Sean’s parents were professors at Northwestern and bought the lake house a decade ago. In Instagram photos, the blue sky stretched across the horizon and puffy white clouds tempered the heat of the yellow sun.
Cherry, Virginia, Bowen, and Sean were meeting there for the weekend. The group had formed in college and somehow stayed sewn together. Sunday was Bowen’s thirtieth birthday. The rules were: get tested, wear N-95 masks and face shields while traveling, and if after all that you were still the asymptomatic fuck-up who infected the group, pay for everyone’s cremation.
Cherry biked to the testing site. A Q-tip high-fived the right-then-left side of her brain. She received a glorious negative on Wednesday, and stayed inside until Friday, when she called a car to drive her to 2003 Cloud Lake Road.
As Cherry waited for her ride, Lex smoked on their stoop. Since the start of the pandemic, Cherry had grown weirdly close to her neighbor who, as a cashier at the local grocery store, had been deemed essential almost immediately. Lex smoked cigarettes and Cherry watched as they recounted ways customers misgendered them and the miscellaneous verbal abuses endured du jour. Talking to Lex always made Cherry feel better and worse. She felt guilty that she had a secure, anonymous job copyediting content for political campaigns and nonprofits. But she also envied Lex’s interactions with the world. The fact that they could mark the start and end of days with the changing of streets and body odors.
“So, there was this pregnant lady,” Lex said. Their coughs stood like punctuation marks. Cherry considered aerosol droplets, and her heart began to race. “A pregnant-ass woman not wearing a mask. Not wearing a mask and asking for Camels! And I’m not one to judge.” Cherry noticed they said that often. “I’m an Aquarius, you know? I don’t give a shit. Smoke what you want. But a mask, mama. Like, you’re really out here trying to die?”
“No, that’s wild,” said Cherry. She took a discreet step back.
“Right?” Lex toed their cigarette into a groove between cracked pavement. “Fucked up.”
They’d been making hazard pay. But it was September now, almost a year since the plague infected its first pink lung. Lex said company policy planned to return to normal wages starting in October.
“Normal. That means minimum.” Lex coughed. “I may quit. I really can’t with them.” They looked Cherry up-and-down and took note of the duffel bag. At the same time a dented, tan Corolla pulled up and beeped. “You going somewhere?”
Cherry looked at Lex and shrugged. Lex shrugged back. “I’m not one to judge.”
Cherry sat in the backseat and rolled down the window. On the floor was an empty tube of generic hand sanitizer and small bottles of water. The normalcy of it all felt uncanny, and it dawned on Cherry that other people rode in Ubers all the time, on their way to places she hadn’t been to in months.
The driver’s mask rested across his chin like a goateed penumbra.
“Sorry, could you put on your mask?” Cherry was simultaneously nervous the man would grow angry and annoyed that she was nervous. He sighed laboriously and pulled the mask over his mouth. Cherry contemplated the risk/reward of another request. She decided to persist, because feminism. “Thanks. And also just—your nose?”
He glared at Cherry through the rearview mirror and complied. After twenty minutes, they moved into the suburbs and cow-sightings became more frequent. The man relaxed. “On vacation?”
“Oh.” Cherry felt self-conscious engaging in anything explicitly fun during these times. “Just a quick weekend,” she said. “A friend has cancer.”
**
It was the first time Cherry had seen her friends since the pandemic started. She had politely declined Lex’s invitation to pod together, and so it was also the first time Cherry had touched another human being in three months.
It felt fucking incredible. Hugging her friends, passing a bottle of prosecco between mouths, the errant slithering of fingers around wrists and waists. It was all delicious. “Oh fuck, I missed you guys,” said Virginia. She was treading water in the lake. It was colder than Cherry anticipated. Each dagger-sharp inhale was one small gift.
Later, they cooked together without washing their hands. They kept their masks in a bowl by the door.
An hour into dinner that first night, Sean brought another bottle of wine into the dining room. Everyone applauded.
“What else is there to cry about?”
