It's Okay to Laugh

by Nora McInerny Purmort

  There was nothing ceremonial about it, either. One moment, we were sitting in Cecilia’s cozy living room, my feet tucked under me on her sofa, a plate of cookies between us on her antique coffee table, gossiping about old coworkers. And then, she announced that Aaron was here, waving her arm to indicate that he was somewhere between the curio cabinet and the picture window. “Hi.” I waved to the empty room between us, suddenly shy and self-conscious.

  “He says hi, but he’s not saying Nora. He’s saying something else. Norn?”

  “Yeah?” I know that it really is Aaron. When I met him, I told him Nora was a hard name to nickname as a kid. He didn’t miss a beat. “Nobody called you Chronicles of Nornia?” he asked, and that was my name, until he shortened it to Nornia. Or Norn.

  I was a little shy at first, because it had been a while since I’d talked to Aaron, but nothing had really changed. We were still on the same team. He told me to move out of our house; it was too hard for me to be there and the home had served its purpose in our lives. It was time to go, as soon as I could.

  He told me I was doing a good job, but that I needed to buck up a little and be the crazy bitch he’d fallen in love with, who stood up for herself and the people around her. I’d recently had some bizarre interpersonal experiences that the Nora he loved would have never stood for, and I nodded in agreement and let the tears I’d been blinking back fall into my lap.

  It was nice to talk to him again, like no time had passed, like he hadn’t died in my arms months before. Like we weren’t communicating through a woman I hardly knew, who sat in her armchair, staring dreamily out the window while our tea went cold.

  He wanted a to-do list.

  A to-do list? What would I possibly ask him to do, pick Ralph up from day care?

  “I can still help you,” he told me, “just write it all down and I’ll find someone who can do it.”

  And then he was gone, and Cecilia and I were just two former colleagues who had communed with the afterworld before lunch.

  I pulled over a block from her house and dug through my purse for a notebook. HELP ME, AARON, I wrote on the top of the page, and made a list:

  •I need Ralph to sleep through the night

  •I need someone to rent our house

  •Where will we live next?

  •I need to be happier and more peaceful

  •I need to love again. Not yet. But someday? Is that okay?

  I dog-eared the page, started the car, and I went on with my life.

  And things started happening.

  Ralph stopped waking up hysterical in the middle of the night, and the fog around me lifted. The first house I looked at with a realtor seemed perfect, and then I got to the kitchen. The fridge was free of the debris a normal family fridge is covered in: save-the-dates and finger paintings and free magnets from your local pizza shop. There was just one little piece of paper, the prayer card from Aaron’s funeral, telling me, “It’s Going to Be Okay.”

  After investigating the rest of the property, I found a wedding photo, and saw that the bride was a classmate from grade school.

  “Hey,” I messaged her through Facebook. “I’m in your house right now and your dog is licking my leg.”

  This was clearly meant to be, and Aaron had led me right to my destiny.

  Even though she and her husband accepted an offer thirteen minutes after I toured their place, she got in touch when I listed my own house for rent and signed a lease immediately.

  One by one, I checked things off the list I had made for Aaron, and added new ones, because I know that’s what he would want.

  Maybe it’s all one big coincidence, and maybe you’re all rolling your eyes at me right now. I don’t care. I know that Aaron is dead. But I also know that he is still leaning in to this marriage.

  It’s time to raise the bar, fellas.

  Chapter 45

  Just Quit

  There’s a pivotal scene in MTV’s The Hills that nobody but my best friend Dave and I remember, when Heidi Montag still looks like Heidi Montag and she’s dating a guy named Jordan. Heidi has gotten a very coveted PR job in Los Angeles, but it comes with the unfortunate requirement that she go to the office and work every day, which doesn’t really leave her a lot of time to hang out in bed with Jordan. One morning, while she’s getting ready to start her day like a responsible young adult, Jordan urges her to instead dedicate herself to staying in bed all day.

