Good Grief: A Novel

  I remember holing up in the bathroom getting ready for the prom in high school while Dad cowered out in the hall, wanting to help. “Sweetie, is there anything I can do?” he called through the door.

  “No!” I shouted over the roar of the hair dryer as I worked at straightening my curls—a forty-five-minute chore that left my scalp scorched and my arm muscles aching.

  I am thirty-six years old and my husband died nine months ago and here I am getting ready for a date to go bowling with a too-handsome actor who must have some sort of dark, psycho-killer secret because everyone knows all the nice, smart, normal men are married. Only the trolls are left.

  In the past hour I’ve changed from corduroys to jeans to a skirt. How could I have managed to lose my husband, my job, my house, and my ass all in one year?

  Oddly enough, I didn’t fret over my first date with Ethan. We went to see the Lakers, who’d come to town to play the Warriors, and I wore jeans and a flannel shirt. As mustard dribbled down my front, I distinctly recall not worrying about what some goofy engineer thought about me or my hair. Maybe because I didn’t fear then that I might be alone for the rest of my life.

  Now I know Ethan would want me to start dating. Go for it, he’d say. Don’t sit home alone. I feel a pang of jealousy imagining him remarrying if I were the one who died. Who would it be? That woman engineer at his office who was smart and funny and had the teeniest feet? I hate her.

  I rub blush into my cheeks, trying to work up a healthy glow.

  I didn’t tell Ruth about my date because you never want to tell Ruth when you’re doing something inappropriate, and I’m not sure this is appropriate. Yet. She’d never say anything, she’d just bristle, her dance-student posture straightening a notch.

  The only thing worse than being widowed is being widowed and single. Well, how could you not be widowed and single? The thing is, though, there’s this grace period right after your husband dies when you’re sort of widowed and still married. When it’s okay to burrow under the flannel sheets with a family pack of Oreos. When you’re not expected to take off your wedding ring and go on a date with a man whose slate-blue-gray eyes give you goose bumps. But eventually you are supposed to get on with things and start bowling with actors.

  How will I know if I really even like Drew Ellis? I’m so eager for intimacy, I would date a tree.

  Drew called the night he visited me in the kitchen at Le Petit Bistro to make sure I was all right after “that crazy woman started yelling.” I explained what had happened with Crystal and he immediately took my side, saying that I should call and report Crystal’s mom, too. Oh, well, I told him. What was the sense in that? We talked for almost an hour, and I learned that he’s from New York and put himself through Juilliard waiting tables at Brew Burger in the garment district and sometimes people left pennies in the ketchup as their tip. He said he hated waiting tables and could understand how the kitchen would be a much better place to work. Suddenly I didn’t feel so embarrassed by my job. I learned that he’s been with the festival for five years and he turned forty-one last month and his parents are retired schoolteachers. I cursed myself for imagining flying east with Drew to meet his parents for Thanksgiving. I’d apologize for the scampi incident, and we’d all gather around the piano to sing show tunes in their living room.

  I explained that my husband died of cancer and I recently moved here from California after quitting my job. I left out the part about wearing my bathrobe to work.

  Now, my heart leaps at the sound of the doorbell. Punctual! Another annoyingly charming characteristic. I jam the bottles of hair goo under the sink, throw the cupboard door shut, and lurch out of the bathroom.

  In the front hall I pull off my glasses and set them on the table, take a deep breath, and consider not answering the door. Later I could claim that I got the day wrong. I wonder if Drew can hear me from the porch. Suddenly I imagine my mother saying: Oh, sweetie, you’re being silly. After one final smooth and pat, I clutch the brass door handle with determination.

  Crystal stands on my front porch, hopping from foot to foot.

  “I gotta pee,” she says.

  I wish I hadn’t opened the door. “You should call first.” I put my glasses back on.

  “Our phone’s broken.”

  “Broken?”

  “Well, like, shut off. My mom didn’t pay the bill. The power’s out, too.” She shoots past me into the bathroom.

