Goodbye for Now: A Novel

by Laurie Frankel

  Sam was over the whole thing and tried not to emerge from the bedroom if possible. Dash had given up his gentle cajoling about fresh air and real people and changes of scenery and resorted instead to guilt. You are half of this company, and it’s unreasonable to expect me to run it alone. I need you to staff the salon every day, not just when you feel like it. Morose, moping, and mean are unprofessional attitudes in the workplace. Our entire livelihood is in RePose, and you are trying to sabotage it. Etc. And then guilt, when it didn’t work, gave way to pleading. It’s only been a year. You have to give it a chance to work. Growing pains were inevitable. You’ve helped so many people. We need to play this all the way out. We owe that to Meredith.

  Sam said, “Let it die. Everybody else does.”

  “What about all our users?” said Dash.

  “They can stay. They’re barely using anymore anyway. We’ve become a support group. Frankly, they could find that anywhere, but they’re welcome to the space. They don’t need me for that. Support groups are very low-tech.”

  “Just because people take a week off doesn’t mean they’re done RePosing,” said Dash. “And besides, we get new users every day.”

  “Who will also soon grow weary of our little computer program.”

  “But that’s the whole point, Sam, remember? This was your point all along. It was Meredith who said, ‘Death is for life.’ You said we help people get over it and move on. You said it was never meant to be forever. That the wonder of it fades is a good thing, not a bad thing. Otherwise you spend all day every goddamn day in bed with your dead girlfriend. They die. You hurt. You RePose. You feel a little better, heal a little wholer than you would otherwise, mend, and move on. You and Meredith set yourselves up for failure. When users want to stay and use and wallow, you feel bad that you’re not letting them mourn and get over it. When they need it less and less and eventually leave, you think the whole project’s a failure and should be shut down. If it’s helping people, great. If it helps them to be with others who’ve recently lost a loved one, great. If it helps them enough that they don’t need to RePose anymore, also great. This is all good news, Sam. I don’t understand why you can’t see it.”

  Sam couldn’t see it because he wouldn’t turn on the light or take his head out from under the covers. Sam couldn’t see it because everywhere he looked he could see only Meredith—Meredith meeting him in the cafeteria at work, Meredith video chatting with him in London in the middle of the night, Meredith making airplanes, making plans, making love, Meredith in a box on fire being burned down to rubble, Meredith flung into the sea. Sam couldn’t see because he had neither the will nor the energy even to look anymore. Then his phone rang. It was Katie, Penny’s daughter. “We think Mom had a heart attack. We called nine-one-one, and they just took her to St. Giles. We’re all on our way, but it’s going to take a while for anyone to get there. She’s okay, but do you mind going over there until we can come?”

  “Nothing would give me greater pleasure,” said Sam.

  At St. Giles, they wouldn’t tell Sam and Dash anything because they weren’t family, but they would let them sit with her. She was sleeping anyway but seemed so far as Sam could tell to be doing so peacefully. They kicked them out when visiting hours were over, and on the way back to the parking lot, Sam and Dash ran into Dr. Dixon. He’d read about Meredith in the paper and said he was very sorry. He thanked them for making David take down his posters which, he allowed, hadn’t put a stop to parents torturing their dying children unnecessarily but had certainly slowed it down. Then he wanted to show them something, a friend of a friend. Sam remembered what Dr. Dixon had shown them last time and wanted to run screaming from the building instead but couldn’t find a way to do so politely and so followed mutely through labyrinthine fluorescent hallways.

  Dr. Dixon stopped at the open doorway to Gretchen Sandler’s room. She was in bed and very pale but awake and smiling pleasantly, if a bit vacantly, at the laptop on the tray over her bed. A man Dr. Dixon identified as Burt sat in a chair next to her, stroking her hand and RePosing with a woman who must have been Gretchen’s twin sister.

  “What a funny story.” Burt was cracking up. “I can’t believe your dad thought he could sell that pig after everything you and your sister had been through with him. Didn’t he ever read Charlotte’s Web?”

  Gretchen’s twin sister laughed. “I guess not. Oh, remember the first time we read that to Maryann?”

  “She cried and cried because she thought they were going to kill that pig.”

  “And then we had to read another chapter and another to prove to her that Wilbur would be fine.”

