Death and Other Interruptions

Chapter Twenty-Six

The slumber party—excuse me, non-sleepover slumber party—had been very necessary, but it was also exhausting. I wasn't used to spending a night out, let alone two nights out, even if I did come home the second night—if 2 am counts as night once you're out of college.

I crawled into bed, not even bothering to take off my bra and underwear though I would regret that in the morning—lately, the straps had grown too tight and I was too lazy and cheap to buy new ones that I would just grow out of again. My mind, inevitably, turned to Al. As soon as I had that thought, though, I realized that it wasn't actually so true; it wasn't inevitable anymore that I would think about Al, at least not in a pure way of thinking just about the man he was and the love we'd had. First there had been the shock, then the media, then the lawsuit. Before I could recover from any of that, I was pregnant and I thought about him in the context of that, and then there was Ethan and I thought of Al in the insanely confusing context of that. In other words, he had been the end result of other thoughts, not the sole focus of my mental activity. Was I over mourning him? Had I already moved on so much that I was already putting that part of my life behind him? Or had his death become incorporated into the fabric of my life, so that ours was now a story that would simply become one of many, the foundation for whatever chapters would come next?

I'd been an official mourner long enough—was it five months now?—that I knew there were no answers to those questions, or at least no right ones. I couldn't look to others for advice, as much as I wanted or even needed to, even those who had been through similar things, because each person had to deal with it a different way. I needed to forge my own path and that, I realized, was what I had been doing, even if it hadn't been a conscious decision on my part. By choosing to embrace life, to forge new relationships and strengthen old ones, by focusing on the life I wanted for my future child, I was choosing how I would mourn.

As much as I knew there was no right way to mourn, I was still afraid there was a wrong way, and that I was going that route. And I also knew that it was an unfounded fear, that if I spoke to Marissa she'd tell me I was wrong about being wrong and she would be right, and it would be as confusing as that sounded. But still I worried.

I felt like I had when I first graduated college with a degree in psychology and realized that I didn't actually want to go into that field: I needed guidance from someone who knew the answers. Not a therapist or my mother or even Al; I needed it from someone who knew me fully, who knew what was right for me, but also had been through exactly what I was going through. In other words, I needed a fairy godmother, and I bemoaned her absence enough that Al's anniversary present to me that year had been a glass figurine of a fairy godmother. Should I go into writing, I needed to know. Would I be happy working as a secretary and saving my passions for after-work activities? Could I be okay working as a full-time artist, knowing I might never have a steady paycheck, and was I even good enough to do that? I needed, essentially, an older, wiser me to come back and take my by the shoulders and show me the right thing to do. I was floundering and, when no such fairy godmother/future me mashup arrived to show me the way, I took the first job I was offered in non-profit executive assistant work and made do with the only-okay salary and seldom-challenging job.

At the time, that crisis had felt like one that would decide the course of my life, and I was overwhelmed with the prospect of figuring out my life. Now, though, I know that much more complicated things had come my way, and I felt, once again, unequipped to deal with them.

Thankfully, though, I was too tired to settle on that thought for very long, and next thing I knew it was morning and I had a doctor's appointment to get dressed for.

When I stumbled up to the kitchen for my late-morning breakfast, a ratty shirt thrown over me—I justified my braless state by deciding my belly was so big it distracted the eye from my unbound bosom, though in truth that was equally big these days—Mom was sitting upstairs, enjoying what was probably her third cup of coffee for the day.