Good Grief (21 page)

“With what?”

“Teakettle.” She winces as she tries to move her leg. Her pink tank top is hiked up, exposing her flat belly. She seems thinner than ever now.

“On purpose?” But I know the answer. I look back at the burn. The two dark red rings around the outside must be from the bottom of the kettle. “Does it hurt?” Dumb question.

Crystal nods. Tears stream down her cheeks, but her face remains still, trancelike.

“Okay.” I take a deep breath and look around the room, unsure what to do. I head for the bathroom to look for bandages, wondering if I should call 911 or take Crystal to the emergency room myself. I decide to take her, since the hospital’s only five minutes away, and I’m not sure if Crystal’s medical insurance would cover an ambulance.

Rummaging through the medicine chest and cupboards under the sink, I find gauze and antibiotic cream. But nothing in the room will hold still. The air is starry and my head feels split open above my eyebrows, as though my skull is floating away. I grab the edge of the sink, fall back against the wall, then slide down until I’m sitting on a green fuzzy rug on the floor. With my forehead resting on my knees, I count slowly to ten.

“You’re going to be okay,” I call out to Crystal, hoping she can’t tell that I’ve collapsed. “But your leg will probably hurt more later.” My voice sounds far away and high-pitched. “The nerve endings go dead at first. That’s your body’s way of protecting you.” Why am I telling her this? I don’t even know if this is exactly how it works. It can’t be comforting information. “Which is why we have to get you to the hospital right away.” I try to say this more calmly.

Wrapping my fingers over the edge of the sink, I hoist myself up, grab the gauze and antibiotic ointment, and return to the bedroom.

“Why are you shouting?” Crystal asks.

She’s sitting up now. Together we swing her legs around so her feet touch the floor. She winces again, shaking her head at the burn. “My dad?” she says.

“What about him?”

She points to a fan of greeting cards spread on the floor by the foot of the bed. I lean over to see that each of the different-colored envelopes has her father’s name and address in Alaska printed in Crystal’s loopy handwriting. They’ve all been marked
UNDELIVERABLE
.
There’s a faint purple stamp, a cartoon finger pointing to the words
RETURN TO SENDER
.

“All the cards I sent him, like, came
back.
”

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry.” I try to hug her, but I don’t want to hurt her leg. “It’s okay.”

I push the covers aside, then help her stand and walk to the bathroom. Waiting outside the door as she pees, I worry she might faint.

In her drawer I find a pair of soft cotton shorts. She steps into them and I pull them up over her legs, careful not to let the fabric touch her skin. Tears run down her cheeks, but she doesn’t make a sound. I decide against the ointment and gauze, figuring they might just add to her pain. I pull a sweatshirt over her head and slide clogs on her feet. Slowly we make our way out to my car. “Ow,” she yelps when her leg bends as she’s climbing into the front seat.

“I know,” I tell her. “I know.”

On the way home from the hospital, I try to comfort Crystal, telling her that the cards coming back is better than if her father had received them and not bothered to reply.

“Yeah.” Crystal looks out the passenger window at a boy playing by himself in his yard. “Except now I don’t even know where he lives. Or if he’s even, like,
alive.
He could have died on a fishing boat. He could have fallen over.”

The same emergency room doctor who saw me for my anxiety attack treated Crystal. Gentle and reassuring, he gave her a pair of scrubs to wear home over her bandage since we didn’t have any pants for her. He gave her antibiotics and a pain pill and showed us both how to change the dressing. Crystal seems more comfortable now.

“I know, honey. It’s a terrible thing.”

“How do
you
know?”

“Well, I can’t imagine what it’s like not knowing where your dad is. But did you know that my mother died when I was your age?”

“Really? How?”

“Car accident.”

Crystal considers this. “Were you in the car?”

“No. I was home with my dad.”

“Did you ever
wish
you were in the car?”

Once I did wish that. Not that I was in the car, necessarily, but that I was with my mother, wherever she had gone. It was just before the first anniversary of her death, and my father was trying to help me hem my bell-bottoms. The stubborn denim fabric wadded up in the sewing machine, and he shouted frantically over the groan of the motor, “Is this the right needle?” Then he broke down and cried. Fathers weren’t supposed to
cry.
I wanted my mother there so badly that I slammed my fingers in a kitchen drawer. I wasn’t sure why, I just had to do something. Something had to be done.

“No, honey,” I tell Crystal now. “I never wished that.”

