by Darcey Bell
I decided to stay in the area. Mainly because I couldn’t stand not to see Nicky.
I registered at the Hospitality Suites motel in Danbury. I was taking a risk, being so near home when I was supposed to be dead. But it was worth it if I could see my son. Besides, I liked taking risks. That was the part I liked best.
There was a chance, a small chance, that I was putting our plan in danger. Except that it was my plan now. That plan was all about Nicky.
I told the clerk that yes, I’d pay an additional fee to his cheapskate extortionist corporation for the use of the internet. I checked in and logged on and started reading Stephanie’s blog: all the posts I’d missed since I left Nicky at her house.
When I read the posts that Stephanie started writing when I didn’t show up to get Nicky, I thought, This is as real as Stephanie is ever going to be. The poor thing was terrified. It was touching to read her pleas to the stressed-out, isolated mothers. As if those overworked women had nothing to do but cruise the streets, searching for the missing friend Stephanie couldn’t even describe. As if they weren’t busy enough changing diapers, making grilled cheese, filling sippy cups with milk.
I was curious to see what Stephanie had to say about my disappearance. Her theories, her analyses of my character and my motives, her laments for our lost friendship. When all that time she was planning to seduce my husband and try to take my place. As if she could.
I will never forgive them.
I never would have predicted that Sean and Stephanie would do this. Now I have to watch them, keep them in my sights until I decide what to do.
During our friendship I read her blog and paid just enough attention to talk about the subjects (motherhood and herself, mostly herself) that she blogged about. But her drivel was nothing I would have chosen to read. The self-delusion, the posing. The madness of seeing your child as the epicenter of the universe.
It was after I read her posts about Sean that I became really enraged. The self-serving, delusional lies! That was my husband! My son with whom she was trying to replace me, whom she wanted to forget me. I’d chosen her because I thought she was someone who could take care of Nicky, not someone who wanted another child. She was like those sad crazy women who steal newborns from the neonatal ward. You want a kid, you take someone else’s. But Stephanie wasn’t that crazy. And the child she was stealing was mine.
* * *
I like the Hospitality Suites. My room is clean, and the bland beige decor is soothing. I’ve made my peace with the ineradicable stains on the carpet. The sheets and blankets are clean. Nothing smells bad, and everything is where it’s supposed to be. It’s quiet; it feels safe. It’s got none of the downsides of motels. I don’t have to improvise a bathtub stopper. I’ve stayed in worse when I traveled for Dennis Nylon.
I take a lot of baths. I bought halfway decent bath gel and shampoo at Target.
There’s a pretty good Salvadoran pupusa restaurant around the corner and a well-stocked convenience store down the block, close enough to walk. It sells decent fresh fruit and ramen I can make in the coffeepot in my room. The owner liked me from the start. He could tell that I wasn’t going to hate him for being Muslim, which he isn’t. From the wall behind the counter, the Hindu elephant god blesses the lottery tickets.
My room has a refrigerator; there’s an ice machine in the hall. I buy bottles of premium mezcal at the liquor store and mango nectar at the health food store. Every night I make a cocktail with mezcal and mango juice. I learned the recipe from Dennis Nylon. It was his drink of choice.
I bought one cocktail glass at the mall. I like to drink my cocktail and read. I order books on my iPad. I’d never read Beckett before. He’s describing how it feels to be me at this moment in time.
I’m surprised by how little I miss my job. It was such a part of my life. I don’t miss the nasty surprises that will be my fault unless I figure out how to fix them. I don’t miss Dennis’s drug binges, or Blanche’s cyclonic rages. I don’t even miss the perks, the buzz. What does it mean that I’m happier in a Hospitality Suites motel in Danbury than in Milan or Paris representing Dennis Nylon Inc.?
The motel TV works well enough, though they don’t have the premium stations. There are some shows I like. Cooking contests. People looking for houses on beaches and building tiny rolling homes in which the couple will split up or kill each other. I used to watch those house-hunting shows with Sean. It’s more fun watching them alone. I can just enjoy them and skip the boring conversations about how those people are starting new lives, so why can’t we? What a joke! Now I’m supposed to be dead—and Sean has started his new life without me.
Will he get to keep the money if I stay an accidental death? A dead woman can’t take care of Nicky, so something will have to be done.
The local news is mostly about traffic accidents and domestic and gang-related violence in Newburgh, Hartford, and further into New England depending on how many people got shot. Many reporters are black or Hispanic. The women have shiny salon-curled hair. Once a day I go online and read Stephanie’s blog about living with Nicky and Miles and Sean. The happy, healthy blended Brady Bunch. That alone is infuriating. That I want to know what she writes. That I care.
When we were “friends,” I only read it because she insisted.
Two nights after I phoned Stephanie just to scare her and let her know I was there, this post went up on her blog:
26
Stephanie's Blog
The Afterlife
Hi, moms!
Some of you are going to think that I have finally lost it completely. You’ll think that the sad, life-changing events of the last months have driven Stephanie out of her mind.
