Before I Go (20 page)

Kayleigh sets her cup back on the table. “What would you wish for?”

I think about it. About how I answered Jack so flippantly on our fourth date, when dying seemed like something that happened to other people: Italy. I’d go to Italy. But now, dying is happening to me. And yes, I’ve always wanted to go to Italy, because who doesn’t want to go to Italy? But I’ve also wanted to go to Greece. And Burma. And Ibiza. And New Zealand. And Seattle.

Seattle.

I’ve never even been to freakin’ Seattle.

I once saw this show on The Travel Channel or PBS about Seattle and its weird tourist attractions, like the wall of chewing gum and the tree that grew around a bicycle on some island because a kid chained it there, like, seventy years ago and then never came back for it. And at the time I thought how I’d like to see those things. How I
would
see those things. How I had plenty of time in my long life to go and look at those weird things. Because that’s what you think when dying is one of those things that happens to other people.

But dying is happening to me. And then Jack’s going to be alone. And who has time to go to Seattle and look at wads of old chewed-up gum?

I sigh and glance up at Kayleigh. She’s looking back expectantly, and I realize she’s still waiting for an answer. But I can’t very well explain how my greatest wish is to see a bicycle stuck in a tree on some island in Washington State.

I chew my lip and force a smile. “To have sex with Ryan Gosling.”

She scoffs. “That would be everybody’s. He couldn’t have sex with four thousand dying women.”

The long-legged woman settles into the velvet couch in the back of the tiny shop and it jars me that it’s the same couch Jack and I shared on our third date, our knees generating an abnormal amount of heat where they touched.

I tune back into Kayleigh, who’s midsentence: “—have to pick someone that no one else would, to be sure that it would happen. Like Kevin Spacey.”

I pull a face. “Who would want to have sex with Kevin Spacey?”

“I don’t know. He’s kind of hot in
House of Cards
.”

I gaze back at the woman one last time, and wonder what I’m actually looking for. With Charlene, I knew they had the vet thing in common. I was drawn to the nurse because she was a natural caregiver. How do I pick out a wife for Jack on sight alone? What should she look like? I realize I haven’t given it any thought. I’ve been searching for a woman in the exact opposite way most men do—trying to decipher personality and compatibility before taking note of physical attractiveness. Does Jack have a type? Am
I
his type? Should his new wife look like me or would that be too weird? The woman eating the bagel looks nothing like me. Her hair, a vibrant honey chestnut, is straight, sleek. Everything about her is finished, like a puzzle that’s been shellacked. In fact, her nails, which I’m pretty certain are acrylic, actually have been shellacked. I can’t picture Jack with a woman who has fake nails.

“Do you know her?” Kayleigh’s voice cuts into my thoughts.

“Who?” I turn back to my tea.

“Uh, the woman you’ve been staring at since she walked in here?”

“No,” I say, thinking quickly. “I just like her . . . nails.”

“Mmm. That’s a totally normal thing to say.”

I give her a weak smile.

“Daisy,” she says, and then she looks at me in the same way she looked at me on the first day of second grade when she told me that her dad was the president of a company, which meant he got to fire people with a gun and then asked what my dad did and I told her I didn’t have a dad. She takes a deep breath. “Do you want to talk? You know . . . about stuff? I mean, you obviously didn’t come here to help me pick up guys.”

I crease my brow, not ready to let go of my ruse so fast. “Why do you say that?”

She nods her head at a table toward the front of the shop. “That dead ringer for Bradley Cooper has been in here since we walked in and you never even noticed.”

I steal a glace in his direction. He did kind of look like Bradley Cooper. Smaller nose, less hair. But still. I sigh and lean back into the curled ironwork of my uncomfortable parlor chair. The gurgle of steamed milk turning into foam blasts from the direction of the counter. A cell phone rings from a sofa behind me. Bits of conversation float through the air like miscellaneous dust particles. I stare at Kayleigh, measuring her, weighing the strength of our friendship like gold coins in my palm. I decide it’s enough. And let the truth burst free in one long stream of words.

