The Year of Pleasures (8 page)

I got out a saucepan to heat water for tea—I hadn’t found the kettle yet; I supposed it was in one of the few kitchen boxes I had yet to empty. I’d drink a mug of Sleepytime, and then, when I was sure I could no longer keep my eyes open, I’d go upstairs to lie down. In the morning, I could cross off another day. I put my hands to my lower back, stretched, allowed myself an
Oh, God.
“Healing hurts,” someone at John’s service had told me. “But hurting heals.”

At 3
A.M.
, my eyes opened and I was wide-awake. I felt as though I hadn’t slept at all, when in fact it had been four hours straight—not bad. I sat at the edge of the bed and looked around the room, made bright by moonlight coming in through the curtainless windows. It was a nice-sized room. Smaller than the bedroom we’d had before, but I appreciated the coziness, especially now. Tall wardrobe boxes stood like sentinels in the middle of the room, smaller cartons stacked up beside them. So much to do, in just this one room. I looked over at the dresser, thinking I didn’t want it where I told the movers to put it after all—the opposite wall would have been better. But I didn’t think I could move it by myself. Another mosquito bite of grief. I was beginning to learn that sometimes sorrow was a complex form of aggravation.

I didn’t want to lie back down. Nor did I want to wander around what was still an unfamiliar house, no comfort stations yet established. The chenille-covered chaise longue was in the corner of the living room, but there was no glowing lamp beside it, no throw draped over it, no ticking clocks nearby or flowering orchid plants with their exotic, reaching stems. Instead, there were more boxes of things to be put away. And there was more silence, denser in the larger rooms, more alive, capable of replacing a hard-won calm with a pulsating panic.

I lay back down on my stomach in a position I’d learned in the single yoga class I’d taken last winter. I pointed one of my heels up, lengthened my leg, then did the same with my other leg.
S-t-r-e-t-c-h.
I remembered the merriment in the instructor’s eyes when she’d asked the class, “Now! Have you all grown an inch or two?” She was an elegant-looking woman from Amsterdam with a charming accent. I’d wondered if she was like that all the time—yogacized—or if she had moments of pettiness and despair like the rest of us. Did she nearly float around her house on a cloud of enlightenment, or did she walk in with a pile of overdue bills, fling them on a table that needed dusting, and phone a friend to complain that all of her students were idiots? My inability to decide was what I turned into an excuse for dropping the class. What did
she
know? I asked myself, when what I was really asking was, Why should I wake up so
early
and go out into the
cold
?

Now, though, I tried to breathe the way she taught us that day.
When you breathe in this fashion, remember that it has a healing effect on each and every cell of the body.
I remember rolling my eyes when she said that, and at the same time wanting very much to believe it. Now, compliant out of class in a way that I could not be in it, I took a long breath in, made it longer, then longer still.
Think of a high waterfall; pull down, down, down. And now, let it go, let your breath rise up along your backbone in a continuous flow, and let it all, all, all out.

I recalled the charged air in that yoga studio, the smell of sandalwood, the soothing periwinkle color of the walls, the way the dust motes glittered in the sun that streamed in from the high windows. I recalled too the luxury of seeing such calm and comfort and rejecting it on the grounds of not needing it. It was like seeing a platterful of food go by when your belly is full. At such times, it does not occur to you that you might someday be starving.

I would find another yoga class, and this time I would go. I would buy books on gardening so that, come spring, I would know how to care for my extraordinary backyard. I would honor John’s request in a most deliberate way: I would try to find joy despite the necessary work of grieving, and I knew full well that
work
was exactly the right word to describe it. It was John’s life that was over, not mine. I had to remember that recognizing the distinction was not disloyalty. I had to remember that I was still a young woman! Well, I was not an old woman.

I smoothed the top of the sheet over my blanket, folded my hands on top of my chest, and felt with relief the veil-like prelude to sleep, that falling away inside one’s chest, the unsticking of self from self. And I felt a familiar hope, too: In dreams, I was sometimes with him still.

