Competitive Grieving

by Nora Zelevansky

  after-death ritual: Who gives a fuck? (That’s what he would say—not me.)

  service: big. Attended by the generations of Jimmys I have always believed would exist, plus his lifelong buddies. He’s the kind of guy people keep around.

  processional music: Slick Rick’s “Children’s Story,” or Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.”

  memorial buffet: Three Words: Six. Foot. Hero.

  He kissed me on the cheek, then let his eyes rest on Gretchen. “So. You’re here.” He frowned.

  “Hello, James.” No one calls Jimmy “James.” She was trying to annoy him and probably succeeding. I couldn’t even remember why there was so much tension between these two. They just loved to hate each other, I guess. I wasn’t in the mood for their shtick.

  He nodded his chin at her curtly. “Always a pleasure.”

  “Is it really though?”

  “I was being polite.”

  “Oh! Is that a new trick? To go with that trim new haircut?” I had noticed too: Jimmy was shaving his head these days, surely because he’d gotten balder.

  “Yeah. It’s a trick called behaving like an adult. I would teach you about it, but you know what they say about old dogs.”

  Gretchen’s mouth dropped open, then snapped shut. “Whatever. I’m going to top off my drink. And by that I mean escape before I catch something nasty from questionable company. See you in a minute, Wren.”

  Jimmy grunted, although I swear I saw him checking out her ass as she stalked away. When he turned back to face me, his expression softened. “Thank God you’re here.”

  “Back at you. It’s so good to see you. Seriously. All these people . . .” I ran a hand through my hair and down my cheek.

  “I know. It’s horrible. The situation is horrible. They’re all horrible. Everything is pretty much horrible.”

  “I mean, it’s been a long time since I saw all of these people in one place. Is it possible that they got worse?” Were Keith and Blair always this bad? Or were their most deplorable qualities on parade under the circumstances?

  The circumstances. Stewart. Gone.

  Jimmy nodded. “Looking around this room, I’m astounded by what bad taste Stu had in friends—other friends. Obviously.”

  “Obviously.” I was relieved not to be alone in my judgements. From a distance, I watched Keith rubbing Blair’s back. Large, mushy, concentric circles. Better her than me. I pulled my attention back to Jimmy. “How are you doing, with all this?”

  “I hadn’t talked to Stu in a while.” Tamping down emotion, Jimmy pulled his mouth to the right making a highway pileup of his lips. “I wish I had made more of an effort, but that seems to be going around. I was just talking to his grad school friends. None of them had spoken to him in ages either.”

  “I guess he was busy,” I said. Not because I believed it.

  “Busy star-fucking maybe.”

  I let out a single sharp laugh in surprise, then covered my mouth.

  “Oh, c’mon, Wren. I wouldn’t say it to anybody but you, but Stu wasn’t exactly above being distracted by the fame.”

  “You don’t have to tell me. He once blew me off for an Olsen twin.”

  Jimmy sighed, letting it all sink in. “Which twin though? ’Cause I feel like that’s okay if it was Mary Kate. But Ashley? That’s not cool.”

  “Which is the one who showers?”

  Jimmy and I had migrated to a far wall between two windows. I glanced outside: cabs zoomed by between Central Park West’s broken white lines.

  “I can’t believe it.” Jimmy remarked, under his breath.

  “I know.” Not for the first time, an image popped into my head of a cartoon brain exploding into a mushroom cloud of particles, then disappearing into the ethos. Mind blown.

  “It’s like a part of our childhood just disappeared, you know? I keep picturing Stewart as a kid, like when we became tight, maybe in fourth grade. Who could have predicted this? He has—had—so much presence. I would have thought he’d outlive us all. He was always so . . . big.”

  That was funny coming from Jimmy, who was physically hulking by comparison, but I knew what he meant.

  “When did you last talk to him?” he asked.

  “A couple of days before . . .”

  “That’s good. If he was keeping in touch with you, he still knew some of what was important.” I had this impulse to grab Jimmy’s enormous arm and wrap it around my shoulders.

  Instead, I asked, “Did you talk to his mom yet?”

