It's Okay to Laugh

by Nora McInerny Purmort

  I’ve spent several hours pretending to know who I am talking to when they hug me and tell me how sorry they are for my loss, but most of these faces have meshed into one. Finally, there is one I know for certain, an old family friend who I am shocked to find has actually turned into an old family friend. He is handsome still, and older in the way they age movie actors in films where they need to play themselves in the future: like someone just drew some wrinkles on him with makeup and brushed some gray into his hair.

  “Gosh,” he says, looking past my shoulder to cast a loving, wistful gaze at my mother, “I always had such a crush on your mother.”

  After we bury my father, in a small plot among rolling acres of long-gone veterans, men and women whose lives are represented by identical white headstones, I go back to work. Everything at my little beige cube is exactly as I left it when I’d gotten a call from my sister the day before my father died telling me to leave work, now. My favorite mug is filled with a scummy layer of dried-up coffee, the highlighter I’d left uncapped is now dry. I spend the day staring blankly at my computer screen, getting hugs from coworkers who are very sorry to hear about my father, sitting in meetings and wondering how all of these people can carry on like this when there is such an obvious, gaping hole in the world. For days and weeks afterward, I pretend he is still alive, that he has left to spend the winter in Palm Springs as he had for years. I keep his number in my favorites, just in case I need to call him.

  ONE SUMMER IN MY LATE twenties, I went to a funeral with my father for a person who was too young to die. It was early evening when the service ended, and when we made our way from the stony sadness of the viewing room to the outdoors, we found ourselves on a busy street with cars passing and late-summer sun shining and packs of young people, drunk on the feeling of being alive in the summer (and also beer), rushing down the sidewalk off to somewhere.

  “That’s the thing,” my father said to me, my arm looped in his, “the world just keeps spinning, doesn’t it?”

  Chapter 40

  Is He Going to Die Soon?

  When your boyfriend is having his head shaved before emergency surgery to remove a brain tumor, the right thing to say about his shiny new head is probably not “You were going bald anyway.” But that’s what I said, because I am an idiot and because nobody ever knows what to say in awkward, terrible situations.

  Aaron laughed, because he had the superhuman ability to laugh at himself, but even today I feel terrible about how that came out. Even though, I mean, I was right.

  Since that bizarre Twilight Zone episode of a Halloween night where my boyfriend went from being a normal thirty-two-year-old dude to being a cancer patient, our family has gotten emails from long-lost acquaintances and friends of friends of friends. We have been stopped in restaurants and on the street by total strangers, people who just want to tell us they love our love, that they think of us often and wish us well. Even though this tends to happen when I am out in public wearing no makeup and looking like a drowned sewer rat, that’s a really amazing feeling. It’s been like a never-ending fire hose of love and energy that we get to dance in like sweaty children on a hot summer day, with occasional pauses for someone to instead pelt me in the face with a water balloon.

  I feel like cancer is just a rite of passage, you know?

  Yes! Cancer is just like getting hazed at your sorority or failing your driver’s test because self-parking cars didn’t exist in the nineties. I think you’re on to something here.

  So, is he going to die soon?

  You know what? Great question. It’s definitely not what a bride traditionally hears after her wedding, but that’s what makes this such a memorable choice. Well done, former coworker.

  My friend’s husband had the EXACT SAME CANCER. He died.

  Oh! Great! Please consider adding a spoiler alert to this conversation.

  Have you tried a juice cleanse? Have you heard of Jim the Healer? He’s located in Argentina, where he had to flee because the FDA didn’t want him to cure cancer. He only takes American Express or PayPal. Here’s the Geocities website he made in 1998.

  Thank you so much for sharing your medical expertise. I know most people prefer to consult “doctors” about their cancer treatment, but why would we when you’ve got the answers?!

  Do you think he would have married you if he didn’t have cancer?

