Also, to finish what Liz-Beth was insinuating: what they say is that many single car accidents aren’t accidents. So what a relief that his blood alcohol level was .15. He was drunk. He was a drunk driver. No need to make anything more complicated.
Also, why blame [Evil Name], not him? I understood the truth in an uncluttered and elegant way when I was eighteen, standing outside my dorm lobby: “Then really I think you got screwed by your brother.”
Funeral night, alone in the house. I kicked out the lingerers around eight o’clock. They aimed for kindness, saying, “You shouldn’t be alone,” and stuff. Yeah. Well, but I was. I was totally alone. He was gone. Not like two days later he’d be at the door with fancy flowers (I taught him early on that carnations do not equal an apology). Not like we could jackhammer through the problems with our counselor. This wasn’t a way of gone I understood. I mean, there was my dead mother, but that was different. Worse? Never rank pain.
The lingerers had picked up big swathes of mess—food, empties, paper plates—but the place felt filthy, as if people were still hanging around, stuffing their faces. “How can you eat?” They could. The place felt so beyond dirty that the sensible solution was for me to move out, and I sprawled on the bed in the guestroom—the only room I could stand—thinking about where I could move to and the only place that made sense was the moon. I would move to the moon.
There was rain, which I hated at that moment. The day had been cloudy, threatening rain, and having that rain come, finally, at the end of this wretchedly long day, wasn’t fair. Something expected actually happening seemed totally unfair.
The tequila had worked through me, carving out the deep glacier of a headache.
The guestroom had two twin beds, and I was on the one up against the far wall, flat on my back, staring at the motionless ceiling fan, crushing and kneading a feather pillow with my hands. There was a cobweb above me, and I liked how it shimmied in a nonexistent breeze. No sounds but the rain. Occasionally when I squeezed the pillow, a tiny feather floated out, and there would be that for me to stare at. It seemed this was how it was going to be, each day nothing but a series of meaningless moments drooping one after the other.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I said. It was the most satisfactory curse I knew, but I wasn’t satisfied.
I was lying there, waiting, waiting for something. Waiting for him to show up. He had promised! Ghosts ran in his family! I believed in ghosts—at least now I did, now when I wanted one. His mother and that single word, “Daddy.”
So I whispered, “Daddy.”
Maybe you needed the fried chicken? Maybe fried chicken was a key component? Maybe KFC overflowed ghosts?
Good stories rely on repetition and pattern, usually of three things. Jokes, too. They call it the Rule of Three. That is, I say, “Jesus fucking Christ,” and that’s one. Then I say, “Daddy,” and that’s two. Then the next thing I say—number three—there’s the payoff, the punch line. It’s classic structure. No one messes with classic structure.
But the phone rang right then. “Jesus fucking Christ,” I repeated, and my careful classic structure turned to shit.
It was his mother. Liz-Beth. “I lied,” she said.
I was so surprised to hear this, just so surprised.
“No, darling, not that one, the other,” she said to Shep, I assume. “Not that other, the other other.”
A pause.
I knew what she lied about.
She had known about the accident. A person doesn’t say something like “ghosts run in my family” if they don’t.
There were muffled sounds on the phone, as if she were sliding her palm over it, the scrape of her big family heirloom ring. I wouldn’t have guessed a ring like that from the stories, or maybe I would have, if someone asked. Then she was back.
She said, “I did feel something. I did know.”
Another pause. She was infuriating, with all these pauses. Someone could live another life inside her silence. I thought about D. H. growing up manipulated by these pauses, the perpetual wait to hear what would come next, never an end. It was a conversational style that seemed in transit.
At least a real minute passed. I puffed out air so the cobweb above swayed. Why was there a phone in the guestroom, anyway? If the phone wasn’t right here, on the wicker table by the bed, I wouldn’t have answered. I wasn’t about to stand up for a ringing phone ever again.
That’s how long this pause was, enough time to think all that. Finally I asked, “What did you feel?”
“Oh, darling,” she sighed, and I thought we were back to Shep, but it was me; suddenly I was “darling.” “Something drained out of me, and I pulled the car over immediately because if I didn’t stop driving, I would hurtle straight over the side of a bridge. I knew he was gone. I knew instantly, in spite of all that ugliness between us—and you don’t know the half of it. . . .”
