Butternut Squash

“I want to be a squash this year,” Hazel tells me.

I’m sipping coffee on the porch, pumpkin spice creamer, frothed to perfection. A dash of cinnamon. You used to tease me. Basic, you’d say. No one really likes pumpkin spice, you’d say, if people really loved it they would have it year round, not just in the fall. It’s just the idea you like. You didn’t drink it on principle. Men don’t like pumpkin spice, you’d say. It’s the idea you don’t like, I’d say.

“Mommy, did you hear me? Can I be a squash this year?” Hazel rests her hand on my leg. Matching cream colored set, cable knit. You used to ask why every year I got another matching sweater set, accusing me of seeking out happiness in the TJ Maxx isles. Innocent pleasures, I’d argue. It’s thirty dollars, we can afford it. Look how good this one looks with my hair this color, remember last autumn it had more warm tones in it? You liked my hair best, natural, mousy.

“Mommy!”

I force myself to focus on my daughter’s face swimming in front of me. Her brow is furrowed, her hair is unbrushed. She’s wearing brown leggings and a white sweatshirt, chocolate stains on her sleeves. You’re turning her into a sad beige baby, you’d say, don’t you think she’d rather be in pink?

“A squash?” I say, my voice sounds strange to my ears, too bright. “Don’t you mean a pumpkin?”

“No,” Hazel insists, “I want to be a squash. In school we painted squash, since Ms Ling said they were cheaper by the dozen than pumpkins. I painted an acorn squash. But I want to be a butternut squash. They are yellow and big and longer than acorn squash. Have you ever seen a butternut squash, Mommy?”

Hazel’s eyes are bright and she is pressing both hands on my knees, using me as leverage to jump up and down.

“I don’t know if they make squash costumes, baby,” I say, “But they have so many cute pumpkin costumes. I can get one of those for you.”

“No, Mommy,” Hazel insists, “I really want to be a squash. And can’t you make my costume? Sierra’s mom is making her costume. A baby cow.”

Hazel’s best friends, Sierra and River. I’ve been friends with Sierra’s mom since we were in high school. Her husband was your best friend. I used to pretend to get upset when you said that. I’m your best friend, I’d say, and you’d fit me into the picture frame of your arms and say yes, BFFs forever, babygirl.

“Mommy, please!” Hazel has crawled into my lap, I have to put my coffee down so it doesn’t spill. Her breath is sweet on my cheek and her hands feel sticky on my neck. She wraps her fingers around my necklace, something she’s done since she was a baby. I look into her brown eyes, and look away because I just can’t search for something in them that isn’t there.

“Sure, sweetie,” I say, “I’ll do my best.”

“Yay!” Hazel shouts and leaps off me, running back inside, “Thanks, Mommy!”

The wind is chilly, and yellow leaves swirl toward the ground in a surprisingly coordinated dance. I smell woodsmoke and winter and the pumpkin that is starting to rot on our front steps. Hazel and I carved it together two weeks ago, a toothy smile and crossed eyes. Her delight had pressed against the cozy walls of my grief and I had halfheartedly reached for it, parting the heavy curtains that stirred in the breeze of my daughter’s laughter.

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There’s a lot of things they didn’t tell me about Halloween when I was a kid. They told me not to light black candles or accept unwrapped candy. They told me to pick a costume that I could wear tights under because the 31st is almost always the first truly cold night of the year. They didn’t tell me that one day, before I knew it, I’d be the parent trying to explain to my four year old daughter that this is the one night of the year she can talk to strangers. They didn’t tell me that it's easy to be a hypocrite- limit my daughter to five pieces of candy so she doesn’t get cavities, when I fought my own mother on that same hill when I was her age.

There’s a lot of things they didn’t tell me about Halloween when I was a kid. That marriage is a treat and you could be so sweet and really it’s a trick because we say til death due us part never expecting us to have to live up to our word.

I wish a genie had stopped me on the street when I was ten, or a black cat had crossed my path when I was fifteen, or a wizard had cast a spell on me when I was twenty-two. Anything that might have warned me one August night when your daughter and wife were watching a movie on the couch and eating popcorn you were going to fall asleep behind the wheel of your car stoned and drive straight into the middle of an intersection. I wish a magician had pulled a rabbit out of a hat when I was six and told me that boys lie, even the best ones. I wish the fortune teller who read my palms when I was nineteen had kissed my lifeline and told me to call you at five-thirty on August 29th the year I was twenty-six.

I would have called you from the bathroom. I would have been angry at your sleepy voice. I would have demanded to know why you thought you were invincible, that boys are untouchable but men run out of luck. That we may have tripped through countless road trips and came out the other side, but that was before we made a whole human being between us.

