Splitting the Difference

by Tre Miller Rodriquez

  When I hit send, the tightness in my throat seems to ease, my nose and eyes stop running. The heaviness that followed me here seems less heavy.

  Really?

  All I had to do . . . was write you?

  No one answers.

  And I’m not asking any more questions.

  I clean myself up with Alberto’s handkerchief and make my way inside. As I maneuver through the crowd, my favorite pop anthem of 2008 starts up: M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes.”

  By the time I reach Maggie, I’m dancing.

  And smiling.

  I toss my coat to her, she hands me a glass, and we dance our way through the champagne.

  What happened outside, she asks on our way home. Did you see someone you knew?

  What do you mean?

  When you came back, it was like you were Tré Before It Happened.

  * * *

  Tomorrow morning I leave for West Palm, where Nikki’s mom resides in winter. Nikki and the rest of the South African clan will arrive later in the week but for the first few days, I’ll be able to sleep quietly in the sun, sit with Nikki’s widowed mom and her caretaker, Margaret, who speaks Spanish and always doted on Alberto in New Hampshire.

  Maggie helps me pack for Florida. Prints my ticket. Arranges a black car for us to JFK. And to be certain that I actually board the right plane, she’s coordinated her L.A. flight for the same day and same airline as me.

  Maggie makes these arrangements because, apparently, she knows what I am just figuring out: come tomorrow morning, I’ll be a hot mess with a boarding pass.

  Dumb Sh*%

  People Say

  Can’t yet convert to the past tense:

  it’s still “our apartment.” It’s still “we.”

  Don’t know how to do this life without you.

  (April 24, 1:18am via Facebook)

  * * *

  In Palm Beach, Margaret shows me to the cabana room: a beautiful, hotel-like suite that’s separate from the rest of the house.

  Considerate, I think, as I unpack a week’s worth of bikinis and cut-offs. These women clearly know how much crying and smoking I’ll be doing here.

  When I place Alberto’s 8x10 photo on the nightstand, I can’t shake the sense that he’s about to walk in, drop his suitcase, and bounce on the bed.

  I stand frozen in the middle of the suite, waiting.

  The room remains silent, so I inform the tropical wallpaper that I’m finding a chaise on the patio. I nod off in the sun and dream of a palpable pair of hands on my shoulders.

  When I reach for them, my fingers grasp at air.

  I open my eyes.

  I’m alone in the Florida twilight.

  Yet I feel him everywhere.

  Over dinner, I ask Nikki’s mom if Alberto ever stayed here?

  Alberto? Here? Pasena pauses. I’m afraid not, love.

  * * *

  Woke late this morning and wandered through the sprawling house, calling for Nikki’s mom and Margaret.

  We’re in here, darling, Pasena answers.

  I head toward her South African accent and see her lying in bed, washcloth on chest, portable phone in hand.

  Oh, we’ve had such a fright this morning, she explains. Lo had a heart attack and he’s in hospital!

  Lo is short for “abuelo,” Fico’s father.

  Is he . . . okay? I ask.

  He’s harassing all the nurses, so apparently, yes.

  Where—when did it happen, I stammer.

  At home in Miami. He wasn’t feeling well last night so he called Nikki and Fico. And of course, given the recent events, they told him to call his doctor. When he started having chest pains, he called 911 and—can you believe it?—he opened the front door for the medics!

  I start backing out of Pasena’s room.

  Chest pains.

  911.

  Hospital.

  This is how heart attacks are supposed to go.

  I excuse myself on the pretext of coffee, but go straight to my room.

  Lo is pushing seventy and he survived something that Alberto didn’t?

  How—?

  I spend the rest of the day in pajamas, drinking something stronger than coffee.

  * * *

  Under the thunderclouds of West Palm, my concentration is locked in a tug-of war: the book on my lap vs. the image in my head.

  When I try to read a sentence or close my eyes, all I can see is him laying there on March 15th.

  Nearly four years of memories and my brain settles on this one?

  I get up and pace the patio.

  Call Alberto’s voicemail.

  Flinch every time I hear the professional version of his voice.

  Not his real voice.

  And definitely not enough of it.

  I consider checking my own voicemail for any messages left by him, but this will also involve listening to condolence voice-

  mails.

  I stop pacing, set down the phone, and pick up the novel again.

  Try to digest a paragraph.

  My eyes slide off the page and into my head.

  Think of swimming with dolphins together, bike riding on the Hudson, watching baseball—

  The scenes flash for a moment before fading—no, no!—into how I found him that morning.

  I yank off my sunglasses and blink into the sun, searing the country-club landscape onto my retina.

  Make it stop.

  God.

  Make it stop?

  I pound out a text to my mom: Pray for me? I need another image of Alberto in my head. Every time I close my eyes, I see his yellow skin with the veins and purple lips . . .

  I pick up the book again.

  And wonder if it’s too early to have a beer?

  Or get struck by lightning?

