by Emily Belden
Casey taps my shoulder twice in consolation, and it’s like
she’s activated a sensor on a faucet. A few tears drip from my
eyes.
“Hey, relax. Just breathe, okay? Breathe.”
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air was sucked out of the room the moment I found out Decker
was gone and it never really came back. Ask any widow and
they’ll confirm the ability to take a deep breath doesn’t quite regenerate back to the way it was before. Just breathing is a little harder for me, no matter how many years have passed.
“Sorry, I’m not sure what to say. I like to think I have all
the answers,” Casey says. “But I’m still just wrapping my head
around the fact you were even married. I mean, you’ve been
a widow for five years and I never even knew.”
The way she explains it, it’s like she’s offended that I kept
her in the dark. But I kept everyone in the dark and it’s not
like I hid some scandalous, dangerous criminal past from her.
I just neglected to tell her the ins and outs of my marital status.
Why? Because when I met her, I didn’t know the formula for
making my own self feel better. I’m not sure I really do now.
And therefore I couldn’t just pretend it into existence around
someone I hardly even knew.
“Did anyone else know?” she asks.
“Not really. Mostly just my parents and some people I’ve
met at support groups.”
Sure, there are a few mutual friends from back in the Decker
days who also obviously know I’m a widow now, but I don’t
mention them. One girl messaged me a month after he died
and said she couldn’t talk to me anymore because it just made
her sad and want to emotionally eat more. Being told I was
a liability to her ideal weight range put a bad taste in my
mouth. The others? They all faded away once they realized
inviting the widow to stuff like bachelorette parties and book
clubs was kind of a buzzkill. But it’s all good. Because I used to think, Since Decker’s gone, do these people still like me?
Now I think, Do I even like them?
“I mean, I get it. We don’t talk about our periods, so why
would you tell me about your love life? I guess I’m just mad
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at myself for not picking up on it. I’m usually sups intuitive
like that. Hey, is that was this is for?”
Casey grabs my wrist, plucks it out from under my bum, and
twists it so that the inside of my arm is facing up. She moves
the band of my Apple Watch up an inch, exposing my D tattoo. I nod my head to confirm. I got the tattoo after Decker
proposed. After I knew we’d be together permanently. Or so
I thought.
“Well for what it’s worth, you’ve done a good job,” she says.
I look up at her, surprised. “Of what?”
“Hiding it. Now that I know, I can’t say that I could look
back on the last five years of living with you and think Aha!
That explains it! So, I’ve got to hand it to you, kid. You definitely don’t act like a widow.”
I had one, too. A widow stereotype. But I’ve been to
enough support groups not to be shocked when I see a fellow
widow in her twenties. To Casey, it feels like a widow should
be an older woman. Not necessarily an old woman, just someone…older than me and old enough to have had time to earn
that label. I picture someone my mom’s age who seems like
she’s carrying emotional baggage, not someone who has yet
to celebrate her thirtieth birthday.
“Well, I am. The package sitting on our kitchen floor con-
firms it.”
“In case you were wondering if I’d be cool with it, I am,”
she says. “You can keep him at our place as long as you want.
In fact, I think it’s rad that you get to have a death do-over
of sorts.”
“A what?”
“You know, like a second chance at dealing with his death.
Think of one thing that bothers you about how it all went
down, and change it.”
Casey polishes off the rest of her Guinness, lets out an au-
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Emily Belden
dible belch, and heads to the bathroom. She couldn’t be more
Courtney Love if she tried, down to the wiry bob that’s styled
with god-only-knows-what goop.
There are a million things that bother me about Decker’s
death. Starting with the fact that he died at all. We were mar-
ried less than a year. Yes, I’ve been a widow for much longer
than I ever was a wife.
Also, I didn’t even know he wanted to be cremated. I was
twenty-five years old when he died, he was twenty-seven. It
wasn’t something we’d had the chance to discuss yet over a
bottle of pinot noir and all-you-can-eat sushi. Unfortunately
“not knowing” or “never discussed it” weren’t valid excuses,
and it opened the door for Debbie Austin—my Know-It-All
mother-in-law—to swoop in, take over, and decide Decker
was going to Pala.
The buzz of an incoming text message lights up my Apple
Watch. It’s my mom.
Sorry, was sleeping. Give my grand dog a squeeze! PS what’s in
the box, J. Crew sale?
