Page 112 - In Five Years

“Blue Cross?” I say when we’re walking back to the waiting chairs.
“They have good out-of-network,” she says.
I raise my eyebrows at her, and she smiles. The first moment of levity we’ve
experienced since Friday.

I called her dad on Friday. He didn’t pick up. On Saturday, I left him a
voicemail: It’s about Bella’s health. You need to call me immediately.

Bella has often said her parents were too young to have a child, and I
understand what she’s saying but I don’t think that’s it, at least not entirely. It’s
that they never had any interest in being parents. They had Bella because having
children was a thing they thought you should do, but they didn’t want to raise

her, not really.
Mine were always around—for both Michael and me. They signed us up for

soccer and went to all the games—jumping at things like snack duty and
uniforms. They were protective and strict. They expected things from me: good
grades, excellent scores, impeccable manners. And I gave them all of that,

especially after Michael, because he would have, and had. I didn’t want them to
miss out any more than they were. But they loved me through the downturns, too
—the B minus in calc, the rejection from Brown. I knew that they knew that I

was more than a resume.
Bella was smart in school, but disinterested. She floated through English and
history with the ease of someone who knows it doesn’t really matter. And it

didn’t. She was a great writer—still is. But it was art where she really found her
stride. We went to a public school and funding was nonexistent, but the parent
participation was hefty, and we were granted a studio with oil paints, canvases,

and an instructor dedicated to our creative achievement.
Bella would always draw when we were kids, and her sketches were good—
preternaturally good. But in studio she started producing work that was

extraordinary. Students and teachers would come from different classrooms just
to see. A landscape, a self-portrait, a bowl of rotting fruit on the counter. Once
she did a painting of Irving, the nerdy sophomore from Cherry Hill. After she

drew him, his entire reputation changed. He was elusive, compelling. People saw
him as she sketched him. It was like she had this ability to uncork whatever was
inside and let it spill out joyfully, excessively, messily.