Two Kisses for Maddy_ A Memoir of Loss & Love - Matthew Logelin [84]
“We’ve got this,” he said, “but there was nothing else.” My front crumbled and I started crying harder than Maddy with a wet diaper. The detective just looked confused. I could see him wondering how the loss of a few trinkets could break down a grown man like this.
“My wife,” I explained, “who I was with last time. She died.”
He looked stricken. I took the phone and went home, without Liz’s jewelry. Without Liz.
For a long time keeping Liz’s cell phone on felt like the right thing to do, continuing to pay the bill every month just to keep active the number that I knew by heart. It allowed me a real attachment to her, but after this incident I wanted to cancel her phone service—it just seemed like the right time. I was worried that if I did, though, I would be losing another piece of her—that I would be erasing more from my memory by essentially deleting this from my life, and I would lose that opportunity to hear her voice should I ever want to.
But it wasn’t the phone number that helped keep me connected to Liz. I thought about her and talked about her all the time. I wrote about her daily and continued to live in the house we bought together. She was still a part of almost every move I made. Those were things that mattered. Besides, she would surely call me an idiot for paying sixty-five dollars a month for the privilege of preserving an outgoing voice-mail greeting that I never even listened to.
Turning off her phone helped me realize that it was time for me to move through this mess in other tangible ways. I had yet to do so much in this regard. Liz’s clothes still hung in her closet, and there were still two baskets of crumpled clothes inside (one to be washed, one to be sent to the dry cleaners). Her jewelry and perfume were still atop the dresser that was still filled with her neatly folded clothes. Her razor still sat on the ledge in the shower, right next to her shampoo bottles. These things were so small and I was so used to them that I could overlook them, like they blended into the scenery or something.
But her car was still parked out front, and that big hunk of salmon-colored metal was difficult to ignore. I hadn’t really been driving it, and sometimes my parents or Tom and Candee would use it when they were in town, but it caught my eye each and every time I looked out the giant picture window in our living room, and it assaulted me every time I pulled up to the house. I hated seeing it. Before she died, Liz’s car was the one definitive sign that she was home; now each time I saw it I had an instant reaction, thinking this was all a fucking nightmare. I wasn’t actively changing anything inside or outside the house—I just wasn’t ready. But the idea of letting Liz’s car go actually came from a total stranger.
During one visit from Liz’s family, I noticed a man in the street through my living room window. We were all hanging out, and suddenly I saw some sketchy dude peering into Liz’s car out front. He was walking around it, trying to open the doors, and kicking the tires.
I walked outside, and said, “Can I help you?” Pleasant words, aggressive tone. This guy smiled back at me, totally harmless, and said, “Is this car for sale?” I was confused. I didn’t expect those words from his mouth. And I certainly didn’t have an answer prepared. I kind of felt like an asshole—I came at him like a man whose car was about to be stolen, and he couldn’t have been nicer.
Finally some words came to me. “I’m not sure,” I said, trying to hide my fluster. “I don’t think so. I mean, maybe.” Not articulate, but words nonetheless.
“I’ll give you two thousand dollars. Cash.”
I took his number and went back inside. I was still confused. I really hadn’t planned to sell Liz’s car, maybe ever, but I was planning