by Gigi Fenster
The fridge door is a clear white expanse. There are no fridge magnets, no pictures of Rachel with her arms round a group of laughing, tipsy friends. No list of tramping gear. Just a fridge. Just white.
Beside the fridge is a little pinboard. On it is a flier like the one on the gym’s website. The classes taken by Rache (aka Goldie) have been highlighted in straight, ruled lines. Morris traces a finger across them.
He wants to call Sadie in from the veranda and show her. He wants to point to the straight lines and say, Look at these lines and you’ll understand. Rachel isn’t Jekyll Jane. There’s no inconsistency between the shy, serious girl you called a cold fish and the exclamation-mark woman who is passionate about exercise. She’s good at her job. That’s all.
He steps away from the flier, towards the balcony, and sees Wendy’s silhouette. She is not the person he wishes to tell.
The last time Sadie came back from the hospital her friends hung about the house like groupies waiting backstage at a rock concert. All dressed up in their thoughtful best, all clutching gifts that they pushed into Morris’s hands with words too hushed and meaningless for him to catch.
He thought they’d go away after Sadie died, but for a while they kept on coming. They pressed harder on the doorbell and there was something aggressive in the way they thrust containers of food at him. They wanted to come in and sit down. To talk.
It was okay if David or Wendy was there. They’d take the food, offer tea, explain that it was the Jewish custom for mourners to sit on low stools. They’d tell the visitor how Sadie died in her sleep and how she valued her friends. Then the guest would dab her eyes and David and Wendy would dab theirs. They’d drink tea and the guest would leave.
If Rachel was there she’d offer tea and put some biscuits on a plate, but then she’d disappear into the kitchen, leaving Morris to face the company alone. He could feel them staring into his dry eyes, studying his smooth face, finding him wanting. He felt sure that his lack of tragedy confirmed what Sadie had already told them—he was a man who did not feel very much.
Morris was alone in the house when the surprising woman arrived. On opening the door he’d reached out automatically for the offered Tupperware or still-hot pot, but she was empty handed and he only just managed to turn his raised arm into a clumsy handshake.
Empty handed. That was the first surprise. The next surprise was her voice—rasping and deep, like a man’s.
But most surprising of all were her words. She waved off Morris’s offer of tea and started speaking before he had lowered himself into his stool. She spoke urgently, vehemently, as if she knew she’d meet opposition and would need to keep her voice strong if she wanted to be heard.
‘It doesn’t get better. Don’t believe them when they tell you that the pain gets better. It gets worse. Time doesn’t heal. It scratches at the scar.’
Morris can’t remember the name of the surprising woman or how she’d known Sadie, but he remembers the urgent vehemence of her voice and he remembers her words. They are the ones which come back to him most often, which come back to him now, in front of Rachel’s pure white fridge. Time doesn’t heal. It scratches at the scar. They are the ones which he finds most comforting.
Before comfort, the rasping woman’s words gave relief from the judgement that there is something horribly wrong with a man who doesn’t suffer agonies at the premature death of his wife—a woman loved and missed by scores of people.
Perhaps today, Morris had thought on the morning of the funeral. Perhaps today I will cry. When we’re on our way to the cemetery, or when I see the cemetery gates, or when our clothes are cut.
Maybe when I see the coffin in the ground, he told himself as the rabbi snipped strips off his clothes. Maybe when the soil is thrown over it, or the prayers recited. Maybe when I wash my hands on leaving the cemetery, or when I turn around in the car to see the cemetery receding behind us. Perhaps when I see the house again on returning from the cemetery or when we’re in the lounge on our low chairs. Perhaps when I’m alone in my bed. Maybe then I will cry.
Morris awoke the day after the funeral, having slept through the night, and told himself that there is something seriously wrong with a man who cannot shed a tear for his wife of over thirty years.
Before the funeral, a man from the synagogue came to the house and talked to the family about dealing with death—the Jewish rituals. Wendy seemed to know it all already. David asked questions, and Rachel sat straight up in her chair and said nothing.
