There Will Be Lobster

by Sara Arnell

  “The paper didn’t say. It just said he’s in the hospital in New York City.”

  “So sad,” I said.

  I told my daughter.

  “I wish I could give him a get-well note,” she said. I loved that her first reaction to hearing he was hospitalized was to help, to lift his spirits, and send him hope and love.

  A light bulb flashed on in my head. I can help with this, I thought. I can help her get a note to Levon. I can move my meetings to the afternoon, let her skip school, and accomplish this. I could do something with my daughter that was uplifting for both of us.

  “Why don’t we try to find out which hospital he’s in and drop your note off at the nurses’ station. They’ll get it to him.”

  “We don’t know where he is.”

  “We can go around to the top cancer hospitals in the city and ask if he’s there.”

  “Really? Is that OK to do? I can also mail it. He can get it when he’s home.”

  “No. We have to try. It’s kind and thoughtful and caring,” I said a bit maniacally. “What have we got to lose except for a few hours of time?”

  She wrote the note. I Googled “cancer hospitals nyc.”

  The first hospital we went to was Beth Israel. We walked in and told the guard at the desk that we had a delivery for Levon Helm. We showed him the handwritten envelope with the note inside. He checked the computer and told us he couldn’t find a Levon Helm registered.

  “Oh,” I said. “Maybe we made a mistake. We might be at the wrong hospital. My mother told us he was here. Oh well. Thanks for your help.”

  “On to Mount Sinai,” I directed.

  We did the same thing. He wasn’t there either.

  Memorial Sloan Kettering was next on the list.

  We walked in and went to the security desk.

  “We have a delivery for Levon Helm. We want to leave it at the nurses’ station.”

  The guard checked the computer.

  He told us the floor and pointed toward the elevators.

  My daughter grabbed my hand.

  We did it. We found Levon, I thought to myself.

  I thanked the guard, and we proceeded to the elevators. We wanted to drop off the note then leave, no hanging around. When the elevator door opened, we saw Levon’s daughter and two of his band members standing across the hall. They were talking to a doctor. His daughter was crying.

  “Let’s go right to the nurses’ station. We can’t intrude,” I said, not taking my eyes off the conversation that was unfolding right in front of us. It didn’t occur to me that we were already intruding. It didn’t cross my mind when we saw his daughter crying that we should have stayed in the elevator and gone back down to the lobby and out the front door. I wanted to deliver the note for my daughter. I was mission-driven for her, at the expense of propriety. The wrongness of this still felt good to me. I was at the helm of a well-known ad agency. My decisions mattered, and I had decided to deliver this note come hell or high water.

  “Let’s go,” I said to her.

  “We have a note for Levon Helm,” I told the woman at the counter, with all the officiousness I could exude.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Can we leave it with you to get to him, please?”

  She looked blank. “Sure. You can leave it.”

  “Thank you!” I shouted forcefully.

  We ran to the elevator like two children going out to play.

  Outside the hospital, we stood on the street, stunned at what we’d just done. We had, through trial and error, found the hospital containing Levon Helm and dropped off a get-well note. I hoped he would read it and that he would write back to my daughter. That would make her so happy, I thought. I played out a scenario in my head where I got a call from the Helm family thanking me for our thoughtfulness and initiative. They wanted to hear the story of how we found him. They wanted to know all the details.

  “It really lifted his spirits,” they would say.

  “It reminded him how loved he is by so many people.”

  “He was touched by the note.”

  “It made a difference.”

  I would tell them that it was nothing and that we were compelled by a higher force to get him the note. That it was almost like we were guided there. That we knew it was a weird thing to do, but we had no choice. It was destiny.

  I learned a few days later that Levon Helm had died about fifteen minutes before we dropped off the note. It was in the paper. Now I knew what the family had been talking about in the hall with the doctor. I knew why the nurse looked at us expressionlessly. I scolded myself. I should have known better, I thought. We went to the obvious hospital choice last.

  I told my daughter that Levon passed away and that our note arrived too late.

  “Oh no,” she sighed. “Do you think his family has it?”

  “I’m sure it was given to his daughter. The nurses would never throw it out,” I consoled.

  Despite the outcome, I was elated. Delivering the note was an adventure, albeit a dark one. At first, I was worried that I stalked a dying man for my own salvation—that I stalked a dying man to impress my daughter with my can-do, never-give-up attitude. I knew that I was often straddling two worlds—moving among the living but trying to connect with the dead through frequent visits with mediums, psychics, and tarot card readers.

  But this felt different. This felt hopeful.

  “His funeral is next week, I said. “We should go to that.”

  We road-tripped to Woodstock. Levon’s casket was on the stage in the barn, where he performed. It was next to his drum kit. My daughter and I waited in line to walk past his body and pay our respects. When we were in front of the stage, a drop of water seemed to come from nowhere and dripped down the side of the coffin.

  “Look, Mom,” she said.

  “It’s a tear,” I told her. “Maybe he knows we tried to say goodbye.” I looked up to see if there was a ceiling leak. There wasn’t.

