I COULDN'T MOVE THE peanut butter. It wasn't just any peanut butter, but the kind my husband had eaten nearly every day of his life. His mother had said once he got a taste of it, everything else lost its flavor. His father, not knowing at the time that peanut butter was bad for babies, had put a scoop on his finger and given it to his then eight-month-old son. Joel had bitten down so hard on his father's finger with his only tooth that he'd drawn blood.
I'd made the mistake of trying to switch things up over the years, like the time we were in a money crunch and I bought a lower-priced brand (I only eat Peter Pan, he'd said to me as if I'd betrayed him), and the time I bought the peanut butter/jelly swirl to save time (How could you? he'd asked, only half-joking), so I learned never to veer from the sacred Peter Pan smooth (never crunchy, honey) peanut butter.
Joel's ritual was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on wheat bread for lunch, peanut-butter honey on toast snacks at 3 p.m. while sitting at his architectural drawing board in the studio, and peanut butter vanilla smoothies every Saturday afternoon after his basketball game at the neighborhood park. The jar was nearly empty, the last remnants used to surprise Joel with the smoothie he never got to drink. And yet.
The cupboard would be empty without the peanut butter. The pantry, stocked full to feed two growing boys, would no doubt feel bare without it. The cruel twist of fate was that our boys preferred turkey sandwiches, something for which Joel blamed my DNA contributions.
“I can't believe it's been two years,” Anh said as we cleaned out the cupboard, as if I weren't keenly aware of every day without him. She knew sympathy stares were off-limits. I needed to not feel like a widow on exhibit around someone, and for me that person was Anh Ly, aptly named for “intellectual brightness” and “lion,” my best friend even when I was the last person on earth anyone would want to be friends with. “It's okay to get rid of the peanut butter.”
I felt the familiar squeeze in my chest that told me it would not be okay, that throwing away the peanut butter would be throwing away his memory. It's the small things that become giant calling cards of grief after someone you love dies. For me, it was peanut butter and a hundred everyday items and the larger ones, too: the hand-me-down sofa and our marital bed, which we'd named Lumpy with good reason. I shook my head vigorously and bit my bottom lip. I took the jar from her hand and curled it into me protectively. The thing is, when I lost Joel, my life lost its flavor, too.
I wondered if Monica had made Joel peanut butter smoothies when they had been together. She didn't seem like the nurturing type, though I have no proof to base this on other than that she hurt my husband; Judith believed the red Monica so bravely wore stood for she-devil, end of story. I wished Judith were more of a gossip, like my mother, because she was mum when it came to Monica. “Swore never to speak that woman's name again,” she said right after she told me that I could be running into her at the school. Why even mention her at all unless there was something I should know? Whatever had happened between them, time hadn't healed. Judith, for so much as preaching how God forgiveth, apparently could not forgive Monica for the transgressions against her only begotten son.
Seeing Monica that day in the parking lot made me realize I couldn't move on until I knew the truth about what happened with Monica and Joel before he died. I wanted to tell Anh this, too, because she was famously good at helping me wade through the muck of emotions that pulled me down like quicksand.
“Fine, we'll leave the peanut butter,” Anh said, moving on to the stale chips (trash) and canned food (charity