Greetings from the Flipside

  I turn to mom. “Tell me this is a joke! A nightmare! That I’m going to wake up!”

  “Look,” Skinny says, “do you think I like this IV stuck in my arm? Dripping incessantly? Do you hear that drip? Over and over. Drip. Drip. Drip. We all got our things, lady.”

  “Do you mind?” I say to him. “You can go now.”

  He turns and heads to my room, grumbling all the way about rent and Pintos.

  Mom tries to sit up. “You should have been there for your funeral. We had azaleas, lilies, and a whole tree built out of greeting cards. Just for you.”

  “Mom, how could you think I killed myself?”

  “Well, what do you expect me to think when you drive my car off a bridge?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Did you swim out the window? Sometimes it gets stuck.”

  “I didn’t crash the car. It was stolen . . .” I remember now, the girl in the purple jacket, racing by me . . . did she drive the car off the bridge?

  Mom slaps my arm so hard it feels like a needle prick. “I’m your mother. You let me think you were dead. Where’ve you been?”

  I slump and sigh all at once. “Idaho.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “Clearly you don’t have the humiliation gene, Mom. I didn’t call anyone.”

  “I shouldn’t have applied for your death certificate, huh?”

  “I’m gone one month. One. And you rent out my room, have my funeral, and apply for my death certificate?”

  “Upon grief I became extremely productive.”

  “Mom.” I gaze at the boxes lining the walls. “Dad’s been gone for two decades and you still keep a closet of his stuff.”

  Suddenly mom grabs my hands, forcing them together. I don’t have to ask. I know what is coming next. “Good Lord, you said I could have the desires of my heart . . . be still, oh my heart, it worked on Hope. Now, how ’bout bringing me her daddy? And a new hubby for Hope to share those gifts with?”

  My head snaps up. “What gifts?”

  Mom leaps off the couch and opens the coat closet. Gifts are shoved in there so tightly it looks like a wall of wrapping paper.

  “Mom! Why didn’t you send the gifts home with the guests?”

  She shrugs mildly. “Souvenirs? Speaking of . . . look what I kept!” She holds up the bride and groom that were supposed to be on top of the cake.

  I put my head in my hands. This is too much for me to take. I’m overwhelmed with the idea that I was dead and everybody thought I was dead. Not just dead. Suicide dead. That’s a step below just plain old death.

  Mom is beside me now, with her lanky arm wrapped around my shoulder. “There’s always a bright side, my dear. Always a bright side. The best part about Sam leaving you is that I get to keep you here with me.”

  My heart sinks so low I think it hits my bladder.

  “I bet,” she says with an excitable ring to her voice, “you can get your old job back!”

  * * * *

  The doors swoosh open at the nursing home. I didn’t notice the smell much when I worked here, but now it’s making me nauseated. I hold my breath as I hurry to Mrs. Barrow’s office, which is down the hall from the cafeteria. I have to gasp for air about the time I pass the cafeteria, and I’m overwhelmed by a whole new set of smells—egg substitute mixed with the burnt smell of a coffee urn sizzling on a hot burner somewhere unnoticed.

  I hurry as fast as I can and round the corner, bursting into Mrs. Barrow’s office the way nobody who is thought to be dead should ever burst into a former boss’s office. Luckily, I called earlier to let her know I was alive and wanted to see her.

  Still, her mouth has dropped and her eyes are wide as full moons. I guess it’s kind of hitting me at this moment how dead people really thought I was. As I cautiously sit in the chair in front of her desk, she rises with the same slowness. Now she’s towering over me, not saying a word, just searching me up and down like I might vanish before her eyes.

  “Hope . . .” It’s all she says.

  I sit up straight and pretend this isn’t at all awkward. I put on my best “I’m-here-for-an-interview” smile so we can get on with business. I think about cracking some sort of “back from the dead” joke but Mrs. Barrow doesn’t seem like she’d be able to take it at the moment.

  As slowly as she rose, she sits back down, both hands flat on her desk as if she might bolt at any second. Why isn’t my “all-is-normal” smile working?

