Perfection

by Julie Metz

  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 electrified 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 Li
za 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.”

  I knew what she was talking about. I had done my share of yelling. Parenting young children is hard, and I was ashamed to admit how many times I’d snapped at her after tripping on toys she’d left on the kitchen floor, even for spilling cups of milk at the kitchen table. But I did recall the times Henry had abruptly made her leave his office, and the fury I’d felt at the time rushed back. Liza loved drawing pictures, snipping colored paper into confetti, or molding Sculpey figures of kitties on the floor of my sunporch office while I worked in the late afternoons or evenings. But Henry frequently shooed her out of his office, shutting the door behind her. He insisted on a kind of privacy I had been able to give up.

  “You weren’t doing anything wrong,” I replied. “I don’t know why he was like that, but I remember that sometimes he would yell at you. I know how much he loved you, though, even if he was mean sometimes.”

  He didn’t love her enough to stay here.

  Another flash of anger, as if his death was something he could have prevented. Then sorrow. He couldn’t possibly have wanted his life to end as it did. In spite of our conflicts and his impatient nature, Henry had been a proud and devoted father.

  “I think we have to try to forgive him. Now, it’s just the two of us, so please always tell me how you’re feeling,” I said to Liza.

  We sat together quietly on the stairs and hugged each other. Then it was time for bed, where we huddled under the quilt, holding hands tightly till I felt the muscles of her hand relax in sleep.

  My social status had flipped a switch. I was no longer a married woman; I was not sure yet exactly of my new place. But I welcomed a new comfort in a group of women around whom I had formerly only circled at the town and school playgrounds: the single mothers. We were precious few in this place. One woman I had always liked—the mother of another one of Liza’s school friends. After the girls met in class, Tanya and I began arranging playdates. Tanya was quiet, her voice almost a whisper. She wore wristfuls of jingly bangles, dangly earrings, a bear-claw pendant on a leather lace around her neck, airy shawls. In the warm months, she liked to walk through town barefoot, her toenails painted scarlet. Some people thought the barefoot thing was weird, but I secretly liked that Tanya did just as she pleased.

  Her home was just another quaint cream-colored clapboard house on a short, tree-lined street, but the interior was like the magical world of a Gustav Klimt painting. Gold Egyptian eyes shimmered on the living room walls; the bathroom walls featured a decoupage of a thousand and one photos of women, clipped from magazines; while pieces of colored glass arranged as a kitchen backsplash mosaic depicted dancing mermaids. Tables and shelves brimmed with bowls and baskets of colored pebbles and shells; free-form weavings of yarn and more shells hung from the ceiling. Two cats roamed the house and yard, a cuddly gray bunny hopped about, colorful fish slowly circled in a fish tank in the kitchen.

  Snuggled on her slouchy couch, I drank the large, steaming cups of tea she offered me. My own home felt staid and traditional by comparison. How had I found myself in that beautiful house with a housekeeper and neatly arranged furniture? I felt like I belonged in this house, Tanya’s house.

  I could feel myself withdrawing from my familiar social world. But the friends who did see me as I moved through my days—taking Liza to school, picking her up in the afternoons, shopping at the grocery store—had sounded the alarm. One morning Emily, Cathy, and two other friends, Louise and Diane, arranged themselves at my kitchen table in a kind of gentle intervention.

  Cathy told me I was too thin. I needed to eat. She had brought a can of powdered protein drink and a bottle of calcium tablets. I tried to focus my attention on her well-intended appeal concerning the importance of maintaining weight and bone density during a stressful time, thinking that Henry would have offered a more caustic assessment: “Julie, you look like shit.”

  I started crying. I knew she was right. I had to eat. I just couldn’t seem to get anything down. My lack of appetite frightened me.

  From her sturdy canvas bag, Diane presented a homemade raspberry pie, the beautiful, flaky brown crust oozing ripe, red fruit. The aromas of buttery pastry and warm berries were suddenly tempting. I cut a small sliver and ate.

  Cathy said that she wanted to arrange a private talk for me with her minister.

  “Fine, that sounds okay,” I heard myself saying between small, exploratory bites, though I had no idea how I would talk to a minister. I wasn’t interested in ministers. The only thing that interested me was the pie.