The doorbell awakened me, and I looked bleary-eyed at my watch. Ten-thirty. I went to the window to see if there was a delivery truck of some sort. The CDs I’d ordered, perhaps. One night in the motel I’d sat before my laptop and ordered thirty CDs from Amazon. I didn’t even remember what they were.

But there was no truck out front. There was nothing. I put on my robe, went into the bathroom to quickly brush my hair and splash water on my face, then went downstairs to open the door. It was the boy from next door, standing there with a basket full of muffins.

“These are for you,” he said. “From my mom. They’re blueberry.”

“Oh, well, thank you,” I said. “Thank
her.
”

He pushed his glasses snug against the bridge of his nose and looked up at me through lenses that magnified his blue eyes in a way just short of comical. “I’m Benny Pacini. Did you get my note?”

“I did. I’m Betta Nolan.”

“Betta?”

I smiled in spite of myself. “Yes. My mother couldn’t choose between Betty and Anna. I do have some work for you, if you’d like to help me unpack boxes.”

“I could help you tomorrow. I already have two jobs for today: walking dogs, and sweeping out a garage.” He eyed my robe and pajamas. “Were you still sleeping?”

“I was, yes. I sleep late. Sometimes.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“It’s all right.” I opened the door wider. “Would you like to come in?”

“Okay.” He stepped just inside the door, shrugged off his jacket. “Do I have to take my shoes off?”

“No. No need. Why don’t you come in the kitchen? I’ll make some coffee, and maybe you’d like to have a muffin with me.”

“They’re just for you. I’m not allowed to have one.”

“But if they’re for me, I can decide what to do with them, right? And what I want to do is share them with you.”

He shrugged in the exaggerated way of children, grimacing, shoulders practically reaching his earlobes. Then he followed me to the kitchen table, where he stood stiffly beside a chair. “At ease,” I told him.

He stared at me. “Huh?”

“Have a
seat,
” I said.

He pulled out a chair and sat on the edge of it, his legs swinging, while I rummaged around a moving box, looking for coffee filters.

“Wow,” Benny said, “you were on the
Mayflower
?”

I looked up at him. He pointed to the box. “Oh!” I said. “No. No, that’s the name of the moving company I used.”
Maybe,
I thought,
I should give in and color my gray.

“Where did you come here from?”

“Boston.”

“That’s the capital of Massachusetts.”

“That’s right.”

He looked around politely, his gaze not wandering beyond the confines of the kitchen. “I’ve never been in this house before. The lady who lived here was mean!”

“Yes, I met her.”

“You did?”

“Uh-huh.”

“A lot of people said she was a real witch. Grown-ups said that. Where did she go, anyway?”

“To a nursing home.” I opened another box and began searching there: funnels, a colander, measuring cups, nesting bowls. “It’s called the Rose McNair Home.”

“We went there in second grade, at Christmastime. We had to sing ‘O Holy Night’ to them.” He sang a few words of the song in a way so distracted and utterly unself-conscious I felt certain he wasn’t aware of doing it. He was taking in his surroundings in a very concentrated way.

“Was it fun, singing to them?” I asked.

He snapped his attention back to me and contemplated the question like a politician hedging his bets. “No. They were mostly sleeping. I meant to ask you, do you have any kids?”

“I do not.”

“Do you have a husband?”

Ah. I stood still for a moment, holding the small strainer I’d just picked up over my heart. Then I said, “He’s dead.”

Benny’s legs stopped swinging. “He is?”

“Yes.” I dug past pot holders, kitchen magnets, cheesecloth.

“Oh. I know how you feel ’cause my favorite grandpa died last month, two days after my tenth birthday, Grandpa Will.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. He knew magic tricks. One thing he could do was chop off his finger.”

“My goodness!”

“Yup. And then he could heal it back.”

