Mourning Becomes Cassandra

by Christina Dudley

  I was, in fact. A new stage in life called for more than sweatpants, I felt, and I had donned one of my few skirts and cutesy pairs of shoes for the occasion.

  I shrugged. “Felt like it. But I’m going to finish moving in and then go back and clean up some more.” Shoving a box into her hands, I grabbed my suitcase. “Help me out.”

  “Cass, don’t be like that. You’re unemployed. You can do that kind of stuff any time.”

  “Yes, but I plan on doing it today.”

  My room was at the top of the stairs, facing out on the driveway. Sunlight streamed in the angled bay window and skylight, and I felt that thrum of excitement again. I no longer was a home-owner. In fact I was now, at 32, a glorified housekeeper renting a room—but at least it was a gorgeous room in a more beautiful house than I could ever have hoped to own.

  Joanie threw the box I’d given her carelessly on the bed, and I watched my toiletries and underwear spill out. “But, Cass, when you say ‘no,’ do you mean ‘no’ to a hiking trip or ‘no, don’t ask me to go to Chaff events’?”

  “Yes and yes. Yes, I mean no hiking trip, and yes, don’t ask me to go to Chaff events. For Pete’s sake, Troy only died a year ago. His ashes have barely cooled.” I led her back downstairs to pick up another load.

  “A year!” Joanie huffed. “You should see some of those guys whose wives die! They’re back at it so fast I wanna tell them to stuff their next wedding invitations in with the memorial thank-yous—save a stamp. Why don’t women do that?”

  “Joanie,” I said through gritted teeth. “I love you, but you’re being hideously insensitive.” That brought her up short. It was impossible to be angry with Joanie long because she meant well.

  Giving me a repentant squeeze she said, “Oh, never mind me. I’ll leave you alone today. Phyl and I will go. There’s a super cute new guy who showed up at Chaff last week, and he’s not even fifty or twice divorced, so Phyl and I are going to try and beat off the seventy other ladies. We don’t need your competition.”

  I didn’t even dignify that with an eye roll. “So if you and Phyl are gone all day, am I on for cooking Daniel some dinner tonight?”

  “Done. It’s already in the fridge, and enough for you, too. I made out a schedule and chore list and put it on the message board. Take a look and let me know what you think. He and his latest ‘house guest’ are on the back deck canoodling, I think—you want to come meet him?”

  “With such a description, how could I resist?” I asked. “What about Phyl? Did she already make her introductions?”

  “Oh, you better believe it! When she saw him, she went all breathless and melting. Good thing Daniel goes more for your breasts-of-steel type, or we’d be in trouble. You’ve got to see the gal with him now—classic Daniel.”

  When we finished unloading the pick-up, we discovered this seventh wonder in the kitchen. Joanie had nailed it: even doing something as mundane as refilling coffee mugs, Daniel’s latest was indeed a sight to behold—all glossy blonde hair, mile-long legs, teensy tank top, and bouncing bosom. Awkwardly I held out my hand to this vision. “Hi, I’m Cass, one of Daniel’s housemates.”

  After giving me a quick look-over and finding nothing threatening, Miss America shook my hand and said, “Nice to meet you. I’m Missy.”

  Seriously? Joanie grimaced at me and rolled her eyes behind Missy’s back as we followed her outside.

  “Daniel,” Missy purred, dropping onto the chaise longue, “I’ve got your refill for you.”

  Only when he lowered his newspaper and I saw his face did I realize I wasn’t seeing Daniel for the first time.

  Troy and I had a favorite Italian restaurant downtown, and after I weaned Min and we started going out occasionally again, we often went there. One of our favorite date activities was watching other people and fictionalizing what we saw; it was our own improvised version of reality television.

  Meeting Daniel we called the Close Encounters Incident. It must have come shortly before Troy died, one of those days near the solstice. In western Washington you can never count on beautiful weather until after the 4th of July, but this was one of those surprise June evenings, warm and mellow and bright out. Restaurants scrubbed down their patio tables and set them outside cheek-by-jowl because absolutely no one wanted to be indoors, and Fabiano’s was no exception. Troy and I had spent most of the meal making up a story for the nearby three-generations table, grandfather, father and son, but the lone woman in the corner caught my eye more than once. She kept checking her make-up in a small mirror and adjusting her bra, not that it needed much adjusting, unless she were trying vainly to keep herself poised just at the point before she spilled out. She was beautiful, to say the least—so whence the insecurity?

