Miss Me When I'm Gone

chapter 9



“In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad)”

This is one of my favorite of Dolly’s oldies, but I never wrote about it in Tammyland—perhaps because it didn’t speak to my feelings about divorce at all. It speaks to something deeper—to memories I’ve been hesitant to revisit at any great length. Till recently, that is.

The lyrics are about the struggles of growing up poor in a rural environment—something I won’t pretend to relate—but the song generally reflects a familiar ambivalence many of us have toward our past. Dolly treasures deeply the memories of her youth, but recognizes, in the same breath, how painful those times were.

In general, I feel this way about my childhood. Certainly I didn’t endure the sort of difficulties Dolly and her family did. Nonetheless, as almost every childhood is hard and mysterious in its own way, I think we can all point to memorable Good Old Days When Times Were Bad—beautiful and terrible times that seem so distant now that they feel like legend in your head.

For me those days are the last couple of weekends with my real mother. With Shelly, that is. I go over and over them and have wondered for years what exactly it is I want out of them.

It goes without saying that I’d pay any amount of money or make any hypothetical sacrifice to have her back again, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. What we’re talking about is those days, and how they feel in my head, and what it would be like to relive them again. Because I remember Shelly giggling with her boyfriend Frank on the way home from Carvel. He was imitating someone they both used to work with, making him sound like an insufferable nerd. And I remember the easiness of her laugh, and thinking that the person must’ve really deserved the teasing, because Shelly wasn’t mean like that.

I remember Shelly letting me pick the TV show that night—Mr. Belvedere. I don’t remember the plot of the show but I remember that we watched it, and that Frank asked a few of his usual probing media-analysis questions (“So, this fat English guy lives with this American family and makes a bunch of jokes at their expense?”) during the commercials, while he and my mother each nursed a beer.

And so far these memories are, I suppose, more about Frank. But then my mother put me to bed, and Frank stayed in front of the TV. During those last few weekends, she’d put me to bed like I was a little kid—like Linda used to when I was still really small. She’d watch me brush my teeth and then sit on the bed and listen while I read to her from the Amelia Bedelia books Linda had sent for me to keep at Shelly’s place. I’d lie under the beautiful pink bedspread she’d bought for me at Kmart—it looked just like a big bridesmaid dress—and I wouldn’t tell Shelly that I was a little too old to be put to bed anymore. I loved her smell—Prell shampoo and beer and a little bit of something else I’m pretty sure I’d recognize immediately if I ever got to smell it again.

I wondered what it would be like to be there with her every night. I wondered if I lived with her, if I’d ever tell her I was too old to be put to bed, or just let her do it. Let her till I was very old—till I was a teenager, even. Beautiful Shelly could put me to bed as long as she wanted. Young, beautiful Shelly who didn’t seem any older than that girl Kelly my mom (Linda) had sit for me on the rare occasions when she and Dad went for a movie.

And before Shelly got up and turned out the light, did I really look at her? If I could do it again, what would I look for in her face, in her eyes?

And if I had it to go back to, what would I say to her?

Probably this: “Shelly, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

I suppose the answer to this and any other question is irrelevant now, since it wouldn’t change anything.

So maybe only this: “Shelly, say one more thing to me. Just one more thing—anything—before you turn out the light. Just one more thing, between you and me.”

So Gretchen had reverted back to writing about Dolly Parton rather than sticking to the male artists. I wondered if she found herself doing that often, and how she planned to justify it in the final draft.

In all of the years I knew Gretchen, she never said as much about Shelly as she’d written here in this piece. And for some reason, I’d been under the impression that Shelly had died when Gretchen was four or five—that she didn’t talk about her because she didn’t really remember her. If Gretchen was old enough to read before Shelly died—old enough to think she was too old to be put to bed, old enough to remember later that she’d watched Mr. Belvedere—she had to be a couple of years older than that.

“How’re you feeling, Jamie?” my boss, Patty, asked me when she caught me staring into space at my desk.

She said it with a hint of irritation. I could tell she’d grown tired of having to ask me this weeks ago, when I’d returned from my second hospital stay for dehydration.

“Great!” I said, returning my gaze to my computer. Exuberance and positivity always seemed to throw Patty, so I’d taught myself to feign them when necessary.

Patty anchored her thick pink hands on my desk and leaned into my personal space. I think she was checking to see if I had Facebook or a game of solitaire on my screen.

“Um. Have you got Warren’s article on the sewer bill?”

I could smell her Altoid breath. I wondered if she’d popped one in her office just for the occasion of coming out here and harassing me. Flattering, in a way.

“Yeah,” I said, glancing at the clock. It was just before nine. “I’ve just got to shave another few lines off it, and I’ll be done.”

“Good.” Patty leaned away from me again, folding her arms and giving me a single nod. “Because Erin just filed a story about that fire on Chestnut, and I need that next. I’m putting it on page one, where the budget story was going to be.”

“Alrighty,” I chirped. I could feel a couple of the reporters’ sympathetic eyes on me, which I tried to ignore.

I finished my work early, but stayed late searching for articles on Gretchen on LexisNexis. I found some I hadn’t read before, but none of them said anything new. The police apparently weren’t releasing many details.



On the way home, I thought about a long-ago conversation Gretchen and I had had in college—the conversation to which Gretchen had referred in her last e-mail to me.