I would have been bitter and bitchy toward you for days. You would have had to coax me out of my anger with kisses and promises and eventually proof of your sincerity. Secretly you would have been annoyed and secretly I would have been embarrassed at my own intensity.

I wish the smoke in all the autumn skies of my youth had curled into an omen and I would have called or you would have sneezed suddenly and woken up. That the semi would not have slammed into your spiraling Civic that night, leaving a long haul trucker with nightmares and your family with nothing but dreams.

They didn’t tell me that Halloween will still happen just two months after you die on impact while Hazel and I stuff our faces with popcorn and watch cartoon animals on TV. That inflatable witches will line the street and Hazel will come home from school with backpacks of candy. That somehow in between figuring out how to live without you I have to make a butternut squash costume for a little girl whose joy seems indecent against the sadness of a gray October sky.

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I buy the yellow fabric from Michael’s and green plastic for the stem and white cotton stuffing to fill out the sides. I buy fabric paint and orange paint because if Hazel wants to be a butternut squash I will be damned if someone thinks she’s a lemon. In the check out line, I see River’s mom, hands overflowing with white and black fabric paint.

I try to hide behind a display of wicker pumpkins, but I see Chelsey’s eyes on mine through the slats, and I slink out, reluctantly facing the music.

“Amelia,” her voice is syrupy, sweet. Her eyes are assessing me. She wraps me in a one armed hug and I smell paint and cinnamon and vanilla perfume. “How are you doing?” Her eyes drip sympathy. “Have you been getting my texts?”

“I’m so sorry, my phone has been weird lately. I think I have to get a new one, or update it or something. I’m sorry.” The lies slip out, and I know she knows but doesn’t care. Everything is excusable, you’ve given me a free pass for at least another year.

“Oh my gosh, it’s totally fine,” Chelsey rushes to reassure me. “Well, if Hazel wants to go trick or treating with River, she’s welcome to. I can take the girls, and you can have some time to yourself.”

You used to say that Chelsey would hang the moon for someone if its light made her look like an angel.

“No,” I say, surprising myself. “I’m going to take Hazel out.” I see Chelsey’s surprise. “But we can walk around together.” I amend, I don’t have enough bridges to burn without risking being stranded.

“Okay great!” Chelsey exclaims. She’s next in line, and she steps forward, depositing her supplies in front of the cashier. “What’s Hazel going to be?”

“A squash,” I say, and watch Chelsey’s surprise.

“Like, a pumpkin?” She asks.

“No,” I say, “A butternut squash.”

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Which is, shockingly, extremely hard to make. YouTube, of course, has countless pumpkin costume tutorials, but none for squash. I am forced to watch a blonde woman with tiny spiders drawn into her eyeliner sew and stuff a pumpkin costume for her six year old daughter, and try and modify it for my own daughter’s wishes. Finally, I am gluing on the green plastic stem atop the lumpy tan body of the costume and carefully setting the whole thing on the floor. I assess critically, measure the uneven arm holes and off center stem. The places where I applied orange paint to highlight the naturally uneven surface of the squash looks garish and misplaced.

I feel it welling in my chest. At first I think it’s tears, that I will cry now at the botched costume that lies at my feet. Maybe it’s just pure overwhelming despair, the prospect of raising a daughter alone and reattempting this project equally huge and surely insurmountable.

Whatever it is crests up into the back of my throat and pours out as laughter, surprising me and our tabby, who leaps off the chair where she has kept me company. She glares at me, betrayed that I broke the silence, and rushes away to the solace of a patch of sunlight to lick her wounds.

The laughter brims from me, and I put my hands against my mouth, shocked. The sound bubbles out from between my fingers, falling like raindrops to the costume on the floor. I laugh so hard I have to sit down, brace myself on the cloud of costume beside me.

You would laugh at me. Remember when I tried to hand-make the place settings for our wedding? You’d remind me of my misses with craftiness with a smile and then kiss away any hurt. You would cradle my heart in your hands and cut out the lines of sewing and show me how uneven they were. Look, you would say, two inches to the left and it’s perfect.

The tears turn to sobs. I rip out the stitches, sew them back, two inches to the left. And just like that, it’s perfect. I stop crying, my breath hitching in my throat. I picture your smile, your cocky hands. You asshole, I whisper, holding the costume close to my heart.

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Hazel wants to watch Hocus Pocus. I make her popcorn and a nest of blankets on the couch. I turn on the movie and turn off all the lights except the one lamp she likes. I kiss her forehead, and turn to the kitchen.

“Mommy,” she says, “Can you watch it with me?”

I hesitate. I haven’t been able to watch a movie with Hazel in two months. The last time we sat together watching a movie you were hit so hard that the glass from the windshield broke over you like rain. There was still glass in your hair when they tucked the earth over you on a hot early September afternoon.

