Talking to the Dead Read online

  “Maybe you should hold off until our food comes.”

  He points a finger at me. “There’s only so far a guy can go in the loans department, you know. There’s a ceiling.” He holds his hand over his head in an imitation of a ceiling. I can’t help but laugh. “I hate ceilings, but”—he holds up a finger as if to shush me, even though I haven’t said a word—“the new acquisitions manager called me to her office today and we had a long talk.” He drags out the word “long,” holding the O and stretching it to ridiculous lengths. “She says I’m in the wrong department. She says she’s been watching me and sees my overlooked potential.” He takes a deep pull on his champagne. “I have overlooked potential,” he says, slurring.

  A flutter of excitement rises in my chest. “I’ve always thought so, babe. So what does this mean for you?”

  “It means,” he says, plunking his elbow down hard on the table. “You’re looking at the new assistant to the acquisitions manager. And you know what that means.”

  “No, what does—”

  “It means a couple of years of effort and I’m a veep.”

  “A veep?”

  He swings his glass wide, nearly swiping a passing waiter. “A VP, my clueless wife. A vice president.”

  I grab his hand across the table, ecstatic. “Kevin, that’s wonderful news. I’m so proud of you.” My head is instantly filled with what this could mean for us. Maybe we can buy a larger home sooner than we expected. A five-bedroom would be perfect. Our two-bedroom just isn’t enough, and we’ve put off starting our family because money is so tight, but with this news … “We can have a baby now,” I blurt out. “We don’t have to wait anymore.”

  Kevin’s eyes cross briefly, then his eyebrows met in the middle of his forehead. “A baby?”

  A giggle burbled up from inside of me. “Uh, yeah. With you on the fast track at work, we can have a baby now, and be able to buy a bigger house in just a couple of years. There’s no need to wait anymore.”

  Our meals arrive, and Kevin stares at his as if he doesn’t recognize it. Then he looks up, smiles, and winks. “Well, let’s wait until after dinner, at least.”

  I kill the engine and car lights, and everything goes dark. The neighborhood is silent, sleeping. I try to help Kevin out of the car but he waves me off. “I’m not drunk, for the one hundredth time.”

  I unlock the door and flick on the lights we always forget to turn on when we leave. Two gifts snuggle on the kitchen table. I’d forgotten all about them.

  Kevin comes in behind me and sees them too. “Oh yeah. Oh good. Let’s open presents.” He grabs the one he bought me and half runs, half stumbles up the stairs with it. “Let’s open them up here.”

  I follow silently, not bothering to ask why. He’d been acting strangely ever since dinner. Talking loudly, drinking an entire bottle of champagne, then ordering a beer. I’d never known him to celebrate this way.

  Kevin stands by his dresser, trying to light a candle. He strikes the match, nothing. Again. Nothing. A third time, sparks, then a fizzle, then nothing. He turns to me, holds out the matches, and I take them, lighting the match, then the other three candles perched on their individual holders. The dim glow flickers around the room. It feels peaceful, calming, sexy.

  Kevin sits on the bed, cross-legged and bouncing lightly like a child. Strike sexy. He holds out his gift to me. “Three years of marriage. Three is leather.” He grins. “You told me so.”

  I grin back and tug on a piece of tape, careful not to tear the brilliant red paper. Kevin leans over and snatches the gold bow from on top and puts it on his head. I laugh and pull off the wrapper. A white box, the kind you use to wrap the sweater you bought Grandma for Christmas. I throw him a toothy grin that I hope covers my disappointment. I don’t want a grandma sweater. I pull the lid open and stare at the thing inside.

  Kevin gets up on his knees and moves over to the end of the bed where I am standing. He peers into the box. “Try it on.”

  My stomach flops over. This is no grandma sweater; this is serious underwear for professionals. Did I say underwear? More like a contraption. It’s black with a spattering of silver grommets and a few buckles tossed in for added flair.

  Kevin rubs his hands together like a kid set loose in a candy store. “Just like you told me—leather.”

