One Last Thing Before I Go

hedge-fund managers? The mothers are gone by nightfall, home to serve dinner and do homework and pick up their husbands from the train, and there’s always a lull in the action right around sunset, a moment of silence to mark the death of another day. Then Route 9 gets busy again, this time with bands of roving teenagers flipping their skateboards in parking lots and trying to score some beer from the supermarkets and convenience stores, and college kids hitting the garish chain restaurants and bars that come alive at night. He can spend hours just looking out the window, numbing his brain by watching these snatches of quotidian human drama being played out on sidewalks and in parking lots, people relentlessly going about the business of living even as his own life has ground to a complete halt.
    He rubs the puncture on his wrist where he pulled out the IV needle and realizes that he is still wearing the plastic hospital bracelet. He tears it off and turns to drop it on the worn oak desk he bought at a yard sale a few years ago from an older couple who were selling their house to move closer to their grown kids and grandchildren. The wife, a petite wisp of a woman, had showed him how each corner of the desk bore a set of initials from each of her four children, who had carved them in themselves years ago. In her mind, this added value. Silver thought it was cause for a discount. They’d settled on seventy-five dollars, and a ride home for the desk and Silver in her husband’s pickup truck.
    He opens up the top drawer and pulls out a folded piece of paper. It is a printed e-mail, addressed to him.

    FROM: Siobhan S.
    TO: Silver
    RE: Miss you

    Just landed back in Galway, and I’m already missing you terribly. I miss your smile, your calm low voice, your skin against mine. The last few weeks were like a dream I wished would never end. I didn’t think it was possible to fall in love like this anymore, but I have, and it fills me with joy, and, of course, a deep sorrow that I can’t simply pack up and move to the United States to be with you. Between Mum and Isabelle, my place is here right now, just as yours is there. So there’s nothing to be done but live for these annual trips, and pray that the time comes soon when our respective situations can allow for something more. Thank you for the best month of my life.

    All my love,
    Siobhan

    He knows the letter by heart. He should; he wrote it. When you live alone, you take certain precautions. He could get hit by a bus, or drown in the pool, or have a sudden heart attack, or, let’s say, an aneurysm. It will then fall to his parents to sift through his pitiful belongings, and should that happen, he feels a certain responsibility to make them feel that he wasn’t quite as alone as he seemed.
    * * *
    He pulls out a notepad and a pen, then another pen that actually works. He thinks for a moment and then composes a small to-do list for himself.

    1. Be a better father.
    2. Be a better man.
    3. Fall in love.
    4. Die.
    It seems simple enough, and maybe even noble in its simplicity. But it is not without its obstacles. He can devote himself to Casey, and he’s pretty sure that dying will take care of itself. It is number two and three that give him pause. They sound good in theory, but with no practical experience, he has no idea where to even begin.

CHAPTER 18
    W hen you know you’re dying, everything comes into focus in a way it never has before. It’s like the grimy world has been polished to a sparkling shine, and everything stands out, latching onto your stream of consciousness and sending it in every direction at once, and your brain becomes a puddle of free associations.
    He lies in bed, studying his fingernails. He’s always assumed they were smooth, but now sees that they’re scored with a slew of vertical lines, each forming its own tiny shelf along the face of the nail, like the facet of a diamond. He’s been biting them for years, never once noticing how much dimension they have.
    The lightbulbs in the standard-issue fixture in the center of his bedroom ceiling actually emit a soft, audible hum that sounds like the first note of the kids singing
“We don’t need no education”
in Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall.” When he was a boy his parents were out and the babysitter, some high school girl from around the corner, was playing that record downstairs on his father’s stereo. Lying awake long after he should have been asleep, he