Afterlife (8 page)

Mel shrugged, as she turned the car into the driveway. “Toni Marino. AKA mom. What more is there to say?”

6

If she were ever to draw her mother, it would be with nothing but circles and squiggly lines. Her hair was a bird’s nest of jet black with glimmers of gray, her face was round, and round glasses upon her round nose. Even the word “mom” seemed to be a round word. She somehow had lost the angular half-Italian look of her Connie Francis-inspired youth and had transformed into Earth Mother by the age of sixty-four. “I picked up the kids from your sitter,” her mother said, too quickly, as a shadow crossed her face. Her voice still with a strange hybrid of the Jersey shore and Pennsylvania clip, hugging Julie while at the same time glancing around at the living room as if about to give one of her famous critiques. Livy was practically attached to her grandmother, clinging to her skirt like it was a security blanket.

“I am so sorry my baby,” her mother whispered, kissing the edge of her ear.

Julie fought back tears as she felt the intense warmth of her mother’s cheek pressed against her own.

7

Mel made some coffee, while Julie and the kids sat around the living room as if they had to entertain her mother. “The one thing I’ve learned about life,” her mother said with that wiser-than-thou voice. “The only thing, really, is that it’s about accepting loss.”

“We were talking about that in my coffee group,”Mel said.

“Your
coffee group?”
Julie chuckled, with a little too much condescension in her voice. “God. My God, that sounds like 1950s with white gloves and cute little casseroles. You mean the church ladies?”

Mel must’ve been working to keep a kind look on her face. Julie was impressed.

“The altar guild. My friend Elaine lost her husband to cancer three years ago. It was her faith that really pulled her through. There really is no death.”

“You’re only in that group because you have the hots for Father Joe,” Julie blurted, and then quickly apologized.

“It’s not like Episcopal priests can’t marry,” Mel said, shrugging.

“We all go to heaven,” Livy suddenly said, her small, wise voice a bit of a surprise.

“That’s right, honey,” Mel said.

“I don’t know,” Toni said. “A lot of people believe different. Death is just a problem of our vision. You know, how we see things upside down? How our eyes work? Our mind works that way, too. We go on. We

just can’t see it.”

“Not your ghost crap again,” Mel said, a bit under her breath.

“If you have your sexy Jesus, Mom can have her spooks.”

Mel shot her a look, then glanced at Livy, as if to say,
what kind of talk is that around your daughter?
“Wait just a second, sweetie,” Toni said. “They’re not spooks. And I’m only a lapsed Catholic, not a heretic. I believe in heaven.” She motioned for Livy to come sit on her lap.

Livy looked a little frightened, but Julie gave her the nod. Livy went over, and climbed aboard the Gramma Express. “Spirituality doesn’t start or stop with a church or a dogma. What is out there is out there. I’m not going to sit here and say that one group has cornered the market on the truth of existence.”

“Is daddy a spirit-chew-aliddy?”

Toni kissed her granddaughter on the top of the head. “Different people believe different things, sweetie. Some people believe we come back as newborns. Some people believe we go to heaven. Some people believe we never really leave. Some go, some stay, some come back. Like when babies are born. Maybe they’re old souls.

Who knows?” She kissed Livy on the top of her scalp. “I think you’re an old soul, sweetie.”

“Wow,” Livy said.

“I bet in your last life you were a brilliant doctor like your daddy.” Then, Toni looked over at Matt.

Matt had his camera on and it was aimed at her. “I’m on
Candid Camera
.”

“I like when you talk about this stuff,” Matt said, fiddling with the lens.

“Okay,” Toni said. “I think I was a sherpa in my last life.”

“Is that like a shepherd?” Livy asked.

“
Mom
,” Julie said, sternly. She felt a severe headache coming on.

“What? Reincarnation’s as valid as anything,” her mother said. Then, she gave her that look that Julie hadn’t seen in years—it was one of her “Take a life

lesson” looks. “You want to live a happy life, Juliet, you start thinking about what comes after. It’ll put a lot of things in place for you.”

“It’s like a nice fairy tale to tell kids,” Matt said, “but the truth is, there’s nothing after you die.” He spoke so suddenly that it was like a shock through the room. He pivoted the camera around to look at Julie. “It’s like the fairy tales about wicked stepmothers.”