When the man said, ‘Morris, I understand you have lost both of your parents as well as your aunt and uncle,’ Morris kept quiet. To speak would be to show his ignorance, to reveal that despite the loss of his mother and father, not to mention his uncle and aunt, he’d never been through the whole period of ritual mourning.
Later, when they were alone together, the man tried to get Morris to talk about those earlier deaths, but what could he say? That he was too young when his father died, that his mother’s death came as a relief? That the aunt and uncle were no more than an aunt and uncle, old and far away by the time of their deaths?
It had been David’s idea that the synagogue man should come with his explanations. Apparently it was important to him that they did things in the traditional way. So important that he’d started crying when Morris suggested it might be best for them to get back to normal as soon as possible, started shouting that he wanted to do things right, that he needed all the help he could get. Who were they to do things their own way when there were centuries of traditions to help them?
‘Who do you think you are to want to do it differently?’ he’d shouted at Morris. ‘D’you think you’re so special that the rituals don’t apply to you?’
Morris could have shouted back that he didn’t think he was anyone special. He was afraid of getting it wrong. Those rituals were hard and there was so much to remember. He could have hugged David and said, ‘I know, I know. I also need all the help I can get.’ He could have admitted that he couldn’t even cry like a normal person. There was something wrong with him.
‘Tell me what you want me to do,’ he’d said to David.
‘It’s not what I want you to do,’ David had replied, but then he’d relented and said that a man would come from the synagogue to help them.
The man left a booklet, Death: The Jewish Rituals Explained. It contained clear instructions.
Morris read the booklet over and over again but either the traditions had different goals or they didn’t work on Morris. Maybe he did it wrong. The end of the Shiva period brought nothing but confirmation that his heart was dry.
And all those visitors—was it too much to characterise as torture their comfort and their food and their promises that it would get better? He wanted to scream at them, to yell that he didn’t want to feel better, what he really wanted was to feel worse.
He came close to actually shouting at one visitor, a colleague of Sadie’s whom Morris knew for the many sentimental gifts and cards he had given her. The man was so overcome with grief that he struggled to communicate, but he did manage, through his soggy handkerchief, to tell Morris that time was a great healer and that even a grief as deep as that which Morris was living with would, with time, recede. ‘We will never understand how such a woman could be snatched from us,’ he’d sobbed. ‘But we must push on through our grief. So we can get to a place of peace. Or if not of peace, at least of closure.’
A place of peace? Morris stood up, felt his hand forming a fist—‘I don’t want …’ then, seeing the man’s white face looking up at him, sat down again. There was no point in shouting at him. He was just trying to help.
They were all just trying to help.
Until the surprising vehement woman with her rasping voice and her knowledge that things get worse. Time doesn’t heal. It scratches at the wound.
Before the vehement woman Morris had assumed that the pain comes first and then things get better. After the vehement woman he could tell himself that
his assumption was back to front. Bad then better is the wrong order when dealing with feelings. Feelings start at nothing and then get worse. He was still stuck in nothing but that would change. He was just a bit slow in making the transition. The pain will come, he told himself. Don’t worry. The pain will come.
Morris could wait. He could be patient.
A year later he decided that the vehement woman must have been wrong. The tombstone was unveiled, and still he didn’t cry. Don’t those who are most vehement tend also to be most mistaken?
Morris hasn’t thought about that vehement woman for weeks but he is reminded of her when he finds himself standing in his daughter’s kitchen, looking at her straight ruled highlighter lines, and he is encouraged.
‘After my Alex died I kept having conversations with him in my head. I’d imagine him giving me advice,’ she’d said, and her voice momentarily lost its rasp. ‘Alex always gave bad advice.’
She smiled, and Morris saw a flash of softness before her intensity returned.
‘Always coming into my head, his words. His bad advice bothering me all the time. Like counting footsteps. Counting footsteps doesn’t make you go any faster.’
