The entire planet watched my funeral. Kings and presidents carried my biodegradable casket.
For obvious reasons the person who’d slay me would have to be a reviled Judas. My parents had searched long. They’d adopted the basest of blackguards and young cutthroats in the hope that one would be my executioner. It was only when they’d tested Goran, scurrilous Goran, that they knew they’d found their villain. No, what happened at EPCOT was no accident, but rather a carefully choreographed experiment. When they’d given Goran a knife and paraded an innocent, endearing pony before him… it was when he’d slashed its throat without hesitation that my mom and dad knew they’d found the player who would eventually end my life.
DECEMBER 21, 12:31 P.M. HAST
What Makes a Family
Gentle Tweeter,
In Athens or Aspen or Adelaide, my parents and I had always created a family. Anytime we were together, our love was intact. We weren’t like normal families who live tied to one plot of moldy compost, growing potatoes and carding wool. We had so many houses, in Dublin and Durban and Dubai, that none of them felt like our home. We weren’t like those genetically isolated finches Mr. Darwin had found in the Galápagos. No, we were more like those lost tribes wandering around in the pages of the Bible book. In Vancouver or Las Vegas or Van Nuys, all we had that was stable and consistent was each other.
For years, my faults were the glue that kept my parents united. My fat, my quiet bookwormish, misanthropic misbehavior, these were the flaws they sought to correct. And when I seemed to throw myself at Jesus Christ, well, nothing could’ve cemented their marital bond more effectively. Please forgive me my boast, but for years I was a genius at keeping my mom and dad hitched while the parents of my boarding school peers were constantly wedding and divorcing new partners. In Miami and Milan and Missoula, while our surroundings constantly changed, we had one another.
That is, until now. Which is why God has erected such a firewall between the living and the dead: because the predead always distort whatever the postalive tell them. Jesus or Mohammad or Siddhartha, whenever any dead person has come back to offer some banal bit of advice, the living recipient misinterprets every word of it. Wars ensue. Witch burnings. For example, when Bernadette Soubirous stepped into the water at Lourdes in the year 1858, the Virgin Mary materialized only to say, “Hey, don’t play here, kid. It’s a filthy-dirty medical-waste dump.” Even worse, in 1917 when she appeared to impoverished Portuguese shepherd children at Fatima, Mary was only trying to sneak them the number for a winning lottery ticket. Talk about good intentions! Here a helpful dead lady was merely trying to lend them a hand, and those predead urchins Ctrl+Alt+Overreacted.
In summation, the predead get everything wrong. But at this point in history, you can hardly blame them for being so spiritually famished that they’d gobble down anything. Yes, Gentle Tweeter, we may have polio vaccines and microwave popcorn, but secular humanism really only covers the good times. Nobody in a foxhole ever said a prayer to Ted Kennedy. Nobody on a deathbed clasps his hands in weeping despair and petitions for the aid of Hillary Clinton. My parents were in a position to proselytize. I gave them some misguided advice, and now, the headlines: “Camille Files for Divorce!”
I’ve failed in my eternal mission to keep them together.
DECEMBER 21, 12:35 P.M. HAST
Camille in Denial
Gentle Tweeter,
“Who’s Persef…?” I ask my mother.
“Persephone,” says she. If Leonard’s to be believed, Persephone was a girl so extraordinary that a brute named Hades had only to glance at her to fall madly in love. She lived with her loving parents on Earth, but Hades seduced her and eloped with her to his kingdom in the underworld. In her absence the world cooled. Without her grace present the trees shed their leaves and the flowers withered. Snow fell. Water turned to ice, and the days waned shorter while the nights waxed longer.
With her new husband, Persephone was happy for a period. In her new underworld home she made friends and learned the customs. She became a favorite among her peers just as she had been on Earth. Hades loved her as much as her parents had, but eventually she pined to visit them. After half a year Hades relented. Such was his love that there was little he could deny his wife. Only when she had sworn to return to him in the underworld did Hades allow her to leave.
Upon her return to Earth the snow blanketing her old home melted. Trees flowered and bore fruit, and the days stretched so long that the nights between them were almost gone. Persephone’s parents were overjoyed to see her, and for half a year the three lived together as they had before her marriage.
According to Leonard, when six months had passed Persephone bade her parents farewell and returned to her husband, Hades. The Earth slept in her absence. When half a year had again passed, she returned to bring summer.
“That’s it?” I ask. “She never goes to college or gets a job or anything? She just shuttles back and forth between her folks’ house and her husband?”
With a sad smile, so wan that I suspect the effects of Botox extend into the afterlife, my mom says, “My daughter is Persephone….”
My own response to her speech is complicated. I couldn’t accept such a proposal from Satan, but coming from my mother it is more palatable. It’s not overly flattering: the concept that I’ve been born and bred and fattened like a calf for some ritual slaughter. My parents stood apart from me because they knew my life would end so tragically. They even selected my assassin and abandoned me to his deadly manhandling.
Perhaps that explains my carnal preoccupation with the ruddy Goran. Aren’t we all entranced by the means of our own future demise?
It’s not without appeal, the possibility that I was born already doomed and that everyone I loved knew more about me than I did about myself. If that’s the case I’m absolved from doing any wrong. I’m helpless and ignorant, but I am innocent.
What chafes me is the image of Leonard the puppet master, some slide-rule misfit telephoning my mother and jerking her chain. Leonard, seated at his telemarketing console, wearing his headset in Hell, dictating his philosophy to my impressionable eleven-year-old mom… the image prompts me to say, “I know him. I know Leonard.”
I say, “He’s book-smart, but he doesn’t know everything.”
My mom’s spirit looks Ctrl+Alt+Stunned.
I say, “He tricked you. Leonard bought your trust with winning lottery numbers and insider stock market tips just so you’d let me be murdered.” The words pour out, unstoppable. “Leonard’s a liar, Mom! Boorism is a big mistake!”
I advance to comfort her. My arms spread wide for a nurturing hug, I say, “It’s going to be okay. You were just an idiotic eleven-year-old girl. I know the feeling….”
The blow lands across my ghost cheek. Yes, CanuckAIDSemily, a ghost can slap another ghost. And apparently a ghost mother can smack her own chubby baby girl ghost. What’s more—it hurts.
Granted, my mother’s ghost is already fading. Her body sprawled on the divan, the chest stirs. Color rises in her cheeks. The ghost hand that slapped me has almost vanished. Perhaps it’s only the idea of the slap that stings.