Unremarried Widow (20 page)

“Please,” I said. “Please help me.”

I spoke the words as I squeezed the ring in my fist.

“Please.”

I shook my head as I said it, slowly, from side to side.

“Please help. Please.”

My sense of things faded and the words lost all meaning. Soon I was chanting a wordless prayer, an om of sadness, a sound that was pure grief. I continued until my lips numbed and my fingers locked in their grip. I sat with my eyes closed and my breath low in the back of my throat, feeling the candle flames and the empty space of the living room. I felt the emptiness in me. I lowered my hand from my chest and opened my fingers, raised the lid to the wooden box, and set my wedding band inside. The two rings glinted in the light from the candles and I sat with my bare hands in my lap, trembling.

Time pressed relentlessly forward and
the one-year anniversary of Miles's death loomed. I had spent the days and weeks and months after the notification inside an iron lung, taking one joyless breath after another, not living really, just sustaining. There had been nothing
beyond the next breath and still people told me the second year would be worse.

“Once you make it through the first round of important dates,” an older widow told me, “you'll be disappointed to discover what follows.”

“What follows?” I asked.

“Another year.”

Widows who were further along told me that the challenge becomes not just surviving but living, less a question of
How do I make it through the day?
and more of the dilemma,
What now?

I planned to take a personal day from work on the anniversary itself. I thought I would drive to a park on an undeveloped stretch of estuary, pack a sandwich and a book, sit under a cabbage palm and listen to the raccoons in the buttonwoods. I thought I would walk the sand paths until they gave out on the shore. I would collect lightning whelks and lilac augers and drag my toes in the surf. But when the day came I did none of these things. I drove to my mother's house and sat on a chair facing the beach as I had done in the first days after the notification. I watched the waves for hours, let them come into me, into my eyes, past the corneas and through the lenses and against the retinas, let the images penetrate my brain until they had wiped away all trace of what lay inside.

I had recently read an article about a woman whose son had been killed in Iraq. She quit her corporate job to start an organic farm, and when people asked how she could be so foolhardy she simply shrugged them off.

“I've already lost everything,” she said. “Why wouldn't I try this?”

A late-autumn cold front had blown in earlier in the week, bringing days of wind and rain, and I was cold as I sat in the wicker chair. I folded my legs to my chest and watched the waters of the Gulf churn the color of strong tea. I wondered what it would feel like to step outside my life, and I thought of the last line from Miles's good-bye letter.
Follow your dreams with all your heart, and with honor and decency.
I realized
then that the way through the days and months and years to come depended solely on me, and I saw for the first time that I could stay in the same house, in the same job, in the same city, drowning slowly, or I could step out and away. There on the eve of my second year without Miles I asked myself,
What now?

A contest. That's how this
all begins. The local daily paper, the
News-
Press
, ran a contest looking for someone to write for their new community website. Annabelle, who worked as a sportswriter for the
News-Press
, encouraged me to enter. I did. The editors selected three finalists, me among them. For two weeks we submitted sample stories while the public voted, and at the end of that stretch an editor from the
News-Press
called to tell me I'd won. I hung up the phone and pumped my fist in the air and did a frantic jerking dance around my living room.

“I won!” I shouted. “Holy shit.”

I wrote for the
News-Press
every week—personal essays and slice-of-life pieces about southwest Florida. The stories were unpaid and unedited, but at least I was writing. One afternoon my boss on the farm called me into his office.

“I've got somebody you should meet,” he said.

He wrote an e-mail address on a slip of paper and handed it across his desk.

“She's a friend of mine. A writer. She does PR work now but she might be able to point you in the right direction. If you're serious about this writing thing.”

I looked at the address in my hand, uncertain.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Contact her. What do you have to lose?”

Back in my office I sat with the piece of paper propped against my keyboard. I could not imagine what I would say to this woman, but I invited her for coffee anyway.

It rained the night of our meeting. Water slid off the waxy leaves of ixora hedges in the parking lot, seeped through the mulch, and puddled on the pavement. I hurried beneath the roof of the shopping center to the soft light from the coffee shop spilling onto the wet sidewalk. Under the awning I shook out my umbrella and peeked to see if she waited inside. Not yet. I nervously ordered a cup of tea at the counter and found a table near the door. An anxious refrain beat against my skull, a version of
What are you thinking?
set on repeat. No one ever told me that the act of courage actually feels like fear. By the time the woman arrived, I had sweated through my nice blouse. We shook hands and she took the seat across from me.

“So I hear you want to be a writer,” she said.

I looked at the mug between my fingers.
Say it,
I dared myself.
Claim what you want.
I raised my eyes to hers.

“I do.”

The rain fell outside in a windless downpour and the woman nodded.

“I have some ideas. Places where you might start.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a newspaper. “This is
Florida Weekly.
A new publication, started by guys who left the
News-Press.
It's a good paper with quality writing, but you can tell they don't have enough reporters.”

She peeled off the front section and pointed to a byline.

“See this? ‘Special to
Florida Weekly.
' That means it came from outside the paper, probably from a PR person.”

The cappuccino machine whirred, briefly drowning out the guitar chords that pumped through the stereo, and I looked at her without comprehending.

“That means they need writers,” she said. “This could be a good place for you to pitch.”

She handed me the paper and I scanned the front page. It had a good look—clean, professional, with quality photos and a clear layout.

“So, how do I pitch them?” I said.

“Write the editor. His name is Jeff Cull. Tell him what you'd like to do—that you want to be one of his freelance writers. Maybe for the Arts and Entertainment section? I think that would be a good fit for you. Then send him clips of the stories you've written for the
News-Press.
That will give him an idea of what you can do.”

