Things I'm Seeing Without You Read online

  We air-toasted. Then we drank.

  And that’s how I became a funeral planner.

  The first phone call came that same night.

  I heard the sound coming from upstairs: a muffled chime echoing through the hallway. It got louder at the foot of the stairs. I went up to the guest room and found my cell phone ringing on the dresser. I thought I had turned it off. I didn’t remember switching it back on. I looked down at the unfamiliar number. I pressed talk.

  There was silence on the line. Then a soft, unsure voice.

  ‘Is this . . . Tess?’

  It was not a low voice like Jonah’s, but somehow I recognized it without having heard it before. I looked down at the screen again, at the seconds of the call ticking away. Slowly, I brought the phone back to my ear. Then I sat down on the bed, took a breath, and said: ‘That depends. Who wants to know?’

  More silence.

  ‘I didn’t think this would actually be your number,’ he said.

  ‘Why would I give you a fake one?’

  This signalled another long pause.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I guess you wouldn’t.’

  Each time Daniel Torres spoke, I was surprised to hear his voice. I was surprised that it existed at all.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said after a while. ‘Is this weird for you or something?’

  No response.

  ‘I mean, is it strange to talk to another human being without an element of deep deception in the mix? I can’t imagine how tough this must be for you.’

  I had told myself to stay calm – not to get too upset before I had the chance to learn something – but it was difficult.

  ‘Maybe . . . this isn’t a good idea,’ he said finally.

  I was lying down on my bed, the taste of stale beer on my tongue. The ceiling above my bed was cracked and peeling.

  ‘Christ,’ I said. ‘Of course it isn’t a good idea. How could it be? I don’t know you. You’re nothing but a creepy stranger to me. I don’t even know where you’re calling from.’

  ‘Romeoville,’ he said right away.

  His voice was a little louder this time.

  ‘Where?’ I said.

  ‘Romeoville, Illinois,’ he said. ‘It’s a suburb of Chicago. By Joliet.’

  This time it was my turn to pause.

  ‘Romeoville by Joliet?’ I said. ‘That sounds totally made up.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ he said. ‘It’s totally real. I’m looking at it right now. It’s as boring as ever.’

  ‘And that’s where you grew up?’

  ‘No. We moved around a lot. My dad’s a flight instructor.’

  For some reason, this seemed like the oddest thing in the world to me. The father of this person I had known but not known taught people to fly airplanes in Illinois.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘What else?’

  Still stuck in thought, I barely heard his question.

  ‘What’s that?’ I said.

  ‘What else do you want to know about me? So I’m less of a creepy stranger. If that’s . . . you know . . . possible.’

  Honestly, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to know about him. Maybe I just wanted to know he was a real person, to hear a voice. But he had opened the door, so I started asking questions. One after the next. And this is what I learnt:

  Daniel was an only child like me. His dad was Mexican American and his mom was white. He grew up speaking two languages, but he mostly hung out with white kids in his suburban high school and he didn’t have much of an opportunity to use his Spanish.

  What else?

  He was eighteen years old.

  What else?

  His parents were still together, but they seemed to get along only when he was around as a buffer. He hardly ever saw them talking alone.

  What else?

  He wasn’t sure what colour his eyes were; his driver’s licence said hazel. His mom thought they were brown.

  What else?

  His first job was working the drive-through window at Dairy Queen. Most people spoke too loud into the microphone making his ears ring. And the bags of soft ice-cream mix looked like digestive fluids.

  What else?

  The first person to die in his life was his cousin who drowned while swimming in a river with a strong current.

  What else?

  He was bullied in high school for being dorky and really into computer games.

  What else?

  His favourite place was the Natural History Museum in Chicago.

  What else?

  His favourite holiday was the Fourth of July because he used to be a bit of a pyro.

  What else?

  He didn’t know his favourite colour because, OK, he was colour-blind.

  What else?

  He really did play video games too much.

  What else?

  He didn’t know why he couldn’t break up with me as Jonah, or why he had kept doing what he did. He was still confused about it all and maybe that was why it was kind of hard to talk to me.

  ‘OK, sure,’ I said, breaking off our game of twenty questions, ‘But I want to know what your endgame was. Did you ever once think of that when you were lying to me for half a year?’

  I could feel my face getting hot. I was holding my breath tight in my chest.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He was tentative suddenly.

  ‘Yes, you do!’ I said. ‘Even if you didn’t think about it consciously, you had to have some kind of idea in the back of your mind. Some sort of fantasy about what would happen.’

  ‘I guess I thought—’

  ‘No more lies,’ I said softly. ‘If you ever want to talk to me again, which probably isn’t going to happen anyway, you have to tell the truth.’

  He took a medium-size pause. Then he said: ‘I thought I would tell you and then you would love me.’

  ‘That’s it? That’s what you thought?’

  ‘Yes. You would love me or I would end it as Jonah and you would never know.’

  ‘And you would have manipulated me for months without telling me. End of story.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why did you think that was OK?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Did Jonah ever know?’

  ‘At first. But he stopped going online after a while.’

  ‘Wait a minute. He knew what you were doing and he didn’t care?’

