Good Grief (27 page)
“I could have used boring,” I tell her.
I lock the front door and flip the sign over in the window:
SORRY, WE
’
RE CLOSED
.
It makes me sad to think how many days the sign might have to hang there.
I awaken from a starchy dreamless sleep, dim brown light seeping through the window shade and lace curtains. The numbers on the clock radio click forward to ten-thirty. The air in the room is thick and sour and presses down on me, making it impossible to lift my head. Another hot day.
A year without Ethan.
I am matter, and the pain of missing him is antimatter, and when you put the two together,
kaboom,
there’s nothing left of me to get out of bed and go clean up the bakery.
I’ll never miss Ethan any less than I did on the day that he died. I know this, because I don’t miss my mother any less than the day she drove off the road twenty-three years ago. My grief is diminished, but it feels permanent, like a small scar. I have brown hair, brown eyes, wear size seven shoes. I miss my husband, miss my mother. Two chips out of my heart like birthmarks. Today I’m exhausted from carrying on as though this is all right.
I’m starting over! I’m moving! I’m sleeping with someone else! I’m going back to school! I’m opening a business!
Screw it. I’m lying down.
I tug the hydrangea coverlet over my head.
I’ll clean the bakery tomorrow. Stay in bed today. Create a sanctuary of sheets and pillows.
But how pathetic to call in sick to your own business. No matter how ill Ethan felt, no matter how loosely his pants hung from his winnowing waist, he rarely missed a day of work, unless he was in the hospital. Every morning he waved and blew me a kiss from the driveway, then climbed into his car and drove off, fueled by optimism I envied. I waved back from the dining room window, drumming up the nerve to go to my own new job.
I smell coffee and hear the tinkering of dishes in the kitchen, where Marion is probably reading over Miss Manners and eating her two slices of rye with marmalade. Peering over the side of the bed, I spot my waitress uniform balled in a clump on the floor. Nest egg overboard. My bladder feels on the verge of bursting, and my throat’s parched from the champagne. Colonel Cranson stares down at me angrily.
Get up and check on Marion,
he demands.
Take a shower, get back to work!
But a magnet pulls me into the center of the bed.
Sandy’s right. It’s easy to believe for several months that someone who died is just out of town. But the one-year mark brings certainty.
A year ago today I was at the hospital with Ethan. The last day was the worst, because he had such trouble breathing. His lungs sounded as though they were trying to percolate coffee. His chart said he didn’t want CPR or tube feeding, only a morphine drip. The oncologist said we would keep him comfortable. Everything had been as calmly and carefully planned as a trip out of town. Still, I felt hysteria boil under my skin. It made me fidget and itch and want to holler at the people coming off the elevators.
Somebody
do
something!
“This is called the agonal phase,” the doctor explained, touching my elbow. “Many family members prefer not to stay for this.” He assured me that while it sounded as though Ethan were in pain, he was not. I remember straining to concentrate on noises other than Ethan’s breathing: the tap-tap of Marion’s knitting needles and the squish-squish of sneakers and the click-click of high heels passing in the hall. The
bing!
of the elevator bell and the rush of TV sitcom laughter fading in and out like surf.
I close my eyes now and try to think of something else. All I can see is the panicked look on Marjorie Bison’s face as she choked down a clump of raw cookie dough. My whole body shudders with remorse. Sometimes you want to turn back the clock so far that it seems you’d have to go all the way back to second grade to fix everything.
The phone rings. I hear Marion tiptoe up the creaky stairs and hover outside my room. “She’s sleeping, Drew,” she whispers loudly. “I’ll tell her—”
I hold my breath as she shuffles back down the stairs, wishing that it were my grief partner, Gloria, who had called.
Gloria says that if you’re going to have a bad day, you should have a
good
bad day. Go all out on a pity party with whatever you want. Sandy looked a little uncomfortable as she recommended this, worried that we’d drink too much or overmedicate. Now I want to call Gloria and ask her how to have a good bad day instead of just a
bad
bad day.
I pull my purse off the night table, dig her number out of my wallet, and dial her house on the old black rotary phone by the bed.
“Rachel?” a gruff voice answers. “Don’t hang up this time.” I figure it must be Teddy, Gloria’s teenage son.
“Is Gloria there?”
“She’s not home.” The boy sounds disappointed, irritated.
