by Emily Belden
“Where did these come from?” I ask Casey as I hold the
tickets up and dangle them back and forth, as if they are a
scandalous pair of panties.
“Oh. Those. I won them in a silent auction at my brother’s
high school football fundraiser.”
“You won them? I can’t believe you’d bid on a singles cruise.”
A dating environment wherein large bodies of surrounding
water could potentially cause her solid black eyeliner to run
down her face doesn’t sound like it’d be Casey’s thing. That’s
not me being mean either, that’s me looking out for her sig-
nature Alice-Cooper-esque makeup.
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“I sure as hell didn’t bid on those. I’m not that desperate to find a man. I’m not you.” As you could probably tell, we have a mutually snarky relationship, as proven by her cutting clap
back. “But my mom threw my name into the hat to be funny
and now look what’s sitting on our counter.”
“And the reason you haven’t put them down the garbage
disposal yet is…?”
“Because I thought it would be fun for us to go,” she says
matter-of-factly.
“You thought it would be what?” I nearly choke on the
string cheese snack I’ve helped myself to. “Are you feeling
okay, Casey? Is the tattoo ink seeping into your blood stream
by chance?”
Casey gets up from the couch to refill her cup of ice water.
She’s wearing a size XL Slayer T-shirt as a dress with a choke
chain and Dr. Martens combat boots. The cool thing about Los
Angeles is that one man’s freak show is another’s fashion icon.
“Yeah, why not? The tickets are good for free booze, food,
and boys. Sounds right up your alley to be honest, Char.”
“Hmm, let me think about that. Speed dating, Sperry’s, and
endless SoCo Limes. Forget about my dating habits, Casey,
I’m not sure you’re going to find anyone even remotely in-
teresting to you at this thing. But the good news is I bet you
could flip those on Craigslist for a pretty penny.”
I pick up my phone and check my work email. On Mon-
days, TIF caters in a causal lunch as a little “thanks for not
calling in sick and giving yourself a three-day weekend” perk.
The “Free Meal Monday” menu gets posted over the weekend
in time for everyone to submit an order. This time, I see that
it’s Chipotle. While I’ve been known to house an entire bag of
chips and guac myself, I haven’t had their food in almost five
years and it’s a streak I’m vowing not to break come Monday.
“I’m not f lipping anything,” Casey says, snatching my
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Emily Belden
phone from my hands as I respond to the email with Nothing
for me. “Pay attention, lady: we’re going on the stupid cruise next week because I registered us about an hour ago and we’re
not exempt from the hundred-dollar cancellation fee if you
back out. So put it on your calendar and get your red lipstick
ready, girlfriend. We’re going.”
I wait for the noise of ice crushing from the freezer door to
stop so she can clearly hear my reply: “No thank you.”
Casey and I don’t hang out much. Read: at all. I mean, of course I see her around the apartment every single day, but
she’s not the kind of girl you spill all your dirty secrets to or with whom you’d go to the movies and see the latest Nicho-las Sparks tearjerker. I’m frankly a little surprised, albeit flat-tered, she took the initiative to choose me as her plus-one to the singles cruise.
“Oh come on. It’ll be fun, Char. Quit thinking of it in
terms of all the guys who won’t be our future husbands and instead, think of all the people we can make fun of! How
about if I put it like this: I’ve run it through my Asshole Al-
gorithm and statistics show we’ll have solid material for at
least six months.”
Along with poking fun of me, she gives me puppy dog eyes
that make me wonder if this is it. Is this the moment she and
I finally hang out together? Our lease is set to renew in a few months. Maybe a good faith gesture wouldn’t hurt to ensure
she re-signs?
“Fine,” I concede to her pathetically loveable stare. “I’ll go.”
“Yessss!” She high-fives me. Instant regret sinks in. “So,
what’s in the box?”
“That? Just a hard drive.”
I almost forgot about the delivery sitting just feet away, al-
though Leno sure has not. My little tan-and-white Frenchie
with the jingly collar has been sniffing the box incessantly
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for the last ten minutes. I take a quick fuzzy photo with my
iPhone and send it to my mom, Jean, aka Jean Rosen, aka The
Jeaner, who is back in New York. Since I have yet to procure
grandkids for her, she’s transferred the entirety of her Jewish grandmother obsessive tendencies to my dog instead. I’m sure
she will love this picture of Leno investigating a package like a bomb-sniffing dog.
“Well then that hard drive is made of solid gold. Have you
picked it up? That box weighs about thirty pounds give or
take. Trust me. The elevator was out of order so I carried it
up myself with Leno on the leash. Most cardio I’ve done in a
decade. Man, I really need to quit smoking cigs.”
