Afterlife - Douglas Clegg [24]
“He’ll be fine, Mom. Don’t butt in where you don’t know…”
“Sometimes my daughters can be so cold,” her mother said, in a whisper meant to float over Livy’s head. Then, more softly, “Children need to talk about death. About what happens afterward. About where we go.”
“Where do we go?” Livy asked.
“Upstairs, sweetie,” Toni said. “Upstairs, only when we’re alive, we don’t know where upstairs goes.”
8
Julie couldn’t take her mother anymore, and left the room. As she went up the stairs, to her bedroom, she heard Mel say something about sleep and shock and Julie almost felt like going back down there and just telling them all to get out of her house and leave her and her kids alone, and wondered how much she could get away with—how cruel and mean she could get and still be forgiven later—how much slack did you get when your husband was murdered out in the woods by a psychopath?
She lay down on her bed, covering her head with the pillow, and submerged into sleep.
9
In a dream, his head was between her legs, and his tongue circled lazily, one circle wetly moved into another, opening her, with a kind of pressure of pleasure that disturbed her even while her body gave in to it. Hut whispered, his voice soft and vulnerable, like a little boy who has just discovered a new forbidden hideout, “Ah, yes. I love it. I love the taste. I love the smell. I want to be inside you. I want to dive into it. You’re the lake, and I want to swim through you.”
Her pelvis began to buck involuntarily, and she hated herself for the feeling she was having, which was not pleasure, but some kind of mechanical movement as if she had no control over her body and it had no connection to her mind, but was a machine that just moved back and forth and up and down when someone put coins in—knowing that Hut was gone, knowing that this was not really him, knowing she was in a dirty, filthy dream where nasty words were said that she’d never uttered in real life nor had he, and shivery forbidden fantasies could exist, and the reality of the world, of death, was beyond this.
10
Sometime in the night, someone touched the edge of her cheek. Julie opened her eyes, feeling nearly out of breath from a terrible dream that she couldn’t quite remember seconds after waking up.
In the bedroom, a small shadow before her. “Mommy?”
“Oh baby,” Julie said. She scooted further into the bed, allowing her daughter to climb up onto it. The heat of her daughter’s body pressed against hers was comforting.
“I have an idea. Let’s ask God to get Daddy back.” She kissed Livy on her forehead.
“I mean it,” Livy said, her voice wispy and full of
wonder at her own idea. “Maybe nobody’s ever tried, Mommy. We just ask. Maybe God feels bad for us and he’ll send Daddy back. I can ask in my brain radio. I can.”
“Oh, baby, honey, shhh,” Julie whispered. “I love you so much.”
“God can do anything. Matt said in the Bible, God sent back a guy named Lazzus.”
“Lazarus, sweetie. But it was different. That was a miracle.”
“Nobody ever asked for their daddy back. Maybe,” Livy said, getting louder, until finally she was yelling, “Maybe if someone did, it would happen. God can do it!” “I’m sorry.” Julie couldn’t control her tears.
“I just want God to send him back,” Livy said, too loud. “I want my daddy back. God can do it.”
11
Julie dreamed of:
The day she met Hut. On the subway. He, on his way to his residency, she, with a day off, thinking about going to buy an air conditioner for her steamy apartment. The train was packed, and he gave up his seat to her. She could not stop looking at him. He was handsome in ways she’d never seen—not a pretty man at all, nor one that had a natural beauty to his face. He just had what seemed to be a chalk outline around him, for her, an aura of something that made her want to know him. He had glanced at her a few times on the train, and then had leaned over and said, “You’d think the carnival was in town,” which made her smile, as she glanced around at others on the train.
When they’d come up into