The Year of Second Chances, page 9
“What can I get you, Pam?” Julie asked. “White? Red?”
“Gin, please,” Pam said, with a possibly European curl in her speech, no change in her expression. “Botanical. With a twist of lemon.”
Marcy sprung to life, calling over one of the caterers and relaying Pam Chomsky’s order.
“Who is Barbara?” Pam called, her voice barely above a whisper. She looked at the walls as if they had animated, the rest of us following her gaze.
“She’s starting already?” one of the women asked.
“Is there a Barbara here?” Pam repeated. “Called Babs?”
A stunned voice sounded. “I’m Barbara.” Near the sink, a tall angular woman who I hadn’t met yet was holding up her hand. “My hubby called me Babs. I can’t believe it.”
“He’s here,” Pam Chomsky said, her tone lighter now, almost conversational. “He says that you’re doing a good job with the boys.”
Gasps and utterances of Oh, my god. Across the room, Marcy did a quick sign of the cross and put her manicured hand on her mouth, shaking her head.
“That means a lot to me,” Barbara said, smiling through the tears collecting in her eyes. “It’s hard raising two boys alone, so thank you, hubs.” She gave a little self-conscious laugh and looked vaguely toward the ceiling.
“Okay, there had to have been at least one Barbara,” I muttered to Audra beside me. “And Babs is a very common nickname.”
“I suppose,” Audra replied, but she was twiddling her ring, looking as awestruck as the rest of the group.
We migrated to the formal dining room, which had been outfitted with enough white candles to be a fire hazard. It also appeared Julie had recently used her sage, casting the arched ceilings with a sweet, smoky haze. Marcy called for quiet. The Sisters in Grief placed their sacred objects in front of them: Marcy’s cuff links, Julie’s photograph. One woman had brought a comb. I slunk to the farthest chair from Pam, hoping to stay out of her line of sight, feeding Gerard pieces of shrimp under the table.
At the head, Pam took a sip of her gin and sat with her hands palms down on the tablecloth. She looked to her right, her eyebrows furrowing.
“I’m getting an H,” she said. “Do we have an H? A Hank, or Henry?”
Henry was the grandfather of Kelly, it turned out, being relayed the profound and highly personalized message of Think of me at the holidays.
“The holidays were special to us,” Kelly informed the group, dabbing her eyes with her napkin. “That’s the only time I got to see him when I was a little girl.”
It appeared that spouses were not the only people present. That, or Pam Chomsky had shot with an H name for a husband and landed on the board with a grandpa. The next few visitations were right on target. Audra, it seemed, had been twiddling with her ring because she had been remarried, and she sought the approval of her late husband for her new spouse. Julie’s ghost, Darlene, referenced the Joni Mitchell song they danced to together after their civil-union ceremony in the ’80s. Robert had also made an appearance, advising Marcy to go back to work and open her own law practice. “You bastard,” Marcy had said, her lips trembling as she held his ashes near her throat. “You knew I wanted to. You knew I was getting bored.”
I was just about to excuse myself when Norma, the oldest member of the group, called out, interrupting a long silence. “Excuse me, hello. Is there a Mike? It’s getting late, and I need to go to bed soon.”
Pam looked affronted. I had a hard time holding in my laughter.
“He’s been moving things on my dresser. Ask him,” Norma continued, gesturing to Pam. “Ask him if he moved my lotion.”
“No Mikes,” Pam said, annoyance at the edge of her voice. She sipped her gin.
“He’s there.” Norma blew her nose. “Probably hiding.”
“If we could have quiet, please,” Pam said. “Thank you.” Now, her head was cocked to her left. “Gabriel,” she said. “The politician. Gabriel.”
A few of the women—including Marcy—shot me a significant look. Go on, she mouthed, her eyes wide.
I leaned forward to wave, giving the medium a small smile. “Nice Facebook research,” I said under my breath. Tammy’s recent post about Gabe had been publicly visible, after all.
Pam Chomsky kept her steady gaze on me. “He’s here, but I can sense you’re hesitant to speak to him. Is that right?”
Marcy’s membership with the Minnesota bar had expired—that was public record, too. Julie had probably let slip about the Joni Mitchell song. “I’m just observing. Thanks, anyway.”
