Finding Mr. Brightside

I wonder what my mother would’ve thought.

4

ABRAM

JULIETTE AND I are all alone in my house, the same model as her two-story down the road—the unwelcoming one with the blinds always drawn. Here’s her right now: examining old photos and Christmas cards on the side of the fridge. Here’s me: looking for an orange soda in said fridge. (The Paxil dulling my brain’s receptors makes each wrong nutritional decision taste even better.) I reach past the bottled water I should be drinking and grab a can, popping the tab.

“You look alike,” Juliette says matter-of-factly, pointing to a picture of my dad and me holding up an oversized te

I take a long drink of soda. “Yeah … sorry…”

“For?”

“Reminding you of him.”

“Have you seen my face lately?” She doesn’t turn around to show me how much she resembles her mother, just continues staring at the image, preoccupying herself with making sure her hair is still trapped in its bun. Setting my soda on the counter, I tell her I have to go to the bathroom and walk into the nearby half bath. I turn on the fan, flush the toilet, swallow my last Paxil to avoid getting a headache, and then come back a few seconds later, a bit worried she’ll think I was taking a late-night dump.

I’m surprised to find Juliette holding my can of soda, risking the corresponding orange stains in the corners of her mouth.

“Thirsty,” she says.

“Want one? I should’ve offered.”

Juliette shakes her head, brings the can to her lips, and takes a sip that my grandma, she of the sugar-sensitive canker sores, would be proud of. As she slides the can back over my way, the note Mom left on the counter catches her eye. She starts reading it out loud.

Off to the casino with Aunt Jane, sweetie!

Make sure to let the dog out. Love you!!

Wish me luck! 777, Mom!

“Mom overdoes it on the exclamation points when she’s excited about playing the slots,” I explain.

Juliette’s pupils contract into blank periods. The life comes back when she sees my golden retriever padding slowly into the kitchen with her eyes all squinty as if to say You teenagers woke me up … and I’m glad you did. Come pet me!

I appreciate Juliette leaning down and introducing herself to my dog at eye level, shaking her extended paw—good dog ma

“She likes you,” I note.

Juliette looks up at me. “Doesn’t she like everyone?”

“Not quite. She’s been avoiding the neighbor’s Labradoodle.”

“Understandable,” Juliette says to the dog, scratching her ears. “What’s her name?”

“‘The dog.’”

I tell Juliette about how we tried several different te

“Want to sit down or something?” I ask.

She nods. We head toward the living room, sitting on opposite ends of the leather sectional.

“Do you still play te

“Quit,” I say, sprawling out across the cushions, my preferred state of being these days.

“Why?”

I’m honest with her about my lack of motivation, explaining that my dad had enough ambition for the both of us. After he was gone, I didn’t have anyone to remind me there was a hungry group of ru

“Sounds like you made the right choice,” Juliette says softly.

“Really?”

“No idea,” she says. “I was trying to be supportive…?”

We share a laugh—she gives me most of it, holding herself back. Why is she here, again? And why does she smell so good, even from over here, like … fancy laundry detergent and green tea extract? Meanwhile, the dog rolls over and allows Juliette access to her furry underbelly.

“You two really do seem like old friends,” I say, failing to stifle my yawn.

“Maybe we met in a past life.”

The idea of reincarnation sounds peculiar coming from her—she doesn’t seem like the “back in the day, when I was a butterfly” type.

“Maybe you and I crossed paths in one of those lives, too,” I propose, as casually as possible.

Juliette purses her lips like a girl who’s been making this expression for centuries, thinks about it for a second, then surprises me by saying, albeit reluctantly, “Sure. But I think I might’ve been a whale.”

“You’ll never believe this, but me, too.”

She’s almost smiling as she rolls her eyes.

“Do you think we could’ve been friends?” I ask.

“Friendly, yes,” she allows. “Assuming our whale parents weren’t associated back then.”

I hold up my hand. “I’m almost positive they swam in separate pods.”

She looks at me curiously, for a split second, before breaking eye contact.

We chat for a while longer until a warm blanket of mononucleosis falls across my body … disregard, it’s an actual blanket, Juliette has brought over my mom’s favorite throw and is covering me up. Damn you, Paxil.

“You don’t have to go.”

She starts to say something, stops.

“Were you this good-looking of a whale in our other life?” I ask her, one eye half open. I wouldn’t bet money that I’m speaking English anymore. “What I mean is, would you have dated an ordinary whale like this?”

She sits down on the floor beside me, rests her head on the edge of the cushion. She looks like she’s been fighting sleep for a while. I want to tell her to let it win, but turning it into an official competition probably wouldn’t help.

“I’m guessing I was an emotionally unavailable whale back then, too,” she says. “But I would’ve considered going on some kind of date with you, yes. Someplace where the water is warm.”

“Now you’re talking.”

Content, I make my best approximation of a joyful whale noise. I may be beached right now, but I’m excited about my life for the first time in a long time. Even if it’s a past life, in whale form.

Juliette says something else that I really want to process, but I’m drifting away, having some sort of hallucination now, seeing my dad in his casket—his cheekbones, broken in the accident, reconstructed with some sort of goopy mortician’s wax. Mom’s panicking. She can’t remember checking a box saying YES to an open casket; thinks maybe she delegated the decision to someone else. I tell her I would’ve done the same thing. “People are probably thinking I’m a bad wife for letting him be seen like this,” she whispers from our spot at the end of the mourning line. Those people aren’t worth our time, but on this day, when Mom is being forced to pretend like everyone doesn’t know about Dad and Sharon Fly

I walk over to the casket and politely ask a few respects-payers to stand back. Then I start trying to close the casket. I hear the various gasps and utters of “Oh my God,” but I don’t care; I’m problem-solving, protecting my mom. My dad, too, in a way. And yet the casket isn’t really cooperating. I grab a different handle and pull down harder. The stupid … padded … lid … won’t budge. No one looks interested in helping me out; most have backed away. The struggle continues until the funeral director shows up and Mom leads me away to regroup. She’s not mad at me, very rarely is. We find a room to hide in and proceed to let it all hang out. We cry about Dad’s face and how we’ll never see the real him again. We get angry about his betrayal. We wish he would’ve been less one-thing-to-the-next, more open to enjoying himself with us, not just others outside our family. Then we start laughing at how the funeral director looked like he wanted to arrest me. Then we go back to crying because here we are, laughing at my dad’s funeral, what’s wrong with us? Mom says we’re reminding her of “that one Mary Tyler Moore episode with the clown funeral” and I go “Oh, yeaaah” even though I have no idea what she’s talking about. “If I tell you something about your dad, Abe … will you promise not to think any less of me?” I promise, and she whispers, “Sometimes I wonder if I ever really knew him.” I tell her that makes complete sense to me, he was a hard guy to read. Then my mom’s sister Jane barges in with a bottle of vodka and dares us to have an extra-stiff drink with her, which we do.