Eden nods. “When do you think we can all talk about it?”
I wish I knew. “Soon, honey. Really soon. I promise. Now, how about that sandwich?”
She nods and lets me lead her out of the room. Shadow follows at our heels. When we reach the top of the stairs, she glances at the closed door of the master bedroom.
“Mom said the f-word,” she whispers, her mouth turned up in a ten-year-old grin. “Twice.”
I allow myself to grin back at her. “I know, right?”
“She owes the curse jar, like, ten dollars.” I nod in agreement, then watch as her grin morphs into a frown. “I’m not gonna make her pay, Dad.”
I nod. “I think that’s probably for the best, at least right now.”
Eden starts down the stairs, her mood suddenly lifted, her hand still in mine. “Can we have a show dinner?” she asks. I can think of twenty reasons why we shouldn’t. But I don’t give voice to a single one.
An hour later, after enduring an episode of Dancing with the Stars, which Eden claims is Aunt Ruth’s favorite show, my daughter gets up from the couch and kisses me on the forehead.
“The crease is better,” she says. “Not much, but a little. I’m gonna go up and read for a while, okay, Dad?”
“Okay, my girl. I’ll come up and check on you soon.”
She nods and goes to the stairs. Once she’s out of sight, I reach up and touch the skin between my eyebrows. I feel the deep furrow Eden referred to and massage it for a moment. Then I get up and carry our paper plates into the kitchen and dump them in the trash bin. I move to the cupboard above the fridge and pull out the Maker’s Mark and pour myself a shot. I drink it in one swallow, then return to the couch. It’s after nine o’clock and I’m surprised that Ruth hasn’t come back yet, but a part of me is glad. I channel surf for a few minutes and land on an old Humphrey Bogart movie. My finger stills on the remote as I remember the night Rachel and I saw this film at a theater in downtown New York.
I don’t want to think about Rachel then. So vibrant and impulsive and spontaneous and alive. That Rachel has gone away. And I don’t know if I will ever see her again. I think about the way she used to skip, skip, down the streets of Manhattan and sing Beatles songs at the top of her lungs and make alphabet pancakes and spell out words of adoration to her kids with them and carve the most elaborate Halloween pumpkins on the block—hell, in the whole neighborhood. I wonder if I will ever see that Rachel again, the one I fell in love with, the one who never failed to surprise me, who made me laugh at myself, who danced with me in the living room, who gave me head in the bathroom of my office and straddled me in the driver’s seat of my Highlander while the kids were napping in the backseat, who picketed the school district when they threatened to raise the class size, and charmed the socks off my potential clients and championed me when I lost an account.
The woman upstairs is a woman I don’t know, and despite the fact that I had something to do with her transformation, I can’t help but grieve the loss of the amazing person she was before. God, I hope she comes back. Not just for me, but for her.
I lower the volume on the TV and stare at the screen. Shadow turns around and around on his bed and finally settles.
God, I miss my wife. Almost as much as I miss my son.
TWENTY-TWO
RACHEL
It’s no one’s fault. What a load of crap.
I sit perched on the edge of the bed, my side of the bed. I could be on the other side, if I wanted. Sam’s not here. He sleeps downstairs on the couch. Because Ruth told him it was for the best. Because I told her I couldn’t sleep with him beside me. And Sam being Sam, he didn’t fight or argue or insist that he sleep in his own bed, beside his wife.
I don’t want him here, don’t want to have to look at him or endure his duplicitous touch or feel his studied, long-suffering gaze. But I wonder, just for a moment, how I would feel about him if he claimed his place in this bed, in this room, if he’d argued against leaving both. Would I feel differently about him? Or would I resent him more?
It doesn’t matter.
Where is the monkey? I miss him. I shouldn’t have given him to Sam.
Again, it doesn’t matter. Jonah is gone.
And yet I can smell him, my son, suddenly, as though he just walked by. The baby powder, macaroni and cheese, and dirt-from-playing-in-the-garden scent. I draw in a long breath through my nose and I can definitely smell him, and I wonder, not for the first time in this last month, if I have gone completely, certifiably insane.
I can’t smell Jonah because Jonah is not here because Jonah is dead.
But you saw him, Rachel.
No. I saw what the pills made me see.
No. He was here.
How many pills have I taken today?
Who cares?
I can’t get that smell out of my nose.
I hear the whispered voices of Sam and Eden at the top of the stairs just outside my room. I can’t make out the words. I feel a brief, intense flash of guilt over my behavior in front of Eden. She must think her mother is a monster. But the scent of Jonah overpowers my remorse. I can’t even recall how I acted, what I said, Eden’s reaction. I know I could access the memory if I tried, but the smell of Jonah is too strong, blocking out everything else.
I turn my head, just slightly, because I am afraid, and there he is, sitting at the head of my bed, resting against the headboard, smiling a close-lipped smile.
“Jonah,” I say. But in a whisper, because I don’t know if Sam and Eden are still outside at the top of the stairs, and I don’t want them to hear me, because if they do, if Sam does, he’ll come in here and make me think I’m crazy, which I know I am, and he’ll tell me I’m not really seeing Jonah, which I know I’m not, but if no one stops me from thinking he’s here, I can pretend that he is.
His mouth is working, but I can’t hear what he says, can’t make out the words. I don’t know if they mean anything, truly, or if they are just the musings of a five-year-old boy. I stretch my hand out to him, and he reaches for me, too, with his right hand, and at the point where our fingers should meet, should touch, I feel only air. And that makes me want to scream, but I don’t want to frighten him, my baby boy, my angel. Because this afternoon, when I saw him at the foot of my bed and started screaming, he vanished. So I hold the scream in.
I ease myself closer to him, but the closer I get, the less I see him. As though he is an optical illusion, smoke and mirrors, only the smoke is my pills and the mirrors are my desperation.
“Don’t go,” I tell him. His expression shifts from the happy smile to a look of concern, a look that is not typical for a five-year-old, a look that Jonah never made when he was alive.