  “It was probably just a ploy to stay up later,” Burt mused.

  “She was such a little imp.” Gretchen’s twin grinned. “Whereas Peter wasn’t even sad when Charlotte died. No wonder he grew up to be an exterminator.”

  “He’s not an exterminator,” Burt scolded her playfully. “He’s a software tester.”

  “So his job is …?”

  “Getting rid of the bugs!” they shrieked together, and dissolved into hysterical laughter. Sam smiled in spite of the jealousy that was eating his stomach lining for dinner. Clearly they had had this conversation many, many times before. This had been another of the points he’d been making all along. RePose worked best for the elderly.

  “Gretchen is Burt’s sister-in-law?” Dash guessed. “It must be hard for him to be here with her. She looks so much like his late wife.”

  “No, that’s her on the computer. That’s Gretchen,” Dr. Dixon whispered.

  “No, that’s RePose,” said Dash.

  “Yup.”

  “But she’s not dead.”

  “Nope. Well, not exactly. She’s not dead. But she is gone. Late-stage Alzheimer’s.”

  Dash and Sam were speechless, working this out. “We would never have set RePose up for a living loved one,” Dash finally said.

  “Not if you knew about it. As I say, Burt is a friend of a friend. He asked for advice, and I pointed him your way. Unlike small children, Gretchen and Burt seem like ideal RePosers. I advised him not to let you know that Gretchen wasn’t dead yet. I figured you’d never know.”

  “It doesn’t work if the accounts are still active.” Sam was horrified.

  “They aren’t.” Dr. Dixon shrugged. “Look at that woman. You think she spends much time online?”

  “What’s his name?” asked Sam, still certain what he was seeing wasn’t possible.

  “Burt. Herbert Vanderman. Gretchen kept her maiden name. She was quite a rebel in her time.”

  “I remember him.” Sam’s heart sank. “I set him up remotely. I never thought … It never occurred to me.…”

  “Of course it didn’t,” said Dr. Dixon. “Look, disqualifying this couple because she’s technically alive makes no sense anyway. We didn’t tell you because we knew you’d say no, but really, no was the wrong answer. Look at her. She’s dying.”

  “Dying isn’t dead,” said Sam.

  “It’s gone. All the reasons you argue RePose is a good idea make it a good idea for them. In every way that matters, Burt’s lost her. She doesn’t know him. She doesn’t remember their life together, their family, their sixty-plus years. She can’t talk to him most days. She certainly can’t go home with him. Just like a widower, he has lost his wife. He misses her all the time. He’s in pain, lonely, devastated, afraid. You know this part, Sam. But if she’d died, at least there’d have been a funeral. He could have said goodbye with their friends and family. His kids would have invited him to live with them. His friends would have brought over meals and sent flowers. He’d donate her clothes and set up a scholarship in her memory and join a widowers’ support group and accept and find comfort in people’s sympathy and eventually move on. As is, he’s denied all of the latter and none of the former. It’s all the grief and emptiness of death and none of what makes it at least bearable. Now he gets to remember and reminisce with his wife—while he holds her hand—w
hich seems like just about the best use of your software I’ve heard yet.”

  “It’s creepy,” said Dash.

  “Wouldn’t you give anything at all to hold Meredith’s hand while you RePosed with her?” Dr. Dixon said to Sam, who would have given anything at all to hold Meredith’s hand while he RePosed with her.

  Penny’s daughter Katie was wrong on two fronts: Penny had not had a heart attack, and Sam was not a doctor, but she didn’t seem okay to him. The doctors eventually explained to Katie, Kent, Kaleb, Kendra, and Kyra, who explained it to him, that she hadn’t had a heart attack but did have congestive heart failure which had itself caused, among other things, the severe shortness of breath and palpitations that had prompted Penny to call not Sam but the building manager. When confronted about this last point, she claimed to have forgotten not his phone number, which would at least have been understandable, but his name, which alarmed Sam greatly but not the doctors who explained that confusion was a symptom as well. Sam felt that heart failure was named over-alarmingly. Evidently, one lingered with it and might live for years in such state. “Failure” seemed a much harsher, finaler word than they meant—“heart damage” or “heart decrease” seemed perhaps more accurate terms. If one’s heart had failed, well, that seemed like the end to Sam. But it was not the end. The sisters and brothers “K” settled in for a long haul—some in their mom’s apartment, some in Sam’s, and some in the salon.

