The Beginner's Goodbye (15 page)

The detritus of the workmen’s daily lives—their drink cups and crumpled drop cloths and jar lids full of cigarette stubs—made the house feel populated even though it was empty. I would have to stand still a moment, regaining my sense of solitude. After that I would move through the house from front to back, from hallway to kitchen.

No Dorothy. Smells of fresh-cut lumber, cigarette smoke, damp plaster, but no soap or isopropyl alcohol. In the kitchen I would stand waiting so long that the silence began to echo at me like the silence inside a seashell, but she never said, “Hello, Aaron.”

Had she said those words aloud? Or had they just been in my mind, the same way I’d told her my own thoughts? Had the whole
scene
been in my mind? Had I been so deranged by grief that I had concocted her from thin air?

I left the house. I walked back to the street. (But, again, very slowly.) I got in my car and drove away.

Where she showed up next was the farmers’ market.

Of all places, the farmers’ market! The one in Waverly. I’d gone there on a Saturday morning to buy salad greens for Nandina. I looked up from the butter lettuce to find Dorothy at the next stall, examining the beets.

She used to act politely bored at farmers’ markets. She would accompany me, but just tolerantly, forbearingly, and she would stand around swallowing her yawns while I chose our vegetables for the week.

Also: beets? Beets are so labor-intensive. And they require a certain amount of culinary know-how. Besides which, she didn’t much like them. She only agreed to eat them because of the beta-carotene.

But there she stood, lifting a rubber-banded cluster of beets from the heap and studying it seriously, turning it over several times as if trying to
learn
it before setting it back down and picking up another.

I moved toward her as cautiously as if she were some skittish woodland animal. My feet made no sound at all. And when I reached her, I didn’t speak. I turned toward the beets myself and selected a bunch of my own. We were standing side by side, so close that even a breath caused our sleeves to whisper together. I could feel the warmth that her skin gave off through the cotton. It warmed my very soul; I can’t describe the comfort I felt. I wanted to stand there forever. There was nothing more I could have asked for.

The woman tending the stall said, “Help you?”

I shook my head, almost imperceptibly.

“You’ll want to use the tops of these, too,” she said. “Notice how fresh and green they are. All you do is boil them up first in a little salted water, say five or so minutes, and then melt you a lump of butter in a …”

Hateful woman. Hateful, loud, prattling, cackle-voiced woman. I felt a coolness at my right side, and I knew without looking that Dorothy was gone.

Then she came to Spindle Street.

To the street where my office is.

I’d been to lunch with Peggy and Irene at the little café on the corner. Irene went shoe-shopping afterward, but Peggy and I headed back to work, strolling at a leisurely pace because it happened to be an especially nice day. It was sunny but not too hot, with a little bit of a breeze. And Peggy chose that moment, wouldn’t you know, to attempt a heart-to-heart conversation. She must have figured she should seize her chance, since for once we had no audience. She said, “So.” And then she said, “Aaron.” She said, “So, how has your life been going, Aaron?”

I said, “My life.”

“Would you say that you’ve moved past the very worst of your grief? Or is it still as bad as ever.”

“Oh,” I said, “well …”

“I hope you don’t mind my asking.”

“No,” I said.

Which was true, I found. At that particular moment, I honestly
did want to tell somebody what I was feeling. (
Share
with somebody, I very nearly just said—not my usual language at all.)

“In a way,” I told Peggy, “it’s like the grief has been covered over with some kind of blanket. It’s still there, but the sharpest edges are … muffled, sort of. Then, every now and then, I lift a corner of the blanket, just to check, and—whoa! Like a knife! I’m not sure that will ever change.”

She said, “Is there something the rest of us could be doing to make it easier? Should we talk more about it? Talk less?”

“Oh, no, you’ve all been—”

Then I sensed a person walking on the curb side of me. She was several feet distant, but she was keeping pace with us. I sensed her roundness, her darkness, her silence, her intense alertness. I didn’t dare look over at her, though. I came to a stop. Peggy stopped, too. So did the other person.

I told Peggy, “You go ahead.”

“What?”

“Go!”

“Oh!” she said, and one hand flew to the satin bow at her neckline. “Yes, of course!” she said. “I’m so sorry! I’m—Forgive me!”

