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  To my mother, my sister and all the women who have taught me how to write life.

  PART ONE

  * * *

  MOBY DICK

  It is not down in any map; true places never are.

  Truth hath no confines.

  There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own.

  —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

  Day 0

  PERHAPS DAY 0 doesn’t exist on the calendar, but in life, it does. My Day 0 was the day Chris died, though I’ve also considered it might have been the day I moved to the island. But in the end, death struck me as more decisive than a move.

  When the phone rang, I knew it was him. I was taking a bubble bath that had two spoonfuls of olive oil and a big glass of whole milk in it—home remedies to stave off stretch marks on my enormous belly—while I ate Belgian chocolate ice cream, an homage to my ancestors. I didn’t make any attempt to step out of the bathtub and pick up the phone. I just hoped it wouldn’t wake up Olivia; it had been hard for me to get my six-year-old daughter to sleep, and my moment of relaxation and self-indulgence had finally come. Chris would understand.

  The bath was over when I’d polished off the pint. I dried off; rubbed almond lotion on my chest, belly, and butt; and listened to the message he’d left on my voicemail:

  Hey, honey. I just wrapped up. I wanted to make it home for dinner, but there was no way. My client insisted we have something here in New Haven, at one of the off-campus bars. I’m headed home now. I should be there around twelve. You don’t need to wait up for me. Kisses, my love.

  I didn’t call back, I just sent a text:

  I was in the bath gorging myself on ice cream when you called. Don’t call me tubby, I’m sensitive! Have a good trip home. The three of us are here waiting for you. ILY.

  My cell phone rang again two hours later. It didn’t really ring; it vibrated and the screen blinked. I’d fallen asleep watching TV in bed. I wasn’t alarmed when I saw it was Chris. When he traveled at night, he sometimes called me on his hands-free to keep from dozing off. I loved that he relied on me to keep him awake. I wasn’t being a submissive wife; it’s just that I had an incredible capacity to close my eyes and fall asleep anytime and anywhere. So not only did those brief interruptions not bother me, I actually enjoyed them. They reminded me of when we were teenagers, and I’d take the cordless house phone into bed, and he would do the same, and we would spend the whole night talking, and in a way, we’d fall asleep together.

  “Hey, honey, where are you?” I asked, still drowsy.

  “Good evening,” a woman’s voice answered. Then I got scared. I looked at the cell phone screen again. Chris. There was a lot of noise from cars in the background. “Is this Alice Williams?”

  “Uh . . . Yeah, that’s me.” Immediately my hands started to shake.

  “Your husband has been in a traffic accident. We’re taking him to Saint Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford.”

  “What do you mean, New Bedford?”

  “Your husband is Christopher Williams, resident of 668 Hope Street, Providence?”

  “Yes . . .”

  “He ran off the road on Route 6, close to Marion.”

  “Marion? Where’s that?”

  “Marion, Massachusetts. Next to the Weweantic River,” the person added, as if that would help me orient myself.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, stunned, fighting not to wake up. As long as I was asleep, all this would be nothing more than a nightmare.

  “I repeat, ma’am. Your husband has been in a traffic accident twenty-two miles east of New Bedford. We’re taking him to the hospital . . .”

  “No, there must be some mistake,” I cut her off, relieved, finally getting my thoughts in order. “That’s impossible. My husband is—was—at Yale.”

  We lived in Providence, Rhode Island. Yale is in New Haven, a hundred or so miles to the west. New Bedford is to the east, the opposite direction. I didn’t know exactly how far then, but less than an hour by car.

  “Ma’am, I’ve just looked through his documents,” she said patiently, understanding how difficult taking in such information can be. “He’s Christopher Williams.”

  “Can I talk to him, please?” I asked in anguish.

  “He’s unconscious. His condition is very serious, Mrs. Williams. It’s important for you to come as soon as possible. Saint Luke’s Hospital, New Bedford.”

  When I hung up, I looked instinctively at the time on the digital clock on my nightstand. I watched it go from 12:01 to 12:02 on May 13, 2015. From the time I was a little girl, my favorite number had been thirteen. It was the number I always picked when I played a sport, the number displayed on my jersey. And since no one ever chose thirteen, all its luck was for me. But that was over now.

  And that day, May 13, 2015, became Day 0 for me.

  * * *

  After driving for five minutes, which seemed like endless hours, a shiver coursed through me when I realized I’d left Olivia alone, as if I’d just gone out to the mailbox to pick up the paper.

  I immediately called my parents in the car on the hands-free, hoping my father would pick up.

  “What is it, honey?” It was my mother, alarmed by the late hour.

  “Mom, Chris has been in a car accident. They’re taking him to the hospital.”

  “Oh my God. Is it bad?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll call you later. I just ran out and Olivia is alone at home. I don’t want her to wake up without anyone there. Please go over there right away.”

  “Sure, honey, we’re on our way. Oh Lord, George, wake up, Chris has had an accident. Where was he, honey?”

