Goodbye for Now (33 page)

Kylie stopped in the next morning to say goodbye. She didn’t think she needed RePose anymore. The ring was all she needed. Sam spent the day stewing about this. How could she not want to see Tim’s face again, talk to him, send and receive love letters, especially now that they were engaged?

“Dash is right. They’re not engaged,” Avery Fitzgerald told him gently. “Maybe she’s engaged, but he’s not.”

“She’s not either really,” Celia Montrose put in. She was hanging around while Kelly chatted with her dad. “Engaged means planning to get married. You can’t marry someone dead.”

“She’ll be back,” said Edith Casperson. “They always come back.”

“Who do?” asked Sam.

“People in love,” said Edith sagely. “Stupid, foolish people in love.” Avery rolled her eyes and smiled knowingly at Celia. The three of them were becoming a little club. RePosing Widows—Dash wanted to have T-shirts made—each with her own role: Avery the marriage cheerleader, Edith the marriage dissuader, and Celia the marriage avoider.

“I’m not for avoiding marriage,” said Celia. “I just don’t want to talk to my husband now that he’s dead. I liked him in life. I’m just avoiding him now. Anyhow Sam, come have drinks with us. We’re going to the café in the art museum. It’s got your name on it.”

It did, in fact. Seattle Art Museum. It said
SAM
in big letters all over the building. Sam gave her a little smile but declined.

“I understand, honey,” said Avery, squeezing his arm, and he suspected she did, at least a little, “but you’ve got to get out. You can’t just work all the time.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not good for you.”

“Why not?”

Avery looked at him with so much tenderness it actually hurt him. “We’ll be gentle, honey. You know we will. We won’t have too much fun. We won’t make you laugh if you don’t want to. We won’t make you talk about her. Or we’ll let you talk about her. Or we’ll let you not talk at all. They have good french fries and strong drinks and tomato soup with grilled cheese. It’s an easy night. Come out with us.”

Sam’s eyes filled because she looked so much like his mother. Not his actual mother—what she might look like with a hairstyle and clothes that weren’t hopelessly out-of-date, with laugh lines and gray hair and reading glasses on a string around her neck, defied Sam’s exhausted imagination—but she looked at him the way Sam imagined his mother would look at him if she were here: pained he was in such pain, almost as sorry as he was about what happened, full of love, full of concern, and desperate to help.

She came over and put her hand against his cheek, and Sam felt like someone’s little boy again. “Come out with us, sweetheart.” And he
almost could except then she added, “Get some fresh air and the company of real people.”

“She’s real,” said Sam darkly, pulling away.

“You know what I mean,” said Avery.

“
You
know what
I
mean,” said Sam.

LOVE LETTER

Dear Meredith,

This is where we came in. Right? To have somewhere to send it? Everyone has this impulse, I think—it’s awfully human I guess—to write to people they love after they’ve passed away. You may be dead, but that doesn’t mean I love you any less than I did a month ago when you were alive. Before we did what we did, before I did what I did, back when dead meant you couldn’t have a conversation anymore, back when dead meant you’d never see her face again, there was this impulse to write it down, to send a letter.

Maybe it comes from our sense that the dead go someplace, an actual place—heaven or an underworld or a land of the dead or a great beyond or a cloud with angels or a waiting room, but always it’s somewhere, a place. And places are places you can send a letter. Or maybe the reverse is true. Way back before anything else, there was this desire to write letters to the dead, so early humans had to imagine someplace for the dead to be. And then they had to invent language.

Mostly, almost always, I regret what we’ve done. But look at all the human invention that came before us: symbols that mean things, words, a way to say them aloud, a way to write them down, something to write them down on, something to write them down with, ways to transport them from one person to another, ways to read them and reply. By rock, by parchment, by paper, by electron, via horse, car, plane, air, cloud. So much of human innovation and progress is about communication, connection, somehow spanning that unbridgeable divide between human hearts that feels like it will kill us if we cannot get across. Once upon a time, understanding your neighbor, having your neighbor understand you, these seemed like impossibilities. So perhaps communicating with the dead was only a matter of time and evolution. It was a human inevitability. It was born of love. Then maybe everything that came next had to happen to somebody. It’s only a shame that it had to happen to us.

In all of human history, Merde, from that first person who lost a dear one until now, there is no one I could love as much as you.

Love,
Sam

HOMECOMING

K
elly Montrose was taking David Elliot to homecoming, but their first stop of the evening was the salon. She wanted her dad to meet him, and she wanted her dad to see her in her dress. Edith had made it special for her, so she could be absolutely certain that no one else would be wearing what she was wearing. Dash madly shot video and called out notes like the B-list Hollywood director he’d just started dating. Sam stood by and tried not to cry. Though Celia had been adamant all along about not wanting to chat with her husband, this night she couldn’t resist. She wanted to stand next to him with tears in her eyes and her head on his shoulder as they watched their baby, looking suddenly like a young woman, go off to her first big dance. She had to settle for Avery’s shoulder, but at least she got to see Ben’s face. Benjamin Montrose had trouble accommodating either his daughter or his wife though. Kelly had never had a boyfriend before, so he had no electronic memory of responding to one. His pictures of her were all of a daughter who really did still look like a little girl. He faked his way through okay—vague affirmations and generalized enthusiasm and support—but it didn’t quite satisfy Kelly or her mom. Sam, however, practically filled the dad role himself, smiling, choked up, and proud, with a nagging desire to pull David aside, ask his intentions, and define the consequences of a broken curfew in no uncertain terms.

This was maybe why, when his own father called to chat later that night, Sam was so confused. He answered, ashen and speechless, like he’d seen a ghost. Like he was seeing a ghost.

“What’s wrong, Sam?” his dad said right away.

“What happened?” Sam managed.

