Calypso(43)

“Wow,” she said, noticing the cigarette that wasn’t there. “How’d you do that?”

The longest she ever quit was for two weeks. “I just wasn’t strong enough to put it behind me,” she said.

“Well,” I told her, “don’t beat yourself up over it. I suppose it was all part of what made you you.”

In our visits my mother is always sixty-two, the age she was when she died. In 1991 that seemed old to me, though now, of course, I’m almost there myself. Before I know it, she and I will be contemporaries. Then I’ll overtake her, and how strange will that be, to have a mother young enough to be my daughter? When that day comes, will I think her naive? “What do you know about being old?” I’ll ask, me with white hair or, likelier still, bald. “You never even reached retirement age!”

Already there’s so much she’s missed out on: email; ISIS; reality TV; my niece, Madelyn. I have to watch what I say—otherwise I spend half my visit explaining what something is. “They’re pictures you take of yourself with a phone and send to the people you no longer communicate with by talking.”

When it’s time for my mother to go, she stands up and brushes her hands on her skirt. Sometimes she has her big beige purse with her and sometimes not. Her hair is always done. She’s made-up and has her octagonal glasses on. We hug, and then she leaves, not eagerly but not regretfully either. It’s the same with Tiffany, though she tends to stand rather than sit. My sister was never what you’d call a big listener, but in my sleep she’s all ears. “Really?” she’ll say. “And then what?”

In fact, we never talk about her. Just me.

“That’s how you know it’s a dream,” Amy says.

But it’s not, it’s real. I’m not alone in this. It happens to other people as well, and unlike with a nightmare or a ghost story, I don’t mind hearing about it. “I talked to my dad last night,” Hugh will tell me at least once a year.

“Give me the details,” I’ll say, as I liked his father. Sam could be intimidating, but he was an original thinker when it came to politics. “Did he talk about the election?” I’ll ask. “Oh, he must be furious.”



I can never predict when Tiffany or my mother will show up. I can’t conjure them, nor can I control how long they stay. The following morning I’ll feel content, recharged. When I think of Mom or my sister the day after a visit, I remember only the good times and wish it could always be this way. I don’t like recalling their faults or the arguments we had, though with my mother there were only a handful, and they were usually over within an hour or so.

I wonder if, after I’m dead, I’ll be able to visit people the way my mother and sister can. It’s nice to think I could drop in on Hugh and tell him to keep his chin up. I’ve told him a thousand times that after I’m gone he needs to find himself a new boyfriend. I’ve even identified some. The first two, OK, maybe I didn’t put enough thought into them. “Are you kidding?” Hugh said when I pointed out Gilles. “Him?”

“Well, he speaks French,” I said.

“That’s not enough to make me want him, for God’s sake. I mean, he wears aftershave!”

The second was a wrong move as well—way too finicky. “But he is good-looking,” I said.

“What do I want with a good-looking boyfriend?” Hugh asked.

“Right,” I said. “Thanks.”

The latest one, though, a sheep farmer named Duncan—this time I’m really onto something. It’s true that he’s currently living with somebody, but at this point, so is Hugh. “There’s no telling what might happen between now and when I die,” I say. “Maybe Duncan’s boyfriend will hit me with his car while driving drunk. I’ll be killed instantly, he’ll be sent to prison for manslaughter, and wham: the two of you are set.”

I believe I’m being thoughtful, but Hugh doesn’t see it that way. In fact, it infuriates him.

“Don’t you want me to be happy after you die?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “I want you to be alone and miserable. And if you do find someone, I’m going to return from the dead and haunt you.”

This brings us back to ghosts, which, as I said, I don’t believe in. I’m just too practical.





A Number of Reasons I’ve Been Depressed Lately



One. It’s early September 2015 and I’m on the island of Santorini for a literary festival. After the short reading, which takes place outdoors on a patio, the Greek audience asks questions, the first of which is “What do you think of Donald Trump?”

Since announcing his candidacy, the reality-show star has been all over the news. Every outrageous thing he says is repeated and analyzed—like he’s a real politician. I answer that I first became aware of Donald Trump in the late 1980s. That was when Alma, a Lithuanian woman I was working for, bought his book The Art of the Deal and decided that he was wonderful. Shortly afterward, I saw him on Oprah, and ever since then he’s always been in the background, this ridiculous blowhard, part showman and part cartoon character. I see his presidential bid as just another commercial for himself. It wouldn’t surprise me if he were to name the Hamburglar as his running mate. So I say that onstage and then have to explain who the Hamburglar is.