“And then what happens?”

“Then you wait to hear back.”

The smell of guavas hung
heavy and sweet as I lapped the farm's main office. I followed the porch that skirted the building, past the jackfruit trees that stood beside the south wall, the spiked fruit big enough to kill a man if they fell. I moved clockwise around the porch, past the door that led into the kitchen, the windows of the front office, the main entrance where papayas turned soft and brown in the heat. I hardly noticed, I was so intent on composing a message in my head.

I had paged through a copy of
Florida Weekly
over lunch, reading the articles in every section, looking for gaps and figuring out where I might fit in, when a thought occurred to me. I remembered the friend
of a friend from college, the one in the running for the editorial job, and his idea for a relationship column. I was still fascinated by the big questions that love asks, specifically how to negotiate the terrain between what we want from our lives and what we want from a partner. I still had strong opinions about a woman's responsibility to herself. And I still thought about sex. My God, did I think about sex.

The back door gave a metallic yawn as I moved into the air-conditioned building. I took a seat in front of my computer and typed out the message I had composed in the afternoon heat. I attached three of my recent articles, scanned the e-mail carefully for errors, and before I could lose my nerve I hit Send. It was exhilarating and terrifying and perhaps the most foolhardy thing I had ever done.

And then what happened?

Then I waited to hear back.

But not for long.

“I really liked the dating piece,” Jeff replied that afternoon. “Let's talk about this when you have some time. If you get a chance, stop by and we'll chat.”

I gulped great lungfuls of air and then covered my mouth to stop the cheer that was building in the back of my throat. I snuck out the side door to a picnic table beneath the oaks and tented my hands over my mouth.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered into my cupped palms.

Shaking my head, I lowered my eyes so that I stared into my lap. I felt a bittersweet pang as I sat on the picnic table processing the best news I'd had in a long time. Because I didn't know what else to do and also because it felt right, I bowed my head and folded my hands.

“Thank you,” I said.

The sign in the parking
lot said
F
LORIDA
W
EEKLY
.
Blue letters on a white background with a palm frond motif. I parked with a knot in my belly where my nervousness had drawn down to a hard pit. The pit stayed there as I crossed the hot expanse of asphalt, stayed as I reached the shade under the awning, stayed as I opened the door and stepped into the cool interior. The office was empty.

“Hello?” I said.

There were half-unpacked boxes stacked against the side wall, a mess of books and office supplies spilling onto the floor. The lights in most of the rooms were turned off. I stepped down a side hallway.

“Anyone here?”

A man in a button-down shirt and tie stepped out of a back room.

“Hey, there,” he said as he walked down the hall. “I'm Jeff.”

He was in his early forties and had an air about him—genuine, curious, intelligent—that I have since learned to associate with editors in general and newspaper editors in particular. I liked him instantly.

“Come on back,” he said after we shook hands. “We're just now getting the office set up.”

I followed him into another room and he offered me a chair. There was no stiffness to him, no formality, just a direct earnestness.

“I looked you up after I got your e-mail,” he said. “I'm sorry to hear about your husband.”

There it was where I least expected it—the hurt I was always bumping into. A moment of worry crossed my mind as I imagined choking up in front of this man I so desperately needed to give me a shot. But he deftly diverted the conversation and I let out the breath I had been holding. I'd like to tell you there was more of a preamble, but newspapermen—and Jeff in particular—have a penchant for getting straight to the point.

“We'd like you to do a column for us,” Jeff said. “Like you pitched. A dating column.”

I kept my gaze steady, afraid if I moved I'd betray my excitement.
Nonchalance,
I whispered to myself, mentally gritting my teeth.
The goal is nonchalance.
I pressed my lips together. It was all I could do not to leap across the desk and wrap my arms around him.

“We'd like you to start next week.”

Sweet Jesus,
I thought.
Just like that?

He told me how much they'd pay me. On the drive over I'd mentally reviewed what I thought would be an acceptable amount. He quoted me twice that figure.

“What should I write about?” I said. “Anything in particular?”

“We liked those samples you sent in. Just keep doing what you're doing.”

I nodded as if I understood. What
was
I doing? I didn't know, but I wasn't about to admit it. I stood to leave and we shook hands.

“And, Artis?” Jeff said as I moved toward the door.

I turned back to him, one eyebrow raised.

“Don't be shy.”

I laughed.

“I'm not shy,” I said.

There are more than a
thousand widows of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but during my first time at the National Military Survivors Seminar held each year over Memorial Day weekend by an organization called Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors—or TAPS—I worried that none of them would be like me. When I walked into the upstairs lobby of the hotel on the first day, I saw that all of the women seemed to know each other, as if they had come from the same unit. They hugged and cried in small circles, everyone but me in red T-shirts.

“Is this registration?” I asked a woman behind a wooden table.

“Sure is,” she said in a voice that struck me as too high and too light.

“Henderson,” I said as she thumbed through the registration packets.

“Here we go.” She handed an envelope across the table and beamed up at me. “You can pick up your T-shirt over there.”

She pointed across the lobby and I turned in that direction.

“Don't forget your button,” she called after me.

“My button?”

As I looked at the table next to hers I understood. The TAPS registration form I'd filled out months before had asked me to submit a picture of my loved one. I remembered having sent in a photo of Miles, but I couldn't have told you which one. I moved to the adjoining table and gave the woman there my name. She handed over a small manila envelope and I pushed open the brass clasp. Inside was a photo button: Miles on the deck of a deep-sea fishing boat, a yellow-finned grunt in his hand. My breath caught in my throat.