  I recall how tidy Crystal’s pink house was, with potted geraniums lining the steps up the porch and neat rows of pillows along the sofa, making me think that Crystal’s mother must be very organized. Apparently not.

  “Okay, you can use the bathroom, but then you have to go. I have a—” The word date sticks in my throat.

  “We have no heat at night?” Crystal says through the door. “I’ve been freezing my ass off.”

  “Do you know when they’re going to turn everything back on?” I feel bad for trying to get rid of her.

  “This happens all the time.” She flushes and opens the door. “My mom sends in the check? But she doesn’t sign it on purpose or she dates it wrong. First they think it’s a mistake and then she gets more time to pay. But they’re, like, totally on to her now, so they shut everything off. Then she goes to stay at her jackass boyfriend’s house and he pays the bill and they turn it back on.”

  “I see.” While I can’t think of a single redeeming quality in Crystal’s mother right now, it doesn’t seem helpful to disparage her. “Well, you know it’s hard being a single mother. Working and making ends meet.”

  “Whatever,” Crystal says. She adds in a prim, grown-up tone, “I think it’s her organizational skills and her priorities.”

  I look at my watch. Seven minutes until Drew’s due to arrive.

  “Okay, well, I have an appointment and when he gets here you have to go, okay?”

  “He? You mean a date! Really? With who? Do you have a boyfriend? Do you think Edgar would mind? I mean Ethan?” She points and cocks her head, considering my skirt. “Is that what you’re going to wear?”

  I freeze, wishing I’d stuck with the jeans. Too late to change now. I brush my teeth for the second time in the last hour. Crystal stands behind me at the sink. She always stands a little too close, her knobby knees bumping me, her baby powder and cigarette smells lingering. I spit and gargle and we look into the mirror together.

  “Um . . .” she says, biting down on her lip. “Is your hair, like, on purpose?”

  I look at her in the mirror, look at my hair, look at the floor.

  “I mean, it’s not, like, a perm, right?” she adds optimistically, reaching out to finger a renegade curl.

  Seven-thirty. Drew’s officially half an hour late. Crystal drones on about how Amber and Tiffanie, the two girls at school she could supposedly care less about, got their belly buttons pierced.

  “They totally didn’t tell their moms, and they are in big trouble,” she says, crossing her thin arms over her chest.

  I glare at the phone, then pick up the receiver. The dial tone hums.

  Seven thirty-five. The only thing worse than being a widow and being single is being a widow and being single and being stood up.

  “I think I’ve been stood up,” I tell Crystal.

  “Oh, no. He’s coming.” She hands me her tube of pink lip gloss and I layer a little on top of my Rose Potpourri lipstick.

  “You want me to fix you some supper?” I ask her.

  She nods and we move to the kitchen, where I make her a grilled cheese sandwich. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that she’s my date for the night and we’re going to discuss Amber and Tiffanie, not Hamlet.

  “Thank you,” she says as I set the plate in front of her.

  Wow. Manners. “You’re welcome.”

  She hops up from the table and roots through the refrigerator for the ketchup. I’m relieved that she makes herself at home at my place now, alleviating some of the pressure to entertain her.

  Since
I’m obviously not going anywhere this evening, I kick off my shoes and unbutton my skirt, which digs into my waist despite the fact that I’ve eaten nothing but scrambled egg whites and canned peaches for two days.

  “So does your mom let you stay home alone with no electricity while she’s at her boyfriend’s?” I ask, trying not to sound judgmental.

  She bites into her sandwich and a string of cheese hangs down her chin. “Sometimes. Or I stay at this kid’s house down the street, Melvin. He’s a grade behind me and he’s a geek, but his parents are totally nice, and they have awesome food like Pringles and Pop-Tarts.” She pauses, in a reverie. “The frosted ones.”

  The lipstick tastes soapy. Using a napkin, I rub it all off.

  “Hey, can I stay here tonight instead of at Melvin’s?”

  “Sure.” What difference does it make? Drew’s not coming.