All I can say is I’m still here. Despite everything, I’m still me. Stephanie. Miles’s mom.
Today I want to write about something that no one discusses, except in Bible class or church. When a person says “thank heaven” or “go to hell,” they’re not thinking of heaven or hell as places where we might wind up. The subject doesn’t arise at drinks or dinner parties or over coffee.
The afterlife.
Even if we never go near a church or a synagogue or a mosque, most of us have noticed how having a child can make a person more spiritual. Miles has told me that, after we die, we all get together on a big happy cloud. That’s a nice way to see it. But grown-ups hardly ever ask, Where do you think our loved ones go? It’s a more untouchable subject than sex or even money.
Are the dead near us? Can they hear us? Will they answer our prayers? Do they visit our dreams? I’ve been thinking about these questions a lot, wondering where Emily is now. I’ve been asking myself what I would say to her if I thought she could hear me.
So with this blog I’d like to get a little experimental, a little . . . further out than usual.
I’m going to write this as if I could communicate with my friend who has passed. As if she could read this. I hope that writing it will be healing for me. And I urge you moms out there to write your own letter to someone who has passed and you still want to talk to.
So here goes:
27
Stephanie's Blog
The Afterlife (Part Two)
Dear Emily, Wherever You Are
Dear Emily,
I don’t know how to begin. What do people say in emails these days? Hope this finds you well!
I hope this finds you at peace.
I’m sure that, if you could read this, the first thing you would want to know is how Nicky is. He’s thriving. Of course he misses his mom. We all miss you more than I can ever say. He knows that you’ll always be his mom. That no one will ever replace you. But he no longer cries every night, like he used to. I know you wouldn’t want that.
Would you?
Sometimes I hope the dead are with us, near us, that Davis and Chris and you—and my parents—are over my shoulder, watching out for me, helping and advising me, even if I don’t know it. At other times I hope they’re spared the pain of seeing l
ife go on without them.
I know it would be painful for you, dear Emily, to see me cooking in your kitchen. But I want you to know that I am preparing the most delicious, nutritious food for your son. I can never take your place. All I can do is love the people you used to love and try to make their lives better.
Which is what I know you would want, if you loved them.
Rest in peace, my dear best friend.
Your friend forever,
Stephanie
What do you think, moms? Write in with letters of your own or with your comments and concerns. And thank you, as always, for your love and support.
Love,
Stephanie
28
Emily
That blackmailing, lying bitch. I slammed down my laptop so hard I was afraid I broke it. I was relieved when I flipped it back up and my background—the selfie Nicky took of himself staring into my computer—came back on.
That mindless slut. She knows I’m not dead. She knows I’m watching her. And not from heaven. Even she isn’t stupid enough to believe she’s blogging to the dead. Maybe she’s convinced herself that she imagined my phone call. Maybe she’s tried to put it out of her mind. But she can’t. She knows.
She can’t tell that to her blogosphere moms. She’s talking to me, in case I happen to be reading this. That Stephanie assumes I’m reading her blog is maddening, though not half as maddening as her moving in with my husband and son.
She got used to thinking I was dead. She got to like the idea. So much for friendship. For grief. So I’d called to let her know I’m not dead.
My number comes up as out of area. There’s no way for her to reach me, except through her blog. She thinks everybody reads her blog. I alone would have a good reason. She probably wishes I were dead. Someone who wants me dead is tucking my son into bed every night and sleeping with my husband.
And she has the nerve to write that this is what I would want? Maybe she is crazy, which means a crazy woman is raising my son.
It pains me to admit that Stephanie was right about how you can never really know anyone. If Stephanie wants to play cat and mouse . . . she can be the mouse. I’ll be the cat. That cat is patient. The mouse is afraid. The mouse has reason to be afraid.
Because the cat always wins. The cat is the one who enjoys it.
29
Stephanie
I no longer know what’s real. For a while I managed to convince myself that I’d hallucinated the phone call from Emily. It was like when you have a worrisome pain and the pain goes away. First you try to forget about it. Then you do forget it.
I always knew I would be punished for my affair with Chris and for deceiving my husband and having my half brother’s child. I should never have told Emily who Miles’s father is. No one could be trusted with that information. I had the foolish idea that telling someone would make my punishment lighter. I confessed to the wrong person. Now the punishment comes.
If she’s alive, someone knows what I’ve done. Someone who wants to harm me.
I always knew that Emily was smarter than I am. I should never have let this happen. I should have died of loneliness and sexual frustration before I let myself sleep with Sean and move into Emily’s house.
I’m no match for her. She’s probably laughing about my pathetic attempt to contact her on my blog by pretending I thought she was dead. She is the only one who knows how much of my blog is a lie.
I wonder how much she told Sean. Not everything, I think. When I mention Chris, I never catch him looking at me nor studying Miles for signs that he’s been damaged by incest and inbreeding.
Sean seems to love Miles. Miles is lovable. And I’ve grown to love Nicky. Do Sean and I love each other? I don’t want to think about that.
Wouldn’t Emily have wanted this?
