There Will Be Lobster

by Sara Arnell

  My, how the mighty have fallen.

  One day, for no reason in particular, I tore through my closet and pulled out six fur coats. I called a friend who was selling vintage photographs and traded the fur for the photos. I felt smart for not spending any money and getting rid of dead animals for some nice prints. Success now had new parameters for me, I realized.

  My, how the mighty have fallen.

  I repeated to myself, “Tall and mighty, like the trees,” over and over again, trying to willfully replace the phrase “How the mighty have fallen.” I was still a tall, mighty tree that was not about to fall. This was something my daughter said to me, about me. She said I was strong like the big trees that surrounded our house. She told me to look out my bedroom window at those trees any time I needed to remember who I was. She told me the trees were strong and solid and that the reason they didn’t break in a storm was because they worked with the wind to let it pass through their branches. I wanted to be like those trees. I wanted to feel strong. I wanted to show how impervious I was to being out of work and out of what I recognized as the normalcy of my life. I didn’t want it to matter. I wanted to say, “Eh, no big deal. It’s just part of life!”

  Or I wanted to spout some truism like “The only constant in life is change” and cliché my feelings away.

  But neither of these approaches was helpful or realistic. I felt more like a forgettable shrub than a towering pine. I tried to visualize myself as a one-hundred-year-old tree that had withstood seasons, storms, heavy snow on its branches, and droughts that caused dry leaves and peeling bark. I tried, again, to smile in the mirror and think of myself as a tall tree, all at the same time—two half-baked tactics for the price of one. I tried to reactivate my social life, to show off my tall and mighty self. Results were mixed. A woman I had dinner with one evening, an old friend, told me laughingly that she was wearing two pairs of Spanx—one to hold her in and one for extra confidence. I tried to laugh back. But it felt forced. I was immediately lost in my thoughts, reminding myself that people do all sorts of things to look and feel their best when out in the world. I asked her how she felt when she pulled them off at home.

  “Relieved,” she told me.

  “You don’t collapse on the bed in tears and sob until you fall asleep? You don’t see your belly fat hanging in folds and begin to swear that you’ll stick to a diet once and for all and never cheat?” I let out a manic laugh to signify that I was kidding. Kind of.

  “Oh honey,” she sighed.

  I shook my head side to side and shrugged my shoulders with complete resignation to the fact that I couldn’t even have conversations anymore without causing the people who loved me to feel concern and worry for my wellbeing. I couldn’t even make a joke that didn’t reek of self-pity and disgust.

  I felt like I was starting to lose myself and my identity. I didn’t even see my face anymore. My reflection distorted before my eyes, twisted into a jumble of worries and concerns. My entire being was composed of unflattering, unhappy adjectives. I was a giant word cloud of doubt and depression:

  Fat

  Old

  Unworthy

  Clothes don’t fit

  Why bother

  Slouch too much

  It doesn’t matter.

  I was beginning to disappear into my own head. I wanted to cover all my mirrors with black cloth and stop the clocks. I wanted to mourn the passing of the self I used to be. I promised myself that, in the future, when someone told me they were depressed or sad, I would never say the words “cheer up.” I couldn’t think of a more useless and unhelpful suggestion. I was sick of hearing it. I felt ashamed for all of my own past lackluster efforts, the way I’d always deflected requests for help or advice from someone who was feeling down. I had been ignorant to the realities of depression and sorry for anyone that had ever come to me for assistance. I was unsympathetic and cold. I didn’t get it. I wished I could go back in time, knowing what I do now, knowing how I feel now, knowing that I could never “cheer up” just because someone told me to. I had no reason or motivation to do anything except look in the mirror and gasp at what I had let myself become. Or, rather, what I would not let myself become. I didn’t think I deserved happiness or joy or contentment. I could not “cheer up.”

  I thought again about my daughter’s suggestion of smile therapy and, while looking in the mirror, lifted one corner of my mouth into a crooked grin. Then I lifted the other corner of my mouth into a creepy, tight-lipped Joker-ish version of a smile. I parted my lips and let my teeth show. It was an unnatural smile made up of three distinct facial moves, more muscle manipulation than happiness. I wanted to do better, so I started over and smiled at myself. I let a big, toothy grin burst across my face in one sudden, fluid movement. I turned my head from side to side and let out a fake laugh. It was the kind of laugh I imagined would emerge if someone said something complimentary that I could respond to with a giggle and grin: “Oh, thank you so much,” I would say. “You’re too kind.” A few negative adjectives seemed to disappear from the mirror. The dark, unhappy word cloud lifted a bit. It wasn’t much, but it reminded me of what being happy felt like. It reminded me that I needed to stop clipping my own wings if I was going to rise like a phoenix from the ashes of my doom and despair.

  I thought about the woman at the store who had returned my desperate grin. I looked back at my image in the mirror, acknowledging that my face and body reflected the pain I was feeling inside. I promised myself that I was finally going to try and smile today and see if it helped. I made a checklist of rules for smiling:

  Make sure it’s not fake-looking.

  Make sure it’s sincere. Don’t smile randomly, for no reason.