  “People connect the way they can,” I told her. “A breeze that ripples the curtains or sheets isn’t always just a breeze.”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  I told my mother all about walking past the casket and seeing it cry a tear.

  After a moment of silence, she quickly changed the topic, not wanting to discuss my otherworldly pursuits.

  “You should have seen all the birds I had at the feeders this morning,” she said, ending the conversation.

  Chapter 5

  Grandpa, Is that You?

  The stresses of work were causing me to lose a lot of sleep. There were nights when I felt like I tossed and turned constantly, getting very little rest. I was always tired and “a quart short” as my mother frequently noted. I’m more than a quart short, I thought. I was in over my head and drowning.

  I woke early one morning before the sun was up, typical for me in my new sleepless state. But this morning was different. It felt like I was awoken by a touch to my foot. It was hanging off the bed, poking out from under the covers. I rolled over and opened my eyes. No one was there.

  I knew my foot had been touched. It was as if someone was sitting at the foot of my bed, gently rubbing and jiggling my foot to wake me up. It was such a familiar feeling. My grandfather, who helped raise my sister and me, used to wake me this way every morning for school. I bolted upright in bed and let out the words “Grandpa, is that you?”

  My heart was pounding. Ever since my beloved grandfather died in 1989, I had been longing for a vision or sign from him. One time I thought I saw his face in the clouds as I was lying in the grass, trying to connect with the universe in some way. I eventually thought I just imagined this or wished so hard to see him that I convinced myself I saw his face. It’s like seeing the face of the man in the moon. It’s not really there, but you can see it if you want to.

&nb
sp; I looked around, waiting, sensing, and hoping he would manifest himself to me somehow. I thought I saw the curtains move out of the corner of my eye. I sank back into my pillow and stuck my foot out from under the covers, hoping he would come back.

  I must have fallen asleep because when I woke, it was time to get up. I looked around my room. Everything was as it should have been. There was nothing left behind for me as proof of my grandfather’s visit. I’m not sure what I was hoping to find—an odd button on the floor, an object out of place, a lingering scent—but I looked for anything. I wanted confirmation.

  I told him how much I loved him and how I missed him every day. I cried for the loss of his actual touch and presence in my life. I wondered if I was going a little crazy, grasping for signs from above that would guide me. I worried about living in the past and counting on people for guidance that weren’t in this world anymore. I prayed to all who loved me to guide me on my journey and to protect my children and me as we traveled forward in life. I wanted to believe so badly. I needed to believe in something outside of myself. I needed to believe my grandfather was there for me and that what I felt was not just a breeze rippling across the sheets.

  “Good morning, Grandpa,” I said aloud, to myself. “Thank you for waking me up. I miss you so much. I wish you were here. I really need you. My business is in trouble. My baby girl is leaving for college soon, and I’m about to be all alone. Nothing’s good. Please help me.”

  I sat in bed and cried. I prayed he would see my pain and come back. I wanted him to grab my foot one more time and tell me to dry my eyes. I wanted to hear him say, “Hunker down,” the way he always did when I needed to finish my homework or a chore or a project left undone. If I feel his touch or presence again, I told myself, I’ll hunker down. I’ll get up, get dressed, and look on the bright side of things. I’ll keep fighting the good fight. I won’t feel so sorry for myself anymore. I’ll imagine that there are great things to look forward to and that the business is on its way to becoming a thriving, successful enterprise, sought after by client after client. I’ll happily anticipate preparing dinners and baking cookies or brownies when my children come to visit. I’ll be thrilled to sit at the dining table for hours, just talking and catching up. I’ll stop resenting them for growing up, for leaving home and living their lives. I’ll quit being a downer to my little one about leaving for college. I promised my grandfather that I would change and make things right for myself, if he would only send me one more sign.

  He didn’t come back.

  I told my daughter about the visit from my grandfather and how I needed to be hyperconscious of anything that came into my periphery because I didn’t want to miss him if he came to see me again.

  “You know, Mom,” she said, “some things are just what they seem. A curtain may have moved because of a draft.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said, not really believing this.

  Around this time, I would often stare knowingly at the photo of Myrlie Evers—the widow of slain civil rights activist Medgar Evers—that hangs on a wall in my front hallway. It was taken at her husband’s funeral. She has one tear streaming down her cheek. It was 1963 when Medgar was shot to death in front of his home. Fifty years later, Myrlie said she saw Medgar. He came into her kitchen wearing khaki pants and a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He was, she said, “as large as life.” Myrlie was sitting in a chair, and Medgar just walked by. When he passed her, he said, “I’m outta here.” Myrlie was furious. He didn’t even stop to look at her. She had to wait fifty years, and even then she didn’t get what she wanted. Maybe I needed to be more patient.

  I spent that morning running through lists of clients that were most likely to jump ship, trying not to think about my grandfather or the spot on my foot where I’d felt his touch. When I got back from picking up my lunch at the deli across Seventh Avenue, I had a message on my desk that one of our biggest clients called. We’d been through twenty-some rounds of creative development for an advertising campaign that seemed more like a moving target than a thoughtful assignment.

  “Hey,” I said, “how are you?”