  “Yeah.” He looked at his shiny shoes, avoiding eye contact as his grew teary. “She was really sweet. She said I was ‘family.’ It almost killed me. You?”

  “I’ve been avoiding it.” I shook my head. “She scares me. Especially today.”

  “You always said that. I never got it. She’s a pussycat.”

  “With really sharp claws.”

  We got quiet again. It was comforting just to stand next to Jimmy, like this was the closest I would ever get to Stewart again. The old Stewart. The one I wanted to remember most. I never wanted to leave his side.

  “We let too much time pass without seeing each other,” Jimmy said finally.

  “You and Stewart?”

  “Me and you.” He was staring hard at the ice clinking around in his almost empty glass. “Let’s not do that again.”

  I nodded.

  “Anyway,” he coughed, changing course. “What’s up with you? Boyfriend?”

  “Not since Doug. Two years ago.”

  “That’s the vegan do-gooder guy, right? What happened with him again?”

  “He hooked up with a D-list celebrity chef on a media trip to build a well in Kenya.”

  Jimmy almost did a spit-take before choking out a loud laugh. “Wow. I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Yeah. It was pretty awesome. He asked me to contribute to his Kickstarter campaign later that same week.”

  “No. He didn’t.”

  “He did. Although maybe it was GoFundMe?”

  “Did you tell him to go fuck himself?”

  “Nope. I sent him fifty dollars. I didn’t want to punish the thirsty people. Plus, I wanted to be the bigger person.”

  “The bigger person or the bigger sucker?”

  “Touché.” I smoothed the front of my dress. “I was supposed to get a reusable water bottle for my donation, but it never came. That guy could never deliver, if you know what I mean.”

  Jimmy chuckled. “He sounds like a real gem.”

  “Yeah, it didn’t feel like a huge loss. The relationship, I mean, not the water bottle. That I really wanted.” I lifted my glass now, toasting no one. “I know how to pick ’em too! Stewart and I had that in common.”

  “Speaking of getting rid of trash, what about work? You still researching sewage?”

  I shot Jimmy a dirty look. “Well, when you say it like that, it sounds so glamorous.”

  As a stockbroker, Jimmy could never wrap his mind around my job, writing grant proposals for a nonprofit that builds infrastructure in developing nations. Sometimes I suspected that my work sounded so boring that people in general just zoned out when it came up. It could be rewarding in practice, though, I told myself. At least, I think I believed that at some point. And it got more interesting once you rose through the ranks and began wooing big donors and traveling to the sites where the grant money was implemented. Or so I’d heard.

  In truth, it had taken me awhile to find grant writing—and I wasn’t sure where to go from here. At first, I tested the waters in marketing (too frat boy), PR (too Blair), and journalism (long story). But once I found the grant path, it seemed as inevitable as inheriting my mother’s high cheekbones and my father’s pointy chin. When you’re the child of a poet and short-fiction writer respectively, you learn more about dangling participles than about econom
ics—and maybe you’re not so prepared for a nine-to-five office job. Maybe you find something that involves writing and allows you to work remotely and make the world a slightly better place. Maybe you find something safe, and, okay, tame, but reliable. Because you’ve seen what the unstable alternative looks like.

  Jimmy must have been thinking the same thing. “Hey, do you remember that time you and Stu got into that huge argument ’cause he couldn’t understand why you didn’t want to be something flashy when you grew up?”

  Did I? That would be a major yes. I had played that scene over in my head a thousand times throughout the years—and at least ten after my argument with Stewart the other night.

  We were probably thirteen years old. Jimmy and I were sitting on the tall stone wall that divides Riverside Park from the sidewalk, mindless of the ten-foot drop behind us. We were only a block from Auburn Prep, but students came here to hang out and smoke, and the school pretended not to notice. The ground was littered with cigarette butts and the sprouts of plants so strong they’d pushed their way through the concrete. Stewart—in one of his perfect beat-up flannels—was pacing in front of us, ranting about how no one would ever be as talented as Kurt Cobain, and how he was an asshole for killing himself because he’d robbed the world of his gift. “I mean, what a dick? Am I right?”