She paused. That was right. He had only told me old-time stories. When I said, “Let’s go visit your mother,” he’d real fast say, “I don’t think so,” and we wouldn’t.
“I sat in my car in a Chick-fil-A parking lot, sobbing. Everything was gone,” she said. “Everything was sand through my fingers, and all I could do was go home and wait for your phone call. Which came.”
“But what did you feel?” I insisted. She wasn’t thorough.
“Something that had been there wasn’t,” she said.
“How did you know?” I insisted. “How were you sure? It could have been someone else.” Maybe I was hysterical. I felt hysterical, but I also felt as though I sounded very calm.
“I knew,” she said.
“But how?” Okay, maybe I was screaming. Maybe I had thrown the pillow to the floor and I was screaming into the phone. Maybe my face was blotchy and hideous, seared red by anger and frustration.
Maybe she didn’t notice I was screaming. In response, she sighed.
The Rule of Three. Is a story more meaningful with it? What is the best and easiest and fastest way to find some goddamn meaning?
? ? ?
“Love,” she said. “I knew because of love.”
“That doesn’t make any fucking sense,” I hissed.
I felt her shrug. I felt Shep rubbing her feet. I felt an ice cube in her glass of scotch melt one additional millimeter and tumble more deeply into the amber liquid. They were staying at the lovely and expensive Hotel Monaco, a block or two from Schultz’s. I felt a lot of luggage in her room in the Hotel Monaco, a lot of expensive shoes.
“I’m sorry for you,” she said. “Waiting for a ghost. Ghosts aren’t real, but love is. You didn’t love him enough.”
Suddenly I knew exactly why we didn’t go to her house for Thanksgiving. You would think someone wouldn’t be mean under sad and dire circumstances, but she was.
Then there was this thought: Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I didn’t. What’s enough? The ghost was hanging with [Evil Name] right now. I had the baseball uniform picture, but [Evil Name] loved him enough, enough and more, and more, and she got the ghost. I should have let go. I should have—. If—. How—. Why—.
Then another thought: She was lying. She was a goddamn, fucking liar. She didn’t love him enough either. Jesus fucking Christ, I thought “either.” What did we want, the two of us, the three of us? Scrabbling over this dead man.
I knew Liz-Beth expected me to hang up but I didn’t. And there we were, breathing on the phone, our breath matching, in and out, and I think maybe she fell asleep, and it was peaceful listening to the in-out of her breath as the cobweb danced above me. I snapped off the lamp beside the bed and shut my eyes and fell asleep, and when I was startled awake late into the night, the phone was silent, and I hung it up.
There in the dark, alone, alone for the first time in my adult life—I’m talking deeply and profoundly alone, not alone in a “table-for-one on a business trip” way, but to the core, drowning in the understanding that there was no one at this exact moment, no one but me awake on this rain-strewn n
ight—alone with my hardest thoughts, alone with the truth, and alone in that darkness, I touched my chest with my fingertips, where my heart beat deep inside me, faithfully, and there was a perfect circle of dampness soaked into my blouse—like tears—only like tears—that could be explained no other way—no other way whatsoever—than that he had kept his promise.
Do you believe in ghosts now? Wait. Don’t answer.
There are ghosts everywhere. Actually, the building that Schultz’s is in was recently bought by a convenience store chain. What could be more convenient than a corner bar, I ask you, particularly one with the best martinis in town? Nevertheless. I’ll have to rip up my will again because soon Schultz’s will be gone. D. H. is gone, along with those college days and that twin bed in the nerd dorm. Johnny is somewhere, but really he’s gone, too. I swept away that cobweb the next day; a year later, I moved from that house to a different one. My mother is gone, or was she never here? We’ll be gone too, soon enough.
The story is winding down. Check! We’ll give up the booth. Time for someone else, time for their ghost stories.
Last thing, I promise. You know Terry in that Springsteen song I was telling you about? I get now that Terry is a ghost. Darling, my love; my crazy, crazy love—. Damn it. If you were here, I would explain it all to you, and the things I know that I didn’t know before. I have so much to tell you.