  Show teeth.

  Laugh if appropriate.

  Try not to look insane.

  The next time I went shopping, I stopped by the Starbucks in the lobby of Target for a midday caffeine fix. I smiled at the person taking my order with true gratitude and thanks. It was definitely sincere. I needed that coffee. I smiled at people I passed in the aisles. Most smiled back. It was all very friendly, and it felt refreshing. I smiled throughout most interactions and encounters. I added a cheery “thank you” to the smile when it made sense. And it did feel good. It felt better than pushing my cart, head down, hoping not to be noticed or addressed. I passed the infants section and remembered my children as babies in their bouncy chairs, laughing and gurgling, kicking their pudgy legs as I played peek-a-boo with them. I remembered how easy it was to get them to laugh and smile. I thought about how thrilling it was to see little toothless grins appear back at me. This is me now, I thought. I’m not a boss or a team leader or even a day-to-day mom anymore. I can’t earn, command, or demand attention. No one is trying to make me happy. I knew that I was the only one in charge of my own happiness. And like a baby, I was going to have to smile, coo, and wave my fists in the air if I was going to get anyone’s positive attention.

  Chapter 15

  The Medium

  It was a cold evening when I decided to take my newly practiced smile and attention-seeking baby antics to a crystal shop where a world-famous medium was going to help a group of us make contact with our deceased loved ones. As always, I hoped my grandfather would come through. We huddled in a semi-circle on folding chairs set up amid the shelves and display tables of the store. The medium was here as a stop on a promotional tour. He looks normal, I thought. He doesn’t look like some beaded-up shaman. There were no flowing robes. No mala beads. His hair was short, and he looked like he could have just come from the office. He chatted as he got organized. He said that one doesn’t choose to be a medium when one woman asked him how he got into all this. He said that being a medium was a calling, something he was compelled to do. He couldn’t help it. Dead people just came to him.

  Sure, I thought. Why else would he be in this suburban crystal shop with fifteen women clutching at ti
ssues and each other. At 7:00 p.m. on a freezing cold night, a charlatan would have found something better to do, an easier way to make a buck. I felt confident.

  The medium welcomed us and scanned the room. I gripped a tissue in my hand, ready to catch the tears I knew would come if my grandfather or Aunt Nell or anyone came through to me. I stared at the medium as hard as I could. I wanted him to feel my energy. I wanted him to bring me a message from beyond. He jumped right in.

  “Is there anyone here whose name begins with the letter J? No?”

  We all looked around at each other to see who would respond. Then, almost in unison, our heads snapped back to the medium waiting for his next communication.

  “Is there a Pam or Patty or a P-name in the room? No…OK. Does anyone have someone who passed named Martin? There’s a Martin here now. No? Well, Martin is here. Maybe he’s just hanging around for a bit to see what’s going on.”

  I continued to stare him down. Feel my vibe, I said silently to will his attention my way.

  A gasp sounded from the back of the room. A woman said she was being choked. There was pressure on her neck. It was hard to breathe. The medium touched her shoulder and asked her what she thought was happening. She said her best friend had committed suicide by hanging. She thought her friend was reaching out. “She’s here,” the medium said. I wanted to raise my hand and ask him why a friend would connect this way. Why would the spirit want to cause her best friend this pain? Is this how spirits share? I wanted to ask him if spirits could cause you to gain thirty pounds and lose all self-esteem. I wanted to know if what I was experiencing was not my fault alone. “I’m here,” I wanted to yell to the afterlife. “Connect with me. Choke me, if you must. Send me a sign that I’m worthy of reaching out to. Tell me if you’ve already reached out and I just missed it. Talk to me.” The choking woman left the semi-circle to catch her breath. The medium connected with someone’s father who said he was with her mother and was happy. Next, he connected with someone’s son who passed on from a tragic accident. The woman whose son died cried uncontrollably. “I’m so sorry,” said the medium. “Know that he wasn’t in any pain when he passed.” I sobbed, waiting for my turn. He called out a few more names of spirits who were in the room. The store owner signaled to him that time was up.

  The medium thanked us and said he would be in a nearby town tomorrow if we wanted to come and try to connect again. He told us there were books for sale at the register that he would sign. I put my soggy tissue in my pocket. It was wet with tears for others. No one came through to me. I glanced over at a woman on the opposite side of the semi-circle. I said hello to her on the way in. She had no idea who I was. I told her our kids had gone to school together. I told her my daughter’s name. “Ah,” she said. I realized that I was just as invisible to this world as I was to the next.

  I was the last to leave. I was willing the medium to lift his head from the books he was signing, to look up, turn his eyes to me, and say, “Hey, there’s a ‘T’ in the room now. It’s your grandfather. He’s sorry that he’s so late, but he was taking your grandmother to church.” I was afraid that if I left, I might miss a visit, a message. I stayed until the medium walked to his car. I followed him out the door. His car was parked in front of mine. I decided to talk to him as he was packing up.

  “Hi…I was just inside with you,” I said, trying out my new smile.

  “Yes…how are you?”

  “No one came through to me. Do you have any idea why? You didn’t point at me or mention the name or initial of anyone in my life that’s deceased.”

