Under My Skin. Lisa Unger
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much to handle. It’s like a brownout, an overloading of circuits. Grief is a neurological event. And Layla was the one to bring me home.
I tell her about the dream, anyway the snippets I can almost remember.
She’s quiet for a moment too long. I think I’ve lost her.
“Layla?”
“Poppy,” she says. “Maybe you should call Detective Grayson.”
I’m surprised that she would bring up the detective who has been in charge of Jack’s murder investigation. A murder investigation that has petered to almost nothing. It’s been almost a year since Jack was killed and every lead has gone cold. There are no suspects. No new information. But Grayson is still on the job, checking in regularly, always returning my calls to query about progress. I used to crave justice for Jack, for everything we lost. It used to gnaw at me, keep me up nights. But, with Dr. Nash’s help, I’ve let that idea go somewhat. What justice is there for this? No matter what price paid, the clock will not turn back. So this question sits like an undigested stone in my gut. Who killed Jack?
“Why? What does Grayson have to do with this?”
Another moment where she draws in and releases a sharp breath. I can hear the street noise so she’s probably leaning out the bathroom window with her cigarette so that the kids don’t smell it when they get home from school. She’s supposed to have quit; obviously, the nicotine gum isn’t cutting it. I’m not going to hassle her about it. Who am I to get on her case, pill popper that I’ve become?
“I was just thinking,” she says finally, carefully. “The days you can’t remember. Maybe what you dreamed last night. I mean, maybe that wasn’t a dream at all. Maybe it was a memory.”
Her words strike an odd chord, cause an unpleasant tingle on my skin. “Why would you say that?”
“Honey,” she says. A sharp exhale. “When I found you, you were wearing a red dress.”
Ben comes in singing. He has his headphones on, clearly doesn’t see me. He’s belting out Katy Perry, singing about how this is the part of him you’ll never ever take away from him. He reaches into my office to flip on the lights I’ve neglected to turn on and his eyes fall on me. He blushes and gives me a wide smile, takes a bow. I’d laugh if my body didn’t feel like one big nerve ending, sizzling with tension.
“Maybe—you’re remembering things,” says Layla when I stay silent.
“Dr. Nash said I probably wouldn’t, that likely those days are gone forever.”
It was two days after the funeral that I disappeared. Four days after that I woke up in a hospital, remembering nothing. Even the days before Jack’s murder and through the funeral are foggy and disjointed. Part of me thinks that it might be a blessing to forget the worst days of your life; I’m not sure I want them back. Dr. Nash has suggested as much, that my memories haven’t come back because I don’t want them.
I remember the day he was killed in ugly, jagged fragments, sitting in the police station, reeling at Detective Grayson’s million, gently asked questions. Was he having trouble at work? Did he have any enemies? Were there money troubles? Affairs? Were either of you unfaithful? Hours and hours of questions that I struggled to answer, grief-stricken and stunned, trapped in a tilting unreality. There were these long stretchy moments where I pleaded with the Universe to just let me wake up. This had to be a nightmare. Grayson’s grim face, the gray walls, the flickering fluorescent lights, all the stuff of horror movies and crime shows. This wasn’t my life. It couldn’t be. Where was Jack? Why couldn’t he make it all go away?
Finally, my mother showed up with our family attorney and they took me home. I remember stumbling into my apartment—our apartment, falling into the bed we shared. I could still smell him on the sheets. I remember wailing with grief, facedown in my mattress.
Take this, honey. My mom forced me to sitting, handed me one of her Valium tablets and a glass of water. I didn’t even hesitate before drinking it down. After a while, the blissful black curtain of sleep fell.
For a while, I know Detective Grayson suspected me. After all, I would inherit everything—the life insurance payout, the business, all our assets—when Jack died. But I think at some point he realized that for me it was all ash without my husband. Then he became my ally. If you remember anything, no matter how small, call me.
The case, it bothered him. Always. Still. Stranger crime is an anomaly. A beating death of a jogger—it grabbed headlines. The city parks are Manhattan’s backyard; people wanted answers and so did he. Jack was a big, strong guy, fast and street-smart. He’d traveled the world as a photojournalist, dived the Great Barrier Reef to find great whites, trekked the Inca Trail, embedded with soldiers in Afghanistan, attempted to summit Everest. It never, ever felt right that he’d die, a random victim, during his morning run. He had a phone and five dollars on him. A year later, his case is still unsolved.
“But maybe Dr. Nash is wrong?” suggests Layla. “Maybe it means something.”
Now it’s my turn to go silent.
“Let’s do it tonight,” Layla continues. “Work out, eat, talk it all through. In the meantime, call Dr. Nash and Detective Grayson.”
Layla, queen of plans, of to-do lists, of “pro” and “con” columns, of ideas to turn wrong things right. She corrals chaos into order, and heaven help the person who tries to stop her.
“Okay.” I release a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “That’s a plan.”
I flash on that moment at the bar, that man, again. Who was he? Someone real? Someone I know?
“You’re okay, right?” asks Layla. “You’re like—solid?”
“Yeah,” I lie (again). “I’m okay.”
* * *
Detective Grayson agrees to meet me in Washington Square Park for lunch. So around noon I head out. The coolish autumn morning has burned off into a balmy afternoon as I grab a cab to avoid even worrying about the hooded man.
The normalcy of the morning—emails and the ringing phone, conversations about understandable things like contracts and wire transfers—has washed over the chaos of yesterday and last night, my dreams where they belong, the grainy, disjointed images faded into the forgotten fog of sleep. I don’t have the urge to look over my shoulder every moment as I make my way under the triumphal Washington Square Arch and into the park. My chest loosens and breath comes easier. Grief and trauma, I remind myself, are not linear experiences. There are good days and bad ones, hard dips into despair, moments of light and hope. My new mantra: I’m okay. I’m okay.
Grayson sits on a shady bench near a hot dog vendor, by the old men playing chess. He already has a foot-long drowning in relish, onions, mustard, ketchup and who knows what else. It seems to defy gravity as he lifts it to his mouth. A can of Pepsi sits unapologetically beside him. No one else I know would even dream of drinking a soda, in public no less. It’s one of the things I like about him, his eating habits. It reminds me of Jack. Jack and I would be walking home from a client dinner that had consisted of tiny salads and ahi poke with some slim, fit photographer who turned in early so he could make a 6:00 a.m. yoga class, and Jack would make us stop at Two Guys Pizza, where he’d scarf down two slices.
God, when did people stop eating? he’d complain.
I grab a similarly gooey dog, and take my place beside Grayson. He grunts a greeting, his mouth full. He’s sporting his usual just-rolled-out-of-bed look, dark hair a mop, shadow of stubble. He’s wearing a suit but it needs a trip to the dry cleaners, his tie loose, a shirt that has seen better days. Still, there’s something virile about him, maybe it’s the shoulder holster visible when he raises his arm, the detective’s shield clipped to his belt.
The leaves above us are bold in orange, red, gold, but they’ve started to fall, turn brown. I dread the approaching winter, the holidays where I imagine