He offers to call Hertz and confirm that the Ford Edge comes with GPS.
I hand him my phone and head inside for some afternoon alcohol.
* * *
Three nights after he died, one of Alberto’s employees shared her posthumous dream about him: he pranked her on a sidewalk—tugged her hair or tried to trip her—and then danced away, laughing.
Two weeks later, my mom called me: in her dream, Alberto said it was all an elaborate joke and that we’d done quite a good job with the arrangements.
I’d laughed, holding in my sobs until I hung up.
In late spring, two of his friends emailed me the same week: again with the effing prank dreams, again with the sound of his laughter.
It was no longer funny.
For the love of everything, I’m his wife: where’s my damn dream?
Last night—103 nights after his death—I had my first posthumous Alberto dream.
The EMTs had been able to revive him.
I embraced him in our living room before we stepped into a futuristic, chrome elevator with three people wearing black. Reminiscent of the opening scenes in “Superman,” the people in black were planning to turn Alberto into a superhero, specifically a Spider Man spin-off.
As we shot skyward in the elevator, I talked to Alberto in a reassuring tone—he seemed frightened—but as I spoke, my own stupid voice woke me up.
* * *
Back on the East Coast, Vanessa helps me unpack California and re-pack for New Hampshire. From the basement storage unit, we bring a half-dozen bottles of wine and the still-in-its-box bike rack.
I sit on the window seat upstairs and watch an afternoon thunderstorm, my gaze swinging between the dark sky and the teak box with Alberto’s ashes. I want to hug it and tell it which bottles of wine I’m bringing to the lake.
It occurs to me that I can bring a bit of him out there with me. To sprinkle in the water.
I stand up.
Vanessa? Will you help me do something . . . hard?
Yes.
Even if it’s ashes that need to come out of one box, I say, pointing at the urn, and go into a different box?
Of course, she says.
I bring out the screwdriver and an empty cufflink box that belonged to Alberto’s late father. After unscrewing the urn, I scoop out four teaspoons. Vanessa keeps track of the screws and holds the Ziploc open.
I concentrate on nothing except not spilling him.
* * *
Fico calls this afternoon to tell me that MetLife denied Alberto’s corporate insurance policy.
The same policy that Revolución planned on using to buy out my 50 percent equity in the company.
The same policy that would’ve kept my money concerns at bay for years.
My mom is a professional appraiser so I’m semi-fluent in the language of insurance. I know that since Fico is the policy benefactor, only he can fight the decision from MetLife.
I’m not going to contest it, Tré. Cases like this are rarely won and frankly, the legal fees alone would bury us.
I call my lawyer to ask what we do now.
Revolución will have to commission an independent appraisal to determine how much the agency is worth. If you and Fico agree on the appraiser’s valuation, then we’ll review the buy-out documents and create an agreement. If you don’t agree, then we’ll have to commission our own independent appraisal.
So a year of negotiation and bullshitting, I say.
That’s a fair estimate, she replies.
* * *
My cousin Vanessa hasn’t seen our East Coast cousins in years, so I call Brent, who lives in Queens, and ask if he’s free tonight?
The Gipsy Kings are performing two blocks away, I say. Can you join us?
I’m on my way, he says.
After exchanging hugs, I open beers and apologize for the living room chaos.
New Hampshire, I explain.
What’s this for? he asks, gesturing at the bike-rack box.
To install on the rental car, I say. Picking up a Ford Edge tomorrow morning.
I just bought an Edge, Brent says.
No way! Did you drive it here?
Yeah, it’s on the street.
Seriously? Will you show me how to install the rack on your car? I’ve read the directions, but I can’t figure out how it mounts on the back window.
Let’s do it, he says.
Twenty minutes later, Brent has given us a tutorial and saved a picture of the installed rack on my phone.
An hour later, we’re at my friend’s club on Eighth Avenue, watching the Gipsies perform “Bamboleo” with a hundred other lucky souls.