Pam raised her thin, blond eyebrows. “He has a message for you, if you want it.”
All the women at the table had turned to look at me, even Norma. This performance meant something to them. Marcy might even change her life because of it. They wanted to believe desperately, even if I didn’t. I could play along.
“Sure.” I sat forward and folded my hands on the table. “Do your worst.”
“He says . . .” Pam began, pausing for dramatic effect, and the room held its breath “. . . Keep going.”
My heart skipped a beat. From across the smoky room, I tried to examine Pam more closely, searching her gray-blue eyes for deceit. Her expression offered nothing, her stare remaining eerie and colorless, watching the space behind me. Still, keep going was a pretty generic phrase of encouragement. Lucky guess. “Is that all?” I asked.
“No. He’s saying something about a path or a road. I see a field and a path. A maze? You turned the wrong direction.”
Acute nausea took a hold of my stomach, a combination of fear and shock and, against my will, delight.
Now, she looked directly at me. For the first time all night, it seemed, the medium allowed herself a hint of amusement. “But he says not to worry. You’ll find your way.”
I did not stay to reflect and dissect after the medium finished her session, though I was tempted when cheesecake bites and coffee were served. Marcy saw me out, giving me a tight, long hug and several dessert samples on a foil-wrapped plate. Gerard sat at her feet, looking up at me hopefully.
“I’ll bring your plate back,” I promised as I zipped my coat.
“Of course. We can talk about what happened in there.” Marcy leaned close, her look conspiratorial, her breath sweet with wine. “Did you see the look on Kat’s face when you got a message and she didn’t? And I think Audra might be having second thoughts about her new marriage.”
I wondered if the other Sisters talked as much about Marcy as she talked about them. Maybe Pam Chomsky imitating the ghost of Robert was right: it was time for her to occupy her brilliant mind.
As I hit the highway, the medium’s words returned, along with the image of her little smile, almost as if she relished my disturbance, victory over the resident skeptic. And now I had run away, afraid to let her see me shaken among all the other women, afraid that their reverent gushing and follow-up questions would rub off on me, setting me more off-kilter than I already was. I still didn’t know if it was real, still couldn’t quite let my heart take the lead from my head. But I did know what it was like to live in an empty, old farmhouse. What it was like to wake up in the middle of the night to creaks and bangs as the wood grew and shrunk, and wind with a vengeance, playing the columns of the porch like a fiddle. I knew the power of a lonely person’s imagination, looking out into the country dark and wishing so desperately for another human presence, shadows begin to form. So I turned up a Carly Rae Jepsen song loud enough to drown out my thoughts.
When I reached home, my headlights swung across the old fir tree line and hit a figure sitting on my stoop. I jumped in my seat, slamming on the brakes. Then I squinted, recognizing the hulking form behind the raised hand, which shielded his eyes from the beams.
I opened my door and called out to him. “Levi? What the hell?”
“Hey, Robin. Sorry. I called, but you must have been driving.”
I looked at my phone. Indeed, Levi had left me a voice mail and a few texts. “Oh. I had it on Silent. I was at a thing.”
“Yeah, I stopped by the restaurant, thinking maybe you were there. And your mom said you’d be home pretty soon, so . . . Can you turn off your lights, please?”
“Whoops. Sorry.” I turned off the engine and gathered my dessert, glancing at Levi as I passed him on the porch. “Want some cheesecake?”
“Uh . . . Normally I’d say yes, but I’ve been off the refined-sugar train recently.” He patted his belly. “Christy has me eating healthier.”
“Who’s Christy?” I asked as I tossed my coat on the couch. Then I remembered: last time we spoke, he’d said something about “seeing this person for a while.” This must have been her.
Christy was a massage therapist, Levi told me. She was a vegan, she wrote freelance articles for health magazines, she had him taking walks and practicing mindfulness. I tried not to smile as I felt my eyes involuntarily roll, digging into my cheesecake. “That’s cool. So, to what do I owe the, uh—” I nodded toward the porch “—drop-in?”
