Disclaimer: The Frost poem quoted is "The Runaway," courtesy of http/ . I don't own Joan of Arcadia or any of its characters. I do, however, own the poem in the story; that's my creation. The views in this story may or may not be my own.
….
You raise the glass to your lips and take a swig of champagne. It is classic New Year's champagne, cheap and plentiful, there not so much by desire as by unspoken law. All around you people are caught up in the spirit of free alcohol, fancy clothes, and the promise of a paid half-holiday come morning. You mirror their smiles on your face and echo their cords of laughter, but you feel a bit like champagne: there because you have to be.
You step out onto the street and hurry down to the cab you called earlier. If you thought you hated buses, then you must loathe cabs. You detest every single bit of the experience, the strange aromas, the dust-covered seats, and watching the meter climb ever higher while you sit in traffic, doing nothing but feeling your wallet get thinner. But tonight, you don't really have a choice, so you suck it up and patronize Yellow Cab anyway. You walked to get here, but it is too dangerous to be walking around downtown at midnight on New Year's Eve, and you'd like to start the year alive.
About six blocks from your apartment, the driver makes an abrupt change in direction. When you question him, he explains that there was an accident further up the road and that emergency personal blocked off the road. Stealing a glance at the already outrageous charge, you nod complacently and put the accident out of your mind.
…
The next morning, you wake up at eight with a slight headache and a groan. You push yourself out of bed anyway and pull on your work clothes. Everyone else gets the option to come in at noon, but you, being the hard worker that you are, plan to come in at nine. What better way to start to New Year off then with some brownie points with the boss?
In the kitchen, you pour yourself a cup of coffee (no way you're giving that up) and grab a banana from the bowl on the counter. As you eat, you casually scan the local section of paper. Your eyes pass over announcements of taxes, park renovations, protests, and foreclosures with a lazy boredom, halfway between sleep and awareness. At least, that's what you do for the first 13 pages. On page 14, you spill your coffee, choke on your banana, and feel your heart stop. Because staring up at you from page 14 is none other than the 35th Street Girl
…..
Your heart is beating now, thumping against your rib cage with such intensity you wonder if you might die right there in the middle of the street.
22 year-old female critically injured…
Your feet are pounding now, pounding against the Manhattan pavement, echoing her name with every step.
Joan, Joan…
Your mind is reeling now, moving at record pace and yet getting nowhere.
I was there. I was there, and I didn't even stop. I was there.
Your lungs are screaming now, burning, gasping for air.
Be okay. Please be okay. Please.
But above it all, you can hear a voice, her voice, Joan's voice, whispering against the wind.
God.
And then you reach the hospital.
……
It is only when you get inside that you realize how horrible you must look. A huge coffee stain looms on the front of your shirt, you're dripping with sweat, and you can barely breathe. You lean against the wall for a minute, briefly wondering if someone will mistake you for a patient, and try to catch your breath.
"Are you okay?" a voice says, and you nearly jump out of your skin.
You turn to face a black doctor in blue scrubs. His voice is gentle and soothing, coxing the fear out of you, and for a minute, you want to tell him everything; you believe he can solve all your problems and make everything okay again. But then you remember why you're here, and you're left with the feeling that no one can fix this.
You tell him you're here to see Joan Girardi. The name feels strange on your tongue, foreign, and you can't quite attach it to her yet. To you, she is still the 35th Street Girl.
He leads you down a dingy gray hallway, walking with a marked efficiency that makes your already exhausted lungs protest. His gait is strong and sure, his stride commanding. As you jog behind him, you swallow again and again the question that rests on the tip of your tongue. You imagine you already know the answer anyway but to hear it from him would make it real. And this can't be real.
The doctor stops in front of a heavy wooden door.
"You can see her now," he says, gesturing toward the door.
…..
She lies there on the bed, unaware of your presence. Wires surround her, and machines fill the room with an incessant array of beeps, blissfully study in their rhythm. Her hair fans out on the pillow, long and brown. Her body is practically hidden by covers and wires, but nevertheless you can see that she is not wearing a scarf. That irks you somehow, even though it is but a small thing, and this is so huge.
