Signs of Life (4 page)

I secretly hope I see a sign. Maybe a bird could land on the plastic window. Maybe a bolt of lightning could streak across the sky. I wait for a noise, a voice, anything. But nothing happens. There is just the slow rocking of my gondola car headed down the mountain and my shrieking voice.

When I come home from Aspen, all I want is to be alone. I am finally able to go to my house. I sit in my house and cry. When I am done in one room, I walk to another room and cry. It doesn’t make me feel better, but it doesn’t make me feel worse. And I prefer it to having people watch me cry uncomfortably. I suddenly feel like no one can talk to me anymore. No one knows what I am going through.

And then I read
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
, which has just been published. There are two epigraphs. The first one reads:

The second one reads:

Does J. K. Rowling know me?
I think to myself. She must. She must have had the book all ready to go, then heard about me and Josh and his accident and how I was pregnant, and so she called her publisher and said, “Wait! I need to add two epigraphs for Natalie Taylor!”

“Who’s Natalie Taylor?” some guy asks in a British accent. She rolls her eyes and scoffs at him.
Of course you wouldn’t know who she is
, J. K. thinks to herself. But as another single mother in the world, J. K. knows my story already. She has written this for me.

I have suffered nearly two months of stupid fucking comments from people. “Oh, it was meant to happen,” “It’s all a part of God’s plan,” “You are so strong, you’ll be fine.” So many moronic attempts at sympathy. And then, over the Fourth of July weekend up north, no one said anything to us. People ignored us. Some people avoided eye contact. Like we were lepers! A pregnant widow? Watch out! She might be contagious! You never know! And here comes J. K. and I feel like we are best friends who have never met. I just want to pick up the phone and call her.

“J. K. It’s Nat.”

“Finally!” she says, flopping down on her couch and putting her feet up. We talk at length about how I’m
really
doing. We both cry. She gives me some words that are actually comforting.

At the conclusion of
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
, in a chapter called “King’s Cross,” Harry is nearly killed. But instead of dying he is suddenly transported to a deserted tube station—King’s Cross. At King’s Cross Harry is reunited with Dumbledore, his hero who was killed fighting the book’s villain. Dumbledore sits with Harry and tells him all about the things that Harry doesn’t understand about life and death and finding his way. Right before the scene closes, Dumbledore gives Harry one last piece of advice: “Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all, those who live without love.”

I read “King’s Cross” at least fifteen times. It is the only thing that makes any sense to me.

a
few weeks ago my dad bought me a copy of
The Godfather
by Mario Puzo. I had never read it or seen any of the movies, but after a few hours of reading I found myself completely immersed in it. I have become obsessed with the world of the Corleone family. I know they are cold-blooded killers, but there is so much more to them than that. They love each other, they want to protect each other, and they would die for each other. They’re not that different from my family once you look past all of the money
and guns. In fact, more and more I find myself analyzing scenarios from the perspective of Don Corleone.

Ever since I lost Josh, the world has turned into two classes of people. There are those people who would do anything for me, those to whom I feel more connected than I’ve ever felt before. Mathews, Battersby, Maggie, Josh’s close friends Toby and Brian Elliott, of course my parents, in-laws, and siblings. All of these people have rallied to my side without a moment’s hesitation. These people I will now address as The Family. Then there are those with whom I had more of a peripheral relationship before Josh died, but now after making only a few small gestures (or no gestures at all), these people have proven themselves to be unworthy of the Family. There are even a few people who were on the periphery prior to the loss of Josh but, because of their surprising yet welcome acts of kindness and generosity, have been accepted. And like the Corleones, my Family is not necessarily connected by blood or geographic location. They simply have to show their undying loyalty to me, to the rest of us, and they are in for life. And if someone betrays or disgraces one of my Family members, he or she is out for good.

Dr. G. explains this as my new perspective of relationships. She doesn’t use the Corleone family as a metaphor and I don’t bring it up—I don’t want to alarm her or anything. But she does reiterate that now that I have experienced death firsthand, I know the value of having strong relationships. All of the people in my Family are closer than they have been before. I talk to them more often, we are more open with each other about life in general, and we often express our feelings more outwardly than we did before. But on the other side, as Dr. G. explains, I have no tolerance for even the slightest hint of inauthenticity (that’s my word for it). People who try to be nice but who are not truly
there for me are simply off the list. People who are not there for me now clearly do not love me as much as I thought.

For example, the other afternoon I was pulling into my neighborhood and I saw this creepy guy who lives in the duplexes at the entrance to my subdivision watching me. I have always thought this man was odd; I have seen him walking down the street in the middle of the day wearing a white V-neck T-shirt with stains on it and boxer shorts. He has long greasy hair and a slimey smile. So, I was thinking, what if this man came over one day and attempted to forcibly enter my house? What would I do? Obviously, I would first call the police, but I can’t expect them to be there promptly (the Don would scoff at this, “the police!?”), nor can I expect them to do anything more than “shoo” the man away back to his house, which is four houses down from mine. So whom would I call? I came to the following conclusion: First, I would call Toby. Toby is a close friend of Josh’s from college. The summer after they graduated from college, Josh and Toby rode their bicycles across the country together. Josh always said that when they were older, someday they would do the same route on their motorcycles. Toby is first on the list for several reasons. First, he lives closest to my house. Second, Toby is from Indiana, and not that I am generalizing about people from Indiana, I do know that Toby has several firearms in his house (and probably his car), so he could come over armed. Now, obviously I wouldn’t ask Toby to use a firearm against someone, but I would use his pistol to threaten the man and if necessary, I would shoot him, probably in the knee or femur. I’ve watched the
Beverly Hills Cop
trilogy enough times to know where to shoot a guy and not kill him. Axel Foley gets hit in the shoulder a lot (at least he did in the first one), but the shoulder is too close to the heart. Let’s get real, I don’t want to have this baby in jail. Or if he were really pissing me off, I
would just fire away, point-blank, into his genital region. Let’s be honest: any man who attacks a pregnant widow deserves to have the symbol of his masculinity blown to bits. It’s that simple.

