Sunday Mourning

no, no, no, this can’t be happening

(March 15, 2009, 11:43am via Twitter)

* * *

The morning of March 15th, 2009, does not begin with buzzing alarms or espresso or reading the New York Times in bed with my husband of three years. It begins with the sound of retching.

Honey? I murmur, eyes half-closed. Everything okay?

My husband’s laugh echoes from our bathroom, and my eyes blink open to pale morning light.

Can I . . . get you anything?

Alberto answers with more heaving sounds.

Getting you Zantac, I say, climbing out of bed.

The kitchen clock reads 5:23am and our counters are littered with empty antacid packets. There’s nothing rare about seeing Alka-Seltzer—it’s the Cuban version of chamomile tea—but in the four years since I’ve known Alberto, he’s never thrown up.

Armed with Zantac and ice water, I knock on the bathroom door and hear the toilet flush. Alberto emerges, naked and sweating.

I threw up, he explains, his voice more four-year-old than forty-year-old.

It’s okay, baby, I say, leading him to the sofa. You’re kinda warm . . .
should I open a window?

Yes, please, he nods, swallowing the Zantac. Sit with me?

I crack a living-room window and curl into him. We talk about what he ate for dinner—gyro meat from our favorite Greek place—and whether he’s been evacuating from both ends.

No, he answers, with a shiver.

Maybe it’s that weird flu that’s going around? I suggest, wrapping a blanket around him. Alberto continues to sweat and shiver, despite the open window and blanket.

Should we go to the clinic on 23rd and Seventh? I ask. It’s always open.

Alberto had his annual physical less than forty-eight hours ago, so spending our Sunday at a walk-in clinic is the last thing either of us wants to do.

We can get dressed and go, I offer, half-heartedly.

Neither of us moves a muscle.

Thirty-six hours from now, I will replay this exchange and hate myself for not getting up from the sofa and insisting we go to the clinic. In the years ahead, this moment will stand out as the singular frame in which today’s outcome might have been altered.

But at daybreak on March 15th, 2009, I do not realize that my husband does not have the flu.

* * *

By his own admission, Alberto did not “do sick” gracefully.

A common cold would send him over the edge—I’m dying! The suffering! The agony!—and send me to KFC for his favorite “sick food” or the market for Nyquil, VapoRub, and Kleenex with aloe. If he got sick in foreign countries, hospital trips or house calls from doctors were involved. Once, in the high drama of a sinus infection, he’d said, You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone, Tré! Then he called his sister, Barby, to complain that his wife was mean because she makes me take antibiotics and they give me acidez.

When he had inner-ear surgery the first year we were married, his mother, Hilda, flew to New York: Partly to be here for Albert, she explained to everyone, but mostly because Tré doesn’t know what she’s in for.

Three days after he was released from the Ear, Nose & Throat Infirmary, Hilda flew back to Miami, apparently assured that her son’s recovery wouldn’t result in his subsequent divorce. But on the fourth day, I was concerned about his lack of sleep—Lunesta didn’t help, painkillers didn’t help, a glass of wine with either of them didn’t help—so I called his surgeon and drove us to the Infirmary on Second Avenue.

The doctor unwrapped the bandage, took one look at his ear and put him on the table. When interns started using words like aerate and 16-gauge needle, I stepped in.

Excuse me, I whispered. My husband hates hospitals and needles, but he’s watched enough Grey’s Anatomy to understand what’s happening right now. So I really need you guys to have this discussion out of his newly restored earshot.

They shot me a collective look of annoyance, but moved to the other side of the room.

As the needle was prepared, I took his hand, told him to look at me and nothing else. It entered his inner ear drum and his pupils dilated. While they drained the fluid causing his discomfort, Alberto squeezed my hand purple.

Hey, you’re doing great, I said, maintaining a calm face. Tell me what you want from KFC after this.

He was too spooked to reply.

It’s almost over, I promised him. And you’ll be able to sleep tonight.

He blinked at me before whispering his order: three breasts, original recipe. With gravy. And a biscuit.

Done and done, I said.

It’s almost over and you’ll be able to sleep tonight.

* * *

Instead of making an early-morning trip to the clinic, we remain on our sofa discussing the flu: who’s had it and for how long.

Still sweaty, Alberto stands up and stretches before heading to the bedroom. I follow and sit beside him on the edge of the bed.

You sleepy?

Yes.

Stomach still hurt?

Yes.

Maybe you could try to get the rest of the food out of you? It might help you rest?

He sighs, squeezes my shoulder, and walks toward the bathroom.

Hey, I call. If your head wasn’t shaved, I’d offer to hold your hair back.

He laughs weakly before the retching sounds begin again. I wince and do the only thing I can think to do: pray for sleep for him.

I drift off mid-prayer, but awaken to a rhythmic flapping sound. Alberto is sleeping vertically across our bed and his right arm seems under the control of a mad puppeteer: it rises jerkily into the air and smacks down on the duvet. I get up and peer over him, unsure if I should wake him from what seems like a nightmare. I shift my weight and observe him until eventually, the arm-thrashing stops. His toes are touching the floor, which looks uncomfortable, but if I move him, he might wake up.

Too risky, I decide.

I shut off the bathroom light, glance at the clock—6:42am—and arrange myself in a ball at the end of our bed.

It will be two hours before I open my eyes again, and by then, all that seems promised and predictable right now will have slipped through the open window in our living room.

* * *

A year and a half after this Sunday morning, I will be in Southern California, where I grew up, accompanying my fifty-nine-year-old mother to a cardiologist. That afternoon, I will learn more about the human heart than I ever wanted to know.

Through illustrations and rubber-heart replicas, her doctor will explain that a nerve bundle in the left chamber of Mom’s heart isn’t functional. And that the bundle in the right chamber compensates by rerouting the electrical impulses. The electricity does a longer lap than it should, he says, but in a word: she’ll be fine. And just to be sure, he’s putting her on a heart monitor for the next month.

I will stare at images of my mom’s heart while the doctor comments on how resilient and creative and determined the human heart is.

I will stifle the questions forming in my throat: is the heart so “resilient” that it would hide a massive blockage from an EKG less than forty-eight hours before cardiac arrest?

Are the hearts of my eighty-eight-year-old grandparents—who each survived recent heart attacks—so much more “creative” than the one belonging to my husband, chief creative officer of his own ad agency?

Is the heart’s “determination” to beat contingent upon a wife immediately taking her husband to a clinic at the first sign of vomit?

I will say nothing.

The window in which to ask these questions has already closed.

* * *

It’s after 8am when I wake beside Alberto, who isn’t snoring.

I reach for him but upon contact with his skin, my eyes jerk open.

What the—why is he so cold?

My eyes race to his face and what I see sends an alarm roaring through my gut.

He is a terrifying shade of yellow.

No!

His mouth is frozen in a gasp.

Alberto!

His lips are lavender.

No, no, no.

The phone, where’s the phone?

911. This is Harmony: what’s your emergency?

I just woke up and found my husband not breathing! He’s—yellow!

What is your name and does your husband have a pulse?

I’m Tré—and I don’t know if there’s a pulse!

Put your ear to his chest, she instructs.

I put my ear to his ice-cold chest but can’t hear anything over the roar in my ears.

Is there a heartbeat, she asks.

I don’t know, I yell. I can’t tell if it’s his or mine?

Let’s stay calm, Tré. Is your husband lying on a flat surface?

The bed. He’s on the bed!

I need you to move him to the floor so you can perform CPR.

Episodes of Law & Order flash through my head: I don’t know much, but I do know if there’s one thing you never do, it’s move the body.

(The Body. Is. Alberto.)

Not possible, I argue. He’s twice my weight. I can’t move him.

You can do CPR without moving him, she says. But first, you need to open the front door so the paramedics can access your apartment.

I start toward the foyer before realizing I’m half-naked. Even as I’m pulling an Ella Moss top over my head, I know it’s too low-cut for a crisis. But there’s no time to deliberate: doors have to be opened and CPR must be performed.

When I unlock the front door, the weight of last night’s dry-cleaning delivery prevents it from staying open.

Have you opened it? Harmony asks.

Not yet, I shout. Gotta move all this stuff hanging on the door—gimme a second.

I start shoving plastic-wrapped clothing into the foyer closet and see Alberto’s shirts, his ties.

CPR!

I must perform CPR!

I grab the phone, rush back to the bedroom, and in my panic, forget to open the front door.

As I stand over Alberto, I become conscious of the sirens approaching.

I hear sirens, I tell Harmony. Thank God.

I hear them too, Tré. But right now, we need to do CPR.

Yes, I say, snapping out of it. Tell me how to do this.

Interlace your fingers and place them in the middle of his chest.

I try to ignore the temperature of his skin and the visible veins creeping down his forehead.

Just pump vigorously, she urges.

I start pumping. His head is jumping off the pillow. His eyes are not opening.

What’s supposed to happen here? I shout. How do I know I’m doing this right? Will he—

Harmony interrupts to ask if the front door is open?

Oh my God, I say, and race to the door.

Two young NYPDs in uniform are standing in the hall. I hang up with Harmony and start answering their questions—any drugs last night? any alcohol?—as I lead them to Alberto. They’re visually sweeping our apartment, but I don’t care. There’s nothing to hide.

No, I say, just Greek food and movies about Cuba.

When we reach Alberto, I realize he’s still naked so I cover his lower body with a chenille blanket. Just as I step away, the paramedics and firemen charge inside.

I retreat to the kitchen to call my parents in California, but like a scene out of a horror movie, the call keeps failing. On the third try, it connects and my mother picks up.

I hear my voice explain that Alberto wasn’t breathing when I woke up this morning and that he’s still not breathing, but the paramedics are here and they’re working on him.

While answering her questions, I think I hear him cough—wait, Mom! hang on!—and lunge out of the kitchen into the chaos. Alberto is on the living-room floor, surrounded by medics and monitors. I want to rush to his side and keep him calm until I realize he wasn’t coughing: it’s just the sounds of the air bag they’re pumping into his mouth.

Is he breathing yet? Is he breathing? she yells across three thousand miles.

No, I whisper. It was only—oh, God. Is this really happening?

I’m waking your Dad right now, she says, firmly.

Please tell him what I told you. I gotta see what’s going on out there.

I take a few halting steps toward what used to be our living room. It’s as if the firemen lifted a corner of our apartment and everything—sofa, coffee tables, area rugs, artwork—tumbled to one side. A medic blocks my view of Alberto and explains that the reason they haven’t taken him to the hospital yet is because we have the same equipment here as the ER does. He asks about Alberto’s age, medical history, and whether he takes any prescription drugs?

He’s forty, I answer. He’s been on Lipitor, and he had a full physical on Friday. I was there: They gave him an EKG and a clean bill of health.

Someone else asks for his driver’s license, which I produce from his orange wallet.

I return to the kitchen in a daze and call Alberto’s mother. His stepfather answers, and when he hears my tone, he asks if everything is okay?

Nothing is okay, I say. Please get Hilda.

He mumbles something in Spanish before handing her the phone.

Nené, what’s wrong?

