Page 97 of Four Weekends and a Funeral

I can’t be with you when you’re so determined to be someone else.

Adam’s words play on repeat when I give myself a moment to think. So I don’t let myself think. I just do. I woke up this morning with energy that needed to be expended and a bone-deep desperation to be the woman I’m supposed to be. Adam’s wrong. I’m not being someone else. That better, more worthy someone is me.

“I’ll need it for next weekend,” I explain, wrenching my cart with a herky-jerky 180-degree pivot. Chelsea trails behind me, her mouth agape.

“Are you going somewhere?”

“The Boundary Waters. Ely, maybe? I’m just gonna play it by ear.” I mention the wilderness within the Superior National Forest near the Canadian border casually, like it’s a bagel shop I want to stop at on the way home.

“It’s like five degrees there if it’s a warm day.” Chelsea follows me through the racks of clothes, removing a hammock from my cart and placing it back on a shelf. Before her hands have left the box, a man with an ash-blond bun snatches it for himself. Never underestimate the brutality of a Midwesterner near discounted outdoor equipment.

“If I don’t get some practice camping, I’ll never hack Patagonia in January.”

“Why do you need to go to Patagonia in January?” she asks in her best patient-teacher voice. When I disappear into the depths of the thermal underwear rack, she tries a different tactic. “Patagonia is in the Southern Hemisphere, right? Is it even that cold there in January? Northern-Minnesota-woods cold?”

“It’s in the mountains.” I haven’t looked into the weather conditions yet. “Should I dehydrate my own food, or can I buy the store-bought stuff?” I barrel away from her with three sets of wool long johns.

“I think there’s some unnecessary risk in dehydrating your own.” Chelsea’s mollifying words don’t match the distress in her voice. Her eyes flit toward the entrance repeatedly as I compare the temperature recommendations on windproof pants.

I see Chelsea’s shoulders slump in relief out of the corner of my eye. “Mara! Thank god you’re here. She’s gone full Into the Wild. Have you watched that one, Alison? I think it’s on Netflix.”

“With Reese Witherspoon? Of course.” My thoughts are miles away, contemplating whether I need new hiking boots or if I can double up on socks.

Mara wrenches the pants from my grasp. “Nope. Into the Wild with Emile Hirsch. It’s a true story in which someone traveling alone in the wilderness starves to death in a bus. A bus, Alison!”

I roll my eyes. “I’m not going to die in a bus. But if I did, at least I’d know I really lived.”

My mantra sounds dramatic and disturbed even to my own ears.

“You know how else you can live? By living. Come on, we’re going to eat waffles. You’re not maxing out your credit card on whatever’s happening right now. I can’t believe you dragged me to the Mall of America during Christmas shopping season. A hugely pregnant woman shoved me in front of a Pandora store, and this was after I’d already witnessed her other child vomiting on the log flume.” Mara grabs me firmly by the shoulder. “I love you, but there’s only so much trauma I can withstand before noon on a Sunday.”

“But my cart,” I whine in despair. It’s then my eyes catch on the thing that rips me in half. Collapsing onto the floor next to a circular sale rack of performance vests, I clutch the source of my devastation on my way down: a fucking denim-khaki reversible jacket.

“Come on, sweetie. We can come back later after we do some googling.” Chelsea pats my head cajolingly.

“Yes, I’m sure Wirecutter has an article on the beginner’s guide to frostbite,” Mara says.

I’m crying on the floor of an outdoor retailer over a men’s jacket. I’m a manipulative teaser on the five o’clock news: Holiday inflation devastates shoppers (more at eleven!). And my friends are hardly fazed. I’m utterly pathetic.

I drop the jacket, and Mara and Chelsea lead me by the arm past the canoe display and out of the store.

•••

I’ve eaten four bites of waffle when it begins.

“First…” Chelsea folds her hands sweetly on the lacquered-penny tabletop of our booth in the assertively trendy restaurant. “We want you to know we love you. It’s just—”

“This is an intervention,” Mara erupts.

“Subtle,” Chelsea murmurs, letting her head fall back on the black vinyl. “What’s going on, Al? Is this really only about Adam?”

“No.” My voice cracks. “Yes. Probably not.”

“Does it have to do with the mastectomy?” Chelsea asks gently.

I consider her question, brushing my hair out of my tear-stained eyes, the wet pieces sticking to my face. The fresh wound to my heart smarts, but something older and thornier twists at my sternum just above it. “I was supposed to get cancer,” I say in a stuttering breath.

“It wasn’t like one hundred percent happening,” Chelsea says softly.

---