  We’d heard this one before. Jimmy nodded absently. It was hard to tear your eyes from Stewart when he was like this, despite the broken record. He was magnetic, I guess a natural performer. Even a passing homeless man paused to listen.

  “Maybe he was in a lot of pain, Stewart,” I said, “and didn’t want to be alive anymore.”

  Jimmy looked at me sideways like I was bonkers to engage. I knew it was pointless, but I was irritated. Enough with Stewart’s sweeping statements! I wasn’t in the mood to be agreeable.

  “Fuck that. We’re all in pain.”

  “We are?” Jimmy. He was never one for mining the emotional depths.

  “Why should he have to live in service to other people if he’s unhappy?” I argued.

  “Because! The greater good! The world relies on artists and truth-tellers to elevate it! That’s why we have to follow our dreams. Not just for ourselves! For everyone! We’re all responsible for making the world more colorful, so other people can bear it. Right, Jimmy? Tell her!”

  “The only thing I’m responsible for is myself and making a lot of money,” Jimmy winked at me. “I’m gonna be crazy rich.”

  Stewart ignored that. “I’m gonna be someone important and make the world more interesting! I’m going to be an actor or an artist . . . or a musician!”

  “You’re tone-deaf.”

  To underline my jab, I puckered my lips, stained hot pink with perfumed lipstick.

  “Who cares? I’m still gonna make the world more vibrant! What about you, Wren? You’re not gonna do that as an investigative reporter? When you travel the world, uncovering political corruption and heart-wrenching instances of human kindness?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know if I’m gonna be a reporter anymore.”

  “Wait, what? Why? That’s what you’ve always wanted to do! You were born to write. Look at your parents!”

  “Yeah, but it’s hard and not very practical.” I flipped my hair. I loved to flip my hair back then. Attitude for days. I didn’t even believe what I was saying; I had every intention of traveling the globe as a journalist. I was just sick of listening to Stewart pontificate. Other people swooned for his “passionate side,” but I knew the real him and liked to remind him of that. Take him down a notch.

  “Seriously?” Stewart’s face fell. He looked like an elementary school kid forgotten at pickup. “But what else would you do?”

  “I don’t know. Be a teacher?”

  “A teacher?” He was incredulous, his face contorted in disbelief. “A fucking teacher? That’s the dream?”

  “Stewart. Leave me alone. Not everyone has to see the world like you do.”

  He stepped in front of me and rested his hands on my knees, looking up at my face through light lashes. “Wren. You’re an amazing person. You have to have bigger dreams than that. For the good of mankind!”

  “Womankind. And no. I don’t. I don’t want to be like my parents, never knowing where rent is coming from. Always hustling to have ‘experiences.’ I want to be stable. That’s the dream.” My parents had been up until 2:30 a.m. the night before, applying for some artists’ residency in Quebec City. Meanwhile, I wanted to go on the eighth-grade overnight trip to Washington, DC, and they couldn’t afford to send me.

  “But Wren, that’s insane!”

  That was it! A shot of red-hot rage coursed through me. I knocked his hands off my knees and jumped down to face him, ignoring the sting as I scraped my thigh in the process. “No, Stewart! It’s not insane. Not everyone looks at the world through your penthouse windows!”

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m some clueless rich kid. Wren, you know that I—!”

  “Hey, hey, hey folks, simmer down,” said Jimmy, giant hands upraised as if to stop traffic. “I don’t even understand what you’re fighting about and I don’t think you do either. Stewart, leave Wren alone. Wren, it’s your own fault for trying to talk to him when he’s like this.”

  “But—!” Stewart started again.

  “No.” Jimmy held up his hand and jumped down off the wall, brushing pebbles from his palms. “Lunch is over. We gotta get back. I have a pre-calc test and I haven’t studied. It’s gonna be a blood bath.”

  Stewart and I glowered at each other on the walk back to school and up the cement steps to our classrooms, his hands buried deep in his faded jean pockets. We made up a couple of days later, but it always remained a sore spot between us—my lack of big dreams and his lack of perspective.