  I didn’t want to have to go on giving explanations.

  “Close to Yale, where he was working.”

  * * *

  I hate hospitals. As soon as I went in, I got queasy, even more than usual given my distress. My legs were about to give out. I don’t know how I managed to drive there. A porous veil started clouding my vision. I suffer from asthenophobia, an irrational fear of fainting in public. It almost always strikes me in stressful situations, when I feel trapped, when I’m surrounded by strangers or when I’m the center of attention. Any combination of those factors can lead to tachycardia, chills, difficulty breathing, and a feeling of panic.

  A nurse accompanied me to a waiting room next to the ICU.

  “Stay here, please. The doctor will come out as soon as he can. They’re still operating on your husband.”

  I saw a soda machine and realized I needed sugar and caffeine. I didn’t even have time to reach into my pocket to fish out the coins. I faded to white at more or less the same time that would later appear on Chris’s death certificate.

  * * *

  I woke up in an examination area in the emergency room. The doctor and the head nurse looked at me so gently, with such empathy, that I knew Chris was dead. Not long after they confirmed it, I wondered whether I would have to honor his wishes and call our baby daughter Ruby or whether I could choose whatever name I wa
nted. Tricks the mind plays to survive. Those little unimportant details you grab onto when life stops moving on solid ground.

  They’d put an IV in my arm to give me saline and injected me with a tranquilizer. Vital anesthesia for facing the nightmare of death. Was it appropriate given my pregnancy? Probably better than taking the risk that I would give birth then and there, wracked with heartache.

  “The circumstances of your husband’s death are still far from clear,” the doctor told me. “We think it was cranioencephalic trauma caused by the impact when the car crashed. But the police have informed us there were no skid marks on the asphalt, so it’s likely he fell asleep at the wheel or lost consciousness before going off the road or . . .” He stopped, thinking it inappropriate to continue speculating on the subject. “A coroner will perform an autopsy to clear things up and determine the exact cause.”

  It was then that I realized he was insinuating that Chris might have committed suicide.

  “How long does that take? When can they send the body to Providence?”

  “There’s a special area in the hospital set up where you can stay and receive family and friends.” Seeing that I didn’t react, he added, “A psychologist will come now to assist you and your family. I’m very sorry, Mrs. Williams. If you want, we can help you get in touch with them . . .”

  “No, I want to take my husband home as soon as possible, please,” I said, or thought. At that moment, I couldn’t really distinguish between the two. All I was certain of was that, yes, of course I would call our daughter Ruby.

  * * *

  The sun was coming up outside and the effects of the tranquilizer were wearing off. It was time to call my parents. I would break down, cry, tell them what had happened, and say that I couldn’t stop thinking that if only I’d picked up the phone when he called, he might still be alive. That I didn’t know what Chris was doing there, that he’d lied to me and I was so sad, that I felt like none of this was happening, that it was all a nightmare. That they’d asked me to identify his body, and when I saw it, I’d thought, No, it isn’t him. Because it couldn’t be him, because Chris never lied to me, and when he did—usually about something insignificant—I always knew it and he’d laugh like a naughty child, and I adored him for it. So the body I had identified in the morgue wasn’t Chris; it was a false Chris. It wasn’t my Chris. None of this was real. Right, Dad? Right, Mom? Tell me none of this is happening. I called my father’s cell phone. My mother picked up.

  “Yeah, Mom, it’s very bad . . . I don’t know, on a road close to Yale. He was on his way home . . . Mom, I don’t know anything else. I’ll call you when I have some news . . . No, I don’t want you to come . . . No, not Dad either . . . I don’t want Olivia to suspect anything and then get scared . . . I’d rather you both stay there and take care of her . . . I’ll keep you informed . . .”

  I didn’t know I could lie so easily, because it was something I’d almost never had to do. Why hadn’t I been able to tell the truth? I couldn’t even say that Chris was dead. It was as if I needed more time. For what? I had no idea. I only knew I needed two hours or so. At that moment, it was hard to foretell that the time I’d need wasn’t a matter of hours or weeks or months, but of years.

  MAY 15, 2015

  MY HUSBAND JUST died two days ago, and I didn’t even know him, I thought. The first time I had smiled at him wasn’t because he was handsome, funny, popular and smart, but because I felt like I’d known him my whole brief life. And from that first fleeting smile we shared in a hallway in high school, I felt like he was part of me, and I part of him. Who was my husband? And, since I had spent eighteen years in love with his smile and with the smile he evoked from me, who was I? Hi, my name is Alice Williams, I’m thirty-three years old, and I’m sitting in the hallway of the Monahan Drabble Sherman Funeral Home listening to Dire Straits on the PA.

