Good Grief (28 page)

I sit up, clamber onto the edge of the porch. Yesterday morning when we were getting ready for the party, I told her that Ethan always got me yellow roses on my birthday and our anniversary. I take the flowers from her, surprised by their weight. I dip my face into the blossoms, breathe in their sweet smell.

“Don’t cry,” she says.

“I’m not,” I insist, wiping my eyes.

“Okay, you can,” she says.

I laugh.

Crystal sits beside me on the porch. She’s wearing loose linen pants to cover the scar on her leg and dirty white sneakers without socks. I clumsily wrap an arm around her, kneading her bony shoulder blade.

“I tried to pick ones Ethan would have picked.”

It’s good to have someone else acknowledge this day. To say:
Yes, this did happen.

“Thank you.” The roses have faint peach-colored stripes along the top of each petal. I am grateful for their uniqueness.

A voice floats through the garden—Drew’s voice. “‘After years of mediocre sweet shops and stale-bagel cafés, Ashland finally has a first-rate bakery!’” he booms theatrically. His shadowy figure appears through the gate by the garage. Then he steps onto the path, waving a sheet of newspaper in the air. “Look, bakery review!”

My stomach tightens. Critics, reporters.
Gentlemen, start your hair dryers.

Marion shuffles out onto the porch.

Drew kisses me on the forehead and Marion on the cheek. Marion giggles and smiles demurely. He gives Crystal a high five. Crystal accepts it but rolls her eyes.

“‘While the opening party was a bit of a boisterous mess,’” Drew reads, “‘this establishment is bound to flourish. The cheesecakes are the highlight, with a sublime consistency that isn’t too dry or gummy, and there are a number of clever savory choices, such as the delicious Brie-and-porcini. These are sure to be a hit, so place your party orders early.’”

I climb up into a chair, cradling the roses in my lap. But I thought Marjorie
hated
the place. We fed her raw cookie dough! “How many stars?” I ask Drew, immediately afraid of finding out.

“Four.”

“Out of how many?”

“Four! You can only
get
four. Did you want a fifth star? I’ll give you one.” He stands behind my chair, kisses my neck.

Marion giggles. I grab the section of newspaper from Drew and continue reading the review.

Frosted when warm, the maple moon cookies hark back to a day when soft cookies and lemonade were a mainstay in the South, where I grew up. The cupcakes are airy and light, with generous dollops of frosting. There are even a few low-fat and sugar-free options. In short, a treat for everyone.

“‘
NEW BAKERY BOUND TO BOOM,
’” I read the headline aloud, savoring the alliteration. “Assuming the baker can drag her butt to work,” I add, standing up. “I’ve got to get a move on.”

“Sublime,” Marion coos.

“Bound to boom,” Drew says, stepping off the porch and swinging an imaginary golf club Johnny Carson style. He’s wearing a black T-shirt and khaki shorts. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed how nice his legs are. Thick, curvy calves. Strong, square knees with halos of golden hair that beg to be touched. We haven’t slept together since he dumped me. I’ve been cautious, like someone who’s afraid to get back in a car after being in a wreck. Meanwhile, Ethan’s ski sweater has been a scratchy, passionless lover. Suddenly I long to break my take-it-slow vow and have sweaty sex with Drew right now, upstairs, defiling the froofy hydrangea bedding.

“Hey, howdja get my mother home yesterday, anyway?” Crystal asks him.

“I asked Chef Alan to drive her.”

I consider the image of Roxanne and Chef packed into Chef’s little Miata convertible, Roxanne’s long hair like a bride’s veil in the wind.

Marion and Crystal head into the kitchen for iced tea. Drew seems relieved once they’re gone.

“Listen . . .” He clears his throat, lowers his voice. “I’m sorry about proposing at the party. I think I embarrassed you.”

“At least Ginger got the message.”

“The offer’s still good, but I know you want to take it slow.”

“Slowly,” I say, correcting his grammar. The prospect of needing Drew scares me; I don’t think I need him the way you need a vitamin or a good night’s sleep. I’m afraid I need him the way you need a cigarette or a drink. Besides, I don’t want to be engaged right now. I don’t even want to be single or widowed. I just want to be a sane person.

“Slowly,” Drew repeats, giving me a quick PG-13 kiss on the mouth. “I’ve got a two o’clock curtain and my call’s at one. Can you go for a picnic tomorrow?”

“We’ll see,” I tell him, turning to the roses. “I have a lot of work to do. I’ll call you.”

The porch steps groan as he turns to go. He whistles a tune as he makes his way through the garden. I’m a little annoyed by his cheerfulness on this day. And equally relieved to be free of those legs.

Marion and Crystal clamber back out onto the porch to settle an argument over whether you can drink iced tea out of a cereal bowl.

