Aftermirth

by Hillary Jordan

Genres: General Fiction; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

“I stopped being funny the day my wife was electrocuted by her underwire bra.” So begins “Aftermirth,” a dark comedy that explores the absurdity of death through the eyes of thirty-one-year-old comedian, writer, and actor, Michael Larssen. What is horribly funny to the rest of the world is devastating to Michael, who loves his wife deeply, especially her bright, rippling, abandoned laughter, which captivated him from the first time he ever heard it. In the aftermath of her death, he loses his sense of humor, and his career along with it.

Then, after two years of mourning her, he sees an article in the paper about a factory worker named Julio Santiago who fell into a giant vat of dough and was kneaded to death. For reasons Michael doesn’t understand, he decides to go to the man’s wake. There he meets and bonds with Julio’s twenty-nine-year-old daughter Elena, a law student who is reeling from her father’s unexpected and preposterous death.

Three months later, she calls him out of the blue and suggests that the two of them drive to North Carolina to speak with another survivor like themselves Elena has found on the Internet. Their road trip is a darkly funny journey of healing that takes them deep into the heart of their grief and others’, and then beyond it, to a place of peace and laughter.

Release date: October 2, 2012

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Print pages: 48

Sample

Aftermirth

I STOPPED BEING FUNNY the day my wife was electrocuted by her underwire bra.

You must have seen it on the news, some Ken-and-Barbie anchor team struggling not to let a hint of morbid amusement crack the thinly applied veneer of sympathy on their faces as they listened to the fulminologist (“That’s science speak for someone who studies lightning,” Barbie said, with a those wacky scientists waggle of her eyebrows) from Stanford University explain how it had happened. Contrary to popular belief, he said, metal worn on the body does not attract lightning. “Well, I’m sure a whole lot of women will be relieved to hear that!” Ken exclaimed, with a sidelong glance at busty Barbie. “Yes, and anyone who wears a wristwatch,” the fulminologist said, obviously annoyed at being interrupted. He went on to explain that since my wife (“the victim”) was found directly beneath a tree that had been struck by lightning and had not been hit directly herself, one could assume that the current had jumped from the tree to her in a “side splash,” a phenomenon that accounts for 30 percent of all lightning injuries but is rarely fatal. It was in my wife’s case, because of the two curved pieces of nickel titanium supporting her breasts, which conducted the current and stopped her heart. “Freakish,” said Ken and Barbie, with crinkled foreheads and mournful shakes of their heads. “Tragic. What a thing.”

You probably saw the headlines in some of the trashier papers too: BOLT SLAYS BUXOM BROOKLYNITE and FOR COMEDIAN’S WIFE, DD PROVES DOUBLE DEADLY. The worst was LIGHTNING STRIKES TWIN TOWERS, hardy har har. I would have loved to have gotten my hands on the clever son of a bitch who wrote that one, and the other piece of garbage who dug up the photo some paparazzi took of Jess in a bikini on our honeymoon in Costa Rica. Her head’s thrown back and she’s laughing at something I said, but the way they cropped the shot I bet her smile wasn’t what you noticed.

Not that I could blame anyone for noticing. My wife had magnificent breasts. They were smooth and luminous and almost perfectly round; two soft, heavy moons capped by nipples like rose quartz marbles. Atomic nipples, I used to call them, because they were so irrepressible. The slightest touch or breeze would stiffen them. Jess actually had to wear padded bras to hide them, an irony whose hilarity was lost on her. She hated being large-breasted, hated the catcalls and lascivious stares, the sly insinuations of other women that she’d had implants, the difficulty in finding clothes that fit without drawing even more attention to her amplitude. She wanted to have reduction surgery, but I talked her out of it. That’s the real knee-slapper: if I hadn’t loved my wife’s breasts so much—their softness, the sweet heft of them in my hands—she might still be alive.

You know that spot between a woman’s breasts where the scent of her settles, distilled to its most intoxicating form? That was my favorite place on earth. I could lie for hours in exquisite near-suffocation, my nose pressed against Jess’s breastbone, my face harbored by the pliant orbs of her flesh. I knew I wasn’t the first man to have berthed there, but I consoled myself with the knowledge that unlike all those other poor schmucks, I had been granted a permanent mooring, a lifelong lease to wallow in Jessness.

But permanent is a lie we tell ourselves and each other. And lifelong turned out to be less than four years.

I HEARD JESS before I ever saw her. It was the spring of 2006, and I was living in LA. I’d been out there for six months, licking my wounds after having failed to make the cut at SNL. My agent had gotten me a gig at the Ice House in Pasadena, which was a big deal for me then. I was up fourth and the two comics before me were lame, so by the time I took the stage the audience was restless and scenting blood. I got off to a rocky start. I could feel them slipping out of my grasp, preparing to turn on me, when a woman in back laughed, startling me to momentary silence. It was a sound like nothing I’d ever heard: artless, weightless, utterly abandoned. I told another joke, and she laughed again, a bright, rippling arpeggio from the most joyful aria ever sung. I peered into the audience but couldn’t see her; as always, the stage lights turned everyone beyond the first few rows into an amorphous horde of humanity. I kept telling jokes, wanting only to keep hearing that glorious laugh, and befor. . .