Chapter 23
A knock at the door. Charlie was here. Wren dabbed at her eyes with a tissue one final time and hoisted herself up. She caught a glimpse of herself in the hallway mirror on the way to open the door and was instantly disgusted with how ridiculous she looked. Like a child cosplaying as a sad adult.
“Why are you dressed like Morticia Addams?” Charlie greeted her playfully.
Charlie, for her part, wore athletic pants and a baggy sweatshirt with a thick neck, like she was going to Trader Joe’s on a random Tuesday.
It took her just a second to scan her friend’s face and realize that something was deeply wrong.
With some effort, Wren choked out the words: Ferdie was dead.
“Can I see him?” Charlie asked solemnly, right after breaking a powerful, life-affirming hug.
Wren nodded begrudgingly and, for some reason, crossed her hands in front of her waist and bowed her head as she led Charlie through the apartment.
Like a morgue director leading mourners to a viewing.
In the living room, she’d lit some incense and two battery-operated candles.
It was the best way she could come up with to be respectful without going back into the room itself.
But Charlie looped her arm around Wren’s and practically dragged her in there. Wren hung close to the doorframe when Charlie finally let go to pay her respects.
“Poor guy,” Charlie said, sitting down next to Ferdie on the bed and then immediately standing back up and pinching her nose. “Jesus, he stinks.”
“Well, he’s dead, Charlie. Have some decorum.”
“No, Wren, he literally…” She leaned in and dropped her voice to a whisper. “He smells like…you know.”
“What?”
And then they both heard one. A quiet, wispy puff of wind that could only have come out of a dog’s butt.
“It’s just the gases leaving his body,” Wren said, wafting it casually away from her nose.
She didn’t know if that was true, but it sounded true.
She’d been smelling it for a little while now, but to be fair, Ferdie always smelled like that.
His meds had a way of making him extra gassy. “Let’s be mature adults about this.”
The next one was not quite so ghostly and gentle.
Ferdie ripped one. Everyone heard it. It was undeniable.
A moment later they were huddled over Charlie’s phone googling “do dead things fart.” They were halfway through scanning an article titled “10 Things I Wish I Knew as a First-Year Embalmer” when Ferdie’s leg started visibly twitching.
“Wait, did you see that?” Wren jumped.
“I think I did.”
Another twitch.
“Is he…is he alive?” Wren yelped.
“Oh my God, is he possessed?” Charlie asked simultaneously, then: “I like yours better.”
Wren scrambled over to Ferdie’s side and gave him one more shake, and she didn’t know what it was, maybe all the excitement or the new smells from Charlie, but Ferdie’s eyes finally flew open at that moment, and a few seconds later he was propped up on his elbows looking around, blinking.
The relief that flooded Wren’s heart nearly made her collapse. Tears came once again.
Ferdie, meanwhile, looked around with the bleary eyes of someone who’d just awoken from an epic, Rip Van Winkle–level slumber. Wren was certain he had been approximately 87 percent of the way to the afterlife.
“My sleepy boy,” Wren said, hugging him and stroking his fur. “You scared me to death.”
Charlie suddenly appeared with Ferdie’s food and water dishes and set them down gently on the floor.
“So he was just in a fart coma?” Charlie said.
It made sense to Wren. Ferdie had been sleeping longer and longer, getting gassier and gassier. It was only a matter of time before it all crescendoed.
Wren grabbed a piece of the dry kibble in her fingers and offered it to him. He ate it casually, then hopped gingerly off the bed and began lapping water as if he hadn’t just returned from the beyond.
Wren could take no more. She collapsed on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Soon she felt Charlie lie next to her, their heads just touching.
“Should we take him to the vet?” Charlie asked.
Wren turned and looked at Ferdie. He was snuggling up to go back to sleep already, this time on his doggie bed in the corner. Being his exact, usual self. “No, look at him. He’s completely fine. He’s not the one who’s broken, it’s me.”
“Wren…”
“I thought my dog was dead for half a day and he was just sleeping.”
“Fart coma,” Charlie corrected.
Wren couldn’t even laugh. “My maternal instincts are nonexistent.”
