Signs of Life (7 page)

I tell Moo about how my days and nights are so quiet except for Louise and Bug. Moo suggests I start listening to podcasts at night. She listens to a show called
This American Life
hosted by this guy named Ira Glass.

I go for a walk by myself and listen to an episode. The first show I download is called “Unconditional Love.” The episode is about a woman, Heidi, and a seven-year-old boy she adopted from Romania. Halfway through my walk I am crying all over myself. But the weird part is I don’t know exactly why I’m so upset. I’m upset because this kid spent seven years standing in a crib in an orphanage with no parents or grandparents or friends and that makes me really sad. Also, this Heidi woman wanted a child so badly that she adopted a son who was on the cusp of the most difficult age for a boy. And here I am pregnant with a perfectly healthy baby and wishing for a different life. All I want to do is call Heidi and invite her over. I just want to talk to her. I am obsessed with finding people who have seen the universe bare its ferocious teeth and I am entirely sick of people who seem to live free and easy.

No wonder I identify more with Italian mobsters than with the average pregnant woman. The Corleones and I are both entrenched in an ugly world of death. We both see the gruesome part of life that most people spend their lives trying to avoid.

•  •  •

This year Labor Day weekend begins at the end of August. I’m afraid to be alone for the weekend so I decide to go up north with my parents. My single friends will be going to bars and staying out late. My married friends will be going to barbeques with their in-laws. So I just leave to avoid the out-of-placeness and potential rejection.

On the way up north I sit in the back of my dad’s car. My dad drives and my mom sits in the passenger’s seat. Ads calls my dad’s cell phone, but I pick it up. I am in the middle of a conversation with Ads when we hit a dead zone. I hand my dad his phone back and announce that the call broke up. I know my dad is doing everything he can not to ask me, “Well, is everything okay?,” paranoid that perhaps Ads had to hang up because he got into a car accident or he was suddenly being held at gunpoint. He doesn’t ask this because he knows it will really piss me off. I’ve been a little touchy lately—not surprisingly—and I know my dad is consciously trying to give me space. A few minutes later, my mom’s cell phone rings. At first, she picks up my dad’s cell phone, whose ring is nothing like hers.

“That’s your phone,” he says.

“What?” She looks at him, as if he’s the idiot. Clearly the phone she is holding is
his
phone.

“No, the phone that’s ringing. That’s
your
phone.”

“Oh.” My mom sets my dad’s phone down and picks up her iPod, and for just a split second she almost brings it to her ear. Finally, she sets the iPod aside and finds her phone. I grab the phone to relay to Ads the entire ridiculous scenario of Mom almost answering her iPod.

“Stop it!” she yells from the front seat. “Stop watching me!” Ads and I rap for a few more minutes and then he remembers that he has something to tell Mom. So I hold the phone out to
Mom and say, “Here, Mom, Ads has a funny story.” My mom, who I instantly realize is engrossed in Dr. Joy Browne on her iPod, takes the phone and shuts it, leaving Ads waiting on the other line a bit confused.

“Mom!” I yell. She pulls her headphones out.

“What?” she says, again irritated that I am getting on her case for no good reason.

“Ads wanted to tell you a funny story.”

“Oh!” She laughs to herself and calls him back. “Ads, sorry hun.” I can’t hear him, but I know he is reminding her of the time she fell asleep when he was talking to her.

We stop at a Wesco gas station in Evert. I am relieved not only because I have to pee, but because I need a break from being eight months pregnant and sitting in the backseat. Moments later my mom and I are standing outside the car waiting for my dad. He walks to the car slowly, carrying his gas station purchases.

“Are you guys sure you don’t want anything?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say shortly. “Let’s go.”

“What did you get?” my mom asks.

“I got two Chunkies and a piña colada SoBe.” My dad pronounces it “Sue-be.” I roll my eyes at this, because it is obviously pronounced “So-be.” It is completely phonetic.

“Oh.” My mom sounds interested.

For the next several minutes of the drive, my dad offers my mom one of his Chunkies, which she initially rejects but then, after his pestering her, accepts. The same thing happens with the SoBe. He takes a sip and then hands it to her. Eventually, she drinks most of it, not realizing it, until the last sip remains.

