Signs of Life (20 page)

I’ve hit a snag. I feel more depressed than I have in the last two months. It is as if someone has put a light behind all of the pictures in the house with Josh in them. They are illuminated. I can’t make it down the hallway without getting choked up. I
miss him more today than I did during the holidays. I am regressing. Fuck.

Ashley stops by tonight for a little while after Kai goes to bed. We talk about everything. We talk about
The Biggest Loser
and how much we love the pink team. We talk about sperm banks (for her, not me) and being single moms. We talk about being single for the rest of our lives, about how we’ll just live for our kids and be happy. We talk about my parents, Deedee, Josh, Chris, Drew, Margaret and Ray, Kai, me, and her. She says that she’s always so impressed with my dad, with how kind and considerate he is. He always knows what to do and how to help. She says she still feels guilty and regretful about her relationship with Josh. We both cry. We cry for Josh, Margaret and Ray, and we cry for the rest of us who have to deal with all of it.

After Ashley leaves I think about how I have nothing negative to say about her visit. I am not filing a complaint. I am really happy she is in my life. I am fortunate she is here to talk to me, to entertain me, to help me, to love me.

Before I go to bed, I put on my headphones to listen to Dr. Joy Browne as I pick up around the house. Her opening anecdote is about how it is important to be thankful, even when times are bad, because if anything is certain, it is that time passes and things change. She says that sometimes they go from bad to worse and sometimes they go from bad back to good. But at any point, we should be thankful. We should be thankful that we had good times when they were here and we can be thankful that they will come again. Despite my state of regression, Dr. Joy’s words are a tremendous comfort to me. I’m not mad or angry at her wisdom, which has been my usual reaction when someone tries to reassure me that it’s going to be okay. Here it goes again, this bizarre side effect of grief; I am completely
manic-depressive. I go from the darkest place in the world to being inspired by a radio psychologist. But she is right. I need to be more thankful even when I hit a bad patch.

My quiet house, for example: I can honestly say that I am getting used to the peace and quiet. I even savor it a little. I like spending the evenings with Ira Glass and Dr. Joy Browne. If I do watch TV, I just quietly sit and rock Kai and watch
Dog Whisperer
. I have become so accustomed to these people that I can picture them sitting in my living room.

I feel like I know Ira Glass. I feel like after dinner, it’s just me, Ira Glass, Dr. Joy Browne, and Cesar Millan, just sitting around and chatting. I know what all of them would say. Ira would do a lot of listening, make an occasional witty comment, and ask poignant questions.

“I know Ashley drives you crazy,” he would say in his distinct voice, “but have you ever thought about what your life would be like
without
her?” His tone isn’t abrasive or judgmental; it’s just a question. Dr. Joy Browne would do the most talking. She would have strong opinions and try to get me to not be so hard on people. She would force me to see things from other people’s points of view, which would initially frustrate me. “I mean, Natalie,” she would say, in her direct, somewhat harsh tone, “you really just need to think about how Deedee feels.” I would sit and listen and sigh. “You need to start being more polite on the phone. Tell her a nice story about Kai when she calls. I mean, you don’t think it’s killing her to be away from her grandson? I’ve got news for you, Cookie, she’s not calling to hear about you, she’s calling to hear about
him
. So get over yourself and fill her in a little bit more.” Cesar would describe things in a straightforward, honest fashion, just as he does on his show. He would never accuse me of being too aggressive or short with people, but he also would never blame outsiders for their behavior.
“Natalie, you have to have rules, boundaries and limitations. Humans are a lot like animals: they will follow rules, but you have to give them rules to follow.” The whole time Cesar talks, he would be on his knees playing with Louise and Bug with his perfect posture. I would vent to Cesar about how my dad is always trying to give me advice on how to get through to the dogs. Cesar would add his insight. “You can’t get frustrated when your dad talks about the dogs all the time, because your dad doesn’t know that talking about the dogs is against the rules, because you haven’t
set
the rules.” In his calm, assertive voice he would give me some direction. “Next time you talk to your dad just say, ‘Dad, the rule is no talking about the dogs until
I
bring it up.’ Then, he will know how to behave because you have drawn the line for him.”

Sometimes we don’t talk about me, sometimes we talk about other things like the latest political news or the weather or who Ira has interviewed lately. It’s quite a panel when you think about it. Three people who know how to ask questions and solve problems. Every now and then Ira comes over with his friend David Sedaris, who wanders in and out of conversations and picks up on strange details that no one else has noticed. “Kai,” he would say in his dry voice as he looks at Kai’s big blue eyes, “do you think it’s frustrating when people shake things in your face all the time?”

