Ordinary World (11 page)

“You don’t masturbate?”

There was a time when the word “masturbate” would’ve made me want to crawl under the chair in which I was sitting.

I shook my head. “Too much work. Besides, I don’t want to be touched.”

“Because if you did, then you’ll have to feel. And you don’t want to feel anything, do you,” she said.

Bull’s-eye. The truth smacked me right in the middle of my chest like a poison arrow.

I nodded slowly, my eyes watering. Again, silence filled the room, and this time it entered my gut and squeezed tight.

Say something.

“So, Andi. You made it through this week. You made it through a year since Sam’s death and your wedding anniversary and you’re still here.”

“Barely,” I said.

“But that’s your choice. Tell me: if Sam hadn’t gone out for that sparkling cider, if that car hadn’t hit him, what would you have done? What did you have planned for your sixth year of marriage? Surely you must have thought about it. What possibilities had entered your life?”

I pondered the question.

“Sam wanted to start traveling. He wanted to start writing novels, too. He was feeling burnt out with both nonfiction and comp, I think. He seemed restless. He put in a request for a sabbatical.”

“That’s what Sam wanted. I asked what
you
wanted.”

I sat and stared at nothingness. I honestly couldn’t remember.

“I don’t know,” I finally said.

“You didn’t have any goals, any plans?”

“I was content. Everything in my life was good. I had tenure, money in the bank, publications, a home, friends, a cat, and a man I loved who loved me back. What more did I need?”

“Well, start thinking about it now. What do you want to do?”

“I want to get the last year of my life and my husband back.”

“You can’t. So what else is there to do?”

“Wait for the next year, I guess.”

“If that’s all you want, then so be it. But I’m not going to enable your inertia in the meantime. And if you don’t want anything for yourself, then why don’t you do Sam the honor of fulfilling the things
he
wanted to do. Because no doubt he was including you in his plans.”

I felt myself get hot, humiliated in a way.

“Are we done?” I asked.

Melody looked at her watch. “We are.” She stood up and opened her arms to give me a hug. We usually ended the session with a hug. “Happy Anniversary,” she said. I fought the urge to cry, and lost. I could feel the warmth of her hug this time.

Chapter Thirteen

S
EX WITH SAM WAS FUCKING FABULOUS.
Sex with Sam was fucking fabulous because Sam was
fabulous.

I always wanted to draw him, or have a portrait made of him that would capture the contours of his cheekbones, the soft turn of his lips, the light lines of crow’s feet that appeared whenever he smiled. And he smiled a lot. He was one of those guys whose little bit of gray hair made him look distinguished, mature, well-read and well-lived. He was fit and active and loved being a New Englander. And he had the bluest eyes of any man I’d ever known. Ocean blue. Blue as the Long Island Sound on a summer’s day. Blue as Buzzards Bay. I could’ve drowned in the depth of those blue eyes.
He made me horny as hell when he read to me. And he made me laugh constantly.
But Sam’s perfection was in his willingness to embrace his own flaws. I think the reason why he was such a great teacher was because he allowed people to see his flaws as well as his virtues—in fact, to him, a flaw was just as much an attribute to writing as was talent. He shared my concept of revision as embracing the possibilities that live within the flaws. His humanity came out on every page that he wrote and shared with his students, and his students loved him for it—he was “real” to them.
  I re-read the eulogy. I’d have to delete “fucking” despite its alliterative appeal and ability to function as both an adjective and a verb in this particular context. Couldn’t say it in a church, though. And how appropriate was it to talk about my sex life? There was no way I could talk about that in front of my brothers or my mother. There was also no way I could say “horny.” Hell, thank God my father wasn’t alive to hear me use such words. My father could never tolerate such profanity, especially when uttered in public in front of his wife and/or children. It wasn’t even a matter of tolerance, now that I think about it—he was practically phobic. Never mind that my brothers heard—and said—a lot worse in the dives where they played or basements where they practiced. Never mind what I heard on the school bus. I, on the other hand, found profanity to be delightfully versatile rather than plebeian. So did Sam. It appealed to our inner wordsmiths, lovers of language and form. There’s an expletive for every occasion, he used to say. He would love its use in his eulogy, no doubt. He loved what he called “juxtapositions of texture,” a phrase he stole from a Mel Brooks interview. Whereas Brooks did it with image and music on film, Sam did it with words and contexts. “Horny” and “church” were juxtapositions of texture, he would think. He’d be stifling his laughter were he actually listening to that eulogy. Hell, he might have written it himself:
My wife would get horny if I read the fucking telephone book to her…

I emailed this latest version of the eulogy to Maggie and then looked at the time. Seven-thirty p.m. An eternity before bedtime. Time passed so slowly in a state of grief. There was so much of it. Where was all this time when our loved ones were alive?