Mamacita. I don’t know how to say this, but please sit down, because I’m about to tell you that Albert wasn’t breathing when I woke up this morning. I called 911 and did CPR but—the paramedics are still working on him.

Is he breathing yet, she gasps.

No, Mumu, not yet. Please pray.

I’m getting a flight right now, she tells me.

Yes, I say, forcing back tears. Please—get here.

I love you, Tré.

Love you, Hilda.

Alberto’s sister in Jersey doesn’t pick up her cell or home phone. Ditto for her husband’s cell. I hang up without leaving Barby a message because who leaves this sort of news on voicemail?

My next call is to Fico, Alberto’s best friend and business partner of ten years. I repeat facts.

I’ll be right there, he says.

A year from now, Fico will confess that he was so stunned by my call that he told his wife and three young daughters that Uncle Alberto had an allergy attack. To this day, the word allergy still throws his kids into hysterics.

At 9:03am, the worst-case scenario becomes official.

Someone in the living room calls it.

Alberto is pronounced.

Massive coronary event.

As the medics start clearing out their equipment, I start looking for a chair, the floor, anything for equilibrium.

This can’t be happening.

Someone asks me for his social.

I hear myself recite it.

Paperwork is produced.

My mouth feels paralyzed but my fingers manage a signature.

Do you want us to cover him, they ask.

I look at Alberto, the chenille blanket still draped over his lower body, and kneel down beside him.

His mouth is open, skin tone nearly normal after receiving the oxygen. He just looks asleep. And pale.

Don’t cover him, I whisper, before returning to the kitchen.

The madcap arrangement of our furniture means Fico has to nearly step over Alberto en route to the kitchen. His brown eyes are wide with horror when he lifts me into a hug.

This doesn’t seem possible, he says. Or real.

I keep hoping it isn’t, I say, turning from the living room and toward the window.

We’re still holed up in the kitchen, avoiding the abandoned triage scene, when Fico’s wife appears. Nikki is visibly shaken—her dad died of a heart attack in front of her—but she shifts into event-planning mode, her profession for the past decade.

Tré. Have you called your PR firm yet?

No.

Give me your boss’ number and I’ll handle it.

I nod and press buttons on my phone.

I stare at my digital calendar and announce in a flat voice that I was supposed to do Pilates with my friend Mariana this morning and I had a hair appointment this afternoon. There’s a dentist appointment tomorrow and drinks with a client on Tuesday. We divide up who’s-calling-who to clear my previously scheduled life.

While leaving a voicemail for Mariana, I’m repulsed by my need to pee. My stupid bladder thinks this is just another Sunday morning? I make my way past the cops on our off-kilter sofa, their radios breaking the silence. Alberto’s arms are outstretched on the floor and I notice the wedding ring on his left hand. I kneel down to remove it, but it’s stuck.

He’s already started bloating?

I scramble to the bathroom, pump some liquid soap into my hand and use it to gently remove the ring.

When I stand up, Nikki and Fico are staring back at me from the kitchen.

What, I nearly say. Everyone knows you don’t get the jewelry back.

Right?

I’m suddenly unsure if this is a thing everyone knows, so I just shrug and take the ring to the bathroom. From there, I make more calls, including one to Ramses, Alberto’s childhood best friend, and his wife, Jeanette.

But I just talked to him on Thursday, she sobs.

A cop interrupts—the detective and M.E. have some questions—so I follow him to the elevator landing, where I repeat facts to men with notepads.

Will you authorize an autopsy?

I want to say no. No because autopsies are disfiguring and no because Alberto should look like himself at the viewing. But scenes from his favorite crime shows flicker on my freshly widowed brain and I find myself answering like a wife-who-did-not-kill-her-husband should.

Do what you need to do, I say.

The medical examiner grills me about Alberto’s health and, when I mention that I’m not sure he’d been taking his Lipitor lately, pauses for a moment.

Non-compliant, he announces, scribbling it on his notepad.

Not the word I would use, I say, stiffly.

The coroner is on his way, he shrugs, and hands me his card.

Thanks, douchebag, I say, under my breath.

Back in the kitchen, Fico recommends we all take a walk. I remember a recent conversation with Hilda about her mother’s death barely a month ago: she wished she wasn’t there when the coroner arrived because the image of the gurney and the body bag still haunts her.

I say yes to the walk.

The cops take Fico’s cell number and shut the door behind us.

Downstairs, Nikki and Fico link arms with me. I’ve known them as long as I’ve known Alberto and their presence today is taking the edge off my panic. Maybe it’s because they’re older and six inches taller, but as they steady me down 23rd Street, I feel like their little sister. When I freeze suddenly in the middle of a crosswalk to pull out my phone, they practically lift me to the safety of the curb.

Wait—I can’t remember if I’ve told my parents that he’s been pronounced?

You called them, Fico nods.

And Hilda?

Yes.

So the blackouts have started already?

The three of us keep walking until we reach the benches on the pier at 27th Street. We stare at the ashy Hudson River, holding hands and Kleenex, until Fico steps away to take a call.

I’ll meet up with you guys in a little while, he says before disappearing.

Nikki and I settle into stillness until I remember that my current Facebook/Twitter update is twenty-four hours old and involves something trivial about an iPod charger.

The digital world still thinks I have a dead . . . iPod?

The idea of those words representing my present tense strikes me as every kind of wrong, so I pull out my phone and robotically address a text to Twitter. My mind is blank but for the phrase no no no and this can’t be happening. I combine them without proper caps or punctuation and press the send button.

When Fico reunites with us, I slowly realize that since Fico is here, it must mean Alberto is no longer there.

They’ve taken him.

I didn’t kiss him good-bye, I say aloud. Oh God, why didn’t I think to kiss him good-bye? I sink into the park bench, trying to console myself. But I can kiss him good-bye at the viewing, right?

Yes, absolutely, Fico assures me. Is that your phone ringing?

Facebook has begun responding to my update: What’s wrong? and Are you okay? and What’s going on, Tré? I call these three friends and give them the news. Then I ask them to please call everyone who should know, so I don’t have to.

I lie on my back and close my eyes against the reality of just how many people need to be called.

Barby and Anthony are on their way from Jersey, Fico interrupts softly.

You talked to them? I couldn’t reach—

Yes, he nods.

So we should head back, I say.

We should.

Fico, will you track down Alberto’s ex-wife and give her the news?

Are you sure? Nikki asks.

I’m sure that if I were his ex-wife, I’d want the chance to pay my respects. Whether or not she does, well, that’s her business.

I’ll find her, Fico says.

Our living room is no longer haunted by cops or chenille blankets, but we still rush toward the shelter of the kitchen.

I’ll look into places—funeral homes—for you to visit tomorrow, Nikki says, gently.

My eyes swing toward the empty space on the floor where Alberto was lying.

My God, I say. He’s gonna make me . . . I’m gonna have to cremate him.

Fico reaches toward me, eyes earnest.

You know that’s what he wanted, right?

Please, I sigh. He claimed there was a clause in his will that said if I didn’t do it, I get nothing. Seriously, who says—who thinks about—that shit when they’re in their thirties?

Fucking Alberto, we all say in unison.

An unbearable silence follows so I fill it with my announcement to shower before Barby and Anthony arrive. In the shower, I encounter Alberto’s half-full Redken shampoo—which I special-order even though he shaves his head—and it brings a sound out of me not unlike the wounded dogs I used to rescue in California.

I shut my eyes against the sight of his shampoo but lose my balance. Elbows and ankles knock against porcelain and I come down hard on my knee. The fall shocks me but it doesn’t compare to what’s rising in my throat and chest. At the bottom of the tub, clutching my wounded limb, I let loose the stream of snot and tears that’s been building since I woke up. I cry until I feel nothing: neither the need to continue nor the urge to stop.

When I emerge from the bathroom, Nikki has intuitively changed the bedding and duvet. Rearranged the pillows and tidied the night table. Our living room has been restored to order and I can hear dishes being washed a room away. Upon opening the four-paneled closet that Alberto installed for me after he proposed, I stare at racks and shelves.

Seems so cliché to wear all black, but maybe that’s what I’m expected to do?

The hell with what’s expected.

I slip on a pair of Alberto’s brightly striped socks and reach for jeans, a citron-colored sweatshirt and my low-top Converse. In the bathroom, I dress and dry my blonde hair, but skip the eye-makeup because today is not my first rodeo.

Alberto’s will be my thirty-fourth funeral.

I am thirty-four years old.

* * *

I wake early in a room at the Standard Hotel, gasping for air.

Each gasp is a direct response to the string of sentences rushing through my head: Why didn’t you take him to the clinic? He hadn’t thrown up in years! When his arm was thrashing wildly—that must have been when it was happening! God, why didn’t you try to rouse him? If you’d called 911 right then, he would’ve had a chance!

I see his yellow skin, the visible veins on his forehead.

I want to throw up.

I want to crawl out of myself.

I want to go home.

I tiptoe past my parents, who flew in last night, and slip out the door with my phone and coat. At the elevator landing, I encounter a wall of windows with a view of the nearly completed High Line Park.

I sink to the carpet.

Alberto and I joined the Friends of the High Line organization a few years ago.

We go to the parties, make donations, watch the progress eagerly from our living-room windows. It’s now a few weeks from completion, yet he won’t ever walk it?

I stare at the newly landscaped green space until I remember why I’m sitting on this elevator landing in the first place.

There are phone calls to make.

I start pressing buttons, waking people up on the West Coast.

Aunt Annette.

Cousin Vanessa.

Maggie.

Tony Papa.

Missy.

I reach some of these people and leave a message for others because I am now someone who leaves this sort of news on voicemail.

I’m still wearing pajamas when I hail a cab to my building, where the computer screen shows a delivery for our apartment.

Flowers? Already?

I head to the concierge and instead receive an oversized box addressed to Alberto Rafael Rodríguez.

It’s the bike rack.

For when we go to New Hampshire this summer.

He ordered it last weekend—was that really only last weekend?—when we celebrated my birthday in Connecticut.

This bike rack isn’t what I need to see right now, but I drag the box through the tiled corridor toward the elevator. Upstairs, I take one step into our apartment and realize it’s not what I need to see either. And I especially do not need to see the stray defibrillator pad that’s lying on our living room floor. I’m in a panic when I call my parents at the hotel: Please come? I’m sorry for leaving but I shouldn’t be here alone.

My sense of time is so contorted that when the doorbell rings a few moments later, I expect to see Mom and Dad.

David the Doorman is holding vases of Casablanca lilies and white peonies.

I’m so sorry for your loss, Tré.

I open the door wide, ask David if he could possibly stay until my parents arrive?

He nods and asks where he should put the flowers.

* * *

The magnitude of things you’re forced to decide within twenty-four hours: a funeral home, a coffin, an urn, a date and time for the viewing, for the service.

How many hours should the viewing be?

When should the obituary run and in how many papers?

Which picture of him should you include? And for the viewing card? And the funeral program? Should you use the same photo for all of them?

Who will produce the memorial video that will loop above the coffin at the viewing?

