Good Grief (2 page)

Now, it doesn’t look as if I’m ever going to get the grief badge.

I look out the window at the brittle, leafless trees, their branches like bones in the sky.

And that’s all the time we have today.

“The warmth of the body causes the patch to adhere,” I explain to the
Herald
health care reporter who’s interviewing me by telephone for an article he’s writing. As public relations manager at Gorgatech, I’m supposed to improve the image of a scrotal patch product that’s prescribed to men whose testosterone production is off-kilter on account of illness. A scrotal patch! Why can’t I work on the headache product? The problem is, the patch doesn’t always stick. Just imagine some poor guy in a sales meeting looking down and suddenly discovering a thing like a big square Band-Aid clinging to his sock.

“For some patients the patch may not adhere completely,” I admit. “In which case it should be warmed gently with a hair dryer before application.”

The reporter snorts. He points out that another company markets a gel. The disdain in his voice suggests he’d rather talk to a used-car salesman than a PR flack.

“True, but the patch provides a steadier dose,” I explain. I look over the padded beige walls of my cubicle at the pockmarked ceiling tiles. Someone’s piping sleepy gas into the office. I want to curl up on the floor with my head on my purse and just
sleep.

My boss, Lara, a size two Armani jackhammer, says I have to get two positive media stories on the patch—one local and one national—by the end of November. That leaves about five weeks for me to redeem myself. Lara’s quick to point out that there haven’t been any media stories on our company or products since she hired me. She says that if I don’t nail the two stories, she’ll slam my hands in her desk drawer, severing several fingers, and I’ll never be able to type again. Then she’ll fire me, and the mortgage company will auction off my house. She didn’t say this with words. She said it with her eyes, with the quick cock of her head, her lips pursing into a little red knot. If this guy writes a positive story, I’ll be halfway through my quota.

“Most patients aren’t bothered by the minor inconvenience of using the dryer,” I tell the reporter, reading from my tip sheet, “because of the benefits of the product.” I imagine my mailbox at home stuffed with property tax statements and soaring electric bills. The problem is, I like to keep lots of lights on at night so it seems as though people are home. “On
low
heat, though,” I tell him. “Never high.”

The clacking of the reporter’s keyboard and his intermittent chuckles make me nervous. He wants to know if I really think guys travel with blow dryers, if they
own
blow dryers.

“We provide complimentary dryers upon request.” At least I think we do. I probably shouldn’t stray from the tip sheet.

The reporter says he has to go so he can meet his deadline. As I listen to a long silence and then the dial tone, I think of how my other English major friends have more noble jobs: one’s a travel writer in Paris, another teaches creative writing to women prisoners.

Finally I hang up the phone and get back to work on the press release I’m composing about the patch. It’s nearly lunchtime and I’ve made little progress. There’s a pea-size hole in my panty hose just under the hem of my skirt, and I’ve taped it to my leg so it doesn’t head south.

I think of the white-haired lady in the grief group whose husband drove her everywhere. I picture them in a Chevy Impala driving forty-five on the freeway, two cottony heads peering over the dashboard. I wonder if it is worse to be widowed later in life, when you and your spouse are as attached as roots to a tree.

The cursor on my computer screen blinks:
mort-gage, mort-gage, mort-gage.

When I first moved to Silicon Valley to be with Ethan, I found a job I liked editing university publications. I had my own office, with ivy growing along the windows, and went home every night by six. But at parties, other women in their thirties compared BMW models and how many direct-reports they had at work, and I decided I needed a higher-paying job with stock options. What kind of loser worked at a place without stock options?

I got this job during Ethan’s remission, after he’d finished his radiation therapy and it seemed that he would be all right. This gave me a brief surge of confidence, during which I drove down the freeway at eighty miles an hour with the moon roof open, the wind in my hair, old songs like “I Will Survive” and “A Girl in Trouble (Is a Temporary Thing)” blasting on the stereo.

Then the cancer came back, this time as a tumor in Ethan’s chest. It was the home wrecker that stole my husband. I almost wished it
had
been another woman—a slutty thing in a miniskirt whose tires I could have slashed.

I hardly took any time off after Ethan died—just the three allowed bereavement days and the two sick days I’d accrued. Co-workers stopped by my cube and asked, “How are you doing?” I wanted to tell them not to worry; my husband was only out of town, maybe at a trade show. He’d be back.

