I started toward the chic prefab-style row houses that had popped up off Bond Street. Back on safe ground, I returned my attention to my phone and typed:
I wish I were kidding.
But Wren. How much were they really taking? Like a couple of T-shirts? ’Cause that’s weird, but I guess it’s not the end of the world.
No! I kid you not, G. They had three garbage bags worth of stuff—memorabilia from the show, everything. They’d asked us to pick up more trash bags and, when we got back from the bagel place, we realized why! We thought they were for cleaning things out, but Mallory was on her way to ask the doorman for A LUGGAGE RACK!!!!!
I am literally covering my eyes to shield myself from what you’re telling me.
I KNOW. No words. Luckily, we got back from lunch just in time. George stopped them in the hallway and pulled out the charm. He was super diplomatic, which is good because I would have lost my mind. He explained that, even if Blair put this stuff in the donation pile, that fact wasn’t confirmed until the family made sure they didn’t want to keep it for themselves or for the tribute. That she and Brian and Keith couldn’t just leave with Stewart’s stuff! I think they still snuck a bag or two. Mallory was a bit TOO willing to take out the trash at the end.
I mean. I can’t even. That that even needed to be said! I’m appalled.
Oh, I know. Trust me. Me too. It’s worse than I even imagined.
Grotesque. And so so dark.
I could picture Gretchen at her desk, clear but for her laptop, Tata Harper hand cream, and the dregs of her afternoon coffee.
And, of course, Blair and Keith claimed they didn’t realize what was happening because they were in the other room sorting Stewart’s art collection. They’re circling those paintings like prey. And Blair said—even though she supposedly didn’t sanction them taking Stewart’s stuff—that she was confident that SHE knew Stewart and his family well enough to decide what was valuable and what was disposable.
It must be so nice to know everything about everything.
Must be. Meanwhile, Mal kept talking about how it was all going to be donated anyway. Did it ever occur to her that there are people who need that stuff more than she does? It’s called, ‘a good cause!’ CHARITY!
She thinks her hoarding IS a good cause.
OMG—I can’t believe I forgot to mention the best part: When George and I walked into the den to assess what damage they’d done, we found Keith alone HOLDING STEWART’S EMMY!! He was gazing at it like some girl he’d roofied.
Stop.
I wish I could.
I did stop at the curb, as I waited for the light. I swear it blinked a thousand times before changing. I was impatient to get home and was almost to my block, a tiny street tucked between Hoyt and Smith.
These people are next level. Where was Willow?
By then, she had left to go to her holistic healing workshop, but not before making the whole apartment smell of fried hair. G, I’m not even sure what else she burned of Stewart’s. She kept taking stuff and lighting it on fire in this portable kiln thing! Now, she wants us all to get together for a goodbye ceremony in his honor.
That sounds like a lot of quinoa and Moon Juice powders. You’re obviously not going to that.
I think I’ll probably have to.
Why?
I could sense the irritation in Gretchen’s tone, even without hearing her voice. She could never understand why I didn’t say “Screw it!” more often and refuse to care.
I don’t know. Willow means well, I think, even if she’s forcing her beliefs down everyone else’s throats. She’s the least of the problem. Anyway, if I didn’t go, they’d all probably never speak to me again.
And that would be bad because—?
Fair question.
Just opt out of all of it.
I thought about Stewart’s will, his request that I be part of determining his epilogue. I couldn’t tell Gretchen because I had promised George I’d keep the secret.
I can’t without abdicating all control over how Stewart is remembered. George and I decided we would just get in and out. But I don’t care what Willow says. I’m not doing ayahuasca. I’m out of my head enough without Peruvian acid.
Interesting.
Not really. I’ve never been big on hallucinogenics. Remember that time I did mushrooms and spent the entire night rocking on Gabriel’s bathroom floor, insisting that I’d seen a shark in the toilet?
Not the drugs! You and Geeeeeeeorge.
Gretchen stretched out his name like she was about to launch into a rousing rendition of “Sitting in a Tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”
I stopped short, almost slamming into a woman pushing a stroller. I mumbled an apology; she barely noticed.
What about me and George?
You’re going to lunch together, stopping the Mallory heist together, suffering through weird New Age ceremonies together? Suddenly, he has CHARM. I thought we hated him.
Well, we don’t love him, but he’s our . . . my . . . best option at the moment. At least he’s not trying to steal Stewart’s belongings, while pretending to preserve his memory. Plus, I have no choice but to meet with him and Helen again, and I’d rather not have everyone in the room hate me.
If you say so.
I could feel Gretchen’s sly smile and I wanted to give her a gentle shove.
Believe it or not, I don’t see my friend’s death as an opportunity for a fling with some cheesy LA lawyer.
There was a pause while Gretchen typed and then, I assume, erased something and started over. My brownstone was in sight, the soft yellow filter of magic hour lighting it up like a treasure chest. I wanted to break into a run. The temperature was dropping by degrees. Why I couldn’t get myself to dress appropriately?
Finally, she wrote,
Totally.
That took a long time.