Where will you hold the reception (such an inappropriate word) and how long should it be?

At Greenwich Village Funeral Home, Alberto’s relatives look to me for decisions, wait for my answers. All I want to do is throw a bookend at the funeral director who grins when he says words like incinerate and we don’t take credit cards.

* * *

Back at our apartment with my parents, I notice the foil-wrapped cake Alberto and I baked three days ago, when he had announced a dessert craving.

Do we have stuff to bake a cake?

We do not.

Can we go to the store?

We can.

We pulled on sneakers and hats, threw coats over pajamas, and took the elevator downstairs. Holding hands, we discussed the weekend forecast, whether it might be warm enough to take the bikes out of hibernation. At Gristedes Market, we picked up organic eggs and chocolate cake mix. I was comparing grams of sugar on tubs of icing until I heard him say he does not like frosting on cake.

Since when?

Since always, he says, skipping ahead of me.

I did not know this (is this the first cake we’ve baked together?) and it amuses me. I ditch the icing and push the cart after him. I pass soy meatballs, which remind me that I need vegetarian sausage for the breakfast-in-bed I usually serve him on weekends.

I overtake him, surprising his neck with my lips and teeth. Take the cart while I grab snausages? I’ll meet you in line?

Okay, he says. I’ll be there.

I meet him in the crowded checkout line, which he promptly bounces out of, taking products off end caps and putting them back sideways. He holds up a box of Entenmann’s chocolate cake, the subject of a recent joke between us, and cocks his head to one side, asking for permission.

I smile, shake my head no, and then reconsider: what if this cake we’re baking doesn’t turn out? What if it burns?

On second thought, I say, and put the box of back-up cake in the cart.

His delight is palpable: a kick-ball-step followed by a clap and a Goody!

It will be several weeks before I decide to freeze the only cake we baked together, because in this moment, I can’t wrap my head around the fact the cake is here and he is not.

My cake reverie is interrupted by a Facebook chime. It’s an event invitation from Alberto’s ad agency, Revolución, with a goofy picture of him I’ve never seen.

Please join us to celebrate the life of one of the craziest, happiest, contagiously

laughing, joking, singing and dancing, rumberos del mundo: our dear Alberto.

Tonight, we will do everything that he loved to do!

Eat! Drink! Smoke! Dance!

And together, we will wish him a fantastic journey to creative heaven.

I’m shocked.

Shocked that this party is happening so soon.

And that it’s being held on St. Patrick’s Day, a holiday Alberto always scoffed at: as if the Irish need an excuse to get drunk.

But more than anything, I’m shocked that I’m getting the invitation at the same time as two hundred other people.

* * *

I’m wound into a ball on our couch, looking toward our bedroom, and my shoulders are heaving. My cheeks are hot and my face feels like it’s about to explode. My parents reach for me, trying to calm me down.

The explosion happens.

Stop! You don’t understand, I shout, this is my fault! I should’ve taken him to the clinic! I was lazy! I didn’t want to get dressed and catch a cab in the cold! I’m a horrible wife! A selfish, horrible wife who wanted to go back to sleep instead of save her own husband’s life! And—

But you took him for a physical three days ago, my mom interrupts. The doctor read the EKG and didn’t foresee it—and doctors are trained to look for warning signs. There’s no way you could’ve known. No one blames you, Therresa.

I haven’t used my given name since I was a teenager and hearing it tonight exasperates me.

But they do! I argue. They’re not saying it but they do. His mom and his sister would’ve recognized a sign like vomiting. They would’ve known to give him an aspirin! To rush him to the hospital! For the love of God, Alberto’s agency is doing an ad campaign for the American Heart Association: increase awareness of heart attacks! Everybody in his office would’ve known what to do! God, if only it had happened at work, if only—.

But his office doesn’t blame you, my mom says, gently. And neither do Hilda and Barby. Everyone’s as shocked as you are, and no one’s said anything about aspirin or trips to the hospital.

Of course they haven’t said it to you: you’re my parents!

Listen, my mom says, I get the blame game. I still hate myself for not getting your brother’s transmission looked over. If I had, I know that Phil’s accident wouldn’t have happened.

Wait—what?

My mother thinks she could’ve prevented my eighteen-year-old brother’s fatal car crash? Even though he was passing another car at eighty miles an hour?

She thinks—?

His transmission failed?

My dad interjects about the call he got from the hospital ten years ago: when he’d heard my grandma was going downhill, he jumped into the shower. By the time he’d dressed and reached his car, he got the call that she’d passed.

If I hadn’t taken that shower, he shakes his head.

Seriously?

I have the inappropriate urge to laugh.

Bless you, I say, looking at my mother, but the transmission?

I look at my father: a shower?

They’re not laughing.

I’m sorry, it’s just—dear God, do you have any idea how absurd you both sound?

They stare at me, confused.

So—if you sound absurd to me then I must sound absurd to you?

Dad’s face starts to relax.

Mom lets out a laugh-sob.

Which means this whole “regret” thing is just textbook, right?

They nod, tentatively.

So, I say, forgive me for being a little tardy to the party, but this is my first bout with the regret monster. Which is pretty lucky, if you think about it.

They’re officially nodding.

Remember my last memory of Phil? I hugged him before leaving for work that day. And Grandpa? We exchanged those incredible letters two weeks before he died. And remember how I made it to the hospital just before LaValley died? Today, right now—this is my first encounter with “if only.”

I watch their faces—processing, wincing, drifting—and realize why they never healed after the loss of my brother: they’re still beating themselves up for the if onlys fifteen years later. It’s affected their marriage, their friendships, and their life choices. In my father’s case, it enabled more if onlys when his mother died.

Screw this spin cycle, I hear myself say. Unless I wanna end up—no offense—still blaming myself however many years later, I gotta let this go.

Mom perks up, meets my eyes.

Yes, she nods, you should.

I need to forgive myself, right?

Exactly, Dad whispers, taking my hand.

Mom takes the other.

I close my eyes and exhale deeply, imagining words like aspirin and clinic and warning signs and lazy and selfish exiting my mouth, dissipating on the air, and escaping through the open window.

Okay, God? Those words are all yours.

My guilt?

Yours.

I never want to think or say those words again.

Please, please, please keep them out of my reach? And remind me of this prayer if I try to snatch them back?

Amen, my dad says, startling me.

I hadn’t meant to pray aloud, but when I open my eyes, the air in the apartment seems calmer, more oxygenated.

My breathing finds its rhythm again.

Shoulders do not feel like heaving.

Face doesn’t feel like a pressure cooker.

I squeeze and release my parents’ hands.

I pack a bag for another night at The Standard.

* * *

From a dreamless sleep, I wake and remember why I’m in a hotel room with my parents—because he’s dead—and what I have to do today—write the obituary.

It occurs to me that I can’t write it here, in this hotel: I will need our iMac and his music and the space to write and sob. I’m gonna have to sleep in our apartment tonight. In the bed that he—

Every pore, every muscle, every hair on my body feels as if it’s trying to repel the rest of this sentence. I give in to the shaking and the heaving, and feel my mom wrap her arms around me. It’s not until my dad cradles my feet and prays aloud—his words floating over me, the cadence wrapping around my limbs—that my shuddering subsides.

Someone orders coffee, along with a breakfast I stare at.

My mom asks if I have any friends who are makeup artists? Someone who knew Alberto?

I realize where she’s heading.

One of my aunts owned a salon in California and she did my brother’s hair and makeup for his viewing fifteen years ago. Mom always said how grateful she was that it was done by someone who knew him.

One name comes to mind.

Shannon.

The Ford makeup artist I met one fall afternoon outside the Paul Smith store in SoHo. Alberto and I were on a bike ride and we’d stopped to buy a birthday gift for my Grandpa. At the bike rack, we’d run into an ad industry pal of Alberto’s and his fiancée. The boys launched into shoptalk and Shannon and I found an easy rapport. Her fiancé had just been laid off and we discussed the situation like optimists: these moments are new opportunities in disguise and he’ll land on his feet and blah, blah, blah.

When Alberto and I rode away, I told him that I liked her and wouldn’t mind going to dinner with them.

Set it up, he said.

Took two years and thirty-two emails, but we finally double-dated with the newly married Shannon and James. Last month, she and I had discussed marriage and the master cleanse over lunch and spa treatments.

And so from this hotel room, Shannon is the makeup artist whom I text: Darling, I don’t have the words for what I need to tell you or what I’m about to ask of you . . . can u call me when u get this?

She calls a minute later and I walk to the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the High Line—the farthest physical place in the hotel room—and turn away from my parents, toward the City.

Are you in a public place right now, I ask.

I’m at home, why?

Please sit down, because I’m about to say that Alberto died of a heart attack two days ago and I’m calling to ask if you will do his makeup for the viewing?

Did—did you just say what I think you just said? Alberto’s . . . gone?

I hear myself telling her I’m still in shock, which is why I’m able to make this call and ask her this question. The viewing is Friday: can she—

I’ll do it, Tré. 

* * *

Nikki and I have to scout locations for Alberto’s after-thing, so I meet her at the first restaurant on the list: Gusto on Greenwich Avenue. Alberto and I dined here a few times and it’s next door to our favorite and now-shuttered sushi place.

As I stand here with Nikki and the kind restaurant manager, I recall that the word gusto actually appeared in the text of our wedding invitation.

I think this is the right place, I inform Nikki. We don’t need to see the others.

Someone hands us event menus and in homage to Alberto, everything we choose is either fried or made with pork.

We’ll need to play his music, I say. Do you have an iPod dock?

We do, the manager says.

I ask Nikki if she can take it from here?

She nods and I step out for a cigarette, a habit I started again yesterday. I forgot to bring matches, so when I see a petite girl smoking I head toward her. As she’s lighting my cigarette, I realize she’s one of the Olsen twins.

* * *

Hi Mom, I say. Just calling to say we booked a place for the after-thing. Did you guys buy a wedding ring for Alberto to wear at the viewing?

Yes, she answers, come meet us in the Flatiron.

When we meet, I eat my first meal in three days—a slice of pizza—and we head to the apartment, where I have a near-meltdown after my parents say they’re too exhausted for the party at Alberto’s office. His mom and sister tell me they’re sorry, but they aren’t ready to see his office yet.

I cannot face Revolución alone so I call Mariana and ask if she’ll meet me at Alberto’s office around 9pm? And pack an overnight bag? And the spaniels?

Of course I’ll be there, darling, she says in her Oxford accent. But . . .
why the dogs?

Because after this party I have to write the obituary, I say. And I can’t write it in the hotel room with my parents, which means I need to stay in the apartment tonight. And if I’m gonna to stay in the apartment again, Mariana, it needs to be very, very different than it was before this happened. And your dogs make it different. And they make me happy.

Consider it done, she says.

* * *

Call me vain, but I’m not delivering Alberto’s eulogy with half-inch roots.

En route to my salon on 23rd Street, I stop in front of El Quijote Spanish restaurant.

We came here on the first night of our second date.

The ten-day second date.

He’d picked me up from JFK and hours later in his apartment, we’d realized how famished we were. I’d thrown on his dress shirt with a jean skirt and we strolled 23rd on a warm May night.