“That’s quite a trick.” I reached the bottom of the second box without success. Where
were
those filters?

“He didn’t really chop it off,” Benny said. “But it sure looked like he did.”

“Yes. I guess that was the trick part, that he made it look so real.” I opened yet another box, lifted some kitchen towels, and uncovered a roll of paper towels. I could use one of those for a filter. Once, on a cold winter morning when we were out of both filters and paper towels, John had tried to use toilet paper. Then he’d used a strainer to try to separate the coffee grounds and disintegrating paper from the liquid. Then he’d tasted it.
Then
he’d gone to the store. And since the windchill was forty below, he’d bought lox and capers and beautiful bagels and gourmet cream cheese and roses and a type of wild rice we’d been wanting to try. That’s the way he operated. Use errors to your advantage. “Your grandfather sounds like he was an interesting guy,” I told Benny.

He sighed. “Sometimes I get mad that I can’t ask him things anymore.”

“Yes. I know what you mean.” I lifted some boxes of tea.
There
were the filters! I brought them over to the coffeemaker and measured coffee, dumped in water, flicked the switch. “I feel that way, too.”

“About your husband?”

“Yes.” A satisfying aroma immediately filled the air, and I felt a reflexive lift in spirits. I’d once asked John, “Why do you think a simple ritual like coffee in the morning makes us so happy?” “Maybe because it’s not simple,” he’d said.

“What was your husband’s name?”

“His name was John.” I opened the refrigerator and took out a small carton of milk, brought it to the table, and sat down. “So.”

“You don’t have so much in your refrigerator, huh?” Benny said.

“No, I haven’t been to the grocery store to stock up yet.”

“Do you like Dr Pepper?”

“I think Dr Pepper’s all right.”

“It’s my favorite. My mom always forgets to buy it.”

“I’ll get some for the next time you come to visit. How would that be?”

“Good.” He smiled shyly, then said, “This guy in my class? Matt Lederman? He said I was gay.”

“Did he.”

“Gay is when you like boys if you’re a boy.”

“Right. Or girls if you’re a girl.”

“But I’m not that.”

“It wouldn’t be bad if you were.”

“Well, I’m
not.
”

“Okay.”

The coffeemaker beeped, and I got up to pour myself a cup. “Would you like some milk with your muffin?” I asked Benny.

“No, thanks.” He peeled the wrapper from the sides of the muffin, put his hands behind his back, and bent down to take a bite. “This is how horses eat,” he said around his mouthful.

I sat down opposite him. “You mean, no hands?”

“Right.”

He took another bite and shut his eyes. “You can taste more with your eyes closed. Try it.”

I closed my eyes for a moment and chewed. “You’re absolutely right,” I told him.

“People should always eat like this. But they just don’t listen.”

“Don’t you think it would be hard to have a conversation when you were eating with someone if your eyes were closed all the time?”

“No, because you know why? You
hear
better with your eyes closed, too!” He cocked his head to the side, his eyes still squeezed shut and listening intently, as if proving his point to himself. But then he opened his eyes to ask, “Where do you work?”

“I don’t have a job right now.” Funny how, in saying this to him, I seemed to realize it for the first time myself.

He stared at me blankly. I suppose that these days, for a woman not to work doesn’t compute. And so I said, “I used to write children’s books.”

His eyes lit up. “Like
Harry Potter
?”

“I wish!” I said. “But no. I wrote picture books, for younger children.”

“What ones?”

I actually hated this question. The person on the airplane, on finding out what I did: “Well, have you published anything that I would know?” And then they never did know anything, and then would come the embarrassed silence, the returning to our respective reading matter. But I answered Benny. “Well, my favorite one was called
Grandma Sylvia’s Pocketbook.
”

“What’s it about?”

I took a second muffin. They were made from a mix, I was pretty sure, but they were very good. “It’s about a grandmother who babysits every Friday night for her grandson, who really loves to look through her pocketbook.”