by Penni Jones
“Well, I gave her the last laugh when I killed myself, right?” The fact that I was a shitty person shouldn’t be news to me, but it is. It doesn’t seem right. “I wrote her a letter before I died. I apologized for everything.”
“But you still didn’t go to see her. When you died, you hadn’t seen her for eight years and you only lived a one-hour drive apart.”
I didn’t just dump her because she wore camouflage. It was because the one time she came to visit me at college, it was painfully obvious that she was a part of the identity I was desperately trying to shed. She was the country girl who wore chronically muddy boots and only drank beer from a can and sweetened her coffee with packets of powered hot cocoa. Yes, she was often depressed. But so was I.
Watching her grieve was a mixed bag. I wanted the ability to cry with her, to find companionship in our sadness. Until she shouted, “why, Gawd, why?” at the ceiling. That’s when I learned that I still had the ability to laugh. It wasn’t malicious. It was the laughter that comes from seeing something so adorable that your body doesn’t know what to do. Ruthie Mae, my country mouse cousin, was adorable to me in that moment. And then I was gone.
“I gave that homeless guy that hung out on the sidewalk in front of my office a dollar every single day. I know it wasn’t much, but that’s one thing that shows that I cared about people.”
“That required no sacrifice.” He looks into my face and says, “I’m not saying you were, are, a monster. But you need to improve. You don’t get another chance until you do something good.”
“What about Oblivion?” My voice goes shrill just like it used to when I felt like I was getting a raw deal.
“You have time to spare. It should be okay.”
“Should? That’s all you’ve got?”
“Get over yourself, Naomi. You’ll be saving someone besides yourself.”
“Whom will I be saving?” I lean my elbows on the table.
Edgar says, “You will be saving Luke.” He crosses his arms over his chest again. “Luke is a tragic young man who ate a bullet in Missouri in 1997.”
“1997? What year is it now? How long have I been dead?”
“Right back to you, Naomi? It’s 2007. You’ve been dead a little more than a year.”
“That’s what I thought. I’ve been wearing this awful dress with my tits half-out for an entire year. I should have never let Eliza talk me into wearing this fucking thing.”
“Yeah. That was a bad choice. Didn’t you have any gay friends to dress you?” He’s glaring at my boobs with a mixture of wonder and distaste.
“Not that night.”
“Back to the business at hand, please. I need your help.” His eyes move to my face. “Luke hasn’t eased through the grief process like you did.”
“Yeah. No shit.” I cross my arms over my chest, mimicking his pose. “What does this have to do with you?”
“The Shadow is upon Luke. He’s running out of time. If he is taken to Oblivion, then so am I.”
“Because you’re his mentor?”
“Yes. But also because I’ve made some mistakes that I’ll have to pay for if Luke doesn’t make it.” He sweeps his right hand through the air to let me know he isn’t going to tell me what he means. “Mentoring is tough. And you don’t get to this spot because someone likes you. You become a mentor because you really fucked up.”
“What did you do?” I can’t help but smile at the revelation that Edgar is probably worse off than I am.
“I ran the Royal Roost in New York City.” He straightens his tie.
“Never heard of it.”
He stares at me blankly and says, “Oh, right. Small town girl.” Edgar props his elbows on the table and leans forward. “It was the place to be back in my day. We had all the greats: Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie.”
“That’s cool,” I say.
“It was more than cool, woman. It was transcendent. But it turns out that God hates jazz.”
“You’re so full of shit.”
He smirks and says, “How many people have you slept with?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ballpark it, slut.”
“I stopped counting after twenty.” I try to slap my hand over my mouth, but it doesn’t quite work out.
“You tried to say ten, didn’t you?”
“Yes. What the fuck?”
“You can’t lie here, Naomi. If you have no choice but to be honest with yourself and others, enlightenment comes more easily. It gives you a better chance of success in your next go-round.”
“I want to talk to your supervisor,” I say, fully aware that I sound like an entitled bitch. I’m not looking for enlightenment. I just want to get out of this fucking dress and get into a real human body again.
* * *
Another waiting room. I wonder what Greg thought of the waiting rooms when he got here. Did he try to find a way to skip them like with the traffic lights?
A door opens but no one steps out. I walk through it anyway.
“You must be Naomi,” the woman says but doesn’t look up from the sheet of paper in her hand.
“Yes.”
“Sit down.” She points at a chair across from her desk.
“Do we ever stop with the sitting business?” I lower myself into the chair as I ask. It’s more of a hover than a sit. “It’s not like we need the rest.”
The woman looks up and grins. “Some do eventually stop, but in the areas where the recently deceased frequent, we find it’s best to keep up some of the old habits and mannerisms. It helps put souls at ease.” She holds out her hand, punctuating her point. “I’m Doris. I’m your caseworker.” She’s wearing one of those big collars that Gloria Steinem made famous.
“Nice to meet you.” We shake, and I return her smile.
“What brings you here?” she asks even though I’m certain that she already knows.
“I finished my grief watch in record time. I’m ready to move on to the next step, and since I’ve done what was required, I should be able to do so.”
Doris nods and looks at my face. She’s either listening intently or making a great show of it.