I walk over to the box, kicking off my high heels along the
way, and tilt it toward me. I, too, am shocked by its weight.
Something doesn’t quite scream “two terabytes” about this
über-heavy delivery, so I bend down to read the return label.
It says,
Hancock Insurance
832 Wilson Lane
Pala, CA 92001
Hancock Insurance doesn’t sound like they broker external hard drives. And come to think of it, why is this box not slathered in blue-and-white Amazon Prime shipping tape?
But even more jarring than the mysterious info on the re-
turn label is that when I look closer, I see that the package
is addressed to “Charlotte Austin.” That name hasn’t auto-
populated the shipping fields for my online orders since I was
married to Decker, and there’s no way I accidentally entered
that name.
“Hey, can you hand me scissors from the junk drawer?”
Casey instead pulls a switchblade from her bra and cocks
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Emily Belden
it open with the flick of her finger. They must not happen
often, but I can tell she lives for moments like this.
I roll my eyes and quickly slice through the clear mailing
tape. When I open the flaps, I find a bunch of packing pea-
nuts and underneath all that padding a solid metal box with
two identical keys taped near the handle. The box is locked
at the hinge.
“What is it?” Casey asks, champing at the bit.
“I literally have no idea. It’s not the hard drive, I’ll tell you that much.”
&nbs
p; “Ooh! Maybe it’s a time capsule. Open it and save it for me,
I might be able to use it an upcoming exhibit.”
Casey is the curator of a monthly oddities expo in Los An-
geles. We’ve lived together for almost five years and I’ve never been to her show. It’s on my to-do list, right after checking
off dates sixty-nine, seventy, and seventy-one. Suffice to say, she gets a little googly-eyed over things like gloves made for
people with six fingers, sunken pirate treasure, bearded ladies, and—apparently—mail-order time capsules.
I peel off the keys from the side of the metal box. They
look no bigger or sturdier than those I used to keep my diary
locked up when I was a teenager. Regardless, they are a per-
fect fit into the lock, and with a quarter turn to the left, the hinge pops open.
I recognize what’s inside immediately and let go, allowing
the box to gently fall back onto the pile of packing peanuts.
I take a few steps back toward the kitchen.
“What is it?” Casey asks again.
There’s an open bottle of wine on the counter. It’s not
mine. I don’t know what kind it is. Or who it came from. Or
how long it’s been sitting there. In fact, it could be balsamic vinegar for all I know. Nevertheless, I pop off the cork and
chug a quarter of it.
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“Jesus, Charlotte. You look like you’ve seen a dead person.”
She’s not far off.
“What the hell is in there?” Casey pries with more intensity.
“It’s an urn,” I say, wiping the wine from my lips with the
back of my hand and taking one more pull for good measure.
“Oh, sweet! I can definitely use that in my show.”
Except she can’t.
“My dead husband is in it.”
Casey closes her eyes and shakes her head, as if she’s trying
to tune out some bad music. “Excuse me? Wait. What? You were married? To who? Back the train up, lady.”
“Hand me your knife again,” I deflect her questioning be-
cause I’ve located a large envelope in the packaging, which I
imagine is there to explain. Casey ceases fire and hands her
blade to me.
I cut the envelope open and rip out its contents so quickly,
it gives me an immediate paper cut on the tip of my pointer
finger. I draw my finger to my lip and suck on the salty blood
as I unfold a typed letter with my other hand.
“Need help, Char? A Band-Aid maybe?”
I shake my head no as I begin to read the letter. Again, it’s
addressed to a name I haven’t gone by in almost five years.
Dear Mrs. Austin,
We regret to inform you that the mausoleum in Pala,
California, was destroyed in a devastating wildfire on
May the 20th of this year.
When the mausoleum identified itself as being in the
path of the fires, all urns were evacuated to a safe place.
Rest assured, your loved one(s) is still intact, although
the Pala Mausoleum is no more.
Hancock Insurance is the company handling the in-
surance claim filed by the mausoleum. At this time, the
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Emily Belden
owners have declined to rebuild and will be considered
permanently closed. As such, we are returning all urns
to the documented next of kin.
Your couriered package includes a locked, fireproof
capsule. You may access the capsule with the attached
set of keys to find the original urn.
The choice of where and when you rehome your loved
one’s ashes is entirely your own. We are terribly sorry for
any inconvenience this may cause and thus grief coun-
selors will be available for up to three complimentary
sessions during the next two weeks. Again, this will be
offered at no charge to you and we urge you to take ad-
vantage of the support during what we can only imag-
ine will be a difficult time. Please call the 800-number
listed on our website for more information.
