In an Instant(39)

“Are you kidding?” Francie says. “I wouldn’t be caught dead in those. It looks like she’s wearing roadkill on her feet.”





46

Chloe and my dad are both being released from the hospital tomorrow. I shiver at the thought. Chloe now has a dozen pills stashed in her suitcase. I have no idea if that is a fatal dose, but a single one knocks her out cold, so I think it might be.

I hate this part of being dead but still here. I know things, but there’s nothing I can do about them. My only ability is a fuzzy conduit to the sleeping subconscious: an ability that freaks people out so badly and registers in such fragmented garble that I don’t want to use it.

Since my night terror–provoking episode with my mom, I’ve stayed out of the thoughts of the living. But tonight, I have no choice.

I watch my father sleeping, his handsome face so serene, the way it used to be when he was awake, that I am reluctant to break his peace. So I wait a long time—so long I’m worried he will wake and I will lose my chance.

Dad, I whisper. His eyes move behind his lids, and I talk fast to minimize the torture. It’s not Chloe’s fingers and toes that are upsetting her. It’s Vance. He hurt her and . . .

My dad’s features twist, and he cries out, his eyes snapping open before I can tell him the rest, before I can tell him about the pills and the note.

He sucks in air, and his eyes dart around wildly, and I know I won’t visit him again. It’s too cruel to allow him to hope I still exist.





47

Bob and Ben lift my dad up the front steps in his wheelchair. Behind them, Aubrey and my mom help Chloe, who winces with each step. Bingo circles and jumps and yips like a puppy, and I wonder how much of what happened he understands. Unlike the humans, he is euphoric rather than sad, celebrating those who have returned and seeming to have forgotten those who are not here.

I grow to like Ben more and more with each day that passes. He’s cute in a charming, bookish sort of way. He has a nice smile; a wide, open face; and kind eyes hidden beneath thick wire-rim glasses. I was underwhelmed when I first met him. Milquetoast—I’d always wanted to use that word, and when Ben joined our life, I finally had a reason to use it all the time. The guy was dead-to-rights boring, and I couldn’t understand what Aubrey saw in him.

When Aubrey announced she was going to marry him, I actually cried. Mo told me to trust Aubrey, that she must see something in him that we didn’t. And now I see it, the side of him I never would have seen in life.

This morning, when he showed up at Aubrey’s apartment to drive her to the hospital, he handed her a bouquet of tissue roses. My sister loves flowers, but pollen makes her sneeze.

“And they’re practical too,” he announced as he plucked one from the bunch and honked his nose on it.

I couldn’t decide if it was cheesy or lovely. I settled on cheesily lovely, like the ooey-gooey cheese they squirt on nachos at the movies—strangely wonderful despite how awful it is.

He keeps this side of himself hidden, plodding forward as milquetoast, and I wonder if it’s for self-preservation. Now that I’m dead, I realize how awful people are to each other, how a pervasive cynicism exists in most of us that stops us from seeing the best parts of one another. Perhaps this is one of the things I like most about this perspective: my ability to view things more plainly than I did before, to see a tissue rose as brighter and more beautiful than I would have when I was alive.

As Aubrey climbs the stairs with Chloe, she looks over her shoulder at Ben and offers an expression of apology for making him do this. Ben ricochets a crooked smile back, letting her know that no apology is necessary, and I feel it, his tissue-rose heart willing to do whatever it takes to make his girl happy, and again I find myself really liking him.

There’s no fanfare or homecoming party for my dad’s and Chloe’s return, only our family and Bob. The couch is made up with sheets and a pillow, and my dad glares at it as they help him toward it, hating the reminder that he’s an invalid. Then his eyes shift to Chloe, who is hobbling up the stairs, and they catch on her hair. It has begun to grow out, a half inch of copper blazing at the roots before abruptly changing to black, marking time and reminding him of me.

“Chloe,” he says.

She turns.

“We’re home. Hang in there, baby.”

She gives the smallest nod, and I give the smallest prayer of thanks. I do not know if it’s because of what I said last night or if he would have said it anyways, but Chloe loves my dad, and she’ll do as he asks, at least for today.

Aubrey returns a minute later, and when she’s near the bottom of the stairs, she and Ben make faces at each other that the others don’t see, a silent exchange asking how long they have to stay to not be considered horrible human beings. Ben gives a supportive smile, letting her know he’s fine with staying. Aubrey is the one who nearly groans with the thought.

I can’t blame them. The house feels like a morgue.

When my dad turns on the television to watch the Angels, they say goodbye.

A few minutes later, Bob returns with Subway sandwiches. He gives one to my dad, then goes to the kitchen to give one to my mom. She invites him to join her outside, claiming it’s so they can enjoy the spring weather, but the truth is, like for Ben and Aubrey, mostly it’s to escape the misery.