“I’mtryingtofindJackawife.”

She stares at me, unblinking, and I wonder if she’s heard me. If I need to repeat myself. Instead, I launch into an unprepared explanation. “For when . . . for after . . .” I trip over the words, not sure how to elucidate something that seems so obvious to me. I settle on: “I need to know that he’s going to be OK.”

I hold my breath, wondering if I’ve miscalculated her. Us. The
possibility of her unspoken responses bark in my ear: “You can’t be serious.” “Who does that?” “That’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said.” Or worse still—peals of laughter.

But the silence between us stretches like taffy. I long to break it. A clean cut. I open my mouth to laugh and tell her that, obviously, I’m joking, when she snaps her head to look at me.

“OK,” she says with a curt nod. Understanding pools in her eyes like spilled ink. And then a grin slowly finds her lips. “But you can’t seriously be considering
that
girl.” She gestures to the shellacked woman on the couch. “She is definitely not his type.”

I release the breath I’ve been holding and let my thoughts start tumbling out, grateful to have ears to receive them. “That’s the thing. I’m not sure what his type is. I know I need someone responsible and organized like me, and driven like him, but I have no idea what she should look like. What he’s really attracted to.”

She attacks her pinky nail with her teeth, thinking. “Who’s his celebrity crush?”

“It varies. Natalie Portman. Sarah Jessica Parker. He loved Demi Moore in
G.I. Jane
—he watches it every time it comes on TBS—but I don’t think he likes her now.”

“Everyone loves Demi Moore in
G.I. Jane
.” She sits back and crosses her arms over her chest. “You need to find his porn stash.”

“Ohhh-kay,” I say, rolling my eyes at the very Kayleigh-like habit of taking everything one step too far. I change the subject. “Let’s get back to you. Are you going to go talk to Bradley Cooper?”

She sighs. “I don’t know. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately.”

“That’s dangerous.”

She ignores me. “Maybe I’m not ready for a relationship. Maybe that’s why I keep choosing unavailable men.”

“Boys.”

She shoots me a look. “Eric was a man.”

“A very married one.”

“They were separated. Whatever. I’m just saying that maybe I’m not ready to settle down.”

I know that she’s right, but I’m surprised at this flash of self-awareness. When we were in high school, and even college, I used to be jealous of Kayleigh’s carefree attitude, how she seemed to meander on no particular path, going this way or that, while I stayed on the straight and narrow—choosing studying over partying or going to class over sleeping in. But as we got older, her enviable spontaneity began to morph into pitiable flailing, and it was difficult to watch. Like how she majored in education just because she accidentally got sent to that orientation our freshman year and decided it was easier to stay there. When she graduated, she took her LSAT on a whim, though she’d never expressed any desire to be a lawyer. I didn’t point out that this sudden career choice just happened to coincide with her older, do-gooder sister’s acceptance of a job as a financial analyst at JP Morgan—or that as much as she tried to deny it, she obviously craved the accolades her parents so easily bestowed upon Karmen. But then she flunked her LSATs and her pride refused to let her retake them. She took the first teaching job in Athens she could find (because what else was she going to do with an education degree?), even though she wasn’t really passionate about it. I’d been pushing Kayleigh to retake the LSAT or go back to school—to go after
something
with the same gusto she goes after nineteen-year-old boys.

But the last time I brought it up she snapped at me and I don’t want to risk triggering her ire again. So instead, I strike my armchair therapist pose, tilt my head, and simply ask her: “Why don’t you think you’re ready?”

Before she can respond, a shadow darkens our table. We both look up at the Bradley Cooper doppelgänger, who’s staring intently at Kayleigh. “Hey, uh . . .” he says. “Do you, like, go to school here?”

I cover my mouth with my hand, to prevent the laughter from escaping.

He doesn’t look a day over nineteen.

