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CHAPTER 9 Meet Cute

About a year ago, Johnson Company did a total software overhaul. Our new email program took its cue from Facebook. Everyone in the system now had a user profile that included a picture and a mini-bio that popped up on the side of the page if you clicked on their contact information or emailed them.

My name is Jeff Manning. I like sunsets and kittens and…

It was meant to foster “inter-office collegiality” or some such bullshit. As far as I could tell, it was mainly an opportunity for voyeurism and ridicule, particularly for the people—almost always women, almost always of a certain age—who took the whole thing too seriously. They’d strike “alluring” poses with their faces tilted to the side, their hair salon-perfect, and post bios full of their likes and dislikes. If they were stupid enough to mention their cats—or, God forbid, pose with one of them—they were done for.

I don’t know if it was spite, boredom, or low-level rebellion, but the minute the site went live, there was a small but persistent group—almost always men, almost always of a certain age—who started compiling lists.

Top Ten Most Likely to Have Their Corpse Eaten by Their Cats. Top Ten Trying Too Hard. Top Ten MILFs. And so on. If you can think of it, the list existed. While some of them were funny, those of us “lucky” enough to be management had the distinctly unfun task of trying to discover the perpetrators so they could be disciplined.

And that’s how I re-met Tish.

When a particularly nasty list went around—Top Ten Facial Blemishes That Ought to Be Taken Care of Immediately—I actually felt motivated to find the culprit. My own assistant was on it, and the mole on her chin wasn’t that bad, really. I had a pretty good idea who the perpetrator was, a junior accountant named Evan. Since he was someone I’d been wishing I had something on for a while—he was a dick of the highest order, and marginally competent to boot—I did some skulking around and got the proof I needed.

My boss, Gerry, was all for firing him, so he took it upstairs and came back with the okay to give him the axe. An “example had to be set,” and guess who got to set it?

Yessir.

Gerry suggested I get some HR training before I did the deed, something about protecting us from liability if Evan went postal.

“I’ve found Tish from the other Springfield helpful. Plus, she’s number five on—”

I held up my hand. “Don’t say it. Then I’ll have to report you too.”

“Good luck with that.”

He did one of those high school bird-flipping maneuvers that turned into rubbing the side of his nose before snickering his way out of my office.

I’m pretty sure Gerry’s the origin of more than one list.

I almost called after him to ask “Tish who?” but it occurred to me that Tish was a pretty unusual name. There probably weren’t two people named Tish in the HR department in the other Springfield.

So it proved. A couple clicks of the keyboard brought me to the contact page of Tish Underhill—real name Patricia—and I couldn’t keep my face from breaking into a grin.

I’d thought of her occasionally since that chance meeting in the food line. Fleeting thoughts, mostly when HR got mentioned, but I’d never made any effort to find her. Because what was the point? She’d made it fairly clear that she didn’t want to be found…

But when I pulled up her contact information, I admit I spent a long time studying it, her picture in particular. Not because she looked great in it—okay, not only because she looked great in it—but because of the whole attitude of the thing. Her dark hair tumbled over her shoulders, like she’d just released it from an elastic, and she wasn’t wearing any makeup. She held her chin in her hand, a pose I usually would’ve found derisible, but in her case, it gave off the perfect mix of ease and I-don’t-give-a-fuck. This is me, her picture said, love it or hate it.

I loved it, and found myself looking at it whenever I had an idle moment.

I may have had a lot of idle moments.

I also loved what she wrote in her profile. No embellishments or waxing eloquent about her pets. She was married, she had a daughter, she loved reading and golf.

It was, in fact, nearly word for word what I wrote in my own biography, which I’d left till the last minute and dashed off without any thought. Maybe that’s what she’d done too. Whatever it was—our strange first conversation, the similarity of our thought process—I felt a sense of kinship with her.

If I’m being honest, it took me a few days to work up the courage to contact her. But like all things, it had to be done sometime. There was a firing to do, after all, and so I opened her contact page, glanced at her now familiar picture, discarded the mental drafts I’d composed, and wrote:

Patricia,

Not sure if you remember me, but we met a while back at that company retreat in Mexico. I was the guy who completely embarrassed himself in the food line. “You schooled that flagpole” is a line that’s been haunting me for a while.

Anyway, I have an HR situation I need a consult on. Can we hop on the line when you have a chance?

Best,

Jeff Manning

I hit Send without reading it through, feeling like I’d asked her on a date.

Which was ridiculous.

Ridiculous.

Ping!

There was a reply from her in my inbox.

Jeff,

Please call me Tish. And how could I forget your knight in shining armor act on the driving range? If you hadn’t dragged that guy away, there might’ve been a homicide. Besides, I was trying to school that thing, so no need to be haunted, if you were.

Hop on whenever you’d like.

Tish

A slight pause and then,

Tish,

Hop on now?

Jeff

Seconds later,

Hop away.

I glanced at her phone number and dialed it. My fingers felt shaky and I kept clearing my throat, like I had a cold coming on, which I didn’t.

Ring, ring.

“Jeff,” she said, a laugh in her voice. “What took you so long?”

CHAPTER 10 Playing in the Dirt

I wake on Thursday feeling something, some measure, like myself. I have a bit of that thumping energy I get, the will to do something, something, I always have to be doing something. I want to leave the house so badly I wish I had somewhere to go to like Seth does. School, I want to go to school, I realize as I’m eating my sugarcoated breakfast while trying to ignore the never-ending flow of my parents’ bickering. And I have a school to go to. My school.

With Beth’s encouragement and over my mother’s halfhearted protests, I shower, dress, make an attempt to arrange my hair, and walk to Playthings. The day promises glorious and the trees are greening. Life, it all screams. Life.

Driving’s still out of the question, but I leave the funeral pills behind. They make me too fuzzy, too lizard-brained, and if my mind’s now full of racing thoughts, at least they aren’t only about Jeff. The slow-motion slideshow of our life together that seems to wend endlessly through my brain has small commercial breaks. We need some better food in the house. Seth should get a haircut. Is there any chance I might convince Beth to move home and, possibly, in with us?

Playthings ends up being exactly what I need. Not the work, or the bills waiting for my attention, or the lease that needs renegotiating, but the kids. When I enter the building and breathe in the familiar smell of fruit-based children’s snacks and papier-mâché materials, I decide to bypass my office and the red light I can see on my desk phone blinking message, message, message and head right for the primary colors.

I feel the strange looks aimed my way from some of the staff, but none of them tries to dissuade me. The tiny little children don’t know any better. They have a new big person to pay attention to them; all’s right in their me, me, me world.

I play blocks, I read the same story about Thomas the Tank Engine (go, Thomas, go, Thomas, go go go) more times than I can count. I roll around on the floor and let the boys take out their aggression by pouncing on me with squeals of delight. I plunk out a few tunes on the child-sized piano, all off-chords and tinny sounds. When snack time arrives, I scoot around the low plastic table, scooping little Ruby Adams into my lap. We share a cut-up apple, some grapes, and a handful of Goldfish.

We play a game with the fish-shaped crackers, pretending they’re swimming in an imaginary sea. After snack comes nap time, and I’m as ready for it as the children are. Ruby pats the space next to her with her slightly yellowed fingers, and I tuck a plush toy under my head.

As I start to drift, the feel of the plastic mat underneath me knocks a new memory into my brain. And as much as I don’t want to think about it, I fall asleep to thoughts of the last time I was on a mat in this room, and with whom.

I leave Playthings before the parents start arriving for pickup, wanting to avoid the uncomfortable conversations that are sure to ensue. Like the messages from my friends I keep on ignoring, I’ll leave it till tomorrow, I think, then think it again the next day.

The air outside is cooler than when I arrived. April’s been fooling us these last few weeks into believing it’s spring, but winter isn’t quite ready to give up its grip. I double over the front of my light coat, holding it tight against my body with my hands thrust in my pockets, and walk as quickly as I can.

It’s fully dark by the time I get home. I can see small puffs of my breath in the glow from the street lamps. When I get to my front walk, Beth’s sitting on the front porch in my winter parka, waiting, I assume, for me.

“Hey,” she says, looking up from her iPad.

It’s open to her work email, which is full of red-exclamation-mark-important messages.

Beth’s a partner in a swanky big-city firm located a thousand miles away from here. She’d wanted to leave Springfield as long as I can remember. It was how she started most of her sentences growing up when we were out of our parents’ hearing.

“When I get out of here…”

I never quite understood what it was that drove her. She’s always been really close with our father, his favorite ever since she declared at ten that she wanted to be a lawyer like him. It was she who spent her summers working in the filing room, running documents to court, learning how to do easy research mandates. He even had “James & James” business cards made up when she got into law school.

But she was determined. And when she went first to college as far away as possible, and then to law school even farther away than that, I watched my father’s heart crack at the realization that what he’d always taken as a given wasn’t going to happen.

A few days after she’d called to say she’d accepted a job at a fancy West Coast firm that subsisted on sunshine and movie stars, I found him sitting in his study with the box of business cards in his hands. He looked so lost I found myself saying something I wasn’t even sure was true.

“I’m going to be a lawyer, Dad. I’ve decided.”

He looked up, startled, clearly having been unaware of my presence until I spoke. “That’s nice, dear.”

“No, I mean it. Really. And I want to come back, I…want to work with you.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to.”

He looked at me for a moment, like he was puzzling something out. “I always thought…are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Well, I guess I’ll keep these then,” he said, patting the box.

When I turned to leave, I heard him slide open the drawer to his desk, the one that squeaked, his discard drawer where old papers he couldn’t quite bring himself to throw away went to live their lives in rarely disturbed seclusion. The box thunked onto the stack of brittle papers, and I imagined the dust motes floating up to tickle my father’s nose. That he’d placed the cards in that particular drawer told me he didn’t believe me, despite what he said.

And as he sneezed a mighty sneeze, I thought, You’ll see, Dad. You’ll see.

So Beth left and I stayed. She makes it home about twice a year, if we’re lucky. She had a brief, disastrous marriage to a guy I never really got to know, which ended when he cheated on her, and since the divorce, I’ve heard little of her dating life. I wonder sometimes if she’s lonely, but it isn’t the sort of thing we ask in our family, or admit to.

“Has the firm collapsed since you’ve been gone?” I ask.

“It spins on without me.”

“Then why do you look so serious?”

She shrugs. “How was Playthings? Still standing without you, or have the kids torn it down brick by brick?”

I take a seat next to her on the porch. The wood releases its stored-up cold.

“It was good, really good, actually, and it’s still standing. But why did you change the subject?”

Her email pings. She frowns at the screen, which casts a greenish glow on her skin.

“Did I?”

“Yeah, you did. What gives?”

She types as she talks, her fingers moving in a practiced way across the screen. “Nothing. Did you want to go out for dinner? How about Joe’s? I haven’t been there in ages.” She hits Send, folds the cover over the screen, and stands up. “Do you mind if we go now? I’m starving.”

“What about Seth?”

“He’s having dinner at a friend’s.”

“Who authorized that? Which friend?”

“I did. Carter someone. I thought it was a good sign. Hope that’s okay.”

“I suppose so.”

“We good to go, then?”

I feel a knot of annoyance at the Seth thing, but it doesn’t distract me from the fact that Beth seems awfully anxious to leave. Not that I can blame her. Our parents are probably in the house squabbling over the remote, or something else equally inane.

But still.

“Do you mind if I change first? I smell like Play-Doh.”

“It’s fine for Joe’s.”

I stand up. Even in flats, Beth’s a head taller than me. “What’s up with you?”

“Nothing. I’m hungry. You know how I get when I don’t eat.”

“Well, your stomach’s going to have to cool it for a minute, because I need to pee.”

