Lingering

by Melissa Simonson

  It’s your goddamned wedding, I’d said from the threshold of the living room, watching her sort through seating plans, cross-legged on the couch, dark hair dripping over her shoulder. Tell her you don’t want him coming, you’re allowed to do that. You got all the say when it came to bridesmaid dresses and whatnot, but the guest list’s just off-limits?

  I don’t have a problem with him coming—you do. This this isn’t about him being there, and you know it, she’d said, eyebrows shooting up on her milky forehead. You’re the most insecure person I’ve ever met, you know that? I’m marrying you, you idiot. Not him, you’ll remember I was the one to dump him, right? It was years ago, I don’t understand why you’re so angry, you run into your exes and wind up having cozy chats with them every time you visit your mom, and whenever I get pissy about it, you tell me I’m ridiculous. It’s like you wish I was Venus naked in the clamshell, born fully-grown with no past before you.

  And I laughed, crossing my arms over my chest in the doorway, shaking my head. I’m the most insecure person you’ve ever met? Look in the mirror, sweetheart, I’m not the one starving myself and throwing up every other day. When’s the last time I asked you how fat I look? When’s the last time I stood on the bathroom scale and cried?

  That was about when the Xbox controller sailed past me and struck the wall.

  Right, go out, get drunk, come home and show me how much better you are, she’d shouted, but don’t expect me to be around for your grand debut.

  Then she called me an asshole; I hadn’t denied it, just grabbed a coat and left the house, and I didn’t return until the next morning. The whole place was silent as I stepped inside, but not Carissa Silent, not calm and punctuated by typing and her clearing her throat, her soft sips of coffee. It had been scary silent, the kind that made you afraid of your own footsteps, hyperaware of your breathing. A very loud silence, like electricity crackled in the air all around me.

  The police questioned me for hours. So right after the two of you had a big fight, your fiancée winds up raped and murdered, huh? What the fuck would you call that, a coincidence? A neighbor saw you storm out that night. We listened to your 911 call, Boss. You sounded like a robot, no emotion at all. Refusing to perform CPR or even touch her, wow, what a loving husband-to-be.

  I let them insinuate whatever they wanted. No arguments from me, I was too numb to shout objections. This wasn’t a grizzly bear charge, snapping me into immediate action, this was a meteor falling out of the sky—there was no way in hell I’d be able to react in time, no way in hell I could survive it.

  They had loads of DNA from semen; they’d know soon enough it wasn’t mine. She’d been beyond CPR and lifesaving efforts, I knew that as soon as I found her. I hadn’t touched her because I could hardly stand to see her that way, bloody and broken and naked except for the engagement ring riding loose on her skinny finger. I had to get out of that bathroom, it suddenly felt three sizes too small.

  Carissa was little. I’d always known that, but it never struck me as hard as it had that morning, when I’d followed Dexter’s bloody paw prints into the bathroom and found her curled up in the tub. She’d always been pale, but with rosy undertones. Not so pale she was blue. But I guessed that tended to happen when someone sliced your throat open.

  J oe had bombarded me with texts and missed calls when I cracked one bleary eye open early the next morning. I didn’t even remember getting home, which had me pretty well convinced I’d hallucinated everything that happened at 311 Emery. The empty State Farm-looking office, Jess’s weird sideways smiles. Nothing more than figments from a drunken dream.

  I fought with clumsy thick fingers as I shot off a response and lurched into the kitchen to feed Dexter, just to make him shut the hell up. Cats were nightmares in the morning. Stepping on your face, rubbing a sandpaper tongue on your cheek, kneading your chest to get you to wake up.

  His yowling reached astronomical proportions as I tried to dump a can of Friskies onto a plate. He kept bashing his furry face against my wrist, making me fling wet bits of beef all over the floor.

  “Calm down,” I told him, knowing it was futile, and it was with a sigh of relief that I finished and staggered back into the living room. The cloud clotted sky seeping through the blinds had everything washed in deep gray, something I knew my hangover would appreciate.

  I wondered if I should congratulate myself on getting through the second worst day of my life, but it didn’t seem like something to throw a party over. I couldn’t imagine looking back on this day and thinking, Jeez, I’m glad I got through that, it’s made me so much stronger. That was such a bullshit line, if anything it made me weaker and more jaded than I’d ever thought possible. What doesn’t kill you immediately will kill you eventually might have been more accurate.

  I went through my voicemails, deleting them after hearing a few seconds of each familiar voice, and then scrolled through the texts, mentally answering the easiest of questions, disregarding the rest which made my head hurt.

  You okay? Well, I still had my health, right?

  Need company? Not unless you bring vodka.

  Anything I can do? I’m not sure, how good are you at performing lobotomies?

  But I didn’t say any of that, I was Ben “I’m Too Nice” Hayden, so I decided on a mass text, knowing Carissa would claim it was tacky.

  Thanks everyone, but I’m fine. You’re all very nice to be concerned, but I’m not up for visitors yet, and I don’t need anything. I’ll be in touch soon.

  I’d barely set my phone on the scratched glass coffee table when it blinked yet again, alight with a new message. The sender was someone I hadn’t spoken to in five months.

