Lingering

by Melissa Simonson

  Her thick pink lips parted as we stared at one another. It was too much to hope for that she’d just snore loudly and fall back asleep.

  “How can you talk to her if she’s dead?”

  III

  I lurched upright, grabbed the sides of the mattress, and pulled myself onto the foot of the bed. Kylie sat up, groping for her glasses on the bedside table.

  “It’s not her,” I said, holding out both quaking hands. “Not really.”

  She slid her glasses back into place. “Then what is it?”

  “It’s a machine that sounds like her.”

  Confusion rumpled her forehead, and I couldn’t blame her. What little girl could wrap her mind around something like this? “Why?”

  “Why?” I cast about the tangled mess my mind had become. “It’s kind of involved, Kylie, it has some technical aspects that would be hard to explain—”

  “No, I meant why are you talking to it?”

  And I knew right then I’d mistaken that confusion for concern. It. Nobody else could have phrased it so succinctly: I was talking to an it.

  “Because…because I just miss her so much.” I hated that pity swimming in her shiny eyes; I had to look away for a moment. “But you can’t tell anyone, Kylie. You can’t.” I reached out for her blanket-warmed little hand, clasping it between both of my own. “It’s got to be a secret.”

  She just gazed at me, her eyes overlarge and moist behind her lenses.

  I squeezed her hand tighter, linking our fingers, leaning in close enough to hear her fluttery breaths. “Do you promise?”

  “Why do I have to promise?”

  “Because people wouldn’t understand, they’d tell me it’s bad, or wrong. And it isn’t. It’s making me feel better. Not as sad. You understand? You get it, don’t you?”

  What the fuck kind of message are you sending this kid, Ben? my smarter self demanded. That death doesn’t have to be permanent, that it’s okay to use a crutch to limp your way through life? Nice going, asshole.

  She gave me an unwilling nod, her eyebrows colliding.

  “So you promise?” My ragged breathing sounded like Darth Vader’s in the silence. “Don’t make me beg, princess.”

  She returned the hand squeeze and nodded over our entwined fingers, a halo of staticky hair rising around her head like a crown of thorns. “I promise.”

  The movie theater in my mind woke after her grudging assent, conjuring images of shadowy concierges parting black curtains to usher me into yet another disaster.

  I smoothed her flyaway hair which crackled with electricity under my palm. “Time to go back to bed, okay?”

  She sunk back against the mounds of pillows, looking at me as though she’d never quite seen me clearly before.

  I stood at the stove beside my mother the next morning, flipping pancakes as she fried bacon, feeling Kylie’s eyes boring holes into my back. I shifted every now and then, and from my peripherals saw her at the kitchen table, teddy bear clutched in her arms, staring right back at me.

  “You’re so quiet, honey,” my mom told her, flicking a glance over her shoulder. “Do you feel okay?”

  My spine stiffened, but I didn’t chance a look at Kylie. I flipped a pancake too quickly and splattered batter all over the counter.

  “I’m fine.”

  “How many pancakes, princess?” I asked, too loudly, too cheerfully.

  “Just one.”

  My mom tipped a few strips of bacon onto a plate. I followed suit with the pancake and slid the plate in front of Kylie, joining her at the table. She fiddled with her fork, twisting it between her fingers, gaze trained on the puddle of syrup seeping into the pancake. I hadn’t expected a grade A poker face from Kylie, but this deafening silence was rightfully concerning my mother, who pulled out the chair next to mine, giving me a bewildered look through the steam ribboning to the ceiling from her coffee mug.

  “Maybe I should call—”

  I interjected forcefully, cupping my mother’s vein knotted hand with my palm. “Wanna go for a ride later, Kylie? Go to the bookstore or a movie, maybe?”

  “Okay,” she said glumly, as if I’d just offered her a ride to her own funeral.

  Mom gave me an I Hope You Know What You’re Doing look and sipped her coffee, twisting her hand beneath mine to lace our fingers together.

  A re we really going to a movie?”

  I caught Kylie’s shifty gaze in the rearview mirror. “We can if you want. I just wanted to talk to you.”