We ended up at this Spanish place, the only restaurant open at 11pm that wasn’t a diner.  

Other than a few weeks in Spain, my experience with Spanish restaurants was confined to Mexican food in California. So with the exception of camarones and sangria, the menu at Quijote was way over my blonde head.

I order the only two things I recognize but somewhere between his ham croquetas and chorizo, Alberto notices that I’m just moving my Shrimp That Have Heads and Eyes around on the plate.

Is it not good? he asks.

It’s fine, I lie.

Well, life’s too short to eat things you don’t like, he says, signaling for the waiter to bring him the menu again.

He orders me codfish croquetas, a green salad, and another sangria.

That night, I caught an endearing glimpse of Alberto’s character: he didn’t believe that If-You-Order-It-You-Have-to-Eat-It and his sense of my palate was actually better than my own.

Today, my palate is all tearwater tea and nicotine, and I’m so lost in my head that I don’t even recognize the salon owner on the street. He leads me inside, hands me a bouquet and a card signed by the stylists.

I stare at the card for what feels like hours, unable to process all the handwriting styles in different color inks telling me how many kinds of sorry they are. I stare at the card until Nikki arrives at the salon to escort me down the street to Revolución. When the elevator opens to the third floor, Alberto’s agency is crowded and the Cuban music is appropriately loud. But when I realize how many pairs of eyes are on me, I start looking for a safe place.

A group of friends from my former PR agency are in the darkened conference room so I head for them, arms out. We group-hug and someone hands me a drink, over which I survey the scene and Alberto’s executive space in the back of the office.

I’m gonna need all of you to walk me there, I say, linking arms with the girls. I’m not doing this gauntlet alone.

On the way, I am embraced by friends, strangers, people whose weddings we attended. It seems like hours before we reach the area where Alberto and Fico have spent half their waking lives for the last nine years.

Maybe it’s everyone raising Havana Club shots or the music that utterly personifies him, but his empty chair does not affect me like I expected.

His spirit is still here, I say to no one in particular, and make my way to his station.

I look at the framed pictures of us with my love notes tucked in the corners. I sit on his desk and reread them.

Revolución’s PR girl, Kerri, makes her way to me and we share a long hug. We talk about the music and she mentions that she queued it up for tonight.

I ask if she’ll create a four-hour playlist for the after-thing at Gusto on Saturday?

Me? Really? Why? she asks.

Because you guys have the exact same taste in music, I say. So include lots of Elvis, Sammy, Sinatra, Cher, and Donna Summer. Throw in some show tunes and “Car Wash,” “Tie a Yellow Ribbon,” and “Sleigh Ride.” Don’t forget AC/DC.

Wait, let me write all this down, she says.

While she’s finding a pen, Nicolas, an Argentine who shares the same birthday as Alberto, starts shouting in Spanish and writes the words ¡te extrañamos! (we miss you!) with a thick Sharpie across Alberto’s huge Mac screen.

Fico’s face goes pale as everyone else cheers and rum is poured all around.

Glasses are raised toward his empty chair.

His absence is officially tangible.

I say my good-byes and exit stage left with Mariana and the spaniels.

At the apartment, we turn up Alberto’s music and an hour in, I realize why it’s going so decently: Mariana is a former editor at Travel + Leisure. She cleans up my sentences the moment they appear on screen. She fact-checks and style-checks and grammar-checks with the speed of someone accustomed to deadlines. We finish around dawn, email it to the New York Times, and curl up with the dogs.

I’m just tipsy and exhausted enough to not think about what happened in this bed seventy-two hours ago.

* * *

I’ve been dreading this moment for three days but I can’t delay it, can’t delegate it.

I have to select Alberto’s suit.

For his viewing.

Last outfit he’ll ever wear.

No pressure.

In the past year, I can only recall him wearing four of the two-dozen suits in his closet. How do I know which suit will fit him? What if I pick one that doesn’t fit and they can’t get him into it? And should it be a winter or a spring suit? Why didn’t I pay more attention when he packed for that business trip to Chicago last month?

Enter my father.

Dad to the rescue.

He takes my hands, calmly asks for a fabric measuring tape and the last pair of jeans Alberto wore. I find the measuring tape in my sewing box and hand him the jeans, belt still attached. From there, he determines which pants will fit: the black Hugo Boss pinstripe. Its matching jacket is not on the hanger or anywhere in the closet, and I’m trying not to panic as I sort through the dry cleaning that came back Saturday.

Jacket’s not here, I announce. Must be at the office.

I call Henry, one of Alberto’s creative directors, and ask if he’s seen the jacket?

I haven’t, he says. But it’s probably in the lobby closet.

Can I have the receptionist’s cell number? Maybe she’s seen the jacket?

Henry steers me away from the panic button: I’ll go to the office early, Tré, and search for the jacket. When I find it, I’ll phone your dad so he can pick it up en route to the funeral home.

The rest comes together in the form of a white dress shirt that was among the dry cleaning and a favorite red-and-white tie. My dad speaks “men” and reminds me that Alberto preferred a full Windsor, not a half.

While he knots the tie, I choose black Calvin Klein boxer briefs, Paul Smith striped socks, and black Ferragamo loafers. Alberto’s red suitcase is produced and Dad folds each item with the skill of a corporate business traveler. I add the new wedding ring, Alberto’s electric clippers (hair grows after death, haven’t I read that somewhere?), and his Helmut Lang Cuiron cologne.

When Dad zips the suitcase closed, I feel the kind of relief otherwise reserved for biopsy results coming back negative or waking from a night terror.

My relief lasts fourteen seconds.

Until it registers that during my wardrobe vortex, the night shift—Mariana and the spaniels—has arrived. And Mariana’s presence means my parents will go back to their hotel and I will stay here because I have to write the text for the funeral program tonight.

The program needs to capture the essential brand of Alberto. And since all the examples I’ve found online are either bad poetry or shopworn Psalms, I’m gonna have to build it from scratch.

* * *

Building it takes all night and more than a few glasses of wine.

Four sentences short of completion, I crawl into bed with Mariana and the dogs.

I awaken two hours later to a pair of restless spaniels.

Mariana is still sleeping, so I change out of pajamas and leash the dogs for a morning wee. I wander 23rd Street in dark sunglasses, mentally running through today’s to-do list: pick up fifty original copies of the death certificate. Meet the Insurance Guy. Place the obit in the Miami Herald. Email photos and final text for the funeral program to Henry. Decide on hymns for the service. Meet with the Brooklyn pastor recommended by our family minister on the West Coast. Choose six pallbearers and two ushers.

What a handbag full of sunshine this day’s gonna be.

Back upstairs with the dogs, I sit down with pen and paper. The ushers will be José and Roberto. The first five names of the pallbearers flow easily: Fico, Ramses, Nicolas, Henry, and Anthony, Barby’s husband.

Who should be the sixth?

I flash back to my brother’s funeral: I chose his pallbearers too. But a day or two after the service, I’d wondered why didn’t I pall-bear?

Because, what, girls don’t pall-bear?

I elect myself as Alberto’s sixth and call the other five guys.

* * *

My phone is blowing up.

I feel obligated to answer it, but after fourteen calls in two hours asking when and where the service is, I decide to upload the logistics to Twitter and Facebook. Which should limit the queries to people who don’t use social media.

The calls ease up.

At the funeral home picking up death certificates, my parents arrive with the red suitcase—Henry found the suit jacket, Dad assures me—and they escort me uptown to an insurance meeting and back home.

Between the barking spaniels and the voices of Barby, Hilda, and Mariana, the apartment’s decibel level is overwhelming—especially when I realize the text for the funeral program was due twenty minutes ago.

I still need to write about seventy-five words, so I email Henry and ask what production’s absolute deadline is?

Three o’clock.

I have ninety minutes to write these sentences.

I also have a living room full of people who are not using their inside voices.

It seems rude to ask them to keep it down, so I launch Alberto’s music on iTunes.

As I sit down at the computer, I see a reminder about today’s meeting with the pastor.

I call for my father, ask him when Pastor Weinbaum’s coming over?

4:30.

I can do this. Right, Dad? I can finish the text by three o’clock and meet the pastor at 4:30? Right?

You can do this, he says.

I point my cursor at a missing line in the first paragraph.

I stop and start.

I stare and start.

I stop.

I’m distracted and annoyed by the living-room laughter, so I huff into the bedroom for earplugs and return to the desk. Dad follows me and cracks the window to smoke a cigarette. These days, he resembles William Shatner, which just reminds me of “Boston Legal” and how Alberto would say Denny Crane! when he did something particularly brilliant.

I stare at the computer screen, crying softly and shaking my head. Dad sets down his cigarette to massage my shoulders. I start typing and actually finish a sentence that I don’t hate. And another one.

He takes his hands off my shoulders, returns to his smoke.

Wait, Dad! Come back! That’s the most I’ve written since I sat down! I need you here. Hands on shoulders, please?

He laughs deeply, in a pitch that sounds surprised and a little flattered. He returns his hands to my shoulders and I start typing. Together we read what I’ve written aloud, tweaking a word here and there. Together we work out the final sentence and email it to Henry, who calls to say he’ll be right over with the final proof.

* * *

When Pastor Weinbaum arrives, people have exited and entered and I’m in the living room with Henry, doing a final edit on the funeral program.

The pastor has a shaved head and statement glasses: two things in common with Alberto already. When he sits on our sofa, I notice his striped socks.

You are so hired, I smile.

After walking Henry out, I join my parents and the pastor in the living room and tell him about Alberto: how we met four years ago when I was here on business from L.A. and how he proposed with my father’s blessing on our fourth date. How he and Fico started the ad agency in this apartment nine years ago and built it into a multi-million dollar shop. How he always said he was going to retire at forty.

I show him framed pictures of us, of him.

I share what I know about his Miami upbringing: how his family and lifelong friends refer to him as “Albert” or “Albertico”; how his mom immigrated from Cuba on the eve of the Revolution before meeting and marrying his dad; how his father was a journalist in Cuba who escaped jail in the early ’60s to found El Patria, America’s biggest anti-Castro newspaper; how his dad died in 1993 and the family donated the El Patria papers to the University of Miami archives.

I tell the pastor about Alberto’s younger sister Barby, who lives in Jersey and lawyers in New York; about his mom who remarried, retired, and still lives in Miami. I mention Alberto’s first marriage to an older woman whom I don’t know much about; his break with the Catholic Church; and how, on our second date, we talked about our experiences of being born again.

I tell him that I have to start the eulogy tonight and just the thought of it staggers me.

Alberto will be my third eulogy, I explain, but when I think of how pitch-perfect this one has to be, well, I don’t know how to start.

Two hours into the meeting with Pastor Weinbaum, he says he’d like to pray with us and would that be okay?

My parents and I join hands with a man who thanks God for the privilege of spending an afternoon with the Miller and Rodríguez families. He asks God to fill the apartment with peace. To comfort us, strengthen, and enable us.

When he says Amen, he looks at me.

I’m compelled to tell you something, Tré, and I know it will sound crazy.

