I took one more look at the sky, then stood to go back inside. Something in my knee hurt, doing this. Arthritis, already? So soon? Who would I tell my old-lady fears to now? Who would tell me I had lipstick on my teeth, or that the story I was telling, I’d already told? Who would, sotto voce, suggest a mint and not have it embarrass me?
There was an old lady who lived on our block in Boston. She didn’t come out except to get the mail, which she always retrieved as soon as it was delivered. Then she stood on the sidewalk and examined with great care everything she received, mostly junk mail and flyers, it seemed. “I’ll bet she actually talks to phone solicitors,” John said. He used to say hello to her, but she would only scurry back inside. I’d always thought of that woman’s life as being so different from my own, alien, almost. Now it did not seem so strange what loneliness might do.
I went back into the house, folded the quilt, and lay it over the arm of the sofa. I looked around the living room, chaotic with unpacked boxes, but settled somehow, anyway, the rug in place, the furniture, too. John would have loved this house. “You,” I whispered. “John.” The specificity, as though it might help. As though it might bring him here in whatever form he chose: A step on the staircase. The wash of moonlight against the back of a chair. A touchless touch, a scent. I waited. I thought of Lydia Samuels and her eerie pronouncement: He will come. But he did not.
I turned out the lights and locked the front door. Then, as I was turning to go upstairs, I saw a small figure on the porch bend down and then run away. I opened the door again, mildly frightened, and saw a note on the top step, anchored by a rock. I brought it inside. In labored print, it read:
My name is Benny. In case you didn’t know, I live next door. Welcome to our neighborhood! If you need any help done, you can hire me. It is only fifty cents (or more if you think I did a really good job). You can call me, and here is my number, get ready it is 555-0098. Or if you don’t want to do that I can be found on the block after school and on weekends. When I am done, believe me you will say Wow, Everything is perfect!!!!
I’d seen a boy sitting on the porch of the house next door, earlier in the afternoon, watching me as I gathered leaves. It occurred to me now that he might have thought I was doing a pathetic version of raking, hence his entrepreneurial overture. He was a slight boy, with shaggy black hair, wearing glasses and a faded blue flannel shirt. About nine or ten years old, I’d guessed. I wondered what he was doing up now. I looked out the window at his house. Dark.
I went to the kitchen, opened one of the top drawers, and dropped the note in it. The drawer was otherwise empty, the surest sign that a house’s inhabitants really have left. Soon it would become the junk drawer, full of the usual tangle of scrap paper and pens, coupons, rubber bands, random buttons, plastic silverware, and take-out menus. I used to also fill our old junk drawer with pictures torn out of magazines and newspapers, an odd habit of mine. “Why do you keep these?” John had once asked, in a rare fit of exasperation. “Why don’t you either do something with them or throw them away?” “Leave them alone,” I’d told him. “You are not the keeper of the kitchen drawers. I am the keeper of the kitchen drawers. You are the keeper of the workroom drawers and the garage drawers. I don’t tell you to throw out bolts.” “Bolts have a purpose,” he’d said. “So do my pictures,” I’d told him. And when he’d said, “Oh? And what purpose is that?” I hadn’t answered him. That was one of the last times I’d had the luxury of ignoring him—his diagnosis had not yet arrived and unpacked its terrible valise.
But a few days after John complained, I did remove the pictures. He’d been right—they were taking up too much room in the drawer. I pasted them into a small, suede-covered scrapbook, and when it became full, I started another. It became my habit to sit sometimes in the afternoon with a cup of tea, making up stories to fit the pictures. It was a different kind of writing, in a way; nothing I had to put to paper or turn over to a publisher or anyone else. It was imagination back to its purest and best form, unpolluted by thoughts of deadlines and reviews and sales figures and book tours. I liked the way the stories changed each time I flipped through the pages. I liked the way bits of dialogue would come into my head, strains of music, and I liked the way the pictures would sometimes expand in my mind so that rather than seeing just a yellow kitchen, I would see the living room next to it, then the street outside. And look, here came the woman whose kitchen it was, walking down the sidewalk with shopping bags knocking into her knees, smiling hello at a neighbor. Cheeks reddened by the wind. I had many of those scrapbooks by now, and I had unpacked them and stacked them by the chaise longue.