Nothing to do. Nothing to watch. Nothing to read. Nothing to write. Nothing to say. Donny Most nestled himself in the corner of the old sofa in the study. I flopped next to him, and he looked up from his nap for a moment, as if contemplating whether to crawl on my lap and snuggle with me tonight. We had become each other’s consolation buddies. He decided against it and rested his orange head back down on his white paw, closing his eyes again. Oh, to be a cat. They sleep away the days in wonderful contentment without anyone criticizing them for wasting their lives.

I wandered around the drafty house. The cool, New England autumn wind whistled and rattled the old storm windows. The foliage had piqued early this year. Sam and I had both wanted an autumn wedding. Last year’s dead leaves still covered parts of the backyard.

I entered our bedroom and stared at the deserted, unmade bed.

Sex with Sam was fabulous.

Devin. David.

What had become of him? I wondered. What would he think if he saw me now?

I went to the closet and opened the door to look at myself in the full-length mirror. Sam’s EdmundCollege hoody, my size twelve jeans, and a pair of his thick socks covered the layers of flesh that had returned to my body after a six year hiatus.
I was this heavy when I met Devin
, I thought.
Maybe heavier
.  Despite Devin’s assertion that all body types were beautiful, I thought that if he saw me today, he’d scowl.

Geez, Andi. You really let yourself go. What a shame. Who’d wanna sleep with you looking like that?

My husband died, Dev, I’d say.

So? What kind of excuse is that?

When was the last time you had sex? I heard Melody ask.

I padded across the room to my dresser and opened the top drawer, where I kept my lingerie. It all sat neatly folded, waiting for me to fit into it, to be sexy and desirous again. Off to the side and at the back of the drawer, an old gift box with a frayed ribbon around it sat hidden. My vibrator. The one Devin had given me. I hadn’t used it in ages. Since before we got married. Didn’t need it once I left New York. Its leopard-skin exterior had faded. I wondered if the batteries still worked, if there were batteries still in it.

As I picked up the box, a pink envelope appeared.

What’s this?

My name was on it, in Sam’s handwriting. I opened it to find one of his handmade greeting cards.

Happy Fifth Anniversary. You know what that means…
said the outside of the card in bold, colored type. I opened it and a second, smaller envelope fell out. I put it to the side and read the card.
…Time to hit up our friends for more gifts!

My laugh pierced the silence.

I opened the other envelope and found airline tickets and a note.

Andrea, il mio amore,

Time to be adventurous and indulge in the pleasures of the world. First stop: Rome.
I love you more than mere words will ever describe.
Buon Anniversario,

Sam

The tickets were for the week of spring break this past year. So,
this
was his surprise for our anniversary! A trip to Rome! I had completely forgotten! And it was right under my nose (or my vibrator) all this time! How could I have not seen it? That clever, stupid, rat-bastard!

I laughed hard, and then I backed up and fell on the bed, weeping.

Chapter Fourteen

“G
O!” MAGGIE EXCLAIMED THE NEXT DAY WHEN I called and told her about the hidden treasure.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because the tickets were for seven months ago.”

“So? They’re probably refundable or transferable. Tell them what happened. They’ll probably feel sorry for you.”

“Who would I go with?”

“Yourself!”

“I can’t go to Italy by myself,” I protested.

“Why not?”

“I’m afraid to fly.”

“Take a Dramamine.”

“I don’t know how to speak Italian.”

“Isn’t your cousin an Italian teacher? Call him. Or call that guy you told me about in the foreign language department, the one who always shows up at the foreign film festivals and NPR pledge drives at school. You know, the one that you once said was cute and wanted to hook me up with?”

“Piero?”

“Yeah!”

“What about the house and the cat?”

“Dammit, Andi!” Maggie yelled. I looked at the phone, taken aback. Maggie never yelled at anyone. She didn’t like confrontation, especially if she was the initiator.

“Mags—”

“Stop it! Just stop it! You’re being a victim. The problem with grief is that it’s so self-absorbing. You act like you’re the only innocent one, like it’s only ever happened to you. You think you’re the only one who got screwed? What happened to the woman I knew in New York? You used to ride the subway at midnight after a movie and coffee with Devin. Remember him? Remember that? Remember how you used to be?”

I found it coincidental that she brought up Devin before I had a chance to tell her about my conversation with Melody.

“That was a long time ago. And that wasn’t exactly me, either. I was faking it—remember
that
?

“You weren’t faking all of it. Certainly not these last six years. Listen to me. Don’t disappear. Look at
me
, Andi. I thought I’d never get over losing James. And you wanna talk about a senseless death? Leukemia is senseless. Leukemia at age thirty is incredibly senseless. Why do you think it took me so long to get back into the dating game? And trust me, every day I wish I could get back all that lost time.
Every day
. So just stop it.”

“What, you’re telling me to start dating?”

“I’m telling you to start doing
something
. And stop sending me revisions of that damn eulogy. Going back to work was a step in the right direction, but you’re still living unconsciously. Wake up. This is not what Sam would want.”

I got angry. “I hate that. I hate when people presume to know what Sam would want,” I snapped.