He pauses for a long moment before drawing in breath.

I’d like for you to approach Alberto’s eulogy as a thing to be embraced, not feared.

Really, I say.

Surround yourself with your memories of him, Tré. Bring out his pictures and the love letters you exchanged. Read them, relish them, translate them into your tribute of him. Strange as it sounds, he says, try and appreciate this experience: it is a singular moment, one you won’t get to do again.

By the time I walk Pastor Weinbaum out of our apartment, I’m actually inspired to write the eulogy. Except I can’t start yet: the music for the service must be selected.

After visiting First Presbyterian Church four days ago, Pastor Edie had given me a hymnbook to take home.

The organist can play everything in it, she said.

Can he do anything by Nat King Cole or Frank Sinatra? I’d asked.

Sorry, nothing secular, she said.

Can he play these hymns on piano instead of the organ?

The pastor looked surprised. We have a really good organ—have you heard it?

I have—and it’s a really nice organ, I nodded, but Alberto loved piano. I bought him lessons for Christmas one year. A piano is what he would’ve wanted.

She agreed to tell the organist to play piano.

Leaving the church, I had asked my mom to go through the book and flag all the songs she thought might work. It occurs to me now that I will have to choose the song for when the coffin enters. And when it departs.

I cannot imagine there’s a hymn for either of these moments, so when Mom hands me the hymnal tagged with Post-its tonight, I shake my head and look away.

She takes my hand.

I’ve done the work already, she says. All you have to do is choose.

All I have to do is choose, I repeat.

I can choose.

“How Great Thou Art” is the first Post-it.

It hearkens me back to my California childhood and Sunday sermons at Lake Avenue Congregational in Pasadena.

Sorry, I say, this song reminds me of Dad. Next.

Upon hearing his name, Dad peeks into the living room.

How’s it going? he asks.

It’s going, I say, and veto the next few songs based on title or overt sentimentality.

I’m looking for something grand, I explain. Something sweeping.  

Grand and sweeping, my mom repeats. Well, let’s see. She tucks her blonde hair behind her ears and shifts the book back to her lap.

I get up to find a beer.

When I return, she looks eager.

How about “Crown Him With Many Crowns?” 

The title certainly works, I say, Alberto was rather fond of the phrase Heavy is the head that wears the crown.

I start humming the song from memory and she joins in with the words. I imagine it being played on piano, echoing through the church.

It’s definitely commanding, I say. I can visualize an entire congregation standing as this song starts. It sounds like a coffin-entering-the-church song.

Sold, I say, one down, one to go.

Actually, Mom says, two to go: there’s also the hymn that will be played while people are entering and being seated.

We dive back into the book, and when we get to “O for a Thousand Tongues,” I can’t remember how the song goes.

Can you sing it, Mom?

She launches into the first verse and I close my eyes to concentrate. Just as I’m starting to see that it might work as the people-being-seated song, she stops singing. I open my eyes.

Why’d you stop? Keep going! Please?

She picks up the second verse and my dad joins in. I close my eyes, smiling at the sound of my parents harmonizing like off-key angels.

It’s perfect, I sigh. Thank you. That will be the people-being-seated song.

Only one more to find, I think. The hardest one.

My mom has flagged “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” but that song reminds me of her and the next flag, “My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less,” is way too cheery. We’re now three hundred pages deep in the hymnal: what if we get to the end of the book without finding the coffin-departing song?

I take a few deep breaths and head to the bathroom where I turn on the faucet and talk myself back from the ledge: You can do this. It’s one song. As soon as you pick it, you can tell the night shift to come over, put your parents in a cab, and start the eulogy. So just effing do it.

I return to the living room, where another half-dozen hymns are considered and dismissed. When we land on “To God Be the Glory,” I don’t recognize it.

Can you guys sing this one?

I close my eyes, lean into the sofa, and listen.

The words are not funereal words—let the people rejoice is something you’d sing at a wedding or a baptism—but no choir will be singing these words. The melody is what matters: and it’s not too peppy, not too somber. The tone and pace of the piece shifts between a reverent adagio and a hopeful allegro.

Can I carry his coffin out of the church as this song plays? Will it capture the spirit of him? Of the moment?

My parents sing the last verse, and I decide.

“To God Be the Glory” is officially the coffin-departing song.

* * *

When my friend Jessica exits the elevator, I put my parents into it, kissing them goodnight.

Thank you, Jess, I say. For coming in from Connecticut. For being up for this.

Don’t thank me, she says, softly. Just tell me what I can do.

Here’s the agenda, I say. We gotta figure out what a girl wears to her husband’s viewing and to his funeral. Because if we don’t decide this tonight, it’ll take me four hours to get dressed tomorrow and Saturday. Also, I say, we need to write at least half the eulogy tonight.

Let’s make it happen, she says.

An hour later, outfits are sorted and Jess helps me take everything off the desk except the computer. We load it all into a canvas bag and put it in Alberto’s closet.

I pull my “Alberto Box” from a cabinet and spread our mementos out like a map: postcards, letters, wedding vows, florist cards, hotel room keys, ticket stubs. I open my Moleskine with the notes and quotes I’ve been writing all week. I start plotting the journey and don’t stop until 6am.

* * *

I wake to the smell of bacon and sit up in bed.

I hear it sizzling in the kitchen.

Jess? Are you . . . are you cooking bacon?

The sizzling stops.

Sunshine, I’m a vegetarian.

I know this already. I’m a fishetarian myself. Have been for eighteen years. And yet our apartment is filled with the scent of pork, one of his favorite food groups?

But, my voice breaks, I smell bacon.

I wander into the living room and see that it’s snowing. If Alberto were here, he’d take one look at my California nose pressed against the window like an eight-year-old and say WEATHER! in a teasing voice.

I nearly jump when Jess wraps her arms around me.

Sorry, I say. I’m all nerves right now.

It’s okay, she says, gently. I don’t want to leave you, but I need to go home and change clothes. Left in such a rush last night, I forgot my overnight bag.

Oh, I say. Let me see if Tony Papa can come over. He flew in from L.A. last night.

I’ll leave in ten, he says.

He’s on his way from the Standard, I tell Jess. It’s ten blocks away. Go. I’ll be okay.

Should I wait? she asks.

No, I’ll be fine.

Soon as the door shuts behind her, I’m not fine.

I should not be wandering our apartment alone so I take a shower to fill up the time until Tony Papa—whom no one calls by first name only—arrives.

When he does, he gives me a long hug and asks how I’m holding up.

Longest week of my life, Tony Papa.

I can imagine, he says.

I explain that I want our wedding video to play while I’m getting ready: would he mind keeping the DVD looping?

Show me to the remote, he says.

I need to hear Alberto’s voice for the next two hours. Need to hear the toasts and the Frank Sinatra and see us dancing. I need to absorb the most sentimental moment of our marriage so I can prepare for its most unsentimental moment: his viewing.

* * *

My darling, my love: this can’t be you.

These are your eyebrows, red glasses, cuticles, but the rest of it?

Not the you I knew.

The you I knew is above your casket, in the memorial video. In the footage of us kissing our way into the candlelit wedding reception with twenty of our closest friends and family, flashbulbs illuminating us. I want to melt into the video but instead, I’m stuck in this godawful movie—at the part where the wife kneels beside her husband’s coffin—with no idea what to do next.

No one stops me from touching his shaved head, his face, his hands: I don’t know how to be near him and not touch him. His skin may be cold and the wrong color, but I still want to climb inside and spoon him.

I’m holding his hands when I hear his sister’s voice behind me.

Is she?

Saying what I think she’s saying?

That Albert looks like a . . . scary Santa?

She is.

And dear God, he does.

When I embrace Barby and her husband, Anthony, I am laugh-crying. The three of us hold hands and stand over the casket, shifting our gaze between the body of Alberto and the movie of him. As childhood pictures flash on the screen, Barby narrates: That’s Albert on his sixth birthday. That’s him in the front yard of our house in Kendall. There’s Albert crying on the lap of a very scary Santa.

The inside joke hits us unexpectedly and we laugh until the video fades from upbeat Cuban music into Donna Summer’s “Dim All the Lights.”

We stand there, swaying to the footage of Alberto and I dancing at our wedding. When a close-up of us kissing fades to a final shot of his name on the place card at our reception, I drop Barby and Anthony’s hands. I sink into a chair and try to find a comfortable position.

There isn’t one.

I want to crawl out of this scene, out of my skin, out of this sweater dress he bought for me. Out of these heels he chose and earrings he brought back from Tel Aviv.

How do I have all these things but not him?

Doris, one of Alberto’s favorite childhood friends, sees me panicking and approaches.

Wraps me in a hug.

Thank you for flying up from Miami, I manage. How are . . . the kids?

She summarizes the family highlights but when we run out of words, we find ourselves looking at Alberto.

I find myself—ridiculously—explaining his silence.

If he could, he would thank you too, I say.

I brought something for him, Doris says, placing an ice-cold package in my hands that makes me think of his skin.

Fifty frozen croquetas, she says. From Versailles.

Alberto’s favorite dish from his favorite Cuban bakery in Little Havana.

You can put them in the freezer tonight and tomorrow you can—

She doesn’t finish the sentence.

No need.

I understand that she’s asking me to place the package in his casket tomorrow before they close it.

The gesture is so thoughtful and the subtext so searing—these croquetas will cook in the crematory oven—that I have to excuse myself.

* * *

There’s a break from 5 to 7pm, someone says. We should go to dinner.

Dinner?

Um, I’ll pass.

I see twenty or so people—close friends and family—in the lobby, pulling on jackets.

I look at his casket and hesitate.

We’re leaving him? Alone?

When my mom appears with my coat, I shake my head.

It doesn’t feel right, I say. To leave him.

She nods and sits beside me.

In the silence and thick scent of flowers, one minute feels like an hour.

I approach the coffin.

I don’t want to abandon you, Alberto, I say. But everyone’s waiting to get something to eat.

At this precise moment, the memorial video cuts to Alberto raising his glass at our wedding dinner.

I take it as a sign.

I kiss his cold cheek and tell him that I’ll be back in two hours.

If you could talk, I say, I know you’d say that you’ll be here.

That was one of our phrases, I tell Mom as we walk toward the lobby. Whenever one of us was going somewhere without the other: You’ll be there? I’ll be here.

Yes, she says, I remember you guys saying that.

I feel the tears so I put on sunglasses before walking the half-block to Da Silvano, one of his favorite restaurants.

When I open the door, the memories assault me.

I start backing outside—why did we come here? Was this my stupid idea?—but now Ramses and Jeanette have stood up and beckoned to me.

People are turning around.

Making room.

I keep my sunglasses on and order a Peroni. Someone orders me a caprese salad that I don’t touch. Around me, everyone is eating, laughing, shouting in Spanish.

On the one hand, this is how it should be: Alberto was never one for somber affairs.

On the other, it’s just wrong.

I slip away from the table, lock the restroom door and cry on the cold floor of the candlelit bathroom.

Someone knocks and asks if I’m okay.