  Crystal perks up, talking faster. “I know what we can do. You can help me sew quilts for the animal shelter.”

  “Sew?” I ask skeptically.

  “Yeah, there’s this volunteer program? Where you cut up old quilts and sew the edges over and make littler ones for the animals ’cause they have to sleep alone in cages on newspaper and they, like, get cold.” She looks around the kitchen. “Where’s your sewing machine?”

  How do I break it to Crystal that I can’t sew? Can’t do algebra, can’t sew. What kind of mentor am I? Home economics was mandatory for girls when I was in junior high. We baked Rice Krispies bars and learned how many calories were in ten medium-size potato chips and sewed wraparound skirts while the boys made clay ashtrays in shop down the hall. I sewed through the front and back of my skirt while trying to get the pocket on, the sewing machine gobbling up the paisley fabric until Miss Crawley had to unplug it from the wall. Thankfully, my dad let me stay home the day of the fashion show when we were supposed to model our garments.

  I clear my throat. “Ruth has a sewing machine,” I tell her. “She knows how to sew. We could go over there.”

  Crystal makes a clicking noise with her tongue and rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Never mind.” She doesn’t care for Ruth or anyone who takes my attention away from her.

  She reaches under her pant leg and pulls a pack of Marlboros out of her sock. Her nose is red and raw, and her breath whistles in her chest.

  “Sweetie, your asthma sounds terrible. I don’t think you should smoke.”

  “Hey, you called me sweetie!”

  I’m embarrassed by my corny term of endearment. “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay. You can call me that. My dad? He called me muffin.” She slides the cigarettes back into her sock. “I’m pretty sure he did.”

  Two hours after Drew was supposed to show up, Crystal’s arranging a game of Risk for us to play when the phone rings. I jump but then let it ring several more times, not wanting to seem interested or desperate or even home.

  “Hello,” I say casually.

  “Sophie?” Drew’s voice sounds thick, as though he’s been drinking. Great! A boozer.

  “Hi. Is this Drew?” I try to sound as though I forgot we even had a date.

  “I’m so sorry,” he slurs.

  “No problem.” I obsessed over mascara, asshole. Fifteen minutes in the aisle at the drugstore debating between clump-free or luxury lash.

  Crystal hovers beside me, cracking her knuckles and mouthing, Is it him? I swat her away.

  “I’m at the hothpital,” Drew moans. “I got hit.”

  “Hit? By who?” I’m thinking bar brawl. DUI, maybe.

  “A truck. I was crossing the street. That’s all I saw. The grill of a very big pickup truck.” He giggles. “Sorry,” he says apologetically. “They gave me a pain pill.” He pauses, then perks up. “Hey, you want to come down here? I’ll buy you some peanut-butter crackers from the vending machines.”

  The Ashland emergency room. My old stomping ground.

  “I could use a lift home,” Drew continues. “I’m not supposed to drive, and besides, I don’t have my car.”

  Dating and the hospital. Two phobias for the price of one. “Uh . . . sure.” I hope my hesitation doesn’t make me sound stingy about giving him a ride. I’d like to ask if they’ll wheel him out to the end of the parking lot so I can fetch him there. Explain that I’ve depleted my lifetime supply of hospital bravery. But I don’t want Drew calling that red-haired actress friend for a ride. She’d probably have him home and sprawled across her sofa with his pants off in no time. “Sure,” I repeat.

  “Great,” says Drew.

  “Can’t I come?” Crystal whines as I drive her to her friend Melvin’s, where she’s supposed to spend the night.

  “Nope, sorry.”

  “But you said we could sew!”

  “We will, just not tonight.”

  “I’m really good at bowling.”

  “We’re not going bowling. My friend’s been hurt.”

  Crystal kicks the dashboard with her bare foot.

  I glare at her. She bows her head and frowns, hugging her grungy backpack to her chest.

  “Think about something fun you’d like to do this weekend,” I tell her.

  “I could watch your stuff while you’re in the hospital, and then we could all—”

  The glass hospital doors jolt open automatically, revealing the cavernous hallway into the ER.