And she spun away and rushed off.

I would have felt bad about it, except that I couldn’t be bothered just then. I waited until she had run up the steps to our building and disappeared inside. Then I turned to Dorothy.

She stood watching me soberly, assessingly. She seemed as real as the
NO PARKING
sign beside her. Today she wore her black knit top, the one she’d worn the night we first kissed, but it was scrunched beneath the slant of her satchel strap as if she had just come from work.

She said, “I
would
have asked more questions.”

“Pardon?”

“We could have talked all along. But you always pushed me away.”

“I pushed you away?”

Somebody passed so close that his shoe nicked the tip of my cane, and I turned toward him for one split second, and when I turned back she was gone.

I said, “Dorothy?”

Pedestrians were parting around me like water around a stone, sending me curious glances. Dorothy was nowhere to be seen.

Weeks passed, and all I thought about was how to make her come back.

Was there some theme here? Was there some unifying factor that triggered her visits? The first time, I had been reflecting on our life together; but the second time, I’d been perusing the butter lettuce, for Lord’s sake. And the third time, I had been deep in conversation with Peggy. As far as I could determine, each set of circumstances was completely different.

“Nandina,” I said one evening, “have you ever … Did Mom and Dad ever … like, appear to you after they died?”

“Mom and Dad?”

“Or anybody! Grandma Barb, or Aunt Esther … You were always close to Aunt Esther, as I recall.”

Nandina stopped slicing peaches. (She was making one of her juice drinks for Gil.) She looked at me, and I saw that her eyes were glowing with pity. “Oh, Aaron,” she said.

“What.”

“Oh, sweetie, I wish there were something I could say.”

“What? No, really, I’m fine,” I said. “I was just wondering if—”

“I know you must feel as though you’re never going to get over this, but, believe me, one day you’ll … Oh, I don’t mean get over it—you’ll never really get over it—but one day you’re going to wake up and see that you still have your whole life to live.”

“I already see that,” I said. “What I’m asking—”

“You’re only thirty-six! Lots of men haven’t even
begun
their lives at thirty-six. You’re attractive, and smart. Some really nice woman is going to come along and snap you up one day. You probably can’t imagine that, but mark my words. And I want to say right here and now, Aaron, that I would wholeheartedly welcome her. I would welcome anyone you brought home to me, I promise.”

“You mean like last time?” I asked.

“You’re going to look back and say, ‘I can’t believe now that I ever thought my life was finished.’ ”

I could have told her that I worried more about my life stretching on and on. But I didn’t want her going all compassionate again.

One late afternoon when I’d stopped by our house, still with no sign of Dorothy, I went around back to where the oak tree used to stand. The tree itself had been carted away at some point, and even the stump had been removed and the hole filled in with wood chips. Gil had arranged for that. I remembered paying the bill, which was considerable.

I was thinking,
Come see this, Dorothy. Come see what changed our world
. But the person who came was old Mimi King, from across the alley. I saw her picking her way through my euonymus bushes. For once she carried no casserole, although she did have a bib apron on. Her gray hair was rolled into little pink curlers that bobbed all over her head. “Why, Aaron!” she said. “How nice to find you at home! I looked out my kitchen window and all at once there you were.”

“Hi, Mimi,” I said.

She arrived next to me, breathless, and gazed down at where the tree had stood. “If that is not the sorriest sight,” she told me.

“Yes, well, it had a good long life, I guess.”

“Nasty old thing,” she said.

“Mimi,” I said, “how long is it since your husband died?”

“Oh, it’s been thirty-three years now. Thirty-four. Can you imagine? I’ve been a widow longer than I’ve been a wife.”

“And did you ever, for instance … feel his presence after he died?”

“No,” she said, but she didn’t seem surprised by the question. “I hoped to, though. I surely hoped to. Sometimes I even spoke out loud to him, in the early years, begging him to show himself. Do you do that with Dr. Rosales?”

“Yes,” I said.

I took a deep breath.

I said, “And every now and then, I almost think she
does
show herself.”

I sent Mimi a quick sideways glance. I couldn’t gauge her reaction.

