A Widow's Story (11 page)
Authors: Joyce Carol Oates
Chapter 24
“Sympathy Gift Basket”
“Mrs. Smith? Sign here, please.”
My heart contracts at these syllables.
Miss-us Smi-th.
The name, in the mouths of strangers, stings like mockery.
For there is no
Mr. Smith.
And how then
Mrs. Smith
?
The sympathy-siege!
As in a silent film accelerated for crudely comic purposes there appear in the courtyard of our house in the days following Ray’s death a disorganized army of delivery men bearing floral displays, crates of fruit, hefty “sympathy gift baskets” stuffed to bursting with gourmet foods—chocolate-covered truffles, Brazil nuts, honey-roasted cashews; smoked salmon, pickled herring, smoked pepperoni sausage; lemon cake, Key West Lime Pie, fruit tarts, chocolate-pecan fudge; “gourmet” popcorn, “gourmet” pretzels, “gourmet” mixed nuts; Vermont cheddar cheese, and Vermont jack cheese; “drunken” goat cheese; jars of peach butter, Russian caviar and pâtés of the most lurid kinds. “Mrs. Smith? Sign here, please”—on his way out of the courtyard the UPS man nearly collides with the FedEx man on his way in; both are followed by a clumsily waddling gigantic plant or small tree in a massive ceramic container—behind it, a harried delivery man from a local Princeton florist—“Mrs. Smith? Sign here, please.” Seeing my stunned and exhausted face the delivery men aren’t certain how to greet me—
Congratulations!
isn’t appropriate for possibly this isn’t a festive occasion, but the parody of a festive occasion—
Have a good day!
isn’t appropriate for clearly this is not going to be a good day.
Possibly, the UPS man and the FedEx man, who come often to our house, have begun to notice the absence of
Raymond Smith.
So often in these days—a nightmare of days—in my trance of misery in Ray’s office where I am seeking (yet another) misplaced or lost document—United Health, IRS, bank—I am interrupted by the doorbell ringing—propelled into a greater misery at the front door where I am obliged to smile at the delivery man and thank him for having brought me yet another massive floral display, fifty-pound potted plant, “Deluxe Sympathy Gift Basket”—useless, unwanted, invariably heavy vases, pots, baskets, boxes, cartons to be carried in my aching arms, shoved, kicked skidding along the floor into the dining room where wilted petals fallen from the floral displays of previous days lie amid Styrofoam packing pellets, torn wrapping paper, cellophane. On the dining room table is a mad jumble of things—vases of beautiful flowers, baskets of beautiful flowers and fruits, “gourmet sympathy baskets” adorned with special velvet “sympathy ribbons” in tasteful dark colors.
What
,
have we won the Kentucky Derby?
—Ray’s droll voice sounds in my ear.
There does seem to be an element of mockery in all this—sympathy. Almost, one might mistake the siege for a celebration.
Of all deliveries I have come to most dread those from Harry & David those ubiquitous entrepreneurs of fateful occasions—Sympathy Gift Boxes adorned with Sympathy Ribbons hurtled in all directions across the continent. Why are people sending me these things? Do they imagine that grief will be assuaged by chocolate-covered truffles, pâté de foie gras, pepperoni sausages? Do they imagine that assistants shield me from the labor of dealing with such a quantity of trash? This morning I am eager to forestall another delivery of sympathy baskets for I have dragged out all the trash cans I can find in the hope that the trash will be hauled away, I have just emptied the mailbox—so stuffed, I could barely yank out its contents—and this mail I am “sorting” by way of throwing most of it into the trash can—there arrives the UPS delivery truck—another Harry & David monstrosity?—“Mrs. Smith? Sign here, please”—crying bitter tears as I tear open the carton—tear open the cellophane wrapper—tear at the basket cramming into the trash can packages of chocolate-covered truffles, bags of gourmet popcorn, here is a Gourmet Riviera Pear—unnaturally large, tasteless, stately as a waxen fruit in a nineteenth-century still life—here is a jar of gourmet mustard, and here a jar of gourmet olives—whoever has sent me this, I have no idea—the card is lost—the label is lost—I am frantic to get rid of this party food—I am infuriated, disgusted, ashamed—for of course I should be grateful, I should be writing thank-you notes like a proper widow, I should not be weeping and muttering to myself in icy rain at the end of our driveway bare-headed and shivering in a rage of futility accusing my husband
You did this!—you went outside in the freezing cold
,
I know you did
,
this is exactly what you did
,
when I was away in Riverside you did this very thing
,
you were careless with your life
,
you threw away both our lives with your carelessness contracting a cold
,
a cold that became pneumonia
,
pneumonia that became cardiopulmonary collapse—
and here as if in rebuke to my raging despair is a Harry & David Miniature Rose—a delicate little rosebush that measures about five inches in height—which I think that I will keep—though, back inside the house in better lighting, pried out of its packing-case and set on the kitchen counter, the Miniature Rose appears to be already wilting, near-dead.
