Good Grief: A Novel

“Maybe we can get together for coffee later this week,” he says.

  “Coffee?” I try not to sound alarmed.

  He nods.

  How’d I get demoted to coffee? I’m the girlfriend, aren’t I? I’ve been sleeping with this man for five weeks! I’ve borrowed his deodorant and seen his appendix scar. Didn’t I recently move up the ranks from date to girlfriend? Just like getting promoted from salad girl to head baker? Wasn’t I on the verge of meeting family?

  Coffee?

  Now I know how St. Christopher must have felt when they decided he wasn’t a saint anymore, that maybe he hadn’t really performed those three miracles. Now I know how Pluto must have felt when astronomers started saying maybe it wasn’t a planet, maybe it was just a big dirty ice ball.

  Maybe I’m not Drew’s girlfriend. Maybe I’m just a fling, a friend. Someone you’d have coffee with. If you weren’t busy with your glamorous actress friend with the Isadora Duncan scarves, Emma Peele eyeliner, Marilyn Monroe giggle, and Lauren Bacall waistline. This woman is a hybrid freak. A conglomeration of every glamorous star in history. I doubt she wears plain Jane Jockey For Her underwear. She probably doesn’t wear any underwear.

  “Um . . .” I clear my throat, mustering a fake cough. “Is anything wrong?” I’m trying to remain calm. I’m trying not to scream.

  “I’m sorry.” He looks at his perfectly white Nikes and closes his eyes as if this were causing him pain. “I’m just confused.”

  Confused! You’re frigging confused?

  “I see,” I say softly. I find the key in my purse and clutch it in my thumb and forefinger, a reflection of sunlight bouncing off of it. No date should end this early, when the sun’s still above the trees.

  “Confused about what?” I ask. But I know I shouldn’t ask. I’m not sure I want to know. Did he sleep with her while he was sleeping with me? The old key won’t turn over in the lock, and I want to jam my fist through the glass on the front door.

  “About us.” He looks at the porch. “About someone else.”

  “Your actress friend?”

  Drew nods. “Yes. Ginger.”

  Ruth was right. Waist-size-smaller-than-my-shoe-size Ginger. Cascading-red-hair-down-to-her-ass Ginger.

  “Have I met her?” I ask, pretending I don’t remember her from the restaurant.

  Ginger is a seasoning, I want to tell him. A knobby little root!

  I turn the key in the lock, and before Drew can answer I’m closing the door on the image of his face—slate-blue-gray eyes looking up sheepishly through brown schoolboy bangs, mouth parted slightly, one foot lifted as if to step forward.

  I snap the lock shut and hurry down the hall to the kitchen. I close the kitchen door, pull down the shades, then crawl into the pantry, because that is one room farther away from Drew Ellis. As far inside my house as I can burrow. I yank the long cord to the bare bulb overhead, pull the door shut, and sit on the floor under the dim yellow light.

  Although we just ate dinner, I’m hungry. There’s nothing to eat in the pantry except for raw ingredients, though: flour, sugar, shortening, yeast, and polenta. I twist open a canister of rye flour and dig my hand into it. It’s dry and silty and tickles as it runs between my fingers. I scoop some into my mouth and try chewing. But you cannot chew flour. I cough and choke, then swallow, saliva turning the flour to a sort of doughy glob that sticks in the back of my throat.

  She’s more beautiful, for one thing. And Drew mentioned that she’s a Seattle SuperSonics fan. I tried to share Drew’s enthusiasm for his stupid Seattle team. “They have a deep bench,” I’d gush, watching the game with him, pretending not to prefer the Lakers, whom Ethan and I love. Loved. Whatever! Drew says the Lakers are too Hollywood, though, and I pretended to agree. That’s the dumb thing about dating—feigning similar interests.

  I wish Ethan were here to kick Drew’s skinny ass.

  It doesn’t matter, though, because I am never going to see Drew Ellis again. I’m not even going to stay in Ashland, where I might run into him.

  No. I am going to move to the Southwest, to Phoenix or Santa Fe. I visited there once, and the air was so dry that my hair was almost straight. It hung in subdued elegant waves.