John never knew I did that with the pictures. I suppose everyone must have his or her own private pleasures. Surely he had his. Trout fishing, that was one—I never went with him when he did that. And oftentimes, in the evening, he took a walk without me and smoked a cigar. Sometimes he disappeared when he listened to opera with his headphones. He would close his eyes, his face full of longing, and I would envy the diva who moved him that way.
I sat at the kitchen table, hands folded in my lap. Overhead, the light hummed—something I’d not noticed in the daytime. Was that something I would need to get repaired? Whom did you call? An electrician? A handyman? A drop of water hung from the kitchen faucet, not quite heavy enough to fall. From the corner of my eye, I could see my face reflected in the window, and I could see the blackness beyond. This quiet was dense and annoying, just as too much noise was—I wanted to swat at it, to make it go away. I thought of putting on some music, but I didn’t know where the stereo or the radio was and I was too tired to unpack any more.
But not tired enough to sleep. I’d need to be somnambulating before I went into the bedroom. Even in this new house, the bedroom was a dangerous place for memories—John, untucking his shirt, laying his watch on the dresser, then crossing the room toward me, his sweet intention in his smile. Here, on this first night, we would have held hands in the darkness, whispering excitedly about what part of our new town we would explore first. Always, we whispered, after the lights were out. Always, upon awakening in the morning, he smiled at me. “Welcome to Tuesday, Betta,” he would say. He did that up until the end, when a pleasant routine had become grimly ironic. Welcome to Friday, Betta, and another day of hell. One kind of hell for you. Another, more breathtaking kind of hell for me. But welcome to it.
I got out a saucepan to heat water for tea—I hadn’t found the kettle yet; I supposed it was in one of the few kitchen boxes I had yet to empty. I’d drink a mug of Sleepytime, and then, when I was sure I could no longer keep my eyes open, I’d go upstairs to lie down. In the morning, I could cross off another day. I put my hands to my lower back, stretched, allowed myself an Oh, God. “Healing hurts,” someone at John’s service had told me. “But hurting heals.”
At 3 A.M., my eyes opened and I was wide-awake. I felt as though I hadn’t slept at all, when in fact it had been four hours straight—not bad. I sat at the edge of the bed and looked around the room, made bright by moonlight coming in through the curtainless windows. It was a nice-sized room. Smaller than the bedroom we’d had before, but I appreciated the coziness, especially now. Tall wardrobe boxes stood like sentinels in the middle of the room, smaller cartons stacked up beside them. So much to do, in just this one room. I looked over at the dresser, thinking I didn’t want it where I told the movers to put it after all—the opposite wall would have been better. But I didn’t think I could move it by myself. Another mosquito bite of grief. I was beginning to learn that sometimes sorrow was a complex form of aggravation.
I didn’t want to lie back down. Nor did I want to wander around what was still an unfamiliar house, no comfort stations yet established. The chenille-covered chaise longue was in the corner of the living room, but there was no glowing lamp beside it, no throw draped over it, no ticking clocks nearby or flowering orchid plants with their exotic, reaching stems. Instead, there were more boxes of things to be put away. And there was more silence, dense
r in the larger rooms, more alive, capable of replacing a hard-won calm with a pulsating panic.
I lay back down on my stomach in a position I’d learned in the single yoga class I’d taken last winter. I pointed one of my heels up, lengthened my leg, then did the same with my other leg. S-t-r-e-t-c-h. I remembered the merriment in the instructor’s eyes when she’d asked the class, “Now! Have you all grown an inch or two?” She was an elegant-looking woman from Amsterdam with a charming accent. I’d wondered if she was like that all the time—yogacized—or if she had moments of pettiness and despair like the rest of us. Did she nearly float around her house on a cloud of enlightenment, or did she walk in with a pile of overdue bills, fling them on a table that needed dusting, and phone a friend to complain that all of her students were idiots? My inability to decide was what I turned into an excuse for dropping the class. What did she know? I asked myself, when what I was really asking was, Why should I wake up so early and go out into the cold?