“Well, you
could,
” I tell Marion, never wanting to make her feel ridiculous. “But a glass is easier.”

“See!” Crystal says. She is always a little too vindicated when Marion is wrong.

Marion succumbs to the iced tea glass and they head back into the house for lemon. I realize there’s no way Marion can fly home alone next week. I’ll have to travel with her. I should go inside and call to make a reservation on her flight right now. But first I’ve got to clean up the bakery—assess the water damage to the floors, return the rented uniforms and punch bowls, and check the answering machine in case there are any orders.

I’m grateful for the bakery’s demand for attention. For the longest time after Ethan died, it seemed no one needed me. Is there anyone less essential in the world than an unemployed widow without children? But now Marion needs me to help her get home. Crystal needs me to help her get through summer school. The bank needs me to stay in business so I can pay off my loan. Ruth needs me to baby-sit—
tonight,
so she can go to her book club! As I remember this, I stand up and clutch the roses to my chest. The porch is reassuringly firm and certain beneath my bare toes.

I close my eyes and imagine the baby shampoo smell of Simone’s hair and the pale green vein pumping in her temple as she concentrates on staying within the lines in her coloring book.

Suddenly I relish the thought of a shower. Sweet warm water trickling into my mouth and a cloud of shampoo foaming up between my fingers. On some mornings back in San Jose, it would take me hours to work up the courage to take a shower, the busy scallop-shell motif on the shower curtain terrifying me. Now I quickly head inside to find a vase for the roses.

G
OODWILL

29

“After we straighten up the bakery, I want to clean out my garage,” I tell Crystal as we pull away from the senior center, where I’ve dropped Marion off for a bird-watching expedition.

“That doesn’t sound fun.”

“I know. But I want to go through Ethan’s stuff.” I’m determined to sort through Ethan’s boxes, to salvage the things I really care about and move them into the house. Pack up the rest and deliver it to Goodwill. Shut down the Ethan museum. I squeeze the steering wheel, bracing myself for this onerous chore.

I wait for Crystal’s signature response to something she doesn’t want to do: What
ever
! Sometimes she’s like a song you know all the words to. I look at her flat bare feet on the dashboard, her toenails painted pink with sparkly daisy decals on every other one.

“Okay,” she says. “I’ll help you.”

I’m surprised by her willingness. I don’t think Crystal really minds the fact that her mother doesn’t pay the electric bill or sign her up for horseback-riding lessons. I think what really bothers her is that Roxanne doesn’t include Crystal in her life. While Crystal can be a difficult person, in some ways she’s easy; all she really wants is to be included.

“You and I will go through the stuff,” I tell her, “then I’ll get Ruth to help me with her truck.”

Crystal nods seriously, as though she can hear all the little cracks in my airy, no-problem tone.

The garage smells like cedar and motor oil. The roof creaks overhead, as though buckling in the heat. Crystal and I sit on the chalky floor, sorting through Ethan’s cardboard boxes and creating four piles:
Goodwill, Trash, Keep, Maybe Keep.
I’ll review the
Maybe
pile before loading the car.

Crystal’s pulled her hair into two spiky pigtails on top of her head. The magenta streaks make them look like flares. She sorts carefully through Ethan’s socks, matching them and tossing the ones with holes. She blows her bangs off her forehead as she concentrates. I’m surprised by her patience. When I first met her, she lacked the ability to concentrate on anything but video games, spending entire Sunday afternoons pumping my dollar bills into the token machine at the arcade while I looked on, pretending to have fun.

I scan the stacks of boxes. The only things of Ethan’s I threw away after he died were his medical paraphernalia: prescriptions, Ensure, X-rays, the sharps container that held the syringes from his pain shots. I edited the illness out of his life story and saved everything else, even his doodles on the phone pad and his nameplate from his cubicle at work.

Lifting one of Ethan’s flannel shirts to my face, I close my eyes, hoping to discover his smell. But the clothes have absorbed a neutral, cardboard aroma. I dig into the box marked
Bathroom.
A sharp pain burns my finger. Razor blade. A bright drop of blood bubbles up from the cut. I suck gently on it. The blood tastes salty. Ethan’s hairbrush peers out from the
Bathroom
box. I lift it and tug my fingers through the bristles, soft brown hair coming free with a ripping noise. It’s smooth and tickly, with the still-sweet, eggy smell of Ethan’s Flex shampoo. I want to lie down.

“You could, like, put that in a locket,” Crystal says, nodding at the hair.

I set the tuft at the edge of the
Maybe
pile. Wind creaks through the garage and the hair blows under a wheelbarrow, settling in among cobwebs, dead leaves, and the remnants of a moth. Organic matter. I shove the
Bathroom
box into the throwaway pile and head into the house for a Band-Aid.