I laugh—what a dumb question—before remembering that this is the very same exchange Alberto and I had through our bathroom door on Sunday.

I stand up, blow my nose, and tell the voice on the other side that I’m not okay but I’ll be out in a minute.

* * *

When viewing hours are over, I kiss Alberto’s cheek goodnight and Jeanette, who drove in from Virginia, accompanies me back to the apartment. There’s a eulogy to finish and she’s agreed to stay the night.

When we open the front door, I’m relieved that the housekeeper left the living-room lamps on and that my family brought Alberto’s pictures and mementos back from the funeral home, along with a bouquet of yellow roses from HBO Latino.

I head straight into the office but when I switch on the desk light, nothing happens.

I try again.

Nothing.

The bulb’s burned out, I shout.

When Jeanette doesn’t respond, I return to the living room.

She’s white as rice.

Tré, I’m sorry, it’s just, I can’t believe it. So many memories in this apartment.

Take your time, I nod. Do what you need to do.

From the liquor cabinet, I bring out the Havana Club and pour two shots into the clear espresso glasses in which I served Alberto his morning cafecito.

I set the rums on the bar and return to the office. But when I grab the mouse, the computer screen remains black. I move the mouse again. Still black. The light and the computer aren’t working?

Shit, I shout. The housekeeper. She must’ve shut something off!

Did I save the eulogy last night? This morning?

Jeanette rushes in as I’m pressing the power—and the panic—button.

Nothing.

The eulogy. The effing eulogy.

Jeanette asks what we need to do.

Something’s unplugged, I moan. And we’re gonna have to pull this desk armoire and those fucking cabinets out from the wall to reach the power strip.

Then that’s what we’re going to do, she says, calmly.

Together, we move furniture, locate the surge protector, and restart it. When I hear the espresso machine starting up, I climb out of the chaos and switch on the desk lamp.

The light blinks on.

I press a button and hear the deep, orchestral sound of a Mac powering up.

Thank you, Jeanette, thank God.

We move the unit back and salùd Alberto with rum while the computer loads.

Which feels like hours.

I click the icon titled “One Mourning in the Month of March” and scan it quickly for what I remember writing before going to bed.

It’s all here.

I exhale and start typing.

Jeanette pulls up a chair.

* * *

It’s 3am and I’m spent.

Can’t we set the alarm for 6am, I beg Jeanette. And finish it then?

I think we can do more, she says. Her Colombian accent is optimistic. Convincing.

You’re right, I say, we can do more.

More rum.

The writing follows.

* * *

The 26th of August 2005, was the happiest day of my life. It was the day Alberto and I were married. And I’d like to share it with you today by reading the wedding vows we exchanged on that summer evening.

These were my promises:

My life has been a thirty-year dress rehearsal preparing me for our introduction on a sidewalk in New York. Since that night four months ago, Alberto, you have confirmed and exceeded my expectation of a leading man.

You are the bravest person I’ve ever met . . . with an extraordinary gift of wisdom. Your laughter is my favorite sound. Your voice: the cream in my coffee. Your presence: the best part in the movie.

As the woman you have chosen to be your wife, I vow, before God & this audience:

To remain your biggest fan;

To never exit stage left;

To never let the lights go down in anger;

To relish the role of supporting actress even more than leading lady;

To respect you in word and in deed;

To intercede with prayer on your behalf;

To always deliver my monologues with 100 percent honesty;

And to always, always make out with you during the elevator scenes.

Because of you, Mr. Rodríguez, I have arrived at this moment: the happiest moment of my life. The moment when I pledge my love and loyalty to you por vida.

Is it too soon to say you are my Cuban prince, my New York state of mind, the reason for my rhyme, my partner in time?

These were his vows:

One night in the month of May, my life changed forever.

You were there without seeking. And I’ve since discovered that you were always there. In my dreams. In my hopes.

My darling Tré, truth is, the thought of you was but a faint illusion because you are, in fact, more “everything” than I ever imagined anyone could be.

And now I am here, standing before you . . . in awe of the woman you are.

Thankful to be worthy of your inspiration and love.

I am a better man today because of you, and I will strive to be better still from this moment forward.

You are the song in my heart. You are the star that guides my way.

You are the love I have waited for my whole life.

Today, surrounded by our most loved, and humbled in the presence of God, I vow to love and honor you above everything else.

I promise to care for you and to always stand sentinel, forever at your side, no matter what hands we are dealt.

I pledge to bring out the smile that shines inside you . . . the one that brought me here today.

I swear this to you now and everyday.

Never again will it be too soon to say “I love you.”

And today, I know it’s not too soon to say that you, Tré Miller, will always be my blushing bride.

And I, Alberto Rafael Rodríguez, will always be your devoted groom.

And today, on the first day of spring, I am saddened to paraphrase the man who was my Happy Ending, who proposed on our fourth date and became my husband on our eighth.

One morning in the month of March, all of our lives were changed forever: the inimitable Alberto Rodríguez went to sleep and never woke up.

And as devastating as it is, let’s try to go beyond the sad facts and remember the handsome man with the red glasses and striped socks and the most spectacular handwriting you’ve ever seen.

A man whose idea of “roughing it” was staying at the Marriott. His love of five-star hotels runs in the family: Hilda—whom he affectionately called Mumu—raised her son with a taste for eight-hundred-thread-count sheets, room service, and housekeeping. Thanks to the values you instilled in Alberto, Mumu, I’ve had the privilege of experiencing some of the world’s finest hotels.

And while Alberto loved ordering chicken francese from hotel room service—with rice, never potatoes—he was also a man couldn’t resist a hot dog: sometimes raw, straight from the package but especially from a gas station or street vendor. Friends actually joked that his bike should have had a custom-made hot-dog holder.

Elegant as he was on his bike and on the dance floor, he was adorably clumsy with his feet on the ground. For example: A few years ago we spent our anniversary at one of the spots listed in his 1000 Places to See Before You Die book: The Wauwinet on Nantucket. At which, we were the youngest couple by about thirty years.

The first two mornings we were there, he got up at 6am to have coffee and run around with his Nikon. Both mornings, I awoke to him showing me wounds from his spills earlier on the patio. I figured he’d learned his lesson, until the third morning, on our way to breakfast, we crossed the patio—which, P.S., involved a two-inch step. All I can say is, he was by my side one second and sprawled out the next. Seventy-year-old men with canes were helping me lift him off the sidewalk. Needless to say, I carefully navigated us the remaining twenty steps to breakfast.

Breakfast.

Anyone here have a memory involving Alberto and breakfast?

Eggs Benedict, waffles, side of sausage, side of bacon, side of chorizo, and pass me the salt, please—but not hand to hand. Welcome to breakfast with Alberto.

He was also a bit of a prankster. From mailing Hanukah cards to Catholic friends to sending me—a fishetarian—a box full of two-foot-long summer sausages from Hickory Farms, the man had a fantastic sense of humor. At his favorite restaurant, Da Silvano, he always ordered the pork shoulder and asked to see it—just so he could enjoy my horror when the carcass came to the table.

And really, we can’t speak of Alberto and not hear music. From show tunes and standards to military marches and year-round Christmas songs, he surrounded himself with the sound of music. One of my sweetest memories in the T-bird was driving to his sister Barby’s at Christmastime while it was snowing: top down, seat heaters on, “Sleigh Ride” blasting through the speakers.

I never met anyone who actually eclipsed Alberto . . . until I met Barby.

Yes, he called to torment her daily, but he deferred to her, went to her side at the drop of a dime, and sincerely wanted only the very best for his baby sister. When he was in her presence, it was the “Barby Show” and he was glad to be a clapping member of the audience.

He was so honored three weeks ago to become the godfather to Barby’s six-month-old daughter, Teresa. We know he would’ve been her favorite uncle, and that his legacy will bless his niece even from beyond. Barby: your kitchen will always remind me of the many holidays on which you made rice for ONE: your brother.

In Barby’s kitchen and ours—and everyone else’s for that matter—Alberto refused to get his hands dirty when he ate. “Dirty” was Alberto-speak for greasy. He did not like to touch warm food so he held his cheeseburgers—extra bacon—with two fingers, pinky up (Thank you very much, Hilda). His pizza was consumed with a fork and knife. In the words of one of his dearest friends, Alberto was a real piece of work.

At least once, if not ten times a day, I was reminded of how lucky I was to be loved by you, Alberto. It is an indescribable privilege to be the one with whom you chose to spend your last few years.

You always said you were going to retire at forty.

And you did.

I’m already missing the New York Magazine crosswords we solved in red pen over brunch and on road trips. The back besito you gave me every night. The way you say, “Is there newspaper?” “Is there cafecito?” “Is there remote control?” And about the Scrabble, baby . . . I lied—I didn’t let you win all those times: you were totally the better player.

Like every married couple, a handful of colloquials were constantly in rotation:

“Goodmorningiloveyou.”

“It’s what I do.”

“You’re my favorite.”

“Ready to Go!”

In the home that we made together, your signature phrase has always been “I’ll be here.” I’m already aching for the day I hear you say it again, but in the meantime, baby, you’ll be here.

* * *

No snowstorms or bacon scents greet me when I wake today: just the distilled sunlight of the first day of spring.

Still too chilly to ride bikes, I think, before remembering that bikes are now singular and I have to ride in a stupid limousine today.

I climb out of bed, careful not to wake Jeanette, and head to the kitchen for espresso and cigarettes, over which I proofread the hard-copy eulogy that I printed at dawn.

Some hour and a half later, Jeanette is helping me into my black wrap dress when her husband arrives.

I think you should read Ramses what you’ve written, she announces.

I wasn’t planning on rehearsing, but it turns out to be a good
call: the first time I read it, I cry. A lot. And make a dozen hard-copy
edits.

The second time: less crying, fewer edits.

The third time, I find my rhythm and the audience disappears: I direct my words toward our walls of art, our framed photographs, our bedroom. When I finish, Ramses and Jeanette are leaning into each other, nodding.

Ramses takes off his statement glasses and wipes his eyes.

I just wish your husband could’ve heard that speech.

Did you notice that I quoted you both? I ask. The part about him being a real piece of work? And the hot-dog holder on his bike?

Well, we all know he loved his hot dogs, Ramses says.

Jeanette hugs me before checking my bag for basics like house keys and phone. A separate bag holds the eulogy, croquetas, and several long-stemmed roses for his family and the coffin.

You’re all set, she confirms, closing my purse. We love you and we’ll see you at the service.

* * *

When our limousine pulls up to the church, Tony Papa is the first person I see. He wraps me in a hug that reminds me of the kind my brother used to give.

You can do this, he says.

I don’t know how to do this, I whisper.

Yes, you do, he says, you’ve done this before.

I glance inside the church and hear the people-are-being-seated song.

I look back at the hearse, its back door open.

I don’t want to see this part, I whisper. And . . . I need to pee. Follow me through the garden? I ask, heading toward the church office.

When I emerge afterward, I ask him to sit with me and my parents during the service.

Are you sure? he asks.

About what?

About sitting in the front, he says. I mean, that’s for the immediate family.