“Nothing happened. I’m just checking in.”

“Why hasn’t someone called me?” Sam panicked.

“I’m calling you now.”

“We talked two days ago, and you were fine.”

“Jesus, Sam, I’m not dead.” His dad was suddenly hysterical, somewhere between amusement and alarm. Sense flooded Sam’s brain so fast he thought he might pass out. “Someone would have let you know, I think. Plus, who’d have run the algorithm if not you?”

“God, Dad, you scared the shit out of me.” Sam tried to catch his breath.

“Sam, are you okay?”

“Just habit, I guess.” Sam ignored the question. “Everyone who calls me is dead.”

“I’m not sure that’s healthy.”

“Occupational hazard.”

“You need to work less. You need to get out of the house more. See some friends. Spend time with the living.”

“I know, Dad. I know.”

“I know you know. But somehow you’re not doing it anyway.”

“I can’t.”

“You could.”

“I can’t.”

Sam’s dad sighed. “I called to tell you a story.”

“Of course you did,” said Sam.

“This one isn’t about your mother.” Sam didn’t know his dad had any stories not about his mother. “This one is about you. But you won’t remember. The summer after you turned three, Aunt Nadene lent us the beach house for a week. This was before the one in Rehobeth. It was in Ocean City, and it was really only half a house—it was a duplex—and half a crappy house at that. The place looked very romantic from the outside—weather-beaten and sand-worn—but it was leaky and moldy and damp inside, and it smelled bad, and there was no AC. You were cranky all week because you were uncomfortable, and I was cranky all week because you were cranky all week and because the last time I’d been there was right after your mother and I got engaged.

“Our second-to-last day there, this woman moved into the other side of the house. She had gotten there a day ahead of her husband and her own toddler and was looking forward to some peace and kidless quiet, but instead she got cranky you. Instead of snapping at you or ignoring you or fleeing to another part of the beach, she shut you up by cheering you up—something that had never occurred to me. She took you out for ice cream, and she bought you a kite, and then she took you down to the beach to fly it. When you didn’t feel like kite flying ten minutes after you started kite flying, she put it away and took you swimming. And when you didn’t feel like swimming ten minutes after you started swimming and wanted to fly the kite again, she dried you off and hauled it out without complaint. When she asked you what you wanted for dinner, you said ice cream again, and she said okay to that too. And then she invited you over to watch cartoons in her half of the house until you fell asleep on her sofa.

“She was out in the morning so we didn’t get to say goodbye, but miraculously you stayed happy and complaint-free as we packed up and headed home. You were quiet in traffic and you were quiet when you missed your nap and you were quiet for the whole long drive back. It wasn’t until we finally got home that you told me, ‘It was nice of Mama to come spend the day with me yesterday.’ I was dumbstruck. I was sick to my stomach. I couldn’t think how you’d gotten so confused. And I choked out something like, ‘Sam, honey, that was just the neighbor. That wasn’t your mother.’ And you laughed in such a sad, knowing, adult way and looked sorry for me and said, ‘Don’t be silly, Dad. Of course she was.’ ”

Sam sat and looked at his dad, and his dad sat and looked at him.

“What’s your point, Dad?”

“I have two. One is you don’t need a computer to visit with the dead.”

Sam had no response to this. “And the other?”

“The other is come home for a little while.”

When Sam checked his e-mail the next morning, his father had booked him an open-return flight into Baltimore leaving the next afternoon.

Dash flew up with plans to make Brie for Jamie and run the salon for as long as Sam wished. Sam would do the tech from Baltimore, but Dash
was happy to take care of everything else. He was thrilled to have Livvie’s expansive kitchen all to himself, glad to get out of L.A. for a while (things were shaky with the B-list director), and eager to run the salon firsthand for a bit instead of reacting, always, to Sam’s and Meredith’s concerns. Mushy sympathy wasn’t Dash’s style nor were geek armor and techie protection, and he was glad for the opportunity to run his own business his own way for a while. Sam wrote out instructions for the dogs like he was leaving his newborn with a babysitter for the first time, but really it was all very simple.

He went downstairs to tell Penny he was going away for a few days and found Penny-not-all-there instead of Penny-on-the-ball. It was a crapshoot every time who’d answer the door, but it was apparent now right away. He didn’t have to wait for her to talk to tell; he could see it in her eyes. She looked so uncertain. She knew who he was—she almost always did—but she was confused about everything else. Things were starting to fall apart around the apartment again, so Sam went right in and started doing dishes and explanations.

“I’m going back east to see my dad for a few days. Maybe a week or so. We’ll see. But Dash is up there if you need anything. He’ll check in on you too.”

“Oh don’t worry about me, honey. I’m fine. Meredith will take me shopping if I need anything.”

Sam winced. “Meredith’s … gone. Remember?”

“That’s okay. I can wait,” said Penny. “I’m fine for the moment.”

“Not gone,” said Sam. “Gone.” No wonder she was confused. Sam couldn’t bring himself to say “dead,” not that that would have helped her understand anyway. And in some ways Penny was right. Meredith didn’t feel very gone to him either. And in other ways, she embodied gone. Gone was all she was. He plowed ahead. “David and Kelly are making a sign-up sheet so people will bring you meals. Okay? And if you need anything, call Dash.”

“Oh I don’t need anything, dear. I’m fine.” Her mantra. She was fine and needed nothing. Sam couldn’t tell if she was so out of it she believed that or if she was trying to convince herself or if some small sentient-today part of her was intent on sparing everyone else the burden. He felt bad, but Penny was easier this way. She wasn’t sorry for his loss. She
wasn’t angry about what he’d said to her. She wasn’t missing Albert. She wasn’t trying to help Sam heal. Foggy seemed to Sam a really great way to be.