My mother rushes over to me, grabs my head, shakes it like she"s listening for change in a piggy bank. "You! You, you, you, you!"
"Me, me. Me what?"
"You"re here."
"I live here." I eye the boxes in the corner. "But you"ve got to give me credit. I did a heck of a job trying to move out. Almost got there, too." I smile, hoping to break the awkwardness, though the awkwardness doesn"t seem to be coming from the fact that I got dumped at the altar.
"But you"re dead. Dead people don"t live."
"Funny. Yes, it felt like death. Heartbreak often does."
"But I had your funeral."
This is the moment when I realize that she may not be speaking metaphorically. Especially when she falls straight back and faints.
"Oh, wow . . ." I hurry to the kitchen and get a washcloth and then drag her to the couch and heave her up onto it. I drape the washcloth across her forehead and watch her breathe. "Come on, wake up. Wake up. I"m not dead." I prod her a little.
And that"s when I see a super skinny dude walking toward me, rolling an IV stand alongside himself, looking like a cautionary tale for some sort of vice that will eventually kill you.
I might not be dead. But maybe I"m going crazy.
The dude is so skinny his britches are hanging halfway down his backside, but not in a fashion-senseless sort of way. He"s got a belt and everything but they"re just too big for his small, skeletal frame.
The IV stand rattles loudly as he slips toward us. He weighs so little I can"t even hear his footsteps.
"Oh, man . . . she okay?"
"Who are you?" I stand up straight, bow my chest, but truthfully, I could totally kill this guy with my left pinky. If I blew hard, he"d fall down.
"I"m renting a room." He pitches a (by all standards, rather fat) thumb over his shoulder, toward the hallway. "The old lady"s daughter just died."
I swing my arm wide toward my mom, who is peacefully sleeping away. "She is not old. Yes, she is current-decade challenged, but she"s not old."
"She"s like a Ford Pinto in a dress. Who are you?"
"I"m the Pinto"s daughter." I sit on the edge of the couch next to Mom. n.o.body calls my mom a Pinto. I stroke her hand. She is so Pinto-ish though. But in a good way. You know when you drive down the street and see a Pinto carrying large pieces of plywood in the back and you realize your coupe could never do that? That"s my mom.
He huffs. "Well, welcome back from the grave. Does this mean I have to give up your twin bed? I already paid the rent for this month."
Mom"s eyes fly open. She taps my face lightly on the cheek. "You are here! Is it you?" Her taps suddenly turn into repet.i.tive slapping.
Skinny just stands there and watches like he is still waiting for an answer about his rent.
I feel like crying. "What is going on?"
Skinny gestures toward a stack of newspapers on the coffee table. "It is all over the news."
"What is?"
Skinny picks up a paper and reads. "Witnesses say the car plunged into the Hudson River. While authorities haven"t been able to find the body, the driver is presumed dead." He looks at me. "They should"ve said *allegedly presumed dead."" He turns the newspaper around. It"s front page. There are pictures! There"s one of me, my face as big as a playing card. "Gettin" dead got you famous, girl."
I grab the newspaper and read the caption: "Hope Landon of Poughkeepsie, Daughter of CiCi Landon, 31, Never Married."
My eyes quickly scan the article, which is two columns in length. Is that what happened to my car? Someone stole it? Admittedly, everything was fuzzy up to the potato farm.
I read quickly, eyeing all the quotes: "I"m not surprised she did it. She had a panic attack at my cake shop."
They"re quoting someone I don"t even know! My eyes dart from sentence to sentence.
"Today, on her wedding day, she was left at the altar by musician Sam Vanderbilt. Our department is handling this as a suicide," said the Poughkeepsie Police Department"s captain, Jerry Wilburn.
I turn to mom. "Tell me this is a joke! A nightmare! That I"m going to wake up!"
"Look," Skinny says, "do you think I like this IV stuck in my arm? Dripping incessantly? Do you hear that drip? Over and over. Drip. Drip. Drip. We all got our things, lady."
"Do you mind?" I say to him. "You can go now."
He turns and heads to my room, grumbling all the way about rent and Pintos.
Mom tries to sit up. "You should have been there for your funeral. We had azaleas, lilies, and a whole tree built out of greeting cards. Just for you."
