Before I Go (33 page)

I hesitate. I don’t want to hurt her feelings, but I also know I can’t bear the weight of her sadness for an entire weekend. “We’ll see. I’ve started helping out a professor and I may have too much work to do.”

“Oh, Daisy, that’s wonderful,” she says, a little too animated. “I don’t want to keep you from it.”

“It’s OK,” I say, but then we just sit in silence until I pretend I have a call coming in and tell her I have to go.

When I hang up, I walk down the hall toward the water fountain. My eyes are strained from staring at all the black type on bright white paper and my brain throbs from the exertion.

I take a long pull of cool water and stretch my legs, walking slowly up and down the linoleum passageway, turning the conversation with my mom over in my mind.

Jack’s graduation.

Jack.

Any concerns—or hopes—I had about our night together bringing us closer quickly vanished. We’ve barely spoken since the night we made love, as if we broke down walls only to have them be replaced by ones taller and thicker, like stubborn hair that returns with a vengeance after you shave it. And I’ve tried to ignore it, but there’s something else in Jack’s eyes on the rare occurrence that we are in the same room. It’s an emotion I haven’t wanted to attach a name to, for fear of making it real. But now, the word comes screeching into my head unbidden.

Guilt.

And I wonder if guilt is what drove him out of our bed so early the morning after we had sex. Was he thinking of Pamela when he was with me? Or worse, was he wishing I
was
Pamela?

The thought stops me, and I put my hand on the white-painted cement-block wall to steady myself. Then I straighten my spine and walk back into Dr. Walden’s office, burying myself in her mountain of paperwork.

FOR THE NEXT few days, my view consists of the four yellow walls of Dr. Walden’s square office and the back of my eyelids. I leave before Jack gets up in the morning, and when I get home, he’s either still at work or shut in his study, and I drop into bed without disturbing him. I know I’m pushing my body too hard, but it’s easier this way. To not see my husband. To not wonder why he doesn’t want to see me.

On my breaks from paperwork, I add to my lists. More things Pamela
should know about Jack: the way he leaves empty shampoo bottles and shaving cream canisters on the counter, as a signal that I need to pick up more the next time I go to the store; his tendency to misplace his keys, wallet, and cell phone within five minutes of coming home; how he sometimes gets so lost in his work that he forgets to call to say he’ll be late. I get flashes of resentment as I recall some of these less-than-desirable traits, and I sit with the anger, preferring it to other emotions.

Then I flip the page of my notebook and stop short at a notation I made weeks ago, when I was in Jack’s office contemplating cremation. And I know it’s a task I’ve been putting off for too long.

THE MCARTHUR FUNERAL HOME looks more like a southern plantation house where you’d go to drink mint juleps in the parlor than a place you’d go to “arrange burials with dignity, caring, and compassion.” Their Web site also said their consultants could help you “plan your own funeral in four easy steps,” as if it was as simple as sewing your own drapes or baking bread.

“I always thought this was a sorority house,” Kayleigh says when we pull up the long driveway and park in front of the tall white columns. I laugh, grateful that Kayleigh is keeping the mood light, but when I open my door to get out of the car, she doesn’t move. I look at her. “Coming?”

“I don’t know if I can,” she says, staring straight ahead, her tight curls billowing around her face. “I know I said I would, but”—she shivers—“oh my God. I just. I can’t.”

“Seriously? You’re going to sit in the car?”

“Daisy. There are dead bodies in there. Right now.” Her voice is a whisper, as if she doesn’t want the deceased to hear her.

“You don’t know that. They don’t stockpile them in the basement. Maybe no one has died this week.”

“Do you
read
the obituaries?”

“Do
you
?” I’ve never even seen Kayleigh with a newspaper.

“No, but I’ve seen them and they take up at least an entire page in the paper every week—sometimes two pages. People have died this week. And they are in there.” She raises her eyebrows and points at the house, as if I wasn’t sure which funeral home she was referring to.

I begin to think bringing Kayleigh wasn’t a good idea.

“Anyway, where’s Jack?” she says. “Shouldn’t he be the one doing this with you?”

“He’s in class,” I say. I don’t add that asking him would have required us to speak to each other, something we weren’t doing much of recently.

When Kayleigh still doesn’t budge, I sigh. “It’s fine. I’ll go in by myself,” I say, and let the car door slam shut. But as I walk toward the house with my shoulders straight and my head held high, staring at the dark clouds above the trees that have been threatening rain all day, I know I’m acting braver than I feel. I wanted Kayleigh to come because this place creeps me out as much as it does her, but I don’t want to admit it.

When I reach the brick steps, I hear the passenger-side door open and I let out a small sigh of relief. “Sorry!” she calls out. “I’m coming, I’m coming.”

We’re greeted by a woman who smiles and leads us down a hall into a back room where leather chairs surround a long black table. I’m relieved it looks like a bright, sterile office conference room, and not the dark, musty
Addams Family
–esque room I had been envisioning. “Can I get you anything? Tea? Coffee?”

