The Year of Pleasures

  “Yes,” I said, watching the clouds lighten and wondering how that could possibly happen.

  “I’ll help you,” he said. He was reading my mind again.

  “Okay.” I leaned over and kissed the top of his head, thinking that if a forehead could look weary, his did.

  A few hours later, he rested quietly as I sat in the Naugahyde chair next to his bed. I was reading aloud, poems by Neruda. A light rain was falling and you could hear the distant rumble of thunder. There was a name for such thunder, and I had been thinking I would ask John what it was as soon as I finished the poem. But I heard his breathing slow, then rattle. I looked quickly over at him, and he smiled at me, then closed his eyes. I watched for his chest to rise again. It did, several times, and then it did not. I took his hand and leaned closer to him. Inside my own chest, it felt as though someone were beating a rug. “John?” I said. I shook him. “John?” I felt a mounting sense of desperation. I had a question. I had one more question. “John?” One more question, and then if it would be all right, if I could just have him until the day was over. Just a few more hours. But he was gone. I clasped my hand tightly over my mouth and felt a trembling that started deep inside move out to make all of me shake. I had a mighty impulse, it truly was mighty, to rise to my feet and howl. To overturn the chair and nightstand, to rip at my clothes, to bring down the very walls around us. But of course I did not do that. I pulled an elemental sense of outrage back inside and smoothed it down. I forced something far too big into something far too small, and this made for a surprising and unreasonable weight, as mercury does. I noticed sounds coming from my throat, little unladylike grunts. I saw that everything I’d ever imagined about what it would feel like when was pale. Was wrong. Was the shadow and not the mountain. And then, “It’s all right,” I said, quickly. “It’s all right.” To whom? I wondered later.

  I closed the slender volume of poems and sat still for a long moment. Then I leaned over to lay my head in the familiar hollow below his shoulder. After a while, I rang the bell for a nurse. I hoped Lonnie would come. She had been his favorite. And indeed it was Lonnie who came, and before she did anything, she embraced me. “He was such a gentleman,” she said.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “You were very lucky,” she said, and to this I did not reply.

  They let me say a final goodbye, and I put his clothes into the little suitcase we’d brought with us. I opened his bedside drawer and took out his watch and his glasses and his wallet. There was also a blue plastic denture cup, which was odd, because he had no dentures. When I looked inside it, I found three slips of paper. One said green bowl. Another, carbon. And the third I wasn’t able to quite make out, but I thought it said gingerbread. All of this I put into the suitcase as well.

  I took a cab home because I did not trust my driving. It had stopped raining; the sun was bright. “Finally nice out, huh?” the driver asked. He was a middle-aged man, probably close to John’s age, wearing a Harvard sweatshirt.

  I swallowed, mumbled agreement, and pulled John’s suitcase closer to me on the seat.

  The driver’s eyes sought out mine in the rearview mirror. “Let me tell you, I’ve had better days,” he said, and waited for me to ask why. But I stayed silent, stared out the window at the beautiful synchronicity of the rowers on the Charles. They would not be out there much longer.

  When I arrived home, I wept, of course, walked around from room to room sobbing from a place deep in my gut. I cried until my eyes swelled shut, and then I slept, a black, dreamless sleep from which I awoke amazingly refreshed, at least until I remembered.

  I made calls to arrange for John’s cremation and memorial service in a kind of removed way that I realized was necessary for performing such a task. I’d argued against his cremation even though I had asked that he do the same for me, should I be the one to go first. But that had been when our deaths were an abstraction. When it became clear that John was going to die, I’d changed my mind—I wanted him to be buried. “I want a place to find you,” I’d told him, and he’d said, “In time, you’ll find the place.” He’d asked me to release him to the ocean as soon as I got the ashes, and I’d promised I would.

  I stayed in the house for a week after that, wearing John’s shirts during the day and John’s pajamas at night. Sometimes I felt on the far edge of reality, unable to understand the simplest things: an exuberant voice on the radio, an advertisement in the mail. The phone rang and I would look at it as if I were a visitor from a distant planet, wondering what sort of animal was making that irritating, repetitive noise.