  I could probably afford to buy a small stucco house in Santa Fe with a pool out back. Spend Saturday mornings lounging under a palm tree in the yard, nothing but the hum of the pool pump, a lizard skittering across the stone patio. Bright blue sky every day instead of this relentless Oregon rain.

  I will marry again. I’ll marry my Santa Fe neighbor, a beautiful man with skin the color of strong tea and coarse black hair. He will not get sick or break my heart. He will not leave me for a red-haired actress. In fact, he will have only one leg. I’ll keep his artificial leg on my side of the bed while we sleep at night, so that he will have to get past me if he wants to leave.

  I set the flour back on the shelf, reach up to pull off the light, and just sit there in the dark.

  I picture Ginger in a string bikini sprawled seductively across Drew’s bed, feeding him gingersnaps and ginger ale.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been crouching on the floor in the pantry when the doorbell rings. My throat is so dry, it makes me gag. I swallow, trying to generate saliva.

  The doorbell rings again. It’s old and funky and has a sharp, overzealous mechanical ring, like the doorbell on the set of a play.

  I rest my forehead on my knees and study the sliver of yellow light under the door. Hopefully, whoever it is—Drew or Ruth—will give up and leave. If it’s Ruth, I don’t want to hear her say “I told you so.” She wouldn’t come out and say it, but it would be in her tone of voice, in the stiffness of her neck. If it’s Drew, I don’t want him to see how crushed I am. I don’t want him to think I ever liked him that much in the first place. Maybe he’s going to apologize, say he’s not sure what came over him, explain how his sudden change of heart was probably an adverse reaction to the prescription medication that he didn’t want to tell me he’s taking.

  There’s a rattling knock on the glass window of the back door. I hold my breath.

  “Hey, Fannie Farmer, are ya home?” Crystal shouts. “How come your car’s here and the lights are, like, on?” She jiggles the doorknob, then shoves the door open. I didn’t realize it was unlocked.

  “Trick-or-treat!” she calls out. Then she mutters, “Great. Probably banging that stupid dork boyfriend.”

  She opens the refrigerator, then closes it, pulls a glass from the cupboard, and gets herself water from the tap.

  I push open the door of the pantry with my heel and peer out at her, the kitchen light making me blink and squint.

  “Hey, whatcha doin’ in there?” She sets her glass on the counter and opens the pantry door all the way, then extends a small chapped hand to help me up. My legs are stiff and achy, and it’s hard to stand.

  “Hiding,” I tell her.

  “From me?”

  “No.”

  “From who?”

  “The world.” I don’t want to cry, but I can’t help it. “Drew.” I try to say, He dumped me, but it comes out: “Dummy.”

  “You’ve got flour on you.” Crystal reaches out a hand to brush off my cheek. I look down and see that flour’s sprayed across my lap and sprinkled in my hair.

  I stop myself from crying, quickly wiping my eyes on the sleeve of my shirt. I spent way too much on this stupid transparent salmon-colored silk top with matching camisole. I thought it was simple but sexy and mysterious, my skin glowing pink underneath. I hoped it was alluring in a 1970s Stevie Nicks kind of way, but Drew didn’t even seem to notice.

  I slide into a kitchen chair and Crystal pours me a glass of orange juice from the refrigerator, pushing it slowly across the table as though I’m a wounded animal she’s afraid she’ll startle.

  I drink half the glass in one gulp.

  “That Drew guy?” Crystal says. “He’s a loser. You could, like, totally land a cuter guy. You should forget about him.”

 
“You hardly even met him.”

  “I could just tell.”

  “How’s your leg?” I ask her, trying to change the subject.

  “Kinda better.” She lifts her foot off the floor to show her mobility.

  “I need to make my good-riddance list,” I mumble.

  “Your what?”

  “Good-riddance list. It’s a list of all the stuff you don’t like about a guy. You’re supposed to make it when you break up with someone.”

  “Killer!” She digs into the drawer by the telephone, pulling out paper and pen. The pen won’t work. She scratches in furious circles until a faint blue line finally emerges.

  Stupid hair! she writes at the top of the list in her big block handwriting. The dots over her i’s are little round circles. Whistles fruity songs. I watch Crystal read over the list so far. It’s funny how you don’t have to be related to someone to love them like family.

