by Julie Metz
I wanted the appointment to be sooner.
“Oh, Julie, stop fussing,” Henry said, brushing off my concern. I tried not to worry. But worrying is in my nature.
The shock of the morning kicked Henry into action. He spent the evening cleaning out his office while I read a work manuscript in bed. By midnight he’d set three bags of trash outside his office door alongside filing boxes filled with neatly organized papers. He looked tired but satisfied. “Tomorrow, I will be ready to begin my book,” he said, with a weary grin.
I recalled this exhaustion as Emily drove me home from the hospital, leaving Henry behind on the gurney. Matthew, who had been close to Henry’s family for twenty-five years, and my friend for sixteen, decided it would be best to tell the news to Henry’s family in person. He offered to drive up that evening and left straight from the hospital. I feared my own task ahead. Liza was still at a friend’s house, completely unaware of what had happened that afternoon.
It was now dark. Anna had arrived at my house. I had called her from the car on the way to the hospital, but she had heard the news from the bookkeeper we shared, whose son was, coincidentally, one of the paramedics who came to our house.
Irena, a close friend from Brooklyn, my parents, brother, and sister-in-law had driven up from the city. A small group of local friends who had heard the news had come over as well. Anna and Irena greeted me at the door. I was grateful that Irena had managed to extract herself so quickly from her busy city office. Her normally exuberant dark curls were tamed in a hair tie without her trademark feather accents. A head taller than I, she had always been sisterly with me, and I suddenly realized how badly I needed someone who would tell me that everything would be all right. Irena walked me over to one of the couches, where I collapsed. Everyone had gathered on the other couch and the chairs in front of the fireplace, creating an odd preparty atmosphere. Even with my sheepskin coat on, I was shivering. I grabbed a blanket from the back of the sofa and draped it over my shaking legs.
Just after 8:00 P.M., Liza returned home from the playdate Emily had hastily arranged that afternoon, when we still hoped that everything would turn out okay. Liza looked around, smiling awkwardly, looking for Henry, wondering why her grandparents and so many others were visiting. It was a party, she thought. But where was the food? Where were the other kids? She joined me on the couch, hopping onto my lap.
“Mama, why are you still wearing your coat?” The room was quiet; everyone waited.
“Lizzie, do you remember how Daddy wasn’t feeling well—how he fell down in the hall the other day? Well, he fell again today, in the afternoon, while you were at school. I called an ambulance right away and they took him to the hospital—the doctors tried to do everything they could to save him. But he died.”
Liza listened to me—a few seconds of complete silence—then she wept while I held her in my arms. She cried for a long time, deep, brokenhearted sobbing. I was too drained to cry.
When she stopped crying, Liza sat quietly on my lap for several minutes and looked around at the adults, many of whom were quietly weeping. I could see her thinking, her eyes scanning the room—now she understood why everyone was in our house.
With a sudden sense of purpose, Liza jumped off my lap and walked to the shelf where we kept the ashes of Chester, our dear dead cat. She took down the small metal box, opened it, and walked around the room showing everyone the ashes.
“Chester, our tabby kitty, was very sick. We got up one day and he was just lying on the porch and he wouldn’t eat or drink or get up, so we had to take him to the doctor right away, but the doctor told us that Chester was too sick to live. So he said he would have to give him a shot to make him sleep forever, but it wouldn’t hurt him at all.”
Chester’s death a year earlier had served a most poetic and instructive purpose.
Irena stayed overnight. We slept next to each other like school-girls.
Matthew, Anna, Emily, and Tomas appeared early the following morning to make arrangements for a memorial. I lay in bed while Irena and the others busied themselves in Henry’s office, across the hall from our bedroom. I heard distressing sounds, bursts of heated conversation and a woman’s muffled scream. I got to my feet and stumbled into the office. Something was wrong. Anna led me back to my bed and quietly tucked me in. I was grateful to lie down again.
Later, I heard Cathy’s voice calling for Matthew as she climbed up the stairs. She disappeared behind Henry’s office door. More muffled voices, but I could not understand the words. Henry’s door opened again. I sat up in bed and looked into the hallway. Cathy rushed quickly down the stairs. Why didn’t she stop in to see me? I lay down again, drifting in and out, my first widowed day dreamlike, foggy, unreal.
We arrived early at the funeral home for the viewing so that Liza could spend time alone with Henry. She boldly walked up to the open coffin, positioned for adult view on a platform.
“Mama, can I have a tall chair?”
We found a high stool.
