I didn’t know Death had a name.
It’s Anita, as luck would have it. Nothing fancy. Just Anita.
You have to admire Death’s simplicity.
Reclining in the bathtub, I hear the doorbell ring. I’ve been reading, though I forget what — something embarrassingly trashy yet engaging — so I’m understandably annoyed. I stand. Towel off. Slip on a robe. This robe in fact, I seem to remember. As I approach the front door, I can see through the wispy curtains a cute little Girl Scout with a tray of the kind hotdog vendors at ballparks use. It’s fastened around her neck by means of leather straps. In the tray are boxes of chocolate fudge cookies. She’s so cute she looks like a child actor.
Anita.
She’s trying to lure me outside with one of my favorite foods. But something in me turns to… what? Something in me turns to goo. Without thinking, I reach for the doorknob. I feel its cool aluminum presence in my palm. I begin to rotate my wrist joint. It’s all I can do…
Just then someone knocks at the front door.
The real front door.
The dreamless one.
Someone knocks that instant.
Andi’s sentence snags on the noise. She stops writing and peers at you over the top of her journal.
You return her stalled look.
The someone who just knocked on your front door clumps over to the window on the porch, pauses, clumps back to the door and knocks again. The someone clumps down the stairs and around the side of the house and back up the stairs and opens the screen door and steps right up to the inside door and knocks.
Andi and you sit perfectly still.
You hear individual drops of rain ploick off the gutter.
The screen door whacks shut.
The someone clumps across the porch and down the stairs.
A minute later, and you hear Jack Pederson’s ATV catch in your driveway.
You hear gravel chewing slowly beneath tires.
Andi retracts her neck.
Now she begins to laugh.
Andi begins to laugh.
She topples onto her side, hands tucked between her legs, thick dark hair obscuring her face, laughing and laughing.
The scene fading out.
You call Benn and Branda after dinner.
From New Jersey.
Benn was your first roommate at Rutgers and you have stayed in touch with him ever since, on and off, more off than on, though you admit to Andi that, all things being equal, if you ran into him on the street for the first time tomorrow it would never cross your mind to strike up a friendship with him.
When you knew him, he was a funny freshman who studied philosophy and took Nietzsche seriously and played guitar. Folk guitar. After college he worked as a street singer in Manhattan.
Then he met Branda, a wellness therapist from Arizona with a wide jaw who talked about crystals and the silver threads of love connecting humans in the same matter-of-fact inflections some people discuss how to use a wrench.
They married, moved to Paramus, and had a pallid-skinned red-haired girl named Bonita.
Paramus being another interesting word.
Paramus and wellness therapist.
Benn took a job with IBM in the PR department.
Branda led yoga classes.
Overnight, they rescripted their lives.
They had a pallid-skinned red-haired child and rewrote themselves.
They bought comfortable middle-age clothes and adopted the roles of loving middle-class parents.
Your friends are themselves.
Your friends are people you have never met before.
Andi mans the wall phone.
You sit at the kitchen table, cordless in hand.
Benn answers on the fourth ring.
After some small talk about your new life in Idaho, you ask him what it was like being pregnant.
A muffled exchange, and Branda joins the conversation on another line.
You know how people always talk about how magic it is? she asks without prelude. Hey, she says, the idea spreading through her. You guys aren’t…
We are, Andi says without skipping a beat.
You shoot her a look that contains surprise, discomfort, and genuine admiration.
Oh wow, Branda says.
You guys, says Benn on the other line.
Somewhere in the staticky background, Bonita enters the room and lets out what sounds like an Apache attack call.
So when’s the due date? Branda asks.
Listen, says Benn. I’m going to be honest with you guys here, okay? We were starting to worry about you. I mean, don’t get me wrong or anything. It would’ve been great if you decided not to do this. Only we kept imagining, you know, like all the things you’d be missing out on.
You’re going to make the best parents, says Branda.
You are, Benn agrees. Seriously.
This is so… I don’t know how to say it. This is just so incredible. Start from the beginning and tell us every single detail.
Andi starts making things up on the spot, telling them about how you two sat down one night and started talking and couldn’t believe it had taken you this many years to grow up and the doctor set the date for April and it is incredible, absolutely wild.
Except then you realize that neither Branda nor Benn is listening.
Palms more or less over mouthpieces, they are explaining to Bonita how it is already past her bedtime and how she should be running along to brush her teeth.
Can she show mommy and daddy what a good little girl she is and do that?
She cannot, it turns out.
She wants a soda and she wants it now.
She can’t have a soda because it’s bedtime, sweetie.
She’s thirsty and she wants a soda.
It’s bedtime, sweetie, and sodas contain white sugar and white sugar does horrible things to your mind and body, especially if you drink it this late in the evening.
Hello? Andi says, tentatively.
Their palms drop from the mouthpieces almost simultaneously.
Do you need some time out? Branda asks.
I don’t think so, you answer before you understand they are still talking to Bonita.
Hello? Andi repeats.
Bonnie. Come give daddy a huggly. Then it’s off to bed, okay?
You hear what you take to be bottles or cans clattering in an open refrigerator and then the refrigerator door thumps shut and a high-pitched squeal commences that makes the Apache attack call seem somehow self-effacing.
Bonita is accusing Branda of deliberately catching her first three fingers in the door.
Mommy didn’t see you behind her, sweetie, Branda says, voice high-frequency with guilt.
Mommy’s very sorry, Benn says. She didn’t see her princess standing there. Come give daddy a huggly. Seriously. He’ll kiss your booboo and make it better.
Hello? Andi says.
Through choking hiccups Bonita continues to accuse her mother of attempted infanticide.
In response Branda begins giving her things. Here are some Tootsie Rolls. Here is a fistful of LifeSavers. Have some ice cream. Have several gallons of Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew, and Jolt. If you stop crying right now you’ll get something called a Wubby-Tubby Doll first thing in the morning and permission to stay up till next Tuesday.
Maybe this isn’t a good time, you suggest.
No way, Benn says, back again, unflappable as a Presbyterian on Sunday morning. It’s a perfect time. We wouldn’t miss it for the world. Gosh, this is so excellent. Only… don’t do that, okay?
Excuse me?
Bonnie. She’s picking up a… don’t do that, sweetie, okay?
Everything feels realer than real, Branda says out of nowhere. Like everything in your field of vision was just taken out of a packing crate.