Your Final Fix
There is something about me that makes men want to dig up my bones long after they have buried me. It has always been this way. Sooner or later, whatever the circumstance of the breakup, they come find me. An unbroken track record, as I tell my friends. See? I told you. All of them. Every last one, without fail. My friends listen with careful neutrality. They don't want to get roped back in, either.
It's taken as little as a month and as long as three years. Eventually they come find me, for one reason or another. Rarely do they want a relationship revividus. They're just looking to fill whatever hole has opened up within them, in that moment of their lives. The guilt-laden want absolution. The players want more play. The covert narcissists want a hit of supply. The good guys want their good guy cards stamped and renewed.
Never is it to offer me anything that I might want or need. Maybe it's not really about me after all.
---
On a frigid bank holiday in January, because I have promised myself an adventure, I walk the hallowed grounds of Chicago's most famous cemetery. Later, I'm going to get a hot dog, at another landmark destination. I am a tourist in my own town, with a two-item itinerary. Look out, Chicago.
Graceland is gloriously empty this winter's day. No doubt in spring the verdant hills and birdsong make it parklike and lush. And fall will be sight to behold, when trees drop shimmering leaves that bedazzle the impassive grey tombstones. But it's a graveyard. Spare, cold, and bleak only enhance the effect.
There is no noise other than the regular rumbling of the train a few blocks over. No other visitors besides one solitary, puffing jogger. Headstones, obelisks, and sarcophagi stretch as far as I can see, across gently sloping land where patches of grass break up the snow. I'm looking for the bridge I saw on the cemetery's website. I'm also listening to a self-guided tour, which turns out to be less a comprehensive deep dive and more a series of quick dips. Thirty seconds about this baron. Forty seconds about that magnate. Chicago's legendary captains of industry. In case you forgot who had money and power, kindly direct your gaze to the towering pillared pavilion on your left. Potter Palmer and wife Bertha (nee Honore), at your service.
I turn off the audio tour. I'd rather hear stories about the everyday folk anyway. The ones whose graves are marked with modest slabs of quartz, some inlaid flat into the ground. In winter, they disappear under a blanket of white. I bet they like that seasonal break from public view. I bet they worked damn hard in life, and haven't much use for the likes of my curious eyes. When people ask me what dead person I'd most like to meet, I always say my great-great-great-great grandmother. Wouldn't that be a dose of eye-widening perspective.
Their names delight. Wendell. Esther. Horace. Atticus. Expectant mothers could get the jump on the next baby name trend, they're all right here for the taking. I wonder how many Mabels this Mabel went to school with. If she even did. Mabel would probably scoff at my problems. Mabel probably had to heat water up on the stove, itself a modern luxury. I tell myself that any one of the souls buried here would trade places with me in a minute, just for the treasure of another single day of life. But would they?
---
I pass a headstone engraved with a list of five Johns. John the Fifth sleeps forever beneath a Celtic cross close to the road. The indignity of being a fifth already stings, and here he is with this terrible real estate on top of it. A row of headstones crumbles besides. How can they be crumbling? They're just a couple hundred years old at most. What must it take to wear down a gravestone?
You can live all your life in the same house, but your bones will still spend longer in a cemetery. How long do you have to be somewhere before you can call it home? How long do bones have to rest before you shouldn't disturb them anymore?
---
Imagination seizes. I picture every single previously living person suddenly sitting atop their grave. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Men in black flannel waistcoats and pressed wool trousers, doffing their derby hats at women in sweeping brocade dresses, who discreetly check their hair pins after so long a sleep. They make no sound. Some look around, taking in their surroundings. Others look down at their bodies, getting oriented to their post-corporeal forms. A sea of ghosts from another era. Can you see them? Can you see the twisted ends of the men's mustaches, and the pointed toes of the women's buckled shoes? Each of them is the age they were when they died--when they left their loved ones behind.
I will remember you how I last saw you, for better or for worse. How will you remember me?
On the steps of a shed-sized mausoleum, one natty phantom leans against the stately columns of his eternal home. Chin high and proud as a peacock, he observes the scene. He holds a top hat: rich black silk signaling all that he was and all that he had. But my hand would pass through him just as easily as it would his poorer counterparts, if I dared. Not that I would dare.
I'm less afraid of MacDougal. Lanky, soigne, with a lopsided smile and posture to match. His legs are crossed in studied insouciance and a shock of blond hair needs the constant attention of his fingers to rake it back. His top coat is perfectly cut to his figure, but ripped across the chest. Something about the rip--and about him generally--suggests last minute foul play. A bar tussle. Some lady's honor on the line. Or maybe he was just drunk.
MacDougal watches me from one of the more interesting graves in this place. A bench with a semi-circle structure behind it. Four slender, grooved columns support a curved mantel that bears his name. He's watching me from the bench where he sits, suppressing a smile, clearly amused by something. His grave seems to have been designed with this exact moment in mind. A throne from which to watch passerby, forever and ever. And here he is watching me.
He can't speak--none of them can--but he nods at something behind me.
What? What is he looking--oh. I turn and see that the portable phone charger I have brought from home is being dragged through the snow, still plugged into the phone that, thankfully, is safe and dry in my pocket. Six feet of cord extend from my coat to the small black device, which trails behind me like a dog on a leash. Ruined, I assume, but when I pull it out of the snow I see the indicator light still glowing green. When I turn back to MacDougal, ready to face his mockery, he has vanished. They all have. It's just me again, in this quiet expanse of cold stone and bare trees.
Later at home, I'll find that to my amazement both the charger and cord have survived the mishap. I wonder if MacDougal had something to do with it.
----
Ellie, I'm sorry for everything. Are you in Michigan? I'm moving to Ohio. Please text me.
Here we go again, I think. I've woken up to yet another shovel slamming into the frozen earth above me. Trying to get at my bones. Trying to exhume what has been laying peacefully.
I stare at my phone, unmoved. There is no sense of vindication, or validation. I had to validate myself, after months of silence told me I had no choice. I waited and waited and was left to wonder for an entire year. An entire year, it took me to move on. But I did.
Setting my phone aside, I slip back into dreams.
---
I find the bridge. It crosses the stream that runs the grounds and connects to a tiny island where a handful of plots are marked by simple, rough-hewn boulders. The stream is frozen, and I resist the urge to drop a rock and see just how frozen. Instead I cross the bridge and walk the perimeter of the island. This is where I'd want to be buried. I bet ducks call this home in warmer months. I wouldn't mind ducks waddling over my grave. We all have to live somewhere.
My destination found, I am free to go get a hot dog. I have successfully completed Graceland Cemetery. I am happy with what I have gotten out of it. I am happy with what I am leaving in it.
---
Time was, I ached for one more day with him, to get my questions answered and bewildered heart calmed. What the fuck just happened? How are you gone so fast, and ignoring me? What did I do? Why won't you answer me? Is this a punishment? Did you not feel the same? Did I dream this whole thing? Are you coming back when you get better?
Now, though, enough snow has fallen on that grave. Several seasons of it, in fact. I can't really hear what's going on up there, and I don't care to know. I'm safe and warm down here where I am. Mabel just put water on to boil. She's been saving some cocoa for a special occasion, and we both have the day off.
My bones are fine, right where they are.