Afterlife - Douglas Clegg [26]
“Me? Okay.”
“No,” Eleanor said. “Not okay. Livy told me that you aren’t talking to her as much. She said that you let things pile up.”
“Well, it’s been a little soon. It’s not like I’m completely recovered.”
“Julie, this is not something to take lightly. You are experiencing post-traumatic stress. Your husband was violently killed. It’s a major shock, to all of you. You can’t mask it. I want you to expect that your mind will be spinning around. I want you to expect that you’re going to have nights when you’re afraid of the dark. All of you will. I want you to come see me as often as you want. And I suggest that you try and get Matt in for sessions, too.”
6
Late one night, Matt was in the den watching one of his homemade digital videos on the family computer.
Julie stood behind his chair. The video had been made six months before, around Thanksgiving, and Matt’s voice on the videotape was generally happy as he narrated the world as he went through it. “Christmas shopping for Julie and Livy is nearly over,” he said, with a beaming exuberance that Julie hadn’t heard from him in a while. He was in the city with his dad—there was Hut, oh my God, so close she could nearly touch him by tapping the computer monitor—and they had just emerged from the Chelsea Market, Hut with a white cup of coffee, and Matt with a Snapple that he waved in front of the camera as he turned the camcorder on himself. He looked so happy. There were a few people on the street, and it looked like Matt might walk right into them if he didn’t put the camcorder down.
His father said, “Let’s turn it off for a bit, Matty.”
Matt filmed his father’s face, then, a close-up, and then the video went to darkness.
Julie leaned over to Matt and kissed the top of his head.
He reached up toward her, without turning around, and laid the palm of his hand against her cheek. “We can see him anytime we want,” Matt said. “That’s what movies do. They keep people alive.”
7
She slipped into the bathrobe that Mel had picked up for her at Bed, Bath & Beyond, made some chamomile tea and felt a little better. Julie sat up that night, late, after the kids were asleep and after Mel was asleep, and played Matt’s videos on the computer, one after another. They were funny, or silly, and usually involved Matt after school with his friends, or Matt and Hut and Julie and Livy—ordinary happiness, as they all made supper together on a rare Saturday when everyone was free, Livy shredding Romaine lettuce for the salad, Hut chopping tomatoes and onions, and Julie sautéing the chicken in the round wide pan. Hut joked about crying over onions, and that got Livy giggling. Matt now and then said, “Now just act natural. Just act natural,” and that got them all acting a little silly for the camera. Sometimes Matt turned the camera on himself, having watched too many episodes of The Real World on MTV, and talked about what he felt like, what he was going through. Nothing startling came through in any of this. Something within Julie ached for the normalcy of it all.
And then, there were several Boys’ Day Out, as they had called the Saturdays or Sundays when Hut would spend several hours exclusively with Matt. They’d go to a Yankees game, or fishing out on one of the local lakes, or doing what Livy called, “boy things,” which she demanded that her father take her on sometimes. Matt holding a big bass up to the camcorder and saying, “Julie, get ready to fry this up for supper!” or at the baseball game, Matt cursing as he videoed the game, and Hut’s voice saying, “Now, Matt, let’s not use those words again, all right?”
And then, a video of an area of cobblestone streets, where half the block was sunlit and half in shadows. The city. Hut looking a little tense. Matt swinging the camcorder to the street and just videotaping his Reeboks as he walked along. “That thing doesn’t always have to be on,” Hut said, a bit curtly.
Matt swung the camcorder up: a shot