Morbidly Yours

by Ivy Fairbanks

Between the lighter feeling in my soul and Cal’s supportive murmurs throughout the screening, I felt incandescent. He lifted me off my stilettoed feet when he engulfed me in a hug after I took a bow with my colleagues. As we kissed, a giddy laugh bubbled out of me. He leaned back, arsenic-green eyes squinting in mirth. An ardent grin split his face.

I loved my job and what our team created. I loved this vibrant, seaside city. And I loved Callum Flannelly. A bittersweet romance with the last man I expected to fall for had sutured the hole in my heart. I’d helped animate the tale of an Irish folk hero, but he’d served as my modest hero. My safe port through life’s storms. The wind in my sails. The eye patch to my peg leg, if you’ll excuse one last pirate-themed metaphor. Life is unpredictable and magnificent, full of irony and happenstance. And I knew I wanted to spend the rest of mine making that brave, devoted, privately sentimental man smile.

I’m a giant.” Lark laughed from atop my shoulders. “This is so high up. Don’t drop me!” “I’m not dropping you,” I assured her, but I did wobble to the side for dramatic effect. As if I’d treat her as anything less than precious cargo. “Cal!” she shrieked, clamping her thighs around my shoulders. “It’s six hundred and eighteen steps down. Six hundred and eighteen!”

While the rest of the tour group was busy snapping photos of the panoramic view and the native puffins, I kissed her. Seven years after we met, Lark still knew how to get my blood pumping. A light tease of her tongue. A lingering connection where we breathed the same air for a moment before pulling away. Our foreheads rested against each other.

“I move dead weight every day. Of course I’d have b-been able to carry you.” I’d only lifted her onto my shoulders for a higher view when she’d exclaimed with awe that it felt like the top of the world. “Gee, thank you. A woman loves to be compared to a corpse.” I snorted. “I wish the kids could see this.”

Bran just turned five and lost his first tooth last Monday. He takes after me, hair as dark as his namesake raven. Lark had decorated a five-euro note with glitter and folded it in the shape of a tooth, leaving it under his pillow in exchange for the tiny cuspid. His three-year-old sister, Robin, had been so jealous she’d cried, so we folded her a paper tooth of her own and sprayed it with glitter. Then Bran cried it was unfair that her paper was prettier than his money. In the end, each of our kids ended up with a bill and a paper tooth to keep the peace. We did need a break from our little blessings from time to time. To reconnect and recalibrate.

Bran proudly tells his preschool classmates that his mom makes their favorite cartoon. The Magical Adventures of Havarti & Plague Rat shorts became a phenomenon.

“It’s so beautiful,” she murmured. “Not as beautiful as you, mo chuisle.” She rolled her eyes at the compliment before cupping my face. Her expression was open and honest. My wife, the woman who taught me how to want. How to live. “I love you so much, Cal. Happy birthday.”

My heart is even more vulnerable than ever before. Beating outside my own body in three others. I know firsthand how fragile life is, what a gift. And Lark does, too. Not a moment is taken for granted in the ivy-blanketed funeral home on the foggy cul-de-sac, which perhaps will go on for more generations of Flannellys yet.