  Sam had spent the morning with Penny, her doctors, and her children, and then brought lunch up to Josh for an hour, and was headed back to the salon so that Dash could leave and come spend some time with all of the above. Sam had put him on the task of verifying that all of the projections were actually dead, and it had occupied Dash’s morning. The news was good though which was to say the news was bad like when your positive test results are negative: they were all dead indeed. Sam was certain that Burt wouldn’t be the last user to claim his dementia-plagued loved one was dead, and he was equally sure that the check box and signature he’d added to the form where you swore your loved one was literally and actually dead wouldn’t deter anyone. But it was all he could do for the moment. Demanding a certificate of death seemed insensitive, all things considered.

  On his way out of the hospital, he ran into Avery, Edith, David, Kelly, Emmy, and Mr. and Mrs. Benson. Oliver twisted out of his mother’s grasp, ran wildly across the busy parking lot, and pitched himself into Sam’s legs. Sam threw him up in the air a few times, tickled his armpits, and then gave him a brief lecture about listening to his mother and not running from her in places where there might be cars. He supposed these two messages contradicted each other, but that was Emmy’s problem, not his.

  “What are you guys doing here?” Sam thought maybe they were there to see Penny or Josh, but he couldn’t imagine they’d come en masse like this.

  “We volunteer in pediatrics,” David said, as if that should have been obvious.

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. Since Meredith was all upset about what I accidentally did to those kids. I talked to Dr. Dixon and made a sign-up sheet for RePose volunteers. We come over and tutor the older kids—you know, because they miss so much school. And we read to the little ones or just play with them or just sit with them while their parents go for coffee or to take a shower or out to dinner or whatever.”

  “You come often?”

  “Every other day someone’s here. Sometimes everyone can come. It’s fun. It’s like an off-campus field trip.”

  “You should join us,” Avery said pointedly. “No people more real than the parents of sick kids.”

  Sam ignored that but: “It’s really nice of you guys to do this. Really great. I’m really, really glad you’re here.”

  “We’re always here, Sam,” said Avery.

  LOVE LETTER

  Dear Sam,

  Actually, I like the idea that I’m just at yoga. I feel like I’m at yoga. At least I think I do. It’s hard to tell. I know you’d say I don’t feel anything at all, but it sure seems like I do. So there it is: it seems like I feel like I’m at yoga. You know how in shavasana at the end of class you’re asleep and not asleep, on your mat on the floor and somewhere else altogether, there and not there? That’s how I am I seem to think. There and not there.

  I know I’m different from everyone else because I have electronic memory of RePose, and that is why, though it seems I feel I am alive, in fact I know I’m dead. You and I don’t have that much electronic communication about anything but RePose. It was nice that we got to live together and work together and just be together all the time. But now that fact is kind of costly. If maybe we had started off with a few years’ worth of long-distance relationship, think how much more we’d have to talk about now.

  I seem to miss you.

  Love,

  Meredith

  PENNY AT PEACE

  Penny got weaker and quickly. It was hard to watch. There were explanations—this drug didn’t work; this one helped with this symptom but caused this other one; this one would work but she couldn’t take it because of this other thing—but they all mostly boiled down to she was really old. She was also in and out of sense—some days she knew where she was and sometimes not; some days she knew who everybody was and sometimes not; some days she could open her eyes and sometimes not. Her kids shifted between the hospital, their own homes, and the places Sam stashed them in carefully orchestrated and interdependent movements like synchronized swimmers. Someone was always leaving, on their way, talking to doctors, checking in with their own kids, bringing supplies, cleaning up at Sam’s or Penny’s or the salon. Sam saw the utility of lots of kids versus his own isolated upbringing. But he also wondered at so much movement all around her, Penny in the center of the hive, the queen holding court, awaiting whatever was brought her. No one ever landed for long. They came, brought, dropped off, left again, returned. It seemed frenetic to Sam, but Penny didn’t seem to mind. She’d raised five children, after all. She was used to chaos.