Tony Papa, I’ve known you twenty-two years. You’re like a brother to me. Please, I need you up there.

He shrugs, a smile spreading across his face.

Go, I say, handing him my jacket and purse, and nodding toward the sanctuary. Sit with us. I gotta meet the pallbearers at the entrance.

In the church foyer, Alberto’s coffin is surrounded by black suits worn by five of his favorite guys. I’m embracing them when a man interrupts and tells us to find our positions.

The first bars of “Crown Him With Many Crowns” begin playing.

Holy God, I do not want to do this.

Fico and I look at each other, take a deep breath, and begin steering Alberto toward the standing congregation.

The last time I walked down an aisle with people staring at me like this, I was wearing white and holding flowers. How am I in black, pall-bearing my groom right now? Not even four years later?

And somehow, we’re here.

We’ve carried him front and center.

According to Fico, you can’t follow the wife, so he’s giving the first eulogy. He approaches the podium like a man on a mission and thanks everyone for coming.

His stories of Alberto’s talents—writer, painter, musician, ad man—and his generosity are spot-on. I find myself absorbing the tribute and occasionally laughing at a well-timed joke.

Fico pauses before announcing that he’ll leave us with a few words Alberto loved.

When he breaks into an a cappella version of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” I flash back to our convertible, watching Alberto belt this song out from the driver’s seat.

My dad suddenly presses my hand, bringing me back to present tense.

Fico has left the podium.

It’s my turn.

I take a deep breath, stand, and open the wooden pew gate.

Crossing the aisle, I hug Alberto’s mom and sister and give them each a yellow rose.

I ascend the marble steps holding a flower, my eulogy, a picture of Alberto, and one of his handkerchiefs.

When I look out on the church, it’s a full house.

As it should be.

Out of my throat comes a voice I hardly recognize but words that I do: it’s the calm, well-timed cadence of a wife reading a six-page love letter to her husband.

A wife who doesn’t care if anyone else is listening.

And doesn’t want it to end.

When it does, I kiss the yellow rose, place it atop the coffin spray, and return to my seat.

Alberto is so proud of you, my dad whispers. I’m proud of you.

Pastor Weinbaum takes the podium and his words are the right ones: it’s meaningful but brief. On cue, the pianist begins playing the coffin-departing song.

I rise with the other pallbearers to steer him down the aisle. I concentrate on the piano solo of “To God Be the Glory” and look straight ahead, away from all the eyes. These are my final moments with Alberto and I want to be present for every step.

I don’t want to reach the foyer.

Ever.

The professional muscle is waiting when we do.

I kiss my hand and touch Alberto’s coffin, whisper that I love him and can’t wait to see him again.

I step back and turn away because I don’t want to see them put him in the hearse.

Or think about where they’re taking him.

I’m exchanging hugs with Fico and the pallbearers—couldn’t have carried him without you nor would I have wanted to—when I realize I’m blocking the exit.

Suddenly, I’m being pulled into condolence handshakes and embraces. Which is fine until I look over someone’s shoulder and realize how far the line extends.

I step away—thank you so much for coming—and locate my mom, give her a pleading look.

She rushes to my side and ask what’s wrong.

I—I don’t think I can—do this, Mom.

Do what? she asks.

That, I nod my chin toward the receiving line. It’s not a wedding. Do I really have to stand here? Do this?

She looks over my head, into the sanctuary, at the line of people in black.

No, she says, firmly. You don’t have to do any of this.

Thank God.

I step into the garden for a cigarette.

When I return, I see the framed black-and-white photo of Alberto on a table, in his tux on our wedding day. It is the only face I am interested in, but people are extending hands, pulling me into hugs. Over someone’s shoulder, I see two of my favorite girls from the office. They’re shifting their weight in black heels, unsure of what to do. I mouth the words stay and please. They nod and smile.

More people, more hugs. I’ve given up trying to be incognito. Plus the line is no longer a line: the few dozen people who are still here are either related to me, close friends, or very patient strangers.

I notice my mother-in-law standing away from the crowd, and when our eyes meet, she opens her mouth, closes it, and looks at the floor as she approaches.

This is what she does when she’s uncomfortable.

I look at the person who’s following her: a fifty-ish Latina in a white suit. Could this be—?

Hilda introduces me to Alberto’s first wife.

I do not say what I’m thinking—bold move to wear white to your ex-husband’s funeral—and instead remind myself that her name means “snow” in Spanish. Maybe she’s taken it literally and her entire wardrobe is white?

I extend a hug, a traditional kiss on each cheek.

I thank her for coming.

She thanks me for inviting her.

There’s a sufficiently awkward pause before she shakes her long black hair and mumbles something about hot dogs.

I’m sorry? I ask.

I used to tell him not to eat so many hot dogs, she says, but he was always with the hot dogs. And I can’t believe he was still eating them raw from the package.

I can’t believe she’s talking smack about hot dogs at his funeral. And I’m about to run out of polite, so I give Hilda a look that says we’re-done-here-don’t-you-think? Hilda takes the cue and thanks the woman for coming, which I echo before Hilda walks her outside.

The foyer is empty but for the obliging girls from my office, who I group-hug before explaining what they just witnessed.

That was the widow meeting the ex-wife.

Their eyes widen.

How was that, one of them asks.

Weird, I say. But over now. And the service is over. And this day, thank God, is almost over. So let’s go to Gusto and have a drink already in honor of Alberto.

* * *

Had about eight drinks in honor of Alberto last night.

When I wake to our sun-filled apartment, I pull the duvet over my pounding head and shudder into tears—out of relief that it’s over and out of horror that it’s over.

I come up for air as my mom enters the room. She’s wearing cleaning gloves and an old T-shirt.

What are you doing, Mom?

Just cleaning the kitchen floor, she says.

Is it that dirty? I ask. Wasn’t the housekeeper just . . . wait, what day are we on?

It’s Sunday.

Sunday, I repeat, as if it’s a new word in a foreign language.

Oh my God. SUNDAY.

A week ago today.

I look at the clock, half-expecting it to read 9:03am.

It’s half-past eleven.

I cringe into the pillows and pull the duvet up to my chin.

I don’t want to go anywhere today, I say. Is that okay? Can I just stay in bed and get well already?

I’m finally acknowledging what I wouldn’t last week: I have a serious cold.

There was no time last week to be sick.

But there is now.

And there’s nothing that requires me to get out of this bed, wash my hair, or make awful decisions.

Can I bring you some tea, some toast? my mom asks softly.

I could do a tea, I answer. Thank you.

I shiver into the covers, close my eyes, and pull out my memories from last night.

The iPod playing at Gusto, the prosecco that flowed, the groups of people who invited me to dinners I refused at various restaurants—including Mr. Chow, another Alberto favorite. Our friend Naumann escorting me to Speakeasy, a favorite off-the-grid bar, where the owner, Vito, handed me a beer the minute I walked in.

The rest of the night is defined by tears.

At home afterward, my dad had handed me an envelope that the CFO of my PR firm gave him at the funeral. Inside was a card signed by my colleagues and a gracious amount of money. It is an unexpectedly kind gesture from an office I can hardly fathom going back to.

* * *

Lost my prescription sunglasses the day of the funeral so my mom accompanies me to a shop in the Flatiron for a replacement pair. As we’re ordering them, another customer asks my opinion on the frames she’s considering. I guide her away from round frames—she has an oval face—and toward a few angular pairs.

I learn that she’s a rabbi who has an interview this week at a synagogue in Colorado.

How exciting, I say. Best of luck.

Since you were so great with the glasses, can you recommend a shoe store nearby? I need a pair of black flats.

Nine West is a few blocks south, I say. But I can’t recall the cross street. Let me grab my mom and we’ll take you there.

I help her choose between three pairs of sensible shoes as we all talk Torah and Jewish mysticism. Even though she asks, we don’t tell her why I’m not at work on a Tuesday or why my mom is in town from California.

She keeps prying but I wait until she’s bought her shoes and we’re about to part ways before telling her my husband’s funeral was two days ago. Her eyes and mouth respond with exactly the horror and pity that I wanted to avoid.

* * *

Just found a picture of Alberto and me at a gala last March: he’s wearing the exact suit and tie I chose for his viewing. With a white shirt. Can’t see his feet in the photo but I’m willing to bet black Ferragamos were involved.

I email the photo to my Dad, who flew home the day after the funeral.

Look at Alberto’s outfit, I write, and tell me if this ain’t a stamp of approval and a punch in the gut all in the same breath?

* * *

It’s been thirteen days since It Happened, and I should throw away what’s left in the rice cooker: his last spoon-carved batch of rice. Yesterday, before my mom went back to California, she asked me if it might be time to toss the rice? Watching it go moldy might be worse?

I had walked to the rice cooker, carried it a few feet, and stared at the yellow rice, tears falling on the glass lid.

Can’t do it, Mom. Not ready. But the mold—you’re right. I don’t want to see it happen. Why can’t it just stay like this forever?

It.

Can.

(If I take a picture of it.)

Using Alberto’s red Casio, I had staged a photo shoot on our kitchen floor. After uploading the images, I created an iPhoto folder called “How to Throw Things Away.” I don’t know it now, but this split-second decision to photograph an object before discarding it will become a fixture in my grieving process. It will serve as a way to acknowledge the memories—and the man—behind the objects that I need to part with.

But, Mom asked, what are you going to do with the actual rice?

I’m waiting until Hilda gets here.

Hilda is now here.

Thin, white bacterial webs have appeared on the greasy surface of the rice.

It’s time.

* * *

I have something awkward to bring up, Barby says. I know it’s only been two weeks since the funeral, but there’s something Albert will kill me if I don’t say.

So I should sit down, I say.

You should, she says. Given the fact you’re inheriting 50 percent of Albert’s ad agency, it would be prudent if you got a lawyer, Tré.

A lawyer, I repeat.

Listen, I’m sure everyone will be noble about this, but Revolución has a lawyer on retainer so you should have one looking out for you too.

Of course, I say.

This is what Alberto would do.

This is what I will do.

Since I’m co-beneficiary to his estate, I can’t legally represent you—plus my specialty is immigration law—but listen, I am here if you want to bounce anything off me. As a lawyer and as a sister.

As a sister.

She’s right.

We are sisters. Who have each lost brothers.

I have a sister.

Thank you, Barb, I say. For bringing up the awkward stuff. It’s exactly what Albert would do.

When we hang up, I stare at Alberto’s pictures.

And pray that God will direct me to the right person.

I’m scrolling through my phone’s address book, looking for friends who are attorneys in New York, when a text from Mariana comes in.

Just checking on you, angel. Need anything?

I call Mariana and sum up Barby’s conversation. Mariana reminds me that her mother and late father were partners at a Manhattan law firm.

Don’t worry, she promises. Agnes will find you a proper attorney,

A few hours later, I’m on the phone with a midtown lawyer who lost her own husband a few years ago. We make an appointment for Monday, which is when I’m scheduled to meet the insurance investigator.

Meet him at our office, the lawyer says. It’s best to have an attorney present at those sorts of meetings.