It seemed like everyone had experienced a disproportionate number of traumas since the virus had hit. No one had job security. No one’s healthcare was good enough. A month into lockdown, Sean’s father died from a drug overdose after twenty-six years sober. Bowen and Nigel called off their engagement when Nigel contracted the virus after continuously breaking quarantine for Grindr hook-ups. “I love being non-monogamous,” said Bowen bitterly. “It was hell pausing things with John. But during a pandemic?” Their wine sloshed from the lip of their mug onto the tablecloth. “Anyone remember AIDS?”
A dear friend of Virginia’s had succumbed to cancer. It was a long time coming, but the beautiful boy had clung to life for so long, for years, that still, it bewildered. And the postponed weddings, reunions, funerals, holidays. Cherry almost wept into her spaghetti when the group discovered they all knew people who’d had a miscarriage or stillbirth since the pandemic began.
The album played its last song, fuzzed and shut off. Candlelight flickered. Silence settled over them like a net.
Was it always like this? Cherry wondered. Had life always been this studded with frequent and grave disasters? Had humans always experienced such consistent loss, different griefs woven into our tapestries, and simply learned to offset the pain with friends and bars and shows and sex? Was it true, that almost everything depended on flirting with strangers and grazing knees underwater?
“The problem is,” Sean plucked the tongs from the salad bowl and plunged them into the tangle of pasta, gathering a ball of noodles on his plate. “You can’t have it both ways. Either we live in an authoritarian state or we don’t. Sure, other countries have it under control –”
“China, dude,” Virginia said. “Too bad my parents decided to move here.”
“Okay, yes. But they’re also the governments that put a chip in your phone and make you sign into apps every morning to record your temperature and like, bowel movements.” He jutted the tongs towards Virginia. “Let’s be real, the government could not handle your morning poops.”
“I feel like we’re at a reckoning,” said Bowen. “Capitalism, democracy, whatever you want to name it. We live in a system that totally glorifies the idea of the individual. Free thought, free will. And now we’re being brought to our knees, literally dying, because the only way out is to work together and abandon the myth of individualism. And people are freaking out. They literally cannot do it. Not to be fatalistic or whatever, but like, it’s only going to get worse. Right?”
“Yes.” Virginia stood. “I have to pee.”
“Okay, but is that really our fault?” Sean continued. “They, we’ve, grown up with a sense of entitlement. I guess it’s nationalism, but soft politics, right? There’s this sense of superiority that up until now has only been affirmed. And why not? I, for one, would rather the economy open and have some people get sick than have a government track me.”
“Yo,” Bowen laughed. “Take a lap. Your trust fund is showing.”
“Ouch,” Sean pouted. “You know I’m down to redistribute wealth. I mean,” he gestured towards his friends, “you’re all here.”
Cherry rolled her eyes. “I agree with Bowen. For the first time, people like us and our parents—white, relatively wealthy—get it. Individualism doesn’t help—it actually hurts. We need to work together. Like, a collective voice. We’re so bogged down in our enclaves, pitted against each other, when the real enemy is the state.”
“I’m sorry, did you just say collective voice?”
“Okay, so what do you propose? Some philosopher king making unilateral decisions for us?”
Cherry chewed a strand of her brown hair. A bad habit. Bowen reached over and pulled it out of her mouth. “Kind of. Yeah. But, you know, a good one.”
“Is that really it, though?” said Sean. “The only options are authoritarianism or what we have now?”
“I doubt,” said Bowen, “we’ll have to wait much longer to find out.”
Virginia walked back into the dining room, pulling up her pants. Her underwear was cotton and pink. She hiccupped. “This guy I was talking to on Tinder told me he was an authoritarian Communist. Is that real? Like are you supposed to be both?” She poured herself more wine. “And then I said I was in the DSA and he ghosted me. Am I conservative?” She looked around the room. “Seriously, you guys. Am I the problem?”
“Oh my god.” Sean took Virginia’s glass and drank the rest. “Can we please stop talking about this?”
“Okay, but don’t you think, like, at their core, people are good? I agree with Cherry. We can use our privilege or whatever and work together. Eventually people will understand there’s only one way out.”
“Everything sucks and nothing matters.”
“Fuck the state! Collective voice!”
“Cher, how’s your momma holding up?”
