Part 3 (1/2)

Death commences.

Now.

Oh, this should be so sweet, the remembered warm jumble of Chloe still in my arms and Chloe dead somewhere.

But no, I'm watched by Marla.

In guided meditation, I open my arms to receive my inner child, and the child is Marla smoking her cigarette. No white healing ball of light. Liar. No chakras. Picture your chakras opening as flowers and at the center of each is a slow-motion explosion of sweet light.

Liar.

My chakras stay closed.

When meditation ends, everyone is stretching and twisting their heads and pulling each other to their feet in preparation. Therapeutic physical contact. For the hug, I cross in three steps to stand against Marla who looks up into my face as I watch everyone else for the cue.

Let's all, the cue comes, embrace someone near us.

My arms clamp around Marla.

Pick someone special to you, tonight.

Marla's cigarette hands are pinned to her waist.

Tell this someone how you feel.

Marla doesn't have testicular cancer. Marla doesn't have tuberculosis. She isn't dying. Okay in that brainy brain-food philosophy way, we're all dying, but Marla isn't dying the way Chloe was dying.

The cue comes, share yourself.

So, Marla, how do you like them apples?

Share yourself completely.

So, Marla, get out. Get out. Get out.

Go ahead and cry if you have to.

Marla stares up at me. Her eyes are brown. Her earlobes pucker around earring holes, no earrings. Her chapped lips are frosted with dead skin.

Go ahead and cry.

”You're not dying either,” Marla says.

Around us, couples stand sobbing, propped against each other.

”You tell on me,” Marla says, ”and I'll tell on you.”

Then we can split the week, I say. Marla can have bone disease, brain parasites, and tuberculosis. I'll keep testicular cancer, blood parasites, and organic brain dementia.

Marla says, ”What about ascending bowel cancers?”

The girl has done her homework.

We'll split bowel cancer. She gets it the first and third Sunday of every month.

”No,” Marla says. No, she wants it all. The cancers, the parasites. Marla's eyes narrow. She never dreamed she could feel so 'smarvelous. She actually felt alive. Her skin was clearing up. All her life, she never saw a dead person. There was no real sense of life because she had nothing to contrast it with. Oh, but now there was dying and death and loss and grief. Weeping and shuddering, terror and remorse. Now that she knows where we're all going, Marla feels every moment of her life.

No, she wasn't leaving any group.

”Not and go back to the way life felt before,” Marla says. ”I used to work in a funeral home to feel good about myself, just the fact I was breathing. So what if I couldn't get a job in my field.”

Then go back to your funeral home, I say.

”Funerals are nothing compared to this,” Marla says. ”Funerals are all abstract ceremony. Here, you have a real experience of death.”

Couples around the two of us are drying their tears, sniffing, patting each other on the back and letting go.

We can't both come, I tell her.

”Then don't come.”

I need this.

”Then go to funerals.”

Everyone else has broken apart and they're joining hands for the closing prayer. I let Marla go.

”How long have you been coming here?”

The closing prayer.

Two years.

A man in the prayer circle takes my hand. A man takes Marla's hand.

These prayers start and usually, my breathing is blown. Oh, bless us. Oh, bless us in our anger and our fear.

”Two years?” Marla tilts her head to whisper.

Oh, bless us and hold us.

Anyone who might've noticed me in two years has either died or recovered and never came back.

Help us and help us.

”Okay,” Marla says, ”okay, okay, you can have testicular cancer.”