She lurches so she’s standing between me and the front door. “Okay, seriously now, Bethie. What the hell?”

She breathes in and out deeply, steeling herself for something. “Tim’s in there.”

“Oh, is that—” I stop and search her face for some explanation. “I mean, of course he’s here. I knew that. We knew that. Today’s Thursday, right? So what’s the big deal?”

“What’s the big deal? Come on, Claire.”

The knot of annoyance grows. Or maybe it’s a knot of something else.

“That’s all past. It’s in the past.”

“Is it?”

“Of course. Jesus. Jeff just—”

She puts her hands on my shoulders, pulling me close. I can smell her citrusy shampoo. It feels too close for comfort.

“I know, Claire. I know.”

“I’m going to have to see him sometime.”

“I know that too.”

“So?”

“I thought…”

I take a step back. “You really think the worst of me, don’t you?”

“No, of course not. I was just…I don’t know what I was trying to do. I was being stupid, okay? Forgive me?”

I meet her eyes, a clearer, lighter version of my own. “Do you forgive me? I mean, really forgive. Not lip service.”

Her hesitation speaks for her.

“That’s what I thought.”

I walk to the front door and stop with my hand on the knob. “He forgave me, you know.”

“Do you mean Jeff, or Tim?”

I shoot her a look and enter the house. The heat is higher than we normally keep it, and I can hear the murmur of voices in the living room. My parents’ voices mixed with a deeper one, only slightly less familiar. A voice from the echoey past.

As I take off my coat, sadness replaces it, a tight fit. It makes walking to the living room harder, even though I can’t help myself from doing so.

When I reach the doorway, there they all are. My parents, sitting on the loveseat, forced closer together than they ever are in real life. Tim, in the wingback chair no one sits in, not ever. His face is tanned and wrinkled from the sun. He’s wearing chinos, a white T-shirt, and a chunky steel watch on his wrist. His left hand rests casually on the chair arm. His fingers are long, thin, and bare.

I stand there silently, watching, listening to the tone of the talk rather than the substance.

My mother senses my presence first. “Why, Claire. How long have you been standing there?”

Tim reacts like an electric shock’s passed through him, or the shiver of a ghost.

“Not long.”

“Tim’s here,” she says.

“I see that.”

Tim stands at the sound of his name, so quickly the chair tips backward and almost over before righting itself in the deep impressions it’s left in the carpet.

We stare at each other for a moment before he walks toward me, quick and certain. He takes me in his arms, pressing my face to his chest. He smells of salt and an aftershave I don’t recognize.

“I’m so terribly sorry, Claire,” he says.

Then he releases me and leaves.

CHAPTER 11 Brace for Impact

Despite being only five hundred miles away from one another as the crow flies, there are no direct flights between my Springfield and Jeff’s.

I consider driving to the funeral, but since I don’t think I can stand that much time alone with my thoughts, I take a connecting flight through one of those hubs whose terminals splay out like spokes on a wheel. An hour there, an hour layover, an hour to the other Springfield, and I’ll be there.

I’ll. Be. There.

But what am I even doing here, on my way to Springfield, on my way to the funeral I told Zoey I wouldn’t be attending?

The day after the day, after the shouting, the crying, what I hope was the worst day of my life, I managed, somehow, to pull a cloak of normalcy around me. I sat at my desk, answered my phone and emails, and processed paperwork for the next three unfortunates who were being terminated. I pretended I wasn’t the object of stares, of whispers, of questions, of doubt. In my silence, I hoped, I’d reinforce the hasty explanations I gave on the ride home with Lori, and that would be that. If I was lucky, there’d be some other event, or someone else, to talk about tomorrow.

At midday, an email went out to the members of the HR department. It had been decided that someone from the company should attend the funeral. Be an envoy. Say a few nice things about how devoted Jeff was, how well liked. It wouldn’t be a pleasant mission, so a volunteer would be appreciated.

The email felt like a bomb sitting in my inbox.

Were my coworkers expecting me to defuse it?

As the minutes ticked away and no one reply-alled their raised hand, my chest started to constrict and I worried I might start hyperventilating. I wanted to go, and I knew at the same time that it was the last thing I should be doing.

In the end, I couldn’t help myself.

I’ll go, I wrote and hit Send before sanity restored itself.

As my email pinged into my department’s inboxes, I imagined I heard a collective sigh of relief. Oh, thank God, a dozen people were thinking. I won’t have to be surrounded by sad people, or search for the right words to say. Besides, my thoughts ran on, she should be the one to go, anyway.

Shouldn’t she?

I waited for the right moment to tell Brian. For many reasons, but in particular because of the timing.

Because timing is everything, and the timing here was way off.

“But it’s Nationals,” Brian said once I managed to get the words out in the kitchen after dinner. I’d poured him an extra-strong drink an hour earlier, but the whole bottle wouldn’t make him forget that detail.

“I talked to Zoey—”

“What do you mean, you talked to Zoey?”

“I explained the situation and asked her whether she’d mind if I wasn’t there.”

“You explained the situation?”

“I told her it was a work thing. She said it was okay.”

He leaned against the counter, an incredulous look on his face. “Of course she said it was okay, but you know she didn’t mean it.”

“She seemed sincere.”

“She’s eleven. It’s not her decision. She’s competing at Nationals, for Christ’s sake. Her mother should be there. You should be there.”

The stab of guilt penetrated through the Ativan shield I was still hiding behind. I have one pill left, and I’m saving it for what’s coming.

“It’s not like it’s the first time she’s been there. Or that there’s any doubt she’s going to win. Besides, I almost never go anymore. It’s your thing together. Your thing with Zoey.”

He held his thoughts for a moment. “Maybe you’re right, but it shouldn’t be.”

“I thought you were fine with that? You never said—”

“Honestly? I was hoping you’d realize it on your own.”

He pushed himself away from the counter. I reached out to him, but my reflexes were slow and all I ended up grabbing was the edge of his shirt, right below the elbow.

“Brian.”

He half turned to me. “Let’s drop it, all right? You’ve made up your mind anyway. But it’s not okay, Tish. I am not okay with this.”

He put his hand on the hinged door leading into the dining room and pushed it hard enough so that it slammed against the wall.

I stood there for a long time watching the door swing back and forth, thinking that it should be creaking, that its courtesy-of-Brian-oiled silence was a rebuke, evidence that his commitment to this house, this life, has always been greater than mine.

Julia agreed to drive me to the airport, but there was a thick silence between us.

She pulled up to the five-minute unloading zone. “You have everything you need?”

“I think so.”

“Will you tell me one thing?”

“What’s that?”

“Forget it. You won’t say, anyway.”

Her face was a mask.

“I can’t explain, Julia. Not now. Can’t you understand how this might happen, even a little?”

“Understand how it might happen to someone else? Or you?”

“Why is it any different if it’s me?”

“I’m not sure. It just is.”

“I’m sorry, Jules.”

“Yeah, well.” She glanced in the rearview mirror. Her son, Will, was asleep in his car seat, his face flushed, his head resting at an angle only a small child can sleep at. “You should probably go. Don’t want to miss your flight.”

“Right.”

I gathered my purse from the floor, checking it automatically for the hard shape of my phone.

“Can we talk, you think, when I get back?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe. We’ll see, okay?”

“Thanks for the lift.”

She nodded and pushed the button to release the trunk.

“Have a safe flight.”

I collected my carry-on, and as I walked to the entrance it began to sink in that maybe I had lost more than Jeff.

Maybe I was going to lose everything.

Aboard my second flight, I walk down the long center aisle to my seat, and look for room for my suitcase in the full overhead compartment.

“Let me help you with that,” says a man touching forty.

Before I can protest, he swings the bag away from me and up into a space I thought was too small even for the little suitcase I’d brought with me. I don’t intend on staying any longer than I have to.

“All set,” he says.

“Thanks.”

“It’s nothing. Window or aisle?”

“Oh, window I guess. But you—”

“I insist. I prefer the aisle anyway.” He gestures at his height, which I place at six three at least.

I slide over to the window. I tighten the seat belt against my waist and rest my head against the cold oval of plastic, noticing a row of small holes across the bottom. I’ve always wondered what these holes are for. To release pressure, or to keep us from decompressing as we rise to the edge of the atmosphere?

Maybe I should drill a few small holes in my brain.

The city out the window looks like any other, particularly once we’ve left the ground behind. We fly over a neighborhood that could be mine—the same curved streets and newly built houses in pastel hues. I watch the cars navigate the streets, and a few tiny dots on the sidewalks.

When we’ve pushed through the clouds, I reach into my purse and take out a battered notebook, something I threw in at the last minute, thinking I might be able to write something about Jeff to say at the funeral. To do what I was sent to do.

I flip slowly through the pages, searching for a blank one. It’s an old notebook, full of half scraps of poetry, ideas, lines, an occasional finished poem. In the last fifteen years, this is the only notebook I’ve needed, and it’s only half full.

The teenaged Tish flashes before me, hunched over one of the many such notebooks lined up like forgotten toys on the bookshelf in our study. Her hand is flying across the page, unable to move fast enough to capture the ephemeral words that appear before her at regular intervals, unbidden.

One of the pages near the front has Brian’s name and number on it, written in his physician’s hand.

When I was in my last year of college, my parents were hospitalized, a week apart, in the hospital where Brian was doing the first year of his residency.

Even then, it seemed over-the-top, having both my parents on the brink of dying, so A-Heartbreaking-Work-of-Staggering-Genius of them. But the funny thing, if there’s anything funny about it, is that I wasn’t that surprised. They’d done everything together my whole life, so dying at the same time seemed like one more thing they’d managed to do right.

Together, anyway. Not right by me.

He had a bad heart, my dad, the same heart that had taken his dad at forty-six. My mom had breast cancer that advanced beyond where it should because she was too busy taking care of Dad to notice the lump forming, separate the bone-weary tiredness from nursing him from something connected wholly to her. They should’ve been on different floors of the hospital, but my dad, Charming Billy, worked his magic until my mother was wheeled into his room and plugged in next to him.

Brian was working nights then, and I was spending a lot of nights at the hospital. Wandering the halls, haunting the cafeteria, scribbling in my notebook.

“You’re the Newtons’ daughter, right?” he asked me one night as I wrapped my ink-stained hands around a cup of half-burned coffee in the cafeteria. I was sitting at my usual table, a small round of Formica tucked next to the windows where I could feel like I was sitting in sunlight during the day, and in the inky sky at night.

I looked up at him. Hospital scrubs, circles under his eyes, a face that was shaven yesterday. Twenty-six, I thought. Handsome. Even in my fog of grief and words, I was present enough to see that.

“That’s right. And you’re…?”

“Dr. Underhill.” He said the words like they were unfamiliar. “Brian. Your parents are on my rotation.”

“Right. I remember you.”

“Can I sit for a minute?”

“Sure.”

He sat across from me. I watched him, wanting to ask what I’d wanted to ask all the others: When was it coming, really, the end? But I couldn’t manage it. I never could.

“Why do you guys do that?” I asked instead.

“What?”

“Insist on using your title all the time? The nurses don’t introduce themselves as Nurse Jones or Nurse Ramirez.”

He looked taken aback, then he grinned at me. A wide grin, full of well-taken-care-of teeth. “Because we’re the masters of the universe.”

“Pardon?”

“It’s this thing some of the jerks in my class started calling themselves after a few weeks in first year, but it’s kind of a pervasive sentiment.”

“Because of the life-saving thing?”

“There’s that, but it’s also a way to distance yourself from the patient. If we’re not on a first-name basis, then I won’t be totally shattered when I don’t save your life.”

“You told me your first name.”

“You’re not the patient.”

“Right. Not the patients.”