Cherry’s muscles clenched. She’d been absentmindedly spiraling spaghetti around her fork and spearing clumps of Beyond Meat meat sauce. Now her friends’ eyes moved to her, and she felt suddenly charged, as if their united energy was streaked paint across her chest. “Oh,” she said. “Not great. Just like everyone. She’s not really leaving the house these days. But Rosa visits and drops off food and stuff.”
“Thank God for Rosa,” said Sean.
“Amen,” said Bowen, raising their mug. “She’s worked for your mom for what, five years?”
“Six. Yeah, I mean. No. Yeah.” Cherry had prepared to lie. So many people had it worse. All things considered, it could be much worse. But as she filled and drained another glass, the heat from the wine spread like rhizomes. “It’s just… Mom’s rejecting groceries now. She thinks they’re poisoned. It’s nothing new, obviously. But she won’t let Rosa come inside the house. Like, because she’s a double agent or something.”
She remembered the voicemail Rosa left the week before, explaining that Cherry’s mother had not only refused Rosa entrance, but chased her away, throwing produce at her as she beelined towards her car. An orange cracked Rosa’s car window, she’d said. Cabbage heads shattered on the sidewalk like glass. Her mother had screamed “alien” at Rosa as she jogged towards the car. It wasn’t until Rosa clarified that Cherry understood the comment was not xenophobic. “Your mother,” Rosa chirped into the phone, “she thinks I am an alien. From outer space. ‘A different galaxy,’ she said.”
“She’s still taking calls from you, though, right?” Sean asked.
Cherry closed her eyes. “Sometimes. It’s just a lot of—you know. Talking about not wanting to live, what’s the point, they’re coming for us. The usual.” She pressed her palm into her cheek.
“Babe,” said Bowen. They sat closest to Cherry and reached out to take her hand. Cherry’s face grew hot. “It’s fine,” she said. She squeezed Bowen’s wrist. No one spoke. “Guys. It’s literally fine. We all have our own shit. It’s brutal for everyone right now.”
“Just because we’re all going through it doesn’t diminish it,” Bowen said quietly.
“Of course.” Cherry chewed her hair. “But I guess lately I’m like, so just do it then. Quit talking about it and do it. You know?”
“You don’t mean that,” said Virginia.
Cherry winced. “I don’t? My mom has threatened to off herself my whole life. Seems like a pretty perfect moment. Everyone would understand. I’d understand. The world is on fire. We’re in a literal pandemic. Genuinely, is there a better time to call it?”
The spaghetti had congealed, the wine was warm. Cherry felt an earlier sunburn prickle along her skin. Her eyelids began to sweat. She felt self-conscious and brined, like a pickle.
The mood had cooled. Virginia stared gloomily into her wineglass. Sean and Bowen made extended eye contact across the table. Cherry wished she was back in her studio apartment naked and alone, pining for intimacy and watching an entire season of a stupid show she’d forget by morning.
“I’m so full,” Sean announced. “Should we take a walk?”
“Yes,” said everyone.
“Talk about a collective voice,” said Bowen and, in an act of deep friendship, everyone laughed.
**
Outside, everything felt electric and new. They clumped together. In the dark, it was easy for Cherry to imagine them as one hot mass, heading towards the center of town like a fireball of energy or a disease come to spread.
Before they reached Main Street, they had to cross a bridge over the isthmus that connected river to lake. It was barely eleven o’clock, but no cars came or went and so the group walked in the middle of the road, letting the lingering asphalt heat seep up through their shoes and spark through their calves like damp outlets.
What Cherry had not said was that her mother was already gone. She had died years ago, on a night when a hangnail moon beat through the clouds. Cherry was twelve and very confused when her mother woke her during witching hours to coax her into the creaky Volvo, still half-drowned in dreams.
Cherry did not ask questions. Even then, she was accustomed to odd-hour outings. When the car stopped in the middle of the bridge, she unclicked her seatbelt and met her mother by the rail. “Are you going swimming?” she asked. There were no cars, no lights. The translucent silver sliver peaked through dark green clouds. “Yes,” said her mother. She removed her coat and shoes. “It’s bad here, Cherry. Someone’s always after you.” Her mother crouched on the guardrail. Her wool socks slid across the metal. Cherry remembered the taste of iron and a sharp pain that snaked through her left arm. “Is it safe?” asked Cherry.