  Or start planning where the hell I’m going for Christmas?

  I wonder how it would be if I didn’t have this awful picture of Alberto in my head?

  It would mean someone else would.

  What if I wasn’t the one who found him?

  What if It Happened a few weeks earlier in Chicago, when he was on a business trip?

  I would not have believed it.

  What if I got the news from the Chicago police?

  Or a hospital?

  Or his business partner?

  I would have hundreds of questions: What did he do on the last night of his life? What did he have for dinner? What was he wearing? What was the last thing he said? Was he awake when It Happened?

  I still feel robbed, but I don’t obsess about those questions.

  We had dinner, watched movies, fell asleep naked.

  I saw him alive at 6:42am.

  And found him not alive at 8:21am.

  So, finding him?

  It sucks.

  But also?

  It means I’m spared the hundred questions.

  * * *

  Lo’s heart surgery was successful and he’s recovering in Miami with Fico at his side. Nikki and the three daughters arrived here today, and after putting them to bed, she joins me on the patio with a glass of wine.

  Over a shared cigarette, Nikki assures me I’m not nuts for sensing Alberto’s presence.

  He’s stayed here, she says, at least once if not twice.

  But your mom—

  Well, she’s in her late seventies, so I’m not surprised she can’t place him here. And—well, you know my dad died in the living room, right?

  It happened here?

  Right in front of us. I thought he was laughing, but he started gargling and his chair tipped backward.

  I didn’t—

  So yeah, she says. Alberto stayed here. And he quite possibly slept in the cabana.

&nbs
p; * * *

  I’m so sorry, Miss, says Edna from T-Mobile, but after thirty days, all unsaved messages are cleared from the system.

  Today is thirty days since his death.

  According to Edna, if I’d have called yesterday, she could’ve accessed my voicemails from March.

  But now?

  I’ll never know if there was a voicemail from him.

  I’ll never know if there wasn’t.

  I’m sorry to bring it up, she says, but have you thought about disconnecting his cell phone?

  I bite down on my fist to keep from crying.

  Can’t imagine never dialing his number again, I say. But, God, his voicemail greeting is so . . . unfulfilling.

  I hear my own words and laugh awkwardly.

  I guess that should answer the question, right, Edna?

  Well, ma’am, it does sound like an unnecessary expense, especially if his voicemail isn’t, um, helpful for you during this time.

  Just give me a moment, Edna.

  Alberto was practical.

  He would tell me to disconnect the phone.

  I ask Edna to hang on while I call him one last time.

  I concentrate on his voice, and when it ends, I open my eyes to a lightning storm dancing on the horizon. I watch the storm until I find my breath. And my voice.

  Okay, Edna, I say. I’m ready.

  * * *

  From JFK last night, I directed the driver to the East Village to pick up a girlfriend who’d agreed to stay the night with me.

  This girlfriend lost a college roommate to suicide.

  I assumed she’d know what to say, what not to do.

  But instead of distracting me, or asking about Florida, she pressed me for details of March 15th.

  I had flinched, gone into the kitchen, and delivered the facts in a flat voice while opening a bottle of wine.

  When I returned, her hand was covering her mouth and she was staring toward the bedroom.

  I set down her wine and began shutting windows and cleaning the thick layer of construction dust that had settled on everything—including Alberto’s urn—while I was away. She did not offer to help. Or turn the topic toward something safe. As she flipped wordlessly through a magazine on the coffee table, I realized I want my privacy back.

  This morning, I cancelled the other girlfriends scheduled to sleep over this week and headed to church. After shedding an absurd amount of tears for a sermon about the Beatitudes, I slip out and hail a cab.

  Can I trouble you to turn up the heater? I ask the driver, whose window is down.

  You are cold? he says in a West African accent. In my country, we have a saying: “Only single women get cold.” You are a single woman, no?

  I look down at my wedding band, touch my engagement ring.

  I nearly ask what qualifies as single in his country, because I’m pretty sure they have a word for what I am and I’m pretty sure it ain’t single.

  But why ruin this nice cabbie’s day?

  I beg your pardon, I say, and close the privacy window between us.

  I call my mother-in-law and ask how her day has been.

  Uneventful, she says. How is yours?

  I tell her I went to church, but I don’t mention the cabbie’s question or that I’ve decided to spend my first night alone in the apartment.

  * * *

  So I slept on the sofa.

  With MSNBC and every light on.

  It still counts, right?

  * * *

  Tonight I meet up with Melanie, a twenty-something opera singer from Georgia who’s known Alberto for nearly a decade. She was on the West Coast when It Happened and couldn’t make it back to New York for the service. So we’re in a Chelsea restaurant, catching up on the past few months.

  Her wicked sense of humor comes with a Southern-Baptist sensibility and tonight, she’s exactly what I need. I find myself laughing, not crying, into my glass of champagne.

  We order food at the bar, and midway through our meal, a flamboyantly dressed fellow leans into our conversation and introduces himself.