  Carissa’s name stared up at me.

  My heart plummeted through my body like a pinball before shooting back in my chest, thrashing wildly, like it had suddenly become claustrophobic inside my rib cage.

  Hi babe was all it said, and I about had a coronary.

  It took a while to get my butterfingers in gear and respond. Is that really you?

  No, it’s Barbara Bush. How’s my hair? Of course it’s me.

  I blundered into the home office, searching for the landline, cell phone still clutched in my iron grip. I found Jess’s crumpled business card on my desk and smoothed it out with a shaky hand.

  “Are you doing this right now?” I demanded, as soon as the call had connected, and she’d given a soft and sleepy hello.

  “Who is this?”

  “Ben. I left Carissa’s cell phone with you. Are you using it to text me? Messages are being sent from her number. I never deleted her contact information.”

  “I’m not even at the office. I told you what would happen, are you really surprised?” She waited for a few beats. “This is what you wanted, right? Right. So talk to her, not me.”

  I hung up and sunk into my desk chair, reading Carissa’s last text over and over. It sounded like her, through and through. I could imagine her saying this aloud, how her lips would move, the way her tongue would soften the consonants. The way she talked mesmerized me when I’d first met her. I used to wish I was those words she played with, her tongue wrapping around them like she was rolling a knot into a cherry stem.

  I miss you so much, I finally typed. I want you back so badly.

  I miss you too.

  We were supposed to get married yesterday.

  I know. December 1st. I checked the weather report. It would have been perfect.

  I couldn’t handle it, I had to start drinking as soon as I woke up.

  That’ll do wonders for your liver.

  I tried laughing, but it came out as something near a hacking snort. I love you. I always have. I can’t even tell you how sorry I am about that night. I shouldn’t have left you. I’ll never forgive myself for being such an asshole.

  You were mad.

  Still.

  Still, nothing. You didn’t mean it. You didn’t know what would happen.

  How scared were you that night, I
wanted to ask. Did you think about me when that asshole was doing what he did? I couldn’t imagine how terrified she must have been. She was so fragile, whatever she acted like. I remember wondering if I’d break her in half the first time I took her blouse off. She reminded me of a type of flower my grandma grew in her garden. If you so much as touched it, all the petals fell off.

  The second I left our house, she’d had no chance at all. She’d been dead as soon as he snuck in our screen-less back window.

  But this wasn’t her, it was a machine. The machine only knew as much as her texts and emails knew. Didn’t it?

  Do you know what happened?

  Google told me.

  You shouldn’t have looked it up.

  Well, I wanted to know.

  I saw your wedding dress.

  You bastard, you weren’t supposed to look!

  I couldn’t help it. Even if I didn’t want to look for it, I’d have found it by accident. I had to find something to bury you in.

  Oh yeah? What’d you choose? I hope not those stockings with the seams up the back. I know you like them, but they look like ten bucks a dance.

  I would have spent way more than ten bucks if I saw her offering dances. I would have given her my wallet, the keys to my car.

  The blue dress, the one with the two swans on the collar. That dress was the only one she owned with a high enough collar to cover the slashed skin across her throat. I’d given it to the funeral home and promptly got into a fight with the director. I wanted to dress her, thinking they wouldn’t be gentle enough, they couldn’t handle her limbs with enough care. I knew how modest she could be, how she wouldn’t have wanted this stooped old man to see her naked. Half the time she wouldn’t even let me see her naked. I kept your engagement ring. Half of me wanted you to have it, but I just couldn’t let it go.

  I think it’s better that you keep it, if it makes you less sad.

  A stupid diamond ring couldn’t make me less sad. It hadn’t even made me sad to spend four months’ pay on it. I’ve been taking it with me everywhere.

  I’m sure it looks lovely on your sausage fingers. How’s Dexter?

  She always did skirt back to lighter topics when she sensed I was upset, knew when to segue into happier territories.

  He misses his mommy. But he sleeps with me now.

  No shit?

  I was surprised, too.

  Well I’m glad you two have each other. He always made me feel better when I was sad.

  She didn’t know what sad was, what it entailed. Sad couldn’t capture it. I was looking at sad in the rearview mirror. Sad was a city I lived in once. I’d give anything to get out of Devastation, population me, and move back to Sad. I felt like a gutted building, boards over my windows, exterior wrapped in the same CRIME SCENE tape the cops had tacked up that awful morning.

  My vision glazed over. I dragged the back of my wrist over my eyes, smearing off tears.

  I’d rather have you.

  Well…you kind of have me.

  That was true, this was better than nothing, it would suffice in the meantime.

  I ’d never used drugs before. I smoked a joint with a friend in high school once, and it made me vomit so forcefully I never tried it again, but I’d heard from TV documentaries that during the beginning stages of upper use, the euphoria was undeniable.

  I found that euphoria was as good a descriptor as any when I wondered what to call the feeling of having the slenderest shred of Carissa back. It was similar to the way I’d felt when we’d first started dating. A terrifying kind of happiness—what if it was all some joke, what if she looked at me one day and decided she’d made some huge mistake, broke it off? I didn’t know the future any more than I knew ancient Aramaic.