“God, it’s been forever since I was here,” Levi said, ignoring my question. He was standing at a stretch of wall next to the TV, where Gabe had hung his Key to the City of Brokenridge. Levi ran his fingers across the brass. “He was so goofy about this. I mean, I know he worked hard, and it meant a lot for him to get recognized, but remember that day of the ceremony? He wouldn’t even set it down. He was walking around, like—” Levi turned to me, his eyes pretend-wide, his voice high “—Here’s my new toy, everybody!”
I laughed, my mouth full of cheesecake. I hadn’t noticed then, but Levi was right. Gabe had held the plaque under his arm all day. “Yeah. Pretty cute. Okay, so you’re off sugar. What about a . . .” I set my plate on the counter and scanned the fridge. “A diet something? Diet Dr. Pepper?”
“No. No, thank you.”
“Water? Coffee? You want a weird herbal tea that Juana left here in 2013?”
“I’m good.” He was pacing between the front door and the TV, picking up random objects from the bookshelves and wall hooks, examining them and setting them back down.
“At least sit.”
“I’ll sit,” he said and pulled up a kitchen stool to the island.
I pulled up an adjacent stool. “What’s the occasion?”
“Can’t I just come here out of the goodness of my own heart?” he said, but he couldn’t get through the question without breaking into an uncomfortable laugh.
I let out my own laugh. “Is this a guilt thing? Like, I saw my best friend’s poor, sad widow lose her shit at Target, and now I feel bad type of thing?” I bit into another mini cheesecake. “Because that is not necessary. I’ll have you know that I just came from a gathering of friends.”
He shifted in his seat. “So you were out with friends, huh? Are you, like, dating?”
My face must have done something hilarious, because Levi burst out laughing.
“What?” I asked as his giant frame shook. “Why? I’m not—” I sputtered. “It’s none of your business. And no, for the record. Not anymore. Why? Are you mad about it, or something?”
“No, it’s good, it’s good!” Levi said, assuring me as he recovered from the laughter. “I hope you are. I’m glad you are. If you are.”
“What is it to you?”
“What is it to you?” he repeated in a mafioso accent. “I like this Robin.”
“I swear to god, Levi. I have three more cheesecake bites and Halloween: Resurrection to get to. I am out of patience.”
Levi sighed, staring at the floor.
I knew that look. The bad-news look. “What?” I demanded.
Levi threw up his arms. “I just don’t know how to say it. Like, okay . . .” He rubbed his chin, his gaze back on the floor. “I got an email from Gabe.”
The bite of cheesecake I was chewing froze in my throat. I swallowed it on instinct, coughs erupting as I struggled to find air. “What?”
“Are you okay?” Levi had darted up from his seat to stand near me, his hands hovering a few inches from my back, not sure what to do.
“I’m fine,” I said, wheezing. I coughed again. “Wrong pipe. What did the email say?”
“A lot of stuff,” Levi said. “But one of the things it said was that I should check up on you. I know, it’s crazy,” he added, watching my face. “But it’s true.”
“I believe you,” I choked out, pounding my chest. So he must have received a timed email, too. The assurances that it was authentic. The pleas to move on, though I wasn’t sure Gabe needed to tell Levi to find a new best friend. “And I don’t need someone to check on me,” I sputtered again, and a tingle in my throat sent me into more spasms.
“Clearly,” Levi said, gesturing to my coughing fit. He fetched me a random coffee mug full of tap water and waited, watching me with those houndlike eyes.
I recovered. “So that’s why you’re standing in my kitchen at eleven o’clock on a Sunday night, asking me if I’m dating? You’re checking up?”
A smile peeked through Levi’s cautious expression. “Kind of. I asked about the dates because I saw you on Bubbl.”
The brief shot of embarrassment at the thought of Levi coming across my profile was quickly shoved aside. “You’re on Bubbl? I thought you and Christy were all, you know . . .” I made lewd gestures with my hands “. . . feeding each other vegetables.”
“We are. I’m not on Bubbl. I saw you on Bubbl because . . .” Levi looked uncomfortable but seemed to recover. “There was a link to your profile in Gabe’s letter.”
“Excuse me?” Come on, I admonished my husband silently. Isn’t dating as a widow embarrassing enough? Now you have to bring in the peanut gallery?
“Is it really you?” Levi asked, beginning to smile.
“Yes, it’s me.” I avoided his eyes. “Stop smiling like a dork. It’s a favor. He sent me something, too.”
