The Sweetheart Deal (8 page)

I
don't know how we—how I—got through that early time, the weeks before Daylight Saving and the first signs of spring. Like people always say, the goddamn sun still rose every morning. The weather followed its own erratic whims. The hummingbirds chased each other away when it was their turn at the feeder and the squirrels bickered and recovered what they'd buried, maintaining their fat and biding their time. The laundry piled, the mail came, the bills still needed to be paid, the food made, the dishes cleared and washed and used again. The boys had homework, and still argued, and each day Andrew simmered a little more with an anger that was unlike him, and Brian screamed in the night from his dreams, still needing his mother, still needing me. Christopher came right home every day after school instead of hanging out with his friends like he always had, though some days Joe Assante came home with him. And still, the sympathy cards kept coming, the phone kept ringing, and the voicemail and my inbox kept filling.

After the boys returned to school, after I got them all out the door in the morning, I went back to bed. I told Garrett I was going to read, but I buried myself in bed and slept for hours, hiding from my grief and exhausted from the insomnia, or from getting up with Brian. I never opened a single book. The fire bureau reached out with resources I wanted no part of.

I listened to Leo's voicemails I'd saved on the landline and on my cell.
On my way, babe. What a sight you'll be for sore eyes,
one said. And,
I wish I was home tonight, darling, but I'll see you when the tour's over
. At the time, saving them seemed unnecessary, and though I was grateful now that I had them, they gave me no comfort. I had the voice of a dead man talking to me, not me now, but to the me I was the day he'd left them, still alive. Since the voicemails could never be anything more, I went to bed, wearing the heaviest, warmest clothes I had, and every time, the last thing I put on over them all was Leo's fisherman's sweater.

Erin called and texted, but otherwise left me alone for three days after my family and the McGearys were gone. I never answered the phone, but I texted her back:
Thanks, got your vm, talk soon
. I didn't want her to worry about me, but I didn't want to talk to her either. All the energy I could muster I spent on the boys—after that, I had nothing left. Then, on the fourth day, she came over with groceries, did all the laundry and put it away. She came up to my room when she got there, and again before she left. Both times she lay down on the bed behind me. The second time, before she got up she said, “I'll see you again in three days. That's when I'll be back. I'll come sooner if you want me too. Let me know.”

When she returned, when she said she would, after she dropped her own kids off at school, I was, as I imagine she expected, in bed. She lay down behind me again. “Sweetie, how about a shower?” she said. “Or do you want me to run you a tub? Tell me.”

“Shower,” I said.

She got me in the bathroom and set up, like I were an invalid. When I'd finished, she had changed the sheets and vacuumed and laid out clean clothes for me.

“Come eat something,” she said. “I'll see you downstairs.”

Garrett was already working, and Erin had eggs, toast, and coffee waiting.

“I can't eat all this,” I said.

“Eat what you can. You can't disappear. I'm not going to let you disappear,” she said. “After this we're going to take a walk, just a little one—it's not raining. And then if you want to, you can go back to bed and I'll come over again tomorrow. The kids have dentist appointments in the morning, but I'll be here right after.”

I pushed around as much of the eggs as I ate and managed half the toast, but the coffee was good.

Her voice got thick and she started to cry. “Audrey, I'm so, so sorry. I wish there was something I could do.”

“You're doing it,” I said.

Then we walked without talking and when we came back, after she left, I didn't go back to bed, but I did lie on the couch under a blanket until the end of the school day.

The next morning, after the boys were gone, I tried, I really did. I took a shower and stood in front of my dresser in my bathrobe. I got tired of standing and sat down in front of it. I sat on the floor staring at the drawers for an hour, sucking in small but regular breaths, which were all I could manage. It was too much to decide. I didn't know how to do the next thing and the next and the next to get dressed. I couldn't manage it. Erin would be here soon and she would find me on the floor. I didn't care. But then I got angry, so angry—I put on the first thing I saw in the drawers I opened and the first thing I saw in the closet. I may have been broken, but I was a grown woman and I could dress myself.

Downstairs in the foyer, I put on one of Chris's ski hats—he would only wear Patagonia; Brian constantly called him a brand snob, but Chris claimed they were the only ones that didn't itch—and sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee. Garrett came in from the addition and refilled his cup.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Good morning,” he said. He looked at me with a curious expression and sat down across from me. “Did you sleep?”

“I guess I must have,” I said. “I didn't for a long time, but then I wasn't awake when the alarm went off. How are you?”

“I'm okay,” he said. “It's good to have something to focus on. He did a great job already.”

I nodded. “Yes. He did.”

Garrett stood up. “You want me to make you something to eat?” he said. “I can cook you an omelet, or scramble some eggs?”

I shook my head. “Not right now. I'll have something in a while.”

