The After Wife (23 page)

I held my hand up to quiet her as he opened the watch to show me a picture of a young girl, maybe Ellie’s age. She had black bangs, a round face, green eyes with dark lashes. Little Aimee was delighted with the person taking the picture.

“He’s showing me a picture, Aimee. Inside a pocket watch …”

“A pocket watch …”

“A green-eyed little girl with black bangs and the biggest smile I’ve ever seen.”

Aimee gasped. “I’m wearing a white dress with a sailor collar,” she said, starting to cry. “Poppy.”

“You look so happy, Aimee.”
I’d never seen her look so happy. Or even, rather happy. Maybe not even mildly satisfied
.

“My grandfather took that picture,” Aimee said. “A year later, he was dead of a stroke. My family fought over his money. Nothing was ever the same. Ever.”

“What’s his name?” I asked Aimee.

“George,” she said. “George Cannon. I knew him as Poppy. Tell him I miss him. I can’t see him, but I can feel him. I swear I can.”

“Mr. Cannon,” I said, watching him. He’d heard her.

“I’m sorry,” he said, mouthing the words. “I’m sorry.”

“Aimee, your grandfather … he’s sorry.”

There was more. It was difficult for him to get the words out, difficult for me to understand. Aimee reached her hand out to where her grandfather was sitting. He reached back, their fingers interlocking. He was fading quickly. “He wished he could have protected you …,” I told her. “Aimee? He wants you to know that. I’m not sure I understand—”

“My stepfather, Hannah,” Aimee whispered. “He said he’d hurt my mother …”

My hand went to my mouth, as I watched his face. I reached out and touched her. “You were born happy, Aimee.” I repeated his words. “Aimee, you were his little girl, his ray of sunshine. He’s
worried that you will never know, never believe … never be happy again.”

He was gone. Spice started barking, as though beckoning him back. Aimee rolled onto the floor and curled up, her shoulders shaking as she sobbed. I sank to the ground and held her.

“I didn’t know, honey,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

I stared up toward the ceiling, as I rocked Aimee back and forth.
Was I helping people with this “gift”? Or hurting them?

Over the next few weeks, Tom and I set more coffee dates, entirely by text. I felt very modern, and slightly confused.

“Does this say ‘I don’t care if you ever ask me out on a proper date but I want to look hot anyway’?” I asked Jay and Aimee, as I modeled my wares in my kitchen, black tights and a snug white v-neck T-shirt, showing the bit of skin that hadn’t been hit by the blotchy, crepey, saggy trifecta.

“Foresooth, describeth yonder knave.” Jay was feeding Ralph, whose coat had been tie-dyed to resemble a mating seahorse. Jay usually slips into Olde English after attending the Renaissance Faire, but that was months away. Some costume designer’s birthday party at the Shangri-La Hotel rooftop on Ocean over the weekend had affected the knave’s braineth. He was doing everything humanly possible, including speaking dialect that sounded idiotic, to forget Hidalgo.

“Really nice. Single dad. Three daughters, one more beautiful than the next. Banker, frat boy, recovered Republican. He says words like ‘gosh.’ And, he’s sporty.” I grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl on my chopping block. “In other words, if our spouses hadn’t died, we wouldn’t have looked twice at each other.”

“Sounds romantic,” Aimee said as she ate breakfast, appearing quasi-Parisian in a silk robe, her hair in a loose bun.

“Prithee, m’lady, whither thine coffee-mate moveth from our regal Starbuckeths to handjobeth in backseat of chariot?” Jay asked.

“We’re coffee-mates,” I said, as Aimee daintily ate a piece of
toast. Her skin looked translucent. “Radiation is so working for you.”

“Hi, kids,” Chloe said, as she joined us, wearing white cotton yoga pants and top. “Do you really think you should be drinking so much coffee? It’s bad for your prostate.”

“Please tell me you put that on your blog,” Aimee said, without looking up. “How’s Sergeant Billy?”

Should I break it to her? “I think my prostate’s just fine, Chloe.”

“Sergeant Billy is fine. He’s off the Israeli Army kick for now,” Chloe said. “Hannah, make sure the coffee’s organic. And fair-trade.”

“That stuff tastes like melted wax,” Aimee said.

“Everything tastes like melted wax to you, Aimee,” I said. “It’s the aftereffects of the radiation and Russian vodka.”

“Not true,” Brandon said, as he walked in. “Aimee loved my banana oatmeal muffins this morning. She needs the potassium. My mom underwent radiation treatment a few years ago, so I’m up on this stuff. Plus, she hasn’t had a drink in two weeks.”