  Daniel took a shallow breath.

  ‘He didn’t care.’

  It was perfectly clear to me then: I had reached my limit.

  ‘I can’t talk any more today,’ I said.

  ‘Tess.’

  ‘No more. Stop saying things.’

  Ten seconds of dead air. Then Daniel spoke again in his soft voice.

  ‘Listen, I have to ask you a question, though. Just one.’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘You could never tell the difference between me and Jonah? You never sensed anything? The whole time?’

  I thought of that poor sad man from the TV show. The guy who’d been duped. I closed my eyes.

  ‘I can’t talk any more today,’ I said again.

  This time I meant it. And I ended the call.

  I didn’t move from the bed when I hung up. I stayed where I was for at least fifteen minutes, the back of my head pinned to the headboard. I was thinking of a moment, one that popped into my mind while I was talking to Daniel.

  It was the aftermath of another high school party. One where I had basically been drinking alone in the company of others again – a pattern I’d done little to change since the farmhouse.

  I wasn’t drunk, though, when I came home from the party. Just a little buzzed and frustrated. While I was out, Emma had given herself a haircut in the sink. Her blonde locks were scattered all over my toothbrush, in my make-up, in a trail across the floor. Outside my window, there was a group of drunk boys tackling one another in the courtyard, calling out homophobic names. I sat down at my computer and dashed of
f a message.

  I’m dropping out. I’m coming to live with you. Get ready.

  He always seemed to be close to some device, and it never took long to get a response. This time was no exception.

  You don’t even know me.

  It was odd, looking back. We usually indulged each other’s fantasies with few exceptions. At the time I thought he meant that we hadn’t seen each other enough in person, which was undoubtedly true.

  Now, I knew it must have been Daniel. And he was exactly right.

  That’s what the honeymoon is for . . .

  At the time, I shut off my computer and went to bed. And the next day, he sent an audio file of ‘Chapel of Love’ and we carried on as usual. Now I couldn’t help wondering what might have happened if I’d asked him to explain himself that night. How didn’t I know him?

  If I had pressed him, would he have told me everything I didn’t know?

  Grace’s business card was thick and grainy to the touch.

  I had been holding it for the last ten minutes, looking at every detail and trying to decide if I should call her. The card had a small picture of a bright-green tree filled with birds on it. Adorable. Next to the tree were the words ‘Greener Pastures’, and then the name ‘Grace Ware’, along with her contact information. On the back, in the lower left corner, it said, ‘Made with soy and vegetable inks. Chemical-free processing’.

  ‘Oh, thank God. Vegetable inks,’ I said to no one.

  Then I dialled the number and held my breath.

  ‘Grace at Greener Pastures,’ she answered right away.

  Her voice left me momentarily stunned.

  ‘Um . . .’

  ‘Are you trying to reach Greener Pastures, miss?’

  ‘Not yet I hope,’ I said.

  ‘Tess, is that you?’

  I bit my bottom lip.

  ‘Tess?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you there?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  I heard her exhale into the phone.

  ‘Why are you calling, Tess?’

  ‘You told me to.’

  ‘I told you to call if you weren’t angry.’

  I was sitting in the passenger seat of my dad’s car. He was in the grocery store, buying food for the week. I had been thinking about Jonah and Daniel, trying not to succumb to the dread, when I reached into my pants pocket and her card was there.

  ‘How do you do it?’ I asked.

  I looked out the windshield at the people going in and out of the store, stubbing out cigarettes, dragging their kids along. I suddenly wanted to cry for the futility of the world.

  ‘Do what?’ she said.

  ‘Run a successful funeral business.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘That.’

  ‘I liked your ceremony,’ I said. ‘For Maxine. I know I was being a little bitchy about it, but the truth is it was really nice. It was better than anything my dad has done. That’s probably why he crawled into his shell.’

  I watched as a bag boy waited for an old woman to open the trunk of her enormous Monte Carlo. I kept talking.

  ‘I think you did something really nice for that woman. And it seemed to actually help the family. I’m not sure my dad is there yet. How’d you learn to do it?’

  My dad was coming out of the store now, carrying two heavy bags. He pretended they were too heavy, nearly dragging them on the ground, and then smiled at me like a goof.

  ‘Why don’t you come to my office?’ Grace said. ‘My assistant can get us some coffee. We’ll talk about it. When are you free?’

  I laughed out loud.

  ‘What’s funny about that?’

  ‘I’ve ruined my future,’ I said. ‘I got nothing but time.’

  ‘Come by this afternoon then,’ she said.

  My dad was loading the bags in the trunk. What would he think if I was meeting with the enemy? Before I could respond, Grace spoke again.

  ‘I’ll see you at three,’ she said. ‘The address is on my card.’

  In the end, I lied to my dad.

  What other choice did I have? I sat around half the afternoon trying to think about how I could get him to understand why I needed business advice from his rival. But when the time came, I just told him I needed a giant box of tampons. Then I drove my ugly car to a neighbourhood full of art galleries where Grace had her office. When I got there, I stood in front of a big window that faced the avenue. There was a sign hanging just behind the glass that read:

  WHAT IS A DEATH CARE MIDWIFE?