By midnight, the smile on my face has eclipsed the fear in my head.
* * *
Seven hours, two thunderstorms, and only one wrong freeway later, Vanessa and I arrive at the lake house in New Hampshire. I can’t tell whether Nikki’s family is impressed—or horrified—that I did the driving.
We haul our suitcases to the same downstairs bedroom that Alberto and I slept in. I unpack our suitcases and fall asleep with his 8x10 portrait on the dresser beside me.
* * *
Winnipesaukee is Native American for “Smile from a Great Spirit.”
Judging by the weather, the Great Spirit is not amused today.
And the forecast for the next four days?
Not much better.
At the first sign of sunshine, we should spread the ashes, I tell Vanessa.
* * *
After two days of dodging rainstorms and doing puzzles with Nikki’s girls, we pull on bikinis in hopes that the sun will make an appearance. When it finally does, I leap up from the dock.
I’m going inside for the box, I say. Start the engine on the WaveRunner?
We slip into life jackets—house rules—and Vanessa steers us into a nearby cove. She cuts the engine in the clear water and I wonder what I’m supposed to say: A prayer? A tribute?
Apparently I’ve said this aloud, because Vanessa assures me that there’s no rush.
There’s lots of sun left, she says.
I look up at the sky, open the bag blindly, and start speaking even more blindly.
Winnipesaukee was one of your happy places, Alberto, so it only seems right that I bring some of you here. But I don’t know how to do this, baby. I really don’t. So I’m just gonna reach in—
Not the soft campfire ash I was expecting.
He feels gritty, like sand.
And when I extend my arm and release my fist, he looks like an oil slick minus the rainbow.
A forty-year-old life and a world of East Coast memories reduced to grains that are dissolving in front of me.
Vanessa and I sit back-to-back in the cove until there’s nothing to see but ripples and lily pads.
* * *
Woke at 6:30am to keep Alberto’s breakfast tradition alive: kielbasa, bacon, one-egg omelets, and—a new addition, thanks to Vanessa—red potatoes with peppers, feta, and eggs. Put on my brave face at breakfast, but went down to the lake afterward and sobbed. Even at a table of fourteen people, he’s just so missing.
* * *
With three hundred others, I’m sitting in the park in the center of town, waiting for the fireworks show to begin.
Like previous years, old-timers in straw hats perform Big Band songs in a gazebo. Nikki’s girls dart about in glowy rubber jewelry. The adults sip adult beverages and discuss the unseasonably cool weather until the New Hampshire sky finally explodes with neon sea anemones. This year, the colors are less brilliant than I remember and “Moonlight Serenade” seems to be played in a lower, sadder key.
Ring on the Right Hand
I’m recalling how to negotiate NYC in four-inch
Miu Mius: softly and with a big . . .
ponytail.
(July 17, 1:34pm via Twitter)
* * *
For the first morning in nearly four months, I’m getting ready for work.
Vanessa’s presence fills the silence, eases the void, and keeps my tears at bay. She stands at the front door and sees me off, the way I did with Alberto, waving until the elevator doors close.
When the fashion department rushes me with hugs and smiles, I realize how much I’ve missed them. But when I arrive at my desk—with its postcards and framed pictures of Alberto and me—the hyperventilation starts.
Last time I sat here, Alberto was still alive.
I clear my throat, trying to push the grief away, and notice my office voicemail blinking.
Messages.
Something people check after vacations—or bereavement leave.
This is where I start, and by mid-afternoon, muscle memory kicks in. I email a few favorite journalists—long time, no stalk!—do a few tedious conference calls, and meet the newest hire: a digital strategist named Sharon who’s rocking a fierce pixie cut and a vintage dress.
But when the receptionist brings me pink, yellow, and green roses in a bark-wrapped vase, I am stunned into silence.
Who sent you flowers, Tré? someone says, a few desks away.
Not the person who used to, I say, before my teeth can stop it.
Alberto was a man who knew how to send flowers: often and well arranged.