  He said he was great but had some “not happy” news to share. He got right to it. He was going to put the account up for review. It was time to look for a new ad agency. He said we could participate in the pitch and defend the business if we wanted. I asked him if we could re-pitch without a review. I asked him if we could be briefed on the business as if we were starting fresh. He said he wanted to see new thinking. I said we’d give him new thinking. I said I’d put a whole new team on it. He said he wanted to invite other agencies in to see their work. I said I’d invite other agencies in myself and that we could all work together—that I could tap into the best talent in our agency network. He asked how many clients we recently lost. “A few,” I mumbled. After working for months on multitudes of creative development for him with not one advertising direction that looked like it was close to being approved, I wanted to say that we weren’t going to participate. I wanted to tell the team that I would never put them through another round of work for a client that was having their own internal problems and growth pains. I wanted to stand in front of everyone and say, “Hey, if he didn’t understand our work after seeing the largest and most brilliant range of creative solutions we have ever done for any client, then fuck him.”

  “Thank you,” I said instead. “We look forward to seeing the new brief.”

  He wanted to terminate our contract as part of this process—a total fresh start if we kept the business and a quick goodbye if we didn’t. “We have a sixty-day termination period,” I reminded him. He asked if we could keep it to thirty days. I told him I’d run it by our CFO. I knew I was going to call him back with the “not happy” news that we were going to stick with the terms in the contract. After all, I had quarterly projections to submit soon, and a month would make a big difference. I sat down with our finance person to fill him in on my call. He asked what new business on the horizon was likely to close. I made a bad joke and said, “this business.” He half-laughed. I regretted the comment. It wasn’t appropriate. It lacked the seriousness, care, and concern that the question deserved.

  “Let me check with the teams,” I said, trying to recover my footing. “I’ll get back to you tomorrow.”

  “We need to streamline things,” I told everyone that afternoon, in a group meeting. My body was tense and joints stiff. I needed to be oiled, like the tin man in The Wizard of Oz. I wanted a new heart pumping fresh with fervor and passion and inspiration. I was beginning to feel hopeless. I could feel an oncoming despair in the deepening hunch of my shoulders.

  “We’re operating with a skeleton crew already,” one of them said. “The copy machine is broken again, our printers can’t handle the amount we’re producing, and this morning, my desk collapsed. We’re all coping, but there’s nothing left to cut corners on or streamline.”

  “So true,” I thought as I eyed his desk, now being held up by a filing cabinet instead of a leg.

  “If we could do something—anything—differently to win new business while keeping the work we have, what would it be?” I asked.

  After a moment of silence, the question was thrown back at me. Someone asked what my ideas were. Nice punt, I thought, you’ll do well wherever you work next.

  “I think we need a complete makeover. We need to totally reinvent our business offering, our value, and our approach. We need to relaunch this business. We need to be fast and smart and spend less to get more. We need to do for ourselves what we do for clients. We need to brand who we are and what we’re good at. And tell the world. We’ll activate all of our resources. We need to find what lifts us up, then use it to take off and fly. The sky’s the limit,” I said, feeling like I covered every cliché in the playbook.

  I imagined a scene where we were all in a conference room with work—smart, incredible ad campaigns pinned to the walls surroundi
ng us. We were batting around ideas, talking pros and cons of each direction. I saw myself sitting at the head of the table, fielding ideas from all the strategic and creative talent in the room—the best in the business. “Yes,” I was saying, “this work is good; this work will change business for our clients and for us.” I imagined that the coffee was flowing and fueling one great idea after another. I imagined there would be pizzas and salads, half-eaten on the side table, because we were on such a roll that we ordered in. We couldn’t break for dinner because we were in the middle of reinventing the next new, new type of ad agency that would give our clients what they needed. The room would be electric with energy, hope, and optimism. No one would even think of going home until we cracked the nut and secured our future. We were laughing, because we felt good.

  “But right now,” I added, “we unfortunately need to clip our wings one more time. There will be some staff cuts coming based on business we’ve lost, which I’ll discuss later today with the leadership team.”

  “Writing’s on the wall?” someone asked somewhat humorously as the group mass exited the conference room.

  I smiled and yelled into the cavernous silence that ended the meeting, “I hope not.”

  I could barely get it together to commute into the city every day for work.

  It felt irresponsible.

  It felt untrustworthy.

  It felt exhausting.

  It also felt oddly liberating not to care so much. After all, my older daughter was on the West Coast making music, my son was in Utah snowboarding and making movies, and my younger daughter was making herself ready to leave for college. I saw purpose and meaning slip away. The things I used to worry about were gone. I wondered what I was working so hard for anymore. It began to feel like I was scratching at an open wound when my job was to close up the incision and help it heal. I was struggling to rise to the occasion as much as the business was struggling to do the same. It was hard to muster up the enthusiasm and motivation to lead when I noticed that the number of people who showed up to work each day began to decrease. But who could blame them? They had wives, husbands, partners, children, and lives to support. They had dreams and desires. They had bills to pay, worries to assuage, and careers to grow. There wasn’t a day since I’d taken the job when the entire team was in the office at one time. They have their own stuff to take care of, I thought.