Perfection (4 page)

He had often been childlike in his pursuits, so eager to try anything new. In our best times together, I had felt loved and cherished with a similar enthusiasm. As I stood at the lectern, I saw clearly what he had brought to me, a naturally cautious and quiet person: a room full of hundreds of people whom he had delighted, who cared about him, and me. I thanked all the guests for coming and returned to my seat between Liza and Irena, passing the lectern to other speakers, who read poems and letters, and other tributes to their deep love for Henry. Person after person spoke about his loyal friendship, his insatiable curiosity about life, and his devotion to Liza and me. I held Liza’s hand tightly.

Now composed in a dark knee-length dress, Cathy read a familiar Dylan Thomas poem in a restrained voice, her face tired and pale. No more coffin for her to weep over. Henry’s body had already been cremated.

A rosy-cheeked man, his head topped with a cloud of blazing red curls, walked up to the lectern. It took me a moment to place him as a salesman at the local wine shop Henry frequented. In a voice choked with genuine grief, he spoke about their long afternoon conversations, Henry’s impeccable taste, his wicked sense of humor. He read a poem he had written the morning before. I was startled to realize that Henry had a real relationship with this man, someone almost unknown to me. He had never sat at our dinner table or come to our parties. I had never exchanged more than a few words of polite greeting on the rare occasions when I ran into the shop to buy a bottle of wine. How could Henry have had such a meaningful, ongoing friendship with this near stranger, a
friendship strong enough to inspire this heartfelt attempt at poetry?

There would not be four hundred, or even one hundred people at my funeral, I thought to myself, gazing over the crowd. Henry’s gift was making everyone feel special—with a joke, a story, a dish of food. I recalled the ecstasy on people’s faces when he served them a beautifully arranged plate. He had won me over that way, even with a humble dish of pasta, presented as if I were royalty. This memorial ceremony was a farewell not only to Henry but to the me who had shared his life of culinary and intellectual adventure, one that had been frequently exhausting but also thrilling.

I returned with Liza to a house filled with bouquets of pink carnations, white lilies, and dip-dyed daisies housed in plain glass vases. A far cry from the extravagant arrangements Henry used to bring home for Valentine’s Day or after our worst arguments. After the carnations wilted, I washed out the vases and stowed them beneath the china cabinet in the dining room, a part of the house I was quite sure would never be used again.

January–February 2003

Friends and family returned to their lives,
the house was quiet.

My new loneliness frightened me. Living alone with my child was not what I had planned.

A small group of friends, family, and Helen, a caring therapist whom Henry and I had been seeing for several years as a couples counselor, graciously surrounded Liza and me in the blurred weeks following the funeral. My friends tended to my daughter when I could not. They brought food into my house, filled and emptied my dishwasher, hauled my garbage cans to the curb, as Henry used to do. They listened to me cry and held me.

Within two weeks I felt able to take Liza to school again and do some work, run a load of laundry. I wanted to feel like a competent human being again, in charge of my new life.

My brother, David, began the process of reorganizing my financial life and wading through Henry’s will. His wife, Susan, helped me tidy and organize my house during their weekend visits. My parents called daily.

Other friends invited Liza and me to join their families for meals to blunt the loneliness of too many evenings on our own. But sometimes visiting friends was unbearable. As we departed,
offering thanks, they stood in the warm incandescent light of their doorways, waving good-bye. It didn’t matter that I knew how complicated family life was, that their lives weren’t perfect. They had the illusion of perfection, a warm family feeling. Whatever illusion we had was gone, and I knew they pitied me. My life was a mess, but I didn’t want pity.

Our house had become too large. I found myself getting lost. My prior roles of sous-chef and weekend hostess were over. Liza and I lived quietly in just a few rooms. I dropped Liza off to play with her friends at Cathy’s or Emily’s house more than their children came to ours. The door to Henry’s office stayed closed except when my brother visited. The dining room was unused, passed through weekly by my housekeeper, who dutifully dusted the tables and the serving platters, stacked in the same concentric ovals I had arranged after the New Year’s Eve party.

Liza and I sat in our kitchen
one evening. I twirled a spoon in my soup bowl. Liza ate more enthusiastically, then put her spoon down on the table.

“How do we know that we are not people in a movie?” she asked.

I looked at her, not sure how to reply.

“Mama,” she continued, reframing her question, “how do we know that things are real?”

Great. Now we have a junior existentialist in the house.

“Well,” I said, “we don’t know. We just have to hope that what we think is real is real.”

“But how do we know?” she asked, insistently.

Ah, a scientist, who wants empirical evidence.

“We don’t know,” I said. “We just have to hope.”

“Mama,” Liza said, “how do we know that things aren’t a dream? You know, how sometimes life feels like a dream? Do you ever feel that way?”

“Yes, sweetie, I feel that way all the time.”

