'Til Death

“It’s just such a bourgeois thing to do, is all!” Carly spat the words out and flailed her arms, as if her pitch wasn’t enough to get Meg’s attention. This willowy daughter, whose usually chiffon face was crumpled into a pout, threw her jet black braid over her shoulder then leaned into the window.

“Carly, dear. I’ve got to go.” Meg patted Carly’s arm, turning her attention to the rearview of her trusty Toyota.

Carly mumbled, “Okay. Okay.” She leaned in to hug Meg. “I love you, Mommy.”

Meg’s eyebrows lifted at the Mommy.

Carly stepped back and her crossed arms. “Be safe and text when you get there before you turn your electronics over to the asylum-keepers.”

“Will do, Carlz. I’m leaving the van keys in case you or Daniel need it. If you stay at the house, which you’re welcome to, just keep up after yourselves.”

Carly shaded her eyes and waved. Meg lowered her Ray-Bans against the rising sun.

She checked the gas gauge. Checked her thinning hair in the rearview. Checked her blind spots and accelerated into traffic.

A Viskasit yoga and meditation retreat in the Berkshires for a whole August week! She inhaled deeply and smiled back at her own reflection. She’d made this trip without Joe often over their years of marriage, so she wasn’t feeling his absence at first. One hundred miles in, she fumbled in the stack of CDs Joe had copied for her, popping in the mystery pick without taking her eyes off the interstate. Roy Orbison: “I was alright for a while…” She sang along with distracted abandon, the words gradually dawning on her as the guardrails whizzed by. She hit eject before “and now you’re gone” and threw the CD back in the stack.

“But he is gone, Meg…” the leader of a grief group her best friend Ethel nagged her into attending, had said. A month into joining the group, when it was her turn to share, Mary had mentioned that she took the kids to an Indian restaurant across town that Joe had really liked. “...what restaurants do you like? What do you want to do?” Meg, opting to be polite, did not say out loud that what she wanted to do was quit the group. What they called tough love, Meg called amateur and rude.

She made herself busy. Took on more volunteer hours at the horticulture society, cleared out closets, joined a book group. Ethel and Ernie invited her over for dinner all the time. Meg accepted whenever she had the energy to tolerate the strain of being a third wheel.

She recently told Ethel over lovely glasses of wine on the back deck that it wasn’t the grief that was the hardest. She was learning to live with the sadness. It was that Joe had been a friend first and a husband second. His death tore up the fabric of her life.

She still had her children. Her friends. Her house. Hobbies. Stacks of unread books. Rotini with homemade pesto that she’d just started making again. Cheeseburgers. Reruns of Golden Girls.

She hadn’t decided yet what to do about missing sex. Self-help was boring. She worried she was closing up.

Maybe there would be some Viskasit yoga posture that could divert all that pent up whatever.

She knew the whatever was still there. She’d quit going to reiki because during one session, she felt some stirrings down there. That had freaked her out.

Her mind wandered in all these back alleys as she drove on. “What the hell’s wrong with me, Joe?” she said out loud to the passing trees.

Joe might have said something like, “Well, Meggy. Do we have time to get into that with only two hours left in the drive?” They’d both have laughed like banshees.

Meg blinked the film of mist from her eyes. She buttoned the top button of Joe’s old flannel shirt against the chill of the AC. The shirt didn’t carry Joe’s scent anymore, but she could smell it anyway when she wore it. Could remember his soft snoring when he was deeply asleep. His softness and hardness when he wasn’t. The row of shoes tucked under his dresser. His ultra-organized side of the closet that Meg emptied into the goodwill bin as soon as the funeral guests left, except for the few things Daniel wanted, his tweed hat for Carly, and the flannel shirt.

“Meg, honey. You sure you want to be doing this right now?” Ethel had asked. Her sister, who was going back to San Diego in a few days, also seemed surprised, but rolled up her sleeves and lent a hand, overstuffing garbage bags with belts, ties, pants, shoes, shorts, shirts. The suits and coats from the spare-room closet. The underwear they just threw in the trash. Meg had the hardest time with that.

But the purge had come to a standstill after that. Joe’s unabridged copy of Les Miserables, with a bookmark a quarter of the way through, collected dust on the end table beside his reading chair. His shave cream and razor waited at attention on his side of the medicine cabinet. The new woodworking tools and the jewelry box he’d been making for her, still on a shelf in the garage.

Somewhere south of Saugerties, Meg became aware of her own eyes in the rearview. She checked exit signs to be sure she hadn’t been meandering memory lane so long that she’d ended up in Canada. She decided she needed a coffee and called Ethel from a drive-through line.

“You up yet?”

“Well, I am now,” Ethel sang.

“Shut up! You’ve been up, I can tell.”.

“You there yet?”

“Soon. Just wanted to check in with you. Carly might be around but if you don’t see her car, could you get the mail and the paper—keep the tomatoes from dying? Please pick and eat whatever comes ripe.”

“You know we will, Meg. Do a sun salutation for me and we’ll see you next Sunday.”

“Love to Ernie, and kiss Sandy right on her droopy lips for me. Tell her I’ll do a downward dog in her honor.”

“Will do. Drive safe.”

“Okay…”

Ethel waited.

“I’m feeling a little unmoored, Eth,” Meg finally whispered.

“Sure you are. It’s okay. You’re a wonder woman doing this thing, my friend.”

“Okay. Okay. Thanks, Eth.”

“Just don’t go painting flowers on your car and driving off to California to weave baskets.”

“Hey! Have you been reading my diary again?!”

Meg was still chuckling and nursing her coffee when her tires crunched into Viskasit’s gravel driveway. She’d call the kids and turn off her phone for the week.

Daniel collected another voice message. Carly picked up right away. “Figured you’d be there by now even with your penchant for obeying the speed limit, Mumsy.”

“Just pulled in. I’m so excited.” Meg unbuttoned Joe’s flannel shirt to let in more of the warming sun.

“I really am glad you’re doing this, Mom. Sorry about my tantrum this morning.”

“It’s okay, honey. Really.” She let the silence on the other end stand.

“I miss Daddy,” Carly finally choked out.

“Oh, baby—” Meg had nothing else.

When Carly could speak, she offered, “Maybe we can do a Viskasit welcome-weekend together when I get out of school—we’ll pack our Gucci bags.”

They laughed lightly. Meg shifted her attention to the other cars pulling into the lot. “I’ll call you before I leave for home. You have the center’s landline for emergencies, right?”

She fixed her hair in the visor mirror before she stepped out to see what she could do about filling the Joe-sized hole in her life.