If Toby was not available, I would call Brian Elliott. Elliott and Josh played soccer together in college. Right before Josh died, they had taken up the sport (?) of paintball. It was one of the few activities where they could act like they were twelve and get away with it—a grown man’s (?) version of Cowboys and Indians. Elliott is interesting because he does not own a pistol yet he has an entire arsenal of bizarre and lethal weapons (if used correctly). Elliott has a set of nunchucks, a Samurai sword set, and a nightstick that unfolds into something similar to what Donatello carried in
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
. The downside to calling Elliott would be that he would have to go into hand-to-hand combat with my intruder, leaving me powerless in the situation. Elliott, however, unlike Toby, does not act rationally when someone in his family in endangered. He simply runs on ferocious emotion, which makes his wrath all that more terrifying. Toby is more cool and collected, the Rocco Lampone, while Elliott is more of a Luca Brasi. In short, now that I am a single woman living alone it is necessary that I have assigned button men. And I do. If I called them at any point of the day or night and said, “There is someone in my house, will you come over and help me?” I know that they would be here without fail. They have an unquestionable loyalty, and if necessary they would kill another human being in my defense. That’s the stuff that puts people in the Family.

Then there are those who are unworthy. For example, the other night my friends and I were at a restaurant in downtown Royal Oak for Elliott’s birthday. We run into this guy, Ted Helms. Ted Helms is a friend from college. Josh adored him and he used to be close to the rest of us. The year after Mathews and I
graduated from college (Josh was a year ahead of us) Mathews told Josh he was gay. Josh was the first person Mathews came out to. I was the second. Then slowly Mathews started telling more and more of our friends. Everyone was incredibly supportive. Ted Helms, however, is the only person who told Mathews that it is not okay for him to be gay. Ted sent some ridiculously ignorant e-mail saying something about how this is Mathews’s “choice” and Ted does not agree with it. He said he will never agree with it and he thinks it is morally wrong. Ted also said he does not want to hear anything about Mathews’s “gayness” in the future. What a fucking prick. So while we are out, Battersby, Maggie, and I see Ted Helms. Battersby and Maggie are both incredibly intelligent and graceful. However, in addition to these lovely qualities, they are both also highly confrontational. In every group of friends, there is at least one person who looks for a fight, who likes to mouth off after a few drinks and see who’s in the mood. In
Romeo and Juliet
it’s the character Mercutio. Everyone has a Mercutio. Battersby is Mercutio with curly brown hair and a manicure. Maggie also has a few of these tendencies. We have always said that Maggie has the identical personality of her miniature dachshund, Lennie: little dog, big attitude. In short, they both find it impossible to be fake to people. We see Ted Helms. We are shocked he showed up to hang out with Mathews and his friends. We see him chat with Mathews, like everything is cool again. Before he’s within earshot, Batterbsy stirs her drink and calls him a “fucking asshole.” Maggie mutters something under her breath about how it is “certainly egregious of him.” Once he gets up to us, they greet him in that cold, snooty way that most females are capable of, and then Battersby explains to him that “we’ll be moving to another table.” Later on, I have the following conversation with Mathews.

“Mathews, Ted is out of the Family.”

“What?”

“Ted Helms is out of the Family. He has disgraced you.” Mathews gives me this weird look like he wants to say, “Why are you talking like that?” but he doesn’t. I continue. “Maggie, Battersby [who are both ironically Irish, therefore fitting the character of Tom Hagan, the non-Italian consigliere], and I have discussed it. He is not one of us anymore.” Mathews puts his drink down and tells me something to the effect of “it doesn’t have to be like that.” I nod my head and let him think that, but I don’t agree. Mathews is a kinder person than me at this point in our lives, but the strange thing is I don’t feel guilty about being so mean to people. I wish he agreed with me. I want to yell at him and say, “The Don would be disappointed in you!”

So now I embrace a sense of absoluteness when it comes to friendships. I know that the absoluteness, in part, has also stemmed from my own frustration when people who know me seem to be stupefied in the presence of my grief. One of the most shocking side effects of being recently widowed is how frequently people avoid me. Take, for example, Melissa Murphy. Melissa and I went to high school and college together. She is friends with Mathews and his fraternity guys (again, Mathews is too nice to turn her away). A few days ago I saw Melissa at the gym. She saw me, made eye contact, and before I could say hello or make conversation, her eyes shifted and she darted the other way. Lame. I am tired of being treated like a leper. It pisses me off. So many times I have seen people who know me, who know what happened to me, and they walk away. They are scared or afraid or just too dumb, so they let me see them walk away. A few days later I run into Melissa again at a restaurant. She looks at me, surprised to see me, and says, “Hey, Natalie, was that you I saw at the gym the other day?”
Oh come on
, I think to myself.
Give me a fucking break. You looked right at me
. I
reply, maintaining strong eye contact and no friendly break of a smile, “Yeah, that was me.” She tosses her blond hair back and uncomfortably adjusts her necklace and says, “Oh, right, yeah, I saw you, but I didn’t know if it was you, but I thought it was you, but like I didn’t want to say hi if it wasn’t you.” I let her finish completely. I don’t interrupt because I want her to know just how stupid she sounds. Finally, she stops talking and looks at me for approval. “Yeah, it was me,” I say again. But the subtext is, you’re a rude biatch. I walk away, again, looking for my table, the table where only Family members can sit.