Now, though, I tried to breathe the way she taught us that day. When you breathe in this fashion, remember that it has a healing effect on each and every cell of the body. I remember rolling my eyes when she said that, and at the same time wanting very much to believe it. Now, compliant out of class in a way that I could not be in it, I took a long breath in, made it longer, then longer still. Think of a high waterfall; pull down, down, down. And now, let it go, let your breath rise up along your backbone in a continuous flow, and let it all, all, all out.
I recalled the charged air in that yoga studio, the smell of sandalwood, the soothing periwinkle color of the walls, the way the dust motes glittered in the sun that streamed in from the high windows. I recalled too the luxury of seeing such calm and comfort and rejecting it on the grounds of not needing it. It was like seeing a platterful of food go by when your belly is full. At such times, it does not occur to you that you might someday be starving.
I would find another yoga class, and this time I would go. I would buy books on gardening so that, come spring, I would know how to care for my extraordinary backyard. I would honor John’s request in a most deliberate way: I would try to find joy despite the necessary work of grieving, and I knew full well that work was exactly the right word to describe it. It was John’s life that was over, not mine. I had to remember that recognizing the distinction was not disloyalty. I had to remember that I was still a young woman! Well, I was not an old woman.
I smoothed the top of the sheet over my blanket, folded my hands on top of my chest, and felt with relief the veil-like prelude to sleep, that falling away inside one’s chest, the unsticking of self from self. And I felt a familiar hope, too: In dreams, I was sometimes with him still.
The doorbell awakened me, and I looked bleary-eyed at my watch. Ten-thirty. I went to the window to see if there was a delivery truck of some sort. The CDs I’d ordered, perhaps. One night in the motel I’d sat before my laptop and ordered thirty CDs from Amazon. I didn’t even remember what they were.
But there was no truck out front. There was nothing. I put on my robe, went into the bathroom to quickly brush my hair and splash water on my face, then went downstairs to open the door. It was the boy from next door, standing there with a basket full of muffins.
“These are for you,” he said. “From my mom. They’re blueberry.”
“Oh, well, thank you,” I said. “Thank her.”
He pushed his glasses snug against the bridge of his nose and looked up at me through lenses that magnified his blue eyes in a way just short of comical. “I’m Benny Pacini. Did you get my note?”
“I did. I’m Betta Nolan.”
“Betta?”
I smiled in spite of myself. “Yes. My mother couldn’t choose between Betty and Anna. I do have some work for you, if you’d like to help me unpack boxes.”
“I could help you tomorrow. I already have two jobs for today: walking dogs, and sweeping out a garage.” He eyed my robe and pajamas. “Were you still sleeping?”
“I was, yes. I sleep late. Sometimes.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“It’s all right.” I opened the door wider. “Would you like to come in?”
“Okay.” He stepped just inside the door, shrugged off his jacket. “Do I have to take my shoes off?”
“No. No need. Why don’t you come in the kitchen? I’ll make some coffee, and maybe you’d like to have a muffin with me.”
“They’re just for you. I’m not allowed to have one.”
“But if they’re for me, I can decide what to do with them, right? And what I want to do is share them with you.”
He shrugged in the exaggerated way of children, grimacing, shoulders practically reaching his earlobes. Then he followed me to the kitchen table, where he stood stiffly beside a chair. “At ease,” I told him.
He stared at me. “Huh?”
“Have a seat,” I said.
He pulled out a chair and sat on the edge of it, his legs swinging, while I rummaged around a moving box, looking for coffee filters.
“Wow,” Benny said, “you were on the Mayflower?”
I looked up at him. He pointed to the box. “Oh!” I said. “No. No, that’s the name of the moving company I used.” Maybe, I thought, I should give in and color my gray.
