Good Grief: A Novel

  After bandaging my finger, I stop in my room. I scoop Ethan’s ski sweater out from under my pillow and knead a pinch of the coarse wool between my thumb and forefinger. Just as children have to surrender their pacifiers, and smokers have to toss their cigarettes when they kick the habit, I should probably give up the sweater.

  I carry it to the garage.

  “I think I have to give this away.” I hold the sweater toward Crystal, hoping she’ll take it from me.

  “Okay.” She shrugs and digs into a box of books. “It’s not like you ever go skiing.”

  “But I want to keep it.” I hug the sweater to my chest, inhaling its smoky wool smell.

  “So keep it.” She flips through the pages of Ethan’s yearbook. “Wow.” Her lips move as she reads the inscriptions. “Some people like high school.”

  “Ethan was a great student.” I crunch the sweater against my belly and sit on the stool beside her. “He was president of his class.”

  “He was, like, totally smart,” Crystal says as if she knew him, too.

  “He could have helped you with your math. He would have made it fun.”

  “There’s no way math is fun.”

  “I know. Which is what was so incredible about him.”

  I set the sweater in the Maybe pile and move on. My whole life seems to be in the maybe pile right now. Maybe I can run a successful business on my own, maybe I’ll stay with Drew.

  “Did you ever think you didn’t want to live?” Crystal asks. “Since Ethan wasn’t living?” She closes the yearbook and places it gently in the Keep pile. She asked me this same question when I told her about my mother dying. It worries me that she can muster these dark thoughts so easily.

  “Yes,” I admit, remembering lying alone in the dark on an air mattress in my living room in San Jose, the eerie blue light of the TV glowing on the ceiling. Too tired to turn it off, too tired to watch, too tired to sleep. “But I’m better now.”

  Crystal looks at the ski sweater. “’Cause you met me?”

  I look at her, thinking.

  She laughs. “I’m joking.”

  “Kind of. Your family doesn’t necessarily have to be your husband or blood relatives.”

  “Cool.” She burrows into a box and pulls out Ethan’s softball trophy.

  “That’s to keep.” I lurch toward the trophy.

  “Don’t worry.” She cradles the trophy to her chest, smoothing her palm over the brass head of the baseball player. “I never won anything,” she says quietly, then sets the trophy in the Keep pile.

  We continue working in silence. Sandy and Gloria will be proud of me for launching this cleanup project on the anniversary of Ethan’s death. Another grief gold star.

  “Hey.” Crystal fingers the cleats on the golf shoes Ethan never wore and looks down at the floor. “My mom says she’ll buy me a horse if I don’t hang out with you anymore.”

  “Oh, really?” I throw an old computer mouse in the Goodwill pile a little too hard and it cracks. I move it to the Trash pile. “I thought horses were too expensive.” Roxanne’s like Ginger; even though she’s not especially nice to the people she’s close to, she wants to hoard them for herself. God forbid anyone else should love them.

  Crystal shrugs. “She says she can get a loan.”

  Maybe a horse is to Crystal what Ginger is to Drew. A sexy upgrade.

  Crystal holds up the dusty golf shoes and raises her eyebrows.

  “Goodwill,” I tell her.

  “Anyways, I told her to shove her horse up her ass.” She sets the golf shoes in the Goodwill pile. “Besides, she’d probably screw up the loan somehow.”

  “You really shouldn’t talk to your mother that way.” I look away, hoping Crystal hasn’t seen me smile.

  By the time Ruth and I reach the Goodwill in her truck later that day, it’s closed. I cup my hands around my face and peer through the glass door at the rounders of clothes. They’re sorted by colors ranging from turquoise to orange to black. I imagine Ethan’s olive rugby shirt sidling up to a stranger’s lime green aloha shirt. But his ski sweater is equally red, yellow, and navy. Will there be a home for it in this strict, color-coded system?

  “Closed?” Ruth asks, digging her hands into the pockets of her jeans.

  I turn toward the truck, which is so jammed with boxes that all Ruth could see out the back when we were driving was cardboard. I know exactly which box holds Ethan’s ski sweater.