Orchids or gardenias or Ecuadorian roses would arrive at my office after I’d spent the weekend at his office, editing his agency’s latest presentation. After I’d nursed him back to health following ear surgery—or a silly cold. A few days before our anniversary. The week of my birthday. On the November date of my brother’s accident.
And always.
Always when I started a new job.
Though the flowers are from my parents, they are exactly what my desk was lacking today.
* * *
A cocktail convention in the French Quarter ain’t a bad way to spend your first weekend back on the job.
But as I pack for the trip, I keep flashing back to Alberto sitting on the sofa, watching me get ready for business trips: You’ve been packing for two hours! You’re taking the big suitcase for a weekend trip? You’re bringing those shoes—with that dress?
Still deciding whether I miss his teasing more than I appreciate my privacy.
* * *
During a working dinner in the Quarter tonight, I keep thinking I should duck outside and check in with Alberto. A thirty-second call or text went a long way with him when I entertained clients or journalists.
Miss you, my text would say. Sorry my dinner is running so late. See you around eleven!
His reply?
I’ll be here . . . at the intersection of Loneliness and Abandonment.
Nobody is waiting at any intersection for a check-in text from me tonight, so I try to focus on memories that have nothing to do with Alberto.
Nine years ago, I spent ten days in New Orleans with my friend Hoffman. He was the jokester buddy of my Malibu boyfriend, and one of the few people I didn’t lose in the divorce. A year after my break-up with his friend, Hoffman was in law school at Tulane and I was at Berkeley. It was the year 2000, when my birthday happened to fall on Fat Tuesday.
You should fly in, he said. Stay Mardi Gras week. We’ll kill it for your birthday, brah.
I flew to New Orleans, met the three other girls who were staying the week, and promptly staked my claim to a sitting-room sofa.
Yeah, didn’t sleep there much.
Host-With-the-Most Hoffman had actually arranged a personal tour guide for me: a smooth, green-eyed local with a legendary . . . pedigree. When the local wasn’t showing me the nuances of NOLA’s underbelly, Hoffman was introducing me to the flourless chocolate cake at Commander’s Palace, a tree named Grandfather at Audubon Park, and the best patch of neutral ground to watch the Zulu parade.
So, yeah, killed it for my birthday.
Over beers in California several years later, he winkingly confessed to sleeping with all three of those girls that week. And his supposedly platonic female roommate.
I may have called him a man-whore and high-fived him.
By 2004, he’d settled into a career as an L.A. attorney and would appear at my West Hollywood door on his Friday-night commute. Over Greek food, we’d swap sport-dating adventures or get buzzed and go to MOCA. Jumbo’s Clown Room, read-alongs of Richard Feynman, and Saturday-night benders were usually involved. Hoffman kept an extra suit in his car, which came in handy if Monday morning happened to find him on my living room couch.
I gave Hoffman his first head shave—it’s not coming back, dude, gotta let go of the dream—and he gave me my first proper shoe shine. I may have scrubbed his vomit from my bathroom walls once and he might have paid my rent one Christmas. We slept in the same room dozens of times but our first kiss was one week before I met Alberto. There would be no second kiss.
Two years from now, I will receive news that Hoffman died in L.A. at forty-one.
Heart attack.
He was found in an armchair, slumped over a book.
Among a thousand other things, I will wonder if the book was written by Richard Feynman.
* * *
Apparently New Orleans has the same insomniac effect now as it did nearly a decade ago: I was up until 7am talking to a man I met last night. We shared a few drinks and the same hotel room, but not so much as a kiss. Did this morning’s walk of fame with my head held high.
* * *
Only a week back in the real world, and the small talk is killing me.
Why is every manicurist and bartender and industry person compelled to notice my rings and ask how long I’ve been married? Did these same unsolicited questions happen when he was alive?
What if I take off my wedding band altogether and shift my engagement ring to the right hand? Is that enough of a social signifier? A sign that something’s askew—and it’s best not to press for details?