  Hi, I’m Gayson! You girls look fun!

  Girl, that’s because we are, Melanie laughs.

  Gayson is a thirty-ish Chelsea boy from Missouri who’s been everything from a sandwich artist to a communications director at Kiehl’s to a vagabond in Australia.

  One bottle of champagne leads to another, and around 11pm, the three of us decide to keep the night going.

  My place is around the corner, I offer. I’ll pick up some champagne and meet you there.

  I hand Melanie my key card and head toward the wine store, which is unfortunately closed. I duck into Gristedes Market before realizing this is the first time I’ve been here since the cake-baking adventure two nights before he died. But meltdowns must be common here: the clerk doesn’t blink at me or my puddle of tears.

  * * *

  Today is one month since the funeral.

  I’ve been drinking for more than twelve hours straight.

  Numbed myself so thoroughly that I haven’t cried since the checkout line last night.

  Grief is sneaky though: I can feel it waiting for me to sober up or approach the bedroom.

  If Alberto could see me right now, he wouldn’t be impressed.

  But if I’d died instead of him, what the eff would he be doing today?

  Immersing himself in work?

  Locking our front door and re-reading my text messages?

  Heading to L.A. to see my parents?

  Planning the trip to Paris we meant to take for our five-year honeymoon?

  Fucking the pain away?

  All I know for certain is that he’d have a much braver face than I do right now.

  * * *

  No fewer than seven people have sent me Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking.

  I read it a few magical years ago, but this time around, it’s a very different book.

  Today, I read the part where Didion recalls the last birthday present her husband gave her, twenty-five nights before his death.

  I flash back to my last birthday present. When Alberto had nine nights to live.

  Like Didion’s last gift, mine is a present no one else could give me.

  Unlike Didion’s, my gift is absurdly awesome: it’s a white rabbit vibrator.

  It will be another month before I’m ready to try it on for size. And like every other gift from him, it will fit perfectly.

  * * *

  In light of the utterly inappropriate things that have been said to me over the past five weeks, I’ve started a list called “Dumb Shit People Say.” As long as the stream of shit keeps coming, I’ll keep routing it here.

  Six hours after he was pronounced: “Let me know when you want to clean out his closet, ’cause I’m happy to help.”

  Seven hours after: “I heard Alberto had an EKG two days ago? I don’t know about you, but I smell a medical malpractice suit . . . I even know a few lawyers who’d be all over that. I’ll give you some numbers.”

  At the viewing: “Was he sick or something?”

  At the funeral: “You make a ravishing widow.”

  Two weeks after the funeral: “At least you know where your husband is . . . and he didn’t leave you with four bastardos.”

  A month after: “But why are you still wearing the ring?”

  A month and a half after: “So you haven’t gotten laid since this happened?”

  Two months after: “I was wondering—given the circumstances and all—did you keep the bed or replace it?”

  Two and a half months after: “Do you ever regret not freezing his sperm?”

  Three months after: “Don’t feel bad if you start forgetting about him in a few years.”

  Four months after: “Oh
, you’re a widow now? I’ll hit on you in about two years.”

  Five months after: “We all have to die of something.”

  Five and a half months after: “Don’t you wish you’d had children with him?”

  Six months after: “Do you ever wonder if you’ll find love again?”

  Seven months after: “When do you think you’ll be ready to date again?”

  Eight months after: “You’re lucky it happened in the apartment. Think of the inconvenience if he’d died on an out-of-state business trip . . . or on a plane. They would’ve had to land at the nearest airport: All those people re-routed.”

  Ten months after: “I’d rather be a nigger than a widow.”

  Eleven months after: “Alberto was only forty when he died? See, that’s exactly why I drink so much red wine! He should’ve drunk more red wine.”

  One year later: “You’re a widow? Where’s your ring? I work in the jewelry district. You should come see me when you want to sell it.”

  I have no words for people who say words like these, so I’ll borrow some from my Grandpa Cray: Just look at the shape of their heads and forgive them.

  * * *

  The.

  Medicine.

  Cabinet.

  It’s slaying me.

  I go in for moisturizer and get assaulted by his Flonase, tubes of Aqua de Palma, Denta-Piks, clipper attachments.

  Even the stupid box of Q-Tips printed in French comes with memories.

  Maybe I could just—move everything?

  Out of sight?

  I head to the kitchen for Ziplocs and bag the medicine cabinet before I lose my gumption.

  It will be another two years before an email about a homeless program in need of men’s items will prompt me to gather Alberto’s toiletries from beneath the bathroom sink and arrange for a pick-up.

  * * *

  Today is the Kentucky Derby party at Soho House.

  I’m trying on cocktail dresses and oversized hats when I realize the significance of the date.

  I rush into the office, where a newly arrived Hilda is checking her email.

  Today, I tell her, is four years to the day I met Alberto. At Soho House.

  And you’re going there today, she says, blinking.

  It seems equal parts awful and apropos, I admit.