  I didn’t know what would come of reuniting with this pale imitation, whether it would cripple me in the end, but it was the only weak light I could see through the dense fog hovering over the horizon. You needed crutches when you broke your leg, right? You needed something to prop you up, get you through it.

  “Who do you keep talking to?” My mother’s eyebrow arched as she lifted Carissa’s favorite floral teacup to her lips. I’d bitten down my objections when she selected it from the cabinets, but there was something sick and unnatural about her vein-knotted hands looped around that teacup rather than Carissa’s marble-white fingers. “I’ve asked you the same question three times.”

  “Sorry.” I put my cell phone aside and took a slug of black coffee. “What did you say?”

  “I asked how work was going. Have you started full-time again yet?”

  “For a few days, now,” I said, searching for some details that could possibly bore her out the door. “Testing day’s almost here. The engineers have been getting snippy because I keep finding bugs and whatnot…”

  Her eyes glazed over as she gave me a smile. “Sounds like you’re settling in again.”

  My cell phone vibrated on the table, making her teacup chatter against the saucer. Her pupils darted over to the illuminated screen, but I tucked it out of sight.

  She pretended she hadn’t been sneaking a glance, and I pretended I hadn’t noticed her nosiness. She gave a small sigh before grudgingly rising, collecting her dishes, and dumping them in the sink.

  “I should get going, hon. The manager will be wondering where I’ve run off to.”

  I bobbed my head, trying not to seem relieved to chivvy her out the door, one hand wrapped around the cell phone in my pocket, the other waving goodbye as she walked, head down, on the way to her Buick in my driveway.

  She wrenched the driver’s side door open and looked at me. “Don’t forget about Kylie. Alanna said you were picking her up after school.”

  “I haven’t forgotten. Had to go shopping for juice boxes and Cheetos just for her.” I waved again as my mother shut the car door, standing in the doorway until her Buick disappeared around the corner.

  Sorry. I’m back.

  I’m always here. Don’t worry.

  D exter!” Kylie sang, bursting through the front door, laden down with a pink backpack that smacked the back of her legs with every step she took. “Where is he?”

  “Probably taking a nap,” I lied, shutting the door behind me. It was more likely he’d raced into the nearest hidey hole he could find after hearing Kylie. She’d always been a little too fond of him.

  My fingers itched to grab the cell phone nestled in my pocket. I’d ignored the urge throughout the drive to and from the elementary school, but now it felt like it was about to swallow me whole.

  She wouldn’t disappear in the few hours I spent with Kylie. I knew that. And if the real Carissa were around, she’d tell me in no uncertain terms that spending time with Kylie, unencumbered time, was more important than being glued to my phone.

  It had been months since she died, but I’d never had a discussion about Carissa with Kylie. I was barely equipped to deal with death myself; how could I possibly talk to Kylie about it?

  But here she was, standing in the kitchen of the house in which the death had occurred for the first time since it happened. I couldn’t avoid it any more than I could avoid gravity. There was no way the topic wouldn’t come up, not when Carissa had painted Kylie’s nails right here at the kitchen table, not when she’d given Kylie a princess makeover in the living room and watched Frozen so often it gave her searing headaches.

  I opened my mouth, determined to broach the subject, but all I wound up saying was, “Want some Cheetos?”

  “Okay.” She slid her backpack off her shoulders, letting it hit the floor with a thud.

  I rustled with the cellophane bag loudly to make up for the silence, casting about my mind for snippets I’d read online about helping children deal with death. Use clear, simple words. Try to let them lead the conversation. Don’t let them confuse death with sleep; they might refuse to go to bed, thinking they’d die, too. Don’t hide your own feelings; then they might hide theirs, thinking it’s shameful. If you shelter them from those
realities, it only denies them the opportunity to express their own emotions. Help them remember the person, but don’t dwell on sad feelings.

  My head spun as it worked through everything I’d read. Bringing it up would slash into old wounds, wouldn’t it? Would that constitute dwelling?

  I dumped some Cheetos into a bowl and opened my mouth before I lost my nerve. “Hey Kylie, I was wondering if you wanted to talk about Carissa.”

  She pulled off her beanie, a frizz of staticky hair standing at attention on the top of her head. “Do you want to talk about her?”

  “I’ll do whatever you want to do. I’m sure your mom has talked to you about it, but I haven’t.”

  “Mommy says she’s in heaven.”

  “Yeah.” I bobbed my head, crunching on a Cheeto, trying and failing to come up with simple, clear words to describe the breadth of emotions I felt. There was nothing simple about what happened. I couldn’t begin to articulate the scope of feelings I’d been wallowing in since the end of July. The landscape of grief was too rocky for words. “I’m still really sad about it, too, so if you ever want to talk to me about her, you can.”

  She accepted the bowl I held out with both her little hands. “Do you think she knows we miss her?”

  “I think so.”

  “I miss how she used to take me into work with her sometimes,” she said, following me into the living room. “She showed me her wedding dress there, when it was almost finished.”