Aimee turned a deep purple-red found only in sea urchins.

“Maybe I’ll just have green tea,” I said.

“Good choice!” Chloe clapped her hands together. Things like this excited her.

“Have whatever you want,” Aimee said. “It’ll end badly, but you might as well have fun, no matter how brief.” Apparently, the visit from Poppy hadn’t improved her outlook on life.

“Whatsoevereth is your problem, fair maiden?” Jay asked.

“My problem?” Aimee asked, her hair falling around her face. “Besides cancer?”

“Boringeth!” Jay said, waving his hand.

Aimee took another bite of toast. “Well, maybe I’m just an old has-been,” she finally said. “Actually old, never-was, has-been.”

We all stared at her. No one moved a muscle.

“Quit begging,” Brandon said. Instead of cracking Brandon upside the head, Aimee started laughing. The rest of us felt safe enough to follow suit.

“Funny
and
hot,” a delighted Jay commented. “Who knew our little Branny had it in him?”

* * *

Days later, Aimee and Brandon were in my cramped living room putting up a Christmas tree that had gone missing from Rockefeller Center.

“Stop. No. To the left.” Aimee waved her hands from where she was laid out on the couch as poor Brandon maneuvered the tree around. “No … no … not right. Put it back where it was, I think—”

“The White House called,” I said, leaning against the wall. “They want their tree back.”

“That’s perfect,” Aimee said, ignoring me. “That’s good. Wait. To the right, now. Branford, come on.”

“Branford?”

“I just call him that,” Aimee said.

“Can you tell she’s feeling better?” I said to Brandon.

Brandon groaned and moved the tree. “I think I liked it better when she wasn’t talking to me.”

Ellie had awakened me at six in the morning with the exciting news (according to her advent calendar) that “Turtle Dove Day” was upon us. Meanwhile, Aimee had overdosed on the Christmas decorations. She’d bought nativity crèches, wreaths, tablecloths, indoor/outdoor lights, ornaments, and centerpieces at Michael’s, the crafts store, and nailed seven Christmas stockings to the mantel.

“I don’t know if I even like Noble Fir,” she was saying to Brandon, as my phone started vibrating. “I might prefer the Scotch Pine.” Brandon collapsed on the floor.

I stepped over him, and took the call. It was Tom.

“Want to see the crèches on Ocean Avenue?” he asked. “I take my girls every year. Christmas was Patchett’s favorite holiday.”

“Sure,” I said. I was not surprised that Patchett loved Christmas. So did John, especially after Ellie was born. Every overly decorated, pine-scented year with him, I was reminded of what Carrie Fisher once said: “No one loves Christmas like the Jews.”

* * *

“Mixing families already? Too soon,” Chloe clucked, as she watched me getting ready to witness Jesus’s Birth. “My readers would have a definite problem with this.”

“She would?” Aimee asked sweetly.

“Are jeans Baby Jesus–appropriate wear?” I asked, as I slipped on my trusty bootcuts, a jacket, and tennies. “Look, I don’t know if it means he’s serious or not serious at all. Probably the latter. He hasn’t even kissed my cheek yet.”

“Just go,” Aimee said. “Enjoy yourself.”

“It’s a bad idea,” Chloe said, “to expose your children to the idea of you two living happily ever after.”

“Like your marriage?” Aimee pointed out. “Or do we call that Happily Never After?”

I parked on Georgina, and Ellie and I walked toward the Palisades, where the birth of Jesus was set up in wooden booths using neat and tidy, easy-to-remember steps.

Tom was already there with his three tow-headed girls. The first was tall, with braces and pin-straight hair. She was the strong, serious one. The middle girl had curls, her father’s dimples. And the mischief in her mother’s eyes. The baby was seven, all jutting elbows and knees, her hair in a ponytail, her mouth pulled tight, holding on to her father’s hand. This one was fragile. Ellie, whom Jay had dressed in a newsboy cap and riding boots, ran up and showed off her Spanish to the girls, counting backward from
diez
.

Together, we navigated the stretch of the nativity scene, crowded with people taking pictures, and cars cruising slowly past along Ocean Avenue, where passengers could view Jesus and Friends from the comfort of their hybrid SUVs.

Twilight drifted toward the cliffs above the Pacific. Palm trees swayed in shadow against the sky as the wind picked up. Tom and I watched the girls play tag in ragged silhouettes. I felt content, yet sad. My emotions were schizophrenic. The girls wheeled and danced while I smiled, held back tears, and shivered. Because
of the cold. And because I knew we were being watched. I was learning.

