Good Grief (13 page)

“Honey, can you hear me?” I say, and I’m not sure why I’m calling her honey. This is what a mother calls a daughter. Crystal raises a stiff arm toward me, her hands mottled with red rings, rust-colored foam bubbling up around the wounds. I feel guilty, because I don’t want to touch her. Hopefully she’ll fall asleep so I can leave. I back away from the bed, trying to think of a reason to get out.

“I’ll be right back,” I gurgle. “I forgot something.” I turn toward the door and Ethan’s there, in a wheelchair, sunken eyes, chattering teeth, a Foley bag bulging with too-yellow urine. I want to hug him, but I don’t want to touch him.

I turn back toward Crystal. Her brown monkey hand reaches for me. Her eyes are sharp, wanting to know why I’m leaving. I can’t leave anyway, because my feet won’t go. They are heavy and numb and welded to the floor.

When I awaken, I’m already sitting up. Something presses on my chest, and my pulse pounds in my temples. My arms are asleep, prickly and heavy as logs. I shake and pinch them. A sour burned taste sticks in the back of my throat, and I’m sure a whorl of smoke hovers by the ceiling; when I snap on the light and fumble for my glasses, it vanishes. Every surface of the room is papered with swirling calico wallpaper, even the ceiling and the light switch plates. When I close my eyes I still see the dizzying sprays of cornflowers.

I try to calm myself by slowly inhaling and exhaling, but my lungs fill only partway. Something woolen clogs them. I imagine my lungs shrinking until they are as small as kidney beans, only two teaspoons of air for my whole body.

“I’m having a heart attack!” I shout into the room. My voice sounds thin and strange. The wood floors glisten sternly. A walnut from the tree in the yard blasts the roof. I stumble out of bed, pull on jeans and a sweatshirt, grab my purse, keys, and coat, and lunge out of the house into the moist night.

At the emergency room I can’t sit down. Driving fifty miles per hour down the quiet streets of Ashland, I failed to realize that I was driving myself right back into my nightmare: the hospital. Suddenly I picture Ethan sick and curled in bed, the covers a white snarl around his shrunken waist.

I pace in front of a woman whose husband fell and hit his head on a wood stove. Her eyes dart back and forth from the big black clock on the wall to the clerk sitting behind a sliding glass window.

When I was a teenager, I baby-sat for a very literal-minded boy who thought that Colonel Sanders actually worked at every Kentucky Fried Chicken and Jesus actually lived in every church. This is how I think of Ethan—that he’s somewhere in every hospital now. That’s where I last saw him, where I left him. I imagine he might roll by on a gurney, thin white arms reaching toward me.

A doctor wearing pale green scrubs hustles down a nearby corridor. I remember loathing that green—the color of illness and surgery. The color of death. I
had
to come to the hospital tonight, though; I don’t want to die of a heart attack at home alone, where no one would find me for days. I picture the polite but finicky bow-tie man who sits at the same table in my section every Thursday night at Le Petit Bistro and orders the Caesar salad and coq au vin with no garnish because he can’t stand parsley. He might pipe up eventually and ask, “Where’s my usual waitress?” Then Bill might show up at Colonel Cranson’s and find me sprawled in some sad corner of the house.

The clerk behind the admissions desk yawns and stretches. Things are moving too slowly here. Adrenaline is sharp and bright in my blood, and I want to run to my car and drive back to San Jose, the Honda slicing down I-5, my heart a rocket in my chest. I should call Ruth. I should call Dad. I should call some Person in Case of Emergency.

“Sophie Stanton?” a voice calls through the emergency room door.

I sit alone on a gurney behind a curtain gulping air until a tired-looking doctor in a white coat appears. He presses two cushiony fingertips to my wrist, studying the floor thoughtfully as he takes my pulse. Then he tips up my chin and peers into my eyes with a sharp white light. His hair is silvery gray and cut short. It looks soft, like a dandelion. I have the urge to cup it with the palm of my hand.