  Well, there’s only one way to tell: acquire a time machine, travel back in time and have him get a CAT scan in about 2006, when his brain tumor was probably just starting to form and was likely not yet cancerous. Then, conduct an elaborate scheme to get him to break up with his girlfriend and fall in love with me, and see if we still end up married. I’m guessing that tipping him off to the murderous cells hiding in his brain might help convince him to love me or totally freak him out, but it’s worth a try!

  You just have to keep fighting.

  Yeah? I mean, cancer isn’t much of a fight for some people. There are some where treatment is basically you just standing there while the Mike Tyson of cancers sucker-punches you over and over again. This is hard stuff, and a person can only take so much. When it’s clear that it’s time to call it, that’s okay, too.

  Don’t worry, you’re young. You’ll find someone else.

  Thank you for the pep talk. It’s a really nice thing to hear at my husband’s funeral. Do you think there’s anyone here who is interested in dating me? Do you mind putting some feelers out for me?

  I know how you feel. My [grandmother, dog, bus driver] just died and I am devastated.

  Oh thanks yep you nailed it. You’ll definitely feel the exact same way when your husband and father die right after your miscarriage.

  You know, it’s all a part of God’s plan

  Hey, God! Great plan! I love it. Super fun.

  He’s in a better place.

  Like Martha’s Vineyard?

  It can be hard to know what to say to a person who is going through something difficult, but you can probably wipe these options from your list of conversation starters. There are no right words, though I wish there were because I would say them instead of the stupid, awkward shit that comes out of my mouth. If there were right words, I wouldn’t have told my hysterical coworker to put her cat to sleep because it sounded like cat chemotherapy was kind of expensive.

  You’re thankful for the kind things people say, you forgive the dumb things, but you’re crushed by the silence. I always like to think the best of myself, so I’d like to think that if something terrible happened to someone I knew, I’d be able to acknowledge it with love and encouragement, though I know it’s easier said than done. When Aaron died, I heard from strangers around the world, but some of his closest friends disappeared completely. New friends came into my life, but some people I’d known forever didn’t return.

  I ran into my very first boyfriend the way Catholics tend to do . . . at a funeral. “I’m sorry,” he said to me as he stood up from our lunch table in the church basement to head back to the office. “I never said anything to you about your dad or your husband. I didn’t know what to say.” We’d dated for nearly eight years, and my father had loved him and threatened to murder him on occasion. I’d noticed his absence in the piles of cards and emails I got after Aaron and my father died, and I let it burn me a little bit, to take the edge off the grief.

  “I know,” I told him, my heart cracking open just enough to feel for him, the mushroom-haircutted boy who’d kissed me on my parents’ steps and always struggled to put his heart into words. I meant it—that I knew he didn’t know what to say, and that I knew why.

  “Nobody knows what to say. I don’t even know what to say.”

  I don’t worry so much about saying the right thing or the wrong thing anymore, and even all of the stupid things that people have said have a special place in my heart, because they’re a sign that somebody tried. Sure, it was awkward and I wanted to punch a few throats, but being a human is awkward and uncomfortable. We’re all just doi
ng our best here. I have to remind myself of that all the time, especially since my Facebook feed has become 90 percent pyramid schemes involving either vitamins, essential oils, or nail decals.

  Being a founder of the Hot Young Widows Club didn’t bring me the wisdom to know what to say when I’m faced with death and sickness and grief. Most people are illiterate in the language of grief, and I count myself among that number. I am trying to learn and teach at the same time, but I am beginning to think that there is no right thing to say, and that perhaps it is okay for language to fail us at this time. It’s okay for us to stumble for words when we’re faced with death and sickness and grief; it’s okay for stupid and awkward ones to slip out where we’d hoped sweet and comforting ones would have appeared.

  You may be the person who says the wrong thing, but that’s better than being the one who says nothing at all.