“Mama, look, you can’t move his fingers. Daddy’s lips are chapped. Can we put some stuff on his lips?” I rummaged in my bag and found a tube of lip balm, which Liza applied with care. Cathy’s daughter, Amy, came over, and we found another tall stool for her. The two girls sat near each other and talked and gestured at Henry. The ease of their friendship comforted me as I watched from across the room, greeting guests. Henry’s family arrived and sat quiet and stunned in the seats near the front. Townspeople arrived, some just acquaintances, many complete strangers. Henry’s high school friends came together in a pack to greet me. One of Henry’s former girlfriends sadly shook my hand.
I glanced over, searching for Liza near the coffin. I saw Cathy in her place. She was weeping hysterically, her head and arms draped over Henry’s lifeless torso. Steve stood next to her, stoic, uncomfortable. When she lifted her head, her face was red and wet with tears. Not even I, the widow, had allowed myself such public emotion. A woman from our wider circle of acquaintances, her face set with concern, walked over quickly to speak with Steve while Cathy wept on. Finally, Steve gently drew Cathy away from the coffin. The awkward moment passed. I watched with relief as everyone returned to handshaking and quiet conversation.
I lay in bed the morning after the wake, my mind still soft and dreaming, in a tangle of sweaty sheets, light filtering through the dusty windows, obscuring the mountains and fog-draped river. Henry was dead; I was a widow. Irena lay sleeping next to me, her steady breath a small comfort. But soon she would have to go back to the city and I would be left here with Liza. Henry was gone.
A cloud gathered above my body, vaporous fingers extending and reaching around my torso and into my secret internal spaces. My mouth was pried open tenderly but insistently. He was invisible but present, an essence that seemed to hold me firmly on the bed. I allowed him to wash over me, enter me, enfold me.
He wanted something from me—to tell me something important, to be with my body. But he had no body; maybe he didn’t understand that yet. Irena stirred and opened her eyes. Now my arms were reaching up to hold him.
“Are you okay? What’s happening?” Irena murmured.
“It’s Henry, he’s here.”
Why was Henry here? What did he want to tell me? He needed a body, but he was floating now without one. I felt anguished for him that he didn’t understand what had happened to his body, that I couldn’t speak to him and explain. Suddenly, I was floating too.
My body felt light and airy in the bed while he visited me each morning after that first time, the intensity of the visits gradually softening. I floated through my days. People spoke to me, and I realized I wasn’t really present. I floated in the icy wind, wishing I could pass into his world, though I was unwilling to leave my child. I was in some in-between place, a dreamlike landscape where the horizon line vanished in a whiteout snowstorm.
The memorial service took place on January 12. I stood before an overflowing crowd at the lectern of a local church that
had kindly offered their space for the ceremony.
“Henry was the love of my life,” I told the crowd, “but also a completely impossible person.” Nervous laughter. I had assumed the audience would be intimate with Henry’s love of excess, his trademark lack of restraint. Surely some of the hundreds of friends, family, and local acquaintances packing this local church knew what I meant. Henry never liked to do anything small. Everything—from his romantic marriage proposal to his dinner party menus—was executed in grand gestures. A reserved twenty-seven-year-old when I met him, I had been drawn to that exuberance and to his forceful love. I had never before received such unabashed love from any man, and I’d welcomed it eagerly.
Snapshots came to mind: our meeting sixteen years earlier at a winter party; a day during our first spring together when he positioned me under a blooming cherry tree to take a photo; Henry cooking one of many amazing dinners for me on the humble stove in our apartment; Henry handing me a ruby ring over a warmly lit restaurant table where we celebrated our third wedding anniversary; a meal in a Paris restaurant where I tasted blinis for the first time; Henry sighing over the delights of a rabbit stew he prepared on a trip to Italy and the afternoon siestas we enjoyed on the warm afternoons in that Tuscan farmhouse we’d rented with friends. More images: Henry squeezing my hand as I pushed Liza into the fluorescent glare of the hospital delivery room; Henry and I as we walked through Prospect Park with our new baby. And recent images: Henry outdoing himself with a three-course lunch for ten women in honor of my fortieth birthday—grilled figs wrapped in pancetta, fresh pea soup with truffle oil, braised quails with pomegranate sauce. One of Liza’s birthday parties, as twenty families and their children gathered around our swimming pool while Henry, in his favorite apron, presiding over the grill, beamed proudly. Henry throwing Liza and other delighted children into the water and swimming after them, as happy as a golden retriever playing with a litter of eager, squealing puppies. Yet another image as Henry showed Liza how to stir a sauce at the stove.
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.
two
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.