  “Quit,” Jordan whispers in her ear.

  But Heidi doesn’t quit. She goes to work and orders sandwiches and books travel for her boss. Or, I mean, she is filmed doing that. Most of the Internet agrees that her job was fake but just stick with me here. If you don’t know who Heidi Montag is, it’s because this began her rapid demise. Instead of dethroning Lauren Conrad as the queen of Southern California reality TV and transitioning into a career as an Internet fashion mogul, she ended up as a cautionary tale married to a reality TV villain with blond facial hair who collects crystals.

  All because she didn’t follow Jordan’s questionable advice, and quit.

  If Aaron were alive, lying in bed next to me while I whined about what to do for the day, he would for sure be whispering “Baby gimme me that toot toot, baby gimme that beep beep,” because we thought it was hilarious to sexy-whisper R. Kelly songs into one another’s ears.

  Like Heidi, I don’t want to go to work anymore. Not because I have a lazy boyfriend who just wants to have sex with me all day (I WISH), but because I just don’t want to do anything at all. Grief is kind of a full-time job, and when you add in a toddler and the fact that Gilmore Girls is now on Netflix, I’m working double overtime right now. I don’t have time to wake up, shower, eat breakfast, put on an outfit and go to work, where inevitably they will ask me to do things and go to meetings and answer questions. I know I’m supposed to do that, but after looking over my schedule, I just don’t see work fitting in anywhere.

  Something inside me, possibly that third glass of rosé, tells me it’s time to quit my job and be a single, stay-at-home mother whose child is in day care full-time. That something is definitely not my financial planner, whose advice was not to quit my job, and instead keep my job, as having a steady source of income would be wise as a single woman. She has done a lot for our family, like explaining to me and Aaron that Nikes are not an actual investment, and that there are places to put our money that aren’t our closets. Still, I think she may be wrong about this one.

  I am not sure if quitting my job is going to signal my own Heidi Montag–level breakdown or help me avoid one, but I’m willing to risk it anyway. I mean, what’s the worst that can happen? My husband and dad can’t die again, and jobs are like bobby pins: you can lose a thousand of them, but you always find another one. I’m just not interested in pretending that I still have the life I used to have, where I had a husband and a baby and a normal job. That life died when Aaron did, and I’m still trying to figure out what this new life looks like, like the girl I used to dance on the bar with in college who is now a Catholic nun.

  Like most Midwesterners, I was raised to appreciate perseverance. Your marriage should last at least fifty years and end when one of you dies. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. So I did a lot of things I didn’t want to do, just because they were expected of me. I played basketball just because I was tall, even though I spent most games after ninth grade just sitting on the bench, avoiding eye contact with my coach and hoping I wouldn’t have to sweat and ruin my makeup. I stayed with a boyfriend twice as long as I should have because when I was like “let’s break up,” he was like “no, thanks.” I did that more than once, with boys and with jobs, because somewhere along the line I’d absorbed the idea that it’s not good to have too many of either of those things. But why not? Dating a lot of boys and having a lot of jobs should tell you that I’m interested in finding the one that’s right for me, not just hunkering down and suffering through sex with someone whose bones protrude so far I can actually
hear our skeletons clanking together, or a job where my boss thinks that the pizza we are eating for lunch is topped with “shit-talking mushrooms.” I refuse to let people slut-shame me for having a lot of jobs. I watched two different people die last year, and neither one of them was like “oh, gosh, if I have one regret it’s based around my employment history.”

  The happiest people in my life are people who did the thing our coaches and parents always told us not to do: They quit. And once they do, they wonder what took them so long, and why they had been so dedicated to something they disliked so much. Before you’re, like, okay, wow, what a privileged point of view, let me tell you, yep.

  But I’m not just talking about job quitters, because yes, it’s a privilege to have a safety net that lets you just quit your job to figure out who you are and that shit doesn’t always work out for everyone because life is not an indie movie about finding yourself through a passion for artisanal soaps.

