Odysseus in the Underworld

Odie’s phone balked at the incoming call with such vehemence it died. She had not recognized the number.

She yelled at the empty living room, “How could I forget a charger?”

Furious with her wife, she had rented the bare apartment three months ago. She kept a power cord at work, ferrying it home for each weekend’s vast and unoccupied tundra of spare time. She had forgotten it this Friday, though, and with nothing to do and no electronic recourse, she blamed her spouse.

“You’re always taking them!” she fumed.

Clumps of snow and wind thumped the frail windows as Chicago’s gray winter raged at Odie. The foreboding ice floes of Lake Michigan swirled like Charybdis.

Half a city away, the attorney buzzed Odie’s wife instead. She answered. He said, “Please come to your mother-in-law’s apartment immediately.” He hung up.

Odie’s wife, stewing in her own resentment, sighed as she put on her coat.

As the door to Odie’s mother’s home opened, the lawyer handed Odie a little black book, one of thousands the grey-eyed Anticlea—“Auntie” to most—had used to administrate and organize a long life. Some contained grocery lists and calendars, others Anticlea’s most closely held thoughts.

“I am very sorry to tell you that your mother has died. She was a brilliant, caring woman,” the attorney said.

Odie’s whole body slumped. Her wife held her shoulders.

“Odie, I’m so sorry. I’m here for you, no matter what, no matter our stuff,” she said.

Odie looked in misery at the crocodile cover of the notebook, and she cracked the reluctant pages. Her mother’s handwriting stomped a regimented parade across the lines. Anticlea had executed the document with rigid attention.

Odie sat to read as her wife attended to other arrangements.

“I loved these notebooks. Of course she would write her will in one of them,” she said. She wished her mother were beside her narrating the book. She had loved the thrum of Anticlea’s voice, treasured the memories of bedtime story time. Her mother’s mouth had sounded deep caverns and sent echoes resounding through a room, though no one ever expected such a deep hum from such a diminutive woman.

Shudders of grief shook Odie. She would miss her mother. They had been happy together. She wept.

The pages began, “My dearest Odie, my only child and the only child I could ever want, know that since the rosy dawn of your life I have loved you with my whole heart. You have stretched countless smiles across my face. I, Anticlea, being of sound mind and sound body, do bequeath to you, my daughter, the sum total of my savings, $20,000. Do with it what you will, do it quickly, and do good.”

A leather ledger, filled with graph paper and figures, followed. Odie’s mother had not been frugal, so the daughter was surprised at the inheritance. Its purpose confounded her. She frowned.

“Do good,” she said to herself. Do good, she pondered. Do good.

She wished with desperation to ask her wife’s counsel. They rode separate elevators to the lobby instead.

When Odie returned to her apartment, she plunged into her phone, having charged it at her mother’s.

“What good do I do with this money?” she asked herself.

She texted Elpenor—whose parents, loopy after a lengthy labor, had misspelled Eleanor—her oldest friend in Chicago: “What should I do with the money my mother left me in her will?”

“Damn girl, not even a ‘Hello, how are you?’” replied Elpenor.

“I’m sorry. I’m just losing it a little bit. My mother died today and left me $20,000.”

“Oh Odie, I’m so sorry. I wish I could be there for you...But you left me behind this year. My own mother died six months ago, and you were nowhere. I know you’re dealing with a lot with the hormones and all the doctor’s appointments and how expensive it all is, but I had to learn all that from your wife. You think you can drop this on me after not telling me about trying to start a family?”

Odie stared out the bleak window and did not respond.

Another blaring notification harassed her out of her reverie. Her therapist Tiresias—Terry for short—wanted to know if she had forgotten their appointment. She had. Twenty minutes of it had already elapsed. She had only just restarted therapy.

“Damn it,” she said, dialing.

First on her mind: “What do I do with all this money?”

“Hello, Odie. What money?” asked Terry.

“My mother died today. She left me $20,000.”

“I see. I’m sorry to hear that. Are you sad?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me more about that.”

“My mother died, so I don’t feel very good.”

“I get the sense you’re either not being forthcoming with me or making a joke.”

“Fine. You’re right. I’d rather not talk about how I feel right now. I’m more concerned with what I have to do. I can figure out my emotions later, with or without you.”

“Would you like the session to end early?”

“I would, yeah, but I’d like you to tell me what to do with my mother’s money first.”

“Have you asked your wife?”

“She’s too angry at me.”

“Are you mad at her as well? Perhaps reconciliation will bring you an unexpected answer to your question.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Look, I just need to know where to put this money. It’s not complicated.”

“Why is your wife upset with you?”

“That’s not what I’m asking about.”

“Your walls look different. Are you calling from a new apartment?”

“No.”