“Teddy?” I remember how when Crystal blew up M-80s at school, Gloria said that was nothing compared to Teddy’s deeds: He was caught skinny-dipping at the town pool and even hot-wired and “borrowed” the neighbor’s car.
“It’s Sophie Stanton. Your mom’s friend? Would you please tell her I called?”
“Okay,” he mumbles. I can tell he’s not going to write down the message. He takes a deep breath.
“You okay?” I ask him.
“Yeah.” But he sounds despondent.
“Rachel your girlfriend?”
“She broke up with me.” His voice quavers. “Last night.”
“That hurts. I know.”
“It
sucks,
” he says accusingly.
“My husband died,” I tell him. I have the urge to eat something hearty. A steak.
“I’m sorry.” He blows his nose loudly.
“It’s okay,” I say, a little embarrassed. “It was a year ago.” The wind picks up outside. “A year ago today.”
“My sister died.”
“I know.” I wonder what it’s like to be the child who lived. How much pressure that must be. “Do you miss her?”
“Yeah,” he says tentatively. “Of course.”
But why all the fuss?
his tone seems to say.
Why not just love the living now?
“Dead people never do anything wrong,” I tell him.
“What are you
talking
about?”
“What do you do that drives your mother crazy?”
“Everything. Leave, like,
one
dirty dish in the living room. She’s so anal.”
“Your sister never did stuff like that, right?”
“She got straight As,” he says, annoyed.
“My new boyfriend has faults.” I lie back against the pillows. The word
boyfriend
still sounds dippy to me, as though I’m a teenager who should be gabbing on a Princess phone. “But my dead husband is perfect. That’s how it works.”
“Yeah,” Teddy says, perking up a little.
I notice that the wallpaper’s curling away from the wall in one corner of the room. There’s a pause. Inertia prevents me from saying good-bye and hanging up.
“I’m not sure this guy’s really my boyfriend,” I tell Teddy, considering Drew’s public marriage proposal at the party. Down on one knee in his tuxedo, already looking like a groom.
“Oh.” I hear Teddy losing interest, his fingers clacking on a keyboard.
“What do you like about Rachel?” I ask, trying to win back his attention.
“I don’t know.” Teddy stops typing and sniffles. “She makes me feel good.” There’s a pause and he coughs. “Her hair and stuff.”
“You’ll meet someone else,” I tell him. “Someone pretty who will love you back.”
“What are you, like, the psychic hotline?”
I laugh.
“I don’t want anyone else,” he grumbles.
“I know.”
As I hang up the phone the wind gusts suddenly, sucking the window shade against the screen. Maybe this is a sign from Ethan. But it feels more like the grief and depression scratching to get back in.
What I really want is some sort of “It’s okay, I’m here” sign from Ethan. The worst part about grief is that it’s so one-sided, so unrequited. Lost loved ones don’t reciprocate, when you get right down to it. You try to convince yourself that they do. But Ethan hurts me every day with his indifference, his aloofness. I pray, I journal, I speak to him. Not a peep. He’s like the popular kids in high school, breezing by in a flash with no eye contact or acknowledgment of my existence.
I flop back against the pillows, irritated. The nerve of these dead people! Not a single word from Mother or Ethan. What do they have to do that’s so important? Sure, you’re dead. But there’s such a thing as
manners.
The lengths I’ve gone to: the flowers tossed into the sea, the candles burned, the photo albums. The shrink visits, the grief groups, the antidepressants. Nothing from them.
I miss Ethan, but I
blame
him, too. Blame him for this pain, for his illness and death, even. Working himself to the point of exhaustion! Returning to that poisonous cubicle as soon as his cancer was in remission. Roasting his privates with that stinking laptop. Maybe
that’s
why we couldn’t have a baby.
Before, I blamed medical technology. (You call this advanced? We’ll burn it out or poison you or cut it out?
Hello!
) I blamed bum luck. I searched for meaning, read books:
When Bad Things Happen to Good People. The Problem with Pain.
I sit up and grab the framed picture of Ethan and me that I keep on the night table. We’re at a party, arm in arm, laughing. While I’m looking at the photographer, Ethan’s distracted by something, gazing off to the side at someone who’s probably told a joke.
Look at me when I’m talking to you!