Sincerely,
Robert Hancock
President, Hancock Insurance
It reads as formal as a court summons, but this letter is a
casual confirmation that Decker is in this box.
Decker is in our apartment.
“It’s him,” I say with certainty and a hint of defeat. I’ve
worked hard to keep this a secret and to keep it in my past.
Now it’s neither of those.
“I don’t know what to do in this situation,” Casey says. “But
I think we should figure it out somewhere not here. Some-
where that serves beer.”
She grabs my car keys for the second time today and pulls
me out the door.
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3
I don’t want to be here. Here being perched on a wobbly bar stool in a neighborhood drinking hole wearing the same
toothpaste-laden dress I had on at Monica’s wedding. But
when your brain suddenly functions as well as a waterlogged
sock, there’s no fending off your roommate from dragging
you out to discuss the untimely return of the most unex-
pected delivery.
It is evident that my pushback reflexes are experiencing
a delay. They did the same thing when this was all going
down, when everyone and their mother—specifically Deck-
er’s mother—were trying to tell me what to do. For now, I’m
just hoping any piece of therapist advice that I’ve managed to
catalog over the years bubbles up. My brain feels like a white
noise machine and I need something to cut through the deaf-
ening sound of a silent shock.
“Ladies, what are we drinking this evening?” asks a
chummy bartender as he puts down two Pabst Blue Ribbon
cardboard coasters.
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Emily Belden
Focus on what you can control is the grief-healing mantra that finally rises to the surface. So, I take some ownership and
order a double bourbon and ginger. As the bartender makes
my drink, I wedge my hands firmly between my butt and the
bar stool. If I don’t take them out of frame, eagle-eyed Casey—
the same girl who spotted my crimson lip like she was solving
Where’s Waldo? —will for sure notice they are trembling, and I don’t want to be asked if I’m okay right now. I don’t know if I’m okay right now.
“Well, you’d think a mausoleum, of all places, would be
built with a just tad more protection against flames, amiright?
I mean, aren’t they setting dead bodies on fire there every
single day? How did they not safeguard the place?”
I’ve done a really good job masking this from everyone.
Hiding the fact that I was ever married. Hiding the fact that I am a widow. Now, the curtain has fallen. All because I thought
my stupid hard drive was in that box. I should have insisted
on a little privacy upon seeing Austin written on the To line.
Instead, I rushed to open it. I involved Curious Casey. I have
no one to blame but myself.
<
br /> “A mausoleum is different from a crematorium,” I say, as
if I’m reciting a sentence off a Wikipedia page. I bring my
palm up to my mouth. Mundane as it was, I’m surprised by
my ability to even utter words right now.
“Ohhhh, that’s right. The crematorium is where they set the
dead bodies on fire, isn’t it? And a mausoleum is just a place
where the urn stays. Like a graveyard but for urns, right?”
“Something like that,” I mutter.
I hate that I am familiar with the nuances of these things.
Girls my age, they know the difference between highlighter
and bronzer. Not the difference between a mausoleum and a
crematorium. And of all the things I feel right now, I’m em-
barrassed that I’m somehow still able to feel jealousy. Jealousy 9781525805981_TS_BG_txt.indd 36
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that it’s just so blatantly clear that I’m not a part of the girls who don’t need to know this kind of stuff camp anymore.
“Where’s Pala again? Like a hundred miles from here?”
I nod my head yes. I know she’s probably wondering how he
wound up there. This is Los Angeles. I’m not saying mausole-
ums should be as frequent as cold press juice shops, but you’d
think there’d be a slightly more convenient option than a place a hundred miles away that’s best known for its casinos and
crypts. And there was. It’s just that convenience never mattered as much as coveted to his mom, the Austin family matriarch.
“You’ve never heard of the Pala Mausoleum?” I ask Casey.
“I thought you would have… .”
Before I even finish the sentence, Casey has already ex-
ecuted a Google search on her iPhone. Over her shoulder, I
see the photo of the place pop right up and my head feels like
it has taken a hit of helium, like it’s not even connected to
my body anymore.
“Is this it?” She has no idea how the mere photo of it—
the chevron marble flooring with flecks of real gold in it, the dreamy high ceilings, the massive flower display of award-winning hydrangeas smack dab in the center of the lobby—
carves an instant pit in my stomach like someone is hollowing
out a pumpkin.
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“Well, I guess this reclaimed wood beaming didn’t fare
so well for them, huh? Bet that thing was covered in lacquer
and the first to go up in flames. The good news? He’s safe
with us now.”