Confessions of a Non-Believer
Mainstream/Women's Fiction
Chapter 1
Carl is dead. If ever there were a day I wished there
was some god to comfort me, to welcome Carl's soul to paradise, today
is it.
I lie in bed, sure the last few hours have been a cruel
dream. After all, young, successful attorneys aren’t supposed to
die of undiagnosed heart defects. They aren’t supposed to die two
months before their wedding, three months after buying a house with
their fiancée. If they’re going to die in the middle of the court
room, it’s supposed to be sensational: the result of a crazed
defendant or disgruntled victim taking justice into their own hands.
Especially Carl, who always had to do the best and be the best, who
had to make a name for himself everywhere he went. He’s probably
looking down on the whole thing now, pissed that he hadn’t been
able to deliver his brilliant closing arguments before fate ripped a
hole in his heart and sent him falling to the floor of Judge
Aberman’s court room. He probably wouldn’t have thought of me on
the way down—of how he was making a widow of me even before I
became a wife—only how he’d never get to make partner now.
Our bed seems much bigger than it used to. The edges
stretch farther and farther away from me, drowning me in expensive
organic cotton. Taunting me. Telling me with all the softness and
compassion of an automaton that no matter how many times I roll over,
I’ll never again feel Carl beside me.
Still, I heave myself over, and over again, searching
for a warmth that isn’t there. Or, at the very least, a cool empty
space just over the edge that might tell me our bed hasn’t really
grown to infinite proportions I can never escape. I find the latter,
in the form of a three foot fall onto the hardwood floor. I hardly
try to brace myself, my hip thudding gracelessly against the golden
pine, my elbow cracking against the nightstand on the way down.
Shit.
I swallow the metallic taste that has sprouted from the
tip of my tongue, curl my knees up to my chest, stare at the dust
bunnies that have collected under the bed. I should get up, I think.
Should wipe the stream of unladylike snot sliding across my upper
lip. Instead, I let my forehead drop to the floor and continue
scanning the shadowy void under the bed as if my fiancé might
magically appear there.
Every time I try to imagine his face, I see him as I
saw him in the hospital.
When he left the house this morning, he was wearing a
dark grey three-button suit. Pale blue shirt. Grey and blue striped
tie. But when I pushed through the hospital doors, the only grey was
the ashen color of his face; he was wearing only a white sheet.
I’ll have to change the sheets on our bed—my
bed now. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to sleep on plain
white sheets again.
My cell phone rings from somewhere unseen. I roll over
onto my back with every intention of getting up and answering it, but
by the time the white ceiling comes into view, the ringing has
stopped. So I stop trying to get up.
Minutes later, it starts again. I don’t know how long
it rings, only that it keeps on ringing. And ringing. When it finally
does stop, for good, it’s replaced by a loud knocking at the door.
“Bree!” The deep voice is somewhere outside my
bedroom, but in the house. Apparently I didn’t lock the front door.
“Brianne!” My brother-in-law calls to me again. At least he
would’ve been my brother-in-law. Not anymore.
“Luke.” I mean to call out, but my voice fails me,
emanating as only a cracked whisper. The bedroom door bursts open
anyway, and Luke is suddenly on his knees with me.
“Jesus, Bree, why didn’t you pick up?”
“It’s not real, right?” Arms encircle me. I find
my face pressed against his neck, a day’s worth of stubble
scratching at my forehead. Definitely real.
“You should’ve called me first. I would’ve gone
with you to the hospital.”
I hadn’t thought to call. When someone told me my
fiancé had collapsed in court, I wasn’t thinking about who I
should call to meet me at the hospital. I was thinking about the
designer gown that would be arriving at a local wedding boutique in a
week for a fitting. I was thinking about the nearly 200 guests we
were expecting at the wedding in 8 weeks.
“Gloria,” I said. I was thinking about her, too, on
the way to the hospital. Carl and Luke’s mother. Somehow, she would
make this out to be my fault.
Luke squeezes me tighter and for a moment I imagine I
might feel better if he would just squeeze all the breath from my
lungs.
“I called. They’re trying to get a flight out.”
I hadn’t called anyone at all. The drive home is a
blur. Someone at the firm must have called Luke.
“I have to call Father Granger.” He was supposed
to marry us. Now he’ll have to perform another ceremony. I try to
scramble to my feet; Luke scrambles with me. His arms are the only
thing that keep me steady when my knees turn to jelly.
“Bree, stop it.”
“I have to call.”
“You can do it tomorrow.”
“I have to—”
“You don’t.”
His grip is firm. I try to push him away.
“There’s so much I have—”
“Bree, just stop. It can wait.”
“He’s dead!” I scream, saying it out loud for the
first time. “What am I supposed to do, huh?” I pound my fists
against his chest. “He was supposed to marry me, and love me, and
be with me forever, and now he’s dead!”
He’s dead.
Luke sits on the couch all night and watches me make
phone calls. Sometimes he protests, tells me it can wait, I should
sit down. Eat. Something. Anything.
But I can’t, because every time I slow down, I can
feel the world spinning beneath my feet. It’s always been turning,
changing, buzzing with the hum of millions of busy lives. But before
now, my life always hummed right along with the rest, one ballerina
in a carefully choreographed dance. Now I’ve lost my place and can
only mimic the movements of the other dancers, frighteningly aware of
how fast everything is going by, until I can find my way again.
I call my parents back home in Seattle and they promise
to get on the first plane they can catch. Mom tells me to hang in
there, not to stay the night alone, to surround myself with friends.
She, like Luke, tries to convince me that all my phone calls—to
cancel wedding plans and make funeral arrangements—can wait until
morning. But I keep dialing. Wedding’s off. Carl’s dead. No other
reason, and why should there be?
Call the caterer. The florist. Maybe
the florist can…no, don’t think about that. Keep dialing. The
reception hall. Should’ve started cancelling things yesterday, or
the day before, but my lips couldn’t form the embarrassed excuse
then. It’s more difficult now to spit out this tragic news instead.
This isn’t what I wanted when we decided… How was I to know?
Call the ceremony site. And the guests. So many guests.
I can at least start calling my side of the list tonight. The rest
will wait.
Can’t stop to listen to the silence or look at Luke’s
expressionless face. I haven’t seen him cry. He sits there and
watches me pace across the living room, cell phone pressed to my ear.
When my fingers run out of numbers to dial, when my lips can no
longer bear to form any words, Luke watches me cry.
I stand in the middle of the living room, sniffling,
wiping at the tears as fast as they come. I don’t even have the
luxury of denial because I saw him, covered from toes to neck. I felt
his skin, not yet cold, but not as warm as mine. I can’t delude
myself that he might come walking through the door. I cry because he
won’t.
And I cry because a selfish part of me is relieved he
can’t.