  My stomach revolted from the shock. Once the cramping and subsequent nausea passed, I cut another slice. Later in the afternoon, I ate another slice, and I ate a piece of pie for dinner and another for breakfast the next morning. When the pie was gone, I called Diane and asked her if she would make me another pie, and she did.

  Cathy called a few days later to arrange a time for her minister to visit. I’d forgotten about her offer but agreed to see him. A cup of coffee seemed harmless enough.

  He arrived, and I led him to the kitchen table. He was burly, with an open, friendly face, clear, light eyes. I had seen him several times in town and once at the church, when Cathy had invited us to the winter holiday concert and Christmas pageant. Amy was in the pageant, so of course Liza had been anxious to attend.

  This meeting seemed to be something Cathy wanted to offer me so particularly, though I remained deeply uncomfortable with the idea of ministers generally and told him so. But it seemed rude to refuse what was intended as a gift.

  If I let him do the talking, this will be over sooner.

  He spoke to me earnestly and thoughtfully about the Christian view of death. The eternal life of the spirit, how we can accept loss. I realized that I wasn’t retaining his words—it was all becoming a kind of white noise. For some reason, his kind message made me feel angry, even outraged that this thing had happened to me. It wasn’t fair. I couldn’t listen, though I wished that my mind would open cheerfully, like fingers in the hand game children play (“Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors and see all the people!”), and suddenly find that this all made perfect sense. Then I too could show up at church services and feel welcome somewhere.

  What would this man think of Henry’s morning visitations?

  Tweed jacket, light blue button-down shirt, khaki trousers, sensible and sturdy brown, laced walking shoes. I decided to keep my sexual encounters with the afterlife to myself.

  More successfully than her minister, Cathy herself offered me comfort in her e-mail letters, telling me not to despair, that things would get easier with time, that she believed me to be a strong person capable of remaking my life. It felt strange to receive comfort from someone who had always remained oddly distant. But I was ready to take the comfort, wherever it came from.

  My brother, David, visited on Fridays, shutting himself up in Henry’s office and reading through endless files. At the end of each day, he handed me a list of tasks: call the bank and the insurance company, sign and mail these documents with death certificates attached, envelopes already addressed and stamped, so that I could have title to the car, so that accounts and investmen
ts could be transferred to my name. I couldn’t even look at the documents without glazing over and weeping.

  David told me that Henry had left behind quite a bit of debt—credit cards I didn’t know about with large balances that would have to be paid off as soon as the estate was settled. Forty thousand dollars’ worth. I didn’t ask what the debt was for. It was too late to be angry, and thinking about the money just made me worry. I was not surprised that he had debt—he liked buying things. I figured it was hotel rooms, meals, wine, and rental cars out West during the research year. And a new travel bag. And a new laptop. But $40,000? Henry had blasted through the entirety of his book advance without writing a word. That was a lot of white truffles, even at $150 an ounce.

  In spite of the prospect of Henry’s debt, I had a fierce urge to shop. I bought a pair of boots on Zappos.com: short, brown suede, high-heeled platform boots with zippers up the slender hourglass insteps. When the box arrived, I tried them on, briefly wrestling with guilt about the price, wondering if I’d ever wear them. What life were these boots part of? Not the reclusive life of the town’s young, grieving widow. These boots were part of the life of a young single woman, who lived in the city, worked at a job in a sleek office, and went to parties and downtown restaurants, listened to music in dark nightclubs, tongue-kissing eager young lovers between sips of colorful cocktails.

  My friend Chloe persuaded me to join her for a shopping trip in the city. She was the only young widow I knew, and she seemed to be making her way after a few difficult years. She even had a boyfriend. As we wandered through stores in SoHo, I admired, as always, her age-defiant face, radiant at forty-eight, her lips painted the color of wild beach roses. As we stood in front of a rack of dresses at our first boutique stop, Chloe put her arm around my shoulders and confessed that she had bought a lot of clothes right after her husband died. I missed her husband, a last-of-the-true-English-gentlemen, who had died of lymphoma at fifty-five, four years earlier.