“I’m thinking this is merely your garden-variety panic attack,” he says a little apologetically, resting a warm palm on my shoulder. “Been under stress lately?” He straddles a black stool and wheels it up to the edge of the examining table.

I explain that my husband died, I just moved here, and I’m trying to learn to wait tables without throwing boiling shrimp on people. I stop talking, embarrassed that I’m taking his time away from patients who are truly sick or injured.

The doctor smiles. He pulls a prescription pad out of the pocket of his white jacket.

“These will help you sleep.” He scribbles out a prescription. I explain that I’m already on antidepressants, but he says these tranquilizers are okay to take occasionally, too.

I clutch the slip of paper a little too hard, and it crumples.

“You can take them during the day, but not if you’re going to drive.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m also going to have you checked out by a cardiologist.” He writes a doctor’s name and number on another sheet. “Just remember, though,” he says, patting my arm, “the death of a loved one, moving, and changing jobs are among the most stressful events in life.”

Ha. Three down. I’ve scored a hat trick. I want to go home with this dandelion doctor, become his adopted teenage daughter, and lie on his sofa all day, drinking coffee milkshakes and reading movie star magazines.

The cardiologist wants to run a few tests, which worries me. That’s how it all started with Ethan.
Probably nothing. (Reassuring slap on the back.) Let’s just order a few tests to be sure.

For twenty-four hours I wear a monitor strapped to my chest that records my pulse as I scramble eggs and dash from the house to the car, chased by the neighbor’s belligerent German shepherd.

Back at the hospital, I have an echocardiogram, lying under a nubby cotton blanket in a dark room while a technician moves a wand across my chest, ultrasound peeking at my insides. At the foot of the bed I watch my heart, a squishy frog of a thing on a black-and-white TV screen. It looks lonely in its murky surroundings.

Cheer up,
I want to tell it.
You look good.

My heartbeat creeps along the bottom of the screen.
What if in the end, you’re all alone?
it seems to say.
The shrinks, doctors, grief groups. None of them can help.

“This is some kind of machine,” I tell the technician.

“Un-hunh. I know it,” she says.

I ask her about her degree, how long it took her to learn to run the contraption. Maybe this is a job for me. I’d like to spend my days in this warm, quiet room, keeping tabs on people’s hearts.

The technician smiles and tells me I better hold still.

The cardiologist calls a few days later to report that my tests are fine. He suggests that I drink plenty of fluids and get enough sleep and exercise. He adds that I can take the tranquilizers as needed.

Negative test results! This is the relief I craved when Ethan first got sick. That’s when I wanted the doctor to peer over his reading glasses and say calmly,
It’s nothing. You can go home now.
Instead, he nervously straightened the manila folders on his desk, checked his watch, cleared his throat, and began discussing options.

14

What if I have a panic attack at
work
? I ponder this possibility the next morning as I’m pressing my blouse and vest. I lean into the iron too hard and the vest starts to melt like caramel.

What if suddenly I get that wool sock sensation in my lungs and can’t breathe or speak to the customers, can’t ask them if they’d like a baked potato or rice? What if I’m in the middle of taking an order and my throat closes up and I cough and choke and have to hide in the bathroom or drive back to the emergency room?

I yank the iron’s plug from the wall and bolt into the kitchen. After digging the bottle of tranquilizers from my purse, I crank off the childproof top and tap two tablets into my palm. They’re the comforting pale peach color of baby aspirin. I swallow them, then slip on my vest and sit at the kitchen table. Nothing. I lace up my sensible black rubber-soled work shoes and try eating a piece of toast. But my throat won’t open. The doctor at the hospital said that I shouldn’t take the tranquilizers every day, but rather keep them in case of emergency, like a fire extinguisher. This morning the blaze seems insatiable. As I delve into the bottle for a few more of the tablets, I think of the helicopters that fly over forest fires dumping buckets of flame retardant from the sky.