“Okay,” he said. “I'm going to make some toast. How about a piece of toast?”

“Thanks, no, that's okay.”

The front door opened and Erin called, “Hello.”

“In the kitchen,” said Garrett.

I got up to refill my coffee as Erin came in the room. “Hi, Garrett,” she said. He nodded his head and raised his eyebrows at her. He buttered his toast and left.

She hugged me and stepped back and looked at me from head to toe.

“Do you want a cup?” I said.

“I'll get it,” she said. “So, what's happening here, sweetie?” She lifted and lowered one hand in front of her, then with both hands massaged the air between us. She smiled a smile I'd seen many times before, when I was being funny and on a roll and she was building up to laugh out loud.

“What?” I said. “What's happening with what?”

“You're up.” Then the smile on her face vanished and her voice turned gentle. “And you got dressed. That's great. I hope you didn't rush because I was coming.”

“No, I didn't rush,” I said. “It actually took me a really long time.” I started to cry when I looked down and saw what Erin saw, and what Garrett had seen: a lace blouse with cap sleeves and a twirly green cotton skirt I'd worn most of the previous summer, the first things I'd seen and put on after I'd opened my closet. I stood in my favorite strappy wedges, shoes not meant to be worn for months.

“I got the boys off to school and then I dressed myself.” I sat back down with my coffee. My tears blurred my vision. “I'm just getting started. It was really hard but I'm doing it.”

“Oh, I know you are,” said Erin. She pulled a chair next to mine and sat too. “I know that. I can see you are. But it's raining out and it's cold and I thought maybe if we went for a walk or got a sandwich later, you might be warmer in something else.” She put her arm around me and pulled me toward her. She slipped off Chris's hat, put it on the table, and leaned in until our heads were touching. Resting against me, she started to hum, and I felt her vibrations as much as I heard her. Garrett came into the kitchen with his empty plate and put it in the sink. He leaned against the counter and looked at the two of us looking back at him.

Erin stopped humming. “We can do this,” she said into the room. “We're going to be all right.” She began to hum again, with her lips against my forehead, and the two of us rocked together, barely moving, and after a minute, Garrett left the kitchen and walked back into the addition.

T
he next morning, because she came earlier, Erin found me in my bathrobe sitting on the floor staring at my dresser. The first thing she did was sit down next to me, and then we were both staring.

“It would be nice to stay like this, I think,” she said. “I could sit here for a really long time.”

“I know,” I said. “So let's.”

And we did, for I don't know how long, together, not saying anything. Then Erin got up.

“I brought you something—I'll be right back.”

She went downstairs and came back up.

“I'd like to go back to sitting, but why don't you get dressed first?” She had a green pad of Post-its and a pen. When she reached her hand out, I took it and she pulled me up.

Together we rearranged my clothes so that similar things were together and I couldn't go wrong with what I grabbed. On the Post-its she wrote numbers one through six. And while I got dressed that morning, she stuck the Post-its on the drawers with my underwear (1), bras (2), and socks (3). She stuck Post-it four on one of my closets—I had two—the one Leo and I shared. On the other closet, where I hung my skirts and dresses and kept my summer clothes and shoes, she stuck the Post-it on which she'd written
Not Today
. Inside the number four closet—where every time I opened it I'd see Leo's things on his side—Erin stuck number five on the shelf holding my folded shirts and sweaters, and on another shelf she put the last Post-it, six, where I could pick any one of the pairs of pants stacked there.

Starting the next week, every Saturday, I drove to the cemetery alone. Every morning I went, it rained. I would bring the boys when I was ready. That first month, after I'd sat next to his grave and talked to him, my face was swollen and my body was spent.

Are you okay?
I said.
I want to know you're okay. I'm sorry, we should have gone on Brian's birthday. I'm so sorry, Leo. I'm sorry you were alone. I'm sorry the weather changed. I don't know what to do.
It went like that every time, so I had to be by myself.

There had been so much to navigate. My family and Leo's family leaving had been as hard as it had been a relief. Fielding the firefighters and their wives, who all called and emailed after the funeral—some I knew well, some a little, and some not at all. The flowers, and cards, and the food Violet had people bring. When I read each card and note, more than once, it was disorienting that they were for me.

I had hung up Leo's skis in the basement, and packed his boots and ski clothes in a bin of their own. I didn't know what else to do with them. I couldn't throw them away. But I couldn't sell them or give them away either. It would have been a terrible thing to do to the equipment, and to an interested party. My husband died wearing them, skiing on them. Even free seemed too high a price for something a man died in. So I put them where they had always been stored, and didn't look at the skis when I was in the basement.

