Denial, Part 4

Good Grief
by Lolly Winston

(Page 4 of 4)

The clerk touches my elbow and leads me through the big swinging double doors by the coolers with the chicken. He says, "Careful," as we walk up a narrow flight of stairs. There's a leaf of lettuce on one stair. We shuffle into a break room and he seats me at a long brown Formica table. He's probably only in high school or junior college. He sets a cup of tea and a box of tissues on the table. "You take your time," he says.

I'm suddenly embarrassed and want something to do to look busy. I grab one of the tissues and begin cleaning my glasses. Okay, so Ethan isn't coming back. The sympathy cards reverted to phone bills months ago. Even telemarketers have stopped asking for him.

Oh! The tissues have lotion for sore noses, and the lenses of my glasses now look as though they've been dunked in salad dressing. The room is blurry. The boy is gone. The holidays are coming. Can I stay in this break room until after New Year's?

At home the phone rings as I'm peeling off my coat. I let the machine pick up.

"Hello? Sophie?... Dear? Are you there?" It's my mother-in-law, Marion, who's not really comfortable around answering machines, VCRs, and other newfangled devices. She clears her throat.

"Well, I'm calling for two reasons. One, there's a sale at Talbot's, and I'd like to take you to buy a few new things. I thought that might cheer you up." Marion always seems to wish I'd shop at Talbot's, that I'd dress more like a country club wife than a frumpy neo-hippie-frayed jeans and clogs and my husband's too big sweaters. Once in a while Marion wears jeans, "dungarees," she calls them, but she irons stiff creases in the legs that stand up like little tents. "The other thing is, dear, I'd like to make a date to come over this Sunday and pack up Ethan's things for the Goodwill. Remember, we talked about that? I really feel it's time, and it'll be a breeze if we work on it together...."

A breeze?
A tornado.

There are no groceries to unload, since I abandoned my cart at Safeway. I head straight for the bedroom and crawl under our king-size quilt, choosing to sleep in my clothes to ward off the icy corners of the bed.

I dream that I run into Ethan in downtown San Jose by the convention center when I'm on my way to the library. His hair glistens like a mink coat and I want to touch it. He's with a policeman. They explain that Ethan's been in a car accident and the officer is trying to help him find his way home. I look down and see the edge of Ethan's hospital gown hanging out from under his parka, the little blue snowflakes on the fabric fluttering in the breeze. I want to tell him that he wasn't in a car accident. He had cancer and now he's dead.

But I'm afraid I'll hurt his feelings, like telling someone they could lose a few pounds or their clothes don't match.

When I make it to work the next morning, the Herald is spread across my desk. I'm supposed to read the paper every morning before getting to work, so I'll know if the company has been in the news. I'm also supposed to scan the national press and be up on current health care issues so I can pitch stories relating to our products.

Spins, pitches, angles. I always mean to do this. But mustering the courage to leave the house every morning leaves me too enervated to lift the pages of Time or Newsweek. I read the health care reporter's lead for the patch story. Gentlemen, start your hair dryers.

I can't read the next line, because there's a Post-it note stuck over it with a note from Lara: See me.

The bum fluorescent bulb over my cube ticks and buzzes like a cicada.

I head straight for Lara's office without taking off my coat. Lara and I are opposites, and in our case opposites deflect. She's only two years older than me-thirty-eight-but she's already a vice president.

She's as polished as a lady news anchor, and her whole being seems dry-cleaned. She meets her personal trainer at the gym every morning at five, arrives at work by seven-thirty, eats lunch at her desk-peeling the bread off her turkey sandwich to avoid the evils of carbohydrates-and leaves at seven-thirty in the evening. I get up at five in the morning, too, but only to pee, my sole workout being a shuffle to the john. The next time I wake it's ten minutes before I'm supposed to be at work, never mind the forty-minute, second-gear commute and the fact that my hair is in one long snarl like the Cowardly Lion's in The Wizard of Oz.

As I stand in the doorway to Lara's office, she's on the phone. "Un-huh, un-huh, un-huh," she says impatiently, punching her PalmPilot, sipping coffee out of a giant mug, and checking her e-mail. She motions me in. I hover at the threshold. Simon says: Go into your boss's office! I take a big step in. She yanks off her headset and tosses it on her desk. Her expression is in the fully upright and locked position.

For the first time, I almost wish I'd get fired. I would probably be eligible for some kind of severance or unemployment. I could get roommates to help pay the mortgage. We could do the Jumble together and cook pot luck suppers. I can live off a couple weeks' salary for a little while. I actually like chicken pot pies....

"Sit," says Lara. I sit. Good dog? Bad dog.

"We'll get a correction printed." She smiles, containing her irritation. Her teeth are so white, they're almost transparent; I think she used her bleaching trays a few too many nights.

"Right," I tell her, as though I've planned this all along. I realize I'm still wearing my coat. "Did you take this reporter to lunch?"

Lara has a real thing for taking reporters to lunch. She thinks you can control the media with smoked turkey and fusilli salad. I shake my head. Bottom line: The patch doesn't stick. "I'd like to be able to tell Ed by noon that a correction will be printed tomorrow morning."

Ed's the CEO. Turn down your teeth, I want to tell Lara. I can't hear you. Instead, I nod. "I'll get on it." First, get me out of this oxygen-depleted room.

Of course, this doesn't count as one of my two media placements due by the end of November, since it didn't even mention the downsides of the competing product. But when I get back to my cubicle, I realize there aren't any errors in the story. It's all about tone. It's a tone piece. Tone, voice. This reporter has found his voice! It is the voice of an asshole.

The phone rings. I pick it up. "Hello?" a man says.

I know he'll ask a question I can't answer. I'm supposed to be able to remember scads of facts for this job: each product name, its generic name, its indication, whether it has a trademark or service mark, how long it's been on the market, whether it's part of a joint marketing and distribution agreement. Then there are the common side effects, adverse reactions. But since Ethan died I can barely retain a seven-digit phone number. I slide one finger over the button on the phone, hanging up. The man will think we got disconnected.

When the phone rings again, I let it drop into voice mail.

I open a new file on my computer and start typing what to say to the Herald reporter about the patch story. This is a trick I employ when I have to make a nerve-racking media call: Type my story pitch or sound bite in all caps, then follow the script.

MUST PATCH THIS ALL UP. HA, HA, HA!

I remember when I first joined the company how I felt I was finally making it in Silicon Valley. I stood in the coffee line chatting with the women from marketing, all of us wearing cute but sensible chunky black pumps, my day planner bulging, my checkbook balance growing, my self-esteem swelling. But now I feel like an impostor in a cubicle-like the artificial crabmeat of public relations managers. Then there's the fact that I have to say "scrotum" to people all the time. Is this really the color of my parachute? If Ethan were alive, I'd call him and we'd meet for lunch. We often did this when one of us was having trouble at work. We had a knack for solving each other's job quandaries, maybe because our ignorance of each other's fields made us objective. Sometimes he'd pick me up after work and I'd be so flustered by this new job, I was ready to quit and start a yard service. By the time we got home, though, Ethan had me laughing and contemplating a solution.

Of course, I can't call my husband. (But why not! What good is all this technology if you can't call a deceased loved one? Who cares if you can buy movie tickets and bid for antiques on-line if you can't dial up your dead husband?)

The cursor on my computer screen pulses impatiently, and the red voice mail light on my phone flashes. My stomach growls and my head throbs. But I can't call my husband. Because, here's the thing: I am a widow.

Copyright © 2004 by Lolly Winston

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