Toni chuckled. “That’s a zinger, Matt. Do you ever come out from behind the camera?”

Matt put the camera down and stared at Julie and then her mother. “Talk talk talk,” he said. “That’s all anyone does. My father dies and it’s all about blah blah blah.”

He got up and stomped out of the room as if he’d been insulted.

“Teenagers,”
Livy said, as if she’d heard this from her mother.

“Shouldn’t you go to him?” Toni asked, hugging Livy. She had an expression on her face that was halfway between being aghast and ashamed. “That boy needs you.”

“He’ll be fine, Mom. Don’t butt in where you don’t know…”

“Sometimes my daughters can be so cold,” her mother said, in a whisper meant to float over Livy’s head. Then, more softly, “Children need to talk about death. About what happens afterward. About where we go.”

“Where do we go?” Livy asked.

“Upstairs, sweetie,” Toni said. “Upstairs, only when we’re alive, we don’t know where upstairs goes.”

8

Julie couldn’t take her mother anymore, and left the room. As she went up the stairs, to her bedroom, she heard Mel say something about sleep and shock and Julie almost felt like going back down there and just telling them all to get out of her house and leave her and her kids alone, and wondered how much she could get away with—how cruel and mean she could get and still be forgiven later—how much slack did you get when your husband was murdered out in the woods by a psychopath?

She lay down on her bed, covering her head with the pillow, and submerged into sleep.

9

In a dream, his head was between her legs, and his tongue circled lazily, one circle wetly moved into another, opening her, with a kind of pressure of pleasure that disturbed her even while her body gave in to it. Hut whispered, his voice soft and vulnerable, like a little boy who has just discovered a new forbidden hideout, “Ah, yes. I love it. I love the taste. I love the smell. I want to be inside you. I want to dive into it. You’re the lake, and I want to swim through you.”

Her pelvis began to buck involuntarily, and she hated herself for the feeling she was having, which was not pleasure, but some kind of mechanical movement as if she had no control over her body and it had no connection to her mind, but was a machine that just moved back and forth and up and down when someone put coins in—knowing that Hut was gone, knowing that this was not really him, knowing she was in a dirty, filthy dream where nasty words were said that she’d never uttered in real life nor had he, and shivery forbidden fantasies could exist, and the reality of the world, of death, was beyond this.

10

Sometime in the night, someone touched the edge of her cheek. Julie opened her eyes, feeling nearly out of breath from a terrible dream that she couldn’t quite remember seconds after waking up.

In the bedroom, a small shadow before her. “Mommy?”

“Oh baby,” Julie said. She scooted further into the bed, allowing her daughter to climb up onto it. The heat of her daughter’s body pressed against hers was comforting.

“I have an idea. Let’s ask God to get Daddy back.” She kissed Livy on her forehead.

“I mean it,” Livy said, her voice wispy and full of

wonder at her own idea. “Maybe nobody’s ever tried, Mommy. We just ask. Maybe God feels bad for us and he’ll send Daddy back. I can ask in my brain radio. I can.”

“Oh, baby, honey, shhh,” Julie whispered. “I love you so much.”

“God can do anything. Matt said in the Bible, God sent back a guy named Lazzus.”

“Lazarus, sweetie. But it was different. That was a miracle.”

“Nobody ever asked for their daddy back. Maybe,” Livy said, getting louder, until finally she was yelling, “Maybe if someone did, it would happen. God can do it!” “I’m sorry.” Julie couldn’t control her tears.

“I just want God to send him back,” Livy said, too loud. “I want my daddy back. God can do it.”

11

Julie dreamed of:

The day she met Hut. On the subway. He, on his way to his residency, she, with a day off, thinking about going to buy an air conditioner for her steamy apartment. The train was packed, and he gave up his seat to her. She could not stop looking at him. He was handsome in ways she’d never seen—not a pretty man at all, nor one that had a natural beauty to his face. He just had what seemed to be a chalk outline around him, for her, an aura of something that made her want to know him. He had glanced at her a few times on the train, and then had leaned over and said, “You’d think the carnival was in town,” which made her smile, as she glanced around at others on the train.

When they’d come up into a muggy afternoon, he said to her, “You know, you look like someone I’d want to get to know.”

She had laughed. “That’s the worst pick-up line I’ve ever heard.”

