Bridge To Happiness (26 page)

“Funny.” I flipped her off, and then played with the balance weights, but no matter how much I adjusted it, or even after I lifted one foot a bit, I still had to use the heavier black weight that read 150 pounds and then move the smaller weight up and up from there.

“The truth is I’m jealous,” she said.

“Why?”

“That haircut looks really good on you.”

“Thanks,” I said distractedly. Shoeless, the horrific number only went down a pound. “I wonder how much more my long hair would have made me weigh. Ugh.” I tousled my stubby, shag carpet hairdo with one hand and could feel the product in it. There wasn’t much to tousle. It was rather like patting your son on the head after his summer buzz cut was growing out. “At least now I know why I thought the haircut made me look fat,” I said. “And why I thought the cleaners shrunk my slacks.”

Apparently the easiest way to put on twenty five pounds in two months was living on a diet of Belgian chocolates, Wheat Thins,
Froot
Loops, margaritas, and the five dozen chocolate chip cookies Molly made but I ate. I had become a carbohydrate junkie.

To my chagrin, the day after my head collision with the coffee table, and after Molly had made all those cookies for me, I discovered I had missed the bake sale by three weeks. Weakly, I had trudged out of the school office in organizational shame, carrying a box layered with waxed paper and dozens of double-sized, really chewy, chocolate chip pecan cookies.

I had options. I could have taken them to the company office, which would have given me another excuse to show up there, but then I would have to admit to my sons that I screwed up . . . just one more thing their mother couldn’t handle. And what if they told Molly?

Scott had given me the third degree about my hair during my last family dinner at their house, and I could tell from the looks they exchanged that all my children were certain I was falling apart.

“Mom! What did you do? Your hair is gone,” Scott said.

“Scott! It looks fabulous, Mom,” Renee said and she elbowed my son in the ribs.

“It’s awfully short,” Molly said. Clearly she hated it.

“I love it,”
Keely
said.

Phillip frowned and walked in a circle, eyeing me like one did melons at the market. “Didn’t Indian women used to cut their hair as a sign of grief?”

I believe at that moment I regretted that Phillip took history classes. Why couldn’t he have been like those young people Jay Leno randomly interviewed on TV, the ones who don’t know who the President or Vice President are and who think cyclamen is a venereal disease.

My hair was a pointed topic of discussion during the entire dinner, and I left Scott’s feeling less good about myself than I had when I arrived. I didn’t know what people wanted from me, especially my children, and worse yet, I didn’t know what I wanted from myself.

Devouring the cookies became my home remedy, a chocolate and carbohydrate asylum I had committed myself to when I was all alone at home, when the loneness I felt for my husband was more than I could bear and I, too, began to question my sanity. Right at that moment, standing in
Harrie’s
office and looking at the scale, I wasn’t certain there was even one aspect of my life that was under my own control.

Harrie
shoved her tortoise rimmed glasses up her nose. I always wanted
Harrie’s
nose. It was one of those lovely European noses, longer and pointed down just a little at the end, the kind that made her face look like it belonged to one those great De Havilland or Fontaine beauties of the past. “When did you stop exercising?” she asked me.

“Around 1984.”

She laughed. “At your age—”

“Our age,” I said.

“I stand corrected. Bone and aging studies have proven that women over fifty need strength training. You’re behind, March. Hire a trainer. Add cardio, walk more, and buy some weights.”

“And here I thought lifting those cookies to my mouth was enough.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know, I know . . . But I hate exercise,” I muttered quite petulantly.

“Next time we’ll need to do a bone density check on you. You’re probably fine, but make strength training part of your routine.”

What routine was that? Self-pity, I thought sourly.

“Start with some yoga.”

“I’d rather start with some yogurt . . . frozen, with hot fudge.” I held up my hand before she said something. “Okay, I know that was bad.”

Harrie
did the exam and I got dressed and went into her office, where she closed the door and sat down at her desk.

“Am I going to live?” I said, joking.

“Do you want to?” She wasn’t joking.

“
Somedays
, no,” I said truthfully.

“Scott called me, which I why I had the office call you about an appointment. Your kids are worried about you.”

“My kids think I’m nuts because I cut and colored my hair,” I paused, then added, “And got drunk. And had a little fall. But I didn’t need stitches,” I said too brightly.

“Scott said John Cummings told him you had some kind of breakdown in the market.”

I groaned. “Scott knows about that, too? Damn . . ..”

“It sounds to me as if you’re having a tough time. And you certainly have a right to, March. I cannot even imagine. Grief is a terrible thing to deal with. It’s really okay if you need something to help you emotionally, at least something other than Ellie’s deadly margarita lunches. I can give you something. Some Zoloft.”

“You gave that to Ellie for her last two divorces.”

“And she got through them both without killing her exes.”

I laughed because Ellie was a pistol even when she wasn’t spurned or angry. Her divorces thoroughly pissed her off. “But I’m not angry,” I said defensively.

“Are you sure?”