Not if she’s alive. Which she is. Maybe. Probably. And I’m being punished.
What have I done to deserve this? All I did was try to make a friend, to befriend the mother of my child’s friend. Bad call, Stephanie!
What will Emily do now? Nothing. She’s dead. Or is she out there? Watching.
I keep imagining someone—a police detective—asking me why I did this or that instead of this or that other thing. I keep saying I don’t know. I no longer know what makes sense. I focus on what’s best for Miles. But I’m no longer sure that the best thing for my son is living with my best friend’s husband when, for all I know, she is watching.
I pull the curtains; it doesn’t help. She’s out there. Or maybe I’m imagining it. There is always that chance.
I don’t know why I don’t tell someone. Actually, I do know. What would I tell the police? Remember my friend who disappeared? And you guys did nothing? Well, now I’m living with her husband. And she might be back, and they might be collecting millions of dollars in insurance money from her apparent death. Who would believe me? Who am I? A mommy and a blogger. Women like me get locked up in psycho wards all the time. They see the dead; they hear voices; they can’t accept the truth; they insist on their nutty stories until someone in protective services decides that their child would be better off in foster care.
I’m afraid that the story of my friendship with Emily and my relationship with Sean might lead the police to the truth about Miles’s dad. They’d have a false missing persons report and maybe insurance fraud on their hands, and self-centered me, I’m sure they’ll focus on a possible case of incest.
Whatever Emily is up to, she can count on me. I gave her that power at the county fair when we watched Miles and Nicky on the ride.
I didn’t tell Sean that Emily called. Maybe I don’t really trust him. I’m no longer sure whom to trust. I trust Miles. And most of the time I trust Nicky.
I’m almost sure that Sean believes she’s dead. And if she’s alive, she hasn’t tried to contact him. Or maybe she has, and he hasn’t told me. If she’s angry about Sean and me, why is she blaming me? He was her husband. Is her husband.
I can’t imagine how to tell him. I can’t find the right time. I’m living with him, yet I can’t say, I think your dead wife called on the phone.
I realize that the blog post addressed to my not-dead friend won’t work. It might make things worse. But it was a welcome distraction, figuring out what to say.
My inbox filled with ghost stories, which have been helpful. Moms everywhere are seeing the dead. Some of the stories were very touching. One was about a dead mom whose spirit brings her daughter a book that’s fallen open to a short story about a dead mother. The daughter felt her mother’s reassuring presence in the room. I cried when I read that one, thinking about my own mother and the hell she went through.
In none of the moms’ stories does the dead person turn out to be alive. That’s a comfort, I guess!
I haven’t heard any more from Emily. And I’ve convinced myself that she’s dead. Some cruel joker must have imitated her voice and somehow gotten it right. Maybe someone at her job. It could have been a prank call. Why would someone do something like that? People do worse things all the time. And what about the caller knowing how many fingers I was holding up?
Lucky guesses, is all.
Don’t think about it, Stephanie. I still love and miss my friend. But the truth is that her being dead may be better than her watching me from the woods. Watching me with her husband.
* * *
The second time Emily called, she again waited till I was alone. The caller ID said out of area.
She said, “I’m still here.”
I said, “Emily, where are you?”
She said, “The fact that I am not in heaven is proved by the fact that I can still read your ridiculous moronic blog. Blogging to me in the afterlife is really stupid, Stephanie. Even for you.”
“Mrrrr.” I made an angry cat sound. “Harsh. That’s unlike you.”
She said, “How do you know what like me is? You don’t get it, do you? You never got it.”
“I do,” I said. “I get it.” Though
I wasn’t sure if I did. The caller had her voice down. This time I had to be sure.
I said, “How do I know it’s really you?”
“Listen hard,” Emily said. There was a silence. I heard static, then a clattering, like something banging against the phone. Then I heard carnival music . . .
I heard my own voice saying, “I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone ever . . .” I heard myself confessing that Miles is Chris’s son.
The tape recorder clicked off.
“They have marvelous voice-recognition technology these days,” Emily said, “to authenticate this, if needed.”
“Who would care?” I was bluffing.
“Everyone would,” said Emily. “Miles would, for one. If not now, then later.”
“I can’t believe you would do this,” I said. “What do you want?”
“I want Nicky,” Emily said. “You can have everything else. But I want you to keep your mouth shut. For once.”
“I will!” I said. “I promise.”
“Talk soon.” Emily hung up.
After that, some homing instinct kicked in. I wanted to be home, if only for an afternoon. In my own home. Not in Sean and Emily’s home. In the home that Davis and I built, in which I’d lived with Davis and Miles, and then for three years with Miles after Davis’s death. I must have been mad to think that I could move into a place vacated by a dead woman. My so-called best friend.
I’d told myself that the four of us living together would be better for the boys. But it was worse for me. As I drove to my house, I felt dizzy. The road I’d traveled so many times looked strangely unfamiliar. I reminded myself to concentrate.
Finally, there it was. My house. Completely real, but like a house in a dream. How I loved that house! I always had. I should never have left it.