  My answer came the next moment, when someone brushed past our table, bumping it. My glass of Shiraz rocked alarmingly, but, having a small toddler at home, my reaction times were nothing short of miraculous, and my hand closed on its bowl to steady it just an instant before another hand closed over mine. Startled, I looked up into a pair of very, very blue eyes. “Excuse me,” he murmured. “I see you have your wits about you.”

  Whatever my physical instincts, my mental sharpness deserted me at that point, and I’m afraid I just gaped at him with my mouth open, feeling a warm blush overspread my cheeks.

  He was easily the handsomest man I’d ever seen off a movie screen: tall, well-built, thick golden-blond hair, classical features.

  Taking in my awestruck expression, his mouth twisted in amusement. Slowly I became aware that his hand was still covering mine. It was warm. I dropped my eyes to it in confusion, just as he released his grip, and I felt Troy kick me under the table. The spell broken, he moved on to sit with the spilling-out beauty, and then I noticed Troy was laughing silently into his napkin—not just laughing, dying laughing, wiping-away-tears laughing.

  I scowled at him. “What? It’s not as if you weren’t glued on that guy’s date after I pointed her out to you!”

  When he regained some measure of control, Troy gave me a mock-innocent shrug. “All in a spirit of scientific inquiry, Cass. Her breasts defy gravity, you’ve gotta admit. But you should have seen the look on your face—you’re still blushing.”

  My hands flew to my cheeks. Blushing was my bane, always giving away more than I wanted. “I should have a few words with that guy for the way he was looking at you,” my husband chuckled, “but you do look pretty, so maybe he couldn’t help it. We’ll have to forgive each other: Tier One people are just too beautiful to be ignored.”

  Troy had a theory about the world: if you pictured all the people in it, they fell into one of three tiers, rather like the food pyramid. Tier One: the very tiny tip of the pyramid, was made up of the world’s most unnaturally beautiful and enviable people, like retouched movie stars and models and the couple at the next table. Tier Two: this made up most of the pyramid, being huge and spanning sub-tiers ranging from quite-attractive all the way down to not-repellent. And Tier Three held the unfortunate of the world: people prevented from being found attractive by one or more overwhelming flaws, sometimes beyond their control. Lepers, was the example Troy always gave. Or inseparable conjoined twins. Think Chang and Eng.

  Pointedly, I turned my chair away from the beautiful couple. “Well, hon, we’ll just have to comfort ourselves with your well-known corollary: Tier One stays small because members of it have a difficult time finding suitable mates. Now are you going to finish that tiramisù, or am I?”

  Now here, a year and a lifetime later, was the mysterious stranger from the restaurant, every bit as handsome as I remembered, and we would be housemates, of all things. But this rather absurd fact hardly registered because I was frozen by a momentary vision of Troy laughing at me that night. How many jokes had we shared in our fourteen years of knowing each other? If he had any kind of consciousness now, was he laughing again, to see me having another Close Encounter? I felt the familiar tightening in my throat and burning behind my eyes: don’
t cry don’t cry don’t cry.

  Through a rushing sound in my ears I heard Joanie introduce me, as Daniel’s gaze flickered over me without recognition. A relief, given how I didn’t think I could speak. One comment like, “Wait, didn’t I see you at Fabiano’s with your husband?” would have finished me. For once I was glad to be the kind of girl that men don’t notice unless they trip over me or, alternatively, co-edit the Yearbook with me, as Troy had in high school.

  I’m pretty standard: average height, average weight, brown hair and eyes, reasonably attractive, and it took Troy half the year to figure out we were more than friends and that he actually preferred me to his girlfriend. But he loved me ever afterward, even when I had various misgivings and misplaced affections.

  My husband.

  Daniel muttered something that sounded like, “Nice to meet you, Cathy. Welcome.”

