I Do Depart

“This is my granddaughter, Olivia,” said Mrs. Woolarak to Mrs. Danby. “She's going to die any day now, so I thought it might be nice to introduce the two of you.”

Olivia Woolarak nodded gravely. It was a great responsibility to be dying. Everyone wanted to meet you, and say how sorry they were, and take you to Disneyland or buy you the pony you had always wanted, although Olivia Woolarak had never wanted a pony. A giant spider, maybe, or a hellhound would have been nice. It was exhausting having to politely accept everyone's condolences when what she wished she could say was,

“Oh, don't be sorry. If I wasn't dying, I would have killed myself anyway.”

The three of them were seated in a quiet tea parlor in the town of Bigrunnie. Spoons chinked against teacups, newspapers shushed, and the soft voices of older women in much-too-large hats hummed from the booths under the big, lilac-curtained windows. The waitress, dressed in a lace-trimmed apron and wearing far too many bows in far too many places, had served them a teapot of something floral and a plate of scones with cream and lemon curd. All of the old ladies seemed perfectly at home in this porcelain and lace world that smelled vaguely of cat piss. Only Olivia looked out of place, scrawny and dark and unraveling the hem of her sleeve with a pair of barber scissors.

“How lovely to meet you,” said Mrs. Danby. “You've grown so big since the last time I saw you.”

“That was twelve years ago, so it makes sense,” said Olivia. She was trying to be polite, but the boredom seemed to leak out of her and spill all over the table. Mrs. Danby didn't seem to mind.

“Well, yes, I suppose it was. The time sure does fly when you're dead.” She chuckled.

“It flies when you're alive, too,” said Olivia's grandma. She sighed and took a sip of her tea. Her lips wobbled on the cup's rim. Olivia watched in fascination. A drop spilled from the teacup and dashed down Mrs. Woolarak's chin, breaking apart into one hundred little droplets that filled all of her chin wrinkles like rivulets. God, it looked so difficult to be old. That was one relief– since Olivia was dying now, at only sixteen years old, she wouldn't have to worry about getting old. No wrinkles, no bed slippers, no sighing as you slipped into bed next to the person you used to make passionate love to, with your bones all fused together and sore, too tired to ever make passionate love again. “These days I blink and the grandchildren have sprouted up like weeds. I blink again and they've propagated little seedlings. Next time I blink, they'll be the ones with gray hair and cloudy eyes, and I'll be–“

“With me,” said Mrs. Danby, patting Olivia's grandmother's arm. She tried to pat just above the old woman's arm, but accidentally slipped right through Mrs. Woolarak's arm and the table. Olivia thought she saw the old ghost's cheeks tinge blue. “I'm terribly sorry. I never did have the best eyesight. I was almost denied my driver's license because my depth perception is so off. And then the cataracts–“

She sighed and turned her attention to Olivia. The girl had already unraveled her left sleeve up to her elbow.

“Well, is there anything you would like to ask me, dear? Death isn't all bad. Eat what you like while you still like it.” She screwed up her face at the plate of scones. Olivia's grandmother teased her by dipping one in lemon curd and savoring it, making “mmm” sounds as she ate. “Damn you, Elisabeth. Oh, and make sure you wear something nice every day, just in case it's the last one. You don't want to end up like me. I hated this sweater, but it was all I had clean.”

“I made you that sweater!” said Mrs. Woolarak indignantly. The two old women laughed.

“Well, your sewing was about as good as my eyesight.”

“You old hag.”

“Crone.”

“These are the best scones I've ever tasted.”

“Evil creature!”

Olivia peeked up from her operation. The two old women were leaning toward each other, eyes sparkling, joking about what good times they'd had before it took so much effort to be alive. She knew her grandmother came every week to meet Mrs. Danby but that she had never once bothered to visit the ghost of Mr. Woolarak, who was forced to haunt the bowling alley where he had spent most of his time and money. She knew her grandmother only wore the hat she was wearing today on special occasions, because it was the same one she had worn to Olivia's christening and to Mr. Woolarak's funeral, both causes for celebration for Mrs. Woolarak. Something blossomed in Olivia's heart, poking cruelly at its sides like a barbed horse chestnut. She thought it might be jealousy.

“Actually, I do have a question about death,” said Olivia. She put down her barber shears and clasped her hands. “And it's very important. Can you marry someone– someone living, I mean, once you pass beyond?”

“Marry?” said Mrs. Woolarak incredulously. “I thought you said boys were pond scum. That's what your mother told me when I asked if I was going to live to have a grandchild.”

“Maybe I don't mean a boy,” said Olivia. “Anyway, is it possible?”

“Well...” Mrs. Danby patted her lips with a napkin, looking up at the ceiling as if the answer could be found in the tea parlor's cupid fresco. “I'm not sure, exactly. I suppose there's no law explicitly barring it. But then there aren't many laws about the dead at all. I suppose you would just have to try.”

“I see,” said Olivia. She went back to tearing apart her right sleeve.

“But, Olivia,” said Mrs. Woolarak. “What is this about?”