Levi watched as I pulled up my email app and found my own special letter. I slid him my phone across the counter.
Levi skimmed. “Wow.” He examined the screen closer. “Interesting,” he muttered. He set the phone on the counter and slid it back. “So you decided to indulge the Gabemeister’s request, but no longer?”
“So? What’s your point?” I said, breaking into another cheesecake bite, chewing this one more carefully.
“I don’t have a point. I—” Levi seemed to shore himself up. “Maybe I could help? I’ve been on Bubbl way too many times. I could probably relate to, uh, your struggles.”
“Ha!” Now it was my turn to burst out laughing. “Hell no.” I pointed to his front pocket, where I could see the outline of his own device. “Let me see yours.”
“Hey, now. Buy me dinner first.”
“Shut up. Your email from Gabe. I want to see what he said about me.”
“It’s personal.”
I scoffed. “I showed you mine!”
“Yeah, um . . .” Levi looked away, clearing his throat. “You just have to trust me.”
I stared at him, waiting for him to give in, but he just stared back, so I began to make us both a pot of weird herbal tea. I was too tired to worry about his sudden need for privacy. Maybe he just didn’t want me to scroll through his inbox and see all the professional-wrestling newsletters he was subscribed to—according to Gabe, it was a lot. And now that Levi had finally told me why the hell he was here, I was feeling more at ease. Slightly less insane. I wasn’t the only one being haunted. As I set a steaming mug smelling of grass and dirt in front of him, Levi cleared his throat again.
“So you want to meet up or something?” Levi put the tea to his lips. “Ow! Shit. That’s hot.”
“You have some sage wisdom about how to avoid fuckbois?”
Levi smiled knowingly. “You already know the term fuckboi—good.”
I shrugged. “I guess it can’t hurt. Theo is probably tired of me sending him screenshots.”
“Whatever you want, dude. I think Gabe would at least want you to have fun with this. That’s the least we can do to do right by that goofy tall drink of water over there.” He pointed to the Key to the City hanging on the opposite wall.
“Cheers.” I held up my mug and clinked it to Levi’s. We sipped, cringing at the tea’s vegetal taste. Then I had to smile. “Goofy,” I repeated.
Gabe had been goofy. So naive in so many ways, but that’s what made him lovable. And frustratingly effective. He never took into account anything, or anyone, in the way of what he wanted. What Tammy had mistaken for listening I knew was dreaming. I had a deep sense that I wouldn’t be able to rest until I had done what he’d asked. Not that I believed he was a poltergeist of some kind, interfering, blowing on my neck, guiding my hand, no. He was an inextricable force in my world, and I was living in the wake. I had tried to float back to stasis, but the ripples kept coming, kept showing up on my doorstep. As they say, energy never dies. It has to go somewhere.
Levi took another pained sip. “Say, friend,” he said, looking guiltily back and forth from me to the cup. “Do you have any sugar?”
9
I remain convinced that . . .
Nobody actually knows what the hell they’re doing.
Midway through a Thursday afternoon meeting on PowerPoint protocol and email etiquette, Marcy texted me that she had HUGE news. I paused my progress through a Honey Bun, wiped my sticky hands on my pants. Inspired by Robert’s posthumous encouragement, she typed, she was going to try and get her bar membership renewed and return to the legal profession. I wrote back with a protocol-breaking number of exclamation points.
So are you going to go into corporate law again? I texted. Or are you going to try something new?
Who knows??? I am open to the universe. I have another session scheduled with Pam, so we’ll see . . .
To this, I rolled my eyes and typed, You don’t have to pay hundreds of dollars an hour to be open to the universe, but I deleted it. Marcy sought her husband’s advice via a vaguely European con artist claiming to speak to the dead; I did it via email with the help of a giant bartender-slash-punk bassist. To each their own. Levi and I had made plans tonight for what he was calling a Bubbl master class, and the thought made the Honey Bun spin in my stomach. There was no reason I couldn’t back out, but I knew I wouldn’t. Some sort of contract had been invisibly signed on Sunday. Maybe because there was another person involved, holding me accountable. Maybe because I had exhausted the lineup of classic horror on all my streaming services, and the house was getting colder at night.