Maybe Gretchen was annoyed. Could I blame her? I was conscious that Stewart’s death was becoming an obsession for me. Was that normal or was it getting out of hand? Either way, I needed to at least pretend I cared about what was happening with the other people in my life too.
I typed,
So, what’s up with you?
Nada. Just the usual. Work.
Do you want to grab a drink tomorrow night?
Ah. I can’t tomorrow, sadly.
You’ve been so busy this last week!
I know, I know. Work is just insane. Next weekend though?
I climbed the steps to my building’s front door and opened my purse to rummage for keys. Stewart’s prescription was stuffed in there; I’d forgotten. I paused. I wanted to tell Gretchen, but that seemed like an invasion of Stewart’s privacy. Also, I didn’t know if pocketing it had been a questionable move. I typed,
I’ll let you go work. But, hey, Gretch, what do you know about Cymbalta?
Cymbalta can help.
Very funny. I’ve seen the commercials. But, I mean, do you know why someone would take it?
Gretchen’s parents were psychiatrists, so she’d osmosed this kind of information.
You’d take it if you were depressed and SSRIs weren’t doing enough. Why? Are you taking Cymbalta?
No. Just curious. Although maybe after dealing with these horrible people, I’ll need to look into it.
Well, for what it’s worth, I don’t recommend it. One of the supposed side effects is something called “brain zaps.”
Ack! What’s that? That’s a real thing?
I don’t know, lady. But it doesn’t sound good.
Once upstairs in my apartment, I sent Jimmy a text about what he’d missed that day: The bags of figurines, records, and clothes with which Mallory and Brian had tried to abscond. I figured he’d appreciate it, but he did
n’t answer. For someone who said we should be better about prioritizing time together, he wasn’t being very attentive—and this was only week one. I felt a pang of disappointment, but told myself not to feel hurt. This part of Jimmy—the self-absorbed side—was what Stewart had struggled with most. It was probably the reason they’d drifted a bit in recent years.
I opened my fridge and contemplated dinner. A pruned green pepper stared back at me. I gave up and closed it. In my cabinet sat a loan bag of rice cakes. Maybe I wasn’t hungry after all. Chris Harrison gave me an impatient head butt. Just because you’re not eating . . .
Leaning against my kitchen counter after feeding him, I thought about calling my mother. I knew she was desperate to be in touch. I wasn’t sure why I was avoiding her anymore. I don’t know if I thought that hearing her voice would demolish my defenses or if I was worried she’d be blasé about what happened—too quick to try to move past the issue.
The truth is, Helen had her negative feelings about me, but my mother had her opinions about Stewart too. I was worried she’d try to tell me that there were silver linings to his death when it came to my openness and making new friends. I didn’t want to hear that right now. She always felt I allowed Stewart to live for me, while I played the background. The straight man.
Sated, Chris Harrison flopped to the ground in front of me and bared his white fluffy stomach (although I knew he’d be affronted if I rubbed it). I bent down and nuzzled his nose with my own. Sometimes I felt jealous of his simple life—less so when I smelled his food.
I scrolled through my phone to check my email. Sometime in the midst of sorting Stewart’s Philip Roth novels and packing up his Heath Ceramics dishware, I had glimpsed a message in my inbox from my boss, Anton. He rarely checked in. He had this philosophy about giving his employees autonomy, which I appreciated. I scrolled through and found the note:
Hi Wren,
Greetings from sunny Panama!
As we discussed, I’m here in a remote southern area scouting out possible project sites. There are no indoor toilets, but there’s plenty of sun—just how I like it! Looks likely that this will be our next Operation Sewage destination. The infrastructure here is crap—ha! Just a bit of plumbing and drainage humor.
Checking in to make sure you don’t need anything from me for the Collins Foundation grant this go around. I know you’re old hat at this, but Wi-Fi is spotty here and I want to make sure I can make myself available in a timely fashion, if needed.
Thanks,
Anton
cause of death: A rare flesh-eating disease—or a rock climbing accident. Maybe both.
after-death ritual: Tribal burning.
service: At IHOP. He is a citizen of the world and happens to love their chocolate chip pancakes. Win-win.
processional music: Seneca Indians’ funeral chant.
memorial buffet: Gorp. Or those pancakes.
To say I had been neglecting my job was an understatement. The deadline for one of our most substantial biannual grants was coming up and—although we were awarded it every year and the application was a formality—there was a bunch of paperwork involved. It was paperwork I had done a thousand times before. I was bored just thinking about it; it seemed so insignificant in the wake of Stewart’s death. I’m sure the thousands of people who now had indoor plumbing because of Anton’s work would disagree. But a person, besides my boss, could only get so stimulated at the thought of sewer systems. I tried to force myself to start on it. I even sat down on my couch, pulled my soft gray blanket over my lap, and opened my computer. But then I remembered that I needed to find a charity partner for Stewart’s tribute—the perfect procrastination!