I looked down at the words written on the paper in front of me. They were blurry and nonsensical. The ever-present smell of cleaning products was giving me a headache.

“Sorry,” he said.

“About what?”

“You know…the patients.”

“Yeah, well. That’s life, I guess. Or death.”

I rubbed my hand over my eyes, trying to clear the blurriness away. When I could focus, I found Dr. Brian trying to read my notes upside down.

I shut the cover of my notebook.

“Okay, now I’m really sorry.”

“No big deal.”

“You write poetry?”

“Sometimes.” I thought about it. “When things suck, or when they’re really good.”

“Kind of like the doctor thing?”

“How do you mean?”

“Writing it down distances you from it, maybe?”

“Ouch.”

“Oh, man, I shouldn’t have said that. We don’t even know each other.”

I watched him again, how his face reddened, how he really did look sorry. And even though I felt terrible, I wanted to make him feel better. There was something in that, I knew. So instead of leaving, instead of giving him any more crap, I did the opposite. I told the truth.

“Then how come this is the most real conversation I’ve had since my parents got sick?”

“Maybe it’s the circumstances?”

“I hope not,” I said, and he smiled.

My dad pulled through, in the end. My mom did not. When I finally wheeled him out of the hospital, pale as the ghost of my mother, who was his constant shadow, I had a handful of poems. I read them all one night a few weeks later, trying to decide if Brian was right about them being a way to distance myself from death, illness, from everything. I thought and I thought, and when I couldn’t decide, I flipped to the page I was writing in that night, saw the phone number he’d written there in case I needed someone to talk to, and decided I did.

“Were you having a bad dream?”

I start awake, feeling disoriented. The man sitting next to me has his hand on the armrest that separates our seats. It’s brushing my arm.

I move away. “Pardon?”

“You sounded frightened. I hope it’s all right that I woke you?”

I straighten myself in my seat, embarrassed that my old childhood habit has come back to haunt me in a public place.

“Did I say anything…” Odd, I guess I want to ask, but don’t.

“No. I thought it better to wake you before you became too distressed.”

Or before I said something that would be embarrassing to the both of us.

“I appreciate it.”

He holds out something. My notebook, which must have slipped from my grasp.

“You’ll want this,” he says.

I take it from him, letting it rest in my lap. “Yes. I…thank you.”

“You’re a poet, then?”

“I used to be. Sometimes. I was trying to get some ideas down. For work.”

My words seem to stick in my throat. But I don’t owe this man any explanations. I don’t have to say anything, really.

He smiles briefly. “Once a poet, always a poet.”

“Poetry is for the young,” I say, thinking of my earnest Zoey. “And maybe, also, for the old. Though I’m not sure about that one. I’ll let you know when I get there.”

I cut off my babble, looking down in embarrassment. I see the one word I wrote down before I slipped off to sleep: Jeff. It’s written at the top of the page of the only poem I’ve written in the last couple of years. A poem no one’s ever seen. I close the notebook quickly, feeling a hysterical urge to laugh. I shove my fist in my mouth to stop it, biting down on my knuckles, almost breaking the skin.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what—”

“Think nothing of it,” he says, but I sense him growing wary.

I think about how I must look on the outside. My dark hair is brushed and tucked up against my neck. I’m wearing jeans, but they’re crisp and new. My cream sweater has enough cashmere in it to be referred to as such. Tasteful makeup. A few lines around my eyes. Sensible shoes. A woman in the second half of her thirties who’s the same size she was in high school, give or take some redistribution. An ordinary woman. Taking an ordinary trip.

But from the way he’s looking at me, I can’t help feeling that he’s seeing past all that. That he can see the thoughts rioting around in my brain, sense the sadness dragging at my heart.

Then he shifts away, the moment’s gone, and we’re back to being two people on an airplane, headed in the same direction, breathing the same recycled air.

The cab from the airport takes me past Jeff’s favorite golf course, one he spoke about frequently. Then we pass a restaurant he’d mentioned, and so on, and so on. It’s like all these conversations we’d had are suddenly animated, clay made into moving life.

I don’t know how I kidded myself into thinking I’d be anything other than a total mess the whole time I was here. The hubris of two semi-normal days at the office? Of all the stupid things to do, of all the stupid decisions I’ve made, this is the hardest to bear. But maybe that’s fate, karma, the way it should be. Maybe I haven’t suffered enough for my decisions, and so now, in this last act, the entire bill is coming due.

I barely make it out of the cab, and the woman behind the check-in counter at the hotel asks me more than once if I’m okay. I mumble that I am, of course, allergies, the first thing that comes to mind. But I’m not, and as the heavy hotel-room door shuts me into solitude with a thud, I find myself leaning against it, sliding to the floor, almost hyperventilating the tears out of me.

And though I’ve already spent a day like this, though I thought that would be the worst day, I was wrong. At home, I had the familiar sights, sounds, and distractions of my life to pull me from my grief, to stay the tears and the dark thoughts. For Zoey, for Brian, I could make the effort. There’d be moments where I’d forget, whole seconds, sometimes minutes. At night, I had the stolen Ativan, broken into halves to make them last, to wipe my brain clean, to erase even my dreams.

I was surviving.

But in this anonymous hotel room, I have nothing to hold on to. And outside lies Jeff’s world, a world that’s familiar enough to me to wound but not enough to know what streets to avoid, which people might suddenly speak of him, where it’s safe to cry.

So I stay in my room, and I make myself breathe, and finally my body’s so worn out by the effort I’m able to crawl under the covers of the thick white duvet and fall into a fretful sleep.

CHAPTER 12 Rites of Passage

In a sense you could say I’ve already been to my own funeral.

It all started when our friend Rob died.

I was in my second year of college; Tim was about to graduate. Rob was in the grade between us during elementary and high school, a mutual snow-fort builder, Woods-player, Rule-follower.

We found out he was dying when we were home on break. Tim and I were feeling restless a few days after Christmas, and we decided to make the snowy trek across town to the small house Rob had rented when he’d dropped out of college the year before when his mom died.

We showed up as the sun was setting behind his house. It was a half-cloudy day, and the sky was streaked with orange and topaz. His street was full of mature trees, their leaves gone months ago. The air smelled cold, even though the sun had been warm earlier. I looked up at the brilliant sunset as Tim pressed the bell, so I wasn’t looking ahead as the door opened.

“Hey, guys,” Rob said, a mixture of surprise and fear in his voice.

My head snapped down and I took a step back before I could help myself. Rob was standing in the doorway, but I barely recognized him. He was thirty pounds thinner, had black rims around his eyes, and a yellow tinge to his skin.

It was pancreatic cancer, he told us when we were seated in his gloomy living room, untouched beers in our hands. He’d taken a leave of absence from work when he got the diagnosis and, as far as I could tell, had holed up in this fourteen-by-fourteen-foot room since then. A film of dust coated everything, even him, it seemed.

The cancer was terminal. He was, for lack of a better phrase, waiting in that room to die. He didn’t say the words—he didn’t have to. The pills on the coffee table, the makeshift bed on the couch, the pile of DVDs of all his favorite movies stacked up like a Jenga game next to the TV all spoke for him.

What they couldn’t say was why he’d kept it to himself. How he could have kept it from us all this time. He never knew his dad, and with his mom gone, we were, for all intents and purposes, his family.

I asked, once, but he acted as if he didn’t hear me. He kept on washing the dishes in the sink, slowly, rhythmically, and just changed the topic.

We spent the rest of the holiday with him. We took him on a slow walk around the block, filled his fridge and freezer with prepared food, and bought him a dozen more DVDs. I taped my numbers on a piece of paper near the phone and wrote “In case of emergency” above them. Rob saw me do it, shook his head slightly, but didn’t say anything. We talked sporadically, letting him set the pace, and when it was time to go back to school, we hugged good-bye, something we rarely did. His bones felt like a bird’s against me, so fragile, and my brain shivered.

He died six weeks later. Tim and I both spoke at the service, telling funny stories, trying to keep it light. What else do you do when a twenty-one-year-old dies? You say he lived his life to the fullest, whether he did or not, that you were sure he had no regrets, no things left undone.

But, of course, everyone has regrets. Loose ends. Things they could do if they had more time.

Everyone does.

Afterward, we gathered in the church basement, a depressing room with ceilings so low anyone approaching six feet had to stoop. The adrenaline began to drop, reality began to hit, and I’m sure I would have lost it completely if Tim hadn’t chosen that moment to put his hand on my shoulder and suggest we get out of there.

I agreed readily, and we moved to a dingy bar down the street with a group of our childhood friends. I remember an old jukebox, a bar-food menu, the smell of half-rotted oats and cheap detergent. We ordered pitchers of beer—a local brew that’s thick and strong—and we continued on, telling every story we could remember about Rob, even the ones whose endings had been consumed by alcohol molecules or time.

When the stories petered out, Tim said how much it sucked that Rob wasn’t there. That he couldn’t hear how much he meant to us, what a hole he left behind. “People shouldn’t have to be dead for them to hear that shit,” he said, his words slurring, though that didn’t blunt the ring of truth.

The idea was born from this. We should have a funeral for all of us, one we could attend. It would be a celebration of our life till then that wasn’t tinged with anything other than love, brother, love.

Maybe it was because we’d reached the I-love-you-man part of the evening, but we agreed to a date there and then. A date we kept, six months later.

Our families thought we were crazy, but we didn’t care. We were doing this for Rob. We were doing this for us. We were doing it.

Despite people’s doubts, the town hall was packed and, pretty soon, laughter clung to the rafters. Each of us spoke of the others: the good, the bad, the funny. Tim even put together a slideshow and set it to schmaltzy music. I’m sure he was doing it to be ironic, but halfway through Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” we were all wiping tears away.

We swore we’d do it again in five years, and every five years after that. To remember Rob, but also to remember us.

It never happened. Life became too complicated, too busy. But because of the pre-funeral, I know a few things you don’t usually know.

The last person to speak about me will be Tim. There will be laughter, a few tears. He’ll have a slideshow full of embarrassing shots of me as a child in a series of unfortunate outfits. He’ll remind everyone of the time I almost set the house on fire, how I’d succeeded in running the school mascot’s uniform up our high school’s flagpole, how I still thought I might make the PGA one day, or at least the Senior Tour. Then he’ll signal to someone and they’ll click to the next slide, and there I’ll be. My face projected through a bright stream of light, smiling, laughing, Rob and our friend Kevin on either side of me, gussied up in tuxedos for prom, awkwardly holding the corsages we’d bought for our dates.

Oh, God, we were young.

CHAPTER 13 Speechless

When Tim has finished speaking, he walks through the stream of light that’s projecting Jeff’s face onto the screen behind him. His shadow crosses Jeff’s younger smile, a momentary reprieve.

It’s such an odd place to be. Sitting in a pew at my husband’s funeral. My sister on one side, my son sitting rigid against me on the other, murmuring under his breath while he repeatedly smooths a piece of foolscap across his knees. The air smells like a botanical garden, and there’s a certain quality to the silence. Even what Seth’s wearing marks this day as different: gray flannel pants and a blue blazer. It’s his first almost-suit, something I’ll never make him wear again, like the dress I bought with Beth that is, as predicted, scratchy and uncomfortable.

I’ve heard Tim’s stories before, of course, first from Tim and then from Jeff. I knew Tim would be telling them because they told me all about that ridiculous event they insisted on having after their friend Rob died. The “pre-funeral,” Jeff called it, serious and laughing, trying to make me understand. And while I did understand what gave birth to it, I couldn’t support it. I laughed at the stories when they told them to me, but inside I felt nervous. Because if you attend your own funeral, if you know what everyone really thinks about you, if you are, essentially, at peace, don’t you tip the odds toward death? Maybe it was magical thinking, but I couldn’t help believing that if you were prepared for the worst, you might make it come true.