I will water it, however! I will follow directions for its care and tending.
Noting on the instruction sheet, at the bottom:
Important
:
Decorative plant mosses should not be eaten.
A widow may be deranged, but a widow is not that deranged!
In the interstices of the monster gifts are practical things from friends—a trolley for the trash cans, now that trash has become a central concern of my life, from Jeanne and Dan; a bag of Odwalla blended fruit-drinks, which will be a food staple for months, from Jean Korelitz; still-warm casserole dishes from several friends—women-friends—left in the courtyard, on our front porch, which, too ambitious in scale for me to attempt to eat alone, I will store in the freezer for use in some vague future time. How deeply moved Ray would be, by this outpouring of grief among our friends. For Ray was so self-effacing, modest . . .
Still, I am angry with him. I am very angry with him. With my poor dead defenseless husband, I am furious as I was rarely—perhaps never—furious with him, in life.
How can I forgive you
,
you’ve ruined both our lives.
The phone is ringing—unanswered. Since the night of the call from the hospital, a ringing phone is hateful to me. Even with caller ID, I don’t answer it. Sometimes I walk quickly away, hands over my ears. Many of the calls are from friends—acquaintances—people with whom I should speak—but I can’t. I can’t bring myself to speak with them. My world has shrunk to a very few friends.
Many phone messages are lost, erased. Only the phone message from Ray remains, through the end of the month, and two weeks beyond. This message, I listen to frequently.
Hello this is your honey calling.
Love to my honey and kitties.
I listen to this message in the hope that I will hear a word or two that I hadn’t heard before. Or—an entirely new intonation to my husband’s voice.
So often have I listened to this call, the syllables of Ray’s words are starting to sound frayed.
“My husband died ten years ago. It doesn’t get any easier.”
A woman at Mercer County Services addresses me in a no-nonsense voice. In desperation I’d called to get information about the recycling pickup schedule in our neighborhood.
Why I seemed to know so little about the recycling schedule, I explained that my husband had always taken care of the recycling, and that he’d died recently.
To a stranger, I could say this. I could say these words. I could utter the word
die
which I could not have uttered to anyone whom we knew.
Driving then on the Pennington-Titusville Road. In icy rain determined to acquire more recycling cans—both yellow (bottles) and green (paper)—free cans, provided by the township!—since the two cans I have are nowhere sufficient for the siege of trash.
Yet much of this new trash—the “sympathy gift baskets” with their spiraling handles, large enough to hold twin joeys—the unwanted food items themselves—is not
recyclable.
For this trash, which includes
garbage
, a commercial service is required.
It’s good for the widow to be told—I think—that there are other widows in the world. Plenty of other widows. Like the no-nonsense woman at Mercer County Services who doesn’t offer sympathy so much as a nudge in the ribs.
Get used to it.
And now returning home on the Pennington-Titusville Road I feel my triumph at acquiring the several recycling cans—for free!—begin to deflate. I am thinking how odd this is, that I am driving here in the country—I am driving here alone—not once in our life in this part of New Jersey had I ever driven on this highway without Ray, and usually Ray was driving; we’d be returning from a trip to the Delaware River, or to Bucks County; an outing on the Delaware & Raritan Canal towpath, that runs along the river; we’d have been walking, running, or bicycling; for these were our favorite things to do together. I am thinking that never have I been alone so much, so
starkly unmitigatedly alone
, as I have been since Ray has died; never, since our marriage in January 1961.