  “So,” I say, “as I said on the phone, I was hoping we could talk about me getting my job back.”

  Mrs. Barrow relaxes a bit, tugging at a blouse that is gaping in all the wrong places. She’s got my folder out on the desk, looking it over for who knows what. I wonder if it has “dead” stamped across it anywhere.

  “Hope . . .” She shakes her head ever so slightly. It’s not so much a shake as a wobble, like her head isn’t sitting quite right on her neck and it’s causing an imbalance. “You quit . . .” She presses her lips together like she might break into a low hum of some sort. “You told us you were moving . . . and then you died. You quit and died. You see my predicament?”

  I nod, but Mrs. Barrow doesn’t seem to see mine. I’ve been dumped at the altar and declared dead by suicide. As predicaments go, I feel mine trumps hers. But you can’t say that at a job re-interview.

  “Mrs. Barrow, I’ve worked here seven years. My grandmother is here.” I clasp my hands together, hoping to either appear angelic or desperate.

  She drums her fingers against the folder, pinky to thumb, over and over. “Well, you have been a model employee. The way you keep up with the laundry . . .”

  “I fervently oppose laundry pileups.”

  “And the bed pans . . .”

  “Nobody is more enthusiastic about bed pans than I am.”

  Finally she sighs and closes my folder. My eye twitches a little as I watch her do it. The book has been closed on me once. It’s like she’s putting the lid on my coffin.

  “I can check with H.R. about letting your replacement go.” Mrs. Barrow smiles. She’s got the kind of smile that makes everything else on her face temporarily obsolete. Those big teeth gleam and twinkle. Her lips are spread wide and tight. And even as I return the smile, a sudden wave of doubt slips over me like a silky nightgown. I don’t think the smile makes it all the way to my lips. I only know this because Mrs. Barrow is now looking at me with the kind of expression that denotes alarm.

  “You know what?”

  She obviously doesn’t. Her eyebrows are raised halfway up her forehead like she can’t possibly anticipate what’s going to happen next.

  “Maybe I . . .” My heart is beating silly in my sternum. My palms are moist and spongy, like a higher-end cake mix. The air conditioning blows uncomfortably at my ankles. “Maybe I don’t want to be known as the Best Bed Panner for the rest of my life.”

  “But you are. You really are. I should’ve gotten you a plaque.”

  “Thank you, but I’m realizing even as I sit here—”

  Mrs. Barrow is starting to look desperate. “No, really. I can check for you. Who else will rewrite the ladies’ greeting cards for them? Who else will make them smile?”

  I stand suddenly. Now I tower over her. “I’m an artist. A writer!” It’s all way too dramatic for a twelve-by-twelve office in a nursing home, but I’m having a moment. I’m having one of those life-changing revelations that you hope happens on top of a mountain or near a monument. She has a small plastic flag on her desk, held up by Snoopy while he stands on his doghouse. So I look at that. “This, here, it’s not what I planned to do.”

  Mrs. Barrow’s expression morphs back into that same expression she wore when I bolted into her office just a few minutes before. I stretch a charming smile across my face. “Why let a little thing like my pulse get between you and the new gi
rl?”

  * * * *

  I kneel by my grandmother’s wheelchair and hold her hand.

  “. . . and obviously I realize it’s very confusing, me having left, then died, then come back, and now I’m leaving again. People in their right minds are having trouble tracking with this. But the point is that I think I’ve found my way. For the first time in my life, Grandma, I think I’ve found my way.”

  “Okay.”

  “Yes. Yes! Okay indeed.” I place the Columbine on her lap. “So, good-bye, Grandma.”

  “Okay.”

  I leave her room, trek down the same hallway I’ve trekked a hundred thousand times, and round the corner into the common room. Usually at this time, the residents are entranced by their soap opera, but there is an odd sight. They’re all reading newspapers. Some of them can’t even see.

  I spot Gertie by her shoes, Reebok’s under swollen ankles. “Gertie?”