"Mom, how could you think I killed myself?"
"Well, what do you expect me to think when you drive my car off a bridge?"
"I didn"t."
"Did you swim out the window? Sometimes it gets stuck."
"I didn"t crash the car. It was stolen . . ." I remember now, the girl in the purple jacket, racing by me . . . did she drive the car off the bridge?
Mom slaps my arm so hard it feels like a needle p.r.i.c.k. "I"m your mother. You let me think you were dead. Where"ve you been?"
I slump and sigh all at once. "Idaho."
"Why didn"t you call me?"
"Clearly you don"t have the humiliation gene, Mom. I didn"t call anyone."
"I shouldn"t have applied for your death certificate, huh?"
"I"m gone one month. One. And you rent out my room, have my funeral, and apply for my death certificate?"
"Upon grief I became extremely productive."
"Mom." I gaze at the boxes lining the walls. "Dad"s been gone for two decades and you still keep a closet of his stuff."
Suddenly mom grabs my hands, forcing them together. I don"t have to ask. I know what is coming next. "Good Lord, you said I could have the desires of my heart . . . be still, oh my heart, it worked on Hope. Now, how "bout bringing me her daddy? And a new hubby for Hope to share those gifts with?"
My head snaps up. "What gifts?"
Mom leaps off the couch and opens the coat closet. Gifts are shoved in there so tightly it looks like a wall of wrapping paper.
"Mom! Why didn"t you send the gifts home with the guests?"
She shrugs mildly. "Souvenirs? Speaking of . . . look what I kept!" She holds up the bride and groom that were supposed to be on top of the cake.
I put my head in my hands. This is too much for me to take. I"m overwhelmed with the idea that I was dead and everybody thought I was dead. Not just dead. Suicide dead. That"s a step below just plain old death.
Mom is beside me now, with her lanky arm wrapped around my shoulder. "There"s always a bright side, my dear. Always a bright side. The best part about Sam leaving you is that I get to keep you here with me."
My heart sinks so low I think it hits my bladder.
"I bet," she says with an excitable ring to her voice, "you can get your old job back!"
The doors swoosh open at the nursing home. I didn"t notice the smell much when I worked here, but now it"s making me nauseated. I hold my breath as I hurry to Mrs. Barrow"s office, which is down the hall from the cafeteria. I have to gasp for air about the time I pa.s.s the cafeteria, and I"m overwhelmed by a whole new set of smells-egg subst.i.tute mixed with the burnt smell of a coffee urn sizzling on a hot burner somewhere unnoticed.
I hurry as fast as I can and round the corner, bursting into Mrs. Barrow"s office the way n.o.body who is thought to be dead should ever burst into a former boss"s office. Luckily, I called earlier to let her know I was alive and wanted to see her.
Still, her mouth has dropped and her eyes are wide as full moons. I guess it"s kind of hitting me at this moment how dead people really thought I was. As I cautiously sit in the chair in front of her desk, she rises with the same slowness. Now she"s towering over me, not saying a word, just searching me up and down like I might vanish before her eyes.
"Hope . . ." It"s all she says.
I sit up straight and pretend this isn"t at all awkward. I put on my best "I"m-here-for-an-interview" smile so we can get on with business. I think about cracking some sort of "back from the dead" joke but Mrs. Barrow doesn"t seem like she"d be able to take it at the moment.
As slowly as she rose, she sits back down, both hands flat on her desk as if she might bolt at any second. Why isn"t my "all-is-normal" smile working?
"So," I say, "as I said on the phone, I was hoping we could talk about me getting my job back."
Mrs. Barrow relaxes a bit, tugging at a blouse that is gaping in all the wrong places. She"s got my folder out on the desk, looking it over for who knows what. I wonder if it has "dead" stamped across it anywhere.
"Hope . . ." She shakes her head ever so slightly. It"s not so much a shake as a wobble, like her head isn"t sitting quite right on her neck and it"s causing an imbalance. "You quit . . ." She presses her lips together like she might break into a low hum of some sort. "You told us you were moving . . . and then you died. You quit and died. You see my predicament?"
I nod, but Mrs. Barrow doesn"t seem to see mine. I"ve been dumped at the altar and declared dead by suicide. As predicaments go, I feel mine trumps hers. But you can"t say that at a job re-interview.
