Death of a Kleptomaniac (12 page)

I am standing next to Henry Shaw. He's curled up on his bed. Soft music flows out of his speakers. It sounds like jazz, but I have no idea who is playing. If I were alive, I could ask him. If I were alive, I could say something funny and cheer him up. If I were alive, Henry wouldn't be sad in the first place.

I'm surprised that his grief would be strong enough to pull me to him. When I died, I wasn't thinking about him at all. Only my parents crossed my mind. I lean down and whisper his name. “Henry?” Because of the Melka situation, because of how things ended between us, I never expected to return to his bedroom. Ever.

“Henry?” I repeat. Even though I know he can't hear me, I feel a strong urge to say his name. And when I do, it makes me feel more connected to him. I move onto the bed. Louise told me that my presence can ease a person's sadness. I press my soul around Henry's body. Can he feel that I'm here? I stay very quiet, very still, as I watch him breathing. My parents didn't seem as affected by my presence, but for Henry my arrival seems to stir something in him. He turns around and faces in the opposite direction; he faces me.

“I can't believe you're dead. How could you die like that?”

I watch him cry. His eyes are swollen and his face is red with sadness. He's looking right at me, but he doesn't know it.

“You were right here. A few days ago. In this room. And you go on one date with Tate Arnold and you wind up dead? Jesus. Why did you even go out with that guy? He's a stupid jock, Molly. He could never appreciate you. He had no idea how funny you are.” He starts crying again. “How funny you
were
.” His voice gets louder. “This wasn't supposed to happen!”

Henry is breaking my heart. I felt bad enough about being dead before I got here. But seeing this makes me feel sad in a different way. I'm beginning to understand that I didn't just lose what I had, but I also lost what could have happened. My future. All the paths that were ahead of me. They are as dead as I am.

Out of an impulse to comfort him, I start saying anything that comes to mind. “You're going to be fine. You have a long life. I can see it.” I have no idea how long Henry Shaw will live. “You'll fall in love. Get married. Have babies. Lots of babies. And there's a ton of jazz.” I'm struggling for ideas. “You will become so famous that you will travel by private jet.”

Do saxophone players ever get famous? I'm not sure. All I know is that my words do nothing to comfort him. I can feel his sadness, and it's as deep as my parents'. This confuses me. He picked another girl over me. How much could he really have cared about me?

I stare at him on his bed, stuck in grief. I can't take much more of this.

“I didn't want to die, especially not the way I did die, but this was supposed to happen.” And I don't say it in a wimpy voice. I say it with total certainty. Because it's not good for Henry to feel this way. And it's not good for me to feel this way either.

He sits up. “I think I'm going crazy. I think I can almost hear you.”

“Really?” I ask. “Henry. You are not going crazy. It's me. Molly Weller. I am on your bed. I am helping you grieve.”

I see goose pimples form on his skin. He's very sensitive to my soul.

“Molly, if you're here, please give me a sign.” His eyes dart around every corner of the room.

A sign? I try to explain. “I can't give you a sign. My spirit guide says that souls don't really do that. Just tune in to what I'm saying, okay?”

“Now it feels like you're gone,” Henry says. “Did you leave?”

This is exhausting. I'm expending way more energy here than I did with my parents. It's to the point where I feel flimsy and barely present. “I am right here!” I yell. When I raise my voice, it seems to impact him more.

“Molly, I need to tell you something. Are you still here?”

It's like I'm in a movie, right at the moment where I'm poised to hear either a crushing confession or something transformative and wonderful.
Don't crush me, Henry.
I should leave. If I don't hear what he says, it will be like he never said it. Sadly, I can't manage to do this, because even dead I am voraciously curious.

“Molly,” he whispers.

“I am still here!” I say again. “I am on your bed with you!”

But he doesn't tell me yet. He grabs some Kleenex from a box beside his bed and blows his nose.

“This isn't how I wanted to tell you,” he says.

“Say it,” I plead. I don't know how much longer I'll be able to stay with him before I get dragged away by a third requester. I mean, my grandma is going to be pulling my soul toward her grief any second. And I'm not going to deny my grandma comfort.

Henry finally speaks. “Molly, I feel like something was supposed to happen with us,” he says. “It feels wrong that you died. Are you there?”

This time, I don't answer him. As he speaks these words I let them settle inside me; I believe them. He's right. Something was supposed to happen. His grief mixes with mine, and it hurts me in a way that causes actual pain throughout my soul. “Stop.” Maybe if he stops feeling this way, I'll stop feeling this way. But he doesn't. He gets up and walks across the room and turns up the volume on the music. The band plaques on his walls vibrate as a saxophone wails. I keep thinking he's going to pick up his own saxophone and play it and release some of his sadness. But he doesn't.

He sits down at his desk and stares out the window. It's dark outside. Watching him as he zones out into the nothingness of the evening, it's so easy for my mind to cycle back to the last time I was in his room. Kissing Henry felt absolutely right.

“You're going to be okay,” I say. In a weird way, it's flattering to see Henry this sad.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

“Henry,” a soft voice calls. “It's me. Melka. I heard the news. Can I come in?”

I can't believe it. Ruthann was right. Melka must be a total stalker, because how else did she know to show up at this exact moment? It can't be a coincidence that minutes after Henry's grief summoned me, she's banging on his bedroom door. And I also can't believe that she's referring to my death as “the news.” It makes me sound like a headline in a newspaper. I was a person. Melka should say my name. My death is not
the news
. Henry lets her inside his room, and they hug.

