Splitting the Difference Read online

  When I stand up, Nikki and Fico are staring back at me from the kitchen.

  What, I nearly say. Everyone knows you don’t get the jewelry back.

  Right?

  I’m suddenly unsure if this is a thing everyone knows, so I just shrug and take the ring to the bathroom. From there, I make more calls, including one to Ramses, Alberto’s childhood best friend, and his wife, Jeanette.

  But I just talked to him on Thursday, she sobs.

  A cop interrupts—the detective and M.E. have some questions—so I follow him to the elevator landing, where I repeat facts to men with notepads.

  Will you authorize an autopsy?

  I want to say no. No because autopsies are disfiguring and no because Alberto should look like himself at the viewing. But scenes from his favorite crime shows flicker on my freshly widowed brain and I find myself answering like a wife-who-did-not-kill-her-husband should.

  Do what you need to do, I say.

  The medical examiner grills me about Alberto’s health and, when I mention that I’m not sure he’d been taking his Lipitor lately, pauses for a moment.

  Non-compliant, he announces, scribbling it on his notepad.

  Not the word I would use, I say, stiffly.

  The coroner is on his way, he shrugs, and hands me his card.

  Thanks, douchebag, I say, under my breath.

  Back in the kitchen, Fico recommends we all take a walk. I remember a recent conversation with Hilda about her mother’s death barely a month ago: she wished she wasn’t there when the coroner arrived because the image of the gurney and the body bag still haunts her.

  I say yes to the walk.

  The cops take Fico’s cell number and shut the door behind us.

  Downstairs, Nikki and Fico link arms with me. I’ve known them as long as I’ve known Alberto and their presence today is taking the edge off my panic. Maybe it’s because they’re older and six inches taller, but as they steady me down 23rd Street, I feel like their little sister. When I freeze suddenly in the middle of a crosswalk to pull out my phone, they practically lift me to the safety of the curb.

  Wait—I can’t remember if I’ve told my parents that he’s been pronounced?

  You called them, Fico nods.

  And Hilda?

  Yes.

  So the blackouts have started already?

  The three of us keep walking until we reach the benches on the pier at 27th Street. We stare at the ashy Hudson River, holding hands and Kleenex, until Fico steps away to take a call.

  I’ll meet up with you guys in a little while, he says before disappearing.

  Nikki and I settle into stillness until I remember that my current Facebook/Twitter update is twenty-four hours old and involves something trivial about an iPod charger.

  The digital world still thinks I have a dead . . . iPod?

  The idea of those words representing my present tense strikes me as every kind of wrong, so I pull out my phone and robotically address a text to Twitter. My mind is blank but for the phrase no no no and this can’t be happening. I combine them without proper caps or punctuation and press the send button.

  When Fico reunites with us, I slowly realize that since Fico is here, it must mean Alberto is no longer there.

  They’ve taken him.

  I didn’t kiss him good-bye, I say aloud. Oh God, why didn’t I think to kiss him good-bye? I sink into the park bench, trying to console myself. But I can kiss him good-bye at the viewing, right?

  Yes, absolutely, Fico assures me. Is that your phone ringing?

  Facebook has begun responding to my update: What’s wrong? and Are you okay? and What’s going on, Tré? I call these three friends and give them the news. Then I ask them to please call everyone who should know, so I don’t have to.

  I lie on my back and close my eyes against the reality of just how many people need to be called.

  Barby and Anthony are on their way from Jersey, Fico interrupts softly.

  You talked to them? I couldn’t reach—

  Yes, he nods.

  So we should head back, I say.

  We should.

  Fico, will you track down Alberto’s ex-wife and give her the news?

  Are you sure? Nikki asks.

  I’m sure that if I were his ex-wife, I’d want the chance to pay my respects. Whether or not she does, well, that’s her business.

  I’ll find her, Fico says.

  Our living room is no longer haunted by cops or chenille blankets, but we still rush toward the shelter of the kitchen.

  I’ll look into places—funeral homes—for you to visit tomorrow, Nikki says, gently.

  My eyes swing toward the empty space on the floor where Alberto was lying.

  My God, I say. He’s gonna make me . . . I’m gonna have to cremate him.

  Fico reaches toward me, eyes earnest.

  You know that’s what he wanted, right?

  Please, I sigh. He claimed there was a clause in his will that said if I didn’t do it, I get nothing. Seriously, who says—who thinks about—that shit when they’re in their thirties?

  Fucking Alberto, we all say in unison.

  An unbearable silence follows so I fill it with my announcement to shower before Barby and Anthony arrive. In the shower, I encounter Alberto’s half-full Redken shampoo—which I special-order even though he shaves his head—and it brings a sound out of me not unlike the wounded dogs I used to rescue in California.

  I shut my eyes against the sight of his shampoo but lose my balance. Elbows and ankles knock against porcelain and I come down hard on my knee. The fall shocks me but it doesn’t compare to what’s rising in my throat and chest. At the bottom of the tub, clutching my wounded limb, I let loose the stream of snot and tears that’s been building since I woke up. I cry until I feel nothing: neither the need to continue nor the urge to stop.