Unfortunately, one google of “aneurysm research” yielded me the results I needed: the Brain Aneurysm Foundation. Clearly the perfect organization with which to partner. I copied and pasted the link and emailed it to Helen with a quick note. Then I stared at the site’s homepage. Here, in front of me, was everything I needed to know about what happened to Stewart. Was I ready for answers? I took a deep breath and clicked on “Risk Factors.” That seemed like a manageable place to start. Smoking, cocaine use, traumatic head injury. I flashed back again to Stewart falling off the monkey bars at recess. I was being crazy, right?
I closed the browser tab. This was not healthy. I considered working after all, but the siren call of Facebook won out. As long as I was making poor decisions. I navigated to Stewart’s page like it was beyond my control, my trackpad like an Ouija board. My stomach fluttered with anticipation as it loaded, but I only needed to catch a glimpse of a post that began, “Oh, dearest Stu!” to want to flee the outpouring of noxious grief. I don’t know what I’d hoped to find. I stared at Stewart’s profile picture, sitting on the sidewalk against a graffitied building somewhere in either Brooklyn, Manhattan, or Downtown LA. Hard to tell. Some urban scape. He had Ray-Bans on, his sandy hair disheveled to perfection like windblown grass. He was wearing earbuds, throwback Nikes, and that Pixies T-shirt that he loved. I wanted to reach inside the photograph and tap him so he turned toward me. I wanted to crawl inside the image and curl up in his lap—something I hadn’t done in years, probably since that one night—and drop my head onto his shoulder. God, I missed him. And it had been less than a week. Suddenly, my body felt like it weighed five hundred pounds. I could barely lift my arm. I almost shut my eyes and tried drifting off, but I don’t do naps. If by some miracle I fell asleep, I knew I’d wake up groggy and feeling worse than before.
Desperate for escape, I navigated to my Facebook messages, realizing that I hadn’t checked them since the night Gretchen had broken the news to me. I hadn’t even opened Instagram. There were five or six notes from old middle and high school friends with whom we hadn’t kept in regular touch:
I can’t believe it.
It seems impossible.
He was so alive.
A piece of our childhood, our shared history.
Do you know the details?
Did he suffer?
I could hear Stewart’s voice now, so knowledgeable after this course he took a few years ago at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center. (Sarah Paulson, Michelle Williams, and Busy Philipps all recommended it.) He didn’t take to the meditation for long, which is why I’d scoffed at Willow’s reference to kundalini, but the underlying concepts made sense to him as guidelines for life. I was complaining about my stomach hurting. I went through a period when it always did, before I knew about the lactose intolerance and stopped eating so much cheddar cheese.
“Pain is a part of life,” he preached. “But suffering is a choice.”
“Except for your lectures. Those I have no choice but to suffer through.”
He was undeterred. “I’m just saying, you don’t have to let the pain upset you. You can sit with it and find peace in the stillness; find equanimity in accepting how you feel in this moment, even if it’s not entirely comfortable.”
“I’m less upset about the pain and more upset that I have to give up coffee because it’s too acidic. What does the Dalai Lama say about caffeine?”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m serious.”
“I know.”
“Life is hard. But you don’t have to let that fact ruin everything.”
It was a typical Stewart rhapsody. When he got into something, he invested fully and became obsessed with bringing everyone he loved along for the ride. I felt a pang of regret. Maybe I should have taken him more seriously? Maybe I should take a mindfulness course as a tribute to him? I felt plenty uncomfortable right now. Could I sit with it? Did I want to?
I shifted my computer on my lap. My joints felt achy. I seemed to have inherited Stewart’s hypochondria in the wake of his death. Did he pass it onto me as he breezed, like a whisper, past my shoulder on his way to the next realm?
I answered the messages from top to bottom—most recent to oldest—winding
up back at Morgan Tobler’s note from the day Stewart died. Navigating to her message, it occurred to me that Morgan knew before I did—and that felt bad. Everyone knew before me. Social media has changed the nature of death, of breaking even the most personal news.
Oh, Morgan. She was a nice girl, however bland and accident prone. You know those people who trip over air?
cause of death: Freak accident. There are too many possibilities to consider.
after-death ritual: Burial. Jewish cemetery.
service: Suburban synagogue. Family, congregation, school fundraising committee members, book (don’t you mean Trader Joe’s wine?) club friends.
processional music: Whitney Houston. “The Greatest Love of All.” (Spoiler alert: It’s inside of you.)
memorial buffet: Potluck. Multiple couscous salads due to a miscommunication between the organizers. All of them under-salted.
I opened her Facebook message, prepared to cut and paste the same basic explanation. After all, I didn’t know much myself. There wasn’t much to know—except that sometimes life can really “f you in the a,” as they say. Bad things happen.
I read her note:
Wren,
I’m so sorry to bother you at what has to be an awful time. I know how close you and Stu were. Oy. What horrible news! I can’t remember the last time I saw him; it must have been our ten-year reunion? He gave that funny speech in tribute to Mr. Bender. They always had a funny shtick. Anyway, this is kind of strange: I know it’s none of my business really, but they didn’t include the cause of death in the article. Was it an accident? What happened? I figured you might know, as you guys were so tight back in the day.
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