Twenty-Eight
“So, how would you like to celebrate?” Esther asks, snapping her laptop shut after her workday ends. Thankfully, it’s summer, so she only has a fraction of the workload she normally does.
I pass my hands through the purple oxalis, making the delicate butterfly leaves tremble.
Or perhaps that’s the breeze from the open window.
I like to imagine I can smell the sun-warmed air, feel the humidity on my not-skin, instead of the constant chill of my ghostly reality.
Astral reality? Metaphysical reality? I frown, doubt plaguing me. “Celebrate? What’s the occasion?”
“Your birthday?” Esther chuckles like it should be obvious.
“My birthday!? When are we?” Ever since that conversation with Dad, I’ve felt off-kilter. I’m not even sure what day it is most of the time. Today should be Friday because Esther watered the plant this morning, but somehow, that feels unimportant.
Esther laughs. “July first. Do you have another birthday?”
“My thirty-second birthday.” I muse, then huff out a laugh. “Or my first deathday? My second thirty-first birthday? Do I age, or do I just stay thirty-one forever?”
Am I even dead?
“All of the above? Three things to celebrate, right? Or honor, in the case of your deathiversary.” With a small smile, Esther shrugs. Her blue button-down wrinkles at the shoulders.
“Deathiversary!” Despite the gnawing discomfort, I can’t help but smile. Between teaching my seminar, and being haunted by me, my East has become much more comfortable talking about my death, even making her terrible jokes about it. “You picked that up from Syd, didn’t you?”
Esther grins, unbuttoning her work shirt to reveal her pink V-neck underneath.
“They mentioned that in their midterm last semester, and you know I love a good portmanteau! Their mom disappeared on their half-birthday, so they go visit her memorial then every year.” She shimmies her blue button-down off her shoulders and hangs it on the back of the chair.
“So, how should we celebrate? How would you usually celebrate your birthday? Did you have any birthday traditions?”
I answer the easier question first. “When I was a kid, we used to go to this Italian restaurant because Angel wanted my free dessert.” I make a face at Esther, even though she can’t see me.
“I’d order chicken fettuccine alfredo and tell the server it was my birthday and that I wanted a chocolate cake for my free dessert, before Angel could tell them I wanted cheesecake.
Totally worth Mom’s scolding! Anyway, Angel would have a meltdown every year, and he was an incredibly cute kid, so they always gave him cheesecake anyway.
For someone who didn’t like chocolate, he’d still eat most of mine. ”
Esther laughs. “I can picture all of that. Seems very on-brand for both of you.”
“What, me two steps ahead of my little brother and him crying about it?” I tease.
“I’d agree. He said I was a storm cloud, but that more accurately describes him.
Tempestuous, prone to tears, and yet strangely magnetic.
” I shake my head. “People can’t seem to look away, even though they know it’s dangerous. ”
“Careful, Luce, that almost sounded like you were complimenting him.”
I snort. “He’s grown a lot, I suppose, now that he thinks he’s got some distance from Mom. And I guess he’s responsible for my birthday tradition, in a way, and I am reluctantly grateful for that. Mom wouldn’t have gone out to celebrate my birthday if he hadn’t insisted on it.”
“Do you still do that?” Esther taps away at her phone. “Or, did you?”
I nod, then remember I’m not grounded; she can’t see me even if her nose wasn’t glued to her screen. “Yeah. I mean, I usually had it delivered. They didn’t sing to me or light any birthday candles. Celebrating my birthday by myself in public was just too…depressing.”
“I know exactly what you mean.” Esther holds up her phone triumphantly.
It’s an order confirmation for chicken fettuccine alfredo and a chocolate cake.
“I was considering going out to eat, but then I realized that to everyone else, I’d be sitting and singing happy birthday to an empty chair.
Luckily, I have a few bottles of wine, so we don’t even need to run to the liquor store. ”
“Best not risk your own death by indulging in a whole box.” I keep my tone light, but Esther makes it difficult not to feel touched.
She’s so…herself—considerate, generous and supportive.
Even before she found out I was haunting her a few months ago, the things she said about me were so genuine and kind.
No one has ever been as sweet to me as she has been over the past year.
When the food arrives, Esther busies herself with setting a table for two, portioning out the pasta onto both plates.