Gretchen had noticed that I seemed to get more mail than anyone else, and that I was always on the computer e-mailing this friend or that. In time she figured out that these weren’t all high school friends—there was Penny from volleyball camp when I was thirteen, and Tara, who was in my homeroom all the way through junior high, but went to private school after that.

It started when I was a kid, I explained to Gretchen, when I became obsessed with the idea of having pen pals. And when I was a little older, I was just an obsessive keep-in-toucher.

I keep in touch with borderline friends and vague acquaintances as much as is possible without it being considered stalking. Often I don’t particularly like the people I’m in touch with. It just comforts me to know they’re still out there, still accessible.

Gretchen had asked if I was one of those old-fashioned letter-writing types. And I said no, it wasn’t that. And it wasn’t even friendliness either, although thankfully that’s how most people perceived it. It was perhaps simply that I can’t stand good-byes. That at the moment of good-bye—especially with someone who you know you’ll probably never see again unless you come up with some excuse to do so—I always come up with the excuse. Hey, why don’t you give me your e-mail address, and I’ll send you the title of that book I was telling you about.

This is how I collect people. Not friends, exactly. Maybe just acquaintances. Maybe just names. Maybe even just avoidances of good-byes. It can be embarrassing, actually—I’ve known myself to start tearing up during partings in which I can’t think of an excuse to be in touch quick enough.

It is a little weird, I have to say, Gretchen admitted. Because you don’t seem like a very sentimental person.

What makes you think I’m not sentimental? I asked, wondering if she meant that I was cold and unkind.

Well. Okay. Maybe just not clingy at all, how about that? You’re not clingy.

But I’m telling you that secretly I am.

But not with guys, ever, is what I was thinking of, said Gretchen, after some thought.

And she was right. Always, with guys, I’d been just the opposite. I was never interested in “staying friends” with boyfriends after a breakup. At the time of this conversation, I’d been dating someone for a couple of months and still didn’t know his phone number. I always relied on him to call me. This had impressed Gretchen.

That’s a totally different emotional category, I explained. It’s not about romance. Get that way about guys and you’re doomed.

Gretchen had nodded. Yes. I imagine you are. But how do you keep from getting that way?

I didn’t wonder at the time—but wondered now—if she was really asking me. She didn’t jump in and out of casual physical relationships like I did, but was equally casual about romance in her own way. When someone was interested, she took so long to decide if the feeling was mutual that the opportunity usually dissolved—often, it seemed, to her relief. It wasn’t until after college that she and Jeremy really got serious. This was part of the reason it had shocked me so when she and Jeremy had divorced. She’d spent so long deciding about him—what, after all that, would make you change your mind?

I believe this blasé attitude about romance helped connect us as friends. There seemed to be a silent understanding between us that guys and relationships were not to be discussed for great lengths of time, or with too much emotional investment. We were smart, well-rounded young women who had a number of other things to talk about. A guy was rarely any more of a crisis than a cash-flow problem or a midterm exam. I recall letting my room phone ring while we were talking, saying, “Oh, it’s just Will,” or (with authenticating eye roll), “Probably just Jason—I’ll let the machine get it.” The apathy felt genuine even though I’d often call said male back within thirty seconds of Gretchen’s leaving my dorm room.

Now I wasn’t sure what part of that conversation Gretchen had been thinking of when she wrote to me. The part about my neurotic pen-pal habit? The part about men being in a separate category? Or some other facet of the conversation I’d long since forgotten?

Remember how smart we thought we were? she’d asked in that final e-mail. What, exactly, had she meant by that?



When I got home, Sam was still up—in bed, but propped up reading a Neil Gaiman book.

“What’d you have for supper?” I asked.

“Roast beef sandwich,” he said. “And a salad.”

“Really? You made yourself a salad?”

Sam shrugged. “I’m trying to be more responsible. Preparing for fatherhood, you know.”

“Yes.” I picked my pajamas up off the top of the hamper and began to change. “Every child deserves a dad who eats lettuce.”

“I’m excited for when we’ll get to have supper together again.”

“Yeah. That’ll be nice. While it lasts.”

“While it lasts?” Sam repeated.

I meant that I’d be going back to the night shift after my maternity leave was over—and Sam knew it. But he was still holding out on the possibility that I’d quit my job and stay home with the baby for a while longer—six months, a year, maybe more.

“Let’s not have this discussion again right now,” I said. “I’m tired.”

“The cost of day care just about breaks even with—”

“I know, I know. You’ve told me about twenty times. I don’t want to talk about it tonight. We have a few months to talk about it.”

“Not so many months now,” Sam pointed out.

I ignored this comment, true as it was. As much as I disliked my job, I wanted to keep it. I needed to feel like I’d be keeping at least one foot in the real world after the baby was born. I feared for my mental health otherwise.

“If it’s so soon,” I said, pulling What to Expect the First Year off my bedside table and tossing it at him, “how come you haven’t even cracked this yet?”

“Have you?” Sam asked.

“I read a couple of chapters, but didn’t want to get too ahead of you.”

“Oh,” Sam said, gingerly putting down his own book and picking up the tome.

I slipped into bed and pulled Tammyland out from under my pillow. My signed copy. I stroked its smooth cover, sniffed the pages. I love the smell of paperbacks. So, apparently, did the baby, who gave a couple of exuberant kicks. Good sign, I thought.

I could feel Sam’s eyes on me as I opened Tammyland. I tried to ignore them until I saw him, out of the corner of my eye, begin thumbing through the parenting book.