I swallow another pill with a few sips of juice, then another. Finally my throat loosens. I wedge the clip-on bow tie under my collar and head off on my walk to Le Petit Bistro, the trees outside seeming more affectionate than usual.

I arrive at work to discover that the restaurant is underwater now. Everything is dreamy and blue. The other waiters swim and float by me, words bubbling out of their mouths toward the surface of the room. As I approach my first table of customers, a three-top, I feel rubbery, boneless, and decide it would be best if I sat down. I slide into the booth beside a man in a lovely gray jacket. I wonder if it’s flannel or wool and explore its mossy surface with my fingertips. Very nice.

“Let me tell you about the thpethals,” I begin. While I don’t know these people, I do love them. I ask the woman sitting across from me where she got her fabulous pink-and-red silk scarf. I adore how older folks dress up for the theater. She fingers the scarf and looks at her husband.

The man next to me removes my hand from his sleeve and sets it in my lap, where it looks strange and far away. Bad hand! The couple sitting across from me leans over the table in unison, swimming my way, their mouths parted, lips forming fishy Os.

“Do you work here?” the man asks.

“Serpently,” I tell him. “I do.” But my head doesn’t want to stay up anymore. I lay my cheek on the tablecloth, which is stiff with starch.

“Sophie, get
up.
” That would be the voice of Bill, the food and beverage manager. He leads me to a chair in the back of the restaurant and sits me down by the coat rack. “Have you been drinking?” Instead of waiting for an answer, he rushes back to the table and apologizes to the customers. I hear him say “recently pickled.” Or maybe it’s “recently widowed.” Bill calls a cab to take me home. I clutch the coat rack for support, hoist myself up, and drag it like an IV pole across the crowded room.

“Good Gob,” I hear Bill mumble as the door of the restaurant thumps me in the rear on my way out.

I sleep for thirteen hours, and when I awaken, Ethan is whispering in my ear. He wants to know why I didn’t pick him up at the airport. “I had to catch a cab, silly,” he murmurs, caressing my arm. He’s been in New York, meeting with stock analysts. His company’s going public, the market’s soaring, and I can quit my waitressing job now. We’re going to fly to Paris for a week and sit at sidewalk cafés, sipping strong coffee out of china cups as white as bones, the sun warming our backs, Ethan’s hair glowing golden. His fingers tickle my arm and I giggle.

The doorbell rings and I open my eyes, enveloped by the expanse of white ceiling above me. I’m still in my clothes. My sleeves are rolled up and the lace curtain by the bed brushes my arm. I’m usually relieved to awaken from a dream about Ethan, because he’s always sick in my dreams. There’s at least one cancer detail—a mottled IV bruise or the row of brown prescription bottles lining the kitchen windowsill, each with its troubling side effect. But this was a cancer-free dream. The pain of Ethan being there and then not being there shoots to the pit of my stomach, and I grab a handful of the bristly lace curtain, desperate for something to hang on to.

The doorbell rings again. I let go of the curtain and get up to see who’s at the door.

Ruth stands on the porch, her cheeks flushed, shooting a look of concern at my mailbox.

“This mailbox is no good.” She’s glamorous even in frump mode—shapely calves outlined in leggings, a bulky sweatshirt, and square-toed hiking boots that make her look as though she walked out of an L. L. Bean catalog. Her face is freshly scrubbed and her hair is pulled back in a high ponytail, shining in the sunlight. “People can steal your identity.”

My head feels heavy, and the mail seems like too much to deal with right now. “They can have my identity,” I tell Ruth. “My vanishing waistline and minuscule checkbook balance and lousy waitressing skills.” The fact that I’ve probably lost my job.

“Aren’t we optimistic!” Ruth scoops the mail out of the box, steps inside, and sets it on the table in the hall. “How come you can be cheerleader for me but not for yourself?” She tugs off her hiking boots.

“Sorry. Horning in on your job as chief pessimist.”

“Ha!” She gives me a quick hug, then scans my outfit. “On your way to work? Or are you going to perform a magic show?”