Charlie grabbed her hand then. “You thought he was dead and somehow he survived,” she said, almost matter-of-fact. “Don’t get me wrong, your instincts are a total mess. But you obviously gave him something to live for.”
“You think?” Wren asked. “Maybe you’re right, but I definitely can’t be trusted with a human baby. I don’t know who ever thought that was a good idea.”
Ferdie was one thing. She’d known from the beginning that he had one foot in the grave.
It was just a matter of time. Certainly, that played a role in her actions.
But she couldn’t help but worry about what it would be like when the baby came.
Would she be too casual and cavalier about every cough?
Too slow to act if, God forbid, there was a middle-of-the-night choking incident?
And what if the baby had special needs? Would she be equipped for that?
In this test, at least, she had failed miserably.
Charlie was silent for a moment as she considered how best to proceed. “Well, I would say Arthur did. He thinks the world of you, always has…” Then: “Do you want to talk about it?”
“What does it matter?” Arthur. The last thing she wanted to worry about right now.
“He doesn’t want to be with me, or more accurately, with someone like me.
It’s abundantly clear now that he would be better off settling down with someone more serious, who wants the same things as him.
We had our fun and maybe we’ve run our course.
” Maybe Arthur would be better off with Chipmunk, who was probably gorgeous and outdoorsy and the kind of person who monitored her credit score.
“Yeah, you had so much fun you cooked up a baby. Do you hear yourself?”
Wren grunted. Charlie wasn’t going to let up, so she had to give her something.
“I’ll call him later, OK? But I’m telling you, we’re not built to last.” She hated that Charlie was making her talk about this, but she had to admit the deep, black melancholy was starting to wear off now that Ferdie was alive again.
“When we get married, and then divorced a few years later, I’m gonna rub it in your face so hard. ”
“That’ll show me,” Charlie said. “Now, how about a walk? We can see how Ferdie does.”
Wren agreed, and then she peeled herself off the bed and leashed up her boy, almost giddy to be doing something as simple as this, something just minutes ago she had thought she’d never do again.
They put on Ford the River and blasted it as they walked. Power chords and distortion and heavy drums backed lyrics about not fitting in, raging against society, and stealing girls from jocks. They moved at a glacial pace with Ferdie, which made for a comical contrast.
“It’s probably for the best that we’re missing the show. I don’t know if I’m prepared to see a bunch of fat, bald, middle-aged men singing this stuff,” Charlie said. “I love the songs, don’t get me wrong, but I feel like they should have moved on by now.”
“Why? They probably realized that they were never happier than when they were ripping onstage with their brothers.”
“Isn’t that sad?”
Wren didn’t think so. Ferdie took this moment to stop and pee on a random mushroom that had sprouted in the grass, signaling his agreement.
Wren examined him carefully as he urinated, pooped, and walked.
He was perfectly fine; she couldn’t believe it.
Yes, he was still dying, as all things were.
Him a little more so than everyone else.
But the little asshole was no worse for the wear after a brush with death, or more accurately, a very intense nap.
“How are you doing with everything?” Charlie asked, not content to make small talk about music.
“Well,” Wren said, taking a deep breath. “I’m about to pop out this baby, me and Arthur are in a fight, my entire future is up in the air, and my dog might be a zombie. It’s a bit of a roller coaster at the moment.”
“Must be hard not to think of your parents at a time like this,” Charlie said before taking a few steps ahead. Almost as if she knew she’d just dropped a grenade in the middle of their conversation and was ducking for cover.
“We’re doing this again, are we? You’re not gonna let it go?” Wren had to work harder than she’d like to admit to catch up.
“You know damn well I’m not. I always win in the long run,” Charlie said. “Can you make it up here?” She pointed to a small hill that separated the apartment complex from the highway, I-83, and didn’t wait for an answer before she began climbing.
Wren groaned and shared a look with Ferdie, who also looked peeved.
See, she got him. But they both began walking up the hill regardless.
Pumping her legs and glutes for all they were worth, it was hard for Wren not to think of her own parents’ funeral, which she missed.
Wren’s uncle thought it might be too hard on her to attend, so instead of closure, instead of their lives having an end point, the tragedy of their deaths just dragged out forever and ever.
The pain subsided a little bit every year.