Her mother paused, right fist clenched around the top rail, woolled toes sliding back and forth along the bottom. “Of course,” she said. “They can’t get you in the water.”
Cherry moved backwards towards the car. She watched her mother’s back and saw it start to dissolve.
“Mom, don’t.”
“I’m going in now,” her mother called, and Cherry was not sure if she was responding to her daughter or warning the world. Cherry closed her eyes. She braced for the sound of a splash, a signal that her mother had hit river and would not return.
And she almost did too, until a truck shone its lights on the pair, blared its horn and spooked her mother back to reality. A few minutes later, Cherry sat obediently in the backseat of the Volvo, seatbelt lined neatly across her lap. Her mother buzzed in the driver’s seat, panting and covered in sweat. Neither of them spoke. Cherry held her breath so long she felt lightheaded.
When her mother tucked Cherry back into bed, she whispered, “See you in the morning, sweetie.”
The next day, Cherry believed it was a ghost who woke her, fed her cornflakes and ushered her onto the yellow school bus, telling her to hurry or she’d be late for school. It took two more days of normal—her mother’s gentle morning shakes, starchy dinners in front of the television, no irrevocable catastrophe—for Cherry’s preteen brain to believe her mother was alive and fine. That she hadn’t jumped.
**
“I can’t believe how warm it is still. God, winter’s going to be so brutal.” Virginia moved towards the side of the bridge and leaned her torso over the guardrail like an L. “Think it’s deep enough to jump?”
The drop was about ten feet, Cherry guessed.
Bowen threw a rock into the lake and watched it sink. “Seems deep enough.” Their voice was velvety and slurred.
“My dad would jump this all the time when we were kids,” said Sean, and everyone paused, because now Sean’s dad was dead. “I mean,” said Sean, “it’s perfectly safe.”
“I don’t know,” said Virginia. “It seems sort of sketchy.”
“What isn’t these days?” Bowen removed their shirt and shoes and peered over the rail. “Wait, maybe I’m scared.”
Cherry remembered the creak of the Volvo, dark green clouds, the river maw that opened like a black hole. “I’ll do it.”
“No!” Bowen pulled their shirt back on. “It’s scary. No one jump. Let’s just skinny dip back at the house.”
But Cherry was already untying her sneakers, unclasping her bra with a sharp yank. “I’m going to jump.”
A mist began to creep through their calves, nuzzling their torsos until it wound itself around their necks and through their hair. The fog was yellow and damp. Instinctively Bowen moved towards the house. Virginia shivered and wrapped her arms around her waist. She coughed. “Shit.” She coughed harder. “I swear my test was negative, you guys.”
Cherry stood naked and watched goosebumps rise on her flesh like pox. She wheeled her legs over the guardrail and leaned towards the water, fingers curled around the metal behind her.
Staring down into the black lake, Cherry thought of her job. It was so boring. She thought of her dehydrated ficus. She thought of Instagram. She thought of all the rice noodles she’d consumed in quarantine. She ate them straight from the pot. Sometimes she squirted Liquid Aminos onto them. Sometimes she ate them with tomato sauce. She thought of the crop-tops she used to wear. She used to curl her hair. She thought of her cat Tippy, who sometimes nuzzled her toes in bed in a way that, recently, she was afraid would bring her to orgasm. She thought, I’ll never have sex again.
One hand slipped and Virginia shrieked. Cherry decided she did not care. She decided there were some reasons to hope, but not many.
Headlights cut through the fog.
“Do it, bitch,” whooped Sean. Bowen laughed and began to clap.
Cherry jumped. In the instant before she kissed the brackish black, Cherry understood that when she hit the water, despite her best intentions, her body would propel itself north, until it broke the surface and took in cold clean air.
Note: The title "Depression Cherry" is taken from Beach House's album of the same name.
Leah Yacknin-Dawson earned her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was the recipient of the Fania Kruger Fellowship, and later taught fiction workshops. Her work has appeared in StoryQuarterly, Hobart Pulp, Yalobusha Review, and more. www.leahyacknindawson.com.