The miscarriage was one confirmation of my theory; Jeff’s death is the ultimate.

The person who first taught me to believe it is sitting next to Beth, and he’s barely spoken to me since he’s arrived.

Tim and I met during our first year of law school when we both tried out for the annual fund-raiser talent show.

My reason for being there was piano. Despite the crushing course load, I took an advanced orchestra class each semester. The music faculty made an exception for me, and that’s probably why, when the law school came calling for its yearly favor (someone who could play whatever music was needed), Professor Davenport offered me up.

I’d fulfilled the same role in high school when tryouts for the school plays were as much a popularity contest as they were about talent. I could sing and memorize lines, but the parts went to Beth and her friends, and the ones who replaced them at the top of the social pyramid when they left. I could sing in the chorus, or play the piano. I chose the latter, my back mostly to the audience, but at least I had my own minute of applause at the end of the evening.

That year the law school had decided to do a musical instead of the usual compilation of sketches, a revival of Guys and Dolls.

My usual early-for-everything-even-when-I-try-to-arrive-late programming brought me to the auditorium a full half hour before I needed to be there. Most of the lights were off. There was a small spotlight focused on the stage, and the running lights that ran along the rows of red plush auditorium seating were on. The score, already half memorized, was tucked under my arm.

I walked down the aisle slowly, breathing in the mustiness left by a summer’s un-use.

What happened next was like in one of those movies aimed at women. The geeky background girl sees her opportunity to feel what it’s like (literally) to be in the spotlight, even though she isn’t the geeky girl anymore. Away from the queen bees, in this mostly new place, she has come into her own. She expresses her opinions. The boys/men don’t need to be drunk to approach her. Sometimes, she even approaches them.

But something about this place brings back memories. She places her music carefully on the piano and climbs the steps to the stage. She faces the empty seats, shadowy in the half-light. She takes a deep breath and sings a plaintive love song, the love song from the show she’ll never audition for.

She gets lost in the music, her voice growing confident, the score she isn’t playing loud and bright in her mind. She nails it.

If only there was someone to hear her.

There is. The room is not empty. The music director is standing stage left. When she stops singing, there’s complete silence, followed by the sound of one person clapping. Startled, she blushes to her toes and apologizes. No, don’t, he says. That was beautiful. What’s your name?

She gives it, and he writes it down. Oh, no, she says, I’m only here to play. He raises an eyebrow, but before he can say anything else, the doors burst open, a gaggle of giggling young women tumbling through them.

She backs into the dark, and when you next see her she’s sitting at her usual place, like Anne in Persuasion, ready to play for others’ amusement.

Cue the hero, who’s been dragged to the audition by his soccer buddies in his gray sweat shorts and a polo shirt whose collar is all stretched out. She recognizes the face sticking out of the polo shirt. He’s from her hometown, though she doubts he’ll remember her, if he looks at her. If he wasn’t so preoccupied with acting like he doesn’t want to be there. But he’s been caught singing in the shower after practice one time too many, and he’s been man-dared, mad-dogged-dared into it.

He waits his turn while she plays for the women with big egos and mediocre skills, for the serious guys who ignore the jocks’ catcalls. If she glances at him, in between the beats, she sees his foot tapping, keeping time. She speeds up to test if he really can keep time or if it’s a coincidence. He can, but the poor guy onstage can’t.

A voice barks from the audience to pay attention, and the blush is back, her face angled away permanently.

His name’s finally called. His friends are whistling and stamping, but he asks her to play “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat” anyway, and when she does he sings it well and with confidence. His friends stop their carping, respect creeping in. That respect snakes around the room and up to the music director, cast in his half shadow, as he should be.

It’s no surprise when, a week later, she checks the cast list out of curiosity (she tells herself) and there his name is next to the part of Guy Masterson. And she pretends to be surprised, though she isn’t really, when hers is set down for Adelaide, the missionary who falls in love with the gambler who eventually wants to change for his love of her.

She thinks, briefly, of turning it down, but fuck that, right? Fuck that.

They meet properly at the first rehearsal. She’s about to mention their hometown connection when he does it for her. She wasn’t as anonymous as she thought, after all.

In that first exchange there’s already an undercurrent of flirting. And by the time they sing the song she sang to get her here, long before opening night, they’re already in the love they are singing about.

The church organ is slightly off-key, something that makes me wince. Then the minister is speaking again, words that are meant to soothe, words I can’t really hear. Is it simply the usual platitudes, or something he really feels? He knew Jeff, knew him all his life. He married us, and chastised us on the occasions when we ran into him for not attending church. But he says that to everyone, so I can’t tell. I only know that the timbre of his voice is the same as it’s been every other time I’ve heard him speak at a funeral. The same cadence governs his speech, the rise and fall of his voice almost hypnotic. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe that’s how you get through these terrible moments? Being lulled into the brief silences between old words.

Then he says a new word and I’m snatched from the somnambulant place I’ve been hiding.

“Seth,” he says. “Did you want to speak?”

My son nods silently next to me, his hand still smoothing the piece of foolscap resting on his knees. I put my hand on his arm.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“No,” he whispers. “I have to. For Dad.”

He stands up and walks to the dais. He’s just tall enough to see over the pulpit, and reaches for the microphone to adjust it to his height. He’s about to grow tall like Jeff, but it’s going to come too late.

“My dad was the best dad,” he says, his voice cracking. “He was always…the best dad. I wish I could say more, for him, but I can’t. So, Dad, I hope you understand that if I was any good at saying what I really felt, this is what I would say.”

He looks up from his paper, and I wonder what he’s looking at, if he sees anything beyond his fear. His lips tremble and my heart breaks all over again. He’s not going to be able to do it, I think, half rising from my seat to go rescue him. But Beth holds me in place, and, after a moment, he bends his head and starts reading:

I don’t need my heart anymore,

you can have it.

Cut it out,

put it in a box,

bury it in the hard ground,

next to you.

My eyes are useless too.

They only show me a world

without you.

Color blind,

color absent,

colorless.

And my mind screams, Not fair!

Not right.

Not what I was promised

on the swing set

as you pushed me

toward the sun.

None of the stories you read me

schooled me for this.

I didn’t learn this lesson

in the moon,

or on the train,

or as a thing to be curious about.

So I don’t need my heart anymore,

you can have it.

Let it be buried,

in the hard ground,

next to you.

CHAPTER 14 Into the Middle Distance

I wake in my anonymous hotel room on the morning of Jeff’s funeral feeling closer to control, but not close enough. I need to punish my body into some sort of submission, something that’ll hold together through the funeral, the burial, the wake.

I call from the hotel room phone to check in with Brian and Zoey. They’re leaving for Nationals today, a five-hour drive in the opposite direction.

“I have a bad feeling about this one,” Zoey says, sounding uncharacteristically nervous.

“What do you mean, sweetheart? You’ll do great.”

“Dad’s been pacing all morning.”

“You know he gets nervous for you. We both do.”

“I flubbed that line last time.”

“What’s up, Zo? Really?”

“Nothing, I…Are you okay?”

I try to keep the catch out of my voice. “I’m just sad, that’s all. I’ll be thinking of you.”

“Dad wants to talk to you.”

“All right. Good luck.”

“Mom!”

“Sorry, sorry. Break a leg.”

She thunks the phone down on the counter and yells for Brian. A few more clunks and he picks up.

“I tried calling last night…”

“Yeah, sorry. I realized this morning my cell phone was dead. I forgot to charge it.”

“Got it. How is it there?”

“It looks a lot like home. Sans mountains.”

“No, I meant…Anyway, Zoey is freaking out.”

“Yeah, she kind of said. Look, if she doesn’t want to go, don’t make her, okay?”

“Don’t forget your knapsack, Zo. What? No, no, she wants to go. God, can you believe it, but I think it’s about a boy.”

I looked out the window at the colorless sky. A boy. A boy.

“Our Zoey?”

He chuckled. “Who would’ve thunk it?”

“Do we know this boy?”

“That Zuckerman kid, maybe.”

“Zuckerberg? The one from the western region?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“Why him?”

“Not sure. He seems like the most likely candidate.”

“Mmm. Well, hopefully it’ll all blow over. Or maybe you can ask her on the drive?”

“I think that’s your territory.”

A reproach. If I were where I should be, I could ask her myself.

“Make sure she’s got enough warm clothes.”

“It’s coming on summer here. Like someone flipped a switch overnight.”

Not here. Not here.

“Drive safe, then.”

“Will do. Check in later?”

“Yes.”

We hang up and I flip through the town directory kept helpfully next to the telephone until I find what I need. A public golf course that isn’t connected with Jeff as far as I know. I call to check if they’re open, and when they say they are, I pull together a passable outfit and ask for directions from the twenty-something at the front desk.

“Cold day for golf,” she says in the local twang that sometimes crept into Jeff’s voice, the words slowed down, like the batteries running out on a music player.

The course is a twenty-minute walk away. The morning still holds the chill of the night I never saw. As directed, I walk along the local bike trail, still muddy from the just-gone snow. It was built on an old rail bed, and there are sections where the overhanging trees form a canopy that blocks out the weakly rising sun.

It ends at the golf course. The clubhouse and pro shop are deserted.

They’re happy for the business, renting me a bag full of semi-decent clubs and giving me enough tokens for several hours’ worth of hitting. I sling the bag on my shoulder, feeling the familiar weight, steadying my body against it, and trudge over the bike path to the range. The pickets haven’t even been set up yet, and the ball machine groans like an old Coke machine that doesn’t want to give up its treasure. But eventually the balls fall into the rusty wire basket, and the one after that.

I take out my seven iron and tee up a ball. My first swings are as rusty as the ball basket, the shaft clanging against the ground, sending shudders of protest up my arms. Soon enough the rhythm returns, but not the hum. That blank-mind state that Brick’s searching for in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He used alcohol, but for me, that click from consciousness to only breathing, existing, comes from pushing myself as hard as I can physically.

I was counting on this today. I need it today, but it doesn’t come. Instead, all the memories, the conversations, the words said and unsaid stream in and speed up until I’m hyperventilating again, barely able to catch my breath.

I keep on as the tears start. I swing and I swing, and I wait and I wait, but I never get there, not in the first hour, or in the second either. My back screams, my knees complain, my stomach and shoulders throw out aches and pains, but I’m not stopping for anything.

In my sorrow I’ve found the drive I needed all those years ago.

I want that click, I need that click, and I’m going to keep swinging until I find it, or my body gives out beneath me.

Back at the hotel, I strip my sweat-saturated clothes from my body, and I do, finally, feel a sort of calm. I feel strong enough, anyway, to climb into the shower and stand under the scalding stream until my body is as red as my face.

The rest is mechanical. Drying my hair, hiding the dark circles under my eyes with concealer, pressing the black dress I pulled from the back of my closet, purchased for some forgotten event when I was a dress size smaller. Or, at least, a dress size smaller than I was last week; now the dress fits fine.

I get to the church almost an hour early. I’m never early for anything, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I’m early today.

The day has become bright and sunny. I find a bench in a park nearby to sit on and stare into the middle distance. When I try to check the time on my phone, I realize I still haven’t charged it.

As I clutch the useless device in my hand I briefly consider pitching it into the duck pond glimmering a few feet away, but I stifle the impulse. Throwing it away isn’t going to change anything. Instead, I try to count the waves rippling gently against the pond’s edge, matching the slow thud of my heart.

When I’ve counted what feels like enough waves to fill up three hours, I walk slowly back to the church. Cars have arrived, the parking lot’s filling up, a fleet of black limos are parked in the circular drive. I reach into my purse to find the piece of paper torn from my notebook that I’d stashed there, full of words I can’t read aloud, but that I will, if able, place with Jeff.