  Other times, I went numb, as though vultures had landed inside and picked me clean. At those times, I did not quite taste or see or hear or touch or feel. And at those times, I thought cautiously, Is that it, then? Am I through crying? Am I healing already? And then would come another tidal wave of pain, nearly nauseating in its force, that had me pounding and pounding on the kitchen table. I knew it was a common story, the loss of a husband, widowhood, but it was of no use to me to know how many had experienced this before me. I remembered an eighty-nine-year-old woman who’d lost her husband many years ago telling me in her shaky voice, You still sleep on your half of the bed. I learned that it was true.

  Then around seven-thirty one evening, I suddenly became ravenously hungry. I didn’t want to cook and I didn’t want to go somewhere I’d been with John, so I walked to an Italian restaurant I’d never been to. It seemed darker outside than usual, the light from the streetlamps moody and insubstantial. I supposed this might be because of a thin layer of fog. But more likely, I thought, it was because I was walking in the dark by myself, something I’d not done in a long time. I could smell the sweet decay of fall, but it was warm, and I opened my coat to the moist night air.

  The restaurant was loud and bright, the tables covered with the commonplace but always comforting red-and-white-checked tablecloths. Tiny white lights ran across the ceiling and down the walls. There were beautiful wooden booths with wide benches and high backs, and I saw couples sitting there together, some with their heads practically touching, some ignoring each other in the tired way of many long-marrieds. I concentrated on looking at the bored couples so that I did not have to see intimate smiles, quick caresses, the open joy of those who clearly appreciated the person they sat across from.

  I ordered eggplant Parmesan to go, then leaned against the wall near the hostess station to wait for it. I checked my watch every few minutes. When thoughts of John and the resultant sting of tears came, I willed them away, thinking, Later. It was like trying to hold back a full-body sneeze.

  When my order was ready, I paid and walked quickly toward home. Outside the Bank of Boston, I saw Burt the Bum (not an unkind appellation—it was what he called himself) sitting in his usual spot to the left of the door, wearing his usual outfit: a suit with a T-shirt, running shoes, and a battered fedora. I’d heard rumors that he’d been a very successful stockbroker at one time, but then he began having a little difficulty with that old bugaboo, reality. “Hey!” he called out. “Where’ve you been?”

  I hesitated, then walked slowly over to him. “John got very sick.”

  “That’s too bad. Is he okay now?” He leaned closer to the bag I carried, and sniffed. “Leftovers?”

  “He died,” I said, and the simplicity of it stunned me. Two words. Whole story.

  Bert’s eyes widened. He took off his hat. “Aw, man. That’s a pisser. I always liked him.”

  “And he you.” It was true. I used to grow impatient sometimes, waiting for John to finish his conversations with Bert so that we could go home. John had appreciated what he called Bert’s clear-mindedness, though it seemed obvious to me that Bert’s mind was far from clear. Still, he was unfailingly interesting, and he had the habit of truth about him.

  “So . . . how are you doing?” Bert asked.

  I shrugged, then handed him the bag of food. “Would you like this?”

  He shook his head. “Just lost m
y appetite.”

  “Yeah, me too.” But I opened the bag and looked inside.

  “Probably pretty good, though,” Bert said.

  “Have you eaten today?”

  “I had a donut.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday morning.”

  “That’s not today.” I took out the foil dish, lifted the lid, and handed him the plastic fork. “Here. Eat some.”

  He looked up at me, put his hat back on, and took a bite. “Not bad,” he said. “Sure you don’t want some?”

  “No, you go ahead.” It did smell good. I leaned against the building, pulled my coat closer around me.

  “Too bad I drank all my wine,” Bert said. He chewed thoughtfully, then leaned back against the wall, put his fist to his diaphragm, and belched. “Oh. Sorry.” He looked up at me. “Guess life goes on.”

