Marigold

A woman bargains over breakfast with Death by offering him something no one ever has before.

Death came to breakfast on a Friday, which I thought was rather rude of him because Friday was the day I made bacon. He came as a cat, the way he sometimes does when he wants to be polite about it, black as the inside of a closed book with eyes the color of stop signs and a tail that moved like a slow second hand. He hopped onto the table across from me, folded his paws, and spoke.

Hello, Marigold.

Oh, I said, and I slowly set down my fork. It’s you.

It’s me, said Death.

Coffee?

I don’t drink coffee.

Tea?

I don’t drink tea.

Water?

I don’t drink anything, he said, a little irritably. I’m Death.

Suit yourself, I said, and jellied my toast, because my mother had raised me right and my mother had also said that a jellied piece of toast is a comfort in any tragedy. Outside, the October sun was doing that buttery thing it does, leaning through the kitchen window like it had nowhere better to be. The kettle was still warm. The bacon was, frankly, a triumph.

You’re taking it well, said Death.

I was raised Episcopalian.

I see.

Also, I said, I have a question, if you don’t mind.

Death tilted his small black head. He did mind, a little, I could tell, he was on a schedule, but he had been raised right too in his way, by no one in particular, and he nodded.

What’s your name? I said.

There was a very long pause, and outside a leaf came loose from the maple tree and took its time about falling.

I don’t have one, said Death, finally.

You don’t have a name?

I have a job. A name is different.

Well, that’s just sad, I said. Everyone should have a name. Even the apple has a name. I pointed at the apple on the table, which sat there all shiny red and looked pleased with itself. His name is Gerald.

Gerald is a terrible name for an apple.

Which is why I haven’t eaten him yet. He hasn’t earned it.

Death’s tail flicked, once, twice, and he was, despite himself, interested. I thought about how in all the long years of his work, and they must have been long, longer than is decent, no one had probably ever offered him a thing. People offered him bargains, certainly, and bribes and tears and long speeches about their grandchildren, but I doubted anyone had ever offered him a gift.

Why, he said carefully, are you asking?

Well, I said, I thought perhaps if I gave you a name, a really good one, mind you, not just any old name, you might give me a little more time. Seems like a fair trade. Life is short, but a name lasts forever.

Death considered this, pondering it for what felt like an eternity.

How much time, he said, did you have in mind?

Oh, I don’t know. Enough to read Moby Dick. Enough to visit Montreal. Enough to apologize to my sister and return her casserole dish.

That’s a lot of time.

It’s a very good name.

You haven’t told me what it is yet.

I haven’t thought of it yet, I said. Names take a long time. That’s how it works!

Death looked at me for a long moment and I had the distinct feeling he was experiencing something he had never felt before, the feeling of being out-maneuvered by a woman in a bathrobe.

All right, he said. What’s the name?

I chewed my toast and I looked at him, really looked at him, at the smallness of him and the politeness of him and the way his paws were folded like a child waiting to be called on in school, and I thought about all the people he had ever sat across from and how none of them had ever asked him anything.

Sam, I said.

Sam?

Sam. It’s a good name. It’s the name of someone you’d want to sit with. Someone you’d open the door for. It means listened to, in Hebrew, sort of, if you squint.

Sam, said Death again, trying it on the way you try on a coat in a shop. Sam. He liked it. I could tell he liked it terribly. It was the first thing in a very long time that had belonged only to him.

Thank you, he said, and his voice was different now, softer, gentler, like wind-chimes.

You’re welcome, Sam.

I’ll come back, said Sam, in a while.

How long is a while?

Long enough for Moby Dick. Long enough for Montreal. Long enough for the casserole dish.

And Gerald?

Sam looked at the apple, and the apple looked back, as apples do. Eat Gerald, he said. He’s only an apple.

And then he hopped down from the chair and walked out through the wall as if the wall were only a suggestion, and I sat for a while in the sunlight and ate the apple, who turned out to be delicious and not, in the end, a Gerald at all.

