Bridge To Happiness (21 page)

“I can pay your bills for you if you want.”

“No!” I snapped, then regretted it immediately when I saw my son’s face. His offer was automatic. That he cared and was thoughtful was not something to shout at him for.

What was it that made me feel as if I had to protect myself from my own children who were trying to protect me? “I’m sorry. Thank you for offering, but I can handle the bills. I don’t want you taking care of me. I just need for everything to be normal . . . to feel normal,” I added, my voice drifting off. I wanted to spin my life backwards and relive my adult years and my marriage to Mike all over again, but I couldn’t say that aloud, because I knew my children had their own regrets.

The temperature buzzer on the oven went off.

“What’s for dinner?” Phil asked, clearly changing the subject.

“Meatloaf. Food of the gods. A gourmet specialty.” I filled a loaf pan, topped it with a ketchup, dry mustard, and brown sugar sauce, and put it in the oven along with some roasted potatoes drizzled in garlic infused olive oil.

“You’re fixing Mickey’s favorites,” Phil said.

“Had I known you were coming, I’d have made spaghetti and meatballs.”

“My favorite.”

“Your favorite.” I smiled at him

“What’s going on with him?”

“I think he’s afraid to pick a college that’s too far away.” I washed my hands and dried them on a towel. “Would you talk to him when he takes you home? I want him to pick the school he wants, not the one he thinks is closest to home.”

“Didn’t he apply to Stanford?”

“He’s waitlisted.”

“Okay, I’ll talk to him.” He looked at me through wise eyes. “Tell me something.”

“What?”

“Are you sleeping okay?”

My hands went to my bare face and then to my hair, which was falling out of the rubber band. “I look like hell, don’t I?”

“You look tired.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said, certain I would never be fine again.

He placed the grocery sack in front of me. “I brought you a present.”

“What’s this?” I looked inside and there were four industrial sized cans of Pledge Lemon Oil Furniture Polish. My son’s expression was half knowing, half sardonic. I burst out laughing.

“I didn’t want you to run out. In the middle of the night . . . ” he said dryly. “You know, when you’re sleeping so well.”

Other than a few lapses,
I focused more diligently on hiding my grief from my kids. I stopped grocery shopping in the middle of the night and was cautiously quiet when I went out for lattes at an hour when most of the city was asleep in their warm beds. I certainly didn’t run the vacuum at four in the morning anymore or else my youngest son—the mouth that roared—would have told the others like he did before.

I believed I was becoming pretty accomplished at being Wonder Widow whenever my children were around. I was certain I was showing them how well I was moving forward and powering through without their father.

Show was the right word. All for show. I came from a generation who believed mothers were strong. Mothers shaped futures. But I wasn’t exactly the 1950’s prototype for the perfect mom. My job as a mother was important to me and certainly part of how I had identified myself for years, because I took the job seriously. My kids had been tantamount in my life. I’d spent years learning balance between my children and my husband. Now I was unbalanced.

Since Mike’s death, I had worked very hard at making my time with them as normal as our lives could be now. They never saw me sobbing on my bed. They didn’t see my red, swollen eyes when I woke up at three a.m., and they were in their own homes or at work and school during those times when I sat in a cotton field of wadded up Kleenexes.

But it was later that morning when I had another bone-chilling moment of seeing Mike in our bedroom. For that to happen twice was tough on my sanity and pretend-strength, especially when I was so unprepared.

This time I was coming out of the bathroom soaking wet and wrapped in a towel and thought I saw him walking across the room to our dresser. I screamed his name, as if screaming could make him stay. My towel slipped from my hand and I was standing half-wet and naked.

But he wasn’t there. Another wavering shadow from the tree outside swept over the carpet, and I swore I would cut that blasted tree down before I went completely mad. I was feeling so unhinged that I put on one of Mike shirts, buttoned it down the front like I had when we were first married. Perhaps I thought holding onto something of his would help me. But I just stood there until my hands weren’t in tight fists and I could breathe evenly.

There is a solitude that comes with loss, an aloneness that wraps itself around you and makes you feel as if you are drifting through time like a helium balloon with no one left to hold the string.

I had been alone in our home for years, since Mike had always worked weekdays. But now, the house was my whole world and it was empty, even when people were there. That aloneness had settled into my bones and blood and I carried it with me all the time even though I didn’t want to feel that way. I wanted to do the opposite of everything I was feeling. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to sing. I wanted to live.

I’ve always played music too loud, and not to cover up loneliness. I’ve known it was too loud but I was still a child of the Sixties who liked to feel the music and lose myself in it, so most days I kept the house sound system tuned to a local rock station as background.

But now a raspy-voice Mick Jagger was singing about shadows, so I turned the volume up until the wall speakers were throbbing and I couldn’t stand still any longer. I sang as loud as my voice could sing about shadows and I danced in front of the French doors as if I were trying to exorcise Mike’s ghost, the shadows of him haunting me. Right outside was the stupid damned tree that was trying to drive me insane. I turned around and around, arms in the air as I sang, spinning around the room until I was dizzy.