  And, without the heart even to correct him, I nodded and the deal was sealed.

  Chapter Two: Laying Low

  “Here, dear. Dear?”

  The elderly woman next to me pulled gently on my sleeve. In her other hand was the offering plate, which she was apparently trying to pass along the row. Apologetically, I smiled at her and handed the basket to the usher; I had been deep in an argument with God.

  Although I felt like the estranged, drag-of-a-great-aunt who shows up at the holiday dinner just to put a damper on things, I still attended church. Even that first year when I could barely get out of bed I came. Unwilling, alienated, completely absent in spirit, I came. Why, I couldn’t exactly say. Maybe because I’d gone all my life. Maybe because I didn’t have anything else to do. Maybe because I was afraid if I let this go as well, there would be nothing left to me; I would disintegrate—float away on the wind.

  Back in the days before my life went down the toilet we’d always gone to the 9:30 a.m. service. It was the big family one—loud band, all our friends, the nursery and Sunday school jam-packed. We assumed 8:00 was for the blue hairs, the “frozen chosen” Troy jokingly called them—all the grandmas and grandpas who got up at 4:30 and wondered why the church didn’t have a 6:00 a.m. service.

  In the past year Joanie and Phyl tried several times to get me to join them at the Sunday evening service, the de facto singles and college gathering, but post-death-and-destruction I went to the 8:00 a.m., preferring to sit among strangers who wouldn’t ask any questions. It turned out Troy and I were wrong: grandparent-types made up only one contingent of those around me; there were also harassed-looking young parents whose kids woke at the crack of dawn, active types who wanted to get church out of the way before a day hike, and morning persons of all generations.

  The early service had several fringe benefits, moreover. For one, it was a piece of cake to get a seat. This morning when I slid into the very last balcony pew, the little old lady there smiled at me benignly and without recognition. Probably a widow, too. Two peas in a pod, that was us. For another, since Troy and I never attended the traditional service, there was nothing to remind me of him. Hymns with a choir and an organ actually carried me back to my study-abroad quarter at Oxford, where I attended a little church close to Magdalen College. After a brief, intense crush on my brilliant tutor with the lame orthodonture, I had returned, tail between my legs, begging Troy to take me back.

  I only knew one of the hymns this morning, which was fine, since I didn’t feel like singing. Or listening to a sermon or praying or talking, for that matter. It was the last weekend of the summer vacation, so a guest speaker was filling in for the senior pastor. During the sermon my mind wandered frequently, but the general topic was the joy of service. The joy of getting outside oneself. Well, if there was ever a place I’d love to be right now, it was outside myself. But what would I do? No more volunteering in the nursery, like I used to. Besides the germs and diapers, I didn’t want to see any little children who would remind me of Min. And I’m sure all my friends picking up and dropping off kids would rather just “get ʼer done” without having to see me moping about the place.

  For a few minutes, to avoid deep thought, I pictured decorating my new room. I could paint the walls a dark buff. Re-cover the cushion in the window seat for a reading area. Hang that chickadee painting some friends gave me by the book case. Then I planned my first few dinners. Was vegetarian cooking out? Did everyone eat fish or beef? I had forgotten to ask. Then I thought of Great American Novels still waiting to be written. The sermon was still going.

  Defeated, I screwed my eyelids shut. It was almost embarrassing to try to talk to God, since I hadn’t been praying for months. Who wanted to talk to someone you were mad at? Especially if He wouldn’t answer, and nothing could be resolved?

  Arguing with the Almighty was also a fairly new experience for me, dating only from when he let Troy and Min die. Was it too much to ask, that He could have let Troy’s heart fail when he was sitting on the couch at home, with me right next to him to call 9-1-1? Or was it too much to ask that He could have spared Min? Min had spent 90% of her time with me, for Pete’s sake, and one of the few times she’s alone with her dad, they have to be in a car, and his heart has to give out suddenly? Troy’s death I could almost get my mind around—a bad heart is a bad heart, and since he was only 31 we hadn’t known about it. But what was the deal with Min? What part of His Wonderful Plan for My Life did it screw up to leave her on earth?

