There’s a pretty good Salvadoran pupusa restaurant around the corner and a well-stocked convenience store down the block, close enough to walk. It sells decent fresh fruit and ramen I can make in the coffeepot in my room. The owner liked me from the start. He could tell that I wasn’t going to hate him for being Muslim, which he isn’t. From the wall behind the counter, the Hindu elephant god blesses the lottery tickets.
My room has a refrigerator; there’s an ice machine in the hall. I buy bottles of premium mezcal at the liquor store and mango nectar at the health food store. Every night I make a cocktail with mezcal and mango juice. I learned the recipe from Dennis Nylon. It was his drink of choice.
I bought one cocktail glass at the mall. I like to drink my cocktail and read. I order books on my iPad. I’d never read Beckett before. He’s describing how it feels to be me at this moment in time.
I’m surprised by how little I miss my job. It was such a part of my life. I don’t miss the nasty surprises that will be my fault unless I figure out how to fix them. I don’t miss Dennis’s drug binges, or Blanche’s cyclonic rages. I don’t even miss the perks, the buzz. What does it mean that I’m happier in a Hospitality Suites motel in Danbury than in Milan or Paris representing Dennis Nylon Inc.?
The motel TV works well enough, though they don’t have the premium stations. There are some shows I like. Cooking contests. People looking for houses on beaches and building tiny rolling homes in which the couple will split up or kill each other. I used to watch those house-hunting shows with Sean. It’s more fun watching them alone. I can just enjoy them and skip the boring conversations about how those people are starting new lives, so why can’t we? What a joke! Now I’m supposed to be dead—and Sean has started his new life without me.
Will he get to keep the money if I stay an accidental death? A dead woman can’t take care of Nicky, so something will have to be done.
The local news is mostly about traffic accidents and domestic and gang-related violence in Newburgh, Hartford, and further into New England depending on how many people got shot. Many reporters are black or Hispanic. The women have shiny salon-curled hair. Once a day I go online and read Stephanie’s blog about living with Nicky and Miles and Sean. The happy, healthy blended Brady Bunch. That alone is infuriating. That I want to know what she writes. That I care.
When we were “friends,” I only read it because she insisted.
Two nights after I phoned Stephanie just to scare her and let her know I was there, this post went up on her blog:
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Stephanie's Blog
The Afterlife
Hi, moms!
Some of you are going to think that I have finally lost it completely. You’ll think that the sad, life-changing events of the last months have driven Stephanie out of her mind.
All I can say is I’m still here. Despite everything, I’m still me. Stephanie. Miles’s mom.
Today I want to write about something that no one discusses, except in Bible class or church. When a person says “thank heaven” or “go to hell,” they’re not thinking of heaven or hell as places where we might wind up. The subject doesn’t arise at drinks or dinner parties or over coffee.
The afterlife.
Even if we never go near a church or a synagogue or a mosque, most of us have noticed how having a child can make a person more spiritual. Miles has told me that, after we die, we all get together on a big happy cloud. That’s a nice way to see it. But grown-ups hardly ever ask, Where do you think our loved ones go? It’s a more untouchable subject than sex or even money.
Are the dead near us? Can they hear us? Will they answer our prayers? Do they visit our dreams? I’ve been thinking about these questions a lot, wondering where Emily is now. I’ve been asking myself what I would say to her if I thought she could hear me.
So with this blog I’d like to get a little experimental, a little . . . further out than usual.
I’m going to write this as if I could communicate with my friend who has passed. As if she could read this. I hope that writing it will be healing for me. And I urge you moms out there to write your own letter to someone who has passed and you still want to talk to.
So here goes:
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Stephanie's Blog
The Afterlife (Part Two)
Dear Emily, Wherever You Are
Dear Emily, I don’t know how to begin. What do people say in emails these days? Hope this finds you well!
I hope this finds you at peace.
I’m sure that, if you could read this, the first thing you would want to know is how Nicky is. He’s thriving. Of course he misses his mom. We all miss you more than I can ever say. He knows that you’ll always be his mom. That no one will ever replace you. But he no longer cries every night, like he used to. I know you wouldn’t want that.
Would you?
Sometimes I hope the dead are with us, near us, that Davis and Chris and you—and my parents—are over my shoulder, watching out for me, helping and advising me, even if I don’t know it. At other times I hope they’re spared the pain of seeing life go on without them.
I know it would be painful for you, dear Emily, to see me cooking in your kitchen. But I want you to know that I am preparing the most delicious, nutritious food for your son. I can never take your place. All I can do is love the people you used to love and try to make their lives better.
Which is what I know you would want, if you loved them.
Rest in peace, my dear best friend.
Your friend forever, Stephanie
What do you think, moms? Write in with letters of your own or with your comments and concerns. And thank you, as always, for your love and support.
Love,
Stephanie
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Emily
That blackmailing, lying bitch. I slammed down my laptop so hard I was afraid I broke it. I was relieved when I flipped it back up and my background—the selfie Nicky took of himself staring into my computer—came back on.
That mindless slut. She knows I’m not dead. She knows I’m watching her. And not from heaven. Even she isn’t stupid enough to believe she’s blogging to the dead. Maybe she’s convinced herself that she imagined my phone call. Maybe she’s tried to put it out of her mind. But she can’t. She knows.
She can’t tell that to her blogosphere moms. She’s talking to me, in case I happen to be reading this. That Stephanie assumes I’m reading her blog is maddening, though not half as maddening as her moving in with my husband and son.
She got used to thinking I was dead. She got to like the idea. So much for friendship. For grief. So I’d called to let her know I’m not dead.
My number comes up as out of area. There’s no way for her to reach me, except through her blog. She thinks everybody reads her blog. I alone would have a good reason. She probably wishes I were dead. Someone who wants me dead is tucking my son into bed every night and sleeping with my husband.
And she has the nerve to write that this is what I would want? Maybe she is crazy, which means a crazy woman is raising my son.
It pains me to admit that Stephanie was right about how you can never really know anyone. If Stephanie wants to play cat and mouse . . . she can be the mouse. I’ll be the cat. That cat is patient. The mouse is afraid. The mouse has reason to be afraid.
Because the cat always wins. The cat is the one who enjoys it.
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Stephanie
I no longer know what’s real. For a while I managed to convince myself that I’d hallucinated the phone call from Emily. It was like when you have a worrisome pain and the pain goes away. First you try to forget about it. Then you do forget it.
I always knew I would be punished for my affair with Chris and for deceiving my husband and having my half brother’s child. I should never have told Emily who Miles’s father is. No one could be trusted with that information. I had the foolish idea that telling someone would make my punishment lighter. I confessed to the wrong person. Now the punishment comes.
If she’s alive, someone knows what I’ve done. Someone who wants to harm me.