Signs of Life (16 page)

But on Thanksgiving night Nancy the nurse floats into my
brain for a very different reason. Nancy the nurse, as you would expect, had been in the presence of death too many times to count. She often shared her experiences with us. She told us stories in a soft, serious voice about connecting with spirits, and I would sit on the couch and think to myself,
Don’t they screen people before hiring for this kind of work?
She told me that she had several experiences where a spirit or soul of someone who has passed away sort of “comes to” the family. She said the spirit almost always came in the form of a light of some sort. One time she remembered a family lost their daughter, a woman in her twenties with a little boy, to cancer. Shortly after she passed, Nancy saw a blue light stream through the house.
Right
, I thought.
Do you believe in vampires too, Nancy?

On Thanksgiving night, however, Nancy’s ridiculous, unscientific observation comes back to me. I remember right after Josh died I was at my parents’ house and the same thing happened with the light. I hit the switch and it didn’t go off. Immediately, I thought it was Josh just saying, “I’m here. I’m right here.” I asked my mom about the light (obviously not telling her my theory about how it was my dead husband reincarnated into electricity) and she just said, “Yeah, sometimes that light does that.” Sure enough, every now and then the light will stay on. It hasn’t done this in a long time. I can’t even remember the last time it stayed on, but on the night of Thanksgiving that light stays on. I know how ridiculous I sound. I sound as ridiculous as Nancy did. But that light makes me feel a little better. I really think it’s not just an electrical quirk. I think it’s a little reminder that he’s not as far away as I think. Weird. The bathroom light. Who knew.

even
though I’m on maternity leave, I still think about my students and my job. I think about how they are treating my sub. I wonder if they’re still trying hard or if they’re having more fun without me. Right now they are starting Shakespeare’s
Macbeth. Macbeth
takes place in eleventh-century Scotland. It’s a fictional story, but historians say that Shakespeare got his idea for the play because he had done some research on that period in Scotland’s history and found that it was an incredibly violent and ruthless time and place—perfect for a dramatic storyline.
Macbeth
is about a guy (Macbeth) who starts off noble and then after getting a taste of power (he gets promoted to Thane of Glamis),
he gets hungry for more. He ends up killing his king (Duncan) and his bff (Banquo) and a list of others. The body count is pretty high by the end of the play. There are a lot of factors that push Macbeth to turn to the dark side; three witches give him these prophecies of his future, and his wife is out for blood before Macbeth even starts to think about killing anyone. By the end of act I, Macbeth and his wife have set out to murder in their hunt for the throne.

But Shakespeare is tricky. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth engage in some pretty horrific foul play. If you know anything about Shakespeare’s tragedies, then you know that the main characters always end up dead in act V. But for Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, their real torture happens long before they die.

Right after Macbeth kills his sleeping king, he claims he hears a voice. He runs out of King Duncan’s bedchamber, and says, “Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more! / Macbeth does murder sleep,’ the innocent sleep.” And there we have the ultimate tool of torture for Macbeth and eventually his wife. They can’t sleep. If you think Shakespeare is going easy on these two, then you’ve obviously never been sleep-deprived for an extended period of time. Because Shakespeare knows that if you really want someone to lose their fucking mind, you take away sleep.

In act V, Lady Macbeth starts to sleepwalk. While wandering around at night, her servants hear her confess all of her crimes. I always picture her bumping into furniture, walking around with the cartoon swirls in her eyes. I used to think she lost her mind because of her guilt, but now I realize that’s not it. Girlfriend can’t sleep. Everything I do on a daily basis is from this same Lady Macbeth sleep-deprived state. It’s not just that I’m tired. We’re not just tired. We are coming completely unraveled.

