Good Grief (5 page)
Thanksgiving is on its way now, like a storm pumping across the weather map. I’d like to hide under the covers for the four-day weekend, but I’m determined to keep busy and get in the spirit. I decide to take off the Wednesday before the holiday and bake pies. Lure those buyers in with the smells of cinnamon and vanilla.
While I’m nowhere near placing two media stories by the end of the month, I call Lara and tell her that I’m making progress working from home. Then I flip through cookbooks and bookmark recipes, comforted by the ingredients as I read them aloud: flour, eggs, butter. Cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg. I decide to bake a pecan pie with the top almost burned, the way Ethan likes it, and a sour cream apple and a pumpkin cheesecake with gingersnap crust. And a pumpkin pie. You have to have one plain pumpkin.
When I finish the pies maybe I can deliver them to a homeless shelter. One Thanksgiving, Mother and I bought store pies and took them to the veterans hospital. A man with scissors-sharp stubble on his chin wept and grabbed my arm and hollered, “Marjorie!” I knew then that the holidays spelled trouble.
The year Ethan and I were engaged, we volunteered as Meals on Wheels drivers, delivering dinners in Styrofoam cartons in East Palo Alto. I baked pies at Thanksgiving and we brought slices to everyone on our route. One woman, Mrs. Tucker, didn’t want to let us in. She peered warily through the crack in her door with one glazed eye. “I’m not celebrating this year,” she grumbled. Her two tiny nostrils flared at the smell of the dinner.
Ethan pulled off his baseball cap, smiled, and said that it was okay not to celebrate the holidays. “But you gotta eat, right?” he asked. “So why not let us in and we’ll sit with you?” His voice was a low, smooth ballad, and pretty soon Mrs. Tucker’s face loosened and she opened the door.
We sat at her kitchen table as she ate turkey and cornbread stuffing, and Ethan poured her a glass of milk.
“Madam,” he said as he spread the napkin across the lap of her quilted robe, and she giggled. In the car on the way to the next house, Ethan said thank God we had each other to grow old with.
Now, as I unpack cans of pumpkin and condensed milk that I ordered from an upscale shop that delivers, the phone rings.
“I’m buying you a plane ticket to come home,” my father insists. He has called me once a week since I left home and has always offered to buy me plane tickets for the holidays, even when I was married. I picture him across the country, sitting at his kitchen table in his retiree uniform—blue chamois shirt and khakis speckled with paint.
“Oh, no, Dad. I told you, I can’t take time off from work.” I cut open a sack of flour and pour it into the canister.
“It’s a long weekend. You could leave tonight and be home on Sunday.”
After years of living alone, Dad recently remarried and seems happy at last. He and his new wife, Jill, do everything together. He washes and she dries. They split restaurant entrées and share a suitcase when they travel. I don’t want to bring grief back into his house. I’m afraid it will linger after I leave, like cigar smoke clinging to the drapes.
“I have to work this weekend,” I tell him. A lie. While some people are going into the office Thanksgiving weekend, Lara hasn’t asked me to. She probably figures I’ll do more damage than good. “I still have so much to learn.” The truth.
“Working through the holiday doesn’t sound fun.”
“Fun?” My expectations are much lower than fun. “Maybe for Christmas,” I tell him.
After we hang up, I get to work on the pies, creaming butter and sugar, sifting flour, scalding milk, chopping nuts. My feet ache as the hours drone by. Pretty soon pies are spread everywhere, cooling on the kitchen counters and table, even on the washer and dryer. As I’m eating a slab of apple crumb over the sink, the phone rings and I hope it’ll be Dad again. Maybe this time I’ll give in. It’s only a long weekend, after all; I can’t pollute his whole life in one weekend. But it’s a telemarketer who wants to know if I’ll switch long-distance phone companies. In my married days, I would have hung up quickly.
The nerve!
But now I ask questions. Maybe I
will
switch. Is it cheaper on the weekends? I want to know more. But I have to say good-bye and hang up, because the doorbell’s ringing and I hear a key turning in the lock.
“Hel-l-o-o-o!” Melanie the Realtor calls out. I hear a baby squawk and a woman trying to comfort him. Melanie peeks around the corner into the kitchen. Her cheery expression suddenly rolls up like a window shade.
