The Leftovers

it didn’t help; it only disturbed the peaceful bubble they were living in. Better to just concentrate on the present moment, the precious days and hours that remained, or let your mind drift backward, into the past. Meg spoke frequently about her wedding, the special day that had never happened.
    “I wanted it to be traditional, you know? Classic. The gown and the veil and the train, the organ playing, my father walking me to the altar, Gary standing there with a tear rolling down his cheek. I just wanted that dream, those few minutes when everybody who mattered was looking at me and saying, Isn’t she beautiful? Isn’t he the luckiest guy in the world? Is that how it was for you?”
    “My wedding was a long time ago,” Laurie said. “All I remember is being really stressed out. You plan for so long, and the actual event never measures up to what you wanted it to be.”
    “Maybe it’s better this way,” Meg speculated. “Reality never messed up my wedding.”
    “That’s a nice way to think about it.”
    “Gary and I fought about the bachelor party. His best man wanted to hire a stripper and I thought that was tacky.”
    Laurie nodded and did her best to look interested, though she’d already heard this story several times. Meg didn’t seem to realize she was repeating herself, and Laurie didn’t bother to point it out: This was the mental space in which her friend had chosen to dwell. Laurie herself was more focused on the years when her kids were little, when she had felt so necessary and purposeful, a battery all charged up with love. Every day she used it up, and every night it got miraculously replenished. Nothing had ever been as good as that.
    “I just hated the idea,” Meg went on. “A bunch of drunk guys cheering for this pathetic girl who’s probably a drug addict from an abusive home. And then what? Does she actually … service them while the others watch?”
    “I don’t know,” Laurie said. “I guess that happens sometimes. Depends on the guys, I guess.”
    “Can you imagine?” Meg squinted, as if straining to visualize the scene. “You’re in church, on the biggest day of your life, and here comes your bride, walking down the aisle like a princess dressed in white, and your parents are right over there in the front row, maybe even your grandparents, and all you can think about is the skank who gave you a lap dance the night before. Why would you do that to yourself? Why would you ruin a beautiful moment?”
    “People did all sorts of crazy things back then,” Laurie said, as if referring to ancient history, a bygone era barely visible through the mists of time. “They had no idea.”
    *   *   *
Dear Kevin,
By the time you read this, Nora will no longer exist.
Sorry—I guess that sounds more ominous than I meant it to. I just mean that I’ll be leaving Mapleton, heading somewhere else to start a new life as another person. You won’t see me again.
I hope it’s not rude to be telling you this in a letter, instead of face-to-face. But it’s hard enough for me to even do it like this. What I’d really like to do is just dissolve into thin air like the rest of my family, but you deserve better than that (not that people always get what they deserve).
What I want to tell you is: Thanks. I know how hard you tried to make things work with me—how many allowances you made, and how little you got in return. It’s not that I didn’t want to hold up my end—I would have given a lot to have risen to that occasion. But I couldn’t find the strength to make it happen, or maybe just the mechanism. Every minute we were together, I felt like I was wandering in the dark through a strange house, groping for a light switch. And then, whenever I found one and turned it on, the bulb was dead.
I know you wanted to know me, and that you had every right to try. That’s why we get involved with other people, right? Not just for their bodies, but for everything else, too—their dreams and their scars and their stories. Every time we were together, I could feel you holding back, tiptoeing around my privacy, giving me room to guard my secrets. I guess I should thank you for that. For your discretion and compassion—for being a gentleman.
But the thing is, I knew what you wanted to know, and I resented you for it. How’s that for a catch-22? I was mad at you for the questions you didn’t ask, the ones you didn’t ask because you thought that asking them would upset me. But you