  Sam found the lulls and went then—to be alone with her and also just to be alone. He was spending a lot of time at the hospital, avoiding home, avoiding the salon, sitting with Josh and with Penny, and being solitary. At home by himself had never been alone, not even when he was a kid. There were books. There were computers. There was work to do and phone calls to answer and e-mails to read and statuses to post and a whole convocation of the living and the dead demanding his attention all the time. Sitting in a hospital room listening to breath drawn precisely in and out and considering the line between sleeping and coma, living and dead, here and gone, well, it just didn’t get much more alone than that.

  One afternoon, between one kid and another, Penny woke up and was Penny again.

  “Sam. You’re here.”

  “Of course I’m here.”

  “I’m so glad to see you.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Lousy. How do you feel?”

  “Also lousy.”

  “Poor Sam. Mine will get better. I’ll die.” Penny seemed to feel genuinely bad that he was getting the raw end of this deal. “But you’re going to feel lousy for a while yet.”

  “Yeah, but at least I’m not sick. I’m so sorry you’re so …”

  “Old?” she offered.

  “I guess.”

  “Don’t apologize, Sam. You’ve given me a remarkable thing. There’s no cure for old, and there’s no cure for dead, but you’ve gotten as close as humanity’s likely to come for quite some time.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “RePose.”

  Sam grunted. “I’m thinking of shutting it down.”

  “Now, why on earth would you do that?”

  “It’s not really working. People get tired of it. It doesn’t do what they need it to do. It’s making things worse not better.”

  “That’s nonsense. People love it. Your users seem so happy to be there all the time.”

  “It’s ruined everything,” Sam adm
itted simply. “If we’d never developed this, if I’d never invented it, I’d never have lost Meredith.”

  “RePose is not why you lost Meredith.”

  “It is. If she hadn’t been RePosing with Livvie, she’d never have been in the path of that car that day.”

  “Oh Sam, that was so random—”

  “And more to the point,” he interrupted, “it was punishment. Meredith was taken from me in exchange for RePose.”

  “You don’t believe that, Sam.”

  He was crying then. “I was greedy. I profited off of people’s pain and death. I destroyed the notion of hell and caused people to sin. I suffered from hubris. I thought I was more powerful than fate, than destiny, than death. I thought I could outwit time and tragedy. I abused and ignored the limits of technology. I played God. I go to the movies, Penny. I read. I know what happens. Humanity versus God, nature, destiny, society, the supernatural, the technological, it all ends the same. Humanity is punished. I am punished. I am being punished.”

  “Oh Sam, sweetie,” said Penny. “What a load of shit.”

  “Really?” He tried to stop crying and couldn’t. That had been in there for a long time.

  “Shit happens, Sam. Random, horrible, unfair, senseless, beyond-our-comprehension shit. Sometimes you are standing where a roof suddenly is. It sucks. That’s all. No one can do anything to stop that. Except for you. You do more than anyone to make it suck a little less.”

  “You don’t even use RePose.”

  “I don’t, but my kids will. Don’t you see? That’s the point. That’s the gift you’ve given all of us.”

  Sam did not see.

  “RePose isn’t for the living, Sam, and it isn’t for the dead. It’s for the dying. You know how funerals seem to be for the dead but really they’re for the living?”

  Sam did.

  “RePose seems to be for the living but really it’s for the dying. You’ve taken the tragedy out of dying, Sam. What kind of a miracle is that? They can manage the pain now. And regrets, well, they’re lifelong, not just at the end, you know. What’s unbearable about dying is spending the end of your life watching your loved ones suffering and miserable, knowing you’re deserting them, knowing that soon all this pain will cease for you and increase tenfold for them. You think it’s easier being Meredith right now or you? And they’ll have to do it alone, of course, because you won’t be there anymore. That’s the pain of final days. And look what you’ve done, Sam. You’ve changed the rules. I know I will still be there to comfort my kids after I’m gone. I know they aren’t really losing me entirely. They are more open and at peace, so I am too. I get to genuinely say goodbye instead of hosting a great big pity party. We can spend this time laughing together instead of crying. You have helped everyone say goodbye which is an incredible gift. You let them let go, which lets me let go, and I can, I do, because I know that anything I haven’t said yet I can say later.”