I yank off the bow tie. “Ha, ha. On my way home. Sort of.” I don’t want to tell Ruth about my mishap. I finally got a job and now I’m screwing it up.

Her eyes dart past me into the living room. “Well, I need a cocktail.”

In the kitchen, Ruth opens the refrigerator and discovers there’s nothing inside but a bag of oranges and a carton of nonfat sour cream.

“I decided the best way to lose weight is to stop buying food.” I duck my head under the tap and drink water from the faucet, closing my eyes, the liquid a cool silver creek against the back of my throat.

“Your inner critic is delusional. You’ve got a very cute figure.” Ruth roots through the empty cupboards, rings on the checked shelf paper where bottles and jars once sat.

“Yeah, well, I can’t zip my jeans.”

“Reality check: The world won’t end if you go up a size.”

“Reality check: I’ve already gone up two sizes. I’ve sprouted third and fourth buttocks.” I pirouette to show Ruth my rear.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She climbs onto a chair, cracks open the cupboard high above the refrigerator, and finds a bottle of Mount Gay rum.

“Bingo,” she says.

“There’s a store down the street,” I tell her.

Ruth’s remarkably resourceful, though. She earned
every
badge in Girl Scouts, even the esoteric Textile and Fibers Badge and the Weather Watch Badge. She slices and juices the oranges, crushes ice in the blender, pours in the rum, then adds confectioner’s sugar she finds caked in the bottom of a box.

As we sink into the sofa in the living room, dust swirls out of the flowered damask fabric.

“Cheers,” Ruth says, clinking my glass.

“Cheers.” I take a shallow sip and the rum warms my chest going down. But my tongue is mossy from the tranquilizers, and my brain feels about as useful as a clump of masking tape. The last thing I need is a drink. I set down my glass, and Ruth and I prop our feet side by side on the coffee table.

“He wants to come back,” Ruth says.

“Tony?”

“Mark. He wants to come home.”

“Home? What happened to Missy?”

“He claims he never loved her. That she was his midlife crisis, which is over.” A rim of orange foam lines Ruth’s upper lip. “He misses Simone and wants to come home.”

“Are you going to let him?”

She takes another neat sip of her drink, wipes her mouth. “He
is
Simone’s father.”

While I always liked Mark, I want Ruth to meet someone new, someone wonderful—maybe a professor at the university, or even the university president—and live happily ever after, filling her house with babies and feeding them fresh-squeezed orange juice with confectioner’s sugar.

“He’ll still be Simone’s father,” I remind her, “even if he doesn’t move back in.”

Ruth lays a hand over mine. Her long fingers are cool and smooth against my skin. She’s wearing her wedding ring, which I haven’t seen since I’ve been in Oregon.

“You put your ring back on?”

She nods, takes her hand back. “You never took yours
off.
”

I shrug and circle my ring around on my finger. After Ethan and I were married, I had my engagement ring and wedding band melded into one interlocking piece. The soft gold tugs at my swollen flesh, and the small, bright diamond is sharp under my thumb. “I guess the diamond would look pretty in a brooch or something,” I say.

“I guess mine would look pretty hocked and in a bank account.” Ruth yanks off her ring and tosses it clanking onto the table. “Fah! Fruit salad!” she curses. “What was I thinking?”

“That maybe you and Mark could get back together and become a family again. That everything might work out somehow. We’re trying to be optimistic, remember?”

Ruth closes her eyes. After a minute, she nods at my ring. “How long do you think you’ll wear yours?”

“Good question.” I should probably have taken it off by now. Moved it to some less married locale, such as a simple gold chain around my neck. I tug the ring over my knuckle and set it on the coffee table next to Ruth’s.

I recall the panic that used to pass over me whenever I slipped off the ring in the bathroom, how any open drain looked gaping and greedy. Now, an itchy indentation circles my ring finger, which feels much lighter than the others, as though it might fly away. I sit on my hand, squashing it. The pressure is a relief.