My pupils dilate in the vestibule. As I look down the long row of straight-backed pews, I know immediately that I’ll be denied this too. The casket’s lid is firmly shut, and in the minute it takes to register, I’m happy for it to be. I don’t need that kind of personal encounter, not with him, not with anyone.

I take a seat in the back row and dig into my purse again for something I will definitely need, the last Ativan in my possession. There’s a chance that in my current state it’ll put me into a semi-coma, but it’s the only way I’m going to survive the rest of today. I swallow the whole thing dry and am thankful when I start to feel its effects.

Sad-postured bodies in dark clothes pass me by while I stare fixedly ahead at the large, stained-glass window behind the altar depicting some biblical scene I could identify if I could focus. No one sits next to me, the stranger, the outsider, so I’m alone in my pew, a collection of worn hymnals available for my perusal if I thought a bombastic song would fix what ails me.

An organ starts, the family is ushered in. Claire looking shell-shocked and stoic. A woman who, from the looks of her, must be her sister. Seth, who, if he knew how much his father loved him, might be able to forgive him anything. Two older couples, then another face I recognize, Jeff after forty if he lived in the sun and on a larger scale. His brother.

The minister asks us to stand, to sing, to sit, to bow our heads. Jeff’s friends speak, telling stories I’d heard from Jeff, as I knew they would. When he told me about it, I thought the pre-funeral was brilliant and only wished I’d had the opportunity to do one with my own childhood friends before we’d grown up and drifted apart.

When the projection of Jeff’s smiling face is looming over us, I feel a sense of relief. Surely we must be almost done. A few more solemn words and I’ll have succeeded in my impossible task of not causing any more harm than I already have.

But then Seth rises, pale, terrified, his head shaped like his father’s, the slight diphthong in his voice one I thought I’d never hear again, and he says something totally unexpected.

“I don’t need my heart anymore / you can have it…”

The words crash down around me, the threads that have been holding me together snap, and there’s nothing I can do to save myself but head for the exit.

An hour later, I’m sitting huddled against a tree. It’s half in leaf. When the wind blows, the loose buds plunk down around me like fat drops of rain.

I watched them lower Jeff’s coffin into the hard ground, but I couldn’t get close enough to hear the words. I couldn’t make myself do this, even if it would’ve been a good idea. The act of watching was enough to drive the Ativan from my system, and my brain feels clear as a bell. Ringing out a warning.

Now they’ve all started to disperse, to walk solemnly back to their cars, their lives. I know from the program still clutched in my hand that there’s a reception at the house, but right now the most likely option seems like I’ll be staying here overnight.

A shadow crosses above me.

“Are you all right?” a man asks.

I look up; it’s Tim. It must be. His hands are stuffed in the pockets of his suit. He looks like he hasn’t slept well in days.

I ought to know.

I run a hand across my cheek to wipe the tears I cannot hide away and edge myself to a standing position. “I’ll survive.”

“Were…were you a friend of Jeff’s?”

“We worked together. I’m the company representative, I guess, here to show the flag.”

I wave my hand like I’m holding a flag, looking to surrender, hoping for clemency.

“How do you know Jeff?” I ask, playing along.

“I’m his brother. Sorry, I should’ve started with that.”

“It’s all right. I’m so sorry for your loss. So very sorry.”

“Thank you. I didn’t get your name?”

“Patricia, but everybody calls me Tish.”

“Tim.” We shake hands. In the awkward silence that follows, we start to walk away from the gravesite.

“There’s a reception at the house now, right?” I say, trying to fill the silence, something I always do when I’m nervous.

“Yes. Are you going?”

“I should. That’s why I’m here, after all.”

We’ve reached the parking lot. The only car that remains is a bright red Ford sedan, the kind you always get from rental companies at the airport.

“Is your car near here?” Tim asks.

“I walked.”

“How about I give you a lift to the house?”

No, no, no, no, no.

“Okay.”

He pulls the key from his pocket and unlocks the doors, the chipper tweet of the automatic unlocker a bright sound in the quiet world. It’s as if the whole town slipped into silence out of respect.

I open the door and slide into the passenger seat as Tim starts the engine. He drives carefully, like he’s not entirely sure where he’s going, though he must be. We stay silent for a few streets as I watch the center of town flash by, a small-town Main Street that’s survived better than most.

“Did you know Jeff well?” Tim asks as we take a left away from the town square.

What can I say to this? That sometimes I felt like I knew him better than myself, and sometimes I felt like I didn’t know him at all? And now I’ll never know which is right?

“Fairly well.”

“From the accounting department?”

“No, I’m in HR. We met when Jeff needed some HR training. A year ago.”

“Have you lived in Springfield long?”

“I don’t live here. I live in the other Springfield.”

“Pardon?”

I shift in my seat. I’m gripping my hands together tightly in my lap, and they’ve gone white. I loosen them, feeling the blisters forming from too many golf swings.

“It’s this work thing. The company bought a company in another town called Springfield. So there are two, which is confusing, and mine’s always called ‘the other Springfield.’ Anyway, that’s where I live. With my husband and my daughter, Zoey. She wrote that poem Seth read.”

I pause for breath, cursing myself. What the hell did I say that for?

He frowns. “I don’t follow.”

Of course he doesn’t. I barely do, and it’s my own life unfurling.

“It’s this thing she does. This spoken word thing. She won Nationals last year, and one of the prizes was publishing some of her poems.” I swallow, my brain whizzing. “It’s about my father. The poem. That’s what Zoey was writing about. He died two years ago. That’s why I was so upset, I guess.”

“Does Seth know your daughter?”

“No, they’ve never met.”

“Then how did—”

“Seth get a hold of the poem? I’m not sure.”

Crap, crap, crap.

“Jeff had a copy,” I add.

Which is true, a hundred percent true. But which is also proof that telling the truth to get yourself out of a bad situation isn’t always the best policy.

Tim puts the blinker on and takes a left. I don’t know how close or far away we are to the house.

Please let us be close. Please let us be far away.

“They were given away at this office thing we were both at a couple of weeks ago,” I blurt, still trying to cover up my earlier words with new ones. “We played golf together.”

A small smile. “Jeff did love golf.”

“He did.”

Tim parks the car at the end of a quiet street. He shuts off the engine and pulls the key from the ignition. We get out in unison and I follow him up the block. Cars are parked here, there, and everywhere, and there’s a steady stream of people climbing the front steps dressed in solemn clothing.

He takes the walkway and trudges to the front door, looking like he dreads going in there as much as I do. I stop at the edge between the concrete and sidewalk, staring at the house, fighting once again for self-control.

He turns back to me as he reaches the front door. “You coming?”

“I’ll be right there.”

CHAPTER 15 The Creaking Dark

My brother’s been home twice in the last fifteen years.

Two years after Claire and I started dating, we received an unusual piece of mail. It was a postcard from Tim, again from Australia, with an address and an invitation—albeit cryptic—to write to him.

Drop me a line were the words he used, if memory serves.

It was, actually, my mother who got the postcard, and she’s the one who responded. In fact, I’m pretty sure she sat down at the kitchen table and pulled out several pieces of her personal stationery minutes after the postcard came shooting through the mail slot.

Tim was open to communication and she was ready to communicate.

Boy was she ever.

Writing to Tim became a nearly daily occupation for her, narrating the small details of her life.

I don’t know for certain, but I’m fairly sure she told Tim about Claire and me in that very first letter. It had taken her a while to accept us when she first found out, which was unfortunately from some local gossip before I’d had a chance to tell her myself.

“I just heard the strangest thing,” she said to me on the phone, where she’d caught me at work. “I’m sure Betty must have it wrong…”

“Have what wrong, Mom?”

“Well, honey, she said that you and Claire James are dating.”

She gave a nervous laugh, trying to convey a that’s-so-ridiculous air, but not quite managing it.

When I fessed up and told her it was true, she went into flutter mode. “Well, I…If you think…Are you happy?”

I assured her I was and that I knew it was a bit weird but that it was a good thing. Eventually, she believed it, but she couldn’t quite let it go until she found out how Tim felt about it.

When the next postcard arrived from him, three months later, the p.s. he added after saying he was working at a bank was: Tell Jeff and Claire I said hi.

There were two ways to take this—as a passive PFO, or a tacit acceptance that things had moved on without him. I chose the latter, at first, and though it wasn’t with my mother’s speed or frequency, I wrote him back, writing of surface things. My practice, the latest town gossip about the boys we grew up with. Not much about Claire, but enough to let him know we were together and we were serious. That it maybe wasn’t the best situation there ever was, and that my happiness was tinged with moments of regret.

He didn’t answer my letters, or my sporadic emails when he finally divulged his email address. He treated my mother’s correspondence with more respect; emails were usually answered within a week. He’s a busy guy, after all, my mother would say, making excuses for him, as she had during all those years of virtual silence.

Tell Jeff and Claire I said hi.

I waited a while to tell Claire about that one. When I did, casually over breakfast one morning, she went quiet, still, before asking me if I was going to write him back. I told her I wasn’t sure, and thought about asking her if she was planning to. But somehow I couldn’t get the words out. I’m not normally a jealous guy, but jealously has a different texture to it when the woman you love used to be in love with your brother. I held my tongue, and if she wrote him, she never said.

I don’t know if I expected him to answer me, or what the answer would be if he did. Instead, all I got was radio silence, the absence of words telling me all I needed to know. Tim was pissed, and whatever it was that had driven him halfway around the world, well, the blame for that was now shifted to me.

Eventually, I stopped writing. Maybe I wanted to send my own signal. Maybe I was tired of the lack of response. And there was life to live too. It was a good life; one I hoped was about to get better.

When Claire accepted my proposal at the Thai restaurant where we’d had our first date, we decided quickly that we didn’t want a big wedding. Family, a few close friends. If we went beyond that we might have to invite the whole town. I didn’t really care one way or another, so long as she showed up and said yes, but Claire didn’t seem interested in the spectacle.

She was the one who sent Tim the invitation. I saw it sitting on a stack of ones to mail near the front door of her apartment. Right on top of the stack like there was nothing unusual about it. And maybe there wasn’t, but it led to our first big fight, one we’d probably been putting off since the beginning, one you didn’t really want to have two months before your wedding.

“What the fuck is this?” I asked, holding Tim’s invitation by the corner, standing over her in a way I knew was more aggressive than it should be.

She glanced up from the kitchen table, where she was making her way through a pile of case law. “A wedding invitation.”

“Come on, Claire.”

She put her pen down. Two spots of color appeared on her cheeks. “Come on what? He’s your brother.”

“Right. My brother. Your ex-boyfriend. The guy who hasn’t spoken to either of us in years.”

“I thought he should be here, or at least have the option to be.”

“And you didn’t think to tell or ask me?”

“No. I did.”

“The hell you did.”

“I meant, I thought about it.”

I threw the envelope on the table. It skipped like a pebble across a pond, once, twice, and landed on the floor with a soft whooshing sound.

“So you thought about it and decided not to tell me?”

“That’s right.”

“What am I supposed to do with that?”

She reached down to retrieve the envelope. “I don’t know why you’re getting this upset.”

“You don’t? You used to sleep with the guy!”

I knew as soon as the words left my mouth that I’d said the wrong thing. This had always been unspoken. That he’d touched and kissed her lips, her breasts, and the soft, wet folds between her legs. But it was something I was all too aware of the first few times we were together, when I was trying to figure out how to unlock the sighs and cries I craved.

Of course, I’d been with women before who’d been with someone else. There was often that feeling the first few times, before the present began to erase the past.