Staring at the absurd tan line on my ring finger, I find myself willing it to both fade and never fade.
* * *
Today’s mail serves up a few catalogs addressed to Alberto and a letter from my biological grandmother. She and my father, the son she gave up for adoption in 1951, located each other nine years ago and have been in distant touch ever since.
Her letter addresses a reoccurring theme—how do she and my father fit into each other’s adult lives?—and I find myself in a familiar but awkward spot. She writes to me because I’m the granddaughter and one generation separates us from guilt or abandonment issues. She writes to me because she knows I do not judge her.
Cannot judge her.
Unless I’m willing to judge myself for making the same decision when I was eighteen years old and pregnant.
It was the last semester of my senior year and six weeks after I’d broken up with Griffin, a half-Filipino fellow I’d dated for three torrid, drug-fueled months. I’d quit the fellow shortly after quitting the drugs, and sobriety had rewarded me with a California high-school diploma, driver’s license—and a positive pregnancy test.
After breaking the news no parent wants to hear, I escaped on a previously booked spiritual retreat in the mountains. At six weeks pregnant, there was no baby bump and my morning sickness was likely seen as an eating disorder.
Two nights into the retreat, I was attending an indoor meditation session in a large cabin on the mountain.
Eyes closed, mind cleared, moon full.
I was repeating this mantra until a voice startled me. Not one of those still, small voices you hear on the way to the airport, asking if you turned off the flat iron: this is a loud, wake-the-dead kind of voice. And it’s saying things no one but me knows.
My eyes fly open, looking for the sou
rce that’s just outed me.
The room is silent and oblivious.
I’m the only idiot with her eyes open.
I shake it off, take a breath, and close my eyes again.
The voice—neither male nor female—speaks and once again, I am gaping at a room full of people who are oblivious to me. I start wondering if hallucinations are a side effect of pregnancy and close one eye, then the other.
I cannot stop the tears when The Voice happens a third time, so I rush outside, away from the words Therresa, you need to give this child up for adoption. I’m halfway up the mountain—I’ll outrun The Voice!—before my throat goes so dry that I have to stop, heave, and throw up.
Dinner evacuated, I hike blindly up the mountain with bare feet until the full force of what just happened in the meditation room hits me.
I collapse on rocks and pine needles, sobbing like a girl.
God?
Is telling me?
To give this kid up for adoption?
As I’m saying these words aloud, it occurs to my eighteen-year-old brain that if God is telling me to do this, then I will not have to do it alone.
I came down from the mountain and told my parents I was giving my child up for adoption. Dad was adopted, so no judgment there. My mother responded by suggesting a summer trip to Idaho—where my parents lived while my dad attended University of Idaho at Moscow—to think things through.
Sure, I said. But my mind’s made up.
Good for you, she said. Oh, I’m buying your brother a ticket too.
I can take care of myself, I said.
I know you can, she replied, but Phil’s going with you.
I’d heard Griffin was seeing other people and since he hadn’t bothered to show up for any of my doctor’s appointments, I didn’t bother sending him the adoption memo before heading north.
The eight-week trip to Idaho with Phil was arranged and summer jobs were landed: me as a florist’s assistant and him as an apprentice plumber. We met for lunch most weekdays and at the Moscow mall on weekends. Every Saturday, he’d do his laundry at the farmhouse where I rented an attic room from a college professor’s family.
It was in this small town of Moscow that I had lunch with the same pastor whom I would ask, sixteen years later, to perform Alberto’s funeral and who would refer me to Pastor Weinbaum with the striped socks and shaved head. During this lunch, the Idaho pastor gave me letters and photos from couples who wanted to adopt. After corresponding with a few potential adoptive parents, I spent a long weekend in Boise with the front-runners. Jack and Lisa aced my teenage litmus test: thirty-ish homeowners with masters degrees; Christian but not culty; political views that didn’t make me cringe. After forty-eight hours, I was convinced Jack and Lisa were The Parents.
Splitting the Difference Page 11