It hits me that the box I thought had a hard drive in it—the
one I photographed and sent to my mother while trying to
score some mom-points—actually contained the ashes of her
former son-in-law. Right now, Jean Rosen thinks I splurged
on a J. Crew summer sale and I’m fine with letting her believe
that’s the case. This whole situation isn’t something I can ex-
plain in a text. Not to my mother. Not to his mother. But I
know I’ll have to fill both of them in eventually.
Night, Char. I love you , she sends next.
I turn the phone to black and get a little squeamish. “I love
you’s” at the end of a conversation, especially ones via text, gut me. My mom could get hit by a city bus crossing the street tomorrow morning and our last conversation would have been
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about a faux J. Crew delivery, but take it from someone who
actually has experience doling out famous last words: you don’t always get what you want in that department.
Casey props herself back up onto the bar stool that’s about
six inches too high for her five-foot-nothing fragile frame.
She smells a bit like cigarettes, which leads me to believe her bathroom break turned into a smoke break, but I’m not judg-ing. I could go for a drag right now myself.
“Okay, so you know I was going to eventually have to ask
this. How did Decker die?”
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Back at the apartment, Casey and I brush our teeth. Our rou-
tines overlap like this in our one-bathroom, single-vanity
apartment most days of the week, but we ma
ke do. Although
the layout of this place is mildly inconvenient, neither of us is willing to suggest moving elsewhere. Because this one—this
tiny one—is home.
“So, yeah,” I say, spitting into the sink. “That’s the story.”
“Damn, that’s fucking crazy,” she says, mouthful of tooth-
paste, waiting her for turn.
“Hence,” I wipe my chin, “Why his mother would say…”
Like I said, there are a million things that bother me about
Decker’s death. Especially the fact…
“…that you killed him,” Casey completes my thought, wip-
ing her wet, leftover toothpaste from her lips with my bath towel.
Bingo.
“You going to be alright tonight?”
I nod.
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“Just one thing,” I say. “I know this was a lot of informa-
tion tonight. And that it was a huge surprise. But please prom-
ise not to treat me any differently now that you know it all?
Just…continue to be normal around me.”
She holds up two scout’s honor fingers and states, “I, Casey
Kevdale, hereby promise not to treat you any differently now
that I know you are a widow.”
She drops her fingers.
“But,” she goes on, “I do hope you realize that being normal is not exactly in my repertoire.” Casey peels down her bottom lip, exposing that new tattoo she got earlier in the
night. It’s a crow sitting on a telephone wire on the inside of her mouth. “Sleep well, Rosen,” she says before shutting the
door to her bedroom, a subtle reminder that I am Charlotte
Rosen now—not Charlotte Austin. Despite what that box in
the kitchen says.
I close the door to my bedroom and invite Leno up on the
mattress. Decker didn’t let him sleep in the bed, he said it
was a “bad habit” dog owners get into, but I haven’t let Leno
sleep anywhere besides the bed since his death. Decker and I
obviously never got the chance to have kids, but with Leno,
we had started a family. The reason I wanted Leno close to
me after Decker died is the same reason I want him near me
now—grunts, snorts, snores, and all—it’s the closest thing to
having Decker still share my pillow and steal all the covers.
It’s the only living, breathing thing that connects me to the
man I happily married.
I unhook Leno’s collar and drape it on the bedside table.
His name tag clinks against the base of my dim little lamp, the inscription on the shiny metal tag reminding me that whatever is left of the man who was so smitten with the legendary
host that he vowed to name his first born—or dog—”Leno”
is just feet away from me.
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Emily Belden
It’s been nearly five years. I want to sit with him. I want to
be close to him. I want to do all this with no (Casey) ques-
tions asked.
Once I hear my roommate steadily snoring for five min-
utes, I peel my covers off and tiptoe out of my room using the
flashlight on my phone for guidance. I make my way über-
quietly to the kitchen and sit cross-legged on the floor next
to the box, peel back the flaps of the cardboard for the sec-
ond time tonight, and pause. It’s been a while since Decker
and I were in the same room and I’m not really sure how to
act around him.
I pick up the glassy ceramic urn and it is cold to the touch.
It’s not a traditional-looking “urn,” this shiny, grayish-blue
jar that his mom picked out from an artist from Argentina.
As I shift it from one hand to the other and give it a three-
sixty, it dawns on me that maybe another wealthy woman
purchased this same ceramic art and is using it as a dog treat
container in Bel Air. Crazy how what’s one woman’s urn is
another woman’s cookie jar.
“Hi,” I whisper.
And that’s when they hit again, the tears.
I miss him. I’ve always missed him.