After bandaging my finger, I stop in my room. I scoop Ethan’s ski sweater out from under my pillow and knead a pinch of the coarse wool between my thumb and forefinger. Just as children have to surrender their pacifiers, and smokers have to toss their cigarettes when they kick the habit, I should probably give up the sweater.

I carry it to the garage.

“I think I have to give this away.” I hold the sweater toward Crystal, hoping she’ll take it from me.

“Okay.” She shrugs and digs into a box of books. “It’s not like you ever go skiing.”

“But I want to keep it.” I hug the sweater to my chest, inhaling its smoky wool smell.

“So keep it.” She flips through the pages of Ethan’s yearbook. “Wow.” Her lips move as she reads the inscriptions. “Some people
like
high school.”

“Ethan was a great student.” I crunch the sweater against my belly and sit on the stool beside her. “He was president of his class.”

“He was, like, totally smart,” Crystal says as if she knew him, too.

“He could have helped you with your math. He would have made it fun.”

“There’s no
way
math is fun.”

“I know. Which is what was so incredible about him.”

I set the sweater in the
Maybe
pile and move on. My whole life seems to be in the maybe pile right now. Maybe I can run a successful business on my own, maybe I’ll stay with Drew.

“Did you ever think you didn’t want to live?” Crystal asks. “Since Ethan wasn’t living?” She closes the yearbook and places it gently in the
Keep
pile. She asked me this same question when I told her about my mother dying. It worries me that she can muster these dark thoughts so easily.

“Yes,” I admit, remembering lying alone in the dark on an air mattress in my living room in San Jose, the eerie blue light of the TV glowing on the ceiling. Too tired to turn it off, too tired to watch, too tired to sleep. “But I’m better now.”

Crystal looks at the ski sweater. “’Cause you met me?”

I look at her, thinking.

She laughs. “I’m
joking.
”

“Kind of. Your family doesn’t necessarily have to be your husband or blood relatives.”

“Cool.” She burrows into a box and pulls out Ethan’s softball trophy.

“That’s to keep.” I lurch toward the trophy.

“Don’t worry.” She cradles the trophy to her chest, smoothing her palm over the brass head of the baseball player. “I never won anything,” she says quietly, then sets the trophy in the
Keep
pile.

We continue working in silence. Sandy and Gloria will be proud of me for launching this cleanup project on the anniversary of Ethan’s death. Another grief gold star.

“Hey.” Crystal fingers the cleats on the golf shoes Ethan never wore and looks down at the floor. “My mom says she’ll buy me a horse if I don’t hang out with you anymore.”

“Oh, really?” I throw an old computer mouse in the
Goodwill
pile a little too hard and it cracks. I move it to the
Trash
pile. “I thought horses were too expensive.” Roxanne’s like Ginger; even though she’s not especially
nice
to the people she’s close to, she wants to hoard them for herself. God forbid anyone else should love them.

Crystal shrugs. “She says she can get a loan.”

Maybe a horse is to Crystal what Ginger is to Drew. A sexy upgrade.

Crystal holds up the dusty golf shoes and raises her eyebrows.

“Goodwill,” I tell her.

“Anyways, I told her to shove her horse up her ass.” She sets the golf shoes in the
Goodwill
pile. “Besides, she’d probably screw up the loan somehow.”

“You really shouldn’t talk to your mother that way.” I look away, hoping Crystal hasn’t seen me smile.

By the time Ruth and I reach the Goodwill in her truck later that day, it’s closed. I cup my hands around my face and peer through the glass door at the rounders of clothes. They’re sorted by colors ranging from turquoise to orange to black. I imagine Ethan’s olive rugby shirt sidling up to a stranger’s lime green aloha shirt. But his ski sweater is equally red, yellow, and navy. Will there be a home for it in this strict, color-coded system?

“Closed?” Ruth asks, digging her hands into the pockets of her jeans.

I turn toward the truck, which is so jammed with boxes that all Ruth could see out the back when we were driving was cardboard. I know exactly which box holds Ethan’s ski sweater.

“There’s a donation bin.” Ruth points to a yellow Dumpster-like container at the rear of the parking lot. She climbs into the truck and backs it up to the bin, leaning out the door to see. Then she hops out and swings a box onto the ground. I follow her toward the bin, noticing that it’s completely full. The mailbox-style door bulges open, choked with the hood of a down jacket. The coat looks as if it’s trying to climb out.

“We’ll just put them here.” Ruth stacks the box beside the container.

“Uh, okay.” The sour smell of unwashed fabric sticks in my throat.

No!
Ethan says.
Don’t leave my worldly possessions in a filthy parking lot.