  “I didn’t tell Aunt Karen,” she said with a touch of indignation, belting her arms across her stomach and staring resolutely out the window. Of course she wouldn’t risk bad karma and break her promise by ratting me out to my mother, was I an idiot?

  “No, I know. Thank you.” I hooked a left and felt her eyes upon me again.

  “I want to talk to her.”

  I blanched, locking gazes with her in the mirror. Biting down my initial thought—and people in hell want air conditioning, kid—I said, “I’m sorry, Kylie, but I really can’t let you do that.”

  “Why not?”

  Sighing, I shielded my eyes against the blinding gold shot through the icy waters of the Quabbin Reservoir and shuffled through all the trump cards I had in my playbook. There was Because I Said So, I’m The Adult You’re the Child, Do As I Say Not As I Do—none fit right. Plus I remembered how mad it made me whenever my mother had played those cards in the past.

  “Because it wouldn’t be good for you.”

  “But it’s good for you?”

  “I never said it was good for me.” I cringed against the winter sunlight shattering off the icicles dripping down the bridge we traveled over and flipped down the visor.

  “You said it made you less sad. Why can’t I see if it makes me less sad?”

  Because it’ll make you crazy in the long run, I wanted to say. Because it’s like she’s some phantom you can’t see or touch. What wouldn’t I give to be able to touch her? There would come a time when this pale mimicry wouldn’t satisfy me any longer—what then? What would happen to me once I’d been driven mad by hopeless, useless, unproductive pining? A rubber room? Suicide, so as to truly join her? Surely carpal tunnel from the constant texting and third-degree burns on one side of my face from the phone calls I planned on making.

  It wasn’t just me in this anymore; a little girl with an impressionable psyche was saddled for the ride.

  “I’m a lot older than you, princess.”

  She gave me a scowl that obviously meant duh.

  “That means I know better than you. And I’m sorry if that doesn’t sound like a good reason, but it’s the answer you’re getting.”

  But I knew by the set of her jaw that this wouldn’t be the last conversation we’d have on the subject.

  M y hands trembled as I clutched my phone and paced around the kitchen. Dexter’s eyes followed my nomadic progress from his usual perch atop the refrigerator.

  I felt the same way I had the first time I’d called Carissa after she’d given me her phone number. I remembered that moment like it was yesterday. I’d just gotten off work and swallowed an inordinate amount of Jameson to calm myself down. I couldn’t resort to a text—untold numbers of guys probably blew up her phone with a barrage of text messages—but what would I say? I knew I would have to work to keep my tone casual, my voice even, but the right words eluded me. She hadn’t answered, and I’d left a bumbling message she never let me live down.

  Uh, hey Carissa, it’s Ben. From the bar, I don’t know if you remember. Not that I think you go to a lot of bars, I have no idea. Anyway. Call me back whenever, I guess. Oh, this is Ben. I don’t know if I mentioned that. All right, bye.

  Why would my stomach tie up in knots at the prospect of calling a machine? She was just an algorithm flipping through codes, but even that knowledge didn’t soothe my spiking pulse.

  So I did what I’d done two years ago, the first time I’d called her phone number: I dialed before I coul
d talk myself out of it.

  Every ring hit me like a bucket of cold water. I couldn’t tell if I was excited or terrified, happy or hollow.

  “You called back,” she said when the call connected. “I wasn’t sure if you would.”

  I stopped dead in the center of the kitchen, vibrating like an electrical current hummed under my skin. “It was just a bad time last night,” I stammered. “I didn’t mean to be rude. I should have waited until I was alone.”

  “You’re back at home then?”

  “I just dropped Kylie off.” And a huffier silence I’d never before endured with Kylie. She hadn’t even said goodbye as she got out of the car and slammed the door, stomping to her front door so hard that her backpack jumped up to her shoulders with each step she took. For all I knew, she was telling Alanna about my phone call with “Carissa” right this very minute. I squinted through the kitchen window, half expecting an ambulance labelled LOONY BIN to scream to the curb, dumping out nurses in scrubs who would fit me for a straitjacket.