  She lowers her newspaper and smiles at me. The other residents lower theirs too. Everyone is staring at me.

  “Oh honey!”

  I embrace her. “Hi, Gertie.”

  “I was so glad to have read in the paper that you’re not dead.”

  “No, I’m not de— . . . hold on. Paper? What do you mean, in the paper?”

  Gertie hands me the newspaper, folded crisply and neatly the way I remember my dad reading it. I turn it over to see what she, and apparently everyone, is so enamored with.

  There are the obituaries. And where normally there would be a large ad for funeral services or legal services or carpet cleaning, there I am, four inches tall, with a headline over my forehead: “Alive and Available!”

  I gasp for the obvious reason—my mother has taken out an ad for me on the obituary page, where, of course, every hot-blooded male goes on the hunt for potential mates. But beyond that madness, she has managed to choose the quirkiest picture ever taken of me, one of those pictures where you’re managing to have a bad hair day and a momentary lapse in judgment on clothing choice and facial expression. It’s a complete train wreck. For no reason that is discernible, my arm is raised, and a shadow is cast right into my pit, looking like I’ve decided to go all Euro on my hygiene options.

  I gasp again. One more and I’ll be officially hyperventilating.

  “It’s official. I’m going to kill her.” I glance at all the residents. They look as if no one really knows who her is. “My mother,” I say flatly. “For putting this in the paper.”

  “Oh . . .” they all say in unison, nodding.

  “Now, now,” Gertie says. “Your momma means well.”

  “This is a nightmare . . .”

  “You know what? After you get rid of them bad boys, that’s when the good one sneaks right on up.”

  “The only people looking at obits for dates are gold diggers, Gertie.”

  “One day, mark my words, you’ll be so thankful you’re in all this pain. When the right boy answers this ad.”

  * * * *

  Maybe it’s just me, but have you ever had a moment where you’re so mad that you’re engulfed by it? Like all facets of your mind are in gear, working out the angst, solving the problem of how to change your current circumstance? Some call it “seeing red,” but I just call it blind-by-rage.

  That’s why I didn’t see the van as I pulled into the driveway of my home. At that moment, I was rehearsing the speech I was going to slay my mother with.

  It wasn’t until I heard “Hope!” that I realized anyone was even there.

  I look up to find a reporter stalking across the lawn of my home, a microphone extended out in front of her, a cameraman trailing behind, and a long cord snaking behind him. My eyes dart to the van. It’s a news crew. The woman is wearing fuchsia head to toe—the kind that really only works if you’re trying to overexaggerate your presence. Her hair is tied into the kind of bun that makes her look like she’s in the middle of getting a face-lift.

  “Ms. Landon,” she says as she sidles up to me.

  I slowly close the car door because the car is dinging a reminder I’ve left the keys in the ignition.

  “How does it feel to be alive?”

  “Great. Thank you for asking.” I flash a smile because all the awkward photos of me are streaming through my mind and I’m hoping, if I’m lucky, this one gorgeous grin will make up for all the ones that have let me and every other single woman down.

  I try to step to the side. She steps in front of me. I try the other side. She’s right there, her heel planted so firmly that I think it might have actually sunk into the concrete of the driveway. All the while, she’s smiling at me and angling herself to still look good on camera.

  “We want to do a news series on you. You give hope to our audience.”

  I just stand there blinking. Me? Giving hope? What is she talking about? Hasn’t she seen all that has happened? I can’t give hope. I’m the polar opposite of hope. I’m Oedipus. I haven’t killed my father and accidentally married my mother, but you’ve seen my life. You have to agree that all-in-all this is more Greek tragedy than inspiration. My mother alone is cause enough for despair.

  The reporter is still going. Her eyes are all “aura and light,” as if somehow her dream is coming true right before our eyes. “To come back from being left at the altar, back from a suicide attempt! Now you’re ready to risk, to find love again.”

  “I’m . . . no, I’m not. I’m still coming to grips with the fact that I was dead. I am still feeling quite dead, to tell you the truth. Not totally dead. Just alive enough to wish I might’ve really been dead. It’s complicated.”