For example, everywhere I go I see the same set of snowmen. In the aisles of Target, in the pages of Garnet Hill, in the Pottery Barn window, on television, in advertisements, it’s the same three snowmen. There’s the dad, the mom, and the little baby snowman. Everywhere, it’s the perfect little snowman family. Mom, dad, and baby. They terrorize me. One day at the mall, I am going to go nuts on the three-snowmen display. One of these days, I am going to be walking through the mall, with all of the parents and their kids standing in line to see Santa, and I’ll hear some kid say, “Mom! Look at the cute snowmen. It’s just like our family, you, me, and dad,” and something will come over me. Weeks of staring at this perfect little snowman family, weeks of being mocked by this snowman family will get to me, and all of the sudden I will lash out at the snowman family right in the middle of the mall. I will start punching the big dad snowman, but not any normal punch, more of a frantic, almost deranged swing. Instead of my arm coming through the middle of my body, like you would see a boxer throw a punch, my fist comes over the top of my head, like a crazed stage mom. I swing at the daddy snowman in an uncoordinated manner; first I knock off his black top hat and then on my second swing I miss and throw myself off balance and fall onto the mommy snowman. Then, in a rage of frustration, at myself and the snowmen, I start thrashing my body in all directions, hoping to take out all three at once. Think Orson Welles in
Citizen Kane
when he trashes Susan Alexander’s room at Xanadu after she walks out. He tears the place down, but he’s so old he can hardly pull the shelves off of the wall. You kind of feel bad for the guy, but at the same time you know he’s losing it big-time. That’s me, only with three oversized snowmen. “Mommy,” the little boy says as he tugs at his mother’s coat sleeve outside of Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, “why is that crazy lady hurting the cute
snowman family?” The Somerset mall guards drag me away as I kick and scream.

The best part would be they would haul me off and throw me into some holding tank where they keep the mall perpetrators until the cops arrive. Some small cell with one plastic bench and a gross tile floor that never gets cleaned. But by the time the cops get there, I’d be asleep. Not even on the bench. I’d be asleep on the floor. Some cop would roll his eyes and say, “All right, ma’am, you can go. Your family is outside waiting for you.” And I would wave my hand and in a groggy voice say, “Ten more minutes, jus’ gimme ten more minutes.”

At Dr. G.’s today, I feel inclined to discuss how angry I am. I leave out the part about the snowmen. This is the first time I’ve seen her since Kai was born.

In the midst of our conversation, she says something about bitterness.

“I think I’m bitter,” I say.

“You do?” she asks, with this weird look on her face. “Who are you bitter toward?”

I think about this. I am not really bitter toward anyone specifically. Battersby recently got engaged to her boyfriend, Paul, and I am actually very happy for her. I found myself being able to participate in conversations about weddings much easier than two months ago. Everyone around me is getting married—my friend Janna from college, Battersby, Terrah, Toby and Nikki, but I don’t feel bitter toward any of them. I am bitter toward the idea of romance. I am bitter at the couples in the mall who are Christmas shopping at Gymboree. “Oh, honey, look at this, isn’t this adorable? We should get it for Nolan. He would just love it,” the mom says, full of Christmas cheer. I want to shove these people and say, “Ya know, some of us are trying to grieve around here! Would you mind keeping your happiness
to yourself?” Finally, I figure out who exactly I am most bitter toward. Everything can be summed up in two words.

“Diamond commercials,” I say. “Diamond commercials make me furious.” Of course, anyone who watches television knows exactly what I am talking about. These stupid fucking diamond commercials where some handsome guy and his pretty, unassuming wife are driving along together, the snow is falling just slightly outside, the street is lined with Christmas lights, the couple is holding hands, and then suddenly, magically, he slips a diamond necklace into her hand and then they exchange this picture-perfect kiss at the stoplight. Or the one where the woman is asleep and her husband slips a diamond necklace on in the middle of the night and she wakes up and he pretends to be sleeping—this one is the worst! Or the one where the guy unhooks the diamond gift bag from the snowman’s hand. There are a million of them. A million too many and all of them make me want to throw my shoe at the television.

“Ugh.” Dr. G. rolls her eyes. Obviously, she has seen them too. “Just turn the television off,” she tells me.

“Told you,” my FMG remarks from the other end of the couch. (FMG is short for Fairy Mom Godmother. Now that she’s part of my family, she wanted a nickname like everyone else.)