  “There’s a donation bin.” Ruth points to a yellow Dumpster-like container at the rear of the parking lot. She climbs into the truck and backs it up to the bin, leaning out the door to see. Then she hops out and swings a box onto the ground. I follow her toward the bin, noticing that it’s completely full. The mailbox-style door bulges open, choked with the hood of a down jacket. The coat looks as if it’s trying to climb out.

  “We’ll just put them here.” Ruth stacks the box beside the container.

  “Uh, okay.” The sour smell of unwashed fabric sticks in my throat.

  No! Ethan says. Don’t leave my worldly possessions in a filthy parking lot.

  Discarded belongings litter the asphalt around the donation bin: a curled-up huarache sandal, a snarl of bent hangers, a silk scarf streaked with black tire marks. The greasy smell of French fries wafts over from the fast-food place next door. Across the parking lot, a faded futon leans against the back wall of the Goodwill building. Beside it, plastic tubs overflow with shoes, toys, and small appliances. There’s simply too much junk in the world. Each person should be allowed a small quota, the way you’re allowed only two bags when you fly.

  Ruth drops a box of books with a loud smack on the pavement, making me jump.

  “Careful,” I tell her.

  “It’s heavy. You need to give me a hand!”

  “Okay.” But I can’t move. Suddenly I feel as though I’ve orchestrated a crime I can’t bring myself to go through with.

  “Help,” Ruth yelps. As she wrestles the big suitcase of Ethan’s coats out of the truck, her slender back bows under the weight. Together we drag the bag across the parking lot and lean it against the bin.

  As we’re returning to the truck, I notice a sign screwed to the chain-link fence behind the donation box: WARNING: DONATIONS LEFT WHEN GOODWILL IS CLOSED IS CONSIDERED DUMPING. VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED.

  “We can’t leave this stuff here,” I tell Ruth, pointing to the sign.

  Her lips move as she reads. “Oh, for God’s sake. You can go to jail for cutting off your mattress tag, too, you know.”

  “Right.” I laugh weakly, noticing another sign on the side of the container: THANK YOU FOR HELPING PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES LEAD PRODUCTIVE LIVES. I think of Ethan’s fancy Bose clock radio, which I’ve decided to give away so I won’t always imagine him lying in bed listening to the news in the morning. They can probably get at least fifty bucks for it. I continue unloading. Surely someone will be here first thing tomorrow to unpack the stuff and move it indoors.

  As we finally drive out of the Goodwill parking lot, I focus on Ethan’s boxes in the rearview mirror the way you might locate the North Star in the sky at night.

  I get up at four the next morning and head straight to the bakery to start the cheesecakes, pies, and muffins. This is me, throwing myself into my work, I think as I lean my weight into the pie dough, the rolling pin smacking the counter. Back in San Jose, work threw itself at me, deadlines wrapping their tentacles around my legs and pulling me down. Crystal shows up shortly after dawn, her eyes puffy with sleep. She lifts the cheesecakes out of their molds, picks the final bits of streamers and tape off the walls. I’m relieved when we’re finally able to flip the sign in the window over to the OPEN side at ten. By then a small cluster of customers waits on the sidewalk, and they all seem to have read Marjorie’s review. Drew’s already framed the review and hung it over the cash register. The article has a big color picture of Crystal and me standing behind a row of cheesecakes. By some miracle I’m having a good hair day i
n the photo: soft ringlets instead of wiry frizz. Crystal looks serious, leaning toward the cakes as though they might tell her something.

  A young actress from the festival wants to order her wedding cake. I’m nervous as she spreads pages torn from magazines across the kitchen table with pictures of cakes decorated as intricately as Fabergé eggs.

  In the afternoon, customers fill the bakery, struggling to see into the glass cases, which are emptying fast. People want cupcakes for birthday parties, cookies for softball games, carrot cakes and cheesecakes for dessert. I work the counter while Crystal mans the register, fretting as she hurries to count change.

  I try to talk to everyone, ask if they live in Ashland or if they’re just visiting, suggest wines to serve with the savory cheesecakes, remind them to order their birthday cakes earlier next time. As I grab sheet after sheet of waxed paper to fill the orders, I feel a year’s worth of isolation and shyness evaporate in the heat of the bakery.

  “That should be a five,” a woman buying a peach pie tells Crystal sweetly. Crystal reddens and pops open the drawer to recount the bills.

  “Don’t worry,” I tell Crystal when there’s finally a lull. “Take your time.”