Someone’s been here before me. Was he better? Did she cry out his name? Did he make her come easily, the first time?

I always shoved these thoughts down with the reality that I too had practiced on others. That this particular swirl of the tongue, or rub of her clitoris, might not satisfy like it had done in the past.

Adjustments were necessary.

Adjustments were made.

But I’d never had to adjust for the fact that one of the men before me was my brother. That if I disappointed her, if I continued to do so, her lack of satisfaction could always be compared with him, another man who’d been in my place, the place I hoped to make mine exclusively.

She gave me a cold stare. “You’ve known that from the beginning, Jeff. What does it have to do with us now?”

“You’re the one bringing him into it. Sending him that invitation is bringing him into it.”

“Inviting him to our wedding isn’t bringing him into it, it’s keeping him out of it.”

“How’d you figure?”

“He’s your brother. If he isn’t at your wedding, people will talk. And your mother would be heartbroken if he didn’t come. You know that.”

“I don’t give a shit what people say. I only care about—”

“That we were together? Is that it?”

I stuffed my hands in my pockets and looked down at the floor. “I don’t know.”

“Seems like that’s something you should’ve figured out a long time ago.”

“What does that mean?”

“Do you think I’m still in love with him?”

“No, I…”

She watched me stumble, unable to deny it.

“If you feel that way, I don’t think I should be sending these out.”

She picked up the invitation and walked out of the kitchen. I followed her down the hall. She placed Tim’s invitation back on top of the pile and straightened the stack, making the corners neat.

“You want to call the wedding off?” I said, my throat closing in panic.

She looked me straight in the eye. “No. I don’t.”

“You think I do?”

“I think you need to figure out if you can live with this. With me. The person I was and the person I am now. You go figure that out and let me know.”

I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach, but there was anger there too. So out the door I went to spend a miserable night at my own apartment, a place I barely spent any time in anymore, a place that no longer felt like home.

In the morning I crawled back to Claire’s, begged her forgiveness, and, when she gave it, buried my jealousy of Tim deep within.

Besides, I told myself, it’s not like he’s actually going to show.

He did, of course. Not that he returned the reply card. Instead, he sent a cryptic email to my mother, which she decoded as his arrival time in Springfield two days before the ceremony.

I knew for sure by then that my take on his silence, his absence, wasn’t paranoia. It was all connected. But what I didn’t know was whether he was coming home to try to do something about it or to accept it.

I watched him closely in those first twenty-four hours after his arrival, looking for signs that might point the way. He looked older, tanned, and less restless. Australia agreed with him, I thought, as we sat across from each other at my parents’ dinner table, as we had all our lives, eating lemon chicken, because Thursday was lemon chicken night, rain or shine.

He’d kissed Claire briefly on the cheek when we arrived and told her she looked well. Claire’s face was like glass, reflecting back the expression of whomever she was speaking to. When she looked at Tim, the few times I caught her looking, she seemed calm, impassive, and slightly distracted; a woman having dinner with her in-laws a few days before her wedding.

After dinner, Tim cornered me in the living room, passing me a Scotch glass with an inch of liquid in it, neat.

“So, brother, have you been properly feted?”

“Feted?”

“I’m talking bachelor party. Has it occurred, or will you be in need of sleep and half drunk on your wedding day?”

I smiled, remembering the weekend with my college buddies, the golf, the drinks, and the drinks after that. “It’s been taken care of.”

“Good. Sorry I missed it.”

“No worries.”

It was his turn to smile. “That sounds like home.”

“Home is Australia now?”

“That’s right. For now. Maybe for always. We’ll see.” He paused to take a sip of his drink. “You should…come visit sometime.”

“Sure, we’d like that.”

If he flinched, it was only a tick of the clock. He glanced around the room. “This place looks the same as always.”

“Nothing ever changes in Springfield.”

“A few things do. One or two.”

“Right. Sure.”

We stood there sipping our drinks in silence, both of us probably wishing the women would reappear and fill the room with chatter.

“Where did Dad get off to?” Tim asked eventually.

“Lodge meeting, I think.”

“Of course. Lemon chicken and lodge night. He inducted you yet?”

“Me? No, no. Never.”

“Never say never, brother.”

I didn’t like this new way he had of calling me “brother,” like he needed to remind himself of who I was. Or maybe he was reminding me.

“I guess. What about you? Any thoughts of settling down?”

He laughed. “You sound like Mom.”

“No one’s ever said that before. No one special?”

“Nothing on the horizon at present. All the good girls seem to be taken.”

I sipped my drink. “Mmm.”

Silence crept over us again and I thought about refilling my glass.

“What do you say to a private celebration?” Tim said.

“What? You and me?”

“You got anything better to do?”

“No. I’m just…forget it.” I put my glass down. “Where’d you want to go?”

“Hurley’s maybe?”

“Sure. Let me tell Claire.”

He nodded thoughtfully and twenty minutes later found us ensconced at the local bar. Tim ordered two rounds of shots, which proved to be the right amount of lubrication to wash away the years. As the drinks disappeared down our throats, we talked about safe subjects: remember-whens from our childhood.

When last call sounded we were both cut, and for my part, I was feeling more warmly about Tim than I had in years. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed him, my goddamn older brother, the man I always wanted to be when I grew up.

Tim seemed to feel the same as he slapped me on the back and suggested we walk the long way round to our parents’ house. I agreed, and as we stumbled home, we passed the edge of the Woods, its thick trees silhouetted against the sky.

“Man,” I said, “I haven’t been in there in ages.”

“Do you remember all those times we played…what was it again?”

“You Can’t Get There from Here.”

“Right, right. Say, let’s do it.”

“What, now?”

“Sure.”

“But we don’t have any flashlights.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a thick ring of keys. A silver cylinder hung from it. He flicked a switch and a bright beam of light pooled around our feet.

“This’ll do, won’t it?”

“Aren’t you the Boy Scout.”

He held up his hand in the three-fingered salute. “With merit badges and everything. You game?”

I hesitated for a moment, but why not? The night seemed to be all about memories, and these were good ones.

“Okay. Who’s spotter?”

“We’ll flip for it.” He pulled out a quarter, getting ready to toss it. “Call it.”

“Tails.”

“Interesting choice.”

He launched the quarter into the air and we watched it flip upward, twinkling in the street light, disappearing into the dark, then reappearing in slow motion to land in the palm of his hand. He slapped his palm against the top of his other hand.

“You sure about your choice?”

“I’m sure.”

He unveiled the coin. It was heads.

“Do you think the old bell’s still there?” he asked.

“Only one way to find out.”

We walked into the Woods, our eyes quickly adjusting to the darkness. The half-full moon was enough to light the well-worn path. After a few minutes we came to a large, distinctive rock, our usual starting place. I sat on its cool surface.

“Give me five minutes,” Tim said.

I nodded and he started off down the path. I checked my watch for the time: 2:12.

The rules of You Can’t Get There from Here are simple. It has to be played at night. Spotters are placed in the woods with flashlights. The Crawlers have to try to get past them without being lit up, to reach a bell that hangs from a tree a half a mile ahead. The first person to ring the bell is the winner.

To be a good Crawler you need patience, silence, and a willingness to become one with the wet, boggy ground. To be a good Spotter you need good night vision and a sense of direction that allows you to hear past the disorienting sounds of movement in the dark. We all had our moments of glory growing up, but Tim was always the best, especially at spotting.

Two seventeen. Regretting the suit I’d considered appropriate for what I thought this night would be, I lowered myself to the moist ground about ten feet left of the path. My plan, such as it was, was to go in a semicircle around the path to arrive at the bell—assuming it was still hanging from the tree where we left it ten years ago—and hopefully avoid Tim.

Within a few minutes, I was soaked through to the skin. My nostrils were full of the smell of decomposing leaves. I moved slowly, stopping often to listen to the sound of my own breathing, willing my ears to reach out into the dark and identify the other sounds. Was that Tim, an animal, or an old tree shifting in the night?

I checked my watch, cupping my hand over its face to hide the light.

Two thirty-two. I was half hoping my slowness and the amount of alcohol we’d consumed would lull Tim into a slumber.

I should’ve known better. Within seconds of the numbers fading back to darkness I was enveloped in light.

“Got you, brother,” Tim said, way closer than I expected. And why was the light so fucking bright?

I flopped onto my back to find Tim standing over me, shining the flashlight in my eyes. All I could see was his outline against the sky, like an actor in the floodlights. He looked enormous, a bear of a man, though I couldn’t see his face well enough to tell if he’d become fully Yeti.

“Will you shut that goddamn thing off?”

“Not until you say it.”

“Say what?”

“You know what.”

“Jesus Christ, Tim. Who cares? You won. Enough. Help me up.”

I held out my hand and the light snapped off. But instead of giving me his hand, Tim was on top of me, pinning me to the ground like he had so many times before, when he wanted to beat on me or teach me a lesson.

“Say it,” he said. I could feel his hot, malty breath against my face.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Say it,” he repeated, and pressed my arms deeper into the mud.

I could feel the back of me becoming as wet as the front, and I was starting to get pissed off.

“Jesus, fuck, fine. You can’t get there from here.”

“Too bloody right you can’t.” He gave me a final push, then released me and stood up. “You shouldn’t even be trying to.”

I opened my mouth to answer him but stopped when I heard him walk away. I knew it would be fruitless to call after him, that he was content to leave me there and let me find my own way home.

So I lay there like that, watching the moon, trying to make sense of it all.

Just me and the creaking dark.

CHAPTER 16 The Plot Thickens

When we get home from the funeral, the house is already thick with people. It feels like the whole town’s here, though of course that isn’t possible. The whole town did send food; everyone’s hands and mouths are full of something. They seem to have forgotten to send alcohol, though. A vital omission.

I wander through the house, being stopped and hugged every few seconds, like a repeat episode of The Day Jeff Died. I think this show should be canceled. It’s always been a terrible show.

I nod and thank and agree. I’m becoming inured to hearing Jeff’s name in connection with his death. At least, I hope I am.

I have an awkward discussion with Art Davies, all mumbled words and expressions of guilt.

“Maybe Jeff was distracted because he felt so bad about firing me,” he says. “Maybe—”

“No. Don’t put that on yourself, okay?”

Don’t put that thought on me, I want to say. I don’t want to think about whether Jeff’s death was avoidable, who’s to blame. I don’t want to feel the emotions that would come with those kinds of thoughts. I’m already feeling too much, and too little.

“But—” he says.

Art’s wife tugs at his elbow. “This isn’t the time, Art. Come on, let’s go.”

He sighs and mumbles an apology and then they are gone.

The friends whose calls I haven’t been returning surround me, a buzz of protectiveness. But their sorrow is more than I want to feel too, and so I don’t really listen, don’t really say anything, don’t really feel anything.

At some point, Seth tugs at the sleeve of my scratchy dress.

“Yes, honey?”

“Was it…okay what I read?”

I turn to him. He looks small and embarrassed in his jacket and tie.

“Of course it was. It was perfect.”

He stubs his toe at the floor. “It wasn’t…cheating?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like at school. How you have to do your own work?”

“Darling, of course it’s not like that. Think about the minister. He was reading something someone else wrote, right?”

“But that’s his job.”

“I don’t think it’s so different. I’m really proud of you…that you were able to get up and speak. It was…more than I could do.”

“Don’t feel bad, Mom. Dad would understand.”

I pull him against me, hoping he’s right but still feeling disappointed in myself. His bones feel small, not quite sturdy enough to shoulder this present life.

“I hope so.”

I release him. He rubs his cheek where it connected with my dress.

“Where’d you find that poem?” I ask. “I’ve never heard it before.”

“Dad had it.”

“He did? Where?”

“In this book I found…please don’t be mad.”