  “I guess it does.” I smiled at him. And then, suddenly, I blurted out, “I’m going to move.”

  “Really. Where to?”

  “I don’t know. I’m going to sell my house and put my stuff in storage and drive to the middle of the country. When I find some small town I like, I’ll buy a house.”

  “Uh-huh. You think that’s a good idea?”

  “John wanted to do it, too. We talked about it a lot. He asked me to do it without him.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s all right then.” He took another bite of eggplant, spoke with his mouth full. “This from Agostino’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re all right, but Donatello’s is better. Donatello’s puts a little something extra in their sauce, maybe allspice. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that this isn’t good.”

  “You enjoy it,” I said, moving away from him.

  “You going?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What are you going to do tonight?”

  “I don’t know. I . . . don’t know.”

  “You get lonesome, you get too sad, you come and sit with me. I wouldn’t mind anything you did.”

  I smiled at him.

  “I mean it!”

  Something occurred to me. I had always thought maybe we should invite Bert to our house—to have a proper meal, to take a shower. But John had thought it was a bad idea, so we’d never offered. But then I said, “I live two blocks down, Bert. Would you like to come over?”

  “Thanks, but I wouldn’t enjoy it, Betta. No offense.”

  “I could offer you a guest room for a night.”

  “I’m used to this.”

  “I just thought you’d like—”

  “I wouldn’t enjoy it, Betta.”

  “Okay.” I drew in a long breath. “So, I guess I’ll get going then.”

  He struggled up from his sitting position and offered me his hand. I shook it, then wiped away tears that had begun spilling down my face.

  “I’ll tell you something, Betta. I’m not going to worry about you. You know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’ll be fine. That’s why. You can’t see it yet, but I can.” He tapped the side of his head with his middle finger. “Psychic. Seriously.”

  “Okay, Bert. So long. Take care of yourself.” I dug in my purse for my wallet and held out a twenty-dollar bill. “Here you go.”

  He looked at the bill, sadness in his eyes. “Betta. Don’t insult me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Put that away.”

  “We’ve always given you money!”

  “Yeah, a five, that’s all right, buys me a coffee and a Danish. A twenty, you’re saying you feel sorry for me.”

  “Would you like a five?” I asked.

  He lifted his chin and pooched out his lips, considering. Then, “Yeah, sure,” he said. And when I gave him the money, he shoved it in his pocket without looking at me.

  “Goodbye, Bert.” I turned to go.

  “Hold on.” He put his hat back on. “Good luck to you, Betta. And . . . I just wanted to say that I sure liked him a lot. He was a rare man. You know. Just . . . a rare man.”

  “Yes. Thank you.” I walked quickly away. Some analytical and oddly interested part of me noticed the specific characteristics of my pain: centered in the middle, making for a weight that felt like someone was sitting on me. I squeezed my hands into fists and thought, I’ll go home and make some scrambled eggs. Maybe I’ll put some cream cheese in there. After that, a hot bath. Jasmine-scented oils. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik in the background, silk pajamas. I looked up into the night sky, at the shrouded stars. “How’s that?” I asked.

  The service for John near the end of October had been a small but elegant affair involving the usual mix of humorous and poignant homages. Everyone who attended—a few friends and a large number of people from the hospital where John practiced—knew of my plans to move right away, and everyone advised me not to. But their advice about staying had not seemed as right as the immediate acceptance I’d gotten from Bert about leaving. And it was not what John had advised.

  After the service, I drove to the ocean to scatter John’s ashes. But I didn’t put them all in the water—I hoped he wouldn’t mind a few alterations. I buried a pinch of him in the earth. I released a bit of him to the air. Some of him I put fire to again—I lit a match to a small pile of ashes. A little bit of him I swallowed. Then, weeping, I took off my shoes and walked to the shoreline to let the rest of him go. I stood shivering for a while, watching the water take him—despite the odd warmth of the day, the sand was ice-cold. I put my hand over my heart and said, “I love you.” I said, “My sweet, sweet, sweetheart.” Then I said, “I’ll see you,” and started back for the car. Behind me, I heard the raucous and eager cries of the gulls. I didn’t turn around to see if they were near him. The ashes had not really been him, after all. And I understood, too, that he was right in asking to be cremated. For if he was nowhere, he could be everywhere. As in, with me.