  I glance over at the gift I bought him. As if reading my mind, he turns and grabs it off the bed. “My turn,” he says, ripping the masculine blue paper to shreds. He stares at his gift with unfocused eyes. “It’s a book.”

  I nod. “A leather-bound book on the history of aviation.”

  “Cool,” he says, placing the book on the floor beside the bed. He points at the leather thing in the box I’m holding. “Try it on.”

  I swallow the bile rising in my throat. “Uh, I’ll put it on in the bathroom.” I dash across the hall before his slightly drunken hands reach me. I close the bathroom door quietly and lean against it. I look at the offensive garment. Three years of marriage, and he’d never once hinted that he wanted this. It wasn’t the sort of thing you put on to feel special or sexy. It was the sort of thing you put on and felt cheap. Disposable. Whorish. I had a drawer full of wonderful, soft, sexy things. I enjoyed wearing those. But this?

  “Need help in there?” Kevin’s voice called from the bedroom.

  Help? I need an escape ladder. “No. Be right out.” I close my eyes and chant, “I love my husband.” I get undressed. I hold the offensive thing against my skin. “I love my husband.”

  It was dark by the time I finished filling out the insurance forms. My eyes stuck together when I blinked. I put the papers into a manila envelope and decided to walk to the mailbox, despite the late hour. A part of me was anxious to finalize the insurance settlement. It was a large amount of money. Guilt poked at my chest like a bully. You shouldn’t care about money, it said. I grabbed my sweater and headed out the door.

  When I returned home, I went to the kitchen, filled the kettle with water, set it on the stove, and went upstairs, taking them two at a time.

  I hesitated at the top of the stairs. It felt strange to be up there. Like visiting a memory. I felt uncertain which way to turn. If I turned right, I would enter the bathroom. Left, I would be in the spare room. If I walked straight ahead, I would enter the bedroom Kevin and I had shared for the past five years. I turned right.

  Avoiding my reflection, I twisted the water taps, stripped, and stepped into the shower. I stood still and bare under the flow of hot water. The bathroom filled with steam as I washed my hair and cleaned my body. Somewhere between the shampoo and the last scrape of the razor against my leg I began to feel, as Maggie had promised, human.

  I stood in front of the mirror combing out my long brown hair, my right hand midstroke, when Kevin’s voice came to me from the other side of the door. “Kettle’s whistling.”

  “Okay!” I hollered back without thinking. I grabbed my robe off the back of the door and flew downstairs. I was in the kitchen, hand on the kettle, before my brain caught up with what had happened. I spun around and called, “Kevin?” I ran back up the stairs, stopping at the top. “Kevin,” I called again. “I heard you. I hear you. Kevin, please,” I said, my voice falling to a whisper. “Please. I hear you.”

  7

  “You need to eat, Kate,” Heather said. She was standing in my kitchen scraping casserole that was covered in a month’s worth of mold into the garbage.

  I sat useless at the table. I was spent from a week of filling in insurance forms and following the paper trail that ended with me being awarded a huge sum of money.

  Heather had invited herself over and was now in the process of ridding my home of harmful bacteria by cleaning out the contents of my refrigerator. She put the dish in the sink and turned her attention back to the fridge. “I’ve never seen so much food stuffed into a refrigerator.”
She’d come by “just because,” she said. But it was clear she was here to check up on me. Subtle is not Heather’s middle name. She was always a flurry of activity. And I suspected that because she didn’t have a boyfriend just then to lavish her attentions on, I became the object of her attentiveness.

  I shrugged, “People keep bringing food over. I put it in the fridge.”

  “This is nuts,” she said, her brown hair swinging across her back as she took stock of the chaos.

  I sat on my hands. “Heather, do you remember, when we used to go swimming, how we’d stand on Dad’s shoulders and jump into the water?”