There’s a snowfall of flour across the floor and a tower of dirty dishes in the kitchen sink. My arms and hands are caked with bits of pie dough, and I’m not officially dressed yet. I’m wearing Ethan’s clothes: baggy jeans that are more forgiving of my new Oreo waistline and a T-shirt with no bra.
“Sorry to interrupt,” the wife says, the mommy. She cradles a chunky toddler around her hips and is clearly pregnant with her second. The husband wears a T-shirt with a company logo, and his hair is tousled.
“We can come another time,” he offers.
“No, please, have a look,” I insist, wiping my hands on my jeans, hoping they’re taking in the cinnamon and clove aroma.
Where’s your husband?
the toddler seems to say with his relentless stare.
Where’s your baby? How come you didn’t fix the fence out back? How come you’re selling the house? Are you sure your husband would want you to sell your house?
I offer the baby a plastic measuring cup to play with. He shrieks with glee and chomps on it.
“It’s an adorable kitchen,” Melanie coos, splaying a hand across her chest, talking to the couple as though I’m not there. “Just
look
at this breakfast nook.”
Ethan and I made love once in the breakfast nook, before we bought a table. It was during a heat wave before we installed air-conditioning and it was too hot to sleep and we found that the only way to keep cool was to lie naked on the kitchen floor with ice cubes on our foreheads. We got to laughing and tickling each other, and one thing led to another.
The oven buzzer goes off and the baby starts to cry.
“There’s a room upstairs that would make a
wonderful
nursery,” Melanie says, herding the couple out of the kitchen.
“Really? Which one?” I ask her. But she is already heading up the stairs.
“Have a look and I’ll be right there,” she tells them. Then she turns back toward me. “What about the new living room furniture?” she hisses through the banister.
“I got a reindeer,” I whisper. I did. I bought one of the reindeer lawn ornaments that Marion found at the nursery and jammed it into the ground next to the
FOR SALE
sign. Surely it adds cheer. Melanie looks quizzically at my hair, which I’ve pulled into a ponytail with one of Ethan’s stretchy black dress socks.
“Look,” she says coolly, “I can sell this house in no time.” She snaps her fingers. “But you have
got
to be a motivated seller. Please, get some furniture and
do
something about that leak.”
I want to explain that I won’t have money for furniture or repairs until
after
I sell the house. But she darts up the stairs two at a time, commenting on my grass cloth wallpaper.
“That is
so
easy to tear down,” she tells the couple.
On Thanksgiving I join Marion for dinner at Ethan’s aunt’s house, bringing two of my pies.
As Marion drives, she peers over the backseat intermittently to make sure her yam puff casserole is anchored. She wears a camel’s-hair coat and brown felt hat with a stiff black feather perched in the brim. She is more formal than my mother was and a better housewife and cook.
Mother was more interested in reading Russian novels than in keeping house. She’d spend hours in the basement laundry room, ironing and listening to art history books on tape. Everything in our house was neatly pressed—even nightgowns and draperies—but caterpillar dust collected on the blinds, and our kitchen floor was always sticky with something. She was a dreadful cook. Her Minute Rice burned and stuck to the pan, and her green beans were always slightly frozen, squeaking between your teeth. My father and I struggled to pretend we enjoyed her murky stews of canned tomatoes and stringy meat. Marion is just the opposite, and now she makes me miss my imperfect mother.
The hugs at Ethan’s cousins’ house are tighter and longer than usual. I haven’t seen these relatives since Ethan died. “How
are
you?” they want to know.
As the afternoon progresses—from football to relish trays to salads to the main course—I begin to have a floating sensation, as though I’m one of the floats in the parade, billowing unsteadily down the street headfirst, a maniacal grin stretched across my face. The women fawn over my pies.
Homemade crust!
Their cheer rings in my ears.
“Sophie, you sit here,” Mrs. Waxman says, pointing to a seat in the middle of the table. “Girl, boy, girl, boy.” I’m seated between two of Ethan’s cousins: a political science professor and a TV news cameraman whose bristly sweater rubs against my arm as he pulls out my chair. Men. My age. I’d forgotten how good-looking Ethan’s cousins are. Their tenor voices reverberate as they talk and laugh, and the hair on their wrists peeks out from under their cuffs as they pass potatoes and peas. They are attentive, piling turkey on my plate and telling funny Ethan stories.
