night when she’s half asleep.
(This is what happens when you ask too much of someone. Beatrice knows that better than anyone. She knows what it’s like to be told you’re not doing enough, that who you are is malleable. She is the person she is today because she contorted herself for the likes of people she no longer claims. Beatrice asked Ava to listen to her and Ava did and in doing so, she condemned her. Beatrice adds that to her list of failures, underlines it twice at the very top.)
(No. Beatrice freed her. She’s free. She’s free. She’s free. )
“Do you know it?”
Beatrice blinks dumbly. She looks to her right where a stout looking man has sat on the bench next to her. He’s wearing a paperboy cap low on his brow that looks like it’s seen better days.
“Pardon?”
He points to the painting, fingernail tracing the air in front of them. “The Transfiguration? Do you know it? It’s one of my favorites.”
Beatrice lays her eyes on the three disciples. Everyone’s always so busy looking at the floating man that they forget he is handing out a warning. Tell no one the vision, he says. Resurrection can only come through death. Is that why Ava had planned to sacrifice herself without saying goodbye? Did she heed his warnings to tell no one? Is that what all divine beings are destined for? Beatrice spends a lot of her time wondering if sacristies can take the form of a woman and if they can, if that means they can also come back.
When she looks back she shakes her head softly. “No. Sorry, I don’t.”
-
A week goes by. Junk mail clutters her doorstep. Beatrice doesn’t go back to the museum. She doesn’t go anywhere at all.
Her phone rings every day at the same time. That’s when Beatrice takes a shower, so she doesn’t have to hear the voicemail play in real time.
She plagues herself with thoughts of Michael. He was only gone a few days. How many years has it been for Ava? Beatrice imagines the bit of gray on her hair, those stubborn strands that always framed her face when she tilted her head forward in a laugh. And wrinkles. Definitely wrinkles. The kind that wraps around your mouth from smiling too much.
They say it takes twice as long to mend a broken heart. Beatrice thinks those people never had an Ava Silva. Someone overly tactile, little fires lighting everything they touched until all you can feel is warmth. A never ending arsenal of puns so bad they’re funny. Or maybe they’re not funny at all. Maybe their laugh is just that infectious. How could Beatrice ever forget that? Even if Ava has forgotten her by now, Beatrice will remember for the both of them. This is the burden she’s imposed on herself when she sent her to the other side so that she wouldn’t be in pain. So that a part of her would still live on. Ava was asking the wrong questions the first time they talked. Beatrice is the self-centered one.
The phone rings. Beatrice looks at the time. It appears a single daily phone call isn’t enough for Camila.
Beatrice watches it, the fraying cord all bundled up towards the end. The 50’s inspired retro green that she supposes looked nice at some point. Now the color is dull and chipping.
(Who even has a landline still? Asks Ava when she picks it up to start dialing, cord wrapped around her finger. Twirling.
Ava, you know we’re not supposed to-
Relax, Bea. I’m just ordering pizza.
There’s this playful glint in her eye that Beatrice has found incredibly difficult to say no to so instead of arguing further, she gives a gentle nod. The smile she receives in return is worth it.)
The phone rings again, almost immediately after. Beatrice blinks, forces herself into the present. Something is wrong. Beatrice doesn’t need to answer the phone to know that much. Still, she hesitates. Beatrice feels a presence weigh heavy in her space, in the room, over her shoulder. It’s nestled deep in her gut, has grasped each of her ribs. It’s embedded so deep in her she can’t move. For a moment, Beatrice is scared she’s been possessed by a wraith or perhaps a specter.
There’s only two reasons Camila would be calling this urgently. They could be in danger. Her sisters might need her. That thought alone is enough to propel her into movement. She’s like a woman possessed, her actions not her own. Camila is speaking on the other line but Beatrice barely hears anything past the first few words. Her ears are ringing, her heart is pounding, there’s only two reasons- no. Not yet. She needs to see it.
The room is absolutely spinning. Her hands are frantic, her usual meticulous routine broken down into a ‘need’ and ‘don’t need pile. Four shirts, crumpled into the corner of her duffel. The only sweater she has, piled in a heap atop her habit, still neatly folded where she never took it out. It takes less than two minutes to empty her dresser, having not brought that many clothes to begin with. Her toothbrush, don’t need. Her bedding, don’t need. Passport. Need. Keys. Need. Beatrice hesitates at the bed, a baseball cap laid gently down on the pillow of the right side. Need.