SLUT
Nicole chose the restaurant: King Street Café in Old Town Alexandria, not too far from her house, easy parking. At the very least, she knew she’d get a good meal out of the night. She didn’t ask her friends for advice because she didn’t want them to know she was going on this blind date.
Ben said he’d seen the restaurant written up by the Washington Post and thought going there would be fun. He used the word “fun” a lot in their phone conversation, which made her nervous. “Sounds fun,” he’d say, or he’d conclude a story with, “Yeah, that was a fun time.” She couldn’t pinpoint what it was, maybe that “fun” wasn’t a very masculine word or that it wasn’t very mature. Either way, she wasn’t anticipating a “fun” dinner. But she had committed, and she was proud of herself for setting up the meeting for Thursday night at six o’clock—even a stealth date was a date.
A coworker, Andrea, was the only one who knew. “Trust me,” she said. “You don’t want to head straight into online dating. Talk about booby traps. They’re 95 percent pigs out there, pigs and goddamn liars. ‘Six feet tall’ means ‘five-eight.’ Ben is a nice guy.”
“Why aren’t you dating him?” They were standing at the office kitchen, listening to the microwave popcorn go wild. It had to be a quick conversation because coworkers would be lured in by the aroma wafting through the heating vents.
“I did date him,” Andrea said. “But it didn’t work out.”
“That hardly sounds promising. Why isn’t he married?”
“Well. . . .” Andrea pulled open the door and grabbed the bag with her fingertips.
“Whose popcorn?” someone called from the hallway.
Andrea quickly said, “He’s really good on a first date anyway. Isn’t that what you said you wanted, to get that first date under your belt?”
Under your belt. She blushed and looked away; surely Andrea didn’t mean anything by that. It was just a phrase.
Andrea pried open the bag, letting the popped kernels tumble into a large plastic bowl. It seemed to Nicole that the air suddenly turned greasy and heavy, that something slick coated the insides of her lungs as she breathed in. Nicole forced herself to eat some popcorn though she no longer had a taste for it.
On Thursday, she left the office early so she could go home and change for her date. She hoped to avoid Andrea, but there was Andrea stepping out of the up elevator when she was waiting to go down, and she grabbed Nicole’s arm as the elevator door closed, stranding Nicole in the lobby. “You look great,” Andrea said, giving her the full up-and-down appraisal.
“I do?” Nicole was confused. She wore black pants that gaped at the waist and butt, a slouchy man’s white French cuff shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a heavy, silver bracelet, and leopard flats. The bracelet was Tiffany, and the flats were cute enough for twenty-five bucks at Marshall’s, but the rest of the outfit was, charitably, only barely passable for office attire.
“Very what-the-hell,” Andrea said. “Confident and sassy. Men love seeing women in their clothing.” There was a slight pause, as if Andrea wanted to say more but decided not to.
“Actually, I was thinking I might go home to change,” Nicole said.
“Thank God.” She let go of Nicole’s arm. “A skirt and heels. Or tight jeans and heels. Whatever you do, heels.” Andrea moved through the glass double doors and into the office, and Nicole pressed the elevator button again. It was wrong to keep wearing Roger’s shirts, yet she felt compelled to pull one on as she got ready in the morning, even knowing it was the day of the blind date. Roger’s monogram, a tiny white-on-white RKR on the left cuff, was carefully rolled up and hidden, but she supposed she wasn’t fooling anyone.
Ten months ago Roger had died of a heart attack. He and Nicole had been married for six years and had recently closed on a new house after working their asses off to dent the student loans and credit card balances. They had picked out a kitten from the shelter, and they were finally ready to have a baby. Now she was back to dating. Fun. The right word after all.
When Andrea described Ben—“Brown hair; brown eyes; tall enough; very easy-going; sort of like a teddy bear, but not fat. And, I guess I have to say, maybe a tiny bit balding, but not bald.”—Nicole was startled to realize that each of those adjectives could be used to describe Roger. But were Ben’s eyes “brown,” or were they brown like Roger’s, richly deep and shimmering, appearing almost black, eyes that made you catch your breath even across the room? Andrea continued—“Nice smile, very excellent butt, no visible tattoos, no earrings though he wears some kind of cheesy string bracelet”—he better not fiddle with it, Nicole thought, she hated nervous tics on men, on anyone—“decent dresser, like someone you’re not embarrassed to be with.”