Hot tears make my cheeks itch. I set down the picture and pick up the little china mouse that sits on the lace doily beside it. I’ve tried not to move too much of the bed-and-breakfast bric-a-brac at Colonel Cranson’s house, since I don’t really live here. I don’t really live
anywhere.
I hurl the mouse against the wall and it pops and shatters, making room for something else on the night table. Clearing one or two cobwebs from my heart.
Somehow the broken mouse makes me feel a little better, as an aspirin might. I wipe my eyes with a corner of the sheet. The house is eerily quiet. I wonder what Marion’s up to, whether she’s broiling mail in the oven. I picture black smoke snaking up the stairs, flames eating through the calico wallpaper. Slowly, I slide my legs out of bed. Somehow I will make it through this day. The first day of the second year without my husband.
In the kitchen, I find Marion at the ironing board with the radio tuned to the oldies station, singing along while she presses rags.
“‘Sweet Caroline . . .’!” she belts out merrily, jumping when I appear beside her. “You’re up? I made you soup.”
A pot of chicken and rice soup simmers vigorously on the stove. Marion ladles some into a bowl and sets it on the table with crackers and a spoon.
It’s too hot for soup,
I want to tell her.
And no one eats soup for breakfast. Okay, maybe in Korea they do. Or on your planet, where they iron rags.
I sit down and take a sip of the soup. It feels good against the back of my throat. A salve.
“Can I take you somewhere?” I ask Marion. “Shopping?” I don’t think she remembers this is the anniversary of Ethan’s death. “Out to lunch?” I decide not to mention Ethan. If I didn’t remember that he died on this day, I probably wouldn’t want someone to remind me. Lucidity can be a drag.
“We better stay home,” Marion says, frowning. “So you can get well and go back to school tomorrow.”
“Work,” I tell her.
“Pardon?”
“Back to work.”
“Right. At the bakery.” She raises a crooked finger in the air, proud of this recollection.
I take a handful of crackers and leave her with the rags, heading out the back door across the porch and into the garden.
It’s a bright July morning that promises something. Green trees, blue sky, pink roses. It all seems like false advertising.
“Ethan?” I say.
Nothing.
I toss the crackers into the grass and sit cross-legged on the brick path. It’s warm from the sun.
I feel a twang of guilt as I recall how sometimes I had to get away from Ethan when he was sick, get away from his illness. I’d make up an errand—a trip to the store or post office—so I could escape the house. I’d take my time, then drive home slowly, crying in the car, not wanting to cry too much in front of Ethan.
One afternoon, a cop pulled me over. There was no siren, just the blue swirl of his lights in my rearview mirror, slow, like a dream. I pulled off the road. I was way over to the side anyway, hugging the edge in case anyone wanted to get by. The cop probably figured I was drunk.
“You all right?” he asked, peering past me into the backseat.
I nodded, handed him my license. He looked at it and handed it back.
“You should wear your seat belt.” He pointed to my chest. Seat belts seemed unnecessary by then. Seat belts, sunblock, life vests. Why bother? I pulled on the seat belt and tried to smile.
“Mind if I ask you to get out of the car?” He was apologetic, gently patting the side of my door.
I killed the engine, unhooked the belt, and crawled out. The policeman asked me to put my feet together, close my eyes, and count to thirty. I obeyed, hoping I wasn’t swaying like a palm tree in the wind. The whole time I wanted to explain that I wasn’t drunk, just afraid.
Now, I lean against the edge of the porch. An ant crawls along a crack in the brick that must be like the Grand Canyon to him. He carries a speck of something white.
One year.
The wind picks up suddenly and a swirl of dust forms in a funnel, leaves and a bit of trash spiraling toward the top. Grit flies around me. I close my eyes, clenching them shut. The world inside my eyelids is a burnt red color. Then I feel something. A breath, a sigh, a chuckle. A tiny hug. It’s not external, as I had expected. It isn’t in the sky or in the trees. It’s somewhere quiet and safe within me.
I hear the crunching of footsteps on the path and realize I’m lying on my back beside the porch, the sun warming my face. Shielding my eyes with one hand, I peer up through my fingers at stripes of blue sky. Then Crystal’s face appears, followed by a swatch of pink tank top.
“Dude,” she says. The sky turns yellow as she holds a bouquet of yellow roses over me. “Here.”