Her hand lies on top of the covers. You reach out to touch it but draw back just before you make contact. You fear that she may die while you are touching her and that you will be forced to carry the burden of her death. So you withdraw your hand and move away, filled with shame and fear and sadness and all these other things ,and wonder who this girl is that she can be so weak and helpless and nonetheless manage to turn your world upside-down.
The chair in the room is made of thick, cheap plastic, and you can feel your back stiffen almost instinctively as you sit down. Ignoring the discomfort, you set your briefcase on your lap and open it up, hoping it find something, anything, to distract you from what is before your eyes. Instead of forums and reports, however, you happen across something even better. You had listened to Sewer Walking a few days ago on your way to work and must have forgotten to take your Walkman out of your briefcase upon getting home that night. You marvel at your stroke of relative luck and click play.
It is only when the tape clicks off two hours later that you manage to comprehend anything outside of Grace Polk's words. Catching a glance at your watch, you remember work and the bills pilling up on the counter and all the things you've worked for. So you pack up and leave and promise yourself that tomorrow you won't run out of words.
…..
That night, you go to the bookstore. It's one of those mega bookstores, the kind with three stories and its own coffee shop. You could care less about the cappuccino; it is the selection alone that draws you this time. The shelves are crammed to the breaking point with everything from the famous to the obscure (within the limits of publishing, anyway ), fact to fiction, funny to heartbreaking. You pass shelves of fantasy, of kids stuff, of political rants without a second glance-amid the hundreds of shelves in store only four matter to you right now; all you can think about is poetry.
By the time you reach the checkout line, your hands are filled with books. Not just the classics (Dickinson, Frost, and cummings among them), but also new books, fresh of the press from authors whose names never showed up in junior year lit. The clerk gives you a bit of a weird look when he sees you but doesn't say anything. You're glad because you don't know how to explain you thought that if you had enough to read, Joan might just stick around long enough to hear it.
…..
"When other creatures have gone to stall and bin/ Ought to be told to come and take him in."
And so you finish Frost. You've found you like Frost, even though you showed no particular affection for him when you were younger. You like the beat of his words in your mouth, the strains of the profound that echo in your mind after the sound leaves your tongue. You like to think that Joan likes him, too, that somehow she heard every word. You hope she likes to rest just as well, that she cherishes Dickinson and loves Wordsworth. You want to make her happy, to see her smile the way she did when she heard Sewer Walking. You would give anything to make here happy, anything that is except God.
If you gave her God, then you wouldn't have her for yourself.
You shake your head and wonder where you got all this. Why are you so unarmored with someone's whose very probably crazy and is at least disturbed? Why did you take a day off your dream job to read poetry to a girl who might not even be able to hear you? And why, why are you buying into her craziness? Why all of the sudden do you think of God when you never really cared before?
And then you look at Joan, lying motionless on her bed, and you pick up another book and begin to read:
"If I could hate you
I believe that I would
I would turn away and forget your name
And walk away with spite
Dangling of my lips
And sooner rather than later
You would not matter to me
Nor would I hesitate to forget you
If only I could
I would not think of you as I lay in bed
And ask why you had to leave
My heart would not jump at the sound of your name
Your words would not grace my lips
You would not matter at all
If you had never existed, never came to be
How light my soul would be
My dreams would be pure
I would not wake up sad
From seeing you again
Just in memory
How hard it is to love
When what I love is gone
And joy and happiness
Become but misery
And yet how blessed I am
That I knew you then
When your words were new
And forever was real
I only wish they had told me
The other side of the coin
About sadness and anger
And how hard it is to say good-bye
So I would know what I was getting into
When I started loving you"
…..
You stay until visiting hours are over at seven. You are loath to leave, and you linger at the door, stacks of poetry books in your hands. You want to break the rules and stay all night like a kid at a sleep over. You want to be there when she wakes up, so you can greet her. You want to tell her everything, to help her, to make everything okay again. If she needs money, you will lend it to her without fail. If she is hungry, you will bring her the fanciest of foods. If she is sick in body or in soul, you will find her the best doctors in world. If she is lonely, you will talk to her. If she is bored, you will entertain her. If she likes art, you will take her to the Met. If she likes music, you will take her to symphony. But most of all, you will ask her all the questions you always meant to ask.