  The good-riddance list is as long and detailed as any cheesecake recipe, but it does not prevent me from driving by Drew’s house at three in the morning.

  Three in the morning is a horrible hour. It’s too late to be up and too early to get up. It’s a limbo, a hell, when the sheets are damp and cold with nightmare perspiration and the blood in the veins moves too quickly, thumping up my neck into my temples like a crazy clock counting the millions of minutes until morning: why, why, why?

  Was it because I said I don’t like musicals? That I prefer plays? Because I was shy around his boisterous actor friends? Because I used a frigging pen to fill in the crossword puzzle? Or maybe the remaining extra pounds were coming off a little too slowly.

  I get out of bed and march like a sleepwalker through the house, fixing a cup of tea, showering, dressing, then climbing into my car.

  No one is on the streets of Ashland at three in the morning. I drive slowly toward Drew’s house.

  Don’t do this, I tell myself, tell the steering wheel. Let’s drive to Ruth’s house instead.

  Ruth is sleeping, the car hums. Turn right here and just coast past Drew’s place to see if her car is there.

  There aren’t any cars parked in front of Drew’s house or in his driveway, except for his old BMW. I had imagined there’d be something like an adorable powder blue vintage Volkswagen pulled self-confidently up to his garage. I turn off the Honda one house before Drew’s. The engine ticks and sighs. Maybe he’s at her place. He wouldn’t have left his car behind, though. A dim light glows in Drew’s kitchen. I try to focus on my good-riddance list. Stupid seventies disco hair. No-good nose-whistling anal neat freak! None of these faults wipe away the fantasy I have of Drew and Ginger having sex on his kitchen floor, Drew’s face red and wrinkled with ecstasy.

  BAKING

  24

  “Let’s talk about tough days,” Sandy says, opening up our Tuesday night grief group meeting. I brought banana cupcakes for the group, but Gloria is allergic to cheese so she has to scrape off the cream cheese icing, and Roger can’t have walnuts, which I chopped finely and added to the batter, and Will, the man whose wife died of Alzheimer’s, is a diabetic, it turns out. Comfort food is harder to pull off than you’d think.

  “As if there are any un-tough days,” Roger says sullenly. He always keeps his coat on and sits at the edge of his chair, as though he’s on the verge of leaving. Apparently his son was a talented softball player. Now Roger seems to find the playoff season unbearable. No one to root for. From the way he talks, all the mistakes Roger ever made in his life were redeemed by his son, a strong student and talented ball player. Until that show-off neighbor kid came along. Now Roger’s redemption, his reason for living, is gone.

  “True, true,” Sandy agrees, stroking his goatee, which has a bit of frosting in it. “But some days are even harder than others.”

  Will nods tentatively. I think he feels a little guilty for being relieved that his wife is finally gone. During her last year on earth, she didn’t recognize him and was cruel. He said that whenever he went to visit her at the rest home, the first thing she said was, “What is that smell?” Now, he seems to have befriended a widowed lady in town. Sometimes I see them sharing an order of onion rings at the A&W.

  “The holidays, of course,” Sandy says. “Also birthdays, wedding anniversaries, and milestone events such as graduations.”

  Any day that you have to walk through town and potentially bump into the actor who dumped you, arm in arm with Ginger Gingivitis, I want to tell the group.

  “The anniversary of their death,” Gloria says, sighing heavily.

  “Exactly,” Sandy says. “That can be the most difficult day, and the first year is usually the worst. When the first anniversary hits, we realize that the person is really gone forever.”

  Great. I’ve got my wedding anniversary looming this week and the first anniversary of Ethan’s death coming next month. Just when I’m beginning to feel human again, am I going to parade down East Main Street in my bathrobe?

  “These are trigger days,” Sandy continues, squeezing his clipboard. Sometimes it looks as though he’s trying to wring all the grief and sadness in the world out of that clipboard. “Grief is literally triggered in the body, leaving you vulnerable and prone to setbacks. This doesn’t mean you’re not making overall progress. In fact, a trigger day can be part of your progress.”