I forgot to drink water
unless a glass was placed before me. My face became gaunt, my lips, parched and peeling. Neighbors and friends brought food—casseroles wrapped in foil, roast chickens from a nearby gourmet shop, containers of homemade lasagna. I placed all the offerings in my refrigerator.

Liza needed to eat, of course. I warmed up the food, placed dishes in front of us on the table in the blue-floored kitchen, and watched her eat. I dished a small amount of food onto my plate, took a few bites, and pushed the remainder around with my fork, hoping to look purposeful.

Liza was not fooled. “We aren’t really a family anymore,” she declared thoughtfully one evening as she spooned up yet another bowl of Annie’s boxed macaroni and cheese. I murmured something about reinventing family with just us two, but it felt false. Dinnertime had been a time when we were together, the three of us, eating Henry’s carefully prepared food. Food was family. Now she ate, I watched, then mechanically collected and scraped the dishes.

I had always eaten. I was born into a Jewish family, where food was love. I was raised on stews with boiled potatoes smothered with butter and dill, schnitzel with cucumber salad, and roast chicken scented with tarragon and lemon, my adolescence padded with cookies snitched furtively one at a time from the kitchen
cupboard after school. Never in my adult life had I been skinny. Widowhood was turning out to be the diet of the century.

I hadn’t seen much of my friend Anna,
though she lived in the town just north of mine. After the funeral, we had both retreated into our graphic design work, exchanging frequent e-mails and phone calls. In late January she called me up to see if she could stop by for tea. Her face was tight and tired looking, and her long, extravagant red hair was woven into a restrained braid. I could see dark roots peeking out at the base of her scalp, a sure sign that life was in disarray. Of course, my own graying roots were showing.

“John and I are separating,” she said.

I had hoped that the rest of the world would stand still while I got myself together again, but Chaos and Tragedy had marched along into other lives close to mine as well. Anna and I had lived our lives around work deadlines, homework, laundry, the restocking of the pantry, and the scheduling of our children’s social lives. Now the careful working of things had tipped into disorder.

Henry had always told me I was too careful, not spontaneous or fun enough. He loved arriving out of breath with a minute to spare before the train pulled out of the station. But I felt wistful about that time when I had the illusion of control over my life. I hated feeling like I was hanging out of a small, rickety plane, its engine failing, gazing down at a checkerboard of suburban sprawl below, praying like hell that my parachute would open when I was brave enough to let go of the hatch door.

“When did this happen?” I asked, dumbfounded. How could Anna and John separate? They couldn’t separate—she had just
finished a beautiful renovation of her glorious, sunny kitchen with views of the sunset over the river.

“John was behaving really weirdly during Christmas vacation, taking the cell phone out of the room to make calls. I hit re-dial, and it’s a woman’s voice. I recognized the name on the caller ID.”

Her agitated fingers fiddled with the frayed ends of her braid.

“Julie, it’s one of his students! Can you fucking believe it? She came to our house for dinner, that night a few months ago.”

I did remember her vaguely. A dark-haired young woman. I had assumed she was one of the young guys’ girlfriends. The small group of John’s students and I had all milled around admiring the new, crisp white cabinets with slate countertops—nibbling snacks, pouring drinks. I had watched the sun set, sipping a glass of red wine, enjoying the contrast of the rich, warm colors outside the window with the newly painted walls, a delicious shade of fresh olive green.

“Anna, I can’t believe this. What a horrible way to end a marriage.” We hugged quietly and both started crying.

At least I don’t have to deal with that. At least I can cherish the good memories of my relationship.

“Looks like we are fellow travelers now,” Anna said.

“We’ll look after each other.” I couldn’t recall ever offering her this kind of comfort before. Now our relationship felt balanced. I hoped I could be useful to her as we muddled forward.

One afternoon a week later,
I visited Tomas. We walked up the path to his sculpture studio, a small brick structure behind his house. The river rushed below us, the torrent muted by a layer of
ice. As we trudged up the snowy path, I strained to hear his voice above the din. He pulled open the heavy door, and we stepped into the dark, frigid studio. He turned on a light and a heater as I tried to distract myself by blowing warm air from my mouth, watching it pass upward like drifting fog. I wished our friendship would allow him to enfold me in a warm hug. He didn’t seem to mind the cold very much, though I noticed his hands were parched and chapped.

Tomas had been kind and attentive, calling me and receiving my phone calls or e-mails every day since Henry’s death. I appreciated that with him I was able to speak about something other than my loss. I felt hopeful for myself as I listened to him talk about his life and his ambitious plans for the future.

His skills were formidable. A man in a reclining, twisting pose that recalled a deposed Christ figure. An entwined couple, the bodies stretched out long and lanky like his, unlike mine, almost androgynous. They wrapped around each other in a way that defied the realities of the human body, but the result was arresting, elegant, and arousing. I stood quietly for a while, admiring the sculptures. Though I enjoyed looking at the male bodies, I felt shy, simultaneously wondering if Tomas’s penis was the size of those of his sculpted alter egos and embarrassed by my crass speculation.