  “Move!” a man shouts as he bumps past me toward the front desk, clutching a bloody towel to the side of his head. I scramble in after him. The doors slice shut behind me.

  At the front desk I tell an admitting clerk that I’m there to pick up Drew. “I’m Drew Ellis’s . . .” Person to contact in case of emergency? “Ride,” I tell her, not wanting to elevate my status.

  She leads me down the hall to Drew, who sits behind a tan curtain on a gurney, examining a pair of crutches. His face brightens when he sees me. Even his wrinkles are handsome—intelligent lines across his forehead, crinkly crow’s-feet when he smiles. Ethan’s face always lit up when I walked into a room. I was grateful for being loved this unconditionally—loved for just showing up! But he knew all of my flaws and foibles.

  “No breaks,” Drew says proudly. His right arm is held close to his body in a sling, his fingers poking stiffly out of an Ace bandage. He wiggles them. “Only a few stitches.” He points to his knee, lumpy with bandages under his jeans, which are torn and streaked with blood.

  I must blanch; he quickly insists that he’s fine, only a little banged up.

  As I listen to Drew’s story of getting hit—a pickup truck packed with teenagers turning right on red without stopping—my pulse takes off and my head swims. I’m distracted by the red sharps container on the wall behind him. It overflows with a tangled plastic catheter dotted with tiny beads of bright red blood. Beyond that, a row of empty gurneys lines the wall, their black cushions gleaming under the bright lights. I wonder what happened to the people lying on them, whether they got to go home.

  Drew says he stopped at the store to buy me daffodils and was headed back to his car when wham!. I picture him sprawled in the gutter. Then my train of thought is interrupted by an awful smell: rubbing alcohol. The stark odor of illness. The smell of the prep pads I rubbed over Ethan’s hip before giving him his pain shots.

  There must be a place to sit down here. I take a step toward Drew’s gurney, but there’s no chair. I consider the floor, spotting a brownish quarter-size stain on the linoleum that could be blood. Then the whole room turns inside out.

  “Miss Stanton?” A blurry nurse hovers over me.

  I’m a Mrs., I want to tell her. No, I’m not.

  “I’m not,” I stutter.

  “You’re not Sophie Stanton?”

  “I am.”

  “Okay, honey. What day is it?”

  “It’s, um . . .” It’s my day off. The day the theater’s dark. My first-date day. “Monday,” I stutter.

  “You fainted. You’re fine. You didn’t hit your head.”

  “What did I hit?” Fainted! Ho
w mortifying.

  “You fell forward, onto the gurney.”

  Which gurney? Drew’s gurney? It’s been a long time since I’ve dated, but I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to do a face plant on your suitor’s gurney on the first date.

  “Are you all right?” Drew asks, hobbling over to me.

  He’s got his jacket on, one sleeve dangling at his side, and he’s clutching some paperwork.

  “I’m fine,” I tell him.

  Drew and I head across the hospital parking lot toward my car. Although I promised the nurse that I was all right, I’m still light-headed. Drew fumbles with the crutches, leaning into me accidentally. I cup his elbow in my hand. He leans closer for support, readjusts. His body gives off warmth. My knees wobble.

  I try to suppress the dawning realization that this is a stellar first-date story. Your father and I had our first date at the hospital! No. Stop that. How can there be a nuclear family in my future without Ethan?

  “Oh, ow,” Drew moans as he hops along the uneven asphalt.

  “Look at us.” I laugh and touch my fingers to the side of my head, as if to be sure it’s still there. “I’m sorry I fainted,” I add. “Since my husband died I don’t do well at hospitals.”

  The word husband hangs in the air before us.

  “Oh. Oh.” Drew stops, touches my shoulder. “God, I shouldn’t have asked you to come down here.”

  “It’s okay.”

  A car swerves into the driveway of the hospital, the driver gunning the engine up to the ER. Drew rears back and we both almost tumble over. We right ourselves, laughing.