“You can finish it,” my dad says.

“No, it’s too sweet for me,” she says, honestly not realizing
she has consumed most of his beverage. So to make her feel like she didn’t just take half of his gas station snack, he drinks the rest.

This is how it always works with my parents. At restaurants, gas stations, and wedding buffets. My mom always says she doesn’t want any and then steals his to make herself feel like she didn’t really eat it. As I sit in the car, I am initially frustrated by this. Why can’t my mom just buy her own Chunkies, her own piña colada SoBe? And then, with both grief and happiness coursing through me, I realize that this is how they are. Their actions, however minute, always involve each other. He knows she will take his food, which is why he buys two Chunkies. She knows he will have enough for her. This is what they have developed after thirty-two years of marriage. I am happy for them that they have little things like this, little ways to remind each other that they are there. I am sad that I may never have this again. Or perhaps that I did. I knew such a feeling. And now I don’t.

It’s not just the sight of my parents’ marriage that evokes this sense of emptiness. I feel like everyone in my life is normal and I’m different. I see women and men pushing strollers and all I feel is anger toward them. I just want to find another Heidi or another me. Maybe I don’t want to go shopping because all of the pregnant women at Baby Gap are wearing wedding rings, looking really happy. Maybe I don’t want to chat it up with everyone about my pregnancy because all I can think about is how Josh isn’t here. Maybe I channel all of my frustration toward my in-laws because the one person who is supposed to be dealing with them is gone, and that’s all I can think about when they call. I just want to be around people who aren’t normal anymore.

I look at my parents in the front seat. In so many ways they drive me crazy and they are a constant reminder that I never get
to have what they have. At the same time I know I am incredibly grateful for them. They have helped me in a way that I will never be able to repay. But that is the credo that holds the Family together. That is the strand that ties us to the Corleones. We both know that without the Family, we don’t stand a chance.

summer
is over and it’s time to go back to school. In some ways this is wonderful. I have to get dressed in the morning. I have to brush my hair and pick out shoes. I am so relieved that I had an entire summer to not think about my appearance, but starting each day with a direction and a destination is a good thing.

In other ways it’s really, really scary. I have practiced not crying in front of people for two months and somehow I have convinced myself that I will absolutely not present any of my inner feelings of weakness while at school. But teenagers are a lot like dogs in that they can sense things that others can’t. They know, they
know
, when a teacher is not on sturdy ground. And the thing is, I teach at a lovely school. We have wonderful
students, but they’re still teenagers. This year I decided to work part-time (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday) so I can stay home a few days a week when my son is born. I am teaching two sections of ninth-grade English and one section of eleventh-grade English. Ninth-graders are usually incredibly eager to please and try very hard to earn the approval of their teacher. I’m not particularly concerned about them. Eleventh-grade students, however, are typically very cynical and at this point in their high school careers are ready to question everything, especially the teacher and the text. They’re not dogs, they’re velociraptors.

We start the year with
The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Gatsby
was published in 1925, but it didn’t achieve its fame until after Fitzgerald passed away. The story takes place in New York during the 1920s—the Jazz Age (test question). Jay Gatsby is this hotshot bachelor who lives on the new-money side of the bay, and five years prior to when the story starts he was in love with a woman named Daisy. She loved him too, but he wasn’t from her socioeconomic playing field. So he goes off to war. She is sad but then meets this other guy named Tom Buchanan and he’s filthy rich (but a real jackass, as we later find out). Tom and Daisy get married and have a daughter. Well, you guessed it, five years later, Gatsby shows up and he’s made himself filthy rich in order to win back his golden girl. I won’t give away the ending, but you really should read it not only because it’s a good story, but also because Fitzgerald is basically a poet who writes novels. He’s the Kobe Bryant of 1920s literature. Finesse, it’s all finesse. (Hemingway is Shaquille O’Neal, but Fitzgerald is totally Kobe).