“Here, I want you to have this,” he said, breaking the awkward silence as he offered me a small sculpture of a female figure in a seated yoga pose. The cold cast metal warmed in my hands and then warmed me.

We left the studio and walked down the narrow path to his small meadow, where he proudly showed me a new tree he had planted in the fall. Other large sculptures were installed nearby.
Two back-to-back standing male figures looked at home in the unmown grass, dusted with snow. One of the figures crouched slightly, with arms bent behind his head; the other stood proud and exultant, with extended chest and arms raised up above his head.

The new tree Tomas had planted seemed lonely in the overgrown grass.

“I could give you some cuttings from my garden in the spring,” I said. I was proud of my own garden and loved giving plants to friends. He didn’t answer, and I regretted offering him a gift, though I was still holding his small sculpture in my gloved hand. “I’d like to cook you dinner sometime. I need to start cooking.”

This offer he accepted.

Timidly, I tried out the pots and pans in the kitchen, once entirely Henry’s dominion, with Julia Child and Nigella Lawson propped open for moral support. Lacking Henry’s experience and confidence, I applied effort and study to the problem, reading recipes, making the same dish several times until I felt I had achieved some mastery. Lamb stew and coq au vin. I could still hear Julia Child’s cheerful, high-pitched voice from the television shows I had watched as a child with my mother. Roasted chicken and minestrone soup. Nigella’s carefree “whatever you have in the fridge” attitude comforted and reassured me.

Tomas played Attack with Liza in the living room while I worked at the stove. Attack was a game with simple rules, one that Liza and Henry had invented. Scary stories delighted Liza, as long as everything turned out well in the end. Henry had to say something like “I am a terrible, scary ogre and I am coming to get you…and when I find you I will suck out your brains with
a bendy straw!” Then Liza and sometimes other friends would race around the house screaming, trying to elude the growling ogre. In the end, the ogre found his quarry, but the tide turned at the last minute, giving the children the upper hand. This was a game that truly illustrated kid philosophy—if it’s fun once, it’s fun a hundred times.

After a rousing game of Attack, Tomas happily devoured everything, and it was relaxing to have him in the kitchen, leaning back in a chair drinking a beer as I stirred and sautéed. He didn’t mind helping out with some household chores, such as changing ceiling lightbulbs. At six foot three, he could do this without wobbling on the top tread of a stepladder.

On one of these evenings, as I prepared a steak for the broiler, I sensed Henry’s presence in the kitchen. His voice echoed in my head: “Don’t forget to salt the meat!”

By February, as my skills improved, I felt ready to throw a modest dinner party for Tomas and a few friends. I decided to offer them the homemade Korean dumplings Henry used to make, floating in a simple broth. This was a meal I could serve in front of the fireplace. The friends gathered, I added another log to the fire, and we all found seating. I sat next to Tomas on the couch. My long, unbrushed hair was bundled in one of Liza’s hair ties. I was comfortable in my woolly socks and jeans, wrapped in a favorite pilled and frayed gray sweater.

The bone of his kneecap stretched the canvas cloth of his pants, revealing the indentation where the bone meets the muscle. I sat as close to him as I dared, a few discreet, magnetically charged inches between our seated thighs. I cast my eyes down at that narrow separating space, wondering about the meaning of the elec
trified feeling in my chest and a sudden hyperawareness of the effort of my lungs’ expansion and contraction. My small hand reached into the charged space between us and found his large, warm hand. His long, elegant fingers took mine in a gentle squeeze. A painful pulse shot up the center of my body, a long-ago sensation.

I remembered the smell and glaring hot colors of New York City in July 1976, my clammy T-shirt, and an ineffectual, rattling fan blowing hot air in my face. A boy with half-closed eyes and tawny hair leans over awkwardly to kiss me as we entwine on my childhood bed, his parted lips steamy with the aromas of pot and liquefied chocolate chip cookies.

That sensation of desperate wanting.

Henry had been dead for a month. I was horny. I was horrified.

“Mama,” Liza said one evening
as we walked upstairs to bed, “I want to tell you something. I feel bad about something, but you might be mad at me if I tell you.”

I sat on the stairs, and Liza joined me. The stairs had become a favorite place for us to talk, a neutral place. As she started to cry, I held her close to me, this warm, lovely creature, all I had left now of my marriage. I missed Henry, and I was furious. Why had he left us so suddenly?

“No, Lizzie, I won’t be mad. Tell me anything you want.”

“Are you sure you won’t be mad?”

“I’m sure.”

“Well, sometimes Daddy was mean to me,” she said tentatively.
Liza had expressed so little of her feelings about her loss that I was grateful for any opening, though I hadn’t expected this. “Sometimes I was playing in his office and he would yell at me to get out for no reason,” she continued. “I feel sad about that and angry that he got mad at me.” She began crying, and I reached over to comfort her. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong, and he yelled at me for no reason.”