"Mrs. Barrow, I"ve worked here seven years. My grandmother is here." I clasp my hands together, hoping to either appear angelic or desperate.
She drums her fingers against the folder, pinky to thumb, over and over. "Well, you have been a model employee. The way you keep up with the laundry . . ."
"I fervently oppose laundry pileups."
"And the bed pans . . ."
"n.o.body is more enthusiastic about bed pans than I am."
Finally she sighs and closes my folder. My eye twitches a little as I watch her do it. The book has been closed on me once. It"s like she"s putting the lid on my coffin.
"I can check with H.R. about letting your replacement go." Mrs. Barrow smiles. She"s got the kind of smile that makes everything else on her face temporarily obsolete. Those big teeth gleam and twinkle. Her lips are spread wide and tight. And even as I return the smile, a sudden wave of doubt slips over me like a silky nightgown. I don"t think the smile makes it all the way to my lips. I only know this because Mrs. Barrow is now looking at me with the kind of expression that denotes alarm.
"You know what?"
She obviously doesn"t. Her eyebrows are raised halfway up her forehead like she can"t possibly antic.i.p.ate what"s going to happen next.
"Maybe I . . ." My heart is beating silly in my sternum. My palms are moist and spongy, like a higher-end cake mix. The air conditioning blows uncomfortably at my ankles. "Maybe I don"t want to be known as the Best Bed Panner for the rest of my life."
"But you are. You really are. I should"ve gotten you a plaque."
"Thank you, but I"m realizing even as I sit here-"
Mrs. Barrow is starting to look desperate. "No, really. I can check for you. Who else will rewrite the ladies" greeting cards for them? Who else will make them smile?"
I stand suddenly. Now I tower over her. "I"m an artist. A writer!" It"s all way too dramatic for a twelve-by-twelve office in a nursing home, but I"m having a moment. I"m having one of those life-changing revelations that you hope happens on top of a mountain or near a monument. She has a small plastic flag on her desk, held up by Snoopy while he stands on his doghouse. So I look at that. "This, here, it"s not what I planned to do."
Mrs. Barrow"s expression morphs back into that same expression she wore when I bolted into her office just a few minutes before. I stretch a charming smile across my face. "Why let a little thing like my pulse get between you and the new girl?"
I kneel by my grandmother"s wheelchair and hold her hand.
". . . and obviously I realize it"s very confusing, me having left, then died, then come back, and now I"m leaving again. People in their right minds are having trouble tracking with this. But the point is that I think I"ve found my way. For the first time in my life, Grandma, I think I"ve found my way."
"Okay."
"Yes. Yes! Okay indeed." I place the Columbine on her lap. "So, good-bye, Grandma."
"Okay."
I leave her room, trek down the same hallway I"ve trekked a hundred thousand times, and round the corner into the common room. Usually at this time, the residents are entranced by their soap opera, but there is an odd sight. They"re all reading newspapers. Some of them can"t even see.
I spot Gertie by her shoes, Reebok"s under swollen ankles. "Gertie?"
She lowers her newspaper and smiles at me. The other residents lower theirs too. Everyone is staring at me.
"Oh honey!"
I embrace her. "Hi, Gertie."
"I was so glad to have read in the paper that you"re not dead."
"No, I"m not de- . . . hold on. Paper? What do you mean, in the paper?"
Gertie hands me the newspaper, folded crisply and neatly the way I remember my dad reading it. I turn it over to see what she, and apparently everyone, is so enamored with.
There are the obituaries. And where normally there would be a large ad for funeral services or legal services or carpet cleaning, there I am, four inches tall, with a headline over my forehead: "Alive and Available!"
I gasp for the obvious reason-my mother has taken out an ad for me on the obituary page, where, of course, every hot-blooded male goes on the hunt for potential mates. But beyond that madness, she has managed to choose the quirkiest picture ever taken of me, one of those pictures where you"re managing to have a bad hair day and a momentary lapse in judgment on clothing choice and facial expression. It"s a complete train wreck. For no reason that is discernible, my arm is raised, and a shadow is cast right into my pit, looking like I"ve decided to go all Euro on my hygiene options.