  Chapter 41

  “The Boy Is Mine”

  I would really like to say that after I befriended my ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend and turned her into my lifelong friend I was forever cured of jealousy. And I do like to lie sometimes, but I still can’t say that. I only lie about things like where I ate for lunch and why I couldn’t make it to your birthday dinner. I don’t lie about who I am because guess what? You’re going to find out the truth eventually, when I die and I have nobody to clear my Google history for me.

  On our second date, Aaron and I performed that delicate dance where you try to figure out just how available the person you’re on a date with really is. You want to give out just enough information to let your paramour know that you’ve got no baggage and are footloose and fancy free, but not enough information that he knows you broke up with your last boyfriend via email because you’re emotionally stunted. I went first, and tried to make it seem like I was ready for a boyfriend, but not desperate for one. When he asked if I was still friends with my exes, I changed the subject, as not a single one of them is currently on speaking terms with me. Maybe because I broke up with them via email or while riding bicycles? I wouldn’t know, we don’t speak anymore.

  Aaron and his girlfriend had broken up pretty recently, he told me. Like, about a day before he and I met. Oh, and they’d dated for about a decade. Of course I couldn’t be cool about this. He’d had one girlfriend and he dated her for nearly a third of his life.

  It was clear to me that we couldn’t date very seriously. I mean, I’d been through enough to realize that you don’t build a successful relationship right on the heels of a failed one. You need to have a buffer of a few casual dates in between, a sort of sexual palate cleanser to get you ready for the next commitment.

  In the few weeks that we’d known each other, we’d spent all day trading texts and Gchats and tweets, a constant stream of communication that I’d grown really fond of. Aaron was the first thing I saw in the morning, and the last thing I saw at night. Through my phone, but still. I was already attached. It had all been so devoid of the drama that underscored all of my previous romances. But then I had to find out that he’d had a girlfriend before me, and I felt that little green fire light up in my stomach again.

  That night, at home in my apartment, I snapped in my retainer, opened my laptop, and prepared for my new case. I was back in the Facebook Forensics game, and I had a new mark.

  It was easier than I thought. Aaron had a variety of Facebook albums for me to choose from, and they were rich with photos of a petite blonde, smiling and drunk and hanging all over him. She had long hair, a big smile, and a nose like mine. So, I thought, he has a type. I was able to put together a profile of my competition pretty quickly: His ex was named Nicole. She was shorter than me, which meant inferior. She was also a recent college graduate, and worked as a scientist. I wasn’t wild about her being smarter than me, but reasoned that I probably made more money than her since I was more established in my career. Plus, Aaron and I both worked in advertising, so we’d have more to talk about, right? She seemed to be friends with all his friends, which was clearly going to be a problem, but they would probably grow to like me more once they got to know me. She may not be my next Karen, but we could probably be friends.

  I was satisfied with my work, even if it took me a few weeks to realize that I was totally off and Nicole was Aaron’s friend’s little sister and not his former girlfriend.

  So I started over. I had to dig deep this time, but I found her. His real ex. And the results did not look good for me. For one, she was taller than me. My résumé clearly states under “special skills” that I’m the tallest woman in the room, so I didn’t like that development at all. She was also terribly pretty, like Mandy Moore only taller, an unfortunate combination for a fan of Mandy. She played college volleyball, unlike this quitter who stopped after high school. She had bigger boobs than me for sure, though there are fifth graders who have achieved the same thing. To top it off, she was barely even on the Internet. It was like she had a rich, satisfying life offline or something. I wasn’t pleased.

  Unlike me, who would tell you literally anything you wanted to know about any guy I’ve ever so much as kissed, Aaron was really respectful about his relationship with Katie. It just wasn’t meant to be, he’d say, and then that would be that, and I would just be left to wonder if she wore makeup or if her skin was really that good.

  Even though in my heart I knew that if I could just Parent Trap us together I could win her over the way I’d won over Karen and we could be best friends who got manicures together and talked about Aaron’s faults behind his back, I had no choice but to consider the case closed. Until that tall, beautiful dame walked back into my life.

