This Angel on My Chest

by Pietrzyk, Leslie

  The waitress refilled the wine glasses at Wyatt’s table; she wished they were having a bottle of wine, but Ben said he should have sauvignon blanc with his fish, and that she should have cab with her bison. So, the overpriced wine-by-the-glass option. Sort of like dating versus marriage, she thought, wine by the glass versus the bottle.

  Wyatt stood up, his napkin falling from his lap onto the floor. Bathroom, Nicole thought, blushing as she remembered her brief fantasy about fucking silly little schoolteacher Ben in the bathroom. But Wyatt stayed where he was, and he picked up his wine glass, tinked it with a spoon, until his table quieted, and kept tinking it until the restaurant silenced, people’s heads swiveling—even Ben—tinking so the waitstaff and bussers paused, waiting one more moment until even the bar seemed still, and the only sounds were from the semi-open kitchen in back: sizzling, a beeper, someone shouting, “Fish!” Nicole couldn’t see Lisa’s face but she was slowly shaking her head, gesturing in a “what next” way with one hand.

  “Thank you,” Wyatt said in a commanding voice. “Just a wee bit of kind indulgence, please, for a special toast.” He took a step back, almost knocking over his chair, and surveyed the room as people picked up wine and water glasses, confused but willing. His eyes returned to Nicole.

  She felt Ben’s gaze equally heavy upon her. She should have told him. She should have explained or said something. Why did she think she could escape Roger? He was dead and buried, yet it was as if he was crowding right here in the booth beside her, something she had to drag along wherever she might go.

  “To my brother,” Wyatt said. She expected him to sound drunk or sloppy, but his voice was perfectly controlled, as if he were accustomed to public speaking in unconventional settings, and that memory of Wyatt at the funeral, talking about throwing the football across the lawn with Roger as the autumn shadows lengthened, how Roger begged, “One more, one more”; “That was Roger,” Wyatt had said then, “‘enough’ wasn’t a word he believed in.” All this a flash in Nicole’s mind, as Wyatt continued now, speaking over a few titters that immediately melted away: “To my baby brother, Roger, who died too young last year, and who broke our hearts when he left us behind. To Roger, whose spirit lives on in those who loved him best. And to us, to all of us, the broken-hearted, the ones left to carry on as best we can.” He lifted the glass and drank, emptying it with a single, steady motion.

  Nicole found the moment surprisingly moving: an entire restaurant of strangers raising their glasses, a room united and rapt at Wyatt’s words, that pocket of silence as everyone sipped meditatively, their own memory flashes, their own heartbreak. Nicole blinked, then remembered to drink from her own glass.

  Oh, Roger.

  She took a deep breath and looked over at Wyatt, now seated. His dinner companions were congratulatory, and Lisa extended both hands across the table, reaching out for him.

  Ben twisted his head to follow Nicole’s gaze.

  “Okay,” he said, turning back to face her. “What the hell? Just who is that guy? What’s going on here?”

  But Nicole was already sliding from the booth. “Hang on,” she said. “I’ve got to go to the ladies room,” and she grabbed her purse and hurried back to the bar, where the bathrooms were. Once in the bar she paused, glancing at the scene behind her: people eating and laughing, going on exactly as they were before Wyatt interrupted them. She took another deep breath, and another, but neither worked as she’d hoped. Tears welled in her eyes, overflowing, her mascara about to be wrecked for the second time tonight. The hostess was eyeing her, so she spun and hurried down the hallway to the bathrooms, two unisex rooms, neither occupied. Instead of going in, she leaned up against a small side table along the wall, and closed her eyes.

  Footsteps. Please don’t be Ben, she thought, and it wasn’t. It was Wyatt.

  “Why’d you do that?” she said.

  He threw his hands up in the air. “Jesus Christ,” he said, keeping his voice low but mean. “You’re here on a fucking date. My brother hasn’t been dead for a year. When’s your next wedding?”

  “Fuck you,” she said.

  “No, fuck you,” he said, and she tried to choke back her sobs but couldn’t. “Goddamnit,” he said. “Stop crying.”

  “Then stop yelling at me,” she said.

  “Do you like that guy or what?”

  “I just met him,” she said. “He’s okay. I don’t know.”