  Heather pulled out another dish—it looked like it used to be a dessert. She faced me. “Sure, he’d swim on the bottom of the pool until one of us could get our feet on his shoulders, then he’d stand straight up and we’d go flying,” she smiled. “He seemed to never run out of air, waiting for us at the bottom of the pool.”

  Heather threw the dessert in the garbage and began rummaging through my cupboards in search of something. She was dressed in her version of casual, which meant wearing one piece of denim—in this case a bolero with tiny pockets on the front. The rest of her outfit consisted of matching tan linen. She looked gorgeous.

  I ran a hand through my shoulder-length hair, and my finger snagged on a small knot. I pulled the brown strands apart while I spoke. “My favorite part was when he stood up. I never knew if my balance would hold. Then Dad would grab my ankles, stand up, and shoot me straight up out of the water. I felt like a rocket. Like a movie star.”

  “A movie star?” Heather asked, taking a break from her cleaning to look at me.

  “Yeah. Special. That’s how I picture it, you know. The way he died. I picture the boy standing on Dad’s shoulders, Dad trying to stand up in the middle of the river and shoot that boy out of the water.”

  Heather spun away and started hunting through the cupboards again until she found the one that held all the Tupperware containers I had acquired as wedding gifts. They were shiny new. Every lid was accounted for. I’d barely used any of them. Kevin had been an eating machine, so there were rarely leftovers. She piled the containers and matching lids on the table in front of me. “We’re going to divide this food up into single servings and freeze them.” Heather was a force of nature when she decided to take charge. She turned the hot water tap, then grabbed a broom, sweeping while the sink filled.

  I shrugged. The food didn’t appeal to me. It had been brought here by sad-faced people who were so sorry they couldn’t stay, but they really had to be going.

  Heather rested the broom against the wall, turned the tap off, and then plunked the last of the containers on the table. She grabbed casserole dishes and bowls from the counter and plopped them in front of me. Compliant, I began transferring the contents in one of the bowls—raspberry Jell-O—into a single-serving plastic container.

  “What was your favorite part?” I asked, balancing the wobbling goop onto a spoon. Something about the Jell-O seemed wrong.

  She was bent over, head in the fridge. “Mine? Of swimming? Let me think.”

  “Can you freeze Jell-O?”

  Heather spun around and marched to the table. “What? No. Oh for—here, give me that.”

  She took the Jell-O and handed me a dish filled with cabbage rolls. I began dropping them into plastic containers. I was pretty sure you could freeze cabbage rolls.

  We worked silently for a time, me blopping food into small containers, and Heather scraping spoiled food into the garbage and washing the dishes. She turned and waved a spoon at me. “I liked everything about those times. Dad could be so much fun when he wanted to be. Swimming and summer vacations. Those are the times I remember Dad the most.”

  “The only times we ever saw him in shorts,” I said.

  We smiled at each other.

  I snapped a lid on the container I’d just filled and added it to the stack beside me. I handed Heather the empty casserole dish and reached for another one. “What do you remember most about Kevin?”

  Heather’s smile faded. She turned back to the sink.

  “Tell me,” I said, looking down into the dish of lasagna. “I’d like to hear it.”

  Heather was quiet. Her hands busy.

  I stared at my hands. Why won’t she say something?

  She came up behind me and put her arms around me. “I love you, Kate.”

  “I love you, too,” I said, feeling uneasy. Why was she avoiding my question? Uncertainty crept up my spine and knocked on my skull.

  “Your hair smells nice,” she said.

  “I just washed it.” She really wasn’t going to tell me. She was avoiding the question.

  “I’m glad.”

  I nudged her arm. “Glad about what? That I washed my hair?”

  “Yes,” she said as she stood upright again. “That you washed your hair. I was getting worried about you. But I see you’re getting better now.”

  I clenched the spoon. Better? What was that supposed to mean? Did she think I was suffering some disease that I’d simply recover from? Just a bad case of Kevin-itis, should clear up in a few days. I felt my chest tighten as anger seeped in.