“Where did you come here from?”
“Boston.”
“That’s the capital of Massachusetts.”
“That’s right.”
He looked around politely, his gaze not wandering beyond the confines of the kitchen. “I’ve never been in this house before. The lady who lived here was mean!”
“Yes, I met her.”
“You did?”
“Uh-huh.”
“A lot of people said she was a real witch. Grown-ups said that. Where did she go, anyway?”
“To a nursing home.” I opened another box and began searching there: funnels, a colander, measuring cups, nesting bowls. “It’s called the Rose McNair Home.”
“We went there in second grade, at Christmastime. We had to sing ‘O Holy Night’ to them.” He sang a few words of the song in a way so distracted and utterly unself-conscious I felt certain he wasn’t aware of doing it. He was taking in his surroundings in a very concentrated way.
“Was it fun, singing to them?” I asked.
He snapped his attention back to me and contemplated the question like a politician hedging his bets. “No. They were mostly sleeping. I meant to ask you, do you have any kids?”
“I do not.”
“Do you have a husband?”
Ah. I stood still for a moment, holding the small strainer I’d just picked up over my heart. Then I said, “He’s dead.”
Benny’s legs stopped swinging. “He is?”
“Yes.” I dug past pot holders, kitchen magnets, cheesecloth.
“Oh. I know how you feel ’cause my favorite grandpa died last month, two days after my tenth birthday, Grandpa Will.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. He knew magic tricks. One thing he could do was chop off his finger.”
“My goodness!”
“Yup. And then he could heal it back.”
“That’s quite a trick.” I reached the bottom of the second box without success. Where were those filters?
“He didn’t really chop it off,” Benny said. “But it sure looked like he did.”
“Yes. I guess that was the trick part, that he made it look so real.” I opened yet another box, lifted some kitchen towels, and uncovered a roll of paper towels. I could use one of those for a filter. Once, on a cold winter morning when we were out of both filters and paper towels, John had tried to use toilet paper. Then he’d used a strainer to try to separate the coffee grounds and disintegrating paper from the liquid. Then he’d tasted it. Then he’d gone to the store. And since the windchill was forty below, he’d bought lox and capers and beautiful bagels and gourmet cream cheese and roses and a type of wild rice we’d been wanting to try. That’s the way he operated. Use errors
to your advantage. “Your grandfather sounds like he was an interesting guy,” I told Benny.
He sighed. “Sometimes I get mad that I can’t ask him things anymore.”
“Yes. I know what you mean.” I lifted some boxes of tea. There were the filters! I brought them over to the coffeemaker and measured coffee, dumped in water, flicked the switch. “I feel that way, too.”
“About your husband?”
“Yes.” A satisfying aroma immediately filled the air, and I felt a reflexive lift in spirits. I’d once asked John, “Why do you think a simple ritual like coffee in the morning makes us so happy?” “Maybe because it’s not simple,” he’d said.
“What was your husband’s name?”
“His name was John.” I opened the refrigerator and took out a small carton of milk, brought it to the table, and sat down. “So.”
“You don’t have so much in your refrigerator, huh?” Benny said.
“No, I haven’t been to the grocery store to stock up yet.”
“Do you like Dr Pepper?”
“I think Dr Pepper’s all right.”
“It’s my favorite. My mom always forgets to buy it.”
“I’ll get some for the next time you come to visit. How would that be?”
“Good.” He smiled shyly, then said, “This guy in my class? Matt Lederman? He said I was gay.”
“Did he.”
“Gay is when you like boys if you’re a boy.”
“Right. Or girls if you’re a girl.”
“But I’m not that.”
“It wouldn’t be bad if you were.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“Okay.”
The coffeemaker beeped, and I got up to pour myself a cup. “Would you like some milk with your muffin?” I asked Benny.
“No, thanks.” He peeled the wrapper from the sides of the muffin, put his hands behind his back, and bent down to take a bite. “This is how horses eat,” he said around his mouthful.
I sat down opposite him. “You mean, no hands?”