But she realized that without that ending, the next phase of her life never really began.
At the top, Charlie sat comfortably on the ground and watched cars whizz by through the thin tree cover.
Wren sat and joined her. There went an ambulance without its siren, and there a minivan, and there a long Buick probably driven by a grandma who could barely see over the steering wheel.
She watched them all go by and she thought about how she desperately wished her mom and dad could be there when she brought the baby home.
She allowed her eyes to go soft, the steady stream of cars blurring together like a river, coming to terms with the fact that that could never be.
“They would be proud of you, you know,” Charlie said, as if she were sitting front row in Wren’s brain watching all the thoughts go by, munching on a big bucket of popcorn.
Wren knew this was a test of their so-called evolving friendship. And this time, she was determined to pass.
“I think about them a lot, and I always wonder. Usually, I try not to think too hard because I don’t suppose I’d like the answer, the honest answer,” she said. “But thank you for saying that.”
Charlie’s mouth hung open. “What, no sarcastic line? No inappropriate joke?”
“It’s only because of hormones,” Wren said. “Don’t think you have some magic power to make me be honest and vulnerable. It’s this stupid baby. Been happening more and more lately.” She reached over and grabbed Charlie’s hand. “But I really appreciate you.”
Charlie wrapped her in a hug and held her tight.
“I have one more thing for you,” Charlie said, pulling out her phone.
“What now? A video montage of starving animals? I can’t cry anymore.”
“I’ve been texting with your brother.” Wren went silent. “You should really reach out to him.”
“I don’t know…”
“You don’t have to decide now. But I did get him to send me this.”
Charlie showed Wren her screen as a video played.
Grainy, jumpy footage from an old camcorder.
A dated kitchen, all brown with wooden trim.
A four- or five-year-old girl sitting at the table, drawing with oversize crayons on a coloring sheet.
Two slightly older boys doing zoomies around the house, creating the equivalent of a human cyclone.
“Is that…me?” Wren said. Charlie nodded.
Then the camera panned over to the kitchen counter, where a dark-haired woman was dumping handfuls of chopped apples onto plates.
“My mom.” Charlie nodded again. “Is she smoking?” She was, the lit cigarette dangling out of her mouth like a farmer chewing on a bit of straw. “Man, it sucks that cigarettes kill you, because it looks so cool.”
Her mom did look cool, wearing a tank top, some kind of tattoo on her back visible. Even Wren could tell, they were the spitting image of each other.
“What’s Mom serving up today? Let’s see,” a man’s voice said, narrating over the footage. Her dad. The camera zoomed in on the plates as Wren’s mom sat them on the table. Apples and peanut butter and jelly on white bread, crust lovingly removed.
“Mommy’s PBJ!” little Wren said.
“Don’t say I never gave you anything,” her mom quipped.
“Love you, you little twerps.” She went around and kissed them all on the cheek.
Little Wren barely noticed while the boys ducked and dodged the best they could.
Wren thought that was tragic. She wondered how many more times her mom had made them lunch and given them a kiss after this footage was taken.
“I make the kids PBJ every week,” her dad said. “And does anyone ever thank me? Nooooo. But we throw a parade when Mom makes it three times a year.”
“It’s better when Mom makes it,” little Wren said.
Wren’s mom approached the camera and gave it playful double middle fingers. “In your face.”
Then there was laughing, and sounds of a tussle, a tickle fight maybe, the camera spinning around and pointing at the ceiling at one point. And finally, black. That’s where the video ended.
“Wait, that’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“That forty-five-second clip…is all that’s left of them?” It didn’t seem fair. There had to be more.
“What else do you need to see?”
Charlie had a point. There would never be enough. Never enough photos or videos, never enough time. But she could see in that brief clip that her mom was a lot like her, a spicy little firecracker, and that she loved her kids. That was all that mattered.
“Nothing,” Wren said.
“How do you feel?”
“At peace. At least, I think? Does peace feel like a horrible cramp in your lower abdomen?” She winced in pain, put her hand to her stomach as if that might stop it, and in a few more seconds, it was gone.
“Wren,” Charlie said, eyes wide and alarmed. “I think you need to call Arthur.”