“That’s how babies
develop
,” Dr. Joy Browne would snap back. “Research proves their eyesight improves if they look at contrasting colors.”

“I’m not arguing the
research
,” he would say. “I’m just saying it certainly would frustrate me.”

This is what I picture. I know if my parents knew my evenings were filled with podcasts and odd journeys of my imagination, they probably wouldn’t leave me by myself so often. But
I’m okay with it. This is good for now. Maybe someday I’ll have the desire to share my space with someone again, but certainly not now or anytime soon. Kai and I are quite content being all alone. It’s all a part of this strange metamorphosis.

•  •  •

The dogs are getting worse. They are bad on the walk, and then when we come back to the house, they are horrible. Louise whines all afternoon. Bug barks incessantly in the backyard. Every time I yell at Louise, Bug gets scared and runs to her crate, but it doesn’t faze Louise. In the middle of feeding Kai, Louise starts barking in an incredibly loud alarming bark at a squirrel out the front window. I cannot get them to calm down. I am losing it. I can’t do this.

In the middle of all of this, my mom comes over. She can tell I am frustrated. She offers to take the dogs for the night and bring them back in the morning.

While she is over, I take a shower and have a curl-up-in-fetal-position-on-the-shower-floor moment. As the water steams around me, I stare at the handles. The hot and cold are completely in line with each other and the shower handle is sticking straight up. I feel like saying a prayer, but I am too angry for a prayer. I have been praying a lot lately, although I still am not quite sure about God or prayers. When I pray at night, I don’t fold my hands or even close my eyes. I don’t even address anyone, because I am never quite sure to whom I am talking or if anyone is even listening at all. But everyone is praying for me, so the least I could do is pray for other people.

So there I am sitting in the shower, staring at the handles, but instead of bowing my head (which I never do anyway), I just start talking to the handles. They look like little messengers.
The middle handle, pointing straight up, a microphone to the heavens.

“This is not a request,” I start off saying. “This isn’t a question or a favor. This is a statement. I need someone to take those dogs. I can no longer provide them with a good home. It’s hurting me, it’s hurting them, and anything that hurts me hurts Kai.”

I pause for a moment, as if the bathtub handles are conferencing about my request. I look up at them again.

“You know, I’ve never said this, but I think I deserve this one. I think I’ve had a hard enough time. I think you can do this for me.” I pause and then make serious eye contact with the middle shower handle. “You will do this for me.” I get out of the shower and call Jason the dog trainer. Over a voice mail, I tell him I need some help.

That night, I have a dream. In my dream I am sitting up in bed feeding Kai. It was the same pose I had held an hour earlier with Kai before I fell asleep. It was the same scene, but in the dream I am looking at our reflection, Kai and myself, in the opposing window. When I am awake rocking Kai in my bedroom, sometimes I look at my reflection in my window. I always look a little ghostly. I sometimes think that if I look hard enough, I can see Josh’s face, just looking at me through the window.

In the dream I can see my reflection in the window from my bed while I hold Kai. And then, just as I had pictured it in real life, I see the image of Josh in the window sort of come out from behind me. In the dream, all I can see is the reflection. I have no sense to look next to me to see if he is there. He appears and he doesn’t float like a ghost. The picture of him is not incredibly clear. For a brief moment, he appears. He doesn’t say anything, he just does this one swift movement. He takes his right arm and raises it above his head and sort of flexes it, his hand is balled in a fist. I know exactly what this movement means.
Anyone who knew Josh, if they could see it, they would know what it meant. It was the same motion he made when Pavel Datsyuk scored a goal for the Detroit Red Wings or when he watched the Glasgow Rangers or Manchester United. I can see him doing it right now. It’s his gesture for cheering someone on. I know what he is saying, but doing this motion, this one sweep with his arm, is more effective than talking to me. This is all he has to do, and I know what he means.

I wake up. You’d think I would wake up out of breath, amazed, unable to fall back asleep. But I don’t. At first I hardly remember what happened. Once I realize the dream, I just feel calm and confident. I check on Kai, his sleeping angel face, and I fall back asleep.

The next day Jason calls me back. We have a long talk. He says that he will do anything to help me, it is the least he could do. He doesn’t think it will be hard to find a new home for the dogs, especially somewhere in a more rural area. He says he’ll be downstate next week and can pick them up then.

I don’t think Josh is running around answering my prayers. Although, if he could, if there was any way he could intervene with my life, he would. Maybe he did. But I am still too skeptical to admit that Josh heard me and helped me.