“Why would I be mad?”

“ ’Cuz I found it in his stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“His travel bag. In his office.”

“Why were you looking in there?”

“It’s stupid.”

The house is loud and full, but we’re in a pocket of quiet, Seth and I.

“Tell me.”

“I feel like I’m starting to forget things, about, you know, him, and I thought if I held some of his things…”

“It’s okay. I understand.”

“You do?”

“I do.”

“Are you forgetting?” he asks.

“I’m sure I am, but I have so much more to remember, so I haven’t noticed yet, you see? We knew each other for a long time.”

“My whole life.”

“And then some. Are you hungry? You should eat.”

“Do you think I could go upstairs instead? There are too many people down here.”

“Of course.”

I realize there’s no one Seth’s age in the house. Only a few of his friends were at the church. Did they not want to come to the funeral, or did their parents think they weren’t old enough to deal with what’s been thrust upon my son?

“Why don’t you take off those clothes and put on something more comfortable? I’ll come up soon and we can be quiet together.”

He agrees and walks toward the stairs, a hitch in his step.

I stand there for a moment, uncertain of where I can stand to go next. I move eventually in the general direction of the kitchen, only to be stopped by Connie, my piano teacher.

She stands rigidly in front of me, her arms crossed. She’s wearing a severe black jacket and skirt.

“Hi, Connie. Thanks for coming.”

She nods curtly. “Lessons start again next week.”

“What?”

“Next week.”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to. I mean—”

“You will come to the conservatory. We will see if you can. It is time to see.”

She talks like a tennis ball machine, firing words at precise intervals.

“I’ll try.”

“I will expect you at noon.”

“I don’t—”

“It is your choice. Do as you wish.” She places a large, mannish hand on my shoulder. “You are strong, Claire. Come to the conservatory so you can remember.”

She walks around me, headed to the front door. Tim’s standing there, shrugging off his coat. I catch his gaze. He holds it for a moment, then looks away. I watch as he stares into the sea of people in the living room. He raises his hand in greeting to someone and disappears from view.

Several more people circle me, hug me, tell me how sorry they are. When I manage to escape, I go to the kitchen in search of a glass of water. I run the tap till the water is cold and start to fill a glass. I look out the window, wondering if I’ll ever be able to do so without thinking of the police car pulling up to divide my life in two.

Today it all looks innocent, despite the unusual number of cars parked on the street. There’s a woman who looks vaguely familiar standing at the edge of the walkway. She raises a cigarette to her lips and inhales deeply, letting out the smoke in a long, slow stream.

A cigarette. Yes, that’s what I need. I let the glass I’m holding slip from my hand and hurry to the hall closet and my coat. In a moment I’m out the door.

“Please tell me you have another one of those,” I say.

The woman looks at me, startled. She’s been crying.

“Of course. Hold on.” She clamps her half-smoked cigarette between her teeth and peers inside her purse. She pulls out a red-and-white package and hands it to me. “Here you go.”

I take the crinkly package and tap out a cigarette. The act of putting it in my mouth, catching a whiff of the tobacco, makes me want a drink, but I never did manage to find one inside.

The woman holds a lighter at the end and flicks it on. I inhale quickly, twice, to make sure the cigarette is lit. The warm smoke sears my lungs. I can tell the exact moment the nicotine hits my bloodstream. Eight seconds, the time a rodeo cowboy has to stay on his bucking bronco.

“These are getting hard to find,” the woman says. Her voice is vaguely familiar too.

“Cigarettes?”

“No, lighters.” She flashes the green plastic cylinder at me, then puts it in her coat pocket. “Used to be, everyone always had a lighter, even if they didn’t smoke. I had to go to three stores to find this one.”

I take another haul, enjoying the illicit pleasure.

“We probably should be hiding behind the shrubbery. If my parents see me with this, they’ll throw a fit.”

A thin smile. “I know what you mean. My husband’s a doctor and if he only knew…” She takes a last drag, throws the cigarette to the ground, and grinds it out with a black ballet flat. “God, these things really are terrible. I thought it would help, but it doesn’t. Sorry, I’m babbling.”

“It’s all right.”

“The service was beautiful, by the way. I guess I should’ve started with that. I’m so terribly sorry for your loss. It’s a…terrible thing.”

“Thank you…you look familiar to me, but…do we know each other?”

“Oh! I’m the company representative. Patricia Underhill, from the other Springfield? You can call me Tish.”

Tish. Tish.

“We met once,” she continues in a breathless rush. “You probably don’t remember? At that company retreat in Mexico, a couple of years back? We only spoke for a few moments…”

Mexico. Right. The first trip Jeff and I took alone together in forever. Things were mostly normal then. Things felt good. At dinner, like today, I’d slipped outside for a cigarette and found a woman about my age sitting on the edge of a retaining wall under the bright bougainvillea trees, crying.

“Are you all right?” I’d asked.

She looked up, embarrassed, hastily wiping her tears away. She was wearing a cocktail dress in a pretty color (green?), and her long hair was loose and black against the moonlight. She obviously belonged to our party, but we hadn’t been introduced.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Why are you apologizing? I’m the one intruding on your privacy.”

“This place isn’t very private.”

“I’m not the one who made you cry, right?”

“No, of course not.”

“So, then, no apology necessary.”

“Thanks.” She stood up and wiped the dirt off her backside. “I’m Patricia. But people call me Tish.”

“Claire. Wife or participant?”

“Oh…participant, I guess. My husband’s inside.”

“Mine too.”

“What about you?”

“I’m a wife. At least, on this occasion.”

She nodded. “I know exactly what you mean.”

I pulled a cigarette from my skirt pocket. “Do you mind?”

“Of course not. I wish I could join you.”

“You can if you like.”

“I don’t really smoke. And my husband wouldn’t like it.”

I held a flame to the end of my cigarette. “Why do you think I’m skulking out here?”

She smiled, and she was quite lovely, in an understated way.

We stood there in silence for a bit before Tish said, “This is going to sound strange, but…do you ever wish you could do your life over again?”

“Everyone wishes that sometimes.”

“I mean really actually do it, start again. See if you can get it right the second time around.” She shook herself. “I’m sorry. You don’t need to hear the inside of my brain. I’m having a weird night.”

“Stop apologizing. I’ve had my share of weird nights. And yes, I think about that sometimes, but I don’t think it’s helpful.”

“No, of course.”

“I mean, I don’t think you have to do your life over to change it. I think it’s wrong to think you can’t change things in your life now because of decisions you’ve made in the past. Most things aren’t permanent—except children, of course.” I smiled, thinking of Seth, missing him.

“I wouldn’t give up my daughter for anything,” she said fiercely.

“You see. Your decisions can’t have been all wrong.”

“You’re right.”

“Don’t be so sure. It might be the cocktails talking.”

“No, thank you, this has been helpful.” She tugged at the bottom of her dress, straightening it. “I don’t have mascara all over my face or anything, do I?”

“You’re fine.”

“I guess that stuff really is waterproof.”

“Good to know.”

“Thank you…Claire. I should be getting back.”

“Of course.”

She smiled again, wanly this time, then walked up the torch-lit path.

“You were outside crying, right?” I say, then instantly regret it. “I’m sorry—”

“No, that’s all right. I was crying. And you were…great. I was in a bad place and…I don’t know if you remember what you said that night, but it helped.”

“I remember, and I’m glad, but I can’t take any credit. It was probably something I’d heard on a talk show.”

“I doubt it.”

“So…did you do it?” I ask.

“Do what?”

“Change the thing you were regretting…Wow, that was way too personal a question, you don’t have to say.”

“No, it’s fine.” She bites her lip. “The answer’s yes. In a way, I did.” Her face becomes incredibly sad.

I look over her shoulder, trying to give her some privacy.

A police car rounds the corner onto our street, driving cautiously. It stops in front of the driveway. A man I know is at the wheel.

“Anyway, I should be…go inside, I guess,” Tish says, but I’m only catching every other word. My heart’s beating so loudly it’s drowning everything else out.

“Thank you for coming,” I say, my eyes fixed on the vehicle.

“It was important to me to do it.”

The driver kills the engine and it’s déjà vu all over again, as Jeff would say. But it can’t be more bad news, it can’t be. Everyone I know, everyone I love, is in the house behind me.

The officer opens the door and gets out. My eyes track to the one thing that’s different from last time. The plastic bag he’s holding in his hand.

This time my body doesn’t fail me when I realize what it must contain, and because I can’t get away fast enough, I turn on a dime and sprint to the house.

CHAPTER 17 Decision Maker

My conversation with Claire leaves me feeling short of breath. I tell myself it’s the cigarettes, but they have nothing to do with it.

Claire.

I feel like I’d recognize her anywhere.

Which is silly, and not what history relates, because when Jeff sent me a picture of her and Seth, early on, when we were trading pictures of our offices, our streets, little snippets of our lives, I didn’t recognize her. Not at first.

But I couldn’t shake her face from my brain. Something about it was haunting me, until it finally came to me one night when thoughts tumbled through my brain like clothes being dried.

We’d met. In fact—and, of course, because when else could it be?—we met at the same time I first met Jeff.

I remember how excited Brian was when I told him we’d been invited to the retreat.

“Mexico! Wow. You’re moving up in the world,” he’d said, ruffling my hair and looking proud.

I smiled back though felt a flutter of unease. Truth be told, my original instinct was to refuse the invite, but the shocked look of a coworker, a look I knew Brian would repeat, quickly put an end to that fantasy. At least there was a sweet-looking golf course in the brochure. It had been a while since I’d made it out for a real round.

And there was the potential of Brian’s excitement. He’d been giving me “helpful” nudges for a while. Were there any openings above me? Could I move from HR to another area of management? Wasn’t the merger a great thing? A whole new world of opportunities?

Brian’s a great doctor. He’s patient and interested and will deliver your baby at two in the morning in a snowstorm. But, despite the fact that he eschewed a big-city practice, he’s ambitious. For himself, for me. And while I got that about him, he never seemed to understand or believe it when I told him I wasn’t like that. That I was happy to coast. To drift and somersault like a dried-out leaf in the late fall, hoping to avoid the rake, the collecting pile, the compost heap.

And by this time, there was something else too. A growing feeling that I had to stop drifting along, although I didn’t know how to. That I’d been letting life act itself out on me when I should have been directing it. I’d wake up in the morning sometimes, disoriented, not sure where I was. When it would come back to me—Springfield, house, Brian—I couldn’t help wondering how it had happened. How I’d ended up in this place, with this man, this life. How?

But how do you say that, really, to your husband? How do you even say that to yourself?

We went to Mexico. And when I got back from the driving range full of indignation about the crudeness of that jerk, John Scott, Brian’s reaction had been to tell me to “calm down.”

“Think about your career,” he said, and, “It’s not that big a deal, is it?”

When he said these things, I couldn’t help but think about the man whose look said he wanted to pound that fat fucker into the ground whether it meant the end of his career or not.

And maybe it was because of him, knowing there was someone close by who I was pretty sure saw things the way I did, that made me tell Brian I didn’t care about my job. It wasn’t a career, and I’d already blown any chance at the careers I ever cared about because I didn’t care enough.

“Don’t you get it, Brian? It doesn’t matter to me. Any of it.”

“What are you saying? Are you only talking about work?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Brian’s voice moved up an octave. “What don’t you know, Tish? What?”

“Don’t push me. You’re always pushing me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re always trying to get me to be something I’m not.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed. “Do I really do that? I don’t think I do that.”

He put his head in his hands, and he looked so defeated, I couldn’t continue the fight. Even though I knew there were things that should be said. Even though I knew I might never work up the courage to say them again.