Ethan’s presence in our house was palpable, his loafers and sneakers lined up in the closet and his
Smithsonian
and
Wired
magazines still arriving every month. But all too soon floury dust coated Ethan’s shoes, and his toothbrush grew dry and hard in the cup on the sink, and his pile of unread magazines toppled over. People stopped saying, “How are you doing?” and Lara started assigning the black diamond projects again. This damn patch.

Lara whistles into my cube now. “Don’t
bother
with a press release,” she says, looking over my shoulder at my keyboard, hands on little StairMaster hips, blond hair pulled into a high, tight ponytail. “Just get a story. Call
The Wall Street Journal.
”

I cower at the keyboard, thinking of the leak underneath my house. A few weeks ago a plumber in coveralls crawled through a trapdoor in the front hall closet and reported that it would cost $2,000 to repair the leak and install a sump pump. Money I don’t have right now. “You folks need a pump,” he said.

“It’s just me,” I told him.

If you reach behind the coats and lift the slab of wood, you can see the black puddle, which smells like iron. My car would like a piece of my paycheck now, too. It’s been making a grinding noise and pulling to the right, as though it would rather drive through the trees.

“Okay?
Okay?
” says Lara. Although she’s only five-three, she somehow manages to tower over people.

“Okay.” I flip slowly through the Rolodex on my desk. Later, when I can breathe, I’ll tell her about the
Herald
story. She huffs a sigh of exasperation and leaves me in a pit of Willy Loman cold-call despair.

On my way home from work that night, I get in an accident: I’m broadsided by the holidays. It happens when I stroll into Safeway and see the rows of tables by the door stacked high with Halloween candy: Milky Way, Kit Kat, Butterfinger. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas.
Stop, turn, run!
I try to shove my cart toward produce, but it won’t go. One stubborn wheel tugs like an undertow toward the candy. I kick the cart and focus on my shopping list: eggs, milk, ice cream.

I make it safely to produce, but there the pumpkins lurk.
Look!
they shout.
The holidays are coming!
I spot the bunches of brown corn you can hang on your door and the tiny gourds—the bumpy acne ones and the clown-striped green-and-yellow ones. I lean into the cart for support. How can a place called Safeway seem so dangerous?

Last Halloween Ethan and I took Simone, the daughter of my college girlfriend, Ruth, trick-or-treating. Ethan dressed up as Yellow Man, his own made-up superhero. He wore a yellow T-shirt, yellow rubber gloves, and a yellow rain poncho for a cape. He made Simone laugh so hard, she choked on a Gummi Bear.

I remember the yellow yarn dust mop bobby-pinned to his head. I remember his hair—the sweet, almost eggy smell of Flex shampoo. Beautiful hair! Thick, straight, shiny, and brown. The hair
I
always dreamed of having instead of my wiry curls. Sometimes a Dennis the Menace piece stuck straight up on top of Ethan’s head, which is probably why he got carded. He was thrown together in a boyish way—baseball caps and too-big sweatshirts, Converse sneakers with no socks, dirt on his knees from crawling around in the backyard looking for his Frisbee. Why did I ever sign that paper to have him cremated? That’s what he wanted. To have his ashes spread at Half Moon Bay, where we went for our honeymoon. It made sense at the time. But now there isn’t even a grave to visit. How can I be a widow when there’s no grave?

“Miss?” A clerk clutching a bunch of basil stands beside me. “Are you okay?”

“Yes.” He said miss and not ma’am. Sweet. There are streaks of cranberry red spots on his cheeks, and his nose shines. I try to think of something to say, a vegetable to inquire after. Instead I blurt: “My husband died.” Maybe this is the first time I’ve said this. I’m not sure. I think it is. Suddenly I’m crying, that little-kid gulping kind of crying, where you can’t catch your breath. The morning after Ethan died, I resented the mourners collecting in my living room. How could they fall into the role and accept Ethan’s death so readily? While they wept and carried on, I cleaned the house. Scrubbed the shower grout with a toothbrush and Clorox. Now I’m one of the howling mourners. But they’ve wrapped it up already, moved on.