Remember the time, remember the time.
I move the turkey around on my plate and try to laugh at the stories: ha, ha! But my laughter comes out: herp, herp. The turkey is dry and sharp. I gulp water and cough, then excuse myself to go to the bathroom. Instead, I hurry past the bath to the end of the hall and duck in the laundry room, closing the door. At least in here I can’t smell the cinnamon and sage. At least in here it could be any day of the year.
Ethan couldn’t really eat last Thanksgiving—he was weak and slept most of the time—but the orderly brought him a tray of food anyway. I loved the cafeteria trays for their optimism.
Look here,
they said.
You can’t die. Because we’ve got turkey, yams, milk, and cranberry Jell-O!
I picked up the carton of milk and shook it, and Ethan’s eyes widened suddenly.
Maybe he’s going to make the
Love Story
speech now,
I thought.
Words of courage to carry me through.
“Why,” he gurgled, “are you
shaking
my milk?”
I squeezed open the carton and white bubbles foamed out the top. Ethan blinked at them. I stuck the straw in.
I don’t know why I’m shaking the milk,
I thought.
I’m shaking the milk because I want everything to be just a little better here. I want to improve on this hospital carton of milk the way you’d fluff up a pillow.
I shrugged, handed it to him, kissed his forehead.
Now, I bend over the concrete sink in the laundry room and splash water on my face as if trying to put out a fire.
There’s a knock at the door.
“Sophie?” Marion whispers loudly.
“Yes?” There’s no towel, so I quickly dry my face on a shirt of Mr. Waxman’s that hangs on a water pipe. It smells perfumey, like detergent.
“Oh, now,” Marion says when she opens the door. She gives me a brisk military hug, then pulls a hairbrush from her purse to fix my hair.
“You can’t really
brush
my hair,” I try to explain, picking at the curls with my fingers. Then I just stand with my hands at my sides and let her use the brush. It feels good against my scalp and her body gives off warmth.
“It’s all right,” Marion says. “You’re among family.” She hands me a lipstick called Coral Reef. It’s too bright and orange, but I dab some on anyway.
“Now let’s see about those lovely pies of yours.”
Clearly, Marion and I are never going to talk about Ethan, about how we miss him.
Marion drops me at home late Thanksgiving afternoon. I sit alone at the kitchen table and pick systematically at the crumb topping on one of the remaining sour cream apple pies. My reflection stares back at me from the French doors.
Do something,
it says.
Read a book. Work on your media pitch letter. Bundle up and go for a walk. Call someone. Call Ruth.
I don’t want to bother Ruth. A single working mother doesn’t need her kooky college roommate pestering her. Our friends Sonia and Alfie invited me over for dessert, encouraged me to sleep over, stay the whole weekend. But I called and canceled last night. I’ve become an expert canceler in the past few weeks, telling friends at the last minute that I can’t make it after all, feigning a sore throat or oncoming migraine. I hate to impose my glumness on them. Besides, everything about them reminds me of Ethan.
The pies seem pointless now, spread across the kitchen. Melanie said bake
a
pie, not
nine
pies. The idea of spending the weekend alone with them makes me nervous. I don’t want to eat them, yet I don’t have the heart to throw them away. I get up from the table and carry the pies one by one out into the driveway and load them into the trunk of my car, so I won’t have to look at them anymore.
Last year I didn’t bake because Ethan and I spent Thanksgiving in the hospital. The Thanksgiving before that we went to our friends Sonia and Alfie’s house, but not until late in the day, because Ethan insisted on working. I close the trunk and head back inside. That was our last
real
Thanksgiving. Screw him for working on Thanksgiving. I slam the front door behind me. The pictures on the walls shake and rattle. “Screw Ethan!” I holler into the empty house, at the hall table and the TV, at all the inanimate objects that have become my aloof roommates. “Screw Thanksgiving! It’s all about women doing all the work and men doing as they please. Watching football. Working. Getting cancer!”
In the kitchen I reach into the cupboard for cereal and a bowl. Unable to swallow my turkey at dinner, I’m hungry now. My hands tremble and I fumble and drop the bowl on the floor, sending it spinning like a dreidel. As I scoop it up I remember the exercise the grief counselor suggested—smashing dishes. She also said you could knead bread or yell in the shower.