I refused to disturb Leo's things anywhere else around the house. Closets and drawers remained unchanged, since I saw no reason they shouldn't stay the same for the time being. His clothes, shoes, and coats waited as they had all the other days he hadn't worn them. But I had to do something about his boots on the porch. Our porch had always been the catchall, where everything landed. It was the place for basketballs, and baseball bats and gloves, cleats and skateboards, and the boys' helmets, muddy sneakers, flip-flops, and rain boots.

The boots Leo wore to work in the yard, or threw on to run out somewhere, were never anywhere but the porch. Their companion, what he called his “dear hat”—a black-and-green mesh John Deere cap that he'd brought to our marriage—always hung on the hook inside the front door. I couldn't leave them out among the other things. I didn't want to see them every time I left or entered the house, when I was able to. If I'd been told before he died how much the sight of Leo's boots and his ugly hat—
Hate the hat, not the man,
he always said when he put it on—would trouble me, I wouldn't have believed it. Before I could stop myself, I put the boots—with mud still caked on their soles—and the hat in a paper shopping bag, and before I put it in back of my closet—the
Not Today
closet—next to my boxed and preserved wedding dress, I took his wedding ring out of my jewelry box and dropped it in the right boot, and shook it down toward the toe. I still wore my wedding and engagement rings, but Leo's wedding band was the only other thing I couldn't bear to have in plain sight or within easy reach. Although I avoided sitting on the porch with my coffee in the morning or a glass of wine at night, at least I could come and go through the front door and walk past everything that was there.

We'd always been a two-car family, but I refused to drive Leo's Land Cruiser, and wouldn't let Garrett either, so we only used mine. But the truck was always there, in the driveway, with the last five CDs Leo had loaded in the player. Although I didn't drive it, I started it every Saturday before I went to the cemetery, part of my routine, to keep the battery charged. The first time I did it, I expected to hear the last music he'd listened to, but instead it was NPR talk radio that came through the speakers. After I let the engine run, I turned it off and left the station right where it was.

F
or the next eight weeks, starting the Saturday after we buried Leo, which was the first weekend of Lent, I went to five o'clock mass, like a sheep, following Audrey and the boys, all our sufferings parallel with those of the liturgical season. Each time, we walked into the church, crossed ourselves at the font, and walked up the aisle until Audrey said, “Here,” and we settled in a pew on the right, halfway between the front and the back. Of those eight masses, the intention for three of them was for Leo. Who had made the requests? I didn't know why masses were always said for the dead—I understood intentions for the sick or dying, but what about saying masses for those left behind, trying to live and survive? Those Saturday afternoons, when all of them were still and in one place, I observed these four people I barely knew.

I knew Audrey and Leo weren't the most devout Catholics, but they were involved in the parish and the parish's school, where Christopher had gone and Brian and Andrew still went. Leo had served hot lunch once a month, which Audrey called “hot dads' hot lunch.” When I gave him shit about it, he'd told me,
No, it's fun. I get to see my boys in their day, in their place. And the other guys, they're all right.
Audrey had chaired the school auction one year, with much success, and volunteered serving meals at one of the homeless shelters in town. So I wasn't surprised that she seemed more relaxed, while still behind a shield of sorts, in this community of the church, than she did with the firefighters and their wives, all so hungry to reach out and help.

Each time we went to mass, she'd lift a hand to someone across the church, or sometimes hug someone on our way in, or was approached by someone when we were on our way out. But once mass started, she seemed to occupy a quiet place where she couldn't be reached. The way she held herself, her whole body announced,
I can't be disturbed
.

Since Leo's funeral, the church had been stripped down for the Lenten season and the crucifix was covered with a purple shroud. The altar society's decorations had disappeared as if the committee had quit the job and taken all their finery with them.

I had heard the Gospel readings my whole life. I wasn't a believer, but I strived to be open-minded, so for all those weeks I sat, waiting to be convinced, hoping for some comfort in
You don't have to see it to believe it.
And it was no surprise to me that it didn't come, that comfort, that confidence, that faith that I suspected so many of the people in the congregation had but I did not. That faith that my mother and Kate had had, and Kate even more so after the inexplicable sensation she'd experienced following my mother's death.

So Easter was a joyous but contrived celebration. As contrived as Christ's Passion had been. The resurrected undead didn't flow into the church, politely cramming into the crowded pews to join their families. How validating and horrifying that would have been, what a miracle, to have Leo waltz in, with my mother and everyone else who'd left behind people they loved, looking as unblemished as they had in life, thanking us for saving them a seat.

Audrey made a ham and although the boys were too old for it, had them hunt for hidden baskets with candy and something special nestled in the plastic strands of grass. I worked most of the day after we got home, but I took a walk before we sat down to eat, scanning the neighborhood. The day had turned sunny early after the clouds burned off, and I sought some proof that this day was different from any other. The first flowers shared their tentative scents, and the explosions of cherry and dogwood were stunning. But that had nothing to do with Easter. It was only because it was spring.