  Heather returned to the sink and plunged her hands into the sudsy water, her back to me, talking over her shoulder. “You’ve been sleeping in the living room, and generally not taking care of yourself very well. It was freaking me out. But you look good. A bit pale, but still, you’re obviously getting better.”

  I tried to concentrate on breathing as anger poured over me like a baptism. “I’m getting over it, you mean.” I spoke through clenched teeth. Who was she to tell me what was normal and what wasn’t? Who was she to be freaked out by what I did or didn’t do? “That’s what you mean, isn’t it? I should be over it?”

  Heather faced me, hands dripping. “No, I just mean that you’re … showing signs of improvement.”

  I stood up so fast the chair tipped over. “Improvement?” I said, louder than I intended.

  She shook her head, a mother hen explaining the facts of life. “Relax, Kate. There’s no need to be upset. I’m paying you a compliment.”

  I pointed the spoon at her as if it were a switchblade. “Who asked you? Who asked you to come in here, take over my kitchen, and tell me how things ought to be? You don’t know anything about what I’m going through.”

  Heather wiped the splatter of tomato sauce that hit her face when I flicked the spoon at her. “I’m only trying to help.”

  I glared at her, anger choking off my air supply. “You think I’m pathetic. That I need your help just to function.”

  She put out her hand like she was calling to a puppy. “No. Kate, please, I didn’t mean to offend you. I just meant I was happy—”

  I cut her off. “You think you know better than I do how to grieve? How to be a widow? You think there are rules about what’s normal and what’s not?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Get out.”

  She stood motionless for a moment, perhaps waiting for me to change my mind, take it back, apologize. She glanced at the door, then back at me, a question in her eyes.

  “GET OUT!”

  Heather jumped at my shout. Her gaze fell to the spoon I was still pointing at her like a weapon. Without another word she opened the door and stepped outside.

  I threw the spoon at the door. Unsatisfied, I picked up the casserole dish, half filled with lasagna, and hurled it. It shattered against the door, spraying food and glass everywhere. I picked up my chair and sat down hard, watching the tomato sauce bleed down the door like a hemorrhage. I put my head down and began to tap my forehead against the tabletop. A rhythm, a drumbeat, a mantra. After a few moments I picked up the phone and dialed. After four rings the answering machine picked up.

  “Maggie,” I said into the
receiver, “I’d like the names of those counselors.”

  8

  I bumped around the house for the next two days, wondering how to fill the time before my first therapy appointment. The thought of seeing a counselor made me nervous and self-conscious. And desperate. A part of me hoped for an easy answer, a mental-health silver bullet that would make my problems go away. Or at least explain to me what my problems were.

  I made a list of everything I thought I should talk about. Kevin’s sudden death. My father’s death before that. Feelings of sadness. The strange and angry outburst at my sister. My hand hovered over the page, reluctant to write: “Hears voice of dead husband.” How crazy does that make me sound? I looked around my living room, which had become my bedroom. How crazy does this make me? Do they measure on a sliding scale? Maybe they tally your behavior. Four behaviors and you’re sane. Five and you’re crazy.

  I was too frightened to tally my behaviors.

  I wrote out the answers to the questions I imagined a counselor would ask.

  Age: 28.

  Occupation: Housewife? No. Homemaker? Nope. Retired? I thought about the amount of the insurance settlement. Yeah, retired.

  Marital status: Widow.

  Reason for visit: See above.

  Patient’s ideal outcome from counseling sessions: Acquire ability to travel back in time.

  I bit the end of my pencil. I had no idea what the counselor would ask me. I doodled in the margin, then wrote the only positive thing I could think of: washing my hair again—but then I crossed it out. How terrible was it that I didn’t wash for three weeks? Even now, it wasn’t as if I was making daily trips to the shower. I managed one trip in the past week. I pressed my fists into my temples and chanted, “Not crazy. Not crazy.” I pictured Heather’s pale face as she fled my kitchen. Something in her eyes. She had looked scared. Of me.