We All Want Impossible Things

Ash and Belle take a walk at night in the cold, and they talk about Belle’s plans for applying to colleges next year. Belle expresses her anxiety over her mother’s increasing sexual partners and says that she doesn’t know how to feel about it: “I don’t know. It’s not the sex, exactly. It’s more like obvious kid stuff. I just want you to be with Dad, I guess” (79). Ash feels sorrow and regret that Belle knows as much as she does, and she apologizes for things being so difficult with Honey. They head back home and Ash ponders what her life has come to: “What is wrong with me?” (79-80). Belle hugs her.

Ash rubs Edi’s feet while Edi asks questions that indicate a slowly deteriorating memory. While caring for Edi, Ash reminisces about the first time they did drugs together as teenagers. Ash realizes that Edi is so much a part of her life, and so much a part of how she remembers her life, that Edi’s death will mean the death of some of her memories. A whole lifetime of experiences alongside her best friend will die when Edi dies, Ash reflects, and she doesn’t want that to happen.

Ash and Violet acknowledge that Edi is quickly approaching the end of her life: “‘Ash, I think you can just use tap water,’ Violet says. ‘I don’t think it really makes too much difference.’ She does not add ‘at this point,’ but I hear the words hanging there all the same” (84). Texting back and forth with her friends and family, she is interrupted by the doctor, who tells her that Edi is exhibiting behavioral changes and he’s going to try switching up her medications.

Ash goes home to take care of some things, and then returns to Shapely later that night. Jonah has sent Edi a gigantic bouquet of flowers, and Edi, uncharacteristically lucid, asks Ash what she believes happens after someone dies. Ash has no idea how to answer, and rambles for a few minutes about consciousness and fading away. Edi seems unsatisfied: “I feel like you just described more about your experience after I die than mine. Will I be somewhere? With my own sense of myself?” (89). Ash admits she doesn’t know, and they both express their grief over Edi’s pain and their desire to just keep living.

After an appointment her gynecologist, Ash drives home in her old sedan, playing an mixtape cassette that Edi made long ago. Ash begins to cry, and she ends up getting pulled over by a police officer for going over the speed limit. In tears, she searches for her license and registration, but the officer sees that she’s been crying, and after learning why, lets her off with a warning. Too upset to drive after being pulled over, she calls Honey and he walks a mile up the road to drive her to the hospice center.

Honey and Ash arrive at the care center while Edi showers. When Edi gets out of the shower, Ash gives her the good news that she’s located the person who baked the lemon cake at the restaurant, and that even though she can’t give out her secret recipe, she’s going to send a cake to her. Honey leaves to go to work, and Cedar comes and has a conversation with Edi about the Wu Tang Clan.

After Cedar leaves, a nursing assistant comes to close Edi’s door, which is hospice protocol whenever a deceased resident is taken away from the care center: “A staff member or volunteer comes into each room to distract everybody while the morgue folks are here, and, except for not being funny, it’s got all the makings of a sitcom mishap […] I love them for so tenderly trying to protect their patients” (100). Edi knows what has happened and asks Ash if she remembers their trip to Edinburgh years ago. While they were there they met a Scottish woman and stayed at her house even though she was hosting a wake for her recently deceased father.

Ash works on a project that she’s taken on helping to ghostwrite a memoir. Ash hates ghostwriting, even though it pays a fortune. Edi tells her that it’s beneath someone of her education and experience, and that she should be writing about herself instead, or even about their relationship: “Write a book about this […] About dying. Hospice” (105). Ash feels that she would never be able to write that book. At the invitation of the volunteer on duty, Ash and Edi go listen to a group of elementary school students play their recorders.

Ash spends time at home with Belle and Belle’s “theyfriend” Scriv. It has snowed outside, so after inviting Honey over they all go sledding before the snowstorm that is supposed to arrive that evening. Later, everyone hunkers down and watches a movie together. Ash recalls the great snowstorm that occurred the night before she and Honey bought the house, which reminds her of the terrible experience they had with their overbearing realtor. Ash texts with Edi, and they determine it’s too late and too stormy for Ash to come over for a visit.