“I realize that must sound crazy,” I said. “But maybe she just hates to see me so sad, is how I explain it. She sees that I can’t bear losing her and so she steps in for a moment.”

“Well, that’s just absurd,” Mimi said.

“Oh.”

“You think
I
wasn’t sad when Dennis died?”

“I didn’t mean—”

“You think I could bear losing him? But I had to, didn’t I. I had to carry on like always, with three half-grown children depending on me for every little thing. Nobody offered
me
any special consideration.”

“Oh, or me, either!” I said.

But she had already turned to go. She flapped one withered arm dismissively behind her as she stalked back toward the alley.

I asked at work. We were sitting around with a birthday cake—Charles’s—and paper cups of champagne, and Nandina had just stepped into her office to answer her phone, and I was feeling, I suppose, a little emboldened by the champagne. I said, “Let me just ask you all this. Has anyone here ever felt that a loved one was watching over them?”

Peggy looked up from the candles she was plucking out of the cake, and her eyebrows went all tent-shaped with concern. I had expected that, but I’d figured it was worth a bit of Oh-poor-Aaron, because she was just the kind of person who
would
think her loved ones were watching over her. She didn’t speak, though. Irene said, “You mean a loved one who has died?”

“Right.”

“This is going to sound weird,” Charles said, “but I don’t have any loved ones who have died.”

“Lucky you,” Peggy told him.

“All four of my grandparents passed on long before I was born, and my parents are healthy as horses, knock on wood.”

Ho-hum
, was all I could think. People who hadn’t suffered a loss yet struck me as not quite grown up.

Irene said, “My father died in a car wreck back when I was ten. I remember I used to worry that now he might be all-seeing, and he’d see that I liked to shoplift.”

“Ooh, Irene,” Charles said. “You shoplifted?”

“I stole lipsticks from Read’s Drug Store.”

It interested me that Irene imagined the dead might be all-seeing. More than once, since the oak tree fell, I had been visited by the irrational notion that maybe Dorothy knew everything about me now—including some past fantasies having to do with Irene.

“The funny part is,” Irene was saying, “back in those days I didn’t even
wear
lipstick. And anyhow, I could perfectly well have paid for it. I did get an allowance. I can’t explain what came over me.”

“But did he find out?” I asked.

“Excuse me?”

“Did your father find out you shoplifted?”

“No, Aaron. How could he do that?”

“Oh. No, of course not,” I said.

“Sorry!” Nandina caroled, and out she popped from her office. “That was Hastings Burns, Esquire. Remember Hastings Burns, Esquire?
The Beginner’s Legal Reference
?”

“
Beginner’s Nitpicking
,” Irene said.

“
Beginner’s Pain in the Butt
,” Charles put in.

I was just glad to have the subject switched before Nandina learned what we were talking about.

·  ·  ·

Then I was walking toward the post office on Deepdene Road and Dorothy was walking beside me. She didn’t “pop up” or anything. She didn’t “materialize.” She’d just been with me all along, somehow, the way in dreams you’ll find yourself with a companion who didn’t arrive but is simply there—no explanation given and none needed.

I avoided looking over at her, because I worried I would scare her off. I did slow my pace, though. If anyone had been watching, they’d have thought I was walking a tightrope, I proceeded so carefully.

In front of the post office, I came to a stop. I didn’t want to go inside, where there would be other people. I turned to face her. Oh, she looked so … Dorothy-like! So normal and clumsy and ordinary, her eyes meeting mine directly, a faint sheen of sweat on her upper lip, her stocky forearms crossing her stomach to hug her satchel close to her body.

I said, “Dorothy, I didn’t push you away. How can you say such a thing? Or I certainly didn’t mean to. Is that what you think I was doing?”

She said, “Oh, well,” and looked off to one side.

“Answer me, Dorothy. Talk to me. Let’s talk about this, can’t we?”

She drew in a breath to speak, I thought, but then it seemed her attention was snagged by something at her feet. It was her shoe; her left shoe was untied. She squatted and began tying it, hunched over in a mounded shape so I couldn’t see her face. I lost patience. “You say
I’m
pushing
you
away?” I asked. “You’re the one doing that, damn it!”