The clerk touches my elbow and leads me through the big swinging double doors by the coolers with the chicken. He says, “Careful,” as we walk up a narrow flight of stairs. There’s a leaf of lettuce on one stair. We shuffle into a break room and he seats me at a long brown Formica table. He’s probably only in high school or junior college. He sets a cup of tea and a box of tissues on the table.

“You take your time,” he says.

I’m suddenly embarrassed and want something to do to look busy. I grab one of the tissues and begin cleaning my glasses.

Okay, so Ethan
isn’t
coming back. The sympathy cards reverted to phone bills months ago. Even telemarketers have stopped asking for him.

Oh! The tissues have lotion for sore noses, and the lenses of my glasses now look as though they’ve been dunked in salad dressing. The room is blurry. The boy is gone. The holidays are coming. Can I stay in this break room until after New Year’s?

At home the phone rings as I’m peeling off my coat. I let the machine pick up.

“Hello? Sophie? . . . Dear? Are you there?” It’s my mother-in-law, Marion, who’s not really comfortable around answering machines, VCRs, and other newfangled devices. She clears her throat.

“Well, I’m calling for two reasons. One, there’s a sale at Talbot’s, and I’d like to take you to buy a few new things. I thought that might cheer you up.” Marion always seems to wish I’d shop at Talbot’s, that I’d dress more like a country club wife than a frumpy neo-hippie—frayed jeans and clogs and my husband’s too big sweaters. Once in a while Marion wears jeans, “dungarees,” she calls them, but she irons stiff creases in the legs that stand up like little tents. “The other thing is, dear, I’d like to make a date to come over this Sunday and pack up Ethan’s things for the Goodwill. Remember, we talked about that? I really feel it’s time, and it’ll be a breeze if we work on it together. . . .”

A
breeze
?

A tornado.

There are no groceries to unload, since I abandoned my cart at Safeway. I head straight for the bedroom and crawl under our king-size quilt, choosing to sleep in my clothes to ward off the icy corners of the bed.

I dream that I run into Ethan in downtown San Jose by the convention center when I’m on my way to the library. His hair glistens like a mink coat and I want to touch it. He’s with a policeman. They explain that Ethan’s been in a car accident and the officer is trying to help him find his way home. I look down and see the edge of Ethan’s hospital gown hanging out from under his parka, the little blue snowflakes on the fabric fluttering in the breeze. I want to tell him that he wasn’t in a car accident. He had cancer and now he’s dead. But I’m afraid I’ll hurt his feelings, like telling someone they could lose a few pounds or their clothes don’t match.

When I make it to work the next morning, the
Herald
is spread across my desk. I’m supposed to read the paper every morning
before
getting to work, so I’ll know if the company has been in the news. I’m also supposed to scan the national press and be up on current health care issues so I can pitch stories relating to our products. Spins, pitches, angles. I always mean to do this. But mustering the courage to leave the house every morning leaves me too enervated to lift the pages of
Time
or
Newsweek.

I read the health care reporter’s lead for the patch story.

Gentlemen, start your hair dryers.

I can’t read the next line, because there’s a Post-it note stuck over it with a note from Lara:
See me.

The bum fluorescent bulb over my cube ticks and buzzes like a cicada.

I head straight for Lara’s office without taking off my coat. Lara and I are opposites, and in our case opposites deflect. She’s only two years older than me—thirty-eight—but she’s already a vice president. She’s as polished as a lady news anchor, and her whole
being
seems dry-cleaned. She meets her personal trainer at the gym every morning at five, arrives at work by seven-thirty, eats lunch at her desk—peeling the bread off her turkey sandwich to avoid the evils of carbohydrates—and leaves at seven-thirty in the evening. I get up at five in the morning, too, but only to pee, my sole workout being a shuffle to the john. The next time I wake it’s ten minutes before I’m supposed to be at work, never mind the forty-minute, second-gear commute and the fact that my hair is in one long snarl like the Cowardly Lion’s in
The Wizard of Oz.

As I stand in the doorway to Lara’s office, she’s on the phone.

“Un-huh, un-huh, un-huh,” she says impatiently, punching her PalmPilot, sipping coffee out of a giant mug, and checking her e-mail. She motions me in. I hover at the threshold.
Simon says: Go into your boss’s office!
I take a big step in. She yanks off her headset and tosses it on her desk. Her expression is in the fully upright and locked position.