Or Not to Be Read Free

and I promised to always
find him and protect him. I can’t even hug him from my fresh post on the dead
side.
    I never had time during my life—between
work and cooking and laundry—to do this, so I snuggle down beside him and watch
my boy snooze until he stirs and rubs his sleepy eyes. After a gigantic yawn he
shoves his fingers up his nose and commences what must be his daily ritual of
digging. I remember the day, after years of harassing him about this disgusting
male habit, when my son took a stand. Rather than issuing his blatant daily fib
of promising to never pick his nose again, he said, “But Mommy, if I’m not
supposed to pick out the boogies, why does my finger fit so good?” At five
years of age, the kid had used evolution and his father’s tone, spot on, to
shut down his mother’s nagging.
    Now, with those boogie-covered fingers,
Joey reaches into the cookie wrapper and pops one into his mouth. He’s as
stubborn as I ever was. He won’t cry. He’ll wait for me under that bed
indefinitely.
    Or until the cookies run out.
    He doesn’t know I’m here. I don’t know how
I got here. I’m just dead and wandering, and, somehow, I can hear my little
boy’s thoughts.
    Yesterday morning Mommy got mad at
Daddy. She never came home last night. She must be really mad about the Oreos.
    But I’m not mad at
you, Joey.
    Me and Daddy almost tricked Mom. But
she always figures stuff out, and we got caught.
    Joey sneaks his
hand out from under the bed and rubs the soft spot of rug warmed by the morning
sun. After spending the whole night under the bed, he has no plans to emerge
today. His stash of Oreos and Ritz crackers makes him thirsty, and he has to
pee. But he waits. He hears a car on the gravel driveway.
    Maybe it’s Mommy.
    Bethany fumbles at the back door. Our
daughter, as always, is carrying too much—her giant purse, some groceries, and
our cat, Stink.
    I watched her drive home from college last night. Once Joey
was settled in his nest of blankets, I sought Bethany and immediately, by some
inexplicable scramble of space and time, I was riding with her, right beside
her in her car, for two hours on the deserted highway. One hundred and twenty
minutes of watching my daughter hold her breath, clench the wheel. Seventy-two
hundred seconds during which I could not hug her and make her feel better. Just
like so many times during my life, I couldn’t ease my daughter’s pain. Eddie
shouldn’t have let her drive home. He should’ve gone to get her. He shouldn’t
have told Joey about me in the car. So many should’ves. None of them matter.
Toss the should’ves in with the ifs and let them rot.
    Bethany tiptoed into our house after midnight. She covered
her dad with an old quilt, slid a flashlight and a half pack of Oreos under the
bed with Joey, and sat awake almost all night. I stayed beside her the best I
could, given my lack of a body. Like everyone else, she didn’t know I was
there. When the sun woke her up this morning, she snuck out of the house and
went to the grocery store. The living need to eat.
    Bethany drops the cat in his favorite
chair by the window, and, as she dumps the grocery bag on the table, I can
suddenly hear her.
    How many times will this happen? I can
distract myself and push down the ache, but then it hits me all over again.
Fresh. Like a train I forgot I was trying to outrun. The engine carries the
news: your mother is dead. I forget to leap off the tracks. Slam. Pierces me
like flying glass.
    My mother is dead.
    Oh, honey. I’m right here.
    A groan from the lump in the blue chair
pulls Bethany back out of her head. She kisses her dad’s cheek and crawls into
his lap like she did when she was small. He wraps his arms around her, and he
sobs. Bethany lets him cry into her hair. Her eyes are dry. Her mind is closed.
It provides no further glimpse of her thoughts, no more inkling of her pain.
    The ring of the
phone pierces our silent home. Joey charges out of his room and yells,