When I arrived home from my appointment with Eliza Campbell, the last of the evening sun was spilling orange and blue onto the dark wood floor of my living room. It was late and I was hungry. I hadn’t eaten before driving to the city for my appointment. In the kitchen, I opened and closed the doors of a few appliances, and within minutes I had a hot meal on the table. I offered up a silent thanks to microwave ovens and my sister’s single-serving organizational skills.
I ate four cabbage rolls, a withered salad, and drank two glasses of water. It was more food than I’d eaten in the past week. Amazing how a full stomach can give a body a sense of bloated calm.
I filled the sink with warm, sudsy water and belched like a trucker, then set about washing the dirty dishes lined up on my counter. As I plunged both hands in, I found I was humming an old song from my childhood. From my maternal grandmother. My mother’s favorite. I sang,
“Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, Too-ra-loo-ra-li, Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, hush now, don’t you cry!
“Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, Too-ra-loo-ra-li, Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, that’s an Irish lullaby.”
Water splashed onto the counter as I swayed to my own music. I’d been loosened somehow. The joints of my mind had been oiled by the idea of possibilities, that there were some, that they might be waiting for me.
Kevin’s voice came on a breeze. “You used to sing that song while you were reading. I could never understand how you were able to read and sing at the same time.”
I smiled down into the dishwater. Somehow I’d known he would speak. Maybe not right that moment, but just he would, sometime, speak to me again. It was as if I’d opened the door to an invited guest.
Eliza Campbell had said we are all connected. There was no reason for me to fear the man I was most connected with, was there? No reason to fear the connection that held us together. No reason to think all of this was crazy. Okay, it’s not as if I was about to take an ad out in the Sunday Times announcing I was spending quality time with my deceased husband. But I was no longer thinking it was wrong, or crazy, or all in my head. Still, I didn’t know how this worked. If only there was some sort of cosmic rule book, I thought.
I gazed down at the soapy water. “I am a multitasker by nature, Kevin.” I made a slow turn on my tiptoes and faced the kitchen. There was no one there. I felt a fissure of disappointment. What was I expecting? That he would materialize before my eyes? I looked around the room, unsure of what to fix on. “You, on the other hand, have a one-track mind,” I said to the microwave.
“Especially when it comes to you, babe,” Kevin said. I heard the smile in his voice.
I thought of saying I miss you, but I remembered the last time I said that to him he had stopped talking. “You were very one-track-minded when it came to me, yes,” I said to the cool, thin air.
“Sing to me, Kate.”
In my kitchen, alone except for the remnants of Kevin, I sang,
“Me Mither sang a song to me, in tones so sweet and low.
Just a simple little ditty, in her good ould Irish way,
And I’d give the world if she could sing that song to me this day.”
Kevin’s soft tenor joined in when I sang,
“Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, Too-ra-loo-ra-li, Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, hush now, don’t you cry!
“Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, Too-ra-loo-ra-li, Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, that’s an Irish lullaby.”
I closed my eyes as I sang the final notes, a soft wave of comfort rolled over my body. I was smiling and crying at the same time. “That was nice.”
I waited, but Kevin said nothing. I sensed somehow, inexplicably, that he wasn’t gone. I only needed to say the right thing. Like turning a key, or flipping the correct switch in the fuse box.
I chewed the inside of my cheek, thinking. I couldn’t ask him questions. He wouldn’t, or couldn’t answer anything. I supposed the rest of the rules would reveal themselves over time. I thought for a moment, conjuring a sentence I thought he might reply to. I spoke to the microwave. “You sing in the shower. Loud, hysterical opera.”
Kevin said, “You love it.”
I smiled. So far so good. “I do. You make up the craziest words.”
Kevin bellowed out in comical operatic parody, “You gotta pizza pie! I wanna pizza pie! Oh no, it’s for you, not I! Please share your pizza pie!”
I laughed. I could see him, standing in the steam-filled shower holding the loofah like a microphone, hollering over the rushing water. My mind clung to the image. Kevin. Naked. Steam billowing around him. Water and soap rushing down his torso. In an instant my body was flushed with desire so acute that it caused actual pain. I bent forward, sucker-punched by lust, trying to stave off its advance. I reached out, but my hands remained dry and empty. I wrapped my arms around myself and pretended they were his arms. I squeezed myself hard, waiting for the sweet ache to subside. My lips opened and closed, searching for a kiss that would never come. Loneliness filled my body like a million small stones.