Both women were looking at Olivia hungrily, the way old women always look when you bring up babies or marriage. It was all they were taught to want when they were younger, and somehow they still believe they need to want it, and need to see other people want it too. Olivia didn't want either. She thought she would rather die one hundred painful deaths than have a baby, and she thought marriage was an outdated construct of the patriarchy built for the purpose of enslaving women. But the barbed horse chestnut in her chest was dulling, swelling into a flower with soft, sweet-smelling petals. She thought her grandmother had looked far too sad since Olivia had announced that she was dying. Maybe this discovery of hers was a way to make her grandmother happy again.

“Will you be seeing Mrs. Danby again next week?” she asked her grandmother after they had said goodbye and watched Mrs. Danby float away through the cupid fresco.

“Every Friday,” she said. “I wouldn't miss it unless hell froze over, and then I'd find a way to ice skate.”

“You and Mrs. Danby are really good friends.”

“The best.”

“Hmm,” said Olivia.

*

Next Friday, Olivia arrived at her grandmother's house with a large paper bag.

“What is that?” said Mrs. Woolarak.

“Nothing.”

Inside the tea shop, there was no chink of porcelain or shush of newspaper. Mrs. Woolarak peered around anxiously.

“Where are all the customers?”

Olivia pulled a plastic tiara from her bag. There was white tissue paper glued to the back. She placed it on her grandmother's head and adjusted the tissue paper veil.

“Surprise!”

Family and friends, living and dead, burst from under the tables, behind the pastry counter, and the kitchen. Mrs. Danby floated down through the ceiling, wearing an identical plastic tiara adorned with tissue paper. In her hand was a ring box which Olivia had helped her pick out. Mrs. Woolarak looked around, her mouth wide open. Her watery eyes rolled back into her head and she fell to the floor. Ignacia Woolarak, Olivia's mother, screamed and raced towards the old woman's crumpled body on the floor. The other guests cried out or gasped, and Mrs. Danby froze in mid-air.

“What's happening?” said Olivia. “Don't you think she wanted you to propose?”

“Well, yes, but–“

They waited a moment. Ignacia Woolarak was taking her mother's pulse. She let out a wail.

“She's gone!”

“But where's her ghost?” said Olivia. “Don't you think it would come here? We just have to find it.”

Ghosts tended to pop up in the places they had been when they died or the places they had frequented in life. Occasionally, if they were really pissed off, they would manifest in the homes of their enemies or in abandoned places where they could scream and shatter glasses and burn out lights without anyone to tell them no. But Mrs. Woolarak had never had any enemies, except maybe Mr. Woolarak. Olivia wondered vaguely if Mrs. Woolarak's ghost had appeared in the bowling alley, so she could throw pins at her husband. But before she could wonder too far, she saw Mrs. Danby shaking her head.

“I don't think my darling Elisabeth left behind a ghost,” she said. She was looking miserably into the ring box. Olivia had helped her steal it, keeping watch on the corner while she floated down into the jewelry store and reached through the glass case. “Those who are perfectly happy pass on.”

Olivia scowled. “That's rotten. You could have told me when I offered to help you propose. Now you've killed my grandmother for nothing!”

Mrs. Danby only shook her head again. She was growing thinner, like evaporating steam. “I knew she'd be happy; at least, I hoped. I always thought, you know– but I didn't know I could make her perfectly happy.”

She was smiling now. She took Olivia's hand – that is, sort of wrapped her ghostly hand around Olivia's in an imitation of hand holding – and said, “And now I'm perfectly happy, knowing my Elisabeth died fulfilled. I never thought it was possible. My advice to you, Olivia, that I should have given you last week, is to die perfectly happy.”

“You're right, that is impossible.”

In another second the ghost of Mrs. Danby was gone, fizzled out into the air of the tea parlor. The light flickered a little, that was all. Ignacia Woolarak was still weeping over Mrs. Woolarak's corpse. The other guests were walking around in a daze.

Olivia fled. She ran to her favorite spot along the Bigrunnie river, under a willow tree. The grass was soft and mulchy there, full of wriggly things, and the river slurped by over stones of every kind of delightful color. It was the prettiest spot in all of Bigrunnie. She threw herself down on grass and wept.

“I killed my grandma, and now I'm going to kill myself here,” Olivia said to the willow tree, “and I'm going to be so miserable that I'll be a ghost for all of eternity.”

The willow tree didn't respond, so Olivia jumped up and kicked it.

“Did you hear me? I said I'm going to kill myself here! I'm going to throw myself into the river and dash my head open on these rocks!”

“That seems rude,” said the willow tree, yawning. She stretched her branches. “You blood will poison the stream and you may fall on some fish or pond-skippers and crush them.”

“Then fall on me!” said Olivia. “I have no chance at all of being perfectly happy!”

“Everyone has a chance at being happy,” said the willow tree. “You're happy when you're here. I see you sitting under my branches, digging your toes in the earth and singing, cutting up little dead creatures you fish from the pond, throwing rocks at children that bike past. Don't you get close to almost perfectly happy?”

“Maybe,” said Olivia. “But I would have to be here a long while, to forget everything about myself and what I did to my grandma. Would you let me lay here for weeks and weeks, until I shrivel up like dried fruit? Would you bury me under your roots after I died, and let me haunt here if I can't pass on?”

“Of course,” said the willow tree. “I've always enjoyed your company.”

“All right,” said Olivia, “then I'll stay here a little longer.”