  “Oh, Christ.” Wyatt sighed, and pulled Nicole in for a hug. “I’m sorry. I just fucking can’t believe he’s gone.”

  “I know.”

  “Fuck.”

  Wyatt’s arms were tight around her; he was taller than Roger, so the top of her head hit right at the base of his neck, a different place on his body than when Roger held her. She was taller than Lisa, so wouldn’t it be hard to kiss someone so short, she wondered. Wyatt’s chest moved under her as he breathed. Her breath slowed to match his.

  Finally, she said, “I miss him so much.” Wyatt’s brown eyes were rimmed with tears. He hadn’t cried at the funeral. He had worn sunglasses as he carried the coffin from the church, as he dropped a shovelful of dirt on top of his brother in the cemetery. She couldn’t do that, couldn’t even watch; she had walked away.

  “I know.” He wiped some of her tears with his thumb. “Your mascara,” he said, pulling out a stiff white pocket square from his jacket.

  She half-laughed. “Roger never noticed things like that,” she said. “I could walk out without combing my hair.” She carefully ran the cloth under both eyes. “Sorry to ruin this.” She returned it to him, thick black smears along one edge.

  He dropped the pocket square on the table, shrugged. “I have a drawer of those things,” he said. “Useless shit.”

  She imagined a deep drawer in a mahogany chest filled with stacks of starched white pocket squares, hundreds and hundreds. The excess, the stupid excess. She’d never realized how sad Wyatt was. Arguing with his mother about gravy. She remembered Roger telling her that Wyatt used to play folk songs on the guitar when he was in high school.

  “Thanks for coming back here to find me,” she said. “This date isn’t going very well, which I guess isn’t surprising.”

  He shrugged. “It’s different for you. I don’t get another brother.”

  “But all I want is Roger,” she said. She leaned into him again, wanting him to wrap his arms around her, which he did. She listened for the sound of his heart beating. Strong, not like Roger’s. Roger and his goddamn heart attack. She gritted her teeth to keep from screaming like an animal.

  “If he wasn’t already dead, I could kill the guy for dying,” Wyatt said.

  “Exactly.”

  She leaned back, away from Wyatt, sliding her arms up along his chest, and thought, Kiss me.

  It seemed so simple, so obvious. He had to see, too, and abruptly he did, kissing her gently at first, then long and hard and rough, tangling his hands through her hair, pulling, and there was the steady thump of his heart quickening, fast, faster, hers keeping rhythm with it, until she pushed herself away, almost panting, and she pointed to her smudgy eyes and muttered, “I should go fix this.”

  She stepped into one of the bathrooms but didn’t snap the door lock. There was a homey-scented incense in the room, like cinnamon, and a single silk orchid in a black square pot. She stared at herself in the mirror, waiting for the knock that she knew would be coming, and when she heard it—a hard rap—she pulled the door open, and it was the two of them alone in the small room.

  I AM THE WIDOW

  Just like at any movie or TV funeral, his casket gets put up front, set under specially focused lighting, parenthesized by yardstick-high sprays of white gladiolus. Plump velvet kneeler in front of him, velvet curtains behind. Top half of the box open, so we can see his face. If we want to see him dead, that is, if we want to look right at death. There are plenty of people ducking their heads, twisting necks around and staring up high into the ceiling or deep down through the
carpeted floor. Not me. Right off, I grab hold of his hand, entwine my fingers around his, not because that feels so great but because it unnerves the people circling me. Hell yeah. I’m grabbing a dead man’s hand. I’m grabbing my dead husband’s hand. Maybe I won’t let go. Maybe I’m going crazy.

  I’m certain I’m going crazy. I’m certain I am.

  What happened was sudden. Alive—and then not. The two of us—and then a pack of family roaming around, in their suits and dark, sensible dresses, howling and clawing each other into tense hugs. A dead body sprawled on the kitchen floor—and then this dead body tucked neatly into a casket. What happened is fast. This is the worst whirling ride at a carnival you can’t jump off of.