“Edgar insists that I’m not ready and I have to help some guy from Missouri who can’t get his shit together.”
Doris raises her eyebrow, so I add, “Pardon my French.”
Doris sighs. Or makes a sighing noise since we don’t breathe here.
“Naomi,” she leans forward with her elbows on the desk. “You have done an exceptional job with grief watch.”
“Thank you,” I say. Doris holds her finger up, ending my plan to continue speaking.
“If making people cry was the only goal, you’d be tops.” Doris leans back in her chair and crosses her arms over her chest. “My worry is that if we send you back right now, you’ll fail. You haven’t learned the lessons you need about helping your fellow human beings. If all you have is yourself, which is understandably how you felt when you were alive, you’ll end up committing suicide again.”
“But Edgar told me that if I kill myself again, I’ll end up in Oblivion. I won’t kill myself if I’m armed with that knowledge.”
She slaps her hands down on the desk. I wait for the noise that doesn’t come.
“You killed yourself the first time with no certainty of what would happen. You’re telling me you weren’t depressed enough to submit to Oblivion that night?”
I open my mouth to argue, but there’s nothing I can say. I’m sure I would have submitted to Oblivion. A small part of me thought I might go to Hell for killing myself. Oblivion sounds better than that.
“It’s what’s best,” Doris says.
“What if it takes too long and I lose my chance?”
Doris shakes her head and says, “You’ll be fine. You have plenty of time.”
“Promise?” I ask, then hate myself for doing it.
“I’m afraid not. But chances are, you’ll be back here in no time. If you don’t get him
through it in time, he and Edgar will both go to Oblivion. It’s a big responsibility.”
“That’s a crock of shit,” I say, for lack of a better option.
“You have a chance to save a young man’s life. You do have the right to refuse. But I don’t recommend it.”
Doris stands without waiting for me to respond. She’s tall in a weird, stretchy sort-of-way.
“You’re special, Naomi. You make a goal and you go for it. You just have to learn how to incorporate some compassion and empathy into your ambition.”
“Thank you.” I’m grateful for the compliment after Edgar made me feel like such an asshole.
“You’re welcome.”
The pull starts before I can say more. Doris did that on purpose. She probably likes to have the last word.
Chapter 3
Luke
It’s almost too late. The Shadow is following me, barely hiding in corners and behind curtains. It’s getting closer, losing patience for my process.
This is my dad’s fault. He won’t cry. He never cried when I was alive. Not when our dog was hit by a car right in front of our house, not when his mother faded away with Alzheimer’s so helpless at the end that she couldn’t feed herself. Why would I think that my death would be the thing that made him human?
But it’s mostly my fault. I’m the one who decided to put the pistol in my mouth and pull the trigger. I’m the one who has spent too long with my other loved ones, too timid to help along the grieving process. I won’t even put out my scent: patchouli and Pantene. I hate being abruptly whisked from person to person with no knowledge of where I’ll land next. But most of all, I can’t bring myself to make these people cry again. I brought them enough suffering when I killed myself.
I’m pretty sure I’ve been dead a long time. I’m taking so long that people aren’t even that sad about me being gone anymore.
My mentor Edgar has warned me over and over that I can run out of time. But his warning never seemed real. It seemed like the warning parents give to not go swimming for 20 minutes after eating. And if it’s a for-real risk, why don’t they give us some sort of watch that’s a personal doomsday clock? Edgar doesn’t have an answer for that. He just rolls his eyes and makes some noise that’s sort of like clearing his throat and growling at once.
My dad is sitting in his recliner, dozing off then waking up long enough to take a pull from his Budweiser every few minutes. When I was a kid, he would sit his fat ass in that chair and preach to me about being a man. He would pass out before primetime with beer bottles at his feet, mostly empty but with a sip or two left that would spill into the carpet and no one would clean it up. The house always smelled like a flannel shirt that had been soaked in beer and then left to dry in a plastic bag.
His message of manhood was always lost in translation.
Sometimes you’re too close to something to really see it. Like when you hang a picture and you can’t tell if it’s crooked until you sink the nail and back away.
I didn’t really see my family for what they were until my cousin’s suicide when I was in college.
When I was nine and finally told them about the things my uncle would do to me on those nights they left me to sleep over, I was relieved that they didn’t confront him. I was relieved that the secret was off my shoulders and laying to rest on theirs. That I didn’t have to tell anyone else the words that would turn family member against family member, each one wondering if I was lying for attention.
They never took me to his house again and that was how they protected me. I didn’t realize until nine years later when my cousin Trevor swallowed an entire bottle of Klonopin that their silence meant he was still exposed to my uncle’s hunger, undoubtedly much worse once I wasn’t around to satiate the beast.
Our family portrait was crooked and always had been.
I asked Edgar once if he mentored Trevor, too. Edgar told me he didn’t know everyone who had committed suicide in a tone that made me feel like a racist.
My mom walks in and throws her keys on the table.
When she grieved, it was spectacular. It was like she knew I was there and wanted to put on the best possible show.
“Walt!” she shouts.
He grumbles a few unintelligible words and sits up. This is the same routine I’ve been watching for at least six months, but maybe as long as six years.
