Page 14 of We Live Here Now
13
Emily
“Is that a fact?” Across the table in the candlelight Iso glows, her ice-white hair shining without a hint of any roots, and I’m sure she’s had more Botox—but even if she has, her figure is all her own work, and I have to salute the energy she puts into staying so hot. She is not wearing a baggy sweater and jeans but a glamorous dress— Well, it is second Christmas, everyone —and a pair of very high heels. “I think people just change,” she says. “Most people anyway.”
“Sure, people change.” Russell shrugs. “That’s definitely part of it, but that’s what we say to be kind to ourselves when things don’t turn out. The essence of who we are doesn’t alter that much as we age. A few people make big changes that can affect relationships—alcoholics who quit drinking or the other way around—but most of us just get calmer as we get older. Not really much different.”
Russell waves his hands around, animated as he talks, and I wonder if he’s this engaged with the students he teaches psychology to at the college, or if it’s an intensity he can achieve only after half a bottle of wine. Either way, it’s a good distraction from my worry that I’ve got a brain tumor or post-sepsis syndrome or that this house is actually haunted.
“If you’re a five-star beach holiday person, you’re not suddenly going to become someone who wants to go camping. If anything, you start wanting more luxury.” His look is pointed directly at Iso and she laughs, and we laugh with her. It’s true. The more Mark earns—and it’s an eye-watering amount for someone only just over forty—the more ways Iso finds to enjoy it.
“The fact of the matter is,” Russell continues, “that when people fall in love the first thing they do is lie to each other.” He smiles at all of us, his curly hair wilder after being caught in the rain. “And lies are hard to maintain.”
“I didn’t lie to you.” Cat hasn’t touched her own glass for a while, and I can see she’s annoyed. Her mouth is pursed tight. Russell always ends up holding court, and the rest of us don’t mind it—at least what he says is clever and interesting—but she gets embarrassed by him. “Except perhaps pretending I liked listening to you pontificate when we should be having fun.”
“Ouch.” He blows her a kiss and gives her a good-humored smile. “But are you sure about that? I lied. I came to church with you. I told you I was a Catholic to please your parents, and we both know now that I’m at best agnostic.”
“I think he’s right.” Mark refills our glasses with the expensive Barolo he brought six bottles of. “Blowjobs, for example. Women lie about loving those. Hey, if this is extra Christmas, does that mean I get an extra one this year?”
“What is this, pick on Iso night?” She throws the end of her bread roll at her husband. “You do better than most, darling.”
“Oh my god, Cat.” I laugh suddenly with a memory. “You said you liked jazz. Do you remember? After your second date with Russell—the first time you shagged, I think—we had to do a quick deep dive so you could pretend to know some obscure 1970s music to impress him.”
“Okay, busted. I did. I suffered for that lie though.”
“I pretended to like skiing,” Iso says. “To be fair, I thought I would like it. But I quickly realized I was born for après-ski, not actual-ski. Those were a long few winters before I fessed up.”
“But I like that you pretended to like it. What about you two?” Mark looks at Freddie and me. “You got together first. What were you, twenty? So, fifteen years ago? Things still the same?”
“Well, nearly dying of sepsis and spending months in the hospital can change a girl.” I don’t want to talk about me and Freddie. I’m not sure it would be so funny. We haven’t told the others about the lost baby. Freddie said it was up to me, but I didn’t want to share it.
“We agreed straight off we wanted a traditional marriage,” Freddie says suddenly. “I’ve always wanted kids and Em said she did too, and I always liked the idea of the man supporting the family and the wife making the home. Traditional values and everything.”
“And I do too. But we don’t have children.” I feel another flash of guilt and pain, and I’m angry at Freddie for starting this conversation. The baby would have been a cuckoo in our nest, I know that. And maybe, awful as it is, the loss has been for the best, even if my heart sees it differently. “Anyway, we’ve got time to make a family.”
“Ticktock, ticktock.” Iso leans forward. “I didn’t realize men’s balls had a baby clock!” Nothing can dampen Iso’s mood tonight, and thank god for that because it feels like the rest of us are a bit snippy.
“But yes,” I concede. “Maybe I didn’t feel as strongly about those values as you did. And I underestimated how much I would like working.”
“And you pretended to like hiking and Freddie pretended he liked books,” Cat cuts in, trying to lighten the moment. “I bet that was as much research as my jazz panic.”
“My point is,” Russell powers on, “that we all fall in love in part with an illusion, because we all present an illusion to someone who we want to love us. We heighten the best bits of ourselves and hide the worst bits. And when looking at our partner we ignore the hints of the things that might annoy us and see only the good. The madness of first love. A successful marriage is about accepting that no one can ever be that perfect version they showed you and you chose to believe.”
“And that,” I say with a sigh, “was the longest explanation ever for why a couple the rest of us can barely remember from college are getting divorced. Maybe we should stop this now or it will be after-dinner divorces for us, rather than after-dinner mints.” My joke is bad, but it’s enough. “I’m just happy to have you all here and to be out of the hospital.”
“Amen to that.” Mark raises his glass, and they all join in with “To Emily!”
“And to this lovely, amazing, huge, fantastic house!”
“And all its weirdness,” I add, glad for the subject change, and Iso’s eyes widen, delighted.
“Tell me it has a ghost.”
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “I’ve heard weird noises at night. Had odd feelings.” I stop there, not willing to go as far as mentioning fires going out and books flying off the shelves. “It could just be me though.”
“It’s not haunted, Em,” Freddie says, exasperated. “It’s old.”
“How do you know it’s not haunted?” Iso’s sharp with Freddie.
“I don’t feel anything odd at all,” Freddie says on cue.
“Even if you did, you wouldn’t admit it,” Iso counters.
Freddie’s in full disbelief mode, and I don’t want to argue with him. Iso, like me, has always been fascinated by the weird. Back in the day we’d be at every fair having our tarot cards read, going to those ridiculous “An Evening with…” medium shows, and all that kind of stuff.
“You see, perfect example,” Russell says. “Freddie used to tell you it was cute that you believed in all this woo-woo stuff, but now it just annoys him.”
“Enough, Russell.” Mark reaches for the cheese. “You never have known when to stop.”
“I don’t find it surprising that Emily feels things that you don’t.” Cat fingers the crucifix at her neck thoughtfully. “After all, she was dead for a few minutes. They had to bring her back.”
“There was nothing when I died, Cat. Literally nothing.” I don’t like thinking about the nothingness. No tunnels or bright lights. One minute I was there in a haze of fever and panic and then there was only the void.
“Nothing you remember. But you crossed to the other side. If we’d been a hundred years ago or whatever, you’d have stayed dead.”
“Gee thanks, Cat.” I try to lighten the mood, but in the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree and the warm glow of the candles, a hush has settled across us.
“You know what I mean. You’ve glimpsed behind the veil. If there’s a spirit in this house, maybe they can reach you in a way they can’t the rest of us.”
“I know what we should do!” Iso claps her hands together with excitement. “The Ouija board!” She looks at me. “You still have that, right?”
“I don’t know,” Freddie says. “I might have thrown it away.”
“No, it’s in that outhouse we got the book boxes from,” Russell says. “I saw it.”
“Come on then.” Mark is on his feet. “Let’s go get it, Freddie. Brave the rain, then brave the afterlife.”
He makes a bwah ha ha sound and that’s that decided. We’re going to try to speak to the spirits.