LATER THAT AFTERNOON I stop by the vet hospital to take Jack the cranberry muffins. The building is modern, linear—all angles and glass. I’ve often thought it too cold, a contradiction to the warm and furry bodies that occupy it on a daily basis. As I open the see-through door to the entrance, a shrill wail pierces the air. I tense, darting my eyes first to the glass walls, as if they might shatter from the sharp arrows of sound waves berating them, and then to the culprit of the noise. A girl. No more than seven or eight, with a mop of uncombed curly brown tendrils framing a face that’s all mouth. Or appears to be, because it’s wide open and emitting the offensive sound without pause.

Her mother is frantically trying to embrace her rigid little body, unclench her furled fists, stop the tears sprinting from her eyes in midflow. But nothing will soothe her. The woman gives up, wraps her arms around her daughter’s tiny shoulders, and carries the girl, still screaming, to the front entrance. I move to let them pass, and when the glass door gently closes behind them, overwhelming quiet fills the still lobby.

I walk toward Maya at the reception desk with wide eyes. “What. Was. That?”

She looks up from the manila file folder she’s writing in. “The girl?”

I nod, wondering what other crazy spectacles occur in this lobby to leave her so nonplussed.

“Dog died. Mom asked us to cremate him, and that’s when she really lost it.” She goes back to writing. “I think Jack’s in his office. You can go on back.”

“Thanks,” I say, still shaken from the intensity of the screams. But as I follow the linoleum path to Jack’s office, something else starts to niggle its way into my thoughts.

Something Maya said. Something I haven’t thought about at all. Until now.

“Should I get cremated?” I ask when I enter his tiny ten-by-ten square feet of space. Jack looks up from where he’s standing, hunched over a stack of medical records, open journals, and God knows what else in the piles of stuff that look just like the piles of stuff on his desk at home.

“You brought food,” he says, shifting his gaze to the brown paper bag in my hand. “I’m starving.”

I drop the sack in front of him and plop down into the plastic molded chair. I wonder if he heard me. I wonder if I said the question out loud or just thought it. No, I said it. I can still taste the words. Is that possible? Do words have flavor? I wonder if I am actually going crazy.

“Jack?”

He digs into the bag and starts devouring the first muffin, a waterfall of crumbs landing on the documents he’s still studying. He brushes them off. “Hmm?” he asks without looking up, his mouth full of cake.

I don’t want to repeat my question. I didn’t even know I was going to say it until it was halfway out of my mouth, the consequence of a seven-year habit of giving voice to my inner thoughts when I’m with Jack. But now. Now, things are different. It occurs to me that even though Jack’s been looking at me as though I might disappear any second and his typical “Hey babe” greeting has morphed into “How are you feeling?” we haven’t specifically discussed what’s happening. What’s
really
happening. And at first I thought it was because Jack was being naively hopeful.

But now I think Jack’s in Denial, which after reading my grief brochure
seems like a place you go to, like the beach or Target or the dentist, for an indefinite amount of time. I went there once, but because I’m an advanced griever, it was a short visit. It appears that Jack packed a bag before he left. The psych major in me wants to help him—ask him probing questions about what he’ll do when I’m gone, get him to ponder the future without me in it—but I’ve taken enough classes to know that he has to deal with it at his own pace.

I pull my feet up and tuck them underneath my thighs in the uncomfortable bucket seat. The frayed hem of my favorite jeans is damp from my trudge through the wet parking lot. “How’s the possum?” I ask.

He looks at me then, and I’m not sure if I’m imagining it, or if it is relief that’s shining in his eyes. He smiles. “Good as new. A dog got him, nearly bit right through its leg . . .”

Jack relives the details of the case, slipping into medical jargon, which is when I’d typically stop him with an “English, please,” or “What the hell’s a pectoral girdle?” but this time I just let him talk. My mind has already left the conversation and is pondering the pros and cons of turning my body into ashes.