“It can’t be,” he said. “Surely it’s only in the top ten of the worst. It can’t be the worst of all.”

From there, they’d made a casual date—to meet at the Empire State Building like Sleepless in Seattle
. “That way, if I scare you, you can have the safety of all those people, plus you can throw me off the roof if you decide I’m the wrong one. You can even give me a fake name if you want so I can’t stalk you later. I’ll buy the hot dogs.”

“I’ll bring a parachute,” she’d told him.

And then, she dreamed of:

The face of the dead man in the morgue. It had not been Hut, even though it had been him. What was Hut had fled, and left the empty husk of flesh behind.

The face of the dead man with closed eyes.

In her dream, his eyes opened.

1

After a week, Julie felt herself rise, a waking sleeper, from some dark place. She spent less time in bed. She began enjoying the taste of food again. Just a little. Less time avoiding phone calls from the detective. Less time avoiding her mother and sister and even her children. Livy started having bad dreams, but weirdly Matt was handling himself okay, and her therapist, Eleanor Swanson, said it was completely normal, everything that was going on. Normal, normal, normal.

Within a few days, her mother went back to Pennsylvania, and Mel came and went, and it wasn’t normal yet, and she felt as if she were hiding something, keeping a secret about how she wanted to scream and cry and yell and break things and kick walls in.

But she let some autopilot within her switch on, and focused on Matt and Livy, helping them navigate the slender canals of grief.

2

“Mommy!” Livy cried out from the backyard.

Some instinct kicked in, and Julie thought of the trowel she had left in the flowerbed, and all she could think of was that her baby was hurt.

“Mommy hurry!” Livy screeched.

Julie nearly flew out the kitchen door, out to the patio.

Livy stood next to the low weeping willow tree at the edge of the lawn.

“Honey? You okay?”

Livy had a glow to her face—as if she’d been sunburned, almost. She had her hands to her ears. “It’s Daddy!” she shouted. “It’s him!”

Julie went to her and squatted down in front of her so they were eye-level with each other.

“He’s on my brain radio,” Livy grinned. “He’s telling me he’s okay.”

“Oh, baby,” Julie said, and felt herself get all weepy as she lifted Livy up. Livy wrapped her legs around her mother’s waist. “He’s in heaven. He’s with God now.”

“No he’s not,” Livy said. Then, whispering in her mother’s ear as if it were a big secret that nobody was supposed to hear. “Gramma was wrong. He didn’t go upstairs. He’s with us. Right now.”

3

On the phone:

“Eleanor. It’s Julie. I think maybe I’d like to ask you to talk with Livy.”

4

Eleanor made an exception that afternoon. Livy clutched her mother’s hand as they stepped into the waiting room. Julie went to the assistant, a young man named Vincent who handled three of the psychologists in the suite of offices. Then, Eleanor came out, and gave Livy a warm smile. “It’s good to finally meet you,” she said. “I know your mom and brother Matt well. I’ve heard so much about you for so long, I feel we’re practically neighbors.”

Then, Eleanor asked Julie to stay in the waiting area so that she and Livy could talk for a bit. Livy looked back at her, eyes wide, mouth a small tight o, and for a second, Julie felt as if she were giving her daughter away to a stranger.

5

Afterward, Livy came out, a grin on her face, and tapped her mother on the knee.

“How’d it go?” Julie asked, setting a magazine down on the chair next to hers.

Livy looked up at her, and for just a moment Julie felt a chill as if her daughter contained some unknown well of anger and fury, and it was all in that glance.

“She’s a nice lady,” Livy said.

When Julie called to ask about Livy, Eleanor told her, “She thinks she sees her father. She told me that he started coming through her dreams, but that one night, she saw him standing over her in her bedroom and he told her he’d come for her. Now, how are
you
doing?”

“Me? Okay.”

“No,” Eleanor said. “Not okay. Livy told me that you aren’t talking to her as much. She said that you let things pile up.”

“Well, it’s been a little soon. It’s not like I’m completely recovered.”

“Julie, this is not something to take lightly. You are experiencing post-traumatic stress. Your husband was violently killed. It’s a major shock, to all of you. You can’t mask it. I want you to expect that your mind will be spinning around. I want you to expect that you’re going to have nights when you’re afraid of the dark. All of you will. I want you to come see me as often as you want. And I suggest that you try and get Matt in for sessions, too.”