* * *

Fico’s wife, Nikki, has arranged noon massages for me and Hilda at Soho Sanctuary, a downtown spa. But once we’re settled in the “quiet area,” I quickly realize that spas are not a safe neighborhood for my mind. The Zen music and scent of essential oils is jolting my memory back to couples’ massages at the Shore Club in Miami, the Fairmont in Tremblant, the W Montreal.

Unless they come for us in the next sixty seconds, Hilda, I’m not sure I can be here.

I was just thinking the same thing, she says.

It’s too soon for us to be somewhere like this, I say.

It just reminds us of him, she sighs.

A woman appears in the doorway.

Hilda? I’m Jana. Please follow me.

Hilda looks at me. You okay?

I do my best I’m-okay nod and say I’ll see her afterward.

Five minutes into my own massage, the therapist stops.

Am I hurting you? she asks, handing me a tissue.

I shake my head and blow my nose.

The pain is on the inside, I choke out. But my body needs this. So if you don’t mind the sound effects, I could use the therapy.

I do not mind sound effects, she says. Let your body cry as much it needs.

* * *

Our freezer is a minefield.

His pork chops, Swedish meatball Lean Cuisines, boneless chicken thighs: proof of intended meals that I can’t bring myself to throw away. I don’t want to cry over frozen meat or individually packaged waffles, but every time I fill the ice tray, I’m confronted by these casual remnants of human intention preserved in plastic and cardboard.

The freezer must be avoided.

I move the liquor into the fridge and decide to order daily cups of ice for Hilda from the downstairs deli.

The rest of it can stay frozen in time.

* * *

My CFO calls today regarding my biggest account, an online search engine.

We’ve been asked to re-pitch the client on strategy and ROI because the old CEO has been ousted and the new one needs to be sold on us. The office held a brainstorm last week and everyone’s rallying to create the presentation.

He pauses, waiting for my response.

I don’t have one.

I don’t understand why he’s telling me all this. I just want him to get on with it so I can go back to Hilda and the couch and the funny childhood stories she’s been telling about Alberto.

We thought it would be great, he explains, if you could take a look before we present, maybe offer—

I stop listening and start concentrating on not saying the first thing that comes to mind: that my husband’s funeral was seventeen days ago and I don’t give two shits about a client presentation.

The CFO has stopped talking.

I’m supposed to say something appropriate.

Something professional.

I start slowly, filtering each word before giving it voice.

I’m sorry, I say, but I’m not sure what I could even bring to the table right now. My head still can’t wrap itself around the fact Alberto isn’t walking through our front door again. I have a meeting with the insurance investigator this afternoon. My mother-in-law is staying with me. I’m not really in the headspace for client strategy. Can we trust the team to do a kick-ass presentation and take it from there?

Of course, Tré, of course. You understand, he says in a lower, kinder tone, that I had to ask.

His phrasing implies that the request came from above and he’s just doing as he’s told.

And you understand, I echo, why I’m unable to say yes?

I do, he answers.

* * *

Hilda accompanies me to the lawyer’s office, where I meet with Ian the Insurance Investigator: a retired NYPD officer who immediately directs a stream of questions toward me.

Did Alberto have a gym membership (yes), when was his last check-up (two days before he died, you jerk, do some research), what medications was he taking (have you even read the coroner’s report?), whether he was smoking (on and off).

He assures me this will not be a quick process: there are ten years of medical records to subpoena.

How delightful, I say.

What exactly is this asshole looking for? Something that allows him to deny the policy settlement? Proof that Alberto neglected his health? That his doctor is responsible for his death? Or cigarettes are?

I stare past Ian the Investigator and out the conference room window, where gray sheets of rain pound the pane. I feel myself disconnecting from this scene, wishing I were somewhere less bleak, somewhere warm and sunny. Maybe I should take Nikki’s family up on their recent invitation to spend Easter in West Palm Beach.

The thought of going south carries me through the meeting and into a cab with Hilda, who thinks Florida would be a good change of pace. So this afternoon, I book my flight, inform my lawyer, and email the CFO to extend my leave of absence. His long-winded reply mentions my paid leave running out and can I meet with him and HR before I go to West Palm?

I’d rather eat glass than do this meeting, but it doesn’t seem negotiable.

I tell him I can do Thursday evening—maybe at the bar near the office?—and he agrees.

* * *

Is that bag on the counter what I think it is? I ask.

Yes, Fico answers.

The bag on Fico and Nikki’s counter contains Alberto’s urn, and it’s going home with me and Hilda after tonight’s dinner.

Can I see it? 

The carved teak box is more handsome than I remember, and I turn to my mother-in-law, reading her reaction. 

It’s perfect, she says in a low voice, not unlike Alberto’s. 

So you think he would . . . approve? 

Yes, she nods, vigorously. 

I turn the box upside down and see the four screws on the bottom. 

You have a Phillips head, Fico? 

Uh-uh, you’re not doing that here. 

No?

No.

Okay, no worries. We’ll do it at the apartment. Getting late though, so we should probably—

Of course, Nikki says. I’ll drive you.

Are you sure? I say. We can just take a cab—

Don’t be silly, she says. I’ll just get the keys.

As we’re pulling on coats, Nikki’s sister, Mary, comes through the front door. Mary is in advertising and lives on the same Connecticut property as her brother Greg, where Alberto and I spent countless summer weekends.

Alberto adored Mary, so when she offers to drive us home, it seems apropos. And when I climb inside her car, it occurs that he would appreciate being delivered to our apartment in a Porsche Cayenne.

I say this aloud.

Everyone laughs.

When we get home, a movie with Hilary Swank is playing on mute. I offer everyone drinks—some refused, some accepted—and turn on Alberto’s music. Into the living room I bring a Phillips head and a box of Kleenex. As I’m removing the final screw in the urn base, I look at Hilda.

I’m sorry—do you mind that I’m doing this? I just need . . . proof? Need to see there’s not a bag of sawdust or stones in this box.

You need proof. I understand that. Do what you need to do, Tré.

I do what I need to do.

When I lift the clear bag out of the box, it requires more upper-body strength than I want to admit.

I set it on the floor in front of me.

So this is you, I say.

I do not say that I thought the grain would be finer, that I wasn’t expecting to see actual bone shards mixed with the gray dust.

I start crying and the room starts crying with me.

But I am outside the moment. It’s as if someone else is saying my words, shedding my tears, holding the love of her life in a plastic bag with an industrial twist-tie.

But now I’m the girl putting the bag back in its box, walking people to the door, and wanting to know if the movie that’s been playing in the background is the same one I’ve been avoiding. I find the remote and press buttons.

Confirmed.

What movie is it? Hilda says, finding her glasses.

I find the couch.

It’s called “P.S. I Love You,” I sigh. It’s about a widow who receives posthumous letters from her husband. So, naturally, this would be playing in the apartment. The night we bring him home.

Did we leave the TV on, she asks.

Yeah, we left it on all day.

She shakes her head. Meets my eyes.

Do you want to watch it, she offers.

Nope, I say, changing the channel. I live that movie every day.

* * *

With a stiff drink and my best face-brightening lipstick, I meet with HR and the CFO.

Their unblinking gazes confirm my hunch that they were dispatched to observe my condition and report back to the powers that be.

I give them a current rundown of my world: lawyers, insurance people, accountants, tracking down doctors to provide Alberto’s medical records, receiving his ashes, and remembering to eat once a day.

They grant me an extended leave of absence.

* * *

Unable to reverse the loss of him, I try to control any further collateral damage.

I constantly spot-check-slash-feel-myself-up in elevators, in cabs, before I leave a restaurant, a bathroom.

Got his pen with the bite marks? Check.

The smartphone he gave you last summer? Check.

The glasses he chose for you? Check.

I know that one day, I will check a pocket or a purse and something will be lost. But right now, I need that day to be light years away.

* * *

My friend Maggie has flown in from L.A. to bridge the four days between my mother-in-law leaving and me heading to Florida. Maggie is gorgeous, Middle Eastern, and someone who doesn’t flee from crisis. She’s also a CPA and has agreed to begin closing certain accounts and transferring others into my name. I’ve given her postage and passwords and an envelope full of death certificates.

By nightfall, she’s typed a spreadsheet of where my finances stand. I comprehend very little, but in the coming months, it will be a gesture for which I am deeply grateful.

How about we get out of the house tonight, she suggests. Music, dancing, a bottle. Like old times.

I try to imagine dressing for a night out, conversing like a normal person.

What about going to Sway?

I try to imagine going to Alberto’s favorite bar without him: the narrow West Village spot where we celebrated birthdays, job promotions, or new-client wins.

Could be rough, I answer. There might be a meltdown. Sure you’re up for this?

Tré, I’m up for everything. It’s about what you’re up for.

I stand up and open the closet, still unconvinced.

Wear this, she says, pulling out a grey-and-blue striped dress. With boots and a belt: it’s perfect.

Well, at least getting dressed will be easy.

I make a reservation with Linda, Alberto’s contact at Sway, but when we arrive, the bouncer at the velvet rope asks where Alberto is.

Seriously, I say, you don’t know?

Know what, he asks.

That Linda came to his funeral three weeks ago?

I give him the picture of Alberto we printed for the viewing—which is now in every purse I own—and we share a stunned hug before he leads us inside.

But the low lighting, the incense, the music: it’s too much familiar in too little time.

Gonna need a minute, Mags, I choke.

We have plenty of minutes, she says. Or we can leave if we need to.

I take a breath and say no: I’m here and that’s half the battle.

Big lie. At every turn—from leather banquette to basement bathroom to our favorite hostess—I’m chasing shadows of him, of us.

I cry my way through the first glass of champagne and slip outside. Over a cigarette, I begin drafting a Facebook message to Alberto. I reference some of our Sway memories, explain that Mags and I came back tonight, and how very much this all sucks.

When I hit send, the tightness in my throat seems to ease, my nose and eyes stop running. The heaviness that followed me here seems less heavy.

Really?

All I had to do . . . was write you?

No one answers.

And I’m not asking any more questions.

I clean myself up with Alberto’s handkerchief and make my way inside. As I maneuver through the crowd, my favorite pop anthem of 2008 starts up: M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes.”

By the time I reach Maggie, I’m dancing.

And smiling.

I toss my coat to her, she hands me a glass, and we dance our way through the champagne.

What happened outside, she asks on our way home. Did you see someone you knew?

What do you mean?

When you came back, it was like you were Tré Before It Happened.  

* * *

Tomorrow morning I leave for West Palm, where Nikki’s mom resides in winter. Nikki and the rest of the South African clan will arrive later in the week but for the first few days, I’ll be able to sleep quietly in the sun, sit with Nikki’s widowed mom and her caretaker, Margaret, who speaks Spanish and always doted on Alberto in New Hampshire.

Maggie helps me pack for Florida. Prints my ticket. Arranges a black car for us to JFK. And to be certain that I actually board the right plane, she’s coordinated her L.A. flight for the same day and same airline as me.

Maggie makes these arrangements because, apparently, she knows what I am just figuring out: come tomorrow morning, I’ll be a hot mess with a boarding pass.