But, Nicole thought, but, but, but.
Oddly, Andrea said exactly what Nicole was thinking: “But he’s not Roger. I know. But only Roger was Roger, right?”
It was stupid to be single again at age thirty-eight. Stupid and sad. She hated her life.
They would be meeting first in the bar of the King Street Café for a drink. The unspoken assumption was that if things went well, she and Ben could head into the restaurant for dinner. It had been at least ten years since Nicole had been on a “date,” and probably what she did in her twenties wasn’t “dating” anyway, so she had no idea what to expect: how to signal the transition from drink to meal, who would pay, how to escape if the conversation was awkward, what to wear that didn’t look like she was trying too hard, because—she reminded herself—she wasn’t trying too hard. She wasn’t trying at all. Only Roger was Roger, and she was going out with this guy because she had to go out with someone eventually. Because she was thirty-eight and was hoping for a baby. Because she was thirty-eight and hadn’t had sex for nearly a year. Because for a thirty-eight-year-old, she spent way too many nights slouched with the cat in her lap, watching the food shows she and Roger used to love. Because—because Roger wasn’t coming back.
“Damn it,” she said. Her hand had slipped, and now her mascara was smeared. She wiped off the smudge with a Q-Tip and started again, as the cat twined around her ankles. Damn it, Roger. It wasn’t Roger’s fault for dying, but she couldn’t help but blame him: if he had tried a little harder, if he had been more considerate and less selfish, if he had—what? something, he should have done something, he should have worked harder to not die—and if he had done whatever that thing was, then she wouldn’t be left here, dolling up for some random guy.
She was out the door, then paused for a moment on the top step. It was wrong. But she unlocked the door and went back in for one—only
one—condom to tuck inside the zippered pocket of her purse. Slut, she thought.
Before the date, she had asked Andrea, “How did you describe me to him?” They were gathered for a conference call, and she didn’t know why she asked; it almost made her nauseous to think of this guy, this Ben, hearing a vague description of her, making judgments and assumptions. Thinking maybe because her husband died she was desperate, ready to jump him on the first hello. She, personally, would never want to date someone with a dead spouse, and she mistrusted Ben for agreeing to.
The others were delayed, lingering in the hallway to suck up to the big boss, who happened to wander by. Nicole didn’t bother anymore with details like sucking up; no one wanted to fire a widow, she figured.
Andrea said, “I said you were gorgeous, which you absolutely are, so shut up. Blonde hair like a shampoo commercial, very midwestern looking and wholesome but also edgy in that really interesting way.”
“He’ll think that means I’m a bitch,” Nicole said.
“Of course,” Andrea said. “You want him nervous. A little intimidation is good.”
“What did he say when you told him about Roger?” Nicole asked.
“Oh.” In the hallway, the big boss was striding away amid a flurry of “looking good, people,” and Andrea moved to the conference table, selecting a seat across from where she normally sat, inserting the wide oak table between her and Nicole. The others drifted in, poking at the tray of doughnuts. “He doesn’t know about that,” Andrea added unnecessarily. “But that’s better. Seriously.”
Nicole rolled her eyes, but later she decided Andrea was right. Why would anyone agree to go out with a woman dragging a dead husband into the picture? Unless they felt sorry for her. No pity dates.
Wearing the expensive jeans and heels high enough to meet Andrea’s approval, Nicole paused at the door to the King Street Café, pretending to read the menu posted on the outside wall, though the only words that registered were “catch of the day / market price.” It was a pleasant April evening, and no one bothered with jackets as they strolled along King Street, headed to various restaurants and bars, maybe the old-fashioned movie theater, one of the ice cream shops. In the reflection off the glass menu case, Nicole watched people pass behind her: everyone was matched up into a couple. Or sometimes two couples together. Even numbers only. Nicole didn’t see one woman alone, not one, and suddenly she felt self-conscious, so she abruptly yanked open the door and stepped inside.
This Angel on My Chest Page 8