But you are not a poet, a doctor, or a priest. You cannot cure her; you can not ease her soul. All you can do is sit and wait, speaking to her with the words of others and hoping she understands. And so you push open the door and walk out without another word.
In the hallway, a boy, a teenager with brown hair, stands outside Joan's door. He smiles at you with a soft, charming smile, and grabs the door as it closes beyond you. You tell him he can't go in, that visiting hours are over.
"They know me here," he explains. "I visit a lot of patients. In fact, they even gave me my own room here for that purpose."
You tell him he looks rather young for that, and he laughs.
"I'm older than you think."
You ask him if he knows Joan.
He nods. "I'm an old friend of hers, but she hasn't seen me in a while."
"She'll be glad you came," you say.
He smiles again, that same enigmatic smile, but says nothing.
You walk away, thinking the conversation is over, but as you walk down the hall, you hear his voice once more.
"Don't worry; she won't be alone."
….
Joan Girardi died that night. About nine pm, she developed a large blood clot. They rushed her down to emergency surgery but were too late to save her. According to the article, the police consider her death a "tragic accident," as the driver was not drunk, and no charges will be pressed. The funeral is to be held in three days.
You read the obituary and accompanying news snippet as you prepare breakfast that morning. The words feel like a rock in your stomach, and you are thankful you had yet to eat anything that day. For a moment, you sit there, your head in your hands. You feel at once furious and heartbroken. You consider getting back in bed and sleeping it away. You consider ripping up all your poetry books (What do they matter now anyway?) and burning the pages. You consider sitting right there at your table and crying. And then you stand up, pick up your briefcase, and head to work because, really, what else can you do?
….
The day they bury her is overcast and cold. The mourners, almost all professors and students from Joan's college, rub their hands together and shiver as the eulogies are read. You can tell part of them just wants to thing to be over so that they can return to their heated automobiles and classrooms, but you don't mind the cold much. After all, if they buried Joan Girardi in ninety degree sunshine, there would be no scarves.
This is your lunch break for the day. You have important meetings scheduled in both the morning and afternoon, and no acceptable reason to take the day off. Everyone would be understanding if she were a relative or even a close friend, but in truth, you can claim her as neither as she only spoke one word to you in sum. Thus, you are allotted but one hour to say good-bye.
When the eulogies are finished, everyone walks by the coffin in single file and says their piece. Some leave flowers; a few reach into touch her cold hand. You do neither, and just try to breathe. You look but for a second at her body in its black silk dress and then turn and walk away.
As you walk back toward the cemetery gates, you hear a voice behind you call your name. You whip around to see the boy from the hospital. Beside him stands none other than Joan Girardi. She looks not as you knew her but a few years younger, maybe 16 or 17, yet you are certain it is her. She smiles at you and nods slowly.
"Look."
You turn your head, and all around you you see people that weren't there before. A red-headed girl, an old women in glasses, a man with a dozen dogs, a black man sitting on the ground and holding a chess board in his lap are just a few among the thousands that you see. The sky is filled with ripples, long and wide and infinite. You stare and wonder what this is. And then you blink, and they all are gone.
You stand there in graveyard as it begins to rain, not quite sure if you're ready to believe the world Joan has shown you, the world of God, faith, and ripples, the world behind your eyes.
….
Author's note: And so I depart from the world of Joan of Arcadia, a world which ended all too soon. I'd like to thank the cast and crew for their amazing efforts, which spurred me to write again years of hiatus and brought me immeasurable joy through a TV show I was so very sure I would hate. I'd also like to thank the folks at TWoP for all their insight regarding the show. And of course I'd like to thank all of those who read and reviewed my stories, which special props to wizened cynic and magentabear for their support and advice. I hope I did Joan justice.