  I would give anything to be fighting with him about that now instead of standing here praying that I’d never forget his face. “Yeah,” I said to Jimmy. “I remember.”

  “You guys could really piss each other off.”

  I put a finger to my lips. It had been a longtime since I wore lipstick that bright. “I keep hearing people call him ‘kind.’ Do you think he was kind?”

  Jimmy considered that. “When he wanted to be.” He swilled the last of his drink. “I should go find—”

  “There you are!” A blond, hair pink at the tips, bopped in front of us like a pogo stick—very pretty, very bouncy, very young. Was she talking to me? She took a step forward, threw her arms around Jimmy’s shoulders, giggled, and licked his ear. She was not talking to me. A tattoo on the inside of her arm read: It is what it is.

  So true.

  Flipping around to face the room, she pulled out her phone and positioned it in front of them for a selfie. “Jim! Look at the camera! But maybe look kind of, like, sad ’cause my post is gonna be about tragedy. Like hashtag YOLO. Or maybe about how lit this apartment is. ’Cause it’s so lit I-M-H-O. One of those two topics.”

  Jimmy recoiled, then stared at the floor like he wanted to disappear beneath it. Without making eye contact with me, he said, “This is Britnee. We, uh, came together.”

  I’m sure my eyes were like saucers: “You brought a . . . date? To a funeral?”

  “Oh, we’re just hanging out!” Britnee assured me. “I don’t do labels. I’m nonbinary. Except I’m definitely a cis girl ’cause, well, that’s a long story about my journey, but, like, in other ways. Like I’m not a vegan or carnivore—that depends on my mood and if I have my period and need a burger. And, like, I like Kanye and Taylor Swift. And sometimes even Blake Shelton. Everyone gives country music a bad rap in NYC, but I’m, like, open—to all possibilities. You have to make space for and invite in whatever brings inner bliss, you know? That’s how you find your truth.” Britnee powered down, considering that for a minute, then she seemed to wake up again, like someone swiped up on her back. “Anyway, hi! Who ar
e you?”

  “Um, I’m Wren.” I shot Jimmy an amused look. “Nice to meet you. How do you guys know each other again?” Been hanging out at the playground, Jim?

  “We met at a Yankee game. My dormmate’s dad gave us tickets and we were in the box next to Jimmy’s company! Her father is like super important in tech or something. Isn’t that cool? That’s another example of how I’m open, ’cause I would watch any sports team, as long as I’m in a box.”

  “Right.”

  Suddenly, Britnee assumed what presumably was meant to be a serious expression—her eyes wide, mouth puckered—and leaned toward me. It just made her look goofier. “Do you know Stanley?”

  I was genuinely confused by everything about her. “Stanley? No, I don’t know Stanley. At least I don’t think I know Stanley.” I looked at Jimmy. “Who is Stanley?”

  He shrugged. Got me.

  “The guy who died !” Britnee stage-whispered. “You know—Stanley!”

  At that choice moment, Gretchen returned. Bad timing for Jimmy. She took one look at Britnee, then at Jimmy and grinned big.

  “Oh!” I said. “You mean, Stewart. Yes. I did. He was my friend from childhood, like Jimmy.”

  “Right, Stewart. I always confuse him with that Stanley guy from CSI.” Britnee pushed her bottom lip out into a pout. “But, anyway, it’s so sad. Isn’t it so sad? Like so sad?”

  “It is so sad,” Gretchen nodded. “About Stanley.”

  “But I mean like, sooooo sad, right?”

  “Yes. Very, very sad.”

  “I didn’t even get to meet him, but I like, cried when I heard. ’Cause also he was famous and super cute. Poor Jimmy. It’s just so so so . . . I don’t know . . .”

  “Sad?” Gretchen offered.

  “Yes! It’s so sad!” Britnee got distracted by a passing tray of tuna tartare cones. “Ooh! Is that raw? I’m only eating raw food this month, while I intermittent fast. It really helps with digestion and longevity. Is that the word? For living for a long time? I always get it confused with ‘gingivitis.’ Oh, shoot. Is that weird to say here?”

  “Gingivitis?” I was trying to keep up.