  Not knowing much on planning funerals, when the professionals say, “Open casket?,” I nod like I mean yes. Not knowing when there’s an open casket, people read an invitation to toss a little something on in. Guess there’s meaning, though a list looks pretty junky: Color photos by a lake, a postcard of the jagged Chicago skyline, pizza takeout menu, half a bottle of tequila, an old lady’s rosary, a wad of clover freshly ripped from a lawn, foot-long length of red wrapping ribbon knotted in four places, wooden fraternity paddle, dog-eared paperback of Fahrenheit 451, brittle yellow Palm Sunday palm frond, tarnished baby spoon, crayoned drawing of a dinosaur-like creature, scuffed-up baseball, pencil sketch of a lion’s head, a regular ordinary brick—come on!—an unopened package of two Twinkies, the Let’s Go Spain & Portugal guidebook with swelled-up pages from falling in water presumably somewhere in Spain or Portugal, race bib #1458 from the Marine Corps Marathon, a bleached-out whelk, a nickel and two super-shiny pennies in a stack, smooth gray rock the size of a big toe, an acorn, Bob Marley import CD, baby food jar half-filled with sand. Four or five flap-tucked envelopes with his name in ink across the front. It’s a jigsaw puzzle of a big picture of nothing. Everything all means something but the only one who maybe could explain is lying there dead.

  And you’d have to say after a while that things get more than a little ridiculous, this casket as receptacle, this dump it all in mentality, because there I am holding onto his hand, when tra-la-la-ing up is some second cousin I barely met—maybe at the wedding, maybe—heaving in an old shop class project from middle school that supposedly they’d worked on together.

  What’s he supposed to do in the afterlife—IF THERE IS ONE, WHICH THERE ISN’T—with an old lamp base shaped like a wagon wheel, I want to know.

  I put nothing in there. No note, no picture, no shop class project. I want him coming back, so I’m leaving him reasons to haunt me. I’m turning him angry enough to rise up and come after me. Damn it.

  All the while I’m smiling, clinging to his hard, dead hand. They got them folded up on his chest, like insect wings, like a way no one poses in real, living life. Left hand on top, so that’s the one I’m grabbing, with that malicious wedding ring, its “til death do you part” mockery. People crush into me with hugs; people pressing around me cry through a blizzard of tissues, and sobs ricochet off the walls. As long as I’ve got his hand, I act like I’m okay since that’s what they need. I crack a joke or two, smile, smile. Everyone’s so relieved to laugh, relieved that laughing is wrong but still possible. They’re treating me like I’m clear cut glass. I appreciate it.

  Two days of this, me clinging to that hand, rubbing my thumb along the curve of his wedding ring like I want to wear through the metal, and people dropping their shit in the casket like it’s a recycle bin. I get used to it. It’s the new life I’ve got. It’s what I’ve got. It’s something settled. It’s that.

  I never planned a funeral so what I forget is the part where they pack up. They’ve got to lock the box. Actually, I didn’t forget about that part; I just never knew it. I’m, like, twenty-nine years old, so how many funerals was I not someone’s kid at? How’d the box get closed? Never thought about it, but someone has to do it, it’s going to be done, and someone’s got to be the last one to look at him, the last one holding that hard, dead hand, the one hanging on to the end. Me.

  Calm-voiced professionals infiltrate, swarm the room, though it’s only two or three of them really, calmly suggesting in their calm, buttery voices that we retire to the outer lobby, that they need to prepare for transport.

  Like . . . the space shuttle? The Jetsons and Star Trek? Transport? I hate words that don’t mean what they mean.

  It’s like Noah’s Ark docked out back, everyone buddying up two by two as they leave the room, the crying thick as pudding. There goes my mother with her sister; his mother—oh, she’s so sad; she wants desperately to be sadder than me; I should let her win—she’s draped like an eel across the arms of her husband; his two brothers, stiff-shouldered; my brother-in-law towing my sister, her spiky heels poking dots in the carpet; my dad and my uncle, the brother he didn’t talk to for five years until now. His poor, sad dad standing by himself. One son comes back for him. He walks out next to his son, his body a limp, as if all the bones have been broken and put together backward. The favorite sister and her boyfriend no one likes; she’s not looking me in the eye, so it’s the boyfriend watching, the boyfriend’s pale blue eyes, clear like flat water, the last in the room with me.