“Why are the holidays like this?” I ask. “Why are they so hard?” Dr. G. nods along with my question and scoots forward in her big chair.

“You know, I was at a convention with a group of other psychologists and we all concluded that this is our busiest time. This week and next week I have more appointments than at any other time of year.”

“Seriously? Why is that? Why do the holidays make us feel this way?”

“Because,” she starts, then thinks about her answer for a
moment. This is another reason why I like Dr. G. She thinks about the things that come out of her mouth. “People know that they are going to be disappointed. The media, the stores, the catalogs—they all make us feel like something amazing should happen, and then it doesn’t.” I lean my head back at the thought of this. Yes, I agree. For example, no woman in America will get a diamond like the women in those commercials. All that will happen is millions of women will watch those commercials and think,
Wouldn’t that be nice. Wouldn’t that be nice if he just completely splurged on me? Even though we said we wouldn’t spend much on each other, wouldn’t it be nice if he completely broke the rule
. And then on Christmas morning, that woman will unwrap a DustBuster and she will scold herself for being so hopeful. And her husband will see the look on her face and say, “But remember, honey, we said we wouldn’t spend a lot.”

“Don’t even get me started on the holidays.” My Fairy Mom Godmother holds her right hand out like a stop sign, like she’s telling the holidays to talk to the hand.

“I could
kill
the person who invented so many holidays,” she says.

Compounding the problem of sleep, grief, and the holiday stress is that the dogs are still out of control. Kai’s sleep is totally irregular, but the dogs have to come out of their crate at a certain time in the morning. Even if I haven’t slept since four in the morning, they still need to go outside and eat by seven. When Kai sleeps I can’t go back to bed because they are always going in and out, getting into things, demanding more time and attention than what I am capable of. Some days I can’t make arrangements for people to come over while I walk them, so they just end up getting all riled up from staying inside all day. When Louise misses a walk, she sits with her front paws on the windowsill, her body completely erect, trembling at the sight of a
squirrel. She makes this horrible noise that sounds like a teakettle and I can’t get her to stop. I can only put her in her crate, but she just barks until I let her out. Walks are torturous for all three of us. Both dogs are now completely unmanageable. They are sad and angry and acting out, and so am I.

I envision punching inanimate objects, I’m mad at commercial America, and I can’t seem to feel anything toward my own pets except extreme frustration. On top of everything, I don’t sleep. Sleep is like the little Jenga block at the bottom of my already shaky tower. The longer I go without sleep, the more I feel like I’m going to collapse into a million pieces.

Right after Macbeth tells his wife that he heard a voice curse his sleep, he reflects for a moment about the importance of sleep. He says, “Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleeve of care, / The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath, / Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, / Chief nourisher in life’s feast.” This quote says it all. What wonderfully comforting words: a bath, balm for a hurt mind, a second course. But all of these things have left me. My chief nourisher is gone. My mind and my body don’t seem to get any rest. One time I read something that said some historians suspect that Shakespeare was a woman. But every time I read this quote, every time I think about his amazing understanding of the importance of sleep, I think about how he wasn’t just a woman, he must have been a baby-mama too.

Tonight is my first parenting group session. Beaumont Hospital arranges parenting groups for all new mothers. It’s free and anyone can sign up. I called Beaumont earlier this week to see when the parenting group met. The woman on the phone told me that my group would start after the holidays.

At the end of the conversation she said, “And you want to be in the couples group, right?”

“Ugh … no, actually, now that you mention it, I don’t.”
Well, lucky for me, there is a single moms’ group that meets once a week for six months and it was about to start in a few days.

“Where does the group meet?” I asked, hoping I wouldn’t have to drive to far.

“The group meets at Embury Methodist Church, right at the corner of Fourteen Mile and Woodward.” My heart sunk. Two years ago this December, eleven days from today, Josh and I were married at Embury Methodist Church at the corner of Fourteen Mile and Woodward. The last time I was there I was wearing a wedding dress. Now I’m going for a single moms’ group.