The song ended and I stopped, stumbled a few feet and fell onto the bed, hoarse, half laughing, half crying. I was curled around the Kleenex box when my sobs finally dropped to whimpers of self-pity.

“Mom? I just picked up the keys for Tahoe. I’ve got a photo shoot this weekend and I—”

I sat up, horrified, but was too late to hide. I was sitting in the middle of a hundred wadded up tissues, wearing Mike’s shirt and still half-sobbing and trying to catch my breath.

Molly stood in the doorway of the bedroom. My daughter had never looked at me that way.

“Molly,” I choked out her name. “Darling . . . ”

She turned and ran away from me as if I were the devil incarnate.
Oh, God, what have I done?
By the time I was almost down the stairs, I heard the front door slam shut. Outside, on the front porch, I saw her car back up too fast, whip around as I chased after her, but she sped through the green light at the corner.

A cable car went rattling by. Someone let out a catcall. A horn honked. I stood there on the sidewalk of the
crookedest
street in the world, wearing only Mike’s shirt and telling myself it was not hatred I saw in my daughter’s eyes.

I called Molly again and again, but there was no answer, and when I called Stone Morgan, I was told she had left to do a photo shoot in the mountains and wouldn’t be back until early next week. Chasing her down was not an option, and again I wasn’t really up to a confrontation. Frankly, I was afraid of what she would say to me after that look. When it comes to working things out with my daughter, I was a coward.

I decided I needed something to do besides hallucinating, shopping for purses (I’d bought two Gucci bags that week) and feeling sorry for myself, and I wanted to take charge of something and feel as if I were capable. Making my life appear as normal as possible became my single-minded goal.

Without warning anyone, I walked into Cantrell, Inc for the first time since the week we’d lost Mike and met head on those looks of pity and helplessness I hated. Everyone at the company loved him and had no idea what to say to me. Some famous philosopher once said that life doesn’t exist without death, and without a moment of life, there can be no death. But the truth about death is: no one knows what to say.

There isn’t anything you can say, really, except for the one sage friend who warned me people would say the stupidest things to me. While it seemed like odd advice at first, I found out pretty quickly that she was right. In their need to say something soothing or to be of help, people say the exact wrong thing.

Perhaps the clear knowledge I would be facing those looks and condolences was one of the reasons I decided to not let anyone know I was coming. From the house, I drove straight to the offices, lived up to my name and marched right in like a lion at eight A.M., and went to work in the graphics department, calling in my managers and assistants to schedule a meeting that afternoon, before I asked to see the final art concepts for the next season. I caused a bit of commotion, but that kept everyone’s focus on work instead of what to say.

The number of image files on the computer was huge. Apparently, because in my absence, everyone had an opinion and no one wanted to make the final decisions, so the designs were not cohesive and we had some of everything. Still, all the new graphic designs for this winter’s lines of boards and skis had to be ready and in place before the end of April.

A few years back, Mike and I had made the decision to keep the graphics department as was—a single department within the company to work on all the lines, boards and skis, along with the clothing end of the company, which was expanding fast. So I spent most of the morning going through a computer slideshow of sample graphic images, before I printed out a stack of proof sheets, sipped my coffee and
ex’d
out the weaker images with a black marker.

Because I was behind, it was imperative that I narrow down the number of images by almost eighty percent immediately, and I made some notes to discuss color changes and adjustments in imaging, before I met with the graphic designers that afternoon to hash out the top designs.

I had a real problem when I returned to the computer and called up the SKISTAR art; it was dated in my opinion, and not as graphically dynamic as today’s winter sports enthusiasts and youth demanded. I fully intended to send everyone back to the drawing board. The exception was a separate file I found with two of the most amazing image designs for the new
Spider O
line of high-tech alpine skis, and a really incredibly sharp logo—a bright orange O shadowed in silver gray with a stylized black spider inside of it.

“Wow . . . ” I muttered and picked up the phone. “Phillip. This logo for Spider’s line is amazing.”

“Mom? What are you doing here?”

“Working. The same thing I’ve been doing for thirty years.

“I’ll be right there.” He hung up.

I stared at the phone in my hand, then quickly called the graphics manager for the SKISTAR division, and told him I wanted to see more from the artist who designed the
Spider O
images.

“What
Spider O
images?”

“They’re in a file under Olsen. I have them on my computer. I’ll email them to you.”

“I’ll take care of it,” he said and hung up, just as Phil came through the door.

“I don’t think you should be here,” my son said to me. “You don’t have to do this, Mom. We can handle it.”

“Sit, please. Based on the designs I’ve just seen for your next season, I do need to be here.” I pushed the SKISTAR proof sheets across my desk. “These are abysmal.”

Phil agreed.

“But the new
Spider O
line is a winner, especially this logo. Whoever did this has the best eye I’ve seen in a long time. I want this logo on the tips of every ski in that line. And see how it’s elongated in the face of the ski? Perfect. You don’t have problem with them, do you?”