Page 89 of Don't Tell Me How to Die

“You’re as sick as your secrets,” my mother told me when I was eleven years old and stopped going to confession.

“What is that supposed to mean?” I snipped back at her.

“It means that the things we try to hide from the world are often the very things we are most ashamed of. Shame is a powerful force that can sabotage you and make you feel worthless,” she warned me. “But it only gets its power when it festers in the shadows of secrecy. Let it out into the light—and you’ll be at peace.”

It was an excellent parental homily, but it didn’t take. Now, thirty years later, with each subsequent trip to the attic, my dead mother was still harping on the same message. Only now she was ladling on a heaping helping of fear by reminding me that it was imperative to seek forgiveness before I died, or I would face one of three possible outcomes.

If my sins were misdemeanors, God might give me a pass and let me into heaven. Fat chance, I thought and immediately took that one off the table. For minor transgressions He would sentence me to do time in purgatory. But the operative word here wasminor, and with the shitload of mortal sins I’d piled up, there was no question in my mind—or my dead mother’s—that unless I confessed, I’d be damned to suffer in the eternal fire of hell.

But first I needed to share my trespasses with someone. Someone outside my tight inner circle. Someone who would listen without judgment. And no one fit that description better than Esther Gottleib, an eighty-four-year-old Jewish grandmother.

I first met Esther when I was seventeen. My mother had just died, Van called me from Korea to say he had fathered a baby with someone else, I’d revenge fucked my drug dealer, I was losing sleep at night worrying about being rejected by the college of my choice, and I’d gotten hammered with Misty the night she came home to a dead family and her bed peppered with buckshot.

Esther was the shrink who got me through that confluence of upheavals. Dr. Byrne had referred me back then. “She’s in the city,” he said. “But she’s worth the trip.”

My father drove me the first time. After that, I insisted on going on my own. Every other Thursday after school, he would drive me across the bridge to the Metro-North station. I’d catch the train to Grand Central, take the number six subway to Sixty-Eighth Street and Lexington, and then walk a block and a half to the tree-lined circular driveway in front of a thirty-three-story white-brick apartment building. And now, a lifetime later, I was retracing the breadcrumbs of my girlhood.

A few days after my weekend with Alex at Mohonk I dug out Esther’s phone number. I hadn’t needed her wisdom in a quarter of a century, and I wondered if she were still alive, still practicing, and of course, would she still remember me? The answer was a resounding yes on all three counts.

“Maggie,” she sang, making the mere mention of my name sound joyful. “I am so thrilled to hear from you, but of course I’m upset because it can only mean you need my professional services. Big picture—what’s bothering you?”

“I’m dying of the same thing that killed my mother.”

“Oh no. I am so, so sorry.”

“Can I see you?”

“Absolutely. My boyfriend and I are traveling through Europe by train. Right now, you caught me at a café in Bulgaria.”

“I thought I called your landline.”

“You did, but it forwards to my cell. I may be old, but I’ve got this techno shit by the balls. I’ll be back July third. I’ll see you the morning of July fourth. Promise me you’ll hang tough till then.”

I promised, but she gave me her email address just in case.

July fourth was the anniversary of my mother’s death, and riding up in the elevator to Esther’s eighteenth-floor apartment my head was flooded with memories.

She was standing in the doorway when I got out of the elevator. “Oh my God, look at you,” she said, giving me a fierce hug. “Even more beautiful than I remembered.”

“And you look fantastic,” I said.

“I’m older, shorter, fatter, and grayer, but I’m still fogging the mirror, so technically I suppose that counts for fantastic. Come in, come in,” she said, escorting me to her office.

I sat down in a familiar worn-leather wing chair. “How much time do I have?” I asked. I laughed. “Let me rephrase that. I’m tired of asking doctors how much time I have. I meant how much time doyouhave?”

“I’m semiretired. My next patient isn’t till Thursday, so you can talk as long as you want.”

“The last time I saw you I was in high school. A lot has happened since then. I’m not sure where to start.”

“Maggie, you didn’t call to catch me up on all the glorious things that have happened in your life over the past twenty-five years. Something is troubling you. Deeply. And since you’re facing a terminal illness, it’s something you need to get off your chest sooner rather than later. Start there.”

That was Esther. Skip the bullshit and cut to the chase.

I took a deep breath. It was time to let go of the one shameful secret that had been haunting me. Time, as my mother said, to let it out into the light so I could find peace.

I just had to say four words. Not my mother’s four words, but my own. Words I had never uttered once to a single other soul.

“I’m having an affair,” I said.

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