  We do $752.86 worth of business over the course of the afternoon, selling out of cheesecakes, savory and sweet. While I figured I wouldn’t need to hire employees for at least the first month of business, obviously I need more helpers right away. As the dinner hour approaches and the bakery finally empties, I sit in the kitchen to draft a help wanted ad: Sales clerk, weekday afternoons. Then it hits me: the image of Ethan’s ski sweater suffocating under a mountain of dead people’s musty sweatshirts and jerseys.

  “It’s cathartic to let go of their belongings,” Gloria said when I told her that I finally cleaned out the garage. She told me that she left jeans and a T-shirt laid out on her daughter’s bed for six months after the girl died. Finally she gave away the clothes, and turned the room into a study.

  I force myself to forget Ethan’s sweater for now, to forget the image of his tuft of hair under the wheelbarrow in the garage, and turn back to the ad. Busy downtown bakery . . .

  By the time I make it home that evening, I can’t wait to lie on the couch and put my feet up. But as soon as I’m through the door the phone rings. Marion answers it.

  “Uh,” she stammers, “he’s not here right now.” She thrusts the receiver at me.

  “Hello?” I cradle the phone between my shoulder and ear as I open the mail.

  “I’m trying to locate a Mr. Ethan Stanton?” a man says. Telemarketers. Rude slime.

  “He died.” I drop the envelopes. “A year ago. Who’s calling, please?”

  There’s a scratchy silence at the other end.

  “I’m sorry,” the man says tentatively.

  “He died,” I repeat, pressing guilt.

  “Are you sure?” the man shouts over wind that rumbles into the receiver, and I realize he must be outdoors.

  “Of course I’m sure. I’m his widow. Who is this, please?”

  “Who died?” Marion asks.

  “I’ve found some of his belongings.” The man’s hoarse voice struggles through the crackly connection. “Coats? On I-5 at a rest stop. I pulled off to use the rest room and when I got back to the parking lot a suitcase was dumped beside my car. I thought someone might have stolen Mr. Stanton’s belongings, or that something might have happened to him. A tag in one of the coats had his name on it. I got your number from information. There was another Stanton, but they weren’t home.”

  The Marlboro Man coat. I tried to cut out the tag with Ethan’s name, but Marion had sewn it deep into the silk lining years ago when we were at her house for dinner.

  “You don’t want someone stealing this beautiful coat,” she fretted, dragging her needle and thread through the slick lining. I was annoyed with Ethan for letting his mother be so meddlesome, treating him as though he were a kid headed for camp. But her bossy behavior never fazed him.

  “There are several boxes, too,” the man shouts. “They’ve been opened and clothes are everywhere. I’m sorry, I have to get going to make it to Spokane to see my son.”

  Someone must have stolen the boxes, decided they weren’t worth anything, and dumped the contents. Suddenly I’m offended by these low-life thieves. Why did they dump the coats? What were they expecting from the Goodwill parking lot? That was a $300 suede coat!

  “You go on,” I tell the man. “I’ll be there soon. Thank you,” I add. I can’t imagine that very many people would have bothered to call.

  “Exit forty-seven,” he says before I hear the ghostly hum of the dial tone.

  I drop Marion off at Ruth’s house for dinner, borrow her truck again, and pick up Crystal en route to the rest stop. As Crystal braces an arm against the dashboard, I realize I’m driving eighty-five on the freeway.

  “Sorry.” But if I drive fast enough, maybe I can undo the terrible mistake of abandoning Ethan’s possessions. DUMPING, the Goodwill sign said. ILLEGAL.

  There are a few hours of daylight left, but a storm is brewing, grayish green mashed-potato clouds roiling along the horizon.

  “There.” Crystal points to the sign for the exit, which I’m about to pass.

  I don’t think we can make it, but I swerve off the road anyway. We jerk across two double white lines, lurch over the curb onto a median strip, and squeal through the grass, gravel and mud shooting up behind the truck.

  “Shit!” Crystal shouts. “They’re only clothes!”

  A rock pops loudly under the truck, as though it’s ruptured something. Don’t worry, I’ll fix it, I’ll tell Ruth. I’ll fix everything. We bump over the curb onto the other side of the median strip and speed into the rest stop parking lot. Clothes, Ethan’s clothes, are strewn everywhere—the only streaks of color in an otherwise gray landscape. I stomp on the brake. Crystal lurches forward. The engine stalls and stutters.