“Please, Mommy?” Hazel’s eyes seem huge, more white than brown between the curtains of her lashes. She has my lashes, I fell in love with my own eyes after seeing my daughter’s for the first time.

“The witches scare me,” she says, and holds out her arms to me, suddenly the toddler who sought the safety of my arms after each tragic tumble.

“Okay,” I say, and sit down beside her, rewarded by her warmth and instant delight.

“Thanks, Mommy,” she says, and curls up to me like a comma, a reassurance that the story goes on from here, that maybe all I needed was a break to catch my breath.

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I fall asleep on the couch next to Hazel, and when I get to bed finally my dreams are sticky as cobwebs and trap me, even when I know they're not real and strain to wake up. I dream I am chasing Hazel down the street, my feet crunching over the leaves that the trees shook off.

She’s dressed in a bedsheet, a ghost, and carries an orange plastic pumpkin in her hand. It swings as she runs, and I call out to her to be careful, that she will spill her candy. That she is running too fast. We reach a crosswalk, and I shout for her to stop, to wait for me. She turns her head back, a white expressionless face and round black eyes. Then she spins away, a devious laugh peeling out behind her, and runs into the road, streetlights making her seem impossibly tall.

It’s one of those dreams where time stands still, where my legs are frozen mid stride, each muscle fiber activated yet useless. My shout builds in my throat but will not come out. I see the car hit the little ghost in the road in slow motion, and then time breaks again and my feet hit the ground and I am running.

When I get to her and pull off the sheet, screaming her name, it’s you. I am speechless, hands falling still at my sides. Your face is still and emotionless, and when I reach out to cradle your cheek in my palm I awake with a start. My heart is racing from chasing you through my dreams.

Outside my window, a silver moon hangs low, bumping against the sill suggestively.

Go back, I beg the dead who are crossing over.

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Halloween morning. I am sitting on the front porch. The thirty-first is a Saturday this year and so Hazel is still asleep. Pumpkin spice creamer in my coffee, but tomorrow I’ll switch to peppermint mocha. I’m planning to decorate for Christmas early this year, fill our house with fairy lights and ornaments and pinecones so there’s less room for sorrow.

Our first Halloween together, we fought bitterly the night before. My roommates begged me to go out with them, but I refused. I was sure we were over, and so I dressed up in sweatpants and armored myself with tissues and Reese's pieces.

At 9:00, I heard the doorbell ring, and I cursed myself for leaving the lights on, for parents who would let their kids' parents trick or treat in this neighborhood overrun by college kids like me. I waited for the ringing to stop, but it didn’t. The noise, intolerable to my tear-muddled head, eventually had me opening the door, ready to scare off the demons or witches or mummies that disturbed me.

It was you, with a bouquet of red roses.

Trick or treat, I’m an apologetic boyfriend.

On the porch, I remember that first Halloween together. If I could go back, would I close the door? Weigh the sweetness with the sorrow and I am afraid to guess where the scales would tip.

Treat- she gets seven years with him and he loves her so well.

Treat- he gives her a daughter with her eyes and his smile who loves her nearly as much as he does.

Trick- he leaves her after seven years with a lifetime left.

Trick- every time the doorbell rings for the rest of her life, she’ll imagine it’s him, a dozen red roses. Apologetic husband, he’d say.

I sip my coffee, pumpkin and clove and allspice, the flavors of a season coming to an end.

Trick or treat, I whisper into the still, cold morning. Tonight I’ll put candles in the jack o’lanterns mouth and leave all the lights on, so if you’re out there, you’ll find me from a mile away.

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Hazel loves her costume. She makes me take a thousand pictures in it, and screeches with delight when I show her floppy hat that looks like a squash leaf I ordered for her last minute.

“Thank you, Mommy,” she cries, “Do you think everyone will know what I am?”

Hopefully, I think.

“Of course, baby,” I say, and put on my pointy black hat, a reluctant witch. The mother’s calling card.

We join Sierra and Chelsey and set off down the street, a witch, princess, cow and squash. The air taut, the spirits watching our masquerade.

Hazel fills her basket three times, and everyone says she would be delicious roasted. Each time, pride wells in my chest, familiar and strange.

After, I tuck Hazel into bed, press a kiss to the slope of her cheekbone.

“Sweetheart,” I ask, “Why did you want to be a squash?”

My daughter smiles, and it’s all you.

“Daddy asked me to,” she says shyly, “He said you needed it. I wanted to be a pumpkin.”

If it were a movie, the lights would flicker. A cold finger would trace my spine. I would see you through smoke and shadow and hope.

Instead, I turn away from your ghost. Wrap my arms around our daughter and feel your love, real and eternal with each beat of her heart.