My dad never really liked me. He loved me in his own way, I guess. But he always found me to be a pretentious navel-gazer. I read too many books when I should have been throwing balls or working on cars.
“What do you want for supper?” she asks, the bite gone from her voice.
“I don’t care, Regina. What do you feel like?” He turns up a beer and gulps until it’s all down his throat.
Mom picks up two of the six beer bottles from the carpet and walks them back into the kitchen. She only stays because she’s afraid he’ll die without her, and he certainly would.
“I’ve got bowling league tonight. I’ll put a frozen pizza in the oven for you. Can you stay awake long enough to get it out before it burns?” She has her hands on her hips and her head cocked.
“Yep. I reckon.”
She sighs and walks to the bedroom.
The curtain flutters even though no windows are open, and no fans are on. I know it’s the Shadow. I have to do it, or I’m going to slip into Oblivion.
It’s easy to do, but every time I feel like I won’t be able to. Maybe because I hate to. But I must.
As soon as I decide that I absolutely must do it, my scent fills the room and my dad dozes off again. The smell of my memory might affect his drunken dreaming but might not.
My mom walks through the room and sees my dad sleeping. She smells me, I can tell because her eyebrows raise, and she looks around like maybe I’m sitting on the couch and have been there the entire time. She starts to cry, then shakes her head and leaves the room. Since I’ve already watched her grieve, this doesn’t help me at all.
The Shadow whispers my name, delivered straight to my ear from Death’s lips. I’m fucked.
* * *
I’m in my bedroom hiding from the Shadow which is ridiculous because I’m certain the damn Death Shadow can find me under bed among my old porn that I should have thought to throw away before I killed myself. Why my mom hasn’t thrown out all my shit is beyond me.
Even though I’m probably about to be sucked into Oblivion, the cover of Jugs catches my eye. It would be nice to have one last boner before I disappear into nothingness.
My last screw was about a week before I died. It was Daisy, my sort-of-but-not-really girlfriend. She was cute, with a great body and a gap between her front teeth. But she had no desire to leave Missouri, so I had no desire to treat her as anything other than a time-waster. I couldn’t face the idea of settling down with some down-home girl and never escaping.
I lived in Southern Missouri. It’s much closer to Branson than St. Louis, but even Branson is liberal and metropolitan compared to Brownsville. Less than 1,000 people live in Brownsville, and 900 of them are poor white folks who would only miss church for the Rapture.
My thoughts wander back to Daisy and I feel a tug at my crotch. Maybe I can get a boner, a weird ghost-boner that I can’t do anything with. The tug spreads all over. It’s not a boner. I’m being pulled away even though my dad hasn’t grieved.
Surely Oblivion won’t be so bad. If it is, I won’t know. Right?
But it’s not Oblivion. It’s a café with no food or coffee because we’re all dead here and dead people have fewer needs than the living.
I’m a table with Edgar and a young woman in a red dress with a plunging neckline.
“Luke,” Edgar says with a warm smile.
“Hi, Edgar.” Relief floods my guts, or what would be my guts if I had any.
“I see that look on your face. You thought you were headed to the end. Didn’t you?” Edgar is still smiling.
“Sure did.”
“Hey, i
f you’re going to stare at my tits can you please ask my name?” the girl in the dress says. I look up at her face. I’m sure I would blush if that was possible. She has a blonde bob and brown eyes. She seems too pretty for suicide.
“Sorry. I’m Luke. What’s your name?”
“I’m Naomi.” She holds out her hand, a reflex from her days of living. I go through the motions of handshaking. It’s surprisingly soothing to feel the temperature adjustment in my palm. I bet it would have been nice to touch her skin. She looks like the type of girl who took good care of her skin.
“Naomi here has broken the grief watch record. She’s going to help you out.”
“You mean I’m going to help you both out.” Naomi tilts her head and smirks at Edgar.
“Yes. Apparently, Naomi excels at making people cry.” Edgar returns her smirk.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” she says.
“The problem is, Luke, that you have been dead for a decade,” Edgar says.
My mouth drops open like it’s waiting to receive a communion wafer.
“Though people might be sad about your passing, it’s unlikely to be to the point of crying.” Edgar clasps his hands together and says, “The exception should be your father, but apparently he’s dead inside.”
“Wait, wait. Ten years? I’ve been at this for ten years?” At times it has felt like a month, then other times one hundred years. But right now, a decade seems unfathomable. I was only alive for two decades.
“Yes. Tick tock.” Edgar points at his wrist where a useless watch sits. “You will both be erased if you don’t get this done quickly.”
“Naomi will disappear, too?”
“Such bullshit,” Naomi says. She smiles and says, “Hey, did you know that God hates jazz?”
“Why are you smiling?” Edgar asks.
“Because it’s funny,” she says.
She’s right, and it makes her more attractive.
“We need a plan.” Edgar places his hands flat on the table. “How are you two going to make his dad grieve?”
“I don’t know. I’ve tried everything.” Haven’t I? I’ve hung around, casting my sad aura all over the place, smelling up the joint with patchouli and Pantene. Such a douchey combination. Even I know that.