  I’m just talking about not doing the things you hate doing anymore. Aside from paying your taxes and flossing, which are nonnegotiable. But most of what we don’t want to do are not things we actually have to do.

  When the pressures of digital relationships detract from real-life relationships, sign out. Give the password to your best friend and tell her to keep you out for a few weeks. When you go back, you’ll have missed nothing but a few birthdays of people whose birthdays obviously weren’t that important to you in the first place or they’d already be in your calendar. Trust me, if your sister has a baby, you’ll find out even without Facebook. Then, you can go on an unfollowing spree, cleansing your feed of every person who still says “Bruce Jenner” or abuses Facebook in the name of “network marketing,” which used to just be called a pyramid scheme.

  You don’t actually have to hang out with people who make you feel exhausted or take little digs at you. You know how everyone has a friend who is basically just mean to them, and you can’t figure out why you are friends with this girl who says things like “Did you guys totally give up on trying to have nice things when you had a kid?” while she’s sitting on a couch that you are proud to say has very few visible boogers crusted onto it? You don’t need to go to her home-shopping party and buy a bunch of personalized bags you’ll never use.

  If you’re married to a total butthole who doesn’t keep up his end of the bargain? Quit. Marriage isn’t supposed to feel like a cage, it’s supposed to feel like a hug that lasts just a few seconds too long.

  Now, is not quitting her job directly related to where Heidi ended up in life? For the sake of this essay, the answer is yes because she stayed at that job, broke up with Jordan, and ended up with Spencer and zero friends. What is not debatable is that some of our greatest national treasures are ours because they were big old quitters. You think you’d see old people grinding to “SexyBack” at every single wedding if Justin were still in N*SYNC? I doubt it. Don’t you appreciate 30 Rock more knowing that it was possible because Tina Fey quit working at Saturday Night Live? Isn’t it amazing that Robert Downey Jr., used to be a huge mess but then he quit drugs and now our kids can watch him save the world as Iron Man?

  The world will keep spinning, and your life will get a little bit better every time you give up on the shit that is taking you away from your one wild and precious life. Nobody is making you go to coffee with that guy you haven’t seen since middle school who is going to try to get you to buy a time-share; nobody is making you stay up until 2:00 A.M. making “end of school” gift bags for forty-eight second graders or accept Facebook invites to birthday dinners you’d rather not attend. These things aren’t jobs, but they feel like them. So let me be your Jordan, whispering gently into your ear, only pushing you toward better things in life because I have your best interests at heart and I’m not sleeping with you.

  Quit.

  Chapter 46

  It’s Going to Be Okay

  (I Think)

  When your dying husband wants pancakes, you get him some fucking pancakes. If ever there is a time to eat your feelings, this would be it, but I cannot. In part because I do not have much of an appetite, and in part because my doctor recently informed me that I can no longer enjoy foods that contain gluten, or in other words, that I can no longer enjoy any of the foods that I consider foods. “Nora,” Aaron said emphatically when I shared my diagnosis with him, “this might be the worst thing that ever happens to you.”

  The diner is small—just a few tables and some stools at the counter, so small that Aaron and I are actually too big to sit there, though before my gluten issues, we would do it just for the chance to eat these pancakes, bigger than our heads, sizzling on a griddle that’s older than the two of us combined. The lunch rush is over, but a few wayward teens with Technicolor hair and safety pin earrings sit a few feet from us. Nobody, I realize, knows that Aaron is dying. It is our little secret. There are many reasons for people to explain why I am crying into my coffee. We could be getting a divorce or being evicted from our apartment or have an inkling that the $20,000 we sent to secure our million-dollar inheritance from a long-lost Nigerian uncle might not pan out.