  “Let us follow your story with our cameras until you find true love! You’d be inspiring many women out there who feel hopeless.”

  I’m slumping just like an eighth grade girl who is all at once dealing with acne and social dilemmas. Doesn’t she see me for what I am? I’m no hero. I’m certainly no reality star. I’m trying to keep my mother from taking more ads out in the obituaries, for my death and for my life. This is not the picture of stardom or hope. This is the picture of complete dysfunction on nearly every level imaginable.

  I look at the reporter. She is still smiling as if I’m missing the most exciting opportunity of my life. “What’s your name?”

  “Danielle Warren.”

  “Danielle, let me give you some advice. I’m assuming by the way you’re looking at me that I’m offering you some hope in life, that you’re single and you’re looking for that one story that makes you believe true love can happen.”

  Danielle glances back at her cameraman, then back at me. She slowly nods. “I got dumped too.”

  Oh goody. We’re all in the same club and they need a pack leader.

  “So you can understand where I’m coming from when I say that this is not really my dream—to be dumped, presumed dead, only to rise again and find out that my life is way worse than I thought. You see what I’m saying? This is not the kind of story that Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks star in.”

  Danielle lowers the microphone, nods her head slowly.

  I’m about to thank her for her time, hug her because, after all, she was dumped too, and bid her farewell when all of the sudden I hear a noise that causes me to freeze—it’s the kind of noise you can’t at first identify. But it becomes louder and the only thing that’s moving in my entire body is a sudden flush of adrenaline, the kind that makes it possible to lift a car to save a life if need be.

  What is that noise?

  It almost sounds like a herd of elephants. Or geese. It’s the weirdest sound. I look quickly at Danielle. She doesn’t look alarmed. She looks . . . guilty.

  I turn around, just in time to see it—the source of the noise: a dozen men are piling out of the news van, each and every one of them sweaty like they’d been stuffed inside a duffel bag for a while. They’re gathering on the front lawn of my home, ad
justing their shirts, feathering their hair, checking their armpits.

  Now, I am just like any other American woman. I see a hot guy and even if I truly believe he’s toxic and would eventually be the death of me, I strike a pose. I smile, maybe run my fingers through my hair. It’s just instinct. Primitive, really, if you don’t include the hair spray and the lip gloss.

  So you’ll understand what I mean when I say I don’t strike a pose. I don’t smile. At all. I’m just staring, that kind of awkward stare that you never want to be caught giving.

  I count them one by one. Eleven. How did they all fit into that news truck?

  I scan the crowd as they smile and wave. Four look like they should be at ComicCon. Three just got off the farm, literally. Two are wearing reds that don’t match. And the other two don’t look right. That’s all I can say.

  Danielle puts the microphone back in my face, her eyes wide with anticipation. “Every one of these men called today to answer your ad!” She makes a sweeping gesture, as if I’m royalty, these are all princes and I get to choose with which one I will live in eternal bliss.

  A croaking noise comes up my throat. It shocks me because I can’t remember another time I’ve actually croaked, besides when I supposedly died. And I’m no psychologist, but if I’m sticking with the fairy-tale analogy, I’m pretty sure somewhere in this scene there are toads. And I’m no amphibian, so . . .

  The croaking sound erupts again from my throat. Danielle’s face grows concerned. The cameraman tilts his head away from the viewfinder, takes a step back, as if preparing for me to yack. At this point, I can make no promises.

  Now you’re probably thinking that I’m going to say something clever. Or give the ComicCon guys a shot, because you and I both know that Nerd is super-hot right now. But I can’t tell you the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek. That kind of ignorance can get you murdered at ComicCon.

  It takes me a whole second to decide, but I realize I need to beat the next croak, because all I can see are five-second sound bites of me on the news, four seconds of which are me croaking like a frog.

  So I bolt. Straight for the front door. I actually jump over the iron railing around the porch. I don’t remember even opening the door. I am just suddenly inside, my back against the door, my pulse a thick, ticking thud against my neck.