I remember waking up once in the middle of the night back in San Jose with a burning hole in my stomach from missing Ethan. I was certain something had ruptured inside of me. A tiny organ, maybe a spleen, was floating up into the back of my throat.

I wanted to call Dr. Rupert, but I realized there was nothing he could do. I wanted to call Dad, but I realized there was nothing he could do. I wanted to call Ruth, but I realized there was nothing she could do. No matter how much medication I took, or how many times a week I visited my shrink, or how many yoga poses I twisted myself into, or how many grief groups I wept through, or how many cartons of pralines and cream I polished off, it seemed there was no solace in the world.

I look over at Crystal. Today it seems there’s solace in offering solace to others. Groggy from the pain pill, Crystal dozes off.

23

When the loan officer calls from the bank to tell me that my loan’s been approved, I fight the unprofessional impulse to shout into the phone:
My own business!
I picture the woman perched behind her big desk, as thin and dignified as an egret. Suppressing my elation, I coolly go over the details of the loan with her, as though several other banks in town want to throw money my way, too.

After I hang up, I call Kit to tell him that I want to sign the lease to rent the old Fudge Shoppe. Then I head straight to Le Petit Bistro to give Chef Alan two weeks’ notice.

“How can you
do
this to me?” he bellows, his breath smelling of sherry.

The dishwasher peers around the corner from his station, a mop of brown hair hanging in his eyes. When he sees Chef shaking a ham-hock fist at me, he quickly ducks behind the wall.

“I’m sure you’ll find someone else good,” I tell Chef. “I’ll work two more weeks and help train the new person.”

“No!” Chef snaps, turning his head toward the wall defiantly. “That won’t be necessary. You are dismissed immediately.” His coarse, wavy black hair sticks out in crazy directions, and I think he’s had a bad night or maybe just a bad life.

The fact is, I
need
a paycheck while I’m fixing up the bakery and testing recipes. “I can stay three weeks if that helps—”

“I don’t want anyone working in this kitchen who does not
wish
to work in this kitchen,” Chef growls, still facing the wall. “Who does not appreciate the
privilege
of working here. Who thinks they are
too good
for this establishment—”

“I don’t think I’m too good for anything. I
like
working here. Aren’t you a little happy for me, though, that I’m striking out on my own?”

Chef marches toward his office. “It is very difficult to run your own establishment. You haven’t
any
idea. You are naive and inexperienced and doomed to fail.”

“Fine. Thanks for the pep talk.” I wonder if maybe Chef opened his own place at one time and it went under. “I’ll just finish up here and punch out.”

“Punch out
immediately
!” he barks, then regains his composure. “Please turn in your uniform on your way out.”

He disappears into his office, slamming the door.

“Open these and put them in the mixing bowl, please.” I hand Crystal a package of cream cheese and wedge of Brie. I’m nervous about perfecting my recipes for prime time at the bakery and want to debut the porcini-and-Brie cheesecake at the party on the last day of my pastry class.

“I don’t
feel
like baking.” Crystal tosses the cheese on the counter. She licks her forefinger, dunks it into the open canister of sugar, then sucks noisily on it.

“Crystal!” I grab her hands and push them under the faucet. “First thing, wash your hands. Here’s the deal: If you want to spend more time with me, you’ve got to help. I’m not forcing you; I’m giving you the option. Either we limit our visits to Sundays or we work together during the week. I’m going to pay you.”

“How much?”

“Eight dollars an hour.”

Crystal’s eyebrows shoot up. “That’s pretty good.” She takes another pump of liquid soap and rubs her hands together vigorously, rinses, then dries.

“Put this on.” I hand her an apron. She pulls it over her head, wrapping the ties twice around her straight, narrow waist. Then she opens the Brie and drops it into the KitchenAid bowl. As she flips the mixer to the highest setting, a glob of cheese flies across the room, sticking to a cupboard door. She doubles over, gulping with laughter.

“Come on now.” I reach around her to turn down the mixer.

She points to the stack of cookbooks on the counter and raises her voice over the mixer. “Hey! Who’s Fannie Farmer?”

“A famous East Coast cook.” I hand her a container of porcini mushrooms. “Rinse these, put them in a small bowl, and pour hot water over them. Very hot, from the tap.”

“These things smell like feet.” She sticks out her tongue.

“They’re pungent.” I turn off the mixer. “This is going to be my signature item: savory porcini-and-Brie cheesecake.”

“What
ever,
Fannie!” She rolls up her sleeves, and I see stripes of fresh, white skin where once there were cuts on her arms. I’m relieved to see this cycle of healing, and make a note to buy her vitamin E cream later. For now, I put her to work chopping onions.