  People shift in their chairs uncomfortably. It’s no fun when Sandy goes on about how grief is such hard work.

  I want to tell the group about my recent setback—how I’ve started sleeping with Ethan’s ski sweater again since Drew broke up with me, bunching it into a ball and spooning the musty wool. But this seems like an embarrassing tangent.

  “The good news is we’re going to come up with a system for helping each other through these tough spots.”

  “It better involve Scotch,” Roger says, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling.

  “It sort of does,” Sandy says, his voice rising with enthusiasm. “If you hit a tough day or a trigger and you feel terrible—like spending the day in bed or drinking to excess—you’re going to call your grief partner.”

  Sandy divvies the group into sets of partners who are supposed to swap home and work phone numbers so we can call each other when we’re feeling miserable.

  Sandy points to me and Gloria, meaning she’s my partner, and I feel lucky and guilty at the same time. Roger’s the one who really needs her. Maybe we should swap. But Roger gets Emily, a woman in her twenties who recently joined the group after her boyfriend was killed in a motorcycle accident. She seems to have a sweet healing way about her, too. He leans toward her to copy down her information.

  Sophie Stanton. My hands tremble as I sign the two-year bakery lease in Kit’s office. I write in today’s date—June 14—which is my wedding anniversary.

  “Congratulations!” Kit hands over three keys on a no-frills silver ring.

  Ethan and I would have been married four years today. If he had stayed in remission, maybe I could have talked him into quitting his job and we could have moved up to Ashland and started the bakery together.

  “Call me if you need anything.” Kit gives me a photocopy of the lease and smiles. “You know I want to be your first customer.”

  Sandy encouraged us to set aside quiet time on our tough days, to think about our lost loved one. When I get home on the night of my wedding anniversary, I dig my wedding album out of a box in the garage, open a bottle of wine, and sit in the living room.

  The album’s thick cardboard pages feel indestructible between my fingers. When we hired our photographer, the price for even the smallest package seemed outlandish. But not when you consider that photo paper, cardboard, leather, and gold trim outlive most people. The photos are as lustrous as the day we first got them from the photographer. Ethan has a precancer glow spiked by champagne and the heat of a June afternoon in San Jose. Now, when I look at pictures of Ethan I can tell whether they were taken before or after his diagnosis. Kodachrome has a way of capturing low hemoglobin—reve
aling the bluish gray tint of someone en route to another world. Here Ethan’s cheeks are rosy, his green eyes bright with expectation. Despite his satin tuxedo lapels and stiff white cummerbund, he still looks like a boy ready for a game of Frisbee. I close my eyes and brush my hand across his face. The photo paper is tacky beneath my fingertips. The anniversary of Ethan’s death is exactly five weeks away. All year the day has been behind me. Now it’s before me, something to make my way through again.

  I open my eyes, turn the album page. I laugh when I see Marion by the cake smiling stiffly. She looks pained, as though her corsage is pricking her.

  Toward the back of the album there are candid shots of the reception. I forgot that Ethan’s fraternity brothers charmed the bartender into getting drunk. In one picture, she’s dancing in the middle of our family. Shortly after that, she left with one of the single guys and Dad had to mix drinks until the hotel sent a replacement bartender. At the end of the night, Dad paid the band to play for an extra hour, and people staying at the hotel called down to complain. I trace a finger along the gold trim. A great party. That’s what a wedding should be.

  I close the album, pour another glass of wine, and wander into the kitchen. Among the cookbooks I find an old etiquette book. I look up the gift for four-year wedding anniversaries. The traditional present is fruit or flowers. Two things as perishable as a husband with cancer. The contemporary gift is appliances. That seems more appropriate. Ethan shouldn’t mind, then, if I buy myself a new industrial-grade mixer.

  The next night I stay up until after midnight cleaning the bakery—scrubbing and scrubbing to get the dirt off the walls and counters, a primal layer of grease and gunk that roots itself under my fingernails and turns the water in the bucket gray.

  Screw Drew Ellis! Prince Too-Good-to-Be-True with his spooky good looks and knack for always saying just the right thing. You’re so smart and funny. Such a great mentor. Brown-noser. He should run for office. Senator Scumbag.