  A PA? Seriously? In a funeral home? Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits, the first CD Chris ever bought, at a yard sale, when he was a kid. His favorite. How did they know? “So Far Away” was playing. How appropriate, how macabre. How ridiculous. But who had told the funeral home? Suddenly I realized it had been me. Is there any particular music you’d like to have played during the viewing? You can personalize the selection, the kindly woman in charge of making our loss more bearable had said. I don’t remember how I’d answered, but it was obvious that if this was playing, it was because I had requested it. Though it could easily have been Tricia, Chris’s sister. I was having problems with my memory. And when I say problems, I mean I was forgetting everything except what I really wanted to forget: that I was a widow.

  Everyone was there. My parents, my grandmother, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, Chris’s parents, his sister and other family members, acquaintances, the friends we had in common and the ones we kept to ourselves. My entire little universe, controlled and orderly, until now. My bubble. A bubble that exploded with that call in the middle of the night, waking me to a hostile world I didn’t recognize, didn’t want to live in. And so, in just two days, I had built a new temporary bubble, where I kept myself relatively alive, in a state similar to hibernation, being there without being there. Even when people were in front of me, I didn’t see or hear them. I didn’t want them to talk to me or touch me. I couldn’t comprehend why I took no comfort in their words of consolation and their gentle, sincere embraces.

  I didn’t tell anyone about Chris, about how he hadn’t been where he was supposed to be. I was ashamed to.

  Olivia came over when “Walk of Life” started playing. She was the only one with a key to get in and out of my emergency bubble. Her and Dire Straits.

  “Mommy.”

  “What, honey?”

  “Where’s my present?”

  “What present?”

  “The one from Daddy that he always brings when he goes on a trip.”

  “I don’t know, love.”

  “Did you look to see if it was in the car?”

  “No, babe, I didn’t look.”

  “Do you think it was my fault that he died?”

  “Why do you say that, sweetie?” Sweetie, babe, love, honey. I didn’t know what to call her to soften the blow.

  “Maybe he was going to buy my present and he died. On the way.”

  “No, Oli, I’m sure he had bought it and I’m sure it’s in the car. I’ll look tomorrow and I’ll get it for you.”

  “If it’s not my fault, whose fault is it?”

  “No one’s. It’s no one’s fault.”

  “So it’s not a bad thing, then?”

  I looked at her without understanding. “Daddy says if something bad happens, it’s always someone’s fault.”

  After reassuring her that it also wasn’t any of her grandparents’ fault, or her great-grandparents’—one at a time, the living and the dead—or Tricia’s, or mine, or anyone she knew or didn’t know, she said to me:

  “So if it wasn’t anyone’s fault, was it Daddy’s fault?”

  “No, honey, it wasn’t Daddy’s fault either.”

  “Why is Daddy’s box closed? I want to see him.”

  The coffin was closed. It had been my decision in order to protect Olivia, to keep alive the image she had of her father.

  “No, Oli, like this it’s better.”

  “When I close my eyes, I see him. I see Daddy.”

  “That’s good, so you remember him.”

  “I see him dead in the car. Pieces of his face are gone. An eye and a bunch of teeth and other stuff. And he’s bleeding a lot. It makes me really scared to close my eyes, Mommy.”

  I didn’t think my soul could break any further. Olivia was six and had never expressed obsessive thoughts, at least not such palpable ones, just little hang-ups, nothing important. I stroked her hair. That was something that calmed her down a lot. Her and me both. I liked to run my fingers through her fine blond hair, which was just like Chris’s. Along with her father’s hair, she had inherited his mouth and smile, and my green eyes, nose and fre
ckled cheeks.

  “When we get home, I’ll print you the photos from when the three of us were on the cruise to Alaska last summer, OK?”

  “It won’t work, Mommy. I need to see him. In the box.”

  I looked at her and thought: How smart my daughter is. Maybe she’s gifted. I should buy her a piano or give her a chess set. But today, so when she becomes the first female world champion of chess or she’s playing at Carnegie Hall, she’ll say in the interviews: “The day we buried my father, my mother bought me a piano—or a chess set. That was my salvation. I want to dedicate this concert—or this world championship match—to my late father and to my mother, for turning my pain into art and passion. My daughter had some hidden talent, and my purpose in life was to discover it. The thought cheered me up a bit.

  “It’s not called a box; it’s called a coffin, honey.”

  That was all I managed to say. Then I took her hand and, despite my original plan, led her into the room where Chris’s coffin was.

  It was cold, very cold. But that was normal. That’s how you have to store meat.

  The first person who realized we were going in there was my mother. She was talking and crying with my aunt Sally. Mom walked over and rapped her knuckles on the glass door that separated us. I couldn’t hear her, but I could see her lips moving: What are you doing? You shouldn’t be in there. I walked up to the door. I looked at my mother for two or three seconds. She looked back at me, waiting for me to say something, but I just pulled the curtain on the door shut to get a little privacy for Olivia and me.

  I took a metal wastebasket—what do the dead need a wastebasket for?—turned it upside down and stood Olivia on top of it, so she could peep inside the coffin.

  “Are you sure, Oli?”

  “Yeah, Mom, come on . . .”