THE PHONE RINGS. The landline. I hate the landline. In the weeks after Michael died, it was constantly ringing--the sympathetic neighbors, the PTA moms, everyone wanting to know how I was doing. You don''t need to know how I''m doing, I''d think. Michael died eight months ago, so it doesn''t ring that much anymore. I guess I''m still not doing well. "Stacey," the voice sings into the machine, "pick up your goddamn phone .
" It''s my sister, Jenny. "Hang on," I say as I pick up. I hold the phone away from my mouth and call down into the basement. "Time to brush teeth, boys. Get ready for bed." "You guys want to come here on Friday? We can stream a movie, make milkshakes?" We''ve spent almost every weekend at her house. The boys are probably expecting it, but I''m starting to feel trapped. Michael was so big on routine, and now I feel like I''ve fallen into another one.
Some times I just want to wing it. I don''t know how to tell her that. "I don''t know," I say. "We should let you guys get back to your own lives. I mean, we''ll be fine." "No, we love having you!" I know she means it. She was born to mother--her own kids, me, the boys. This past year, she''s been amazing, and I know in some ways she loves it.
Being so necessary. I wander back into the living room and sit down in front of my lap top. I got it out earlier to look at job postings, but with my background an advanced degree, two published books of poetry, and no real work experience--it''s discouraging how little I''m qualified for. I could be a barista maybe. Jenny keeps talking, but I''m not really listening. I''m checking my Facebook, my e-mail. I have a separate account that comes in from my author''s website, but I haven''t been paying attention to it. I haven''t been writing anyway, and besides, it rarely has anything in it.
But today, there''s something there. The subject line reads, Interested in your book, so I open it. The note is short. "Listen to this," I say, interrupting my sister, and I read her the e-mail. Dear Ms. Lane, I just had the pleasure of reading your novel-in-verse, Monsters in the Afterlife. I''m wondering if you have an agent who represents you. I''d be interested in discussing the film rights.
"Seriously? That''s so cool! Who''s it from?" ''''Alan something-or-other. Probably some nobody," I say, but I''m already plugging the name into Google. "Is this the same guy? Holy shit." The list of credits is long. Really long, and I recognize a lot of it. "Oh my god. What do I say? I don''t have an agent." "Then answer, ''Thank you, that sounds amazing, but no, I don''t have an agent because there''s no money in poetry.
''" It''s true. My first book, The Seduction Of Eve, came out with a tiny press, but the reviews were good and it sold close to six hundred copies, which for poetry is really not bad at all. It wasn''t a novel-in-verse like Monsters, but it was thematic, and each section opened and closed with poems titled "The Seduction" that retold this one moment, but the perspectives, the voices kept changing. Some of them were really beautiful, like love poems, but in others the language turned dangerous, dark. The day the box came with the first copies of the book, I just sat on the floor and read it cover to cover, like it was something new, like it wasn''t even mine. "Wow," Michael had said when he''d come home. "Congratulations." And he picked up a copy and flipped through it, not to read it, just to see if it was real.
"One more chapter?" Stevie begs. I look at the clock. It''s late, past their bedtime by ten minutes, but I say yes anyway. I like reading to them. I feel like I can fall into the book, and then I''m giving them what they want, but I don''t have to think. I don''t have to find my own words. When the story''s over, I kiss Stevie first, leaning into the bottom bunk to tuck him in. "Give me a squeeze," I say, and he does, his little arms tight around my neck.
"Who''s my favorite monkey?" I say, and he squeaks, "Me!" I step on the rail and pull myself up to kiss Ben. I smooth his Hulk blanket across him, ruffle his hair. "Thanks for being my kid," I whisper, and he smiles. "Thanks for being my mom." We do this every night. Every touch, every word the same. I love the ritual of it, the few minutes when I feel like I''m my best self. I feel like I''m getting it right.
