Or Not to Be Read Free Page A

“Is it Mommy ?” Bethany climbs off Eddie’s lap to answer it. She
shakes her head at Joey. When she hangs up, she crumples to the cold tile floor
in the foyer and pulls my lost boy into a hug. Joey remains rigid, but his
sister isn’t lacking in the stubborn gene. She won’t let him go.
    Finally, Joey puts
his head on her shoulder. Her hair smells like mine. He turns his face into her
neck and cries.
    Mommy! Mommy !
    My
children are calling for me, and I am helpless, stuck. Though I know I’m the
dead one, I feel as though my entire family has died. Maybe it doesn’t matter
who dies—the separation and pain are the same. I’m separated from my family by
a force beyond my control. I’m right here beside them, but without my body I’m
light years away.
    I am not fond of death so far.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    4
Falling
Apart
     
    The light of the bright fall afternoon shines through the
windows at the back of our house and glances off Bethany’s glasses as she peels
apples, slowly, each in one long coil. She mixes butter with flour, not gently.
Clouds of the white dust waft around my kitchen. Eventually, each speck
succumbs to gravity, settling upon any horizontal surface that will stop its
fall and convert kinetic back to potential energy.
    My daughter is the only functioning body
in the place. The cat sleeps on the heating vent with his long, bushy tail
shielding the day from his eyes. Joey must be under his bed again. Eddie hasn’t
moved from the blue chair yet. The stubble on his chin is graying. I imagine
his breath is deadly. He is pathetic. I should feel sympathy for him because he
looks like he could use a hug. But I don’t. I can’t yet because I don’t
understand his reaction to my death. I wish I could have hugged him and made
him smile more while I was alive, but we squandered our time together. Regrets
overwhelm me.
    I watch my Eddie frown when he smells the
apples and cinnamon from the kitchen. I know he’s thinking about me, about us.
I try to stay away, but he pulls me into his thoughts with the same magnetic
intensity as when he pulled me into his arms thousands of times, still never enough,
when I lived.
    Anna?
    Cinnamon reminds me of you. I can’t go
into the kitchen. With both of his
large hands, he rubs his face hard and blows out his breath. You were so
sexy in there.
    Shut up, Eddie.
    I mean I was nuts about you when you
cooked things I loved, just for me. Just for me, Anna.
    The man is still a jerk. He throws around
the L-word for food. So nonchalant.
    That’s when I knew you loved me back.
    Eddie’s the one who said we didn’t need
the L-word. We didn’t need to say it. Could he give me a sign he loved me back?
    Feeding me was how you showed me, for
sure, that you were still mine.
    Still yours? You didn’t even want me
around.
    I was so shook up when your cooking
ability began leaking out. Remember? That’s what you called it—leaking.
    I remember that day last spring when I
made those apple squares, and I burned them to a crisp. I had the oven set too
hot and forgot to set the timer. I got distracted.
    I found you sitting on the kitchen
counter dripping salty tears. The whole house smelled like scorched caramel,
but the cinnamon still smelled incredible.
    Cinnamon has a high thermal stability.
Sugar decomposes first. Eddie came in covered in mud from digging a drainage
ditch in the rain. He had that little-boy grin and that expectant look in his
eye, the one that says he’s hunting cookies.
    There wasn’t much I could do except eat
all the nasty, charred things and keep telling you they were great—that I liked
them better that way.
    What a rotten liar. But he made me laugh.
    I couldn’t tell you the real reason you
were leaking because I wasn’t even supposed to know.
    What did you know?
    That’s when you told me you thought you
had Alzheimer’s. It became our standard joke to explain away your
absentmindedness.
    He told me if I had it, I would be the
last, not the