Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance

by Alison Espach

But I knew then that anybody who chose to be alone had no idea what it really meant to be alone.

After you died, we went to church. That’s how it always was in our family—never religious until we had to be. Never prayed, until we lost our keys. Never went to church, until Mrs. Mitt called and asked if I was getting my first Communion like Valerie.

When nothing bad happened, nobody even noticed. When nothing bad happened, it was just an ordinary day. Sometimes, when Dad was yelling his loudest at me, this was what he seemed to be saying: Do you people know how many ordinary days I’ve provided for you?

it seemed weirdly important to Valerie that no one’s parents dropped us off, important that we were not caught sliding out the dark minivan of our mother’s love. We were teenagers now, and we preferred, when given the opportunity, to suffer.

During the day, at school, people stared at them as if they were inappropriate, like, what was I thinking, bringing these breasts to school! Girls looked at them as I changed during gym, like I was oversharing. And in the hallways, they were always in the way. Sorry, I said, sorry when we were caught in traffic jams at the corners of the hallway. When we were all pressed up against each other, trying to get to class. Sorry my tits are so fucking big. Sorry they’re full of so much tissue and fat and blood. Sorry I’m alive.

Wendy and Mom were both extremely depressed, and if there was anything that depression gave you, I learned, it was the freedom of not giving a shit.

“Yes, we’re doing okay,” Mom said. I was impressed by Mom and her restraint. Things Mom did not say, but could have said: Oh, you know. I’ve been thinking of killing myself. Oh, I’ve been thinking of smashing the mirror with my fist and dragging the pieces along my wrist. I’ve been thinking of that cemetery, where we buried my daughter. Remember how your son killed my daughter? That son you’re having a party for tonight? He drove her pretty little face straight into a tree. Enjoy your Eggos!

But I knew enough by then to know that it was unfair to use a woman’s past self against her.

I was thinking that there was nothing better in this world than to discover someone who was weird in exactly the same way I was weird. To be weird and then loved for it.

I like knowing that my problems exist within a large and respected tradition of problems. That ever since the beginning of civilization, humans have been very upset.

Kurt is a lawyer, one of those men who lives in one state, works in another, and vacations in a third. These men read the Wall Street Journal and fold it into a neat rectangle when they are done. These men wear French collars and read mysteries that always get solved at the very last minute; they hate ambiguity. Their careers are all about pretending to know things they don’t really know that well. Knowledge is power, including knowledge a person pretends to have.

I know by now that everyone is having an affair with the internet; everyone has shameful moments alone with websites they aren’t sure they can trust, yet trust anyway. Everyone wakes up at two in the morning and Googles the name of someone they once loved.

Kurt takes a sip of his wine. I can tell what he’s thinking. Fucking writer. Fucking hippie. Fucking feminist. But Kurt is polite. He has made millions off this poker face. It is a lawyer’s strength, as well as weakness. “You sure you’re a writer? You sound like a public-school teacher,” he says. “You sound like an asshole,” I say.

“That’s what happens when parents die,” he says. “All of a sudden, you want an answer to every question you never thought to ask them.”

The boy asks me how many I’d like, even though it is quite obvious by his tone and facial expression that he doesn’t give a shit how many I want. He seems to hate us, simply because I want lobster. Fair enough. I have hated people for less. His hatred is the only power he has.

Ray starts flipping through the pages of an outdated Time magazine. A terrorist plot, already thwarted. A vegetable that is known to prevent heart disease now gives people liver cancer. And will Donald Trump run for president? “No,” Ray says. “The fucker never runs. Why does everybody always think he will?”

IF ONLY

“I have a theory about people who say ‘you should,’” Ray says. “‘You should do this,’ ‘you should read this,’ are people who don’t know how to say, ‘This is my favorite book’ without saying the word should.”