  I learned in the church’s Grief Recovery class what I already knew intellectually: that it was okay to be angry at God. But it still made me uncomfortable. Maybe my faith had tended too much to the what-a-friend-we-have-in-Jesus side, only to discover that that friend was not averse to letting circumstances stab me in the back. It felt like having the faithful family guard dog, who rescued you from house fires in the past, turn on you and maul you. Bad analogy, I know, to compare God with a dog. Sit, Lord. Stay. Lie Down. Turn water into wine. Fix my every problem. And heaven knows no one has ever gotten God to heel. On the other hand, like an unruly pet, faith could be euthanized when it didn’t meet expectations.

  The atheists and agnostics in my life were trying hard to bite their tongues, but I could read their thoughts: Cass, doesn’t this prove it’s all random, or that, if there is a God, He’s a jerk? Religion’s great if you find it comforting, but in your case, shouldn’t you get off your knees and stop worshiping this figment of your imagination? And on bad days I thought they were probably right, but on other days, most other days, I figured God is God, and He can do whatever He pleases. While I certainly wish He would have asked for my input in this situation, I was willing to believe there were more things going on in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in my philosophy.

  The speaker was talking about some time he made some big faux pas at the homeless shelter, and the people around me chuckled appreciatively. So fine—God was God, and Troy and Min were gone, for whatever reasons. Now what? What on earth was I supposed to do with my life? And was there any way I could get through the rest of it under the radar?

  I had woken up that morning with a faint headache after dreaming about Min: her first birthday, and the terrific face she made when she first tasted frosting. Hey, Minnie was my first baby, so like millions of other first-time moms I was something of a nutrition Nazi. One of my food rules was that we weren’t going to give her any sugary sweets for the first year, to see if it could prevent her from developing a sweet tooth. In my zeal, I considered a sweet tooth the gateway condition to childhood obesity and early-onset diabetes. But my experiment didn’t work. After that first puzzled taste, Min licked every speck of frosting off her cupcake and begged for more. Like mythologists of old, I learned that once desire was out of the box, there was no stuffing it back in. Min spent the remaining months of her short life being an absolute sugar fanatic, willing to do anything for M&Ms or a cookie, and I worriedly imagined her first high school boyfriend getting whatever he wanted from her for a couple Oreos.

  Once Min tasted sugar, there was no pretending she was going to be content therea
fter with only sour, salty, bitter, and umami. Could I? If I lay low, God—keep my head down and behave myself—will you let me be? I leave you alone—ask for nothing—and you leave me alone?

  I wouldn’t say the heavens opened and angels ascended and descended, but the speaker sat down at last, and a teenage girl stood up to speak, recapturing my attention.

  She was average height and maybe sixteen, with lank brown hair and conservative clothing that she looked rather uncomfortable in. She cleared her throat a couple times and glanced nervously to someone seated off to the side.

  “Hi, I’m Ellie,” she read from her cards. “I came to Camden School last spring after being kicked out of my old high school for doing drugs. Camden School is an alternative school for students like me who haven’t been succeeding in the regular public school system. I’d been doing drugs since middle school and gotten in lots of trouble and didn’t know how to change my life. At Camden School I meet with a substance abuse counselor and get lots of one-on-one attention from my teachers. They really care about me here, and I have been sober for four months. I really missed school this summer and seeing my friends and teachers, and I can’t wait to start again next week. I am also excited about getting a mentor this year. A mentor is an adult who can hang out with me regularly and do occasional activities with other students and mentors. This church is one of the big financial supporters of our school, and I want to say thank you for helping people like me. We also depend on many volunteers at our school to help with fundraising and special events and tutoring and mentoring. If you would like to help in any of these areas, please see the information in the bulletin. Thank you.”

  Ellie delivered this entire speech on three breaths, tops, and when she sat down there was a wave of encouraging applause. Feeling a burning sensation in my chest, I scrabbled with the bulletin to look at the blurb on Camden School. As if they were a message for me, the letters seemed to jump from the page, like the red-letter sayings of Jesus in my mother-in-law’s King James.