“No, thanks,” I say.

She gives a pleasant nod. “John Jr. will be in shortly.”

I wait for Kayleigh to make fun of his name—to say something like
Junior? Are we meeting with a four-year-old?—
but she just sits there, pale-faced and twitching.

Her silence makes me even more anxious, so I say the first thing that comes to mind.

“How’s Harrison?”

She looks at me blankly, and I wonder if I’ve misspoke his name. No, I’m fairly certain the nineteen-year-old is Harrison.

“What?” I ask.

“Uh, we broke up?” she says.

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Daisy, you know this. I’ve been seeing Greg. For a few weeks now.”

It’s my turn to stare at her blankly.

“You know, Bradley Cooper?”

“Oh, right,” I say, even though I’m still not sure exactly whom she’s talking about or when she stopped seeing Harrison and I feel bad that I haven’t been a better friend. That I’ve been so absorbed in my own life—or death, I suppose—that I haven’t been there for her.

We sit in silence, because I don’t want to betray any more of my lack of knowledge of her romantic life. I’m relieved when Kayleigh speaks up.

“How are Jack and
Pamela
doing?” She says Pamela’s name with a sneer, and my guilt turns into a flash of annoyance. Ever since I realized PW147 was Kayleigh’s reviled co-teacher, she hasn’t exactly been a good friend either.

“You know, I could use a little support in this.”

Kayleigh’s eyes grow wild. “Support? Look where I am. You think I’m not supporting you?” She pauses. “But you know how I feel about
her.
”

My annoyance quickly turns to anger. “God, Kayleigh, yeah, I get it! You don’t like her. But can you just take
your
feelings out of it for a
second? She’s a good person. She would be good for him. He deserves to be happy.”

I’m expecting a snide retort, but instead, Kayleigh looks down at her fingernails, and I know she’s trying to decide which one to start gnawing on. I sit back, smug that I’ve put her in her place. She starts chewing on her thumb thoughtfully, and then, in a tiny voice, says: “What about you? Don’t you deserve to be happy, too?”

I scoff. How typical for Kayleigh to not get what it means to really be someone’s partner, to not understand what it is to love someone more than yourself. “So selfish,” I say, under my breath.

She turns to me. “What did you say?”

It’s all the prompt I need. “You’re selfish!” I explode. “You sleep with married men and boys young enough to be your nephews without ever considering the consequences! You make Jack and me come to your school and pretend to be
parents
when we’ll never have any children of our own. Ever. You didn’t even think for a
second
how that might make me feel. You hate Pamela—because she makes
you
look bad! And you wonder why you’re terrible at relationships?”

I know I should stop there, but words keep tumbling out as if they’re a flood of water that’s broken through a dam and can’t be stopped.

“And you have your whole life ahead of you and you’re just
wasting
it. Do you know what a slap in the face that is? I won’t ever be a therapist. Ever. I won’t get my master’s. I’ll never have my own counseling practice in New York or Georgia or anywhere, for that matter! But you, you could be
anything
. Anything you want. But no, you just wake up every day and go to that stupid job that you hate and just accept it. And what for? To spite your parents? God forbid you
succeed
at anything, lest they compare you to your perfect sister and you don’t live up to it. Better to just not try, right?”

I slump back in my chair, feeling like a weight has been lifted off my chest.

Until I see Kayleigh’s face. There’s so much pain in her dark eyes it makes my bones hurt.

I put my hand over my mouth, as if I can somehow go back in time and prevent the words from coming out. I didn’t mean them. Not really. I know I’m just a tornado of emotions and Kayleigh happened to be in the path of my storm.

I wish I could take it all back. But I can’t.

“I’m wasting
my
life?” Kayleigh asks. Her voice is steady, eerily calm. “What the fuck do you call what you’ve been doing?”

Before I can respond, the door to the room opens and John Jr. walks in. He has television preacher hair, shiny wing-tip shoes, and a clammy handshake. And while he goes over the myriad of options for caskets, as if he’s telling me the features of a brand-new Cadillac, I sit absolutely still and pretend that I’m ordering a car and that my best friend doesn’t have every reason in the world to hate me.

THE SKY HAS opened up and it’s raining thick pellets of water when I drop Kayleigh back off at her car in the elementary school parking lot. The only sound in the air is the music coming out of the radio. It’s some Sarah McLachlan song and I reach up to turn it off. I’ve hated Sarah McLachlan ever since my freshman roommate played the
Surfacing
album on rotation for three straight weeks when she broke up with her high school boyfriend.

But now I wish I hadn’t turned it off because the silence just underscores that I can’t find the words to convey the depth of my remorse to Kayleigh. As she reaches for the door handle, we both speak at the same time.

“Kayleigh, I . . .”

“You know . . .”

I force a small chuckle, relieved that the silence is broken, even if she’s still angry with me. I forge forward with my unprepared speech. “I’m so sorry for what I said. I didn’t mean—”