Until the Day I Die
Emily Carpenter
MARCH
1
PERRY’S JOURNAL
Friday, March 1
TO DO:
Take Shorie for ice cream
Pick up wings, beer, pinot gris
Work on Shorie’s letter
Shorie’s new Jax budget for school
DO NOT OPEN SLACK OVER WEEKEND!!
(except latest Error Message—kick to Scotty?)
(and Global Cybergames guy—kick to Sabine?)
March’s Oulipian constraint—N+5
How do I love thee? Let me count the weddings.
I love thee to the design and breaker and herb My southeast can reach, when ferrying out of silence.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “How Do I Love Thee?” N+5
AUGUST
2
ERIN
I was the one who insisted on the going-away party. Surprising exactly no one, I’m sure, because of how colossally bad an idea it was.
In fact, I have no doubt they discussed the issue behind my back in the days leading up to the dismal event. Just another instance of me forging blindly ahead, I’m sure they all agreed, trampling underfoot good sense, prudent measures, and the basics of self-care.
Proof positive that I was in dire need of a break.
Case in point: Shorie, my daughter, didn’t even want to go away. Instead of accepting her scholarship and going to college—fulfilling her late father’s wishes—she wanted to stay home and work at our tech company, Jax.
Additionally, the venue left much to be desired. For cost and conveniences’ sake, I’d planned to have the party at Jax’s office. Our startup, which launched a personal budget app, is run out of the funky loft space of a defunct department store in downtown Birmingham. The building is located smack-dab in the middle of the Birmingham Civil Rights Heritage Trail, and all day, you can see groups of tourists retracing the steps of Martin Luther King Jr. and the protests he led. Possibility and hope fill the air.
At least they used to before Perry died. But now—five months later—the place never fails to put me in a dark mood. When I’m there, I feel like a scuba diver trapped underwater, desperately trying to fight my way to the surface, all the while knowing my oxygen is running out. I love my job, but I hate the daily reminder of what I’ve lost.
So, not the best place to have a party.
In my defense, no one tried to talk me out of it. Sabine, my ever-loyal best friend, assured me everything would be fine. “Shorie will have a great time,” she said in that soothing yoga-instructor voice she uses to persuade me to do things I don’t want to do. “She may be the CEO’s daughter, but we all consider her family.”
I believed her and relaxed. Sabine has that effect on me. Behind my back, people call her the Erin Whisperer. A somewhat embarrassing but fair assessment. Truthfully I don’t know how I would’ve survived Perry’s death without her. She’s been a lifeline for me, at work and with Shorie.
Sabine sent out the e-vites and ordered all the food, enough for the fifteen Jax employees and the handful of friends and family Shorie was inviting. Sabine said decorations were no big deal, just some flowers and Auburn swag to spruce things up. She even offered to take Shorie shopping for a new outfit.
I tried, I truly did. I plucked my unruly eyebrows, made sure to pick up my old workhorse black dress at the cleaners, and got my nails done, fingers and toes, for the first time in months. I had Shorie’s gift cleaned and wrapped, a delicate band of emeralds that my mother gave to me when I went away to Auburn.
And then, the afternoon of the party, I unraveled.
It wasn’t a Chris Stapleton song or the smell of an Altoids mint on somebody’s breath or the way some man’s light-brown hair curled up against the edge of his starched white collar. This time it was fast food.
I had popped into the hole-in-the-wall where Perry and I used to sneak off to revel in the forbidden glory of a chili slaw dog. In the shoebox-size space, I ordered what my Jax app had suggested to me—Have Sloan’s Special Dog, only $5.99!—and found a table near the door, being careful not to smudge my newly glossed black nails as I sat. Then the vortex descended.
Perry lay on the hospital bed in the shadowy emergency room. In the curtained area, I could barely look at him, he was so bloody and still. He’d been driving from Columbus, Georgia, to meet us at the lake for a family camping trip, first one of the season. On 73, between Waverly and Roxana, he’d fallen asleep at the wheel, the police said. Veered off the narrow road and smashed his car into a pine tree. He hadn’t been wearing a seat belt, that idiot.
After his meeting in Columbus, but before he’d gotten on the road, he’d met someone for drinks. A friend from college, Roy. Roy later swore to me that Perry only had one beer. The doctors did a blood test and didn’t find anything to warrant concern, but what did it matter anyway? This motionless body covered in blood was not my husband. My husband was gone.
How to explain grief to someone who’s never experienced it? It’s like a cross between a panic attack and a case of acute appendicitis, only it happens all over your body. It never goes away, and it permanently alters who you are. There is no escape, only temporary reprieve. That afternoon, I raced out of the hot dog place without my food. At home, I vomited into the kitchen trash can, then locked myself in the guest room. The room had the only bed I could sleep in, one without any memories hiding between its sheets. I crawled under the blanket, fully clothed, and immediately fell asleep.