“Dis is so unbelievable,” Melka says. “I'm sorry. I know you liked Molly so much. She was so funny. So easy to like.”

I have two thoughts on this.

First,
Wow.
Weird that his girlfriend would talk about the fact that he liked me
and
build me up. Is this some sort of relationship-saving reverse-psychology strategy that people use in Eastern European countries? I would be furious if I knew that my boyfriend liked another girl. And if that girl died, I would feel terrible, but I wouldn't focus on how likable and funny she was. Would I?

Second, I'm glad she called me by my name.

“You seem surprised by his sadness,” a voice says. Freaked out that somebody is standing next to me, I whirl and scream. It's Louise.

“What are you doing here?” I ask. She shouldn't invade Henry's bedroom like this.

“I told you I'd be here for your entire journey.”

“Everything about this sucks,” I say. “Everything.”

“Are you just beginning to understand how much he liked you?” Louise asks.

“Don't you get it, Louise? He chose Melka over me. He's with her right now. See?”

I dramatically swing my arm out toward Melka and Henry. But they aren't locked in some supportive embrace or holding hands or anything. They're just sitting on the floor together. Looking at something. Whoa. It's a picture of me.

“I don't understand how that relationship works at all,” I say.

“Grieving is a very draining process,” Louise says. “Henry needs company.”

“Why do you keep downplaying the fact that Melka is his girlfriend?” I ask.

“Like I said, I've been following your life with great focus for six months. Henry and Melka broke up.”

“And got back together,” I say.

“Well,” Louise counters, “that's complicated.”

I am so sick of hearing that phrase. “Okay,” I say. “Right. Do you want to know what's complicated? My death! That's complicated.” I leave Henry's room, burst through three walls, and enter the Shaws' backyard. I'm furious, and as I pass the side of the house, a motion detector light goes off and floods the sidewalk with a pale yellow glow. It startles me that I can make this happen. I catch a glimpse of Louise, and she seems surprised too.

I wish I could smell the grass. Or trees. Or night air. Until you lose your body, you don't understand how much it gave you. I miss it. Trying to comfort myself, I focus on what I can see. Henry's backyard is parklike and adorable. I've never been in it before, but it's a meticulously groomed bed of grass, lined with evergreens on both sides for privacy. It strikes me as the perfect place to picnic, or tan, or make out, or just hang around and relax. They even have a hammock! Louise stands beside me.

“I don't like helping people grieve,” I say. “It hurts.”

“I know,” Louise says.

She doesn't know. “I'm mad. Really mad. I want everything to be different. This is way more final than I thought it would be.”

“Anger is part of the grieving process. For you and them.”

“Stop talking to me like you're a textbook. This isn't what I need right now.”

Louise stands next to me while I pity myself in Henry's backyard. Then I hear voices. Henry and Melka aren't in his bedroom anymore. They've moved to the den, where a window is open. Soon I can hear Melka telling Henry he should play. She tells him several times. Finally he agrees. And then I can hear Henry's saxophone. For some reason, instead of enjoying the music, listening to it makes me pity myself even more. This time, hearing Henry play means something different to me than it did when I heard him play in his bedroom. This time it means that life will go on for everybody. Except me.

“I should have made different choices,” I say.

“Nobody makes perfect choices,” Louise says.

I turn to Louise and reach out to her. “I am begging you. Please tell me where I go after I cross over. I need reassurance that I'm not going to be alone. I can't handle it. I need my friends. I need my family. I need to know that I get to be with them again.”

Louise looks at me with such concern that a new fear surfaces inside me. I'm not going to see my family and friends ever again. This is it. And she knows it.

“Where you go next depends a lot on the direction you'd already aimed your life.”

What? Other than securing a triangle point on the Tigerettes and asking a guy to a girls'-choice dance, my life didn't have much of an aim at all. My anxiety feels like it could clobber me. I look Louise in the eye again and hope she'll understand that I need answers. “Will the people I love come too? Will they follow me?”

“Molly, I can't give you these answers. Your crossing is unique to yourself.”

My mind feels empty and crushed.

“A lot of times when people are in their deepest sorrows, they have their clearest insights,” Louise says.

I want Louise to stop talking.

“Tell me. Which of your regrets is giving you the greatest discomfort?” Louise asks.

But all my regrets are forming one giant lump of sadness. I can't sort through them.

“I usually counsel people to focus on one act they wish they could undo. And concentrate on it. Then explore how that act put them on a path that helped give their lives their unique shapes. Our actions define us. They shouldn't be regrettable. They created you.”

This is the stupidest exercise anybody has ever unleashed into the world.

“During your life, while I followed you, I felt a lot of regret centered around your theft issues.”

I cut her off. “I don't want to talk about that.”

“You either come to grips with it now, or you store it, let it weigh on you, and carry it longer. You will have to deal with it eventually.”

“There's nothing to deal with. I wasn't a perfect person. And I wasn't even thinking about that kind of regret. I was thinking about Henry and my parents and their unending grief,” I said.

Louise moves to the center of Henry's lawn, out of the pool of light made by the motion detector. Under the dark sky, on top of the nearly black lawn, she lifts her delicate arms over her head and spins around. “I used to be a dancer.”

I have been so busy coming to terms with my own death that I never considered that Louise used to be a person. But that makes sense. She's a soul. And to end up a soul, you probably had to be a person first. In her pantsuit she doesn't automatically look like a dancer, but watching the outline of her soul move gracefully in circles convinces me that she was.