Nothing gets past the dead.

John the Departed noticed that I was starting to wear makeup.

“You’re wearing lip gloss,” he had said one night, the week before. “And you colored your hair.”

I touched my hair, then wiped the back of my hand against my mouth. “I just wanted to feel … normal.”

“It’s that kid, the manny, isn’t it?” John said.

“Brandon? Oh, honey, I heat soup for him, I don’t sleep with him. He’s like the Teutonic deity I never had.”

“I watch them play,” John said. “I watch him swing Ellie … I listen to her laugh and talk … and it kills me. I mean, if I weren’t already dead enough. I die all over again.”

“I understand, John. I do.”

“Hannah … her memories of me will be replaced by him.”

“Never, honey. That’ll never happen.”

“It’s true.” John sighed. “Ellie doesn’t even want me to read to her anymore. Sometimes he reads to her. And he’s good at it. He cares. I feel it. Like his Knuffle Bunny—he acts out all the parts. It’s disgusting.”

“Honey, I know,” I said. “It’s unfair beyond all comprehension.”

I didn’t tell him about Tom yet. I couldn’t.

“I miss you so much sometimes that I stop breathing,” I said, instead. And it was true, too. “It’s as though my body shuts down for a moment so I can die, too. And I wanted to die so badly when you left. But I can’t die. I don’t have that choice. Ellie took that away from me the moment she was born. Sucks to be me, having to be alive and all.”

I’d noticed that just lately, John was becoming more visible. I could see his outline and occasional glimpses of his hands, his shoulders, his hair … just enough to torture me with the memory of his body. It’d been months since we’d made love that last time, the last morning, his last morning.

“John … do spirits have … you know … do they do it?”

“What do you mean?”
Dead husbands, just as obtuse as live ones? Yes
.

“Do they … you know … have sex?”

“Well … I haven’t.”

“What do you mean, you haven’t?”

“I mean, I haven’t. I’m pretty sure some of the others have.”

“But you don’t have bodies—”

“It’s more of a mental thing.”

“Okay … so have you mentally fucked anyone lately?”

“Were you always this crazy?”

“No. I’m definitely crazier now. I talk to dead people.”

“I loved you in life and I love you in the afterlife. What more do you want from me?”

I watched his outline, swaying in and out of focus with the breeze.

“I don’t know, honey,” I said. “I’m going to bed … I’m kind of tired.”

“Have you been looking for it, Hannah?”

“Looking for what?” What did he mean?
Sex?

“The Range Rover.”

“I’ll call Ramirez,” I said, “first thing tomorrow morning.” I threw a kiss to the breeze, but John was already gone. I turned toward the kitchen, my guilty soul knowing I couldn’t wait a lifetime for a bout of lovemaking, mental or otherwise.

Dead people pop up out of nowhere. Talk about distracting. Cold bursts of air, chimes that only I hear, lost keys, windows slamming, birds suddenly taking off in flight. Try keeping a line of thought when there’s always someone trying to get your attention. I felt like a mother of twelve, except I couldn’t even lock myself in the bathroom to get away. I tried iPods and headsets that are used on aircraft carriers. I tried mantras. I tried running to get away from them. Running! It turns out there are ghosts who used to run marathons—a skinny guy in his late forties, had a heart attack at the
last L.A. marathon right before the finish line at the beach—talk about bitter, that one.

I had opened a portal to the other side, but was not fully equipped to handle the logistics. It’s not like I can hire an assistant, even if I had the money. I can’t handle my own living logistics, much less the needs of the dearly departed. It’s all I can do to get my kid to school on time.

“Play it again, Mommy,” Ellie—dressed for her nursery school’s Christmas Pageant wearing a thin hairband and a red velvet dress with a wide sash—requested from her car seat. John’s R. Kelly CD. How many times can I hear “I’m a Flirt” before someone gets hurt? Apparently, millions.

“You don’t want to rehearse ‘Away in a Manger’?”

Ellie shook her head. “I know that, cold.”

“Fine,” I said to Ellie before turning the woman sitting next to me. “Can you get that?”

Hold up
, I thought. Who’s this lady in the passenger seat? She looked in her fifties, wearing a green smock and wide-brimmed hat, with faded red hair. She was holding gardening shears. I slammed on the brakes just in time to avoid a Latino woman pushing a baby stroller across Wilshire.