In chapters 5–7 of
The Great Gatsby
, Fitzgerald introduces (or begins to heavily emphasize) the theme of time. Jay Gatsby has been in love with Daisy for “five unwavering years” and even though she is married and has a child, Gatsby still believes that
they can make it work. Fitzgerald gives the reader all sorts of clues that Gatsby is living in the past. There are “period rooms” throughout his house. The only picture that Fitzgerald chooses to mention is of an old friend, Dan Cody, taken nearly twenty years ago. At one point the narrator, Nick Carraway, describes Gatsby as “an over-wound clock.” The most obvious reference to time is when Gatsby sees Daisy for the first time in the book. He is so nervous during their awkward meeting that he bumps into the clock on Nick’s mantel. It drops and Gatsby, the man who is determined not to let the events of five years ruin his dream, catches the clock and prevents it from breaking.

One of the most blatant references to Gatsby’s desire to go back in time is when he describes to Nick his ultimate plan to break up Tom and Daisy and marry Daisy the way it should have been. Nick remarks, “You can’t reinvent the past.” Gatsby replies by saying, “Can’t reinvent the past? Why, of course you can!”

In previous years I always got to this part and thought, wow, Gatsby needs serious therapy. How can an intelligent human being believe that you can actually go back in time? As one of my students today pointed out, it’s like in
Napoleon Dynamite
when Napoleon tries the time machine and the uncle wants to be a high school football star again. And it is. I always believed that Gatsby would, just as foolishly, try the time machine too. That’s how bad he wants to go back. Yet it’s one of the most basic laws of physics—the clock only goes forward; it is completely impossible to go back in time. And the people who want it to go back, or the people who think it can, must be entirely delusional. Gatsby, Napoleon’s uncle—don’t they know any better? Don’t they know that the past, present, and future can never collide?

But this year I feel like Gatsby and I have a whole lot more in common. We both had a dream. We both pictured our lives working out in certain ways. We worked and planned and spent years
trying to build a certain style of life. We both had visions of future Christmas cards, he with Daisy, and me with Josh and the kids. Gatsby pictured himself and Daisy, sitting on a blanket enjoying the scenery of West Egg, talking about nothing, just relieved at the company. I had pictured Josh and me, sitting on the dock at Elk Lake, Josh swinging our baby boy into the water and talking about tying flies for fly-fishing and hunting for frogs. But like Gatsby, there comes a moment when it settles in that all the things we’ve pictured will never happen. And we both think,
This is as happy as we can ever be
. If this person is not in our lives then there is nothing else to look forward to. There is no image of the future on which we can rest comfortably. That person (me, Josh; him, Daisy) is the “incarnation” of our dream. For both of us, the dream dies almost as quickly as it came.

You can’t reinvent the past. It seems so simple. But for me life has now been abruptly sliced into two categories. Before Josh died and after Josh died. And there are moments when I think that I can somehow go back. Until Josh died, I thought I understood what time was and how it worked. I thought I knew that you couldn’t go back. But death gives time a whole new meaning. I have days on which suddenly it will hit me, as if for the first time, and I will say to myself,
Oh my God. I’m never going to see him again
. Every time that thought comes to my mind, no matter when or where I am, it seems to be as painful as the first time. I can’t go back. I will never be able to go back. I know that even now, three months later, my brain hasn’t fully absorbed that concept. That’s what Gatsby and I also have in common. We can’t seem to swallow our own realities. Of course, it’s not like I’m cooking dinner for two and looking out the driveway waiting for his car to pull up, but I still don’t know if I get it.

A few weeks after Josh died I ordered return address labels that only had my name on them. Instead of
JOSH AND NATALIE
TAYLOR
they just said
NATALIE TAYLOR
. Around the same time, I took Josh’s name off of our checking accounts, and I immediately ordered new checks with only my name on them. Most notably, not even a month after losing Josh, I stopped wearing my wedding ring. I did this because I wanted everyone to know that I got it. I didn’t want
anyone
to think that I was in denial about his death (as if Consumers Energy or Comcast Cable care about whether or not I’m in denial). Months later, as I read
The Great Gatsby
again, I think about my return address labels, checks, and wedding ring. I don’t get it. I don’t understand what has happened. I just try to change things around me to help my brain along. But it doesn’t help.