  On November first I listed the house with the agency John and I had called, and it sold immediately, without advertising. The real estate market in Boston was crazy; there were waiting lists of people wanting brownstones. I received seven offers over my asking price, and all of the bidders seemed willing to try to top one another forever. One of the couples was in their late twenties. “Where did they get this kind money?” I asked Victoria, the Realtor, and she shrugged. Which I assumed meant none of my business.

  By the end of the week, the house went to a late-thirtyish couple with a young child. One point nine million, a cash deal, when John and I had paid a hundred forty thousand. I didn’t meet the people; for many reasons, I didn’t want to. I arranged for the lawyer to represent me at the closing only three weeks hence, then made the call to a mover to pack up my things and put them in storage.

  “You’re lucky,” the woman on the phone told me. “We’ve just had a cancellation. Do you want us to come on Thursday?” It was Tuesday. I thought Thursday was probably too soon, but when I cast about for reasons to stay longer, I couldn’t think of any. It would feel good to keep moving, I thought. I didn’t want to stay in a place that only reminded me of him. I wanted to go to a new place. I had been ready even before.

  On my last night in Boston, my neighbor Sheila Murphy came over with a gift. It was beautifully wrapped—pink-and-gold floral paper and wide, satiny pink ribbon, and at first I worried about having to make a fuss over whatever it was. I felt at the bottom of my own resources; I had nothing to give. But it turned out the gift was not from her but from John. This was so like him, a corny, bighearted man who quoted aphorisms like “We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.” Even when he was very ill, he still had sent me flowers. I had once answered the door to a glorious bouquet, looked for a card and found none, then turned to see John sitting on the sofa, smiling. He had no longer been able to walk around very much, but he could still use the phone.

  And now here was his final gift. I began to cry and winced as I put a tissue up to my face. My right eye had developed a minor infection from
wiping away tears with everything from hankies to paper towels to envelopes from condolence cards. “Sit down with me for a minute,” Sheila said.

  We moved to the family room sofa, and I sat sobbing beside her, she patting my back awkwardly. It didn’t last long—in less than a minute, I straightened up and took in a deep breath. “Sorry,” I said, and she said, “Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t have to apologize.” She had tears in her eyes, too.

  I looked at the gift in my lap. “Do you know what this is?”

  “Sort of.”

  “What is it?”

  “Well, it’s . . . you know, that one time when I stayed with him when you went out for groceries? He spent the whole time writing out things on little slips of paper. I don’t know what they were. But that’s what this is.”

  I thought of the papers I’d found in John’s hospital drawer. “Just . . . words?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Don’t know. He asked me not to read them, so I didn’t. He just sat there and wrote these things and then folded the papers and put them in a cigar box. That’s what this is, it’s just a cigar box, but John asked me to wrap it in something beautiful—he said you liked pink.”

  I nodded, miserable.

  “Well, anyway, I just wanted to bring you this.” She looked around the room, then at me. “Oh, Betta. How are you?”

  “Fine,” I said, in a bright and automatic way that made us both smile. “Really,” I said. “I’m okay.”

  “You’ve lost weight.”

  “Well, might as well have one good thing happening!”

  “No, but seriously, you’ve got to take care of yourself. Did you eat today?”

  “Yes.”

  “All three meals?”

  “Uh-huh. Yup.”

  “What did you eat?”

  I sighed. “I had bad cholesterol for breakfast, mad cow disease for lunch, and mercury poisoning for dinner.”

  She frowned, then said, “Oh, Wagner’s? The salmon special?”

  “Yes.”

  “How was it? Randy and I have been meaning to go there.”