“That dorky actor guy?” Crystal says, peeling away the papery skin of an onion, then cutting into it. “Is he, like, your real boyfriend now?”

I shrug and get to work crumbling sesame crackers into a bowl for the cheesecake crust.

“Do you think Ethan would want you to have a boyfriend?” Her eyes tear up from the onion. She wipes them with the backs of her hands, then pauses, considering her own question. “I think he would want you to.”

“I saw Drew in town,” Ruth says slowly, deliberately. She eases a miniature cheesecake out of its mold, being careful not to let it crack. She’s helping me test the classic New York recipe, which I want to offer in a single-serving size.

“Did you say hi?”

“No. I was on the other side of the street. He didn’t see me.” She licks some crust off her finger. “He wasn’t alone.”

I turn off the mixer. The cheesecake batter emits one bubble of air, as if sighing.

“He was with that actress,” Ruth continues. “The red-haired one.”

“Oh, her. I hate her.” I nod, slightly relieved. “But they’re just friends. She has a boyfriend in New York. He’s a big, rich soap opera star.”

Ruth raises one arched brow doubtfully.

“They’re
engaged,
” I tell her.

“Well, Drew looked very smitten by her. They were arm in arm. Sort of leaning into each other.”

“They’ve known each other for years. Went to Juilliard together.” I turn the mixer back on.

“Un-hunh.”

“
Maybe
they slept together,” I ponder, raising my voice over the whir of the beaters. “Back in school?”

“I don’t know. The point is they seem involved now. They had that nothing-else-in-the-world-matters-because-we’re-in-lust aura.”

I turn off the mixer. “What are you telling me?”

Ruth rearranges the cheesecakes on a platter unnecessarily. “That you should be careful. Don’t get too attached.”

“I’m
not
getting too attached.” I bite into one of the cheesecakes that fell apart. It’s warm and smooth and sweet, and I would like to plow through the rest.

“Oh, yes, you are. I know you.” Ruth shakes a spatula at me.

“Fine. But so what? I told you, they’ve known each other for years and she’s engaged.”

“To a guy three thousand miles away.” Ruth scrubs the cheesecake molds in the sink. “I just want to be sure that Drew’s actually available before you fall in love with him.”

“He pursued
me,
remember?”

“I just can’t bear to see you get your heart broken again.”

Ruth’s so jaded. Jaded and bitter and just plain wrong.
Isn’t it time you got going?
I want to ask her.
Don’t you have to be someplace?

“What
ever
!” I tell her.

Drew and I are good together.

In the evenings after work we stroll through Lithia Park arm in arm, the sky a starlit navy bowl over our heads, tiny frogs singing to us. In the mornings we linger in bed, drinking lattes and working the crossword puzzle. We go out salsa dancing, and I teach him to program his VCR and make French toast, and he turns me on to Dixieland jazz and adds me to his speed dial, and I write his name down in case of emergency on my yoga sign-up sheet. I imagine collapsing during my extended wheel and Drew driving me to the chiropractor, holding my hand the whole way.

“I met someone,” I tell Dad over the phone.

“Oh,
sweetie.
” I picture him all the way across the country, sitting at his kitchen table in his khakis and chamois shirt. “When do I get to meet him?”

“Soon. He’s an actor. You and Jill could fly out to see the plays. Drew can get you
great
seats.”

But then late one Monday afternoon after a picnic in the park—I brought champagne and a cold frittata and fresh sliced tomatoes with basil and a wedge of chocolate rum cake—Drew says he doesn’t feel well and would like to make it an early night.

I’m disappointed, because Monday is the only night when we’re not working and can get together at a normal hour for a date.

I tell him sure, he probably just has a tension headache, and I’ve got aspirin and antacids back at my place. I’ll set him up in front of the TV with the heating pad behind his neck.

“I’m an excellent nurse,” I tell him.

“I don’t think so. I have to get up early tomorrow.”

“Since when do
you
get up early?”

Drew leads an actor’s life, rolling out of bed around ten, going out for coffee at eleven, and hitting rehearsals at one. When I sleep over we stay up as late as two in the morning, making love and giggling and drinking wine and eating cold pizza in bed.

“I have a meeting.” He winces, turning his head stiffly from side to side.

I rub the back of his neck, and his shoulders drop, relaxing.

“I’ll walk you home,” he says.

