Life and Other Near-Death Experiences(15)

Paul gave me another number, one that was much lower.

“Awesome. One last question. I want to give, um, some money away. You know, try to boost my karma and lower my taxes for the year,” I said, asking God to forgive me for this and the many fibs I’d had to tell over the past several days. “How would I find a good charity?”

“Check out Charity Navigator. They have a full rundown of who’s legit. Look for an organization that has at least a B-plus rating.”

“You know everything,” I said. I was starting to see the light again.

“It’s a burden, I tell you.”

“I love you the most, Paul.”



An hour later, I emptied half my savings. I would’ve unloaded the entire account, but since there was a chance I’d have to split it with Tom if I lived long enough to legally divorce him, I stuck the other half in a cash deposit.

I couldn’t find a well-established charity specifically for children who had lost parents to cancer; and while I briefly contemplated turning the lie I told Ty and Shea into truth by forming some sort of foundation for that purpose, I ultimately decided my money would be better off with people who knew what they were doing. So I chose two nonprofits dedicated to cancer research—Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital—and sent each one a check far larger than any I had ever written before, specifying that the donations were in memory of Charlotte Ross, my mother.

Which got me thinking. Though I was prone to prayer and put my faith in God, I could not say with absolute certainty that I believed in the afterlife—although I sure as hell hoped it existed. I wasn’t so much interested in meeting my maker as I was in seeing my mother again. As this possibility drew nearer, however, I was getting a tad panicky. Had she been watching my life from afar? What would she say about my choices? The two donations seemed inconsequential. Surely I could pay tribute to my mother in an even bigger and more meaningful way.

Yes. Yes I could. And I would do so by ridding myself of all the treasures I would not be storing up in heaven.

I went on Craigslist and placed an ad:

DIVORCE SALE! MID-CENTURY FURNITURE! LIGHT SCULPTURES! MODERN ART! DIRT CHEAP PRICES—EVERYTHING MUST GO!

Then I called my Realtor friend. “Libby?” he said curiously. I’d already reached out to him about the condo, but he probably was not expecting me to contact him at nine on a Friday night, especially as we hadn’t seen each other since a mutual friend’s engagement party a few years ago.

“Raj, I want to move forward. Can you still sell the apartment for me?”

He perked right up. “So you’re going to go through with it! How soon?”

“Yesterday.”

“How much do you want?”

“Enough to make the mortgage disappear,” I said, and told him what I still owed.

He whistled. “Nice. You guys bought before the height of the market, so you’ll probably pocket close to a hundred.”

“Dollars?”

“Thousand, Libby. A hundred thousand.”

I exhaled. “Tell me more.”

“I can get it listed this week, but you’re going to have to make sure the place is as clean and clutter-free as possible.”

“Not a problem. It’ll be all but empty, and I’ll be out of town for the next month.”

Raj and I were friends online, and he’d seen my recent status update about being single. “Libby, I hate to ask, but—”

“Tom’s not happy about it, although I’ve paid for ninety-eight percent of this place. Even so, he’s on board.” I’d have to get the locks changed and forge Tom’s signature. That was regrettable.

On the other hand, I was going to make it rain for kids with cancer. Heck, by the time the condo was unloaded, Shea’s measly literacy donation would look like a lemonade stand.

More important, I would no longer be a worthless chunk of carbon, but rather a daughter who had done at least a little something to show that her mother’s death had not been entirely in vain.





NINE


“Mary and Joseph, Libby. Have you lost your mind?” said Jess. She glanced around my apartment, which was barren. I had planned to hold the Death and Divorce Sale all day, but an interior designer armed with a moving van and a couple of beefy guys showed up first thing that morning and nearly cleared me out. “This is really yours?” the designer kept asking; apparently putting Salvation Army prices on Scandinavian furniture makes it appear as though you’re not doing business on the up-and-up. Though my initial goal had been to unload everything as quickly as possible, I realized the designer had the ability to pad my charity fund, and I tacked an extra thousand bucks onto her bill. She didn’t open her trap again.

I wouldn’t have buzzed Jess up if I had known it was her, but I thought she was another buyer swinging by.

“Seriously,” she said, aghast. “I think you should see a professional. Like, today.”

I followed Jess’s eyes to the dust bunnies clustered where the cream sectional had been not an hour before. “Maybe,” I allowed. I examined her outfit du jour. “Then again, I’m not the one wearing a feather in my hair without a hint of irony and carrying a bag made from llama foreskins.”