  “I’m not in control of who comes through,” said the medium. “They just come.”

  “But why didn’t anyone come through to me?” I whined.

  “Maybe,” he said, “they have nothing to say. Maybe there’s no unfinished business with them on earth or with you. When spirits have nothing to say, they don’t bother to connect. It takes a lot of energy for them.”

  “So no one connected with me because they have nothing to say to me?”

  “Maybe.” He closed his trunk and got in his car.

  This confirmed that I was too dead for the dead to bother with.

  I felt more alone than ever.

  I looked at what the medium had inscribed in my book. It didn’t make any sense.

  “What does this mean?” I held the book up to the window of the car and showed him what he’d just written.

  “I don’t know,” said the medium as he rolled up his window. “It’s for you to interpret. I just write what comes to me.”

  He drove away.

  I wanted to live my life like this.

  “Hey, I just say what comes to me,” I would tell people.

  “You don’t like what I said? Not my fault.”

  I, too, needed justification for the words coming out of my mouth. My older daughter, the one who’d had the eighteen-pound tumor removed before free-spiriting it out to the West Coast, told me I was becoming unsocialized, like an abandoned, neglected animal. She said I was spending too much time alone and forgetting how to act in public. She said I could barely follow a conversation and that my responses ranged from rude to irrelevant. How great it would be, I thought, to respond based on the moment, like the medium did. When you’re being guided by the dead, everything is up for interpretation. I read once that another medium said she couldn’t sleep because her bed was surrounded every night by spirits wanting to connect with loved ones. She saw them standing at the foot of her bed, just staring at her. She said it was unnerving. She had to yell at them and tell them to go away. She would sit up in bed and scream, “Leave! Get out.” And they would go. I imagined them forlornly fading into the walls and curtains. Not everything that happened, I knew, was infused with hidden messages. I read the channeled inscription from the medium—“Let it shine. Let it shine. Let it shine.” I wondered what the spirit world was trying to tell me.

  Chapter 16

  Step Over the Log

  “When will you have arrived, in your mind?” my spiritually inclined friend asked me when we met for coffee. She was someone I turned to for advice. I liked her. I told her I would arrive when I stopped obsessing about every little thing that crossed my mind. I live in my head, I told her. I will have arrived, I thought, when I can once again follow a conversation and not have to say, “Can you repeat that?” because my attention had wandered away; when I can look at myself naked without harsh criticism; when I can think clearly and logically and stop excusing things I do, or don’t do, by saying it was meant to be, or it’s the universe talking; when I can remember what to hope for; when I can live in the present; when I can see a light at the end of the tunnel; when I don’t have to begin almost every sentence with the words “You won’t believe what happened;” when my daughter doesn’t have to pick me up off the floor anymore.

  She told me to imagine that I was walking down a beautiful path in the woods and that there was a log lying across the path, blocking the way. “Step over it,” she said, “and keep walking. Every time a thought crosses your mind that you want to get rid of, imagine stepping over that log.”

  “That’s it?”

  “You can also kick the log off the path and out of your way, if there’s something you want out of your life for good. And you can also sit on the log if you need to think a bit more about what to do.”

  “Step over the log,” I repeated.

  “It works. You have to visualize it very clearly. You have to see yourself, in your mind, stepping over the log. “

  “Do you ever kick or sit on the log?” I asked.

  “I usually just step over it. It’s enough. The repetition of seeing yourself do this will begin to become second nature, and it will help you quickly rid yourself of thoughts and feelings that you need to shake. It’s also very useful when you run into annoying people—like the lady at the outdoor cafe who allows her dog to j
ump up on all the tables. I wanted to tell her she owed me a cup of coffee the other day, but I just stepped over the log and left in peace.”

  I can relate to this, I thought.

  “Nothing,” I said to my daughter when she asked what I’d been up to. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t want to hear about my new stepping-over-the-log methodology. She thought I needed more help than talking to my smart and intuitive friend over coffee. She thought I needed to see a real professional.

  “Nothing?”

  “Yeah. Absolutely nothing. In fact, I’m not even busy doing nothing. I am literally doing nothing at all.”

  “Have you thought again about seeing a therapist? I think you really should consider it,” she told me.

  “I know. I haven’t found one yet. I’ve been looking. That’s actually what I’ve been doing.”

  “There are a lot in our area.”

  “I’ll try harder,” I said.

  “You need to talk to someone.”

  Step over the log, I said to myself. My friend was right. It really worked.

  Chapter 17

  Psychic-Ology

  I agreed with my daughter that I should seek professional help for my anxiety and stress, but I wasn’t through with the spirit world yet. I made an appointment for a tarot card reading. Gloria sat in a curtained corner of a spiritual bookstore in New York City. I booked her for a thirty-minute session. She said I could record it on my phone. I wasn’t sure if I was going to like what she had to say so I declined. She asked me what I wanted to know about, and I told her nothing. I couldn’t even think of one thing to tell her that I wanted to explore. “Let’s just see what the cards say,” I said. I really wanted to say, “You tell me. You’re the psychic.”