“Well then,” said Terry. “It doesn’t seem there is much I can do to help you make a decision for yourself. You want it made for you, Odie, but this is the very essence of a complicated question. You are allowed to struggle with it.”

Boiling tears reddened Odie’s face. “Fine. My wife is angry with me about money. I didn’t pay her for something extremely important because I didn’t have enough saved, not even close. She paid for all of it. I was irresponsible with money before I met her, and it caught up to me. I was embarrassed. But I had to give up a lot for the procedure, too, ok? And she didn’t get that. She didn’t want to carry it and still doesn’t. I was going to bear it. It would be my body for all those months. But she didn’t think what I was willing to do for us would be equal to what she paid. And that felt unfair. It made me mad that she didn’t even try to see my side. She demanded I pay her back.”

“I see. And what are the options for the money?”

“To keep renting this bachelor pad.”

“Ah, I see, so you and your wife have separated.”

“No, not really. I mean, she’s my wife. She’s mine.”

“But you live apart?”

“For now, yeah.”

“And I see on your hand you’re not wearing your wedding ring?”

Odie did not answer. She pulled her hands from the view of the camera.

“I see. Odie, I will tell you that I believe your immediate future will not bring quick closure. I would advise you to return home. Do not succumb to the temptations of haste. What you think will be a one-and-done choice will in all likelihood leave a rankling taste in your mouth. Make amends with your wife before you designate the trajectory of your inheritance. Your distance from her lies at the heart of why such heavy obstacles weigh on you. You are not at peace with yourself.”

Odie hung up. Terry did not call back.

She flopped onto her bed, where she had stacked her mother’s black-bound papers.

She pulled apart the thin, timid leaves of an ancient notebook and read, “Saturday: Odie helped me cook a huge dinner for her sleepover with her friends. Sunday: She babysat for the neighbors, and before they picked up the kid, they stopped by to say how wonderful she was with him. She did good this weekend.” The repetition of the will’s final dictum brought yet more tears to the brink of her eyes.

Another entry, even older, in the same diary: “It was so hard to have a child. I wanted, I begged, I would have given anything, and my prayer was answered. I am happy and thankful beyond measure for my one. But now Odie has the flu. I would give anything all over again for her to be healthy. Any time she’s sick I wish I would cut off an arm to make her better. I guess I’d be out of arms fast.”

Memories of such devoted care tugged the tears down Odie’s face as her eyelids creased with sobs. Of all the people undeserving of such dedicated love, she believed herself foremost. Through her watery vision she searched for a more recent notebook.

In a journal dated two weeks before Anticlea’s death: “I know that Odie moved out of their apartment, though she never disclosed the departure to me. I think a divorce is likely. It kills me to see Odie punishing herself like this. Some of the rift may be her fault, but I’m also sure she blames herself more than she should. I hate that she hasn’t told me what’s driving a wedge between them. I think I know what it is. I’m happy they want a child, and I know they love each other, but I don’t know if Odie will allow anyone but me to love her. I wish I had done a better job raising her. I could have. I suppose every parent thinks that, but it still doubles me over with pain to wonder.”

Odie pressed the notebook to her chest in a grasping imitation of a hug. She pictured how she had been cuddled as an infant. Fond memories bloomed from the musk of the crocodile leather. She hoped her child would feel the loving smush of many mothers someday.

A panic overtook her as she wondered if the embrace she envisioned for her baby would remain only possibility and dream if she did not rejoin her wife. She scrambled to gather all the black journals she had been reading—the will, the ledger, the diaries—into her arms.

“I would have told you, I just—” she whispered.

The diaries cradled her back, and a wholeness overtook her warmly.

Odie thought of how the inheritance could honor and continue her mother’s affection and tenderness. The only true choice was the reconstitution of her family, Anticlea’s lineage. She resolved that the best good she could do was for herself, her wife, and their child-to-be. She pledged to redeem her mother’s suffering. A relieved sigh escaped her chest, and her body uncoiled its tight, stressed winding. She smiled.

“Thank you,” she said.

She returned, at last, to Penelope, her wife.

She stood, stiff and awkward, in their living room. Penelope sat on an ottoman with straight and serene posture.

“It’s yours. The money was always yours,” said Odie. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I knew the egg might not take. But I had no idea how angry I would be when it didn’t. It was so expensive, we had so much riding on that first embryo, and you paid for it all, and I prayed to get pregnant with everything I had, but my body failed us. I resented this process and my body and you and giving my body to this process and then, on top of all that, also having to pay. I was heartbroken, and I couldn’t stand to think about us when our future seemed so impossible. I don’t feel that way any more, though. Of course I’ll repay you.”

“Thank you,” said Penelope. “I’ve been waiting for those words. I’m glad you came back. Stay this time. I love you.”

They embraced.