payment page
Lindsey’s face flushed; mine flushed up in heaven.
I forgot my father in the family room and my mother counting silver. I saw Lindsey move toward Samuel Heckler. She kissed him; it was glorious. I was almost alive again.
Susie often watches her sister Lindsey, vicariously experiencing what life might have been through her sister. In this passage from Chapter 5, even though one sister is dead and the other is alive, they share a reaction to Samuel Heckler’s gift: both their faces flush. When Lindsey kisses Samuel, Susie feels “almost alive” because she too delights in the moment. For now, Lindsey is a conduit through which Susie experiences everything she will miss. However, Susie can only know that which she herself experienced while she was still alive. It is not until later that Susie will understand what it means to have sex, since that was not an experience she had while alive. Thus, Susie’s encounter with Ray allows her to enjoy kissing with and for her sister. As she wryly notes, Lindsey would not have told her about the kiss, so she’s able to know more while dead than alive. For Susie, the thrill of a first kiss is so intense that it transcends the difference between life and death.
“When the dead are done with the living, the living can go on to other things," Franny said.
"What about the dead?" I asked. "Where do we go?”
She wouldn’t answer me.
Although the novel proposes that the dead and the living are intertwined, this passage from Chapter 12 suggests that they must eventually go their separate ways. Elsewhere, Franny explains to Susie that her heaven will expand and change as she focuses less on why she was murdered and watches her family less jealously. But, although Susie does materialize on Earth several times, the implication of the passage is more figural than literal. It is not her spectral presence that prevents her living family from moving on to other things, but rather her memory. Even though Susie is dead, the memory of her is very much alive, and it prevents her parents and siblings from fully living themselves. Franny’s refusal to answer Susie’s question about what happens to the dead is part of the novel’s general reluctance to consider religious questions. Nonetheless, it is the case that as the living begin to move on from the dead, the dead too are free to do other things. In Susie’s case, she shifts to a different kind of heaven where she dances happily with her grandfather.
We stood—the dead child and the living—on either side of my father, both wanting the same thing. To have him to ourselves forever. To please us both was an impossibility.
As this passage from Chapter 18 makes clear, both Susie and Buckley long for their father’s love and attention. For Buckley, Jack has been the most constant presence in his life and their bond is very strong. As Jack recovers from his heart attack, Buckley dreads the idea of losing him. In heaven, Susie acknowledges that her father’s death would allow her to exist with him. She would be less lonely in heaven were he to join her there. But the desires of the living and the dead are incompatible. Jack can only exist in one place, and the scene ends with Buckley praying to Susie to protect their father’s life. On Earth, the needs of the living must take precedence over those of the dead, as Susie comes to realize while watching this scene. With this knowledge, she moves closer to understanding what it means to be dead, as her visiting grandfather makes clear.