We walk in silence; he’s studying the sidewalk as though it might crack open suddenly, while I’m too afraid to ask what’s going on. A meeting? With whom? His wife? His drug dealer? His Mafia boss? What is the big secret?

When we get to my front porch he kisses my cheek: an airy sibling peck.

“Maybe we can get together for coffee later this week,” he says.

“Coffee?” I try not to sound alarmed.

He nods.

How’d I get demoted to coffee? I’m the
girlfriend,
aren’t I? I’ve been sleeping with this man for five weeks! I’ve borrowed his deodorant and seen his appendix scar. Didn’t I recently move up the ranks from date to girlfriend? Just like getting promoted from salad girl to head baker? Wasn’t I on the verge of meeting family?

Coffee?

Now I know how St. Christopher must have felt when they decided he wasn’t a saint anymore, that maybe he hadn’t really performed those three miracles. Now I know how Pluto must have felt when astronomers started saying maybe it wasn’t a planet, maybe it was just a big dirty ice ball.

Maybe I’m not Drew’s girlfriend. Maybe I’m just a fling, a
friend.
Someone you’d have coffee with. If you weren’t busy with your glamorous actress friend with the Isadora Duncan scarves, Emma Peele eyeliner, Marilyn Monroe giggle, and Lauren Bacall waistline. This woman is a hybrid freak. A conglomeration of every glamorous star in history. I doubt she wears plain Jane Jockey For Her underwear. She probably doesn’t wear
any
underwear.

“Um . . .” I clear my throat, mustering a fake cough. “Is anything wrong?” I’m trying to remain calm. I’m trying not to scream.

“I’m sorry.” He looks at his perfectly white Nikes and closes his eyes as if this were causing
him
pain. “I’m just confused.”

Confused! You’re frigging confused?

“I see,” I say softly. I find the key in my purse and clutch it in my thumb and forefinger, a reflection of sunlight bouncing off of it. No date should end this early, when the sun’s still above the trees.

“Confused about what?” I ask. But I know I shouldn’t ask. I’m not sure I want to know. Did he
sleep
with her while he was sleeping with me? The old key won’t turn over in the lock, and I want to jam my fist through the glass on the front door.

“About us.” He looks at the porch. “About someone else.”

“Your actress friend?”

Drew nods. “Yes. Ginger.”

Ruth was right. Waist-size-smaller-than-my-shoe-size Ginger. Cascading-red-hair-down-to-her-ass Ginger.

“Have I met her?” I ask, pretending I don’t remember her from the restaurant.

Ginger is a seasoning,
I want to tell him.
A knobby little root!

I turn the key in the lock, and before Drew can answer I’m closing the door on the image of his face—slate-blue-gray eyes looking up sheepishly through brown schoolboy bangs, mouth parted slightly, one foot lifted as if to step forward.

I snap the lock shut and hurry down the hall to the kitchen. I close the kitchen door, pull down the shades, then crawl into the pantry, because that is one room farther away from Drew Ellis. As far inside my house as I can burrow. I yank the long cord to the bare bulb overhead, pull the door shut, and sit on the floor under the dim yellow light.

Although we just ate dinner, I’m hungry. There’s nothing to eat in the pantry except for raw ingredients, though: flour, sugar, shortening, yeast, and polenta. I twist open a canister of rye flour and dig my hand into it. It’s dry and silty and tickles as it runs between my fingers. I scoop some into my mouth and try chewing. But you cannot chew flour. I cough and choke, then swallow, saliva turning the flour to a sort of doughy glob that sticks in the back of my throat.

She’s more beautiful, for one thing. And Drew mentioned that she’s a Seattle SuperSonics fan. I tried to share Drew’s enthusiasm for his stupid Seattle team. “They have a deep bench,” I’d gush, watching the game with him, pretending not to prefer the Lakers, whom Ethan and I love.
Loved.
What
ever
! Drew says the Lakers are too Hollywood, though, and I pretended to agree. That’s the dumb thing about dating—feigning similar interests.

I wish Ethan were here to kick Drew’s skinny ass.

It doesn’t matter, though, because I am never going to see Drew Ellis again. I’m not even going to stay in Ashland, where I might run into him.

No. I am going to move to the Southwest, to Phoenix or Santa Fe. I visited there once, and the air was so dry that my hair was almost straight. It hung in subdued elegant waves.

I could probably afford to buy a small stucco house in Santa Fe with a pool out back. Spend Saturday mornings lounging under a palm tree in the yard, nothing but the hum of the pool pump, a lizard skittering across the stone patio. Bright blue sky every day instead of this relentless Oregon rain.