  I almost asked Carissa for advice on how best to handle this new obstacle with Kylie, but her voice drowned my train of thought.

  “Is Dexter around?”

  “Yep,” I said, locking eyes with the cat. His tail swished slowly as he looked down upon me. “He’s staring at me right now. Up on the fridge, as usual.”

  “All the better to look down upon the lowly humans.”

  “That’s exactly what I was going to say.”

  “Well, our thoughts have always been in synch. We should be studied by scientists. Hey,” she said, seeming suddenly struck by a lightning bolt of inspiration, and again I marveled at how a machine could do such a thing. “Think he’d recognize my voice?”

  “Dexter?” Dexter was no longer deigning me worthy to look at, but his spine stiffened at the sound of his name. “I’m not sure. I can put you on speakerphone.” I fumbled with the buttons. “Okay. Go ahead and try. But he’s even ignoring me now, so no promises.”

  “Dexter,” she called, using the same playful baby talk voice she constantly used with him that for some reason had always made me inexplicably jealous. “Anything?”

  “Nope. I can tell he heard you though, his ears moved.”

  She sighed. “And after all I’ve done for that cat.”

  I almost told her to cut Dexter some slack—he hadn’t eaten her face, after all—but I didn’t want to be needlessly gruesome with her vibrant and oh-so-alive voice in my ear.

  “So…what are you doing?” My cheeks burned as soon as I’d said it. This was our very first phone call all over again.

  She laughed. “This is reminding me of our first phone conversation.”

  “I’ll be sure to bring up the weather, too.” I took a deep breath and slid into a chair at the kitchen table, forcing my muscles to relax, staring at the speakerphone icon.

  “Are you nervous or something?” she asked, after a few beats of deafening silence, after I’d watched five silent seconds tick by on my phone. “You can’t be more nervous now than you were during that first phone call.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know how I feel.” I blew out a sigh. “I just love you so much. You can’t imagine how much I miss you. I don’t think there’s anything I wouldn’t do if it meant I could have you back.” My heart rate picked back up, pumping into overdrive, and suddenly I was on a roll, verbal diarrhea spewing out of my mouth. “And now this dick cop is coming around, showing me composites of some person of interest. The guy they think killed you. And I want to know who it is, but you have no idea how bad it was back when you’d just died. How crazy it made me, not knowing who it was. I punched your asshole ex David in the face at your funeral. I scared Dexter half to death throwing those engagement pictures you had framed across the room. I accused Tom across the street of doing it, told him I’d fucking kill him if he did, screamed it loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear in the middle of the night. He was always such a pervert, undressing you with his eyes, trying to talk to you when he knew I wasn’t home—”

  “Hey,” she interjected, her tone like liquid Valium. “Just take a breath, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, the syllables weak and wobbly, my throat hot and tight.

  “First of all, if ever anyone deserved a punch to the face, it’d be David. Dexter forgives you for scaring him, because you’re the guy with the food. Tom was probably passed out drunk and didn’t hear a word you said. That neighborhood has heard worse by far. Remember when Mrs. Long found out Mr. Long had a girlfriend? She tried to set his clothes on fire in the front yard. You couldn’t have been any worse. You had a better reason to throw a fit, at least.”

  She’d conspicuously neglected to mention Detective Matthews. Because she had no frame of reference to flip through in that respect, or to skirt heavier subject matter the way my real Carissa had done? Word vomit forced its way back up my throat.

  “Do you know who did it?” I couldn’t keep the desperation from my voice. “I mean—I know you can’t tell me what you were thinking then, or who you saw. But do you have any idea?”

  “I really don’t. I’m sorry.”

  She was apologizing to me, but she was the one who died. I almost laughed at the absurdity. “You didn’t mention anyone paying too much attention to you in texts or emails to your friends during the weeks beforehand? You didn’t mention anything like that to me.” It was a pathetic grasping-at-straws question. She got too much attention without even trying. Didn’t notice half of the heads she turned as it was. I used to have to walk around with my head practically on a swivel to catalog every lewd glance and stare she attracted.

