Free The Girls From Corona Del Mar by Rufi Thorpe

wrote me back a clipped one. It was fine; she understood. But I knew it wasn’t fine and she didn’t understand. Who could understand? I had behaved terribly. Even I knew that.
    So the following Christmas, I made it a point to visit her.
    ——
    She was living in Costa Mesa. After Jim’s death, almost all the “death gratuity” (such a creepy phrase!) had gone to collections, and though she would receive another $400,000 over the coming years, she had already signed this money over to the collections agencies in a settlement that would leave her broke but finally debt-free. She was allowed to continue living on base for only six months after Jim’s death, and it was Zach’s social worker, Mr. Kawabata, who had come to their rescue and found them a place to stay, a complex with specially prorated rent for people on disability.
    At first I had been amazed, because the location was really good, convenient and in a nice area, but as I parked and walked to her door, I began to understand that this was a sad place. There were plants on the porches, but they were dying plants. There were tiny hibachi barbecues moldering and filled with pools of rainwater. There were sun-bleached and dirty American flags hanging limply from mini flagpoles flaking with chipped paint. Several dogs barked at me as I made my way to her door.
    As I waited on the stoop, having rung the doorbell, in that tense moment before the flurry of kisses and hugs and meaningless compliments, I realized for the first time that Jim was dead. His being dead became real to me. I had known, obviously; I had even cried about it, thinking those two bottles of wine and bucket of gelato were somehow my tribute to him. But he had never seemed deader than in that moment before that door was about to open. Dead the way Space had been dead. Really and truly dead. My heart began to race. My friend had been living here, all this time, with Jim dead, with a disabled child, with no money. How alone Lorrie Ann had been through all of this stunned me. My own selfishness in failing to be there for her was overwhelming and made me close my eyes the way one does to get through a passing wave of nausea.
    When Lorrie Ann opened the door, her smile huge and open and absolutely the way I remembered it, I suddenly smelled pot smoke. Wehugged and she invited me in, gesturing to a couch that was already inhabited by a Middle Eastern–looking man crouched before a large bong. He was missing both his legs from the knee down and in their place were fascinating mechanical contraptions that looked as if they had been designed by NASA. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he could leap over cars and ponies, so impressive did they look. He had waist-length black hair hanging loose that shone like a dark mirror, and a thick silver chain around his neck, from which a miniature silver skeleton dangled. Zach’s wheelchair was in the corner, arranged as though it were an easy chair placed there to complement the sofa. I couldn’t take my eyes off him—Zach was beautiful. He had Lorrie Ann’s nose, upturned and elfin, her oceanic eyes, her skin, white and satiny as heavy whipping cream.
    “This is Arman,” Lorrie Ann said, gesturing to the man on the couch. “He lives next door.”
    “Hi,” I said, feeling suddenly more awkward than I had in years. Was Lorrie Ann sleeping with this man? She couldn’t be. Jim had been dead only six months. Was it all right to smoke pot in front of the child? Was I going to be offered some of the pot, and if I was offered some, did I want to get stoned here? I had not been this unable to read social cues or this unsure of my own desires since undergrad.
    Uneasy about joining Arman on the couch, I slipped to my knees in front of the coffee table, clutching my purse. I kept looking and then trying not to look at Zach in his wheelchair in the corner. He was wearing a Christmas sweater with pompoms on it. He seemed so much smaller than six, and he was thin,