  When I emerge from the bathroom, Nikki has intuitively changed the bedding and duvet. Rearranged the pillows and tidied the night table. Our living room has been restored to order and I can hear dishes being washed a room away. Upon opening the four-paneled closet that Alberto installed for me after he proposed, I stare at racks and shelves.

  Seems so cliché to wear all black, but maybe that’s what I’m expected to do?

  The hell with what’s expected.

  I slip on a pair of Alberto’s brightly striped socks and reach for jeans, a citron-colored sweatshirt and my low-top Converse. In the bathroom, I dress and dry my blonde hair, but skip the eye-makeup because today is not my first rodeo.

  Alberto’s will be my thirty-fourth funeral.

  I am thirty-four years old.

  * * *

  I wake early in a room at the Standard Hotel, gasping for air.

  Each gasp is a direct response to the string of sentences rushing through my head: Why didn’t you take him to the clinic? He hadn’t thrown up in years! When his arm was thrashing wildly—that must have been when it was happening! God, why didn’t you try to rouse him? If you’d called 911 right then, he would’ve had a chance!

  I see his yellow skin, the visible veins on his forehead.

  I want to throw up.

  I want to crawl out of myself.

  I want to go home.

  I tiptoe past my parents, who flew in last night, and slip out the door with my phone and coat. At the elevator landing, I encounter a wall of windows with a view of the nearly completed High Line Park.

  I sink to the carpet.

  Alberto and I joined the Friends of the High Line organization a few years ago.

  We go to the parties, make donations, watch the progress eagerly from our living-room windows. It’s now a few weeks from completion, yet he won’t ever walk it?

  I stare at the newly landscaped green space until I remember why I’m sitting on
this elevator landing in the first place.

  There are phone calls to make.

  I start pressing buttons, waking people up on the West Coast.

  Aunt Annette.

  Cousin Vanessa.

  Maggie.

  Tony Papa.

  Missy.

  I reach some of these people and leave a message for others because I am now someone who leaves this sort of news on voicemail.

  I’m still wearing pajamas when I hail a cab to my building, where the computer screen shows a delivery for our apartment.

  Flowers? Already?

  I head to the concierge and instead receive an oversized box addressed to Alberto Rafael Rodríguez.

  It’s the bike rack.

  For when we go to New Hampshire this summer.

  He ordered it last weekend—was that really only last weekend?—when we celebrated my birthday in Connecticut.

  This bike rack isn’t what I need to see right now, but I drag the box through the tiled corridor toward the elevator. Upstairs, I take one step into our apartment and realize it’s not what I need to see either. And I especially do not need to see the stray defibrillator pad that’s lying on our living room floor. I’m in a panic when I call my parents at the hotel: Please come? I’m sorry for leaving but I shouldn’t be here alone.

  My sense of time is so contorted that when the doorbell rings a few moments later, I expect to see Mom and Dad.

  David the Doorman is holding vases of Casablanca lilies and white peonies.

  I’m so sorry for your loss, Tré.

  I open the door wide, ask David if he could possibly stay until my parents arrive?

  He nods and asks where he should put the flowers.

  * * *

  The magnitude of things you’re forced to decide within twenty-four hours: a funeral home, a coffin, an urn, a date and time for the viewing, for the service.

  How many hours should the viewing be?

  When should the obituary run and in how many papers?

  Which picture of him should you include? And for the viewing card? And the funeral program? Should you use the same photo for all of them?

  Who will produce the memorial video that will loop above the coffin at the viewing?

  Where will you hold the reception (such an inappropriate word) and how long should it be?

  At Greenwich Village Funeral Home, Alberto’s relatives look to me for decisions, wait for my answers. All I want to do is throw a bookend at the funeral director who grins when he says words like incinerate and we don’t take credit cards.

  * * *

  Back at our apartment with my parents, I notice the foil-wrapped cake Alberto and I baked three days ago, when he had announced a dessert craving.

  Do we have stuff to bake a cake?

  We do not.

  Can we go to the store?

  We can.

  We pulled on sneakers and hats, threw coats over pajamas, and took the elevator downstairs. Holding hands, we discussed the weekend forecast, whether it might be warm enough to take the bikes out of hibernation. At Gristedes Market, we picked up organic eggs and chocolate cake mix. I was comparing grams of sugar on tubs of icing until I heard him say he does not like frosting on cake.

  Since when?

  Since always, he says, skipping ahead of me.

  I did not know this (is this the first cake we’ve baked together?) and it amuses me. I ditch the icing and push the cart after him. I pass soy meatballs, which remind me that I need vegetarian sausage for the breakfast-in-bed I usually serve him on weekends.

  I overtake him, surprising his neck with my lips and teeth. Take the cart while I grab snausages? I’ll meet you in line?

  Okay, he says. I’ll be there.

  I meet him in the crowded checkout line, which he promptly bounces out of, taking products off end caps and putting them back sideways. He holds up a box of Entenmann’s chocolate cake, the subject of a recent joke between us, and cocks his head to one side, asking for permission.