I flip off the lights and stand in the hallway outside their door, leaning against the wall, listening to them talk. Some part of me is always expecting to overhear something painful or profound, to hear them talk about Michael or me. Most nights, they don''t. Tonight Stevie is talking about Spider-Man, imagining new powers he thinks would be better, what if he could fly, what if he could be invisible too? "Invisible all the time?" Ben asks. "Or just when he wants to be?" I walk down the hall to my bedroom, and Bear pads along behind me. He curls up on the big fleece mat in the corner of the room. It''s funny to think he''s as settled as ever. It''s the boys and I who are floundering.
Just in different ways. They want nothing more to change, and I want everything to. Last week while the boys were at school, I packed up all of Michael''s things. It seemed pointless to keep hanging on to it all, the T-shirts, the electric razor. I went to a grief session once, in the very beginning, but one of the other women was talking about how she couldn''t wash her husband''s clothes, how she held on to the smell of him. Some days, she said, she spent hours on the floor of their closet, trying to breathe him in, and I thought, I shouldn''t be here, this isn''t for me. I packed one box for each boy using old pictures. Here is the tie your father wore for your christening.
Here is a T-shirt he was wearing one day at the park. In the photo, he''s pushing you on the swing. Here is a wallet, a watch. I didn''t know what to do with his wedding ring, so I just put it in a velvet jewelry box with mine. The upshot is that now I have all this empty space to fill. I tried spreading my clothes between both dressers, but I couldn''t find the right balance. Everything feels disordered. I can never find what I want.
I walk down to the kitchen and pour myself a glass of wine. At first I''d felt weird about drinking alone, but I have a rule about stopping at one glass, so I think it''s okay. I do use my biggest glasses and I pour them pretty full, but I always stop after one. Michael and I met in Boston, in graduate school. He was studying actuary science. I was studying poetry. He had a job lined up months before graduation, and when he proposed, he said, Marry me, Stacey. God knows you can''t afford not to.
Then he laughed. We both did. We were really young then, and happy. We moved to Omaha right out of grad school, the year we got married. It''s where Michael grew up--flyover, landlocked, just about as far as you can get from either coast, which is where I''d always lived--Boston, and before that San Francisco. First one coast and then the other, and now I''m right in the center. I don''t feel very centered. I used to.
I don''t anymore. I take the wine out to the living room and sit on the couch. My laptop is still sitting open, but the screen''s black, timed out. You realize your book could end up a movie? Jenny had said before we hung up. I wonder what they''ll pay you. In my best year, just last year, I made three thousand dollars. Look at you, Michael said. I think he thought it was cute.
He did risk calculation for an asset-management firm. It''s not really risk if you understand math, he used to say, but I don''t understand math, not even a little, so he told me not to even look at the numbers when we bought our first house. It was this sweet little bungalow in Midtown with wood accents and dormers. Michael didn''t love it, but he liked the commute, and he liked that I liked the built-in bookshelves next to the fireplace. "It''s close to the university," he said. "Maybe you could teach." "I don''t think we can afford this," I said, running my hand along the dark wood of the shelves. "Maybe we should rent.
" "Maybe you should trust me," he said. There were not any jobs at the university. There never are, but for a while I did part-time development for an arts nonprofit. I wrote some grants and sat in on a few board meetings, but it didn''t pay much and I wasn''t very good at it. When Ben was born, Michael said I should just stay home. I''d walk Ben in the stroller for blocks and blocks through Happy Hollow and Dundee with all the big brick Tudors and overgrown lawns and one-way streets. We''d stop at this cute little corner market and I''d buy Ben grapes most afternoons. Plums when he got a little older.
Some nights we''d walk down to this offbeat vegetarian place, though Michael liked to tease me that if I was going to be a Nebraskan, I was going to have to learn to eat steak. I wasn''t sure, really, how I felt about Nebraska, but I loved Midtown. "We need a bigger house," I told Michael after Stevie was born, and what I meant was a big brick Tudor with ivy. But all he saw were the detached garages and the radiators and the retrofit piping for central air-conditioning. So he bought this house, or rather it just fell into his lap,