  “Just the weird creeper who always hangs around outside the Dunkin’ Donuts near the house. But you already know about him.”

  I did already know about him. Everyone knew about him. He gawked at anything female that went inside that Dunkin’ Donuts.

  “So…a composite, huh?” She didn’t have a throat to clear, but lo and behold, she did. “That didn’t ring any bells?”

  “It was one of the vaguest pictures I’ve ever seen. It could be anyone.” I laid the phone on the table and pressed my eyes closed. Almost jumped a mile when something furry bashed against my ankle, but it was only Dexter, rubbing against my leg the way he used to do to Carissa. I’d never hated Dexter more than when he’d lock eyes with me, twisting his sinewy body bonelessly around her ankles, his slow, deliberate blinks screaming stay away from my mommy.

  “Did you ever wind up going to the Christmas party?”

  I opened my eyes, one corner of my mouth tugging back into an unwilling smile. “Yeah. I saw Jason there. No Jackson. Jason said Liv was trying to hit on me, but I didn’t notice.”

  “That bitch,” she said, mock angry and full of righteous indignation. “I’ll cut her.”

  I tried calling Kylie a few nights later, but a bewildered Alanna informed me that Kylie was apparently too tired to come to the phone.

  “I’m sorry Ben,” she told me. “Maybe she’s getting sick?”

  Or maybe she was trying to freeze me out, give me her first ever silent treatment. I’m too tired was almost as bad as I’m washing my hair.

  “You mind if I pick her up from school tomorrow?”

  “I’m sure she’d love that.”

  I swallowed the laugh of derision building in my throat, thanked Alanna, and disconnected.

  I was no novice to dealing with hissy fits and silent treatments, but Kylie doing those things was uncharted territory. I’d always known she wouldn’t be a little girl forever, innocent and sweet, but I’d expected hissy fits to crop up during the hormonal haze of puberty—a long way off, and ultimately Alanna’s problem, not mine.

  “Shit,” I told my empty living room, tossing my phone aside. I chewed my lips, running a forefinger down the gnarled spine of The Art of War.

  And then I picked up my phone once again.

  “Hey,” Carissa’s warm voice greeted me like an injection of codeine.

/>   “Hi. Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Kylie’s pissed at me, and I have no idea how to make it better.”

  “What did you do?” Her tone was both amused and accusatory. She could have been right here with me in the living room, looking at me from over the top of her laptop, her expression both pitying and patronizing.

  I fell back against the couch cushions, closing my eyes. “She heard me talking to you a few nights ago. I made her promise not to tell anybody, and then she asked me if she could talk to you, too.”

  “And you said no.”

  “Well. Yeah. I thought it would be for the best. She’s too young to digest something like this.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” she said after a pregnant pause that spoke volumes. “You’d know best.”

  “So what should I do?”

  “You can try talking to her, Benjamin.” Like it was the most obvious thing in the universe. It was such a Carissa thing to say, dripping with sarcasm and ill-disguised impatience, that I felt a stab of annoyance, the same way I’d felt when the real Carissa had said stuff like that.

  “Well thanks, Carissa, I hadn’t thought of that. I’ve tried talking to her. She’s silent treatmenting me.” And by God, I was used to that. Carissa was the queen of the silent treatment. The longest she’d gone without speaking to me was a week, a Herculean feat I’d never thought possible.

  “I don’t know, Ben. Buy her something.”

  “That never worked on you.”

  I’d tried that once, after the first blowout we had after moving into the house. Jason had taken pity on me and helped me pick out a white gold snowflake encrusted with diamonds during our lunch break. I’d presented it to her one morning as she sat in front of her laptop, the delicate floral teacup she sipped from at odds with her stony expression. She’d opened the box, stared at the snowflake, and held it out to me, wordlessly piling her hair on top of her head. I had moved behind her chair, fumbled with the miniscule clasps, and finally succeeded in securing it around her throat. She’d let me kiss the back of her neck, but when I pulled out a chair to join her at the table, relief swelling inside me like a helium balloon, she pressed a finger to the snowflake and threw a dart at that balloon. You’re still an asshole, you know, she said primly, and went back to her work.