Counting footsteps doesn’t make you go any faster, Morris repeated to himself, and the phrase had a comforting ring of truth to it.
‘What really mattered only came later. What really mattered was not his ghost knocking on my door, reminding me that he was dead. That was nothing. The real thing was when I went knocking on his door. When I forgot that he’d died.’
There was that softness again. ‘Sometimes I’d forget that he’d gone.’
She was silent for a long time and Morris looked at her pointy shoes.
Maybe the woman wasn’t mistaken after all, thinks Morris. Hadn’t he just done what a grieving person’s supposed to do? Gone knocking on Sadie’s door, forgetting she was gone. Hadn’t he turned to say something to her, only to remember she’s no longer around?
He wants to rush out onto the balcony, to tell Wendy that he’s just found himself wanting to tell Sadie something, that this is a good sign. It means the vehement woman was right and things are finally getting worse.
He catches himself. He’s making too much of a stupid mistake.
Morris looks at Rachel’s white fridge and wonders what he’s doing there.
You are in Rachel’s kitchen. Wendy is on the balcony, smoking.
She opens a gap in the door and sticks her head through. ‘Try her bedroom.’
Take a breath, collect your thoughts. Slap your forehead. You are looking for a list and camping gear. Wendy says you should try the bedroom.
The bedroom door is open. There’s a white bed and a white wardrobe, and Morris is saved from having to enter by the certain knowledge that Rachel wouldn’t store tramping gear in all that whiteness. She wouldn’t keep it in this clean bedroom at all. There must be a storage space somewhere.
He steps back and looks down the short passage. There’s a built-in cupboard near the front door.
Inside the cupboard smells of lavender and something else which Morris recognises but can’t place.
It’s the smell of ironing and a white tablecloth on Friday nights. The smell of his mother’s linen laid out on a paper-lined shelf. The smell of his mother saying, ‘You see, Morris, I don’t fold these ones neatly along the same place. If I did they’d get stiff lines and permanent creases. These ones we don’t fold. It’s better to roll them in a wad, carefully but not precisely.’
Rachel has stuck little labels on the shelves: Duvet Covers, Sheets, Towels (Training), Towels (Bath). There are some bags made of a shining satiny fabric which contain, Morris knows this for sure, the lace. And there, behind the tablecloths, are serviettes, stiff from ironing like serviettes ought to be. He reaches out to touch a pile, then pulls back. Wendy would think it weird if she caught him stroking his daughter’s linen. It is weird to stroke your daughter’s linen.
It’s the smell of cloves. Cloves to keep the moths away and lavender to keep the linen fresh. Cloves to invite Morris in and lavender to tell him he can fit under the bottom shelf, close the door behind him and wait for his daughter to come home. Maybe he will cry.
There’s a noise from the balcony. He steps back, is about to slam the cupboard door shut, stops himself. There’s no need for panic. He’s not doing anything wrong. But he does need to focus. Rachel would not keep her camping equipment so close to the linen.
She would keep it—there, in that extra little cupboard above the linen cupboard. The one that you need a chair to get to. She’d use that chair with the hard, scuffed seat which is easy to stand on and balances just right.
The cupboard contains a gas canister, a burnt frying pan and—Oh Rachel, he thinks, my daughter, my clever daughter—sitting right in the front, a yellow notebook. A tidy little thing you could fit in a pocket. She’s written on it in her clean straight writing: Camping Lists. And the last page is dated. Five days ago.
Dated and everything. My very clever daughter.
Tent, reads the list.
Check.
Torch.
Check.
Gas cooker.
Good girl, Rachel. Good girl.