I miss our life together. I miss watching him scramble to
do his taxes the night before they were due because he in-
sisted that paying an accountant to do them was a waste of
money even though he wasn’t good at math. I miss us tak-
ing turns throwing Leno’s tennis ball for an hour at the park
while sipping rosé on a grass-stained blanket that smelled like mold no matter how many times we washed it. I miss grilling
grocery store butcher counter steaks to a perfect medium-rare
and talking about how our neighbor two doors down might
actually be a high-end hooker. I miss so much about my life
back then, my old life.
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I can’t help but draw my finger—fresh paper cut and all—
to the urn’s inscription and run it lightly back and forth, feeling the shape of each and every letter.
Debbie facilitated the cremation. That’s what she said he
wanted. So Debbie picked the mausoleum. And Debbie or-
dered the custom urn. But I got to choose what this little
nameplate was going to have on it. This was my part of the
process to own.
I was shocked that Debbie came to me, albeit in an email,
for my buy-in. I was simply told it needed to be under thirty
characters per line, three lines max.
I don’t know why she outsourced this task to me. Maybe
her conscience couldn’t possibly be okay with her not consult-
ing his wife on at least one thing on the list of death to-dos.
But instead of dissecting the semantics, I decided to reply to
her email as quickly as possible so I could delete it out of my inbox just as swiftly as it had pinged in. Short and sweet, just like our marriage, is what I went with: Decker’s full name,
his date of birth, and the date he died. While it may not have
been the most colorful arrangement of words, at least it fell
well within the character limit, unlike my other idea—THIS
NEVER SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED.
I shift my legs and kneel to the side, my thigh pressing
against the cold tile of the kitchen f loor. I sat just like this in his hospital room next to his bed when I was too tired to
stand. As Debbie paced back and forth telling me exactly how
things were going to go after I told the doctor to stop resus-
citation efforts. I don’t remember the exact things she said;
all I know is it sounded like the white noise I heard earlier at the bar tonight. Muffled musings drowned out by the sound
of a monitor flatlining.
After he died, it wasn’t exactly like planning a wedding—
even though you call some of the same types of vendors (flow-
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Emily Belden
ers, caterers, etc.), it’s expensive, and there’s a lot to organize.
And I wouldn’t go as far as saying Debbie enjoyed making Decker’s arrangements, but she certainly plowed through them
in a way that seemed like she was worried about what others
would think if
she chose an ill-fashioned urn or just a run-of-
the-mill mausoleum for her one and only son.
I take my finger off the engraving and realize then that
it has gone tingly. In fact, all my fingers have. Like pins and needles poking and prodding my extremities.
No, no, no, I say to myself, refusing to go there right now.
There being fetal position on the floor where Casey will eventually find me when she gets up to refill her water, probe me
with questions, and vow never to leave me alone again. AKA:
the thing I’ve wanted to avoid since day one with her as my
roommate.
Though I’m not there yet, the last bad episode I had, I was
in the grocery store getting lunch meat for the week. Just out
of nowhere, I suddenly couldn’t breathe. I’ve never been on
an airplane when oxygen masks had to descend, but I imagine
what I felt is similar to that: a change in cabin pressure fol-
lowed by pure panic. I ditched the roast beef and cheese on a
shelf in the chip aisle and ran out the exit, where I proceeded to sit on the curb and tuck my head between my knees. I
rocked back and forth, ignoring all the people who asked me
if I was okay. Eventually I got back in my car, popped one
of my prescribed emergency pills, and the little black spots I
was seeing started to go away. Once the meds fully kicked in,
it was off I went to pick up my dry cleaning. A relief? Sure.
I had errands to run. But scary to think the pills made it feel like my panic attack never happened; like it wasn’t real.
I lay the urn back on the packing peanuts for the moment
and grab my purse off the counter. I haven’t tapped into my
“emergency stash” in years because I’ve been good—really
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good—since the grocery store meltdown. But today, my world
has changed. I’m scared I won’t be able to stay glued together
much longer. So I unzip the hidden pocket in my purse and
pull out the last two now-expired anti-depressants to my name
and wash them down with the wine on the counter from ear-
lier in the night. My tongue puckers and I wipe my wine-
stained lips with a dishrag.
When he realizes I’m no longer in bed, Leno groggily
emerges from the doorway of my room. He trots his way over
and takes a seat by me. As I pet him, I feel like I’m ascending on an airplane, weightless with the white noise of the engine
whirring in the background. I have found smooth air, I feel