“It’s okay if you want to wear it,” Ruth says. She’s always easier on others than she is on herself. If she was widowed, she would have had that ring off two weeks after the funeral, her naked willowy fingers steadily writing out mortgage checks and a poignant obituary for the alumni magazine. She’d use the same self-discipline she used for studying in college, marching off to the library while the rest of us procrastinated over foosball and beer. That’s why I can’t understand why she’s caving in to Tony and Mark.

I tell myself I don’t need to wear my ring anymore. Ethan will still be woven around my fingers like a glove. Leaning to one side, I press my weight onto my hand, which is numb and tingly.

I consider our rings sitting on the table. They look pretty and hopeful, like girls waiting to be asked to dance.

When I arrive at work later that afternoon, Bill wants to see me in his office. I follow him past the bar, where the other waiters fold napkins in silence. Usually they joke and gossip, but today they frown at the napkins. Maybe they know something I don’t; maybe I’m going to get fired. Fired for the second time in six months. I breathe in the smell of burning butter and the dizzying fumes of the brass polish that the bartender’s rubbing into the railing along the bar. I follow Bill down the hall to his office. His scalp shows pink and shiny through the hair on the back of his head. He closes his door.

“Have a seat,” he says, pointing to the chair in front of his desk. I was called to the principal’s office once in high school, when I wrote a paper for Danny Glutcher, a track star who lightened his hair with lemon juice and had a knack for getting people to do things for him. The paper was on
The Scarlet Letter,
and it was a little too passionate to be a boy’s essay—a little too sympathetic toward Hester.

The dark brown wood paneling in Bill’s office closes in on us. A paperweight in the shape of a head of lettuce anchors a sea of pink forms on his desk.

“I’m sorry to have to do this,” he tells the lettuce. “But you can’t work in the dining room anymore.”

“I see.” A part of me says,
Tell him you
can
work in the dining room. Tell him you will
learn
to uncork wine properly and not let plates of food tip over.
But another part of me doesn’t want to worry about the dining room anymore.

“But I can offer you another job, in the kitchen.”

“Washing dishes?”

Bill chuckles, rubs his eyes. “No, no.” I know he has a baby at home, and I don’t think he’s been getting much sleep. He’ll probably get more rest once Lucille Ball isn’t bumbling through his dining room.

“As salad girl.”

“Salad girl?” From corporate manager to salad girl! What will I tell Dad? What would I tell Ethan? I wish I could tell him that I got promoted to director at Gorgatech and fixed the leak under the house and installed the flagstone patio in the backyard. “Isn’t salad girl kind of a politically incorrect job title?” I ask Bill, not being critical, merely thinking aloud. I imagine myself as a food group superhero, with radish head, eggplant body, and carrot arms and legs, celery leaves for hands. Salad girl is a job you’re supposed to have in high school.

“Well, food prep assistant level three, technically,” Bill says.

I imagine that level two is dishwasher and level one is amoeba. The funny thing about rock bottom is there’s stuff underneath it. You think,
This is it: I’m at the bottom now. It’s all uphill from here!
Then you discover the escalator goes down one more floor to another level of bargain-basement junk.

“I’ll need you to come in at two and do prep for a few hours,” Bill adds. “Then stay until about ten making salads and assembling dessert orders and cleaning up. You won’t make as much—no tips—but it’s very low-key.”

I want to tell Bill that I was capable at one point in my life. I was hired out of seventy-five candidates for my PR manager job. Before that, when I was a publications manager, I edited two award-winning four-color newsletters, wrote speeches for the university president, and managed a small staff. I spoke in front of large groups and drove a stick shift in rush hour.

“Meanwhile,” Bill says, rubbing his eyes, then his forehead, then his temples, as if he’s trying to rub something out of his head, “if you find something else—you know, a better job in town, I’ll understand. You might find something at the Chamber of Commerce, for example. Or maybe the Shakespeare festival has an opening?” He says this hopefully, as if he’s worried I might goof up as salad girl, too—maybe drizzle chocolate sauce on the romaine.