  I smile, shake my head no, and then reconsider: what if this cake we’re baking doesn’t turn out? What if it burns?

  On second thought, I say, and put the box of back-up cake in the cart.

  His delight is palpable: a kick-ball-step followed by a clap and a Goody!

  It will be several weeks before I decide to freeze the only cake we baked together, because in this moment, I can’t wrap my head around the fact the cake is here and he is not.

  My cake reverie is interrupted by a Facebook chime. It’s an event invitation from Alberto’s ad agency, Revolución, with a goofy picture of him I’ve never seen.

  Please join us to celebrate the life of one of the craziest, happiest, contagiously

  laughing, joking, singing and dancing, rumberos del mundo: our dear Alberto.

  Tonight, we will do everything that he loved to do!

  Eat! Drink! Smoke! Dance!

  And together, we will wish him a fantastic journey to creative heaven.

  I’m shocked.

  Shocked that this party is happening so soon.

  And that it’s being held on St. Patrick’s Day, a holiday Alberto always scoffed at: as if the Irish need an excuse to get drunk.

  But more than anything, I’m shocked that I’m getting the invitation at the same time as two hundred other people.

  * * *

  I’m wound into a ball on our couch, looking toward our bedroom, and my shoulders are heaving. My cheeks are hot and my face feels like it’s about to explode. My parents reach for me, trying to calm me down.

  The explosion happens.

  Stop! You don’t understand, I shout, this is my fault! I should’ve taken him to the clinic! I was lazy! I didn’t want to get dressed and catch a cab in the cold! I’m a horrible wife! A selfish, horrible wife who wanted to go back to sleep instead of save her own husband’s life! And—

  But you took him for a physical three days ago, my mom interrupts. The doctor read the EKG and didn’t foresee it—and doctors are trained to look for warning signs. There’s no way you could’ve known. No one blames you, Therresa.

  I haven’t used my given name since I was a teenager and hearing it tonight exasperates me.

  But they do! I argue. They’re not saying it but they do. His mom and his sister would’ve recognized a sign like vomiting. They would’ve known to give him an aspirin! To rush him to the hospital! For the love of God, Alberto’s agency is doing an ad campaign for the American Heart Association: increase awareness of heart attacks! Everybody in his office would’ve known what to do! God, if only it had happened at work, if only—.

  But his office doesn’t blame you, my mom says, gently. And neither do Hilda and Barby. Everyone’s as shocked as you are, and no one’s said anything about aspirin or trips to the hospital.

  Of course they haven’t said it to you: you’re my parents!

  Listen, my mom says, I get the blame game. I still hate myself for not getting your brother’s transmission looked over. If I had, I know that Phil’s accident wouldn’t have happened.

  Wait—what?

  My mother thinks she could’ve prevented my eighteen-year-old brother’s fatal car crash? Even though he was passing another car at eighty miles an hour?

  She thinks—?

  His transmission failed?

  My dad interjects about the call he got from the hospital ten years ago: when he’d heard my grandma was going downhill, he jumped into the shower. By the time he’d dressed and reached his car, he got the call that she’d passed.

  If I hadn’t taken that shower, he shakes his head.

  Seriously?

  I have the inappropriate urge to laugh.

  Bless you, I say, looking at my mother, but the transmission?

  I look at my father: a shower?<
br />
  They’re not laughing.

  I’m sorry, it’s just—dear God, do you have any idea how absurd you both sound?

  They stare at me, confused.

  So—if you sound absurd to me then I must sound absurd to you?

  Dad’s face starts to relax.

  Mom lets out a laugh-sob.

  Which means this whole “regret” thing is just textbook, right?

  They nod, tentatively.

  So, I say, forgive me for being a little tardy to the party, but this is my first bout with the regret monster. Which is pretty lucky, if you think about it.

  They’re officially nodding.

  Remember my last memory of Phil? I hugged him before leaving for work that day. And Grandpa? We exchanged those incredible letters two weeks before he died. And remember how I made it to the hospital just before LaValley died? Today, right now—this is my first encounter with “if only.”

  I watch their faces—processing, wincing, drifting—and realize why they never healed after the loss of my brother: they’re still beating themselves up for the if onlys fifteen years later. It’s affected their marriage, their friendships, and their life choices. In my father’s case, it enabled more if onlys when his mother died.

  Screw this spin cycle, I hear myself say. Unless I wanna end up—no offense—still blaming myself however many years later, I gotta let this go.

  Mom perks up, meets my eyes.

  Yes, she nods, you should.

  I need to forgive myself, right?

  Exactly, Dad whispers, taking my hand.

  Mom takes the other.

  I close my eyes and exhale deeply, imagining words like aspirin and clinic and warning signs and lazy and selfish exiting my mouth, dissipating on the air, and escaping through the open window.

  Okay, God? Those words are all yours.

  My guilt?

  Yours.

  I never want to think or say those words again.

  Please, please, please keep them out of my reach? And remind me of this prayer if I try to snatch them back?

  Amen, my dad says, startling me.

  I hadn’t meant to pray aloud, but when I open my eyes, the air in the apartment seems calmer, more oxygenated.