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Witnessing - Part Five

By Jennifer S. Davis

Mr. Meekle's hands explored Cecilia's sickness for two hours in that dingy motel room. But when Cecilia asked him, despairingly, if there was any hope, he simply advised her to gather her friends and accept death. It wasn't the answer she and Rose had driven all those hours to hear.

"Quack," Cecilia says when Mr. Meekle leaves, but Rose can tell that she's deeply shaken. "Ascension and release. I didn't need to pay someone to tell me how to die. Everyone figures that out." Her eyes are strangely bright, almost iridescent. She picks up the bag of medicine he left, turns it over in her palm, then throws it back on the dresser.

She walks to the table, pours herself a glass of wine. "Just think," she says, "if we were friends, and on our last trip together, this would be cocktail hour, and we would be sipping drinks, coddling our nostalgia, but happy."

"It's that late? My boss is going to kill me." This is Rose's fifth job in three years, and she needs not to lose it, but she can't seem to muster the concern to care. It's not like she's a doctor or a teacher, where her presence or absence matters. She processes parts, and if she's fired, there will be another girl working tomorrow who can do the job just as well.

"Forget the dealership," Cecilia says as if reading Rose's mind. "You can do better."

"I'm planning on it," Rose says. "I just need to save a bit more for school. Besides, my job's not so bad. I've had worse."

Ceclia considers this for a moment, sucking on the soft petal of her bottom lip. "Did you ever hear of the story," she says, "about the Persian servant who stumbled upon Death, who threatened him? He begged his master for the fastest horse so he could make it to Tehran by nightfall. Later that day, the master met Death, and he asked why Death had threatened his servant. 'I did not threaten him,' Death said. 'I only showed surprise in still finding him here when I planned to meet him tonight in Tehran.' It's about avoiding death or fate, but I think it can be about avoiding life as well."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Rose says. And suddenly, she's angry. Aside from falling in love with the wrong man, what had she done to piss off God so royally?

"I'm hungry," Cecilia says, her mood shifting from bleak to chipper so fast Rose wonders if she should fear for her own safety. "I'm never hungry. Do you think there's anything to eat around here?"

Rose gives Cecilia a half-eaten bag of Cheetos she has in her purse, and Cecilia begins shoving them in her mouth like a girl at a slumber party, crumbs spilling down her bodice. "These are delicious," she says. "I haven't food like this in ages."

Cecilia climbs onto the bed next to Rose, leans back on the overstuffed pillow, intermittently stuffing Cheetos in her mouth and taking long swigs of wine. Sanguine rivulets dribble down her chin. She doesn't bother to wipe them away.

"We can go now," Rose says. "Baxter must be home. He'll be worried. We could make it back by ten if we take the highway. At least we should call." Rose wondered what she would say. I have your wife.

"I saw you that night," Cecilia says, her mouth full of Cheetos. Rose's heart drops to her stomach. "The night Baxter dumped you. I saw you outside my window."

It only happened once. Rose just wanted to understand why, to see what was so special about Cecilia that made Baxter choose her when he was never asked to make the choice.

She'd parked a mile away so no one would see her car and walked, tripping through yards and ditches. Orange lights from suburban homes spilled onto dead grass; silhouettes of wives in kitchens preparing dinners slurred past Rose like a flipbook. She'd huddled under Cecilia's bay window, her knees scraping against the stucco house, and watched as Cecilia stood emotionless in front of her full-length mirror in the same nightgown she wore this morning. A smiling Baxter walked into the room, passing the window to reach Cecilia, so close that Rose could have touched him if not for the glass. It was very much like an elegant movie with the sound turned off.

At the time, Rose understood that something terrible had gone wrong in her life to bring her to this moment, but she wasn't yet willing to name it. If she did -- name it -- she would have had to give Baxter up. And if she gave Baxter up, what would she have?

"No one should feel that alone," Cecilia says. She smoothes Rose's bangs out of her eyes with her finger. "That's one of the reasons I brought you here. I wanted you to know that I think that. And I wanted to make peace with things. So know that I forgive you."

"No," Rose says. "You don't."

"You're right." Cecilia hand is hot on Rose's cheek. "I don't. But it has nothing to do with Baxter."

Outside the winter sun is setting; it filters through the blinds in long, honeyed beams.

"I didn't use to be this way," Cecilia says. "It's hard to remember anymore, but surely I was different. That makes it better, thinking of the me before as separate from the me now."

Cecilia crunches the empty Cheetos bag into a ball, pitches it at the trashcan and misses. "I'm hot," she announces, struggling to sit up. "I'm always hot. It's either the medication or menopause, but either way, it's killing me."

Cecilia tries to extricate her arms from her suit coat, but the sleeve catches on her elbow. When Rose tries to help, she brushes her away. Cecilia fumbles with the buttons of her blouse, smearing orange Cheetos seasoning on the cream silk. Finally, she sits half-naked on the bed. Empty skin puddles below her elbows. Her breasts are small and flaccid in her beige bra. And because she is healthy and young but aware that this will not always be the case, Rose cannot help but stare, cannot help but think, So this is what we all become.

"I'm going to die," Cecilia says.

"We all are," Rose says.

"Maybe today. Maybe I'm going to die today."

"I don't think it will be today."

"Perhaps I want it to be today. Today is a good a day as any."

Without warning, Rose finds herself crying. She thinks that maybe Cecilia's story about avoiding Death or fate makes sense. That maybe we're all avoiding the life we're living while waiting for our real lives to begin.

Cecilia slides her hand, all bones, into Rose's. They rest like this for a while, their feet grazing in awkward intimacy.

"Rose," Cecilia says after a long while. "What's your greatest fear?"

"Is this one of those games?" Rose says. She's reminded of lazy afternoons with her girlfriends when they sprawled out on her Strawberry Shortcake quilt and took quizzes that would reveal what their inner animal is or which celebrity they would date if they lived in the same world as the beautiful people on the slick pages of the magazines. At the time, she didn't understand that these are the moments that linger, that string together to create a past. "Like I tell you what I would name a horse, and you dissect my psyche?"

"Mine's that maybe I'm right," Cecilia says softly. "That maybe there is nothing else other than this."

"We should go home," Rose says, but neither of them move to leave. When twilight shrouds the room and Rose can no longer see the particulars of Cecilia's face, can no longer be sure if she hears her breath or the soft sighs of the hotel heater, she reaches for Cecilia's chest and feels the faint thump of her unfortunate heart.

"I'm still here," Cecilia whispers. For now, this is enough.