  Or maybe they do know that Aaron is eating the very last public meal of his life. It may not be as mysterious as I think it is. I’d taken the one handicapped parking spot, though our application was still finding its way through the bureaucracy of the DMV. There were already a few snowbanks, and to get Aaron from the car to the sidewalk, I’d had to squat down and lift him from the waist, like two figure skaters in a dry rehearsal. “Watch my nuts!” he’d yelled, resting his good arm on top of my head like this was a completely natural situation for any couple to be in.

  “So,” Aaron asks me as he hands me the butter knife to cut his pancakes, “what do you want to do now? Should we go to Italy? Should we go to Brazil?”

  There will be no trip to Italy or Brazil, but we talk about it anyway, one last little kindness in a sweet little lie.

  “I just want to be here,” I say, “with you.”

  WE’D STARTED THAT DAY IN the same emergency room he’d been admitted to three years earlier. That first day, before brain cancer was even a part of our vocabulary, was like a field trip for us. We’d found it all so outrageous and fascinating: Why would they make Aaron stay in the hospital, just because he’d had a seizure? Didn’t they know he was young and healthy? That we’d just moved in together, and weren’t planning to tell my parents about the cohabitation? I was only just beginning to shake off the hangover from the Halloween party he’d thrown on Saturday night, so I was having a particularly hard time keeping up with even normal conversations, let alone whatever medical nonsense the nurses were spouting whenever they stepped into our little space in the emergency room. Aaron had given me his phone that afternoon and told me to Instagram everything. I took a handsome photo of him as a modern-day FDR: his skinny legs in the nonslip socks they insist you wear, poking out from under the blanket on his lap as we wheelchaired him to his MRI. We didn’t really know what an MRI was, just that he needed to get one, so that we could get home and get on with our lives, which for me meant chugging at least fifty more ounces of Gatorade and eating a cheeseburger on our couch while Aaron handed out the Halloween candy. I sat on Aaron’s lap in the wheelchair while we waited for his name to be called, his thumb tracing little infinity signs on the small of my back, the way he did every time we touched. Next to us, there was an old man lying alone on a hospital bed, motionless except for the rise and fall of his chest and the occasional blink of his watery eyes.

  We assumed he was first in line.

  When it was Aaron’s turn, I followed him right to the door of the room where what looked like a small spaceship was waiting for him. It took a team of people in various shades of pastel scrubs to get him all strapped in, and before they shut the door I could hear him calling my name. A small part of me, the part that wasn’t thinking of quippy tweets and flirting with Aaron in the basement of a hospital, knew that we were in a Moment. That there would be
Before this moment and After, and I tried to take in everything that I could, to reassemble for future contemplation. Like, for example, how he called out for me before they shut the door.

  “Nora,” he called, raising his arm and gesturing with his forefinger as I stepped closer. “Take a picture for Instagram.”

  WE’RE ER PROFESSIONALS NOW, SO we arrived today prepared for a full day of bullshit: two laptops, two iPads, two iPhones, our own chargers for each device, a pile of fresh comic books for Aaron, San Pellegrino water, KIND bars, and Sour Patch Kids. Before the nurse has even pulled the curtain shut, I’ve pulled the folding chairs from their hanging spot on the wall and kicked off my shoes, putting my feet up on the foot of Aaron’s hospital bed and blindly accepting the terms and conditions for the free hospital Wi-Fi, which probably means I’ve forfeited all rights to my internal organs in exchange for a snail’s-pace crawl toward the information superhighway. There’s no Instagram today—Aaron doesn’t want his mother to worry about him (World’s Best Son Award)—but we settle into our routine of finding funny tweets to read aloud to one another. I suck at this because I can’t get through more than three words of anything Jenny Mollen writes without giggling like I’m in church and just heard somebody fart, but Aaron finds gem after gem, and we may as well be at home in bed except for the sound of a woman howling outside of our room, begging to be put into rehab, insisting she was ready to get clean. “That lady thinks she’s done some shit?” Aaron sighed, staring at the ceiling. “She should try chemo. That’s the really hard stuff.”