I read Moby Dick and I did not love it but I loved that I had finished it. I drove to Montreal and found, to my surprise, that I had a cousin there, a small loud woman named Ginette who made terrible coffee and excellent pie, and I stayed four days longer than I meant to. I apologized to my sister, and my sister cried and then I cried and then we laughed, because that is what sisters do. The casserole dish came home with a chip in it, and my sister said she liked it better that way.

And in between all of this, the reading and the traveling and the apologizing, I did smaller things too, the kind of things that don’t make it onto bucket lists. I learned the name of the woman at the post office (Doreen). I planted tomatoes, badly. I sat on my porch in the evenings and watched the light go, and sometimes, just sometimes, I thought I saw a small black shape at the edge of the yard watching with me. I would lift my hand and the shape would lift its tail, and neither of us would say anything. The years did what years do, piling up like leaves, quietly, until one morning you look out and the yard is full of them and you can’t remember when it happened.

And then one Friday, because it is always a Friday in the end, Sam came back, and he hopped up onto the chair across from me and folded his paws very politely, exactly the same as before, because Death does not age, though the people he visits do.

Hello, Sam, I said. My voice was smaller now, my hands were spotted.

Hello, Marigold.

I made bacon. Just in case.

I told you, he said gently, I don’t eat.

I know, I said. I just… I thought it would be nice. Just like old times.

There was a pause. Sam looked at me and I understood, somehow, that he had visited a great many people in the time since he had last seen me, and he had been Sam to none of them, because Sam was a name I had given him, and he had decided, very privately, that it was mine to use and no one else’s. To everyone else he had gone back to being nameless, which was easier, and which hurt in a way he hadn’t known until he met me.

Did you read it? he said. Moby Dick?

I did. It’s about a whale!

I’d heard.

And Montreal was cold and lovely. And my sister forgave me. And I named the tomatoes, all of them, although most of them died.

What did you name them?

Oh, all sorts of things. There was a Harold. A Beatrice. A small one I called Peter.

Peter is a good name for a tomato.

Peter was a good tomato.

We sat with that for a while, and the bacon went cold between us the way it had the first time, and the sun spilled into the kitchen and I realized, with a small clean surprise, that I was not afraid. I was afraid the first time. I had hidden it well, but I had been.

Sam? I said.

Yes?

Thank you for giving me time. You didn’t have to.

Sam’s tail flicked, once, and he looked down at his paws, because Death, it turns out, can be shy. You gave me a name, he said. It was the least I could do.

I smiled, and I set down my fork, gently, the way you set down a book you’ve finished and are sorry to be done with but also a little glad, because a book that goes on forever isn’t really a book at all.

Ready? he said.

I took a deep breath, reached out, and placed my hand gently onto Sam’s small black head. He closed his eyes and purred, soft and low.

I’m ready.

And here is the thing nobody tells you, the lovely secret thing I am telling you now, which is that dying is not at all like falling asleep, no, dying feels like waking up. You know how sometimes you are so deep inside a dream that you forget there is anything else, and then you wake, and oh, the world, the wide bright morning of it, so much bigger and stranger and kinder than the dream could ever have been, and you laugh, you laugh out loud, because how could you have thought your small little life was all there is? The kitchen, the bacon, the tomatoes named Peter, my sister, all of it the dream, sweet and small and dear, all of it slipped away and the waking world, the wider one, the realer thing, I walked towards it and oh, there was so much light, there was light all around me, and I was inside it, and a part of it.

And then I was not in the kitchen anymore, and Sam was walking beside me, very upright, very gently, and ahead of us, in a doorway, was my mother, who had raised me right, and who was younger than I remembered her, and she opened her arms, and there were fat wet tears running down her face, and she said, There you are, oh my love, oh Marigold! There you are! Mommy’s right here! Mommy’s got you, and I was home.