  We were in the pre-op room in the basement of the hospital about two minutes before doctors were going to chainsaw Aaron’s head open to take out a brain tumor we’d just found out about. So, you could say that the atmosphere was a little intense. When the curtains opened, I expected it to be the little old nurse who had left abruptly when a drugged-up Aaron accused her of “trying to get up on my diiiiiick,” but instead, it was Katie.

  It was immediately clear that she had as good an idea as I did as to how she’d ended up back here, and my hard little Grinch heart softened into a little sponge. I wanted to hug her, but there wasn’t enough room, so I just extended my arm and we shook hands over Aaron’s half-conscious body. Per my “meeting girls I’ve stalked” code, I hadn’t showered in many days, and had my hair in a greasy bun. She did look exactly like a taller Mandy Moore. And she smelled nice. And then, she was gone.

  While Aaron’s surgery got under way, I walked through the cold, sterile halls of the hospital until I got to the adjoining hotel, where I took the kind of long, hot shower that burns off at least a layer of skin and helps you think all of the thoughts you’ve been too tired to think. I realized, standing in a Marriott shower while my boyfriend had what the doctors referred to as a “skull flap” cut into his cranium, that love was the best thing to have in common with anyone. It was a goddamn Carrie Bradshaw moment. I loved Aaron, and so had Katie. So I loved Katie, too. For spending her adolescence with the man I would marry, and for setting him free just in time.

  I didn’t see her again for years, even though we became Facebook friends and exchanged phone numbers and liked each other’s Instagram photos and I referred to her as “my friend Katie” like we had in fact gone to school together and not just loved the same dude at different times. I spotted Katie while I delivered Aaron’s eulogy, her pretty face floating head and shoulders above the crowd. And after hugging about seven hundred people and slamming as many glasses of white wine, I cornered her, held her in my sweaty arms, and begged her to come out to the bar with us afterward. And, like a best friend I had only met once before, she did.

  It was the karaoke bar where she and Aaron had spent many nights, and Aaron and I had gone when we started dating. I put in my request right away. A duet that I normally performed myself, though tonight I was ready to share the stage. What video footage from that night tells me is that when we t
ook the stage, we crushed it. And by crushed it I mean it is not clear that I am singing the right song, and somebody unplugged my microphone without me even noticing. But I don’t remember any of that, so who cares.

  I just remember Katie smiling at me, holding my sweaty hand, and agreeing to sing with me. “What song?” she asked me, walking up to the stage.

  “‘The Boy Is Mine.’”

  Chapter 42

  Welcome to Grey Gardens

  This is a just a temporary roommate situation. It’s not like I live with my mom—that would be crazy. Besides, we’ve tried that before a few times and it always ended up with one of us (her) recommending the other one (me) get an apartment. I told her the last time she kicked me out that this was it, I wasn’t going to be returning to the nest just to eat her food and not pay rent, and if she thought I was going to, she had another thing coming. At the time, she and my father had some annoying habits they weren’t ready to confront, like grinding coffee at 7:00 A.M. even when I had a hangover, or always wanting to know when I was coming back just because I was driving their car.

  That was when I was young, just a tender little angel at the age of twenty-seven, smoking cigarettes on the back steps and spraying myself with Febreze to hide the smell. Now I’m an adult woman with a child and a 401(k), I don’t live with my mom. I don’t sleep in the bed I got when I was sixteen and finally convinced my parents that I was too tall for a twin with a footboard, why would you even think that? Yes, I woke up there this morning but it was more like I just needed a place to crash, and I was already at my mom’s house and had already put my son to bed in the room next door, and my toothbrush was already here, so I figured, hey, why not take a snooze? Yes, my son and I have been spending seven nights a week at my mom’s place for the past few months but it’s not like we live there. It’s not like she buys our groceries or has accidentally worn my underwear. That’s just gross, you weirdo.