I sat next to him and took his hand in mine. He looked at me and I could see there were tears in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean…I was so mad at that guy.”

“I’m sorry too. I should’ve offered to beat him up, right?”

“Maybe. Maybe that would’ve been good.”

“I’m not really dressed for that.” He was in a suit, ready for dinner.

“No.”

“Or built for it either.”

“True.”

“Are you…are you unhappy? With our life? With me?”

“No, of course not. I love you.”

“And you know I love you, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Is this because we never had a second child?”

“No, it’s not that. I didn’t…I didn’t want that.”

Brian was never around, particularly when he started his practice, and I felt so overwhelmed in those first few years with Zoey, so sleep deprived and not like myself, that I couldn’t imagine having another child. Brian was an only child, like me, and had never expressed the desire to have a second. But that he thought I did want more than one was a shock. Had he thought that all this time and never said, never asked?

“You and Zoey are the most important things in the world to me,” Brian said. “If I thought…” His voice shook. “If I thought I was failing you…”

But the thing was, I never brought it up either. I let my silence decide for us, like I’d been doing all my life.

“No, Brian, no. I’m the one.”

“The one what?”

“I don’t know.”

I rested my head on his shoulder. His arm circled me, holding me close.

“You don’t have to work at that company if you don’t want to. Or if you want to write, or go back to school, or whatever you want to do, you can do it.”

“I know.”

“I mean it.”

“I know you do.”

His eyes searched my face. “Are we good?”

“We’re good.”

He held me to him tightly, and his familiar scent, as familiar to me as my own, drove my anger away.

“You should—” he said.

“Take a shower? Yes.”

I kissed him quickly and untangled myself. I closed the door behind me in the bathroom, turned on the taps, and slipped under the spray. And then the tears started to flow, hard and fast, dropping as fast as the water. I shoved my fist into my mouth to keep the sounds of my weeping contained. All I could think the whole time was Why am I crying? What is wrong with me? What?

When I regained control, I dressed quickly and we walked to the cocktail party. I was relieved to see that we were seated with a couple of people from our Springfield, people I knew well enough to skip over the usual intro chat. I stifled the rising feeling of panic with too many glasses of wine, and when I went through the food line, there he was again, being all awkward and fanlike. I didn’t feel like myself and I didn’t act like myself. I flirted, we flirted, but I left it at that. I didn’t even tell him my name. I never expected to see him again.

Later that night I ran into John Scott again, red-faced and reeking of liquor. He made a pass at me, and I slipped out a side door and sat on a retaining wall near some bushes I thought would hide me from view. The tears came again, less intense this time, but still inexplicable to me.

And then, after a few short minutes of inconsequential talk, I found myself telling some semblance of the truth to Claire, who I didn’t know, who I also thought I’d never see again. It felt good to tell someone something, and her words comforted me. They stayed with me, like her face did. They worked their way through my brain until they became one all-encompassing thought.

I could change my life if I wanted to.

I had permission.

I gave it to myself.

I watch Claire run, and when I see what’s in the police officer’s hand, I want to run too. But I stay put, letting him pass me by, walk up the steps, knock on the door.

Only once he’s inside do I force myself to enter the house. I have a condolence card signed by the office with me. I will find the pile of them and add my card to the stack. I will do my duty and then I will leave. I will go back to my life, my family, my friends, like I’d already decided to do before any of this happened. I will try to put all of this behind me.

A woman with short graying hair wearing a black dress opens the front door. Claire’s sister, if my guess at the funeral was correct.

She looks distracted and angry. Over her shoulder I can see Claire leading the police officer into the den and closing the door behind them, but not quite completely.

“Fuck,” Claire’s sister mutters.

“Pardon?”

She shifts her attention to me. “Apologies. Were you trying to come in?”

No, no, no.

“Yes, I…wanted to leave a card.”

She takes a step back, leaving enough room for me to pass. We brush shoulders as I do, releasing the faint smell of gardenias. When it dissipates, the real smell of the place filters in. It’s not familiar, as I feared it might be, just the smell of too many bodies packed together, too much food. Sweat and cumin. Red wine and sausage. A store full of flowers.

“Were you…who are you?” she asks.

“I’m Tish. I work…worked with Jeff. The company sent me.”

“I’m Beth. Claire’s sister.” She closes the door and gives me a speck of her attention. “Your lot, they’re all in there.”

She motions to the living room to the left of the door, where I recognize a few faces. John Scott, of course, with an unhappy-looking woman at his side who must be his wife. The CEO and his very young wife. Others I’ve only seen in photographs. I feel light-headed at the prospect of going into that room, talking to those people, wondering if some rumor has reached them about me, if my presence there will bring it to mind, bring it to light.

“Are you all right?” Beth says.

“Yes, I…It’s been a long day. Could I use your bathroom?”

“Of course. It’s down there, on the left.”

I walk slowly past the guests clogging the hall, catching snippets of conversation focused on the police officer Claire is hidden away with.

“Do you think that’s…?”

“What else could it be?”

“What’s wrong with him, bringing it here today?”

My thoughts exactly.

I stop in front of the bathroom’s closed door. I try the handle, but it’s locked.

“Someone’s in here!” a shrill voice admonishes me.

“Sorry!”

I lean against the wall, waiting. The door Claire and the police officer disappeared behind is across the hall, slightly ajar.

I edge across the hall. Voices float out.

“…investigation?”

“It was an accident…”

More words, then silence, then a creak of the floor, heading toward the door I’m standing too close to.

I jump back, taking up my station waiting for the person who seems to be treating the bathroom like it’s her own.

The police officer leaves, followed by Claire holding the plastic bag. I scan its meager contents. A wallet. A wedding ring dulled by use. Jeff’s watch. His phone.

I lift my eyes and meet Claire’s for a second, but she’s not seeing me, not really. In an instant, Tim’s by her side, leading her away to the back of the house.

Without thinking, I slip along in their wake, like a magnet’s pulling me. They stop in the solarium that leads to the backyard and I hover in the doorway, ten feet behind them. Tim tells her to wait there, turns, and walks past me. He gives me a puzzled look, like he’s already forgotten where he knows me from, and doesn’t slow his step.

I stare at Claire’s back. Her posture’s perfect—straight, with square shoulders. I feel schlumpy inside my coat, my head more naturally looking down than straight ahead at life.

Tim passes me again, a bottle in his hand, and in a moment he and Claire are outside, walking across the brown lawn, passing a small stand of crocuses, heading for an old swing set in the back corner.

As the screen door clangs shut I step into the room. The same force propels me to the doorway and keeps me standing there long enough to see them sit in the too-small swings and pass the bottle back and forth with the ease of old intimacy.

I finally force myself to look away, to fix on something else. A cell phone charger is plugged into the wall above the counter. Underneath it sits the bag of Jeff’s effects.

I pick it up. Everything’s intact except Jeff’s cell phone. Its screen is cracked. I press the power button through the plastic, as if bringing it back to life might revive Jeff in some way. But this is foolishness. It looks broken beyond repair. And its damaged state is probably a blessing, really.

I put the bag down, and now I want very badly to talk to Zoey, to check in. But when I dig my phone out of my purse, I remember that it’s dead to the world too. I plug the charger into it and wait, but it’s gone so long without power that it’ll need a few minutes before I can even turn it on. Which leaves me with enough time on my hands to do one more thing I shouldn’t.

Like in my own house, the stairway in Jeff’s displays a series of framed photographs, mostly of Seth through the ages, but also some early ones of Jeff and Claire, back in the day, purely happy, before life intruded.

The top stair squeaks loudly and I stop, nervous as a burglar worried about waking a sleeping family.

“Mom?”

I’m about to bolt when Seth pops his head out of a doorway. He’s taken off his funeral suit and is wearing a hoodie over a pair of surfing shorts.

“I thought it was my mom.”

“She’s outside with your uncle, I think.”

“Who are you?”

“I worked with your dad.”

He looks at me for a moment, turning that over like a worry bead. “A lot of people worked with my dad.”

I take the last step into the hallway, and now, for the first time, I can detect, faintly, the smell I associate with Jeff. This is what I was looking for. This is why I came up here. For one last breath of him.

He was here not so long ago. Not so long ago.

“Yes, they did,” I say.

He edges backward, and I take this as a sign to follow him, at least to the doorway. The room he’s in is set up as an office. A wall of bookshelves full of the detective fiction Jeff loved to read. A filing cabinet. A large desk made out of a piece of plywood held up by two sawhorses.

Seth is sitting at the desk in front of a large-screen laptop. He has a couple of browser windows open, including one showing his Twitter feed, updating every few seconds.

Sick trick in this video!

Does Mr. H. suck or what?

@trixli yolo!

“It’s Seth, right?”

He glances at me briefly. “Yeah.”

“I was wondering…where you found that poem? The one you read at the funeral?”

“Why?”

“Well, my daughter wrote it actually, her name is—”

“Zoey, right?”

“That’s right. How do you know about her?”

“I don’t. My dad did. I found her book in his stuff.”

“Oh, I thought maybe…” I stop myself, because what am I thinking? Honestly, what am I thinking?

“It must be weird,” he says.

“What’s that?”

“Having something you wrote out there in the world for everyone to read.”

“Is it any different from that?” I point to the computer screen, where a trail of words is scrolling it.

@connorsallright Dude, I just saw the FUNNIEST video.

“Nah, that’s only, no filter, you know? Nobody’s really saying anything. They’re just…what’s that word? Narrating.”

Oh, Jeff. Your son is bright and perfect.

“That’s an interesting way of looking at it.”

“You worked with Dad?”

“Yes.” I pause. “He was a great guy, your dad.”

“Yeah.”

He opens a new navigation screen and types something. The landing page of an email service. The one Jeff used.

“I’m doing this thing,” he says, looking shy. “This kind of collage thing? You know, like the AIDS quilt?”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s this mosaic site where you can load in photos and stuff like that, and it makes these awesome collages, but like mosaic tiles. But you know what sucks?”

OMG. That’s hilarious. What a loser!

Check this version out! Even better with music! xtylorsm.com.

“No, what?”

“We don’t have enough pictures of Dad. But I have an idea.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m going to email his friends, and ask them to send stuff, like pictures and whatever. But I can’t get in.”

I bet that’s going to get, like, a zillion views…like Star Wars Kid.

“Into his email?”

“Yeah. I’ve been working on his password for days, but I can’t get it.”

My heart squeezes and I raise a hand to my chest.

“Well, maybe there was…stuff in there, private stuff…There must be another way you could get his friends’ email addresses.”

“Not without asking my mom.”

“I’m sure she’d want to know what you were doing.”

“But then it wouldn’t be a surprise. You won’t tell her?”

Before I can answer, or think of some other way to try to discourage this precious boy from trying to crack into Jeff’s email, an IM pops up on Seth’s screen.

Mike_Boarder: Sethie! Have you seen this?

Seth types quickly.

Sethsamillion: What?

Mike_Boarder: Watch this. Immediately. xtylorsm.com

Seth clicks on it and a video loads, ready to play. There’s a blurry still shot of a girl in black standing at a microphone. The caption reads: Poet Girl Takes a Nosedive!

Oh, God…no, no, no.

I take the mouse from Seth’s hand, move it to the play button, and click. It starts to play.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

But I don’t hear anything Seth says after this point. I’m out of his room and down the stairs and into the solarium, where my phone is now charged. I pick it up and it’s vibrating. The revived screen tells me I have twenty-one missed calls and eight messages, and texts from Brian, from Zoey, from Brian.

I dial the last number, Zoey’s cell, and she answers before the ring even finishes.

“Mom?” she says. “Mom?”

“I’m coming, baby. Right now.”

And then I do the first unselfish thing I’ve done in a very long time.

I go home.