“You think I’m mad at Mike? Oh that’s right. Denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. It’s part of the grief process. Yes, I did buy some books. Why would I be mad at him? Believe me, I am absolutely certain Mike would have rather kept right on living. However, I don’t want to ever
accept
his death,” I said vehemently.

“And there are days when I feel as if my life is spinning out of control.” I was quiet and thought about what I had just said.
Harrie
wasn’t condemning me or judging me. She was my friend. “Well,” I said more quietly. “I’m a little pissed off at God. I wouldn’t mind doing a few rounds with Him.”

“Oh, March. I’m sorry. That can’t be easy to admit.”

“Actually, I’m so angry, it’s not all that difficult,” I said and was surprise by the bitterness in my voice.

Harrie
shook her head. “No one, least of all me, has a right to tell you how to feel. What you decide to do about dealing with all this is up to you. You do what you want to do. I just want you to think about the options, especially when you’re feeling lost and out of control. There are resources to help you.”

I stared down at my clenched hands for a long time.

“Look, if you try them and they don’t help you, you don’t have to stay on the pills, but if they can help why not at least give them a try? That’s why these drugs were created.”

“Our Prozac nation?” I said sarcastically, but she merely stared at me. “I don’t know . . . ”

“Grief counseling isn’t a crutch. For some people, it helps to talk to someone, privately or in a group. I have some names here.” She handed me some business cards. “I think you should consider getting some help. I’m talking to you because I love you. You know that.”

I didn’t want to hear this. I closed my eyes and leaned back in the chair. “I’m not sure medication is for me. And I’m certain group speak is not.” Sitting in a room and telling strangers how I was feeling? I shuddered. “I’d like to think I can be stronger than that. And if I take the meds, doesn’t that mean I’m giving in to this abysmal state I’m in and admitting I can’t go on?”

“Is that such a bad thing to admit?”

“It is when it might mean I’m even a worse mess than my children believe I am.”

“It doesn’t make you a weaker person because you might choose to take an antidepressant. This medication is not addictive. The risks are minimal. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to take it. But it takes about six weeks for them to start to have an effect. I’m going to give you this prescription. You’ll have it if you need it.”

So I left her office more confused than when I went in, and headed for my car, but I stopped and turned, looking up and down the street. Figuring I needed the exercise, I might as well start immediately. After checking my watch—as if I actually had something to do—I walked up the hill, and down another, and another, stopped at a toy shop and bought some puzzles for my grandchildren, then left and went down along Market Street to Nordstrom’s.

I tried on dresses for Mickey’s graduation; the size fourteens were tight and the few size
sixteens
that even existed in this new world where a size ten/twelve was an extra large, fit in the hips, but gapped in the arms and bust. The size-two saleswoman suggested I check out the plus size department.

Though I had always been a twelve, sometimes a ten, even in maternity clothes, I wasn’t any longer. Eventually I found a black, boat-necked, cotton designer sheath with five percent spandex in size fourteen and a black
Spanx
that pretty much went from neck to knee.

My mother would have laughed and called it a full body girdle. I could hear her goofy laughter in my mind. She cackled like a chicken when she laughed. We all teased her about it, but my father was the worst. He used to say, ‘Beatrice. You’re going to lay an egg any minute.’

She had died five years ago, gone quietly one night just about six months after my father. You hear about those couples who grow old together and one dies first and other soon after. Both quietly. I had thought Mike and I would be one of those couples. Still I missed my mother, especially now without Mike. She would have been my rock. I made a mental note to call my sister May tonight. There were only the two of us
Randolphs
left, and I hadn’t been very good about calling her back lately, and still she called regularly from back east. She knew how lost I was.

I sat in the Café, eyeing the fifty-grams-of-fat, six hundred calorie muffins—chocolate and carrot, both with pecan-crusted tops—the thick cheese and meat
paninis
, and wedges of bacon quiche, but only ordered two big glasses of iced tea with extra lemon. When I finished them off, I gathered my shopping bags and took one of the silver, snaking escalators up to a beautifully displayed, truly yummy, designer handbag department. I had decided to have leather for lunch.

I understood
I was not in a healthy state, that
Harrie
had a point, so I took up exercising. Power-walking to be exact, which was actually better than running over all the city’s steep hills and curving streets. I wasn’t certain I should even start running in my fifties, and since that sounded like a really good excuse, I used it.

I had hated track and field in high school and tried to ditch the class as often as I could. Back in the seventies, when jogging overtook the nation and health came to the forefront of our social culture, there was this great
Henny
Youngman joke: ‘Everyone’s jogging. I can’t jog. My cigarette goes out and the ice cubes fall out of my drink.’

Even now it made me smile. To make
Harrie
happy, I bought a set a weights—an excuse to also get a cute little pink and black Prada gym bag—and couple of books and DVDs on strength training, and learned I had muscles in places I didn’t know could be sore. I took pictures of myself lifting weights, then contorted on the floor in mock pain with a digital camera and emailed them to
Harrie
.