“Are you expecting company?” I ask, confused when I see her pour a second glass of rose.
“No, this is for you.” She works the cork back into the bottle, and puts it in the fridge. “Might be a little sweet for your taste. Remember I had to pour out that one bottle I thought you might like? I didn’t know something liquid could dry out my mouth so much.”
“You do know I can’t eat it, right? Or drink wine?
Believe me, I’ve tried.” I snort, remembering how pleased I was that Esther had been influenced by me, only to feel awful that she’d hated it.
“Sorry you had to suffer through my Malbec experiment. I was trying to see if I could taste something bitter.”
Part of me wonders if I would drink the glass of wine she’s poured for me, after a year of forced sobriety.
Not that I’ll have a chance again, but if I could do it all over again, I think I’d want to have the kind of relationship with alcohol Esther does.
One where the occasional glass is a way to celebrate, to unwind, a rare special treat, instead of a way to cope, the way my dad taught me.
I always thought that everyone was just as miserable as I was, and I envied how they managed to hide it better.
I’d assumed everyone had the same coping mechanisms.
But Esther seems genuinely happy, or she tries to be. She chooses to be happy, even when life makes everything miserable. She doesn’t need to drown out the world with wine the way I did.
Esther looks up in my general direction with a soft smile.
I scoot an inch to the right so she’s looking into my eyes.
“Lucy, have dinner with me. I will save the actual food for lunch tomorrow. I just thought it would be a nice treat for your birthday, you know? To have dinner together? To sit and talk, while we eat and split a bottle of wine? It’s kind of romantic. ”
I consider it. I should tell her that she shouldn’t waste a romantic dinner on a dead person. But it’s my birthday. My deathiversary. I want to be a little selfish.
So instead of telling her that she’s delusional, like I should, I reply, “You need to pull out a chair for me. And light some candles or something. This overhead lighting is not it.”
Esther laughs and unfolds a second chair tucked away between the fridge and the wall, then brings a large pink candle over from her bedside table. “Sorry, I don’t have birthday candles, so this will have to do. We’ll have to find out if you can blow it out.”
I ground myself to sit in the chair. “This is no eggplant parmesan like you made for me on our first dream date, but thank you. This is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me on my birthday.”
Esther laughs quietly as she sits across from me. A serious expression settles over her pretty blue eyes. “I have a confession. I looked up the recipe for eggplant parm after that dream, and there is no way that is ever getting made in this house! I hate to break it to you, but I can’t cook.”
“What? You can’t cook? This is shocking!” I tease. “But babe, those burnt cookies you bake always look so appetizing.”
“Wow!” Esther laughs, winding fettuccine around her fork. “And you can do better?”
We’re both ignoring reality at this point.
I should not have called her babe. She should have corrected me.
We should not be pretending we’re on a date.
But in this moment—with the wine and the flickering candlelight; the smell of garlic and alfredo that contrasts so strangely with the floral rose of the candle; with Esther smiling at me with her crooked bottom teeth and her blue eyes as warm as the afternoon sky—I can’t stop pretending this is real.
That I’m alive and allowed to be in love with this charming, dorky, beautiful woman, who wants to celebrate my birthday.
I swallow hard and force myself to keep flirting to prolong this moment, full of lies I want to be true. “Please, you put this on a plate. That’s more than I would ever do. I’d eat it straight out of the container.”
“You know, I always thought I’d be the disaster gay in the relationship, but I think I’m somehow the responsible one.” Esther’s smile falls as her words hit us both. She puts her fork down, her first perfect bite of carefully wound pasta uneaten.
And with that, the bubble pops. Avoidance is so tempting, but it isn’t fair to her. “Esther, this isn’t a relationship.”
Esther shakes her head firmly. “Lucy-”
“No,” My voice breaks when my heart does.
“You deserve someone real. Someone who can touch you and be out in the world with you. Someone alive. I can’t be that.
I can’t be the succubus who steals your life as you waste your time with me.
You’re the farmer to my sylphid, and we both know this ends in tragedy.
This will just hurt us both, East. I’m…” I trail off, unsure of what to say anymore, ever since Dad shared his version of reality.
“Dead? I’m painfully aware that you’re dead, even if I don’t understand all of your allusions.” Esther’s voice is hard, all of her sweet softness is gone.