Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance

I like knowing that my problems exist within a large and respected tradition of problems. That ever since the beginning of civilization, humans have been very upset.

I was thinking that there was nothing better in this world than to discover someone who was weird in exactly the same way I was weird. To be weird and then loved for it.

I knew enough by then to know that it was unfair to use a woman's past self against her.

We laughed a lot, but I don't remember about what. I just remember laughing. And wasn't that the most important thing? Wasn't that all a person wanted to remember?

When nothing bad happened, nobody even noticed. When nothing bad happened, it was just an ordinary day. Sometimes, when Dad was yelling his loudest at me, this was what he seemed to be saying: Do you people know how many ordinary days I’ve provided for you?

That's what happens when parents die," he says. "All of a sudden you want an answer to every question you never thought to ask them.

Teachers didn’t like it when you didn’t participate, even when you were a spelling bee champion who got 100s on all the exams. Silence made them uncomfortable. Silence was like a big watery void that reflected back whatever they feared the most.

It was death, I knew, waiting in the most unexpected places—inside Mom’s laughter, at the end of Dad’s toes, in the bright green leaves outside our bedroom window that couldn’t have looked more alive.

I had aged a thousand years overnight, Mom liked to say. That’s what death does to a person. Death destroys people, splits them open. Reveals who we really are inside, and it’s not a pretty sight. It’s quite bloody, actually. And your teeth—

you clutched my arm like you did whenever we saw a fox in the woods. “It’s Billy Barnes,” you whispered. We knew foxes lived here

I found it much more healing, to be honest, to take care of my father's plants.' ...He knew he had cared for something--truly and deeply--and he saw how those things came alive again. He had been so convinced that the only solution was to run away...The solution was always the opposite of what we expected it t be. The solution was to stay here, to plant a rosebush in the middle of Main Street. To wait, to have patience, to watch new life grow up all around him. And now, it's been years. Now, our town depends on Billy. Our town comes to him for help. They ask him to line the walls of the church for their weddings. They ask him to cover the graves of their dead. They have forgiven him.

Thank you to my parents for always encouraging me to write about the hard things and for never shying away from the reality of our grief. You taught me how to see beautiful and funny things in unexpected places, and this is a gift I will cherish all my life. And finally, thank you to my brother Michael for the time on earth that we spent together, for always being silly with me when we were young, and for teaching me how much fun it is to spend an afternoon talking about nonsense with someone you love. ALSO BY ALISON ESPACH The Adults

Jealousy turned you mean. Jealousy turned you against me sometimes, on perfectly fun car rides to Grandma’s house—Why does Sally get the front seat?

But I knew then that anybody who chose to be alone had no idea what it really meant to be alone.

But I was starting to believe in the things that upset me. I was starting to realize that it was much more likely that all the bad thing were true. That civilization was the worst. Because whenever we sat around the table, eating on place mats, like a goddamned family, Dad said, "So how was school?" and I said, "School was good,” and Dad didn’t believe me for some reason.

But I didn't remind you of this, because that was the fun of being sisters. Sometimes, you got to be younger than you were, and I got to be older.

We were teenagers now, and we preferred, when given the opportunity, to suffer.

Don’t look!” he kept shouting, and yet I looked, because you were my sister, and not looking felt wrong, as if I were leaving you all alone in your own death.

In reality, children sometimes die. And as Americans, we don’t have a great way of dealing with this. Other cultures, they do. They understand this reality. In Ancient Greece, so many children died in infancy, people were advised not to love them until they turned seven.

were not caught sliding out the dark minivan of our mother’s love. We were teenagers now, and we preferred, when given the opportunity, to suffer.

We changed our minds about what to wear, which you said we were allowed to do, and yet I felt bad for the rejected clothes all during breakfast, sometimes apologized to them before we ran to the bus.

You will go north. You will become a tropical storm. You will make it all the way to Labrador, and that is where you will come apart. That is where your winds will spread over the ocean until you are no longer Kathy, until you are only air. But you will return to us, I know. When we are repainting the house or making pancakes for breakfast or digging in the garden or laughing at something funny with our heads back and our mouths wide open—the way you always laughed—we will breathe you in without even knowing it.

all. “That was weird,” Billy said

the internet is sort of like the dark and private space of our bedroom at night

you can stop loving someone if you need to. You can stamp love out of your brain like a tiny fire.

All I know is that I don’t know what I know.” It was a nice thought. “That’s what college taught me,” he said. “That I know absolutely fucking nothing.

He sliced an apple with a paring knife

Things Dad said at dinner in August: Did you know that Lewis and Clark had to build their own canoes when they were already on their expedition? Can you imagine? Did you know that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the same exact day? July 4

Man’s attempt to be civilized,” Mr. Klein had said