  I’ve got his hand through all this. Don’t know why. Doesn’t make me feel better. But I’m afraid something will happen if I let go. They’ll take him away if I let go. They’ll swipe his wedding ring. (“You know they steal the jewelry,” more than one person whispers in my ear.) There’s a picture in my head of a bottom dresser drawer rattling with a thousand different wedding rings.

  Then me. Alone.

  No one comes back for me.

  The one who would come back for me? Who would march me out to the Ark? I’m holding his hard, dead hand. Damn it. The professional has seen people cry like this, I’m sure. Like this, like this too, like this, this. These are endless, unforgettable minutes I won’t think about again.

  No one wants to touch me.

  I’ve got to let go. I’ve got to, and I don’t know how I do, but I do, and when I do, my own hand feels hard and dead, not part of my own body ever again.

  I march myself to the outer room, to the sad stares, slam myself against the isolating wall of sympathy. Right now, I’m saddest. All I’m seeing right now are the miles of my own tears.

  Then the favorite sister announces that she has a note. She has to drop it in. She forgot. She meant to. She has a note for him. This note she wrote last night. She holds up a tattered envelope, like a “who needs two” scalper. She’s the youngest, the baby of the family, only twenty, nesting in the safety of being everyone’s favorite, even after flunking out of the good college and then the less good college, even with the boyfriend no one likes. She wanted to be a vet, but now she works in a pet store while she figures out her life. She might be pregnant; there’s that look about her of a complicated secret, and she drank club soda last night when the rest of them were at the vodka, and now this note. So hard to hate her, but with that smudgy envelope in her hand, I do. Even though she lived with us that summer, even though that summer she and I sat out nights on the moon-splashed deck with glasses of white wine, talking as if we were the sisters. Even though I never got along much with my own sister and didn’t see what having a sister meant until I met his favorite sister. Even though all that.

  Even though he would hate me saying in a very loud voice: “No! I have to be the last one to see him. You can’t go back in there.”

  The outer lobby turns super-quiet. As the widow speaks . . . as the widow speaks, the lobby turns super-quiet. There are no professionals here. There are just sad people.

  She’s flummoxed, gripping her tattered envelope—it’s pink, as if from a greeting card—and her boyfriend grabs her elbow, maybe thinking she might puddle to the ground.

  I am the widow. (That word means me.)

  “Okay,” says the favorite sister, finally, slowly. Each syllable a hundred years long. Everyone is breath-held. “I won’t,” she says. “
But can you please . . . ?” She stretches out her hand, giving me the envelope, which I take even though I don’t want to. I don’t want to go back in there; I don’t want to interrupt the professionals as they prepare to transport, I don’t want to have to say, “Excuse me, I am the widow, and here’s one more thing to drop into that casket, one more thing that wasn’t said at the right time, the right time being when he was ALIVE, one more thing that’s too late to matter now because he’s DEAD, and one more time I have to see him and then not see him, one more letting go to remember, one more hammer pounding this forever through my chest.” Do that, say that—alone.

  I swing myself through the doors, and it’s okay because nothing much has happened because maybe this goes on all the time when you’re a professional—maybe people come swinging back ALL THE TIME with one last thing to cram into the open casket or one last check that the wedding ring’s in place. A professional snaps that calm smile back on and says, “Yes? What can we do for you?”

  I look at the ceiling. I look at the floor. I tore off that hand once, I said goodbye. I’m alone.

  I shake my head like I mean no. “I’m sorry,” I say. The pink envelope goes right then into my purse, smashed down to the very bottom, where the lint breeds. She’ll never know. I’ll fish out my wallet, my keys, the sunglasses, then I’ll shove this purse and everything inside down into a trash bag for the Salvation Army, where I’ll also shove his suits and his T-shirts and his winter coat and his shoes and his neckties and all the rest of everything that once was his.

  Let him haunt me. Let him haunt me forever, please God. It’s the only prayer I’ve got.

  ONE TRUE THING

  Craft lecture, MacBride Writers’ Conference, August 10–23, 2015

  Good morning. Today I’ll be speaking about point of view. POV. Deciding who tells the story and how it gets told is the writer’s most important decision. There are countless ways to tell the same story, as many ways as there are people in this room, and more. By offering examples of various points of view, I’ll illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of these different options. Time permitting, I’ll take questions afterward.