  Beneath these words was a list of answers to a question that I hadn’t asked:

  AN ADVOCATE! We help you deal with anything you need in your time of loss, from legal paperwork to negotiation with area cemeteries and preserves!

  A PLANNER! We arrange for in-home wakes and green burials outside of the traditional parlour system!

  A STEWARD! We protect local ecological cycles and our planet as a whole with every decision we make!

  A few too many exclamation points for my taste (!).

  I had just finished reading it all when I heard the tap of fingernails on the glass. I looked past the sign to find a woman in square glasses staring back at me. I walked over to the door and stepped inside the modern office space.

  ‘Miss Fowler?’ the woman asked.

  She squinted at me like I was out of focus.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But . . .’

  ‘You’re early,’ she said.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘That’s why I was outside.’

  ‘I’ll let Grace know you’re here.’

  She walked away and I looked around the small space. Aside from a very tiny coffin display, with models made of wicker, bamboo, and other planet-friendly stuff, you’d never know anyone dealt with death in this place. It looked like the acupuncturist’s office in Manhattan where my mom went.

  Grace’s office door swung open, and the woman with the square glasses ushered me inside. I found Grace standing behind her desk. Her hair was piled on top of her head, held together by a mass of bobby pins. She looked like the bohemian art teacher I’d had in elementary school, a woman who wore sandals in the dead of winter and talked to us about the transcendent sensuality in Picasso’s early reclining nudes.

  ‘Tess,’ she said. ‘Welcome to Greener Pastures.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘It smells gardeny in here.’

  ‘We have a scent made for us,’ she said. ‘With cacao. That’s probably what you’re smelling.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said.

  Her office was just like the rest of the space. Sleek. Accents of wood. Green things budding from every surface.

  ‘I’m afraid I only have a short time,’ Grace said. ‘I have to meet a family for a home ceremony this evening.’

  ‘You’re having a funeral in their home?’

  ‘It’s one of our services.’

  I sat down in an uncomfortable chair across from her.

  ‘Why would anyone want to do that?’ I asked. ‘It sounds depressing as hell.’

  Grace wasn’t fazed. She just sat down and adjusted a bobby pin.

  ‘Tess,’ she said. ‘I think one of the reasons we’re so scared of death in this country is because as soon as someone dies, the body is taken away and pumped full of chemicals. There’s no direct contact with the dead any more.’

  ‘Maybe that’s a good thing.’

  ‘I’m not so sure. We used to be better at this. The body would stay with the family so they could wash and dress and care for it. They could have time alone with it to grieve and come to understand what happened.’

  I couldn’t help thinking about Jonah, and the fact that I had never seen his body, let alone touched it. I had barely seen it when he was alive.

  ‘But maybe it’s OK not to see it,’ I said. ‘Maybe it would just be too hard, you know? Maybe you’re forcing people to do things they don’t want to do.’

  ‘I don’t force people to do anything, Tess,’ she said. ‘I give them options.’r />
  The woman with the square glasses came in and poured two cups of coffee in glass mugs and then disappeared behind a nearly slammed door.

  ‘Your assistant is a real people person,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, Morgan’s OK,’ said Grace. ‘She just knows who you are. That’s all.’

  I took a long drink of coffee.

  ‘And who am I exactly?’

  ‘She’s heard the story. She doesn’t think I should be staying in contact with you. She thinks you’re going to sue me or something.’

  ‘So she thinks I’m mentally disturbed?’

  ‘Well, you did jump in a freezing lake with all your clothes on.’

  I tried not to laugh, but the image was suddenly too ridiculous. A lone chuckle escaped.

  ‘Listen, Tess,’ she said, her face getting serious. ‘It’s a little weird between us. I can deal with that, OK? But I just want to tell you something before you go.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ I mumbled.

  ‘I know you’re mourning someone,’ said Grace.

  I opened my mouth to deny it.

  ‘I know the signs,’ she said. ‘I’ve been doing this a while now.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I said.

  She gave me a look that said: please cut the crap.

  ‘I lost someone, too,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A child,’ she said.

  I tried to stay calm, but my palms were starting to sweat.

  ‘About three years ago,’ she said.

  ‘How?’ I managed.

  ‘She had a genetic disease. Neurological.’

  ‘How old was she?’

  ‘Twenty-two months.’

  When she had said a child, she had meant a child.

  ‘Grace,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry. I . . .’

  Her eyes were dry, but her brow was folded tight. She was quiet for a minute. Then she began to speak.

  ‘After it happened, I wanted every happy person in the world to be as miserable as I was. I wanted everyone to experience a tragedy like mine. Otherwise I couldn’t talk to them again. I couldn’t relate to anything about them.’

  ‘OK,’ I said.

  ‘But a little later, maybe a year or so, I wanted something different. I wanted people to be able to say goodbye the way I had. It was the only good thing, really, that we got to do it on our terms. Someone helped us out, and we kept her at the house. I wanted to help other people in the same way. You came here for business advice, right?’