There is a terror in
aloneness.
Beyond even
loneliness.
And now, this is my life. This is what my life will be. This aloneness, this anxiety, this dread of the next hour and of the upcoming night and of the morning to follow, this dread of a vast avalanche of trash, useless unwanted trash spilling over me, filling my mouth, suffocating, smothering trash for which I am (perversely) expected to express gratitude, thanks; this will be the rest of my life, without my husband; this, unbelievable, impossible to believe, and yet—of course it is true: there is the
Certificate of Death
, as proof.
When you are not alone, you are shielded. You are shielded from the stark implacable unspeakable indescribable terror of aloneness. You are shielded from the knowledge of your own insignificance, your trash-soul. When you are loved, you are blind to your own worth; or, you are indifferent to such thoughts. You have no time for such thoughts. You have no inclination to think
Why am I here
,
why am I left behind
,
what am I doing here
,
why in the car driving on this highway
,
why trash cans rattling in the rear of the car and in the trunk of the car
,
why not turn the steering wheel sharply to the right
,
there are trees
,
there is the promise of quick oblivion—or—maybe not?
That is the dilemma: maybe not. Maybe things would be worse. Actual pain, agony, brain damage, hospital, Telemetry—you don’t die in the car wreck but survive in a mutilated and disfigured state—a single eye remaining, swollen and near-blind and you open it to see Jasmine hovering over your bed, chattering in your face.
The widow-life of low-grade misery is preferable to
that.
No hiding! Back from the Pennington-Titusville Road—back in Ray’s study trying to make sense of a morass of papers—ignore the ringing phone—ignore the doorbell ringing—but no, I can’t ignore the doorbell ringing—I must answer the doorbell ringing—I must put aside my misery out of courtesy for the delivery man on my doorstep—I must not scream at him
Go away! Leave me alone!
I must smile and graciously accept from him whatever it is—perhaps not a monster-package but something small, that will fit on the dining room table as a token of a friend’s sympathy and love, but even if it is a monster package I must accept it, reasoning that the sympathy-siege must end, soon—there is a finite quantity of
sympathy
in the world, and it is rapidly being used up.
“Mrs. Smith? Sign here, please.”
Advice to the Widow
:
Do not think that grief is pure
,
solemn
,
austere and “elevated”—this is not Mozart’s
Requiem Mass
. Think instead Spike Jones
,
those unfunny “classical” musical jokes involving tubas and bassoons.
Think of crude coarse gravel that hurts to walk on. Think of splotched mirrors in public lavatories. Think of towel dispensers when they have broken and there is nothing to wipe your hands on except already-used badly soiled towels.
And one morning I am unable to bear it: the sight of the
New York Times
in its transparent blue wrapper lying at the end of the driveway. Through a break in foliage I can see it from a window in my study and even if only a glisten of the transparent blue wrapper is visible this glisten is enough to make me feel very weak, very bad. I am thinking of Ray reading the newspaper each morning of his life without fail. I am thinking of how surprised Ray would be to see how copies of the paper are accumulating unread. I am thinking
What futility
,
what vanity! He cared so much for—what?
Unable to make my exhausted way outside to pick up the newspaper(s) as I am unable to remove the newspaper(s) from the transparent blue wrapper as I am unable to read this incontestably great newspaper nor am I able to glance at its front page, its headlines which had the power to so absorb Ray as he returned to the house he would sometimes pause in the courtyard frowning over the front page until I called to him—
Honey! For heaven’s sake come inside.
The green recycling trash-container is already packed with “mixed paper and cardboard”—many pages of newsprint—magazines, bound galleys, wrapping paper, discarded mail. Too much newsprint! Too much heartbreak!
Within a week of Ray’s death I have canceled our thirty-year subscription to the
New York Times.