But I can’t.
Seven hours after Otter woke up for the first time in seven days, and as the sun set in the early winter dusk, Theresa Jean Paquinn died quietly in her sleep at the age of seventy-six. I was in the room with her, the Kid in my lap, the others strewn about in the hallway outside, waiting for the inevitable: Otter to wake up again and Mrs. Paquinn to pass. We watched for an hour, no words said, none that would have meant anything in the long run, anyways. We waited and waited until it finally happened. There was nothing revelatory about it, nothing to indicate that she was leaving, that she was saying good-bye. There was a breath in, no deeper than the one before it. Then she exhaled. And she was gone.
The Kid trembled in my arms as the machines began to flat line, and he turned and pressed his face into my shoulder, and I felt my shirt grow wet under his face. I rubbed his back as I watched her, so tiny and gone, and even when others came in to turn off the machines, when my family came in to say good-bye, we still sat there, waiting until we both knew the Kid would be strong enough to walk out on his own. He didn’t want to be carried. He didn’t want to lean on anyone. He wanted to walk out with his head held high, knowing he’d said good-bye in the only way he knew how to a woman who’d been his life.
Eventually, he slid from my lap. He walked over to Mrs. Paquinn and kissed her hand. He stood next to her for a moment and then walked out of the room, his head high, shoulders squared. Such a little guy.
I stood from the chair and made my way to her beside. I leaned down and kissed her forehead, brushing her hair back off her face. Her skin was already cool to the touch. “Go on, old girl,” I told her. “Go find your Joseph, God love him. I’ll handle the rest down here, don’t you worry about that. I’ll be strong because you showed me how, and for that, I thank you. And hell, if anyone was capable of coming back as a ghost and haunting us, it’d be you. You stay out of my bedroom if you do, okay? There’s things I do in there that even you shouldn’t see.”
I kissed her one last time and left the room.
OTTER took her passing hard, but while he mourned her as the rest of us did, I think it was even harder for him, knowing what we’d been through while he was unconscious. I could tell the guilt was eating at him, that he hadn’t been there to shelter the Kid and me, even though the reason for his absence was not his fault. He seemed clingy, which was unusual for him, and he almost acted like the Kid, asking where I was going, what I was doing, when was I going to be back. He didn’t like me going places on my own, even though I rarely left the hospital. If I was gone longer than I said I’d be, you can sure as shit bet I’d get a phone call, demanding to know where I was.
There was plenty to do, however, in the days that followed. Otter had another surgery on his leg after the sutures became infected. There were a few moments where we were worried that he’d actually lose it, but they were able to clear out the infection with aggressive antibiotics, and the pins in his leg were unaffected. He woke up groggy and whining about how much pain he was in, and I knew then that he’d be okay. He stopped grumbling when I crawled back up into the bed with him and whispered in his ear that I was going to give him the sloppiest blowjob ever when he got out. He’d grinned at me in that drugged-up way he had and laughed quietly as he held me close.
I started to plan the funeral for Mrs. Paquinn, only to find that she’d left specific instructions as to how she wanted to be laid to rest. She wanted to be cremated, and her ashes spread along a familiar stretch of beach where so much of our lives had been decided. She didn’t want a big fuss made, she wrote in her will, but she did want everyone to tear up at least once, and then she wanted people to get drunk (“Even you, Bear” she wrote. “Lord knows it’ll probably only take half a beer before you’re crying, but at least we know that means you’re a cheap date. Otter, don’t let Bear out of your sight.
I’m sure Creed will try to take advantage of that whole situation since he wants to have a bone session with your partner. But, if you do decide to join in the fun, make sure that you film it and send it to my new address: Mrs.
Paquinn, care of God. Heaven, The Sky. I don’t know the zip code, but I don’t think that’ll matter. The post office should know what you mean”).
She wanted to be celebrated, not mourned.
Easy enough for a classy lady like her, even if she did put in her will that she wanted to watch a videotaped session of me having sex with Otter and Creed. What a weirdo.
So that’s what we did.
Two weeks after she passed, we all arrived on the beach, dressed in our Sunday best, even though it was a Thursday. Creed and Anna went first, sans shoes as we all had agreed upon. Anna’s parents and Alice and Jerry followed. Dominic and the Kid, in matching suits that I’d bought them both, were next. Isaiah helped Jordan and the bar gang put out wooden planks so I could push Otter’s wheelchair onto the beach without it getting stuck. He grumbled about being pushed in the chair, grumbled about having to go back to the hospital afterward, grumbled that I was pushing him when he thought he needed to be the one taking care of me. But I leaned down and whispered quietly in his ear that I’d be strong for just a little bit longer and that, when he was ready, I’d let him do to me whatever he wanted. He shivered as my lips grazed his ear and immediately stopped complaining, his good hand reaching up and touching the ring that hung from a chain around his neck.
I love how he’s so predictable.
I’m sure I could go on and on about what was said that day. About the memories that we shared and the tears that were shed. The toasts that were made and the heartache we all felt. But just know the one thing that mattered the most: that, when we’d opened up the urn that held her ashes and tipped it over to let it pour out onto the beach and into the water, a wind picked up and the ashes were thrown right back into our faces. I think I inhaled some.
We sat there, all wide-eyed and shocked, black smudges on our cheeks and noses and forehead, until the Kid started to laugh. He wrapped his hands around his middle, and he bellowed out great laughter, and soon we all followed suit, tears streaming down our faces as we wiped Mrs. Paquinn off each other. It was weird and morbid and hilarious, just like the person it had belonged to. I’m sure Mrs. Paquinn had something to do with that wind, letting us know that we were being too serious, that a person passing does not always need to be grieved for.
So we laughed as we spread the rest of her into the water and sand and a breeze ruffled my hair just once as the last of her slipped from the urn and was carried away on the ocean current.
I like to think that was her too.
FIVE days after the funeral, Otter finally came home to the Green Monstrosity. Probably a good thing, too, as he was beginning to threaten every single member of the hospital staff, especially the hardcore butch bitch named Thelma, who was his physical therapist. She’d heard him whine and complain over some basic strengthening exercises he’d been forced to do and had flatly told him that she didn’t know that huge guys like him could be such nelly bottom queens. She’d then congratulated us on our upcoming nuptials and asked if Otter was going to go the traditional route and go with a white dress with a veil. He’d scowled at her and tried to make himself look bigger,
as he’s wont to do, but he only succeeded in knocking his bad arm into the wall, bringing tears to his eyes.
“You’re a big baby,” I told him, and then Thelma grinned at me like I was the greatest thing in the history of ever.
“Well, at least he’s pretty,” Thelma said as she winked at me. “Lord knows you at least have that, seeing as how you’re forced to listen to him whine like a little girl all the time. You’d think big guys would be tough.”
Otter narrowed his eyes. “I am tough,” he snapped. “And Bear loves to listen to me talk about everything. That’s why he’s my fiancé.”
I rolled my eyes and pretended to gag, even though I felt a little tingle in my stomach.
“Well, don’t you want to be able to fuck him on your honeymoon?”
Thelma countered. “’Cause you won’t be able to if you don’t do what I fucking tell you to do!”
I didn’t hear Otter complain about physical therapy again after that.
Alice and Jerry wanted Otter to come back to their house, at least for a while. It’s bigger, they said. It’ll be easier for him to move around in. They said that of course the Kid and I would stay with him until he was ready to go home. But Otter just shook his head. He grabbed my hand and pulled it into his lap and said that he wanted to go to his house, to be with his stuff.