And then she’s gone, the front door slamming behind her. She almost slips on the stack of old newspapers on the welcome mat.
It’s a nineteen hour drive from Cat’s Cradle to the Swiss Alps. Beatrice plans on making it back in two.
And maybe there’s something to be said for divine intervention. Maybe there is a God that still listens even after he’s been abandoned, his prayers turned over for conversation, his name whispered in the shape of a woman. Because there is absolutely no reason why she should be so lucky. The ticket is almost three times the amount it should be and she still needs to wait another forty minutes or so but all Beatrice can think to do is swipe her card and say a silent thank you (in that order) her cross clutched tightly between her hand. The one she never took off, even when she desperately wanted to. Even in the middle of the night when she would roll over hoping to be met with a warm body and instead could only feel the metal burn against her skin. Beatrice had never doubted her faith until that first lonely night. Continued to do so every night after. Against her will. Against reason. Against the teachings she has dedicated her life to. Because when you ask God a question, you expect an answer. In the form of a sign, a crucifix, a synchronicity. Something that tells you he’s listening. Beatrice tried to find them in the apartment. Under the welcome mat where Ava always kept a key after the third time she lost hers. In the little potted plant on the windowsill, already dried and wilting by the time she got back to it. In the shower, hot water beating down her back, an ear pressed flush against the tile, her heart stuttering because it knows there should be singing behind the splash. When you talk to God, it is in Beatrice’s experience that he always talks back but she has spent the last week not wanting to hear him at all.
It’s an ungodly hour by the time she arrives, far later than she would have wanted to. She navigates the courtyard in a haze. The path is so familiar she could walk it blindfolded, she’s sure. But something about being here feels foreign. Unreal.
“Beatrice!” She says, breathless. She runs over, wraps her up in a hug.
(Synchronicities. Like Ava’s favorite song playing in the grocery store. Like her neighbor, music far too loud, offering Beatrice a lemon drop, an apology for how long the party was running. Like a character on tv rattling pun after pun until Beatrice couldn’t take it anymore and turned it off. Like the only thing in the pantry when she moved back in, a box of sugar cubes. Like the sound of a phone ringing sounding almost like church bells.)
(Sometimes God speaks to you through the phone. Sometimes you have to answer.)
“Camila,” Beatrice is breathless. She pulls away from the hug, that heavy weight returning and pressing down on her. “Where is she?”
“Follow me.” And Beatrice does.
-
The room is cold, the insulation in Cat’s Cradle practically nonexistent. It never used to bother Beatrice until she grew accustomed to a cozy micro apartment, multiple blankets piled over the comforter, a throw hanging off the arm of the couch. All Ava’s doing, of course. They only lived there a month but she managed to turn it into a home anyway. The room she stands in now, Beatrice has been in more times than she can count and it’s never pulled a shiver from her until now.
Ava, normally sprawled out, lies with her knees tucked close to her chest. Beatrice’s fingers twitch. She wants to cover her with a blanket, she realizes. Before she even touches her. Before she wakes her. Her eyes zero in on the way Ava’s chest rises and falls, small little breaths. The way her face scrunches. That’s new too. Ava always looked so peaceful when she slept, instead she looks unsettled.
“She was calling your name earlier,”
Beatrice jumps. She’s been so focused looking at Ava, she’s surprised to find Lilith at her bedside. She’s holding Ava’s hand, nearly lifeless. It’s that image alone, of Ava’s unmoving hand, that pulls a small sob out of Beatrice.
Lilith’s eyes widen. She drops Ava’s hand, slowly makes her way over to Beatrice. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-”
Beatrice shakes her head quickly, tries to contain herself and all these emotions that are seemingly spilling out for anyone to see. “She was?”
“Yes,” says Lilith, “She’s been in and out for a few hours now but she asks for you when she wakes. Only you.”
Beatrice had imagined this moment. Had dreamt of it. Of having Ava in front of her. That hard weight is still pressing against her chest, though. The ringing is back in her ears. Looking at Ava now, so small and fragile, it brings no relief.
“I think she thought I was you,” explains Lilith. Her face is very, very serious. “That’s why she was holding my hand. I wasn’t-”
“Okay!” Interrupts Camila. “How about we give Beatrice some privacy?”