Discarded belongings litter the asphalt around the donation bin: a curled-up huarache sandal, a snarl of bent hangers, a silk scarf streaked with black tire marks. The greasy smell of French fries wafts over from the fast-food place next door. Across the parking lot, a faded futon leans against the back wall of the Goodwill building. Beside it, plastic tubs overflow with shoes, toys, and small appliances. There’s simply too much junk in the world. Each person should be allowed a small quota, the way you’re allowed only two bags when you fly.

Ruth drops a box of books with a loud smack on the pavement, making me jump.

“Careful,”
I tell her.

“It’s heavy. You need to give me a hand!”

“Okay.” But I can’t move. Suddenly I feel as though I’ve orchestrated a crime I can’t bring myself to go through with.

“Help,” Ruth yelps. As she wrestles the big suitcase of Ethan’s coats out of the truck, her slender back bows under the weight. Together we drag the bag across the parking lot and lean it against the bin.

As we’re returning to the truck, I notice a sign screwed to the chain-link fence behind the donation box: WARNING:
DONATIONS LEFT WHEN GOODWILL IS CLOSED IS CONSIDERED DUMPING
.
VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED
.

“We can’t leave this stuff here,” I tell Ruth, pointing to the sign.

Her lips move as she reads. “Oh, for God’s sake. You can go to jail for cutting off your mattress tag, too, you know.”

“Right.” I laugh weakly, noticing another sign on the side of the container:
THANK YOU FOR HELPING PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES LEAD PRODUCTIVE LIVES
.
I think of Ethan’s fancy Bose clock radio, which I’ve decided to give away so I won’t always imagine him lying in bed listening to the news in the morning. They can probably get at least fifty bucks for it. I continue unloading. Surely someone will be here first thing tomorrow to unpack the stuff and move it indoors.

As we finally drive out of the Goodwill parking lot, I focus on Ethan’s boxes in the rearview mirror the way you might locate the North Star in the sky at night.

I get up at four the next morning and head straight to the bakery to start the cheesecakes, pies, and muffins.
This is me, throwing myself into my work,
I think as I lean my weight into the pie dough, the rolling pin smacking the counter. Back in San Jose, work threw itself at me, deadlines wrapping their tentacles around my legs and pulling me down. Crystal shows up shortly after dawn, her eyes puffy with sleep. She lifts the cheesecakes out of their molds, picks the final bits of streamers and tape off the walls. I’m relieved when we’re finally able to flip the sign in the window over to the
OPEN
side at ten. By then a small cluster of customers waits on the sidewalk, and they all seem to have read Marjorie’s review. Drew’s already framed the review and hung it over the cash register. The article has a big color picture of Crystal and me standing behind a row of cheesecakes. By some miracle I’m having a good hair day in the photo: soft ringlets instead of wiry frizz. Crystal looks serious, leaning toward the cakes as though they might tell her something.

A young actress from the festival wants to order her wedding cake. I’m nervous as she spreads pages torn from magazines across the kitchen table with pictures of cakes decorated as intricately as Fabergé eggs.

In the afternoon, customers fill the bakery, struggling to see into the glass cases, which are emptying fast. People want cupcakes for birthday parties, cookies for softball games, carrot cakes and cheesecakes for dessert. I work the counter while Crystal mans the register, fretting as she hurries to count change.

I try to talk to everyone, ask if they live in Ashland or if they’re just visiting, suggest wines to serve with the savory cheesecakes, remind them to order their birthday cakes earlier next time. As I grab sheet after sheet of waxed paper to fill the orders, I feel a year’s worth of isolation and shyness evaporate in the heat of the bakery.

“That should be a five,” a woman buying a peach pie tells Crystal sweetly. Crystal reddens and pops open the drawer to recount the bills.

“Don’t worry,” I tell Crystal when there’s finally a lull. “Take your time.”

We do $752.86 worth of business over the course of the afternoon, selling out of cheesecakes, savory and sweet. While I figured I wouldn’t need to hire employees for at least the first month of business, obviously I need more helpers right away. As the dinner hour approaches and the bakery finally empties, I sit in the kitchen to draft a help wanted ad:
Sales clerk, weekday afternoons.
Then it hits me: the image of Ethan’s ski sweater suffocating under a mountain of dead people’s musty sweatshirts and jerseys.

“It’s cathartic to let go of their belongings,” Gloria said when I told her that I finally cleaned out the garage. She told me that she left jeans and a T-shirt laid out on her daughter’s bed for six months after the girl died. Finally she gave away the clothes, and turned the room into a study.

I force myself to forget Ethan’s sweater for now, to forget the image of his tuft of hair under the wheelbarrow in the garage, and turn back to the ad.
Busy downtown bakery . . .

By the time I make it home that evening, I can’t wait to lie on the couch and put my feet up. But as soon as I’m through the door the phone rings. Marion answers it.