Read Online A Kick-Ass Fairy: A Memoir by Linda Zercoe - Free Book Online

in the living room. Kim was already asleep for the night. I hadn’t smoked pot before. He brought out the joint and lit it up. I liked the smell and recognized it from rock concerts.
    Soon I was laughing, but then something happened. The television was on in the background with some show about firemen fighting an apartment fire, which got my attention. In addition to the apartment fire, there was a loose power line with sparks flying everywhere. Then I faintly remember wondering if I was saying what I was thinking and trying to test my theory by thinking of sex, sex with Dave, how this or that would never happen again. And then I began sobbing uncontrollably. They put me in the shower with my clothes on. My sister Diane was called to spend the night.
    At some point, hours or days later, I woke up on the floor of the kitchen with little Kimberly shaking me saying, “Mommy, wake up. Wake up, Mommy.” That incident helped me to realize that I had to live, even if I didn’t want to. I had to go on for Kim.
    At this point, Kim had been told that her dad was in heaven. Kim thought heaven was in the sky, so every time she saw a plane she would ask, “Is that where Daddy is?” Not really knowing where her daddy was, as if anyone did, I called up my friend Beverly, who had lost her dad when she was little, and asked her how she was told. She gave me an idea.
    Fortunately, that night the sky was clear. I bundled Kim up and we went outside to look at the stars. Together we found the brightest star in the sky. I pointed to it and made sure that she could see it.
    I told her, “That star is where your daddy is.”
    “Even during the day,” I continued, “Daddy’s star is still there, but hidden by the daylight. Even then, day or night, Daddy can see you and hear you.”
    There were no stars in my sky, though. I was still walking around in the dark with the wind knocked out of me. I saw Dave’s ghost in every room. Every corner was filled with memories of stripping wallpaper, painting, laughing, crying, making love. In my nights of insomnia, I poured through a chain-reference Bible, looking for clues about what happens to us when we die.
    Finally, on a mid-autumn day while hanging out the laundry, after pleading with the God that I didn’t necessarily believe in that I needed a sign that my Dave was OK, I looked out to the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge across the street from our house, and for the first time in my life saw a double rainbow. I was so excited I grabbed Kim to show her, hysterical that this was the sign, the sign that he was not just OK, he was great. She didn’t understand. I called my mother and told her breathlessly about what had just happened. She responded, “Whatever you need to believe.” She didn’t believe me. Deflated, as I had been so many times by her, I still held some modicum of excitement and a renewed commitment to forge ahead.
    My parents kept asking me what I was going to do and why didn’t I move back to their house. I began taking stock of my situation. I finally threw out the rancid clothes I’d slept with and the toothbrush I had contemplated for weeks. But the rest? What was I going to do with a brand new 1983 Silverado three-quarter ton truck, a restored 1953 Chevy pickup in candy apple red, and a 1968 Chevy Camaro SS souped up for racing, not to mention two motorcycles and assorted guns and fishing equipment, a log splitter, and a neglected German short-haired pointer? How was I going to care for three acres and pay rent to my dead husband’s parents?
    Somehow, my father-in-law got wind of the fact that I was considering what to do with his son’s stuff, and came to the conclusion that I was preparing to pack up and move on. One Saturday afternoon he stormed into my house without knocking, drunk and raging like a bull.
    “My son isn’t even cold in the ground,” he thundered. “You are not going anywhere, and I’ll be damned if you think you are getting rid of any of