When they’re finally alone, Beatrice immediately drops to her knees. She pulls her cross out from under her shirt, clutches it in both hands. She doesn’t ask for forgiveness. She doesn’t confess. She doesn’t waste a single second to say thank you as quickly as possible because this is the miracle she’s been asking for and Beatrice refuses to question it any longer.
She occupies the chair Lilith was sitting in, and then realizes that isn’t close enough.
The bed isn’t too high off the ground and kneeling right beside it means Beatrice can hear Ava breathing. She closes her eyes, can feel the first few drops roll down her face.
(She’s back, says Camila. Ava is back. Beatrice? Beatrice?
You’re sure? She whispers.
Yes but-
But? She's quick to ask. What’s wrong?
We think she’s dead.)
Beatrice hovers over her, almost afraid to touch her. She raises her hand to Ava’s clammy forehead, swipes the baby hairs that are sticking to her face out of the way.
The tears fall freely, her head bowed when she grips Ava’s hand. She squeezes it and cries even harder when Ava doesn’t squeeze back.
“Oh god. My god, my god. My god.” Beatrice repeats, over and over again. Uncaring of using his name in vain.
This feeling on her shoulders, it presses into her with each sob. It sweeps its way into her stomach with each gasp, takes the shape of a ball and lodges itself in her throat. She clasps her hand with Ava’s and holds on tightly, so tight she tries to wedge her palm into hers. Tries to will the blood in her fingers to rush, to wake, to create movement. Beatrice presses aching lips against the side of Ava’s head and tries to breathe life into her.
“A little formal, don’t you think Bea?”
Beatrice freezes. The dichotomy of how shaken she was just a moment ago, nearly frenzied, to how absolutely catatonic she is now. She moves away just the slightest bit, looks down. Ava is fluttering her eyes, face scrunched up.
“Fuck. My head hurts.” She says.
“Oh my god.”
“Seriously just call me Ava,”
That feeling that has been holding Beatrice hostage, that thread of terror that tied all her ligaments together until Beatrice couldn’t eat or think or breathe without feeling it, it all bubbles to the surface at once and releases into the air around them. She lets out the ugliest cry, unashamed of how she must look. Both of her hands find purchase on Ava’s face, her eyes frantic in their search for Ava’s. Wanting to see them open. Awake. Alive.
“Are you really here?” She whispers it into Ava’s skin, on her forehead and in her hair and on her neck.
“Yeah. I’m really here, Bea.”
Beatrice kisses her. She doesn’t mean to. She doesn’t even think about it when she does it. All she knows is Ava is smiling up at her, that stupid, mushy, stupid smile that she only ever gives Beatrice when she’s in danger or just in the clear from danger. Right after she’s given Beatrice a near heart attack.
Beatrice surges forward, every prayer she’s ever kept flowing into Ava in an attempt to keep her. Please God, let me keep her, is all she wants to say. Ava is pliant in her hands. Like clay, she is easily molded, and she fits into every part of Beatrice like they were grown and harvested together. Ava pulls away to breathe, to gasp, to make another joke. Beatrice pulls her right back in, chases her lips as quickly as they’re gone. She doesn’t want to waste a single second not showing Ava how she feels. She refused to kiss her right before she left, she thought it would feel like too much of a goodbye but Beatrice has spent every waking hour that she’s been gone regretting every moment that she didn’t make it abundantly clear to Ava how much she wants her and needs her and loves her. How much Beatrice has ached for her.
Ava says, “whoa, missed me?”
“Like someone cut a hole in me,” Beatrice says it like a confession. Like a revelation. Like she’s spent her entire life asking for absolution when she could have just been kissing Ava instead.
-
“What did it feel like?” Asks Ava later on.
The sun is finally starting to peek through the window. They lay on their sides facing each other on the twin sized bed, Ava’s hand gently resting on Beatrice’s face.
“The room was spinning, like that time you got me drunk.” Beatrice smiles at the memory. She places a gentle kiss to the palm of Ava’s hand.
(How did you make it back here, everyone asks. Once the sun has fully risen. Once Ava has regained strength enough to feel like her usual restless self.
It was like being called home, Ava will say but she’s only looking at one person when she answers.)