  A sudden gust of wind makes the trees twist and strain toward the heavens. Ethan’s Christmas necktie spirals in the air like a red streamer. The arm of his navy windbreaker flaps over the top of a box, waving at us.

  Across the lawn there’s a low, sand-colored building as bleak as a prison with a row of vending machines out front. I shove open the truck door, but the wind is stubborn, slamming the door shut against my calf. Pain sears my leg.

  We finally push our way out of the truck, bending our heads into the wind. Something bangs loudly inside the rest stop building. Crystal jumps and grabs my arm.

  “This place is creepy,” she says.

  It’s odd how many things don’t frighten her—blowing up M-80s, starting fires, cutting herself—while other scenarios freak her out.

  “We’ll be out of here soon,” I tell her. “Let’s just gather the clothes.”

  Children’s screams from a nearby field curl through the wind.

  “I don’t think we can get rid of these clothes.” Crystal shudders and shoves her hands inside her sleeves, hopping up and down to keep warm. She bends over, plucks a soggy sock out of a puddle, shakes it, and drops it into a box.

  A pair of Ethan’s khakis are strewn in the grass beside a metal garbage can that’s chained to a pole. Wind tunnels through the legs of the pants, making them dance a little jig. Maybe a person never really leaves this world. You can pack up their belongings, deliver their clothes to Goodwill, put their letters away in shoeboxes. But they will always inhabit the landscape in some way. If not in a rest stop parking lot, then in the first smell of cut grass in the spring.

  I try to refold Ethan’s T-shirts. This proves futile as the wind yanks everything apart. I give up, balling and stuffing the clothes into the boxes. As I turn over the suitcase, I find that it’s been sliced open with a knife. A black nylon wound flaps open, a slash all the way through the soft suede arm of the Marlboro Man coat. I collapse, sitting cross-legged beside the suitcase, and begin to sob, choking on the wind.

  Crystal looks up from a box, her face flushed. “Wh
at’re ya doing? Let’s get out of here!”

  “Buh!” My eyes and nose and mouth gush as though I’ve sprung a leak. A strand of drool hangs from my mouth, but I don’t care. I double over my legs and pound the pavement with my fists, tiny rocks piercing the skin.

  “Hey, it’s all right.” Crystal’s thin arms circle my middle, the goose bumps on her skin as rough as a cat’s tongue. She crouches and grunts, trying to lift me. “We’re almost done.” Her breath is warm in my ear.

  “Everything’s ruined!”

  “Nah, look.” She points to Ethan’s ski sweater, which lies folded neatly at the top of a nearby box. She manages to get us both standing, bending her knees into the backs of mine to right me. My arms flop at my sides, and my hair whips and stings my cheeks.

  “Okay,” I tell her, tell myself. I concentrate on taking deep breaths, wiping away hair and tears and drool with the sleeve of my corduroy jacket. “Okay.” I want to be strong for Crystal. Strong for Marion and Ruth and Dad. For Ethan. Strong for people I haven’t even met yet, for prospective customers, future grandchildren. Strong for me. Person to contact in case of emergency? Put my name down: Sophie Stanton.

  I brush dirt off my jeans. After I open the bakery tomorrow morning, I’ll leave Crystal in charge and deliver the boxes to the Goodwill when they’re actually open.

  As Crystal and I wedge the suitcase between the last of the boxes, the rain blows in sheets, soaking our clothes and drumming the car roof.

  Soon we’re back on the freeway, windshield wipers squeaking, the cab of the truck smelling like mealy wet cardboard, the whole Oregon sky turning inside out.

  30

  It’s still dark as I trudge up East Main Street to work, orange light tingeing the sky, the asphalt glistening black like the still surface of a lake. I’m groggy from lack of sleep. Last night Drew and I slept together for the first time since our breakup. After dinner and a bottle of Chianti at an Italian restaurant, followed by a furtive make-out session in the car outside Colonel Cranson’s, Drew tried to persuade me to stay at his house. I didn’t want to leave Marion home alone, though. “May I come in, then?” he asked, rubbing his arms to keep warm.