Sadie had laughed when Morris bought the little notebook for Rachel. ‘First a backpack, now a notebook. Who’s playing Santa Claus this week?’ She’d kept a straight, artificially firm, I’m-laughing-behind-my-hands-at-you face when Morris explained the importance of keeping a good list in a handy notebook, the convenience of having all your lists in one place so you could refer to past lists when you made out the new one. Then she’d laughed out loud and said, ‘Don’t worry, Morris. I won’t come between you and your little notebooks. All those lovely little notebooks with their lovely little lists.’ And she’d teased him about being a man who thinks he can reduce his life to a series of notebooks, a pathway of lists.
Morris had put up with the teasing until she got going on ‘that book you write in at the start of the tramp. What do you call it? The Declensions Book? Pretensions Book? Suspension. Suspension. Your Suspension Book. No, no, it’s redemption. Your Redemptions Book. Your Books of Redemption.’
‘Intentions. The Intentions Book.’
‘Yes, yes, that one. I mean honestly, Morris, how restricting is that? Writing out all of your intentions when you’re supposed to be free and easy, on holiday, ready to go where the wind takes you?’
Morris looked at Sadie then and thought, She doesn’t understand. She will never understand. Thought, She’ll tell Rachel the Intentions Book is just daddy’s nonsense. She will put our daughter in danger with her silly teasing.
And then he did something. He put his hands on Sadie’s shoulders and steered her to a chair. He sat her down and said to her, ‘Sadie, please, please be quiet and listen to me.’ He explained to her, in as few words as possible, the importance of the Intentions Book. Told her the value of the lists and the notebooks when you’re going tramping. He put his case.
Sadie was quiet until he finished. Then she said, ‘I shouldn’t have teased.’ Later Morris heard her telling Rachel that it might be better if she wrote in the Intentions Book (‘Let daddy dictate and you write. His handwriting can be messy sometimes but yours is lovely and clear. And you want your tramping intentions to be lovely and clear, don’t you?’), and he felt a wave of affection for his wife who did, actually, understand.
Morris looks at the little yellow notebook and wonders if a wave of affection can knock you off a chair. He rests his forehead against the wall for a moment and tries to recall the smell of Rachel’s linen cupboard. Then calls out to Wendy that they can go. He has what they need.
She says, ‘Let me help you down,’ and reaches out a hand.
Wendy’s nicotine hand will kill the smell he’s trying to hold in his head.
She wriggles her fingers. ‘Are you coming or not?’
He takes her hand.
Wendy says, ‘Do you know what she took? Is it good news?’ She
takes her car keys from her pocket, starts jiggling them. ‘Did she take what she needed?’
‘I think so,’ says Morris. ‘She kept a list.’
He clasps his hands together with the notebook between them.
Wendy passes her car keys from hand to hand.
He slips the notebook into his pocket.
She says, ‘Morris. We have to get going. It’s almost …’
Morris looks at his watch.
Wendy’s jangling keys lead the way out of the apartment, down the passage and into the grey outdoors.
She walks quickly with her head forwards as if she’s dropped something. As if she’s at the end of an elastic that’s stretched so thin it’s cutting her in half at the waist. He trots to catch up to her, and she goes faster. She has her key in the ignition before he’s opened his door.
‘Jesus Christ, Morris, it’s almost four o’clock,’ like he’s made her late for something, like there’s somewhere she’s supposed to be. ‘Jesus Christ, Morris. Jesus Christ.’
She’s hunched over the steering wheel. One tug on her elastic and they’ll start speeding across the road, weaving in front of oncoming traffic.
Morris’s head tingles, as if the car is actually weaving and spinning and something in the engine’s about to give.
A terrible noise breaks into the car. Wendy gives a little yelp and starts flapping her hand towards the floor at Morris’s feet.
‘My phone. In my bag.’
She bends towards him, hand still flapping. He wants to shout, Keep your eyes on the road, I’ll get it. I said, I’ll get it.
The car jerks to one side as she tries to lean past him. He has the bag on his lap. Her hand flaps and pecks. ‘Unzip it, Morris. Dig around in it. Find the bloody phone.’
Unzip it, Morris. Dig around in it. Find the bloody phone.