All I know is that yesterday I came close to losing my mind. I know that a lot of women with children say this, but I mean it. I came close (I’m still close) to going crazy. Right at the moment where I wanted to give up, to call my parents and say, “Come take care of me and my son because I can’t,” just when I thought no one could help me with my dogs, I had this dream. It doesn’t matter if Josh actually tried to send me a message or if my own subconscious saved me. All I can see is his face and his arm and his closed fist. He’s not sad or mad or angry. He’s just looking at me and rooting for me like I’m about to win the
Stanley Cup. Like he’s proud of me. He’s proud to wear my jersey, even at my worst moment. He’s elbowing the guy next to him. “That’s my wife,” he says. I’m his wife and he knows I can do this.

In the “King’s Cross” chapter in
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
, after Harry has his long conversation with Albus Dumbledore, Harry looks at Dumbledore’s twinkling blue eyes and says, “Tell me one last thing. Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?” Dumbledore says, “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

I feel like I read that chapter six months ago to prepare me for the dream I had last night. I can’t quite say if Josh and J. K. Rowling and Albus Dumbledore and the handles on my shower and me are all spiritually connected. I do know that this morning I woke up and I did not feel the need to sit on the floor of the shower again.

A week later Jason comes over and picks up the dogs. Part of me feels hugely disappointed in myself. They have to leave because I am making them, and I am making them leave because I couldn’t pull it together. Growing up, if there was one thing my dad never allowed us to do, it was back out of a commitment. Joining the softball team, playing the flute, writing for the yearbook staff. I vividly remember wanting to quit all of these things and being told I couldn’t. I had to stick with it until the end. But here I am quitting. I am giving up. I am ashamed of this. This goes against how I was raised to resolve problems. But even with that sense of shame, I am hugely relieved in their departure. I hate to say that even more. I am ashamed that I gave up on something and I am more ashamed that giving up is going to make my life easier. But I can’t put this back together the way it was. I can’t make this work.

•  •  •

While out shoveling the driveway I slip on some ice. For a second, I think I am going to fall, but then I catch myself. How horrible, I think, if I fell and hit my head and died, just like Josh. Then my mind starts to wander about what would happen when I got to heaven.

Shortly after Josh died, I had a lot of moments in which I didn’t want to be alive. I was never suicidal, and it wasn’t even that I wanted to leave my family or friends, but I just wanted so badly to be with Josh. I even thought about it in my head as a sense of sympathy I had developed for Romeo and Juliet. I was going to write about how I felt for them. It’s not that I wanted to die, but I just suddenly knew where they were coming from. That’s how badly they wanted to be together.

But as I catch myself from falling, I realize that I feel totally different from the days of sympathy for Romeo and Juliet. It is because of Kai. I don’t want to die solely because I cannot leave my son. The thought of having to be without my son is more immense and powerful than I ever imagined.

If I hit my head today, I would get to the gates of heaven and go insane. I would trash the place in a screaming fury. I would throw chairs through glass doors. I would knock the clipboard out of the receptionist’s hand. I would take every pile of papers and splatter them across the room. “I don’t belong here, you fucking assholes!” I would yell as I kicked over desks and smashed harps. I would destroy the place. Not out of anger, but out of pure desperation to get back to my son. “You screwed up again!
I DON’T BELONG HERE!
” I would scream. “What kind of
fucking morons
do you have running this place!
SEND ME HOME!
” I would look crazy. My hair would be everywhere. I would be doused in sweat. Then they would bring Josh out and they
would say, “But he’s here. Didn’t you say you wanted to be with him? Didn’t you say you wanted to be where he was?” I would look Josh straight in the face, I mean a real solid stare, and without hesitation I would say, “No. I don’t want to be here.” The words would sit in the empty space like a heavy load, like a punch in the face. Josh would just stare back, not knowing how to respond. “Now send me home.” They would look at each other, and they would check their files and ask me again, “Now, ma’am, you’re sure. You’re sure you don’t want to be with him. You can. He’s right here. You can stay. We’d like you to stay.” And the whole time they were talking, Josh and I would be staring at each other. But he would hardly recognize me. My chest would be heaving from the destructive rage. I would be taller than he had remembered. I would look more confident, stronger than when he had left me. I would be looking at him with angry eyes. He would be looking at me, trying to figure out what was going on. “Yes, I am sure,” I would say slowly, so everyone knew I was certain. “I do not want to stay here with him. Send me back to my son.” They would shrug at each other. “Okay, you heard the lady. You’re free to go.” Without another word, I would turn and march out. On my way out I would shove little old St. Peter right in the chest, a one-handed, fuck-you-asshole shove. And Josh would stand there, completely bewildered. The guys working in the office would say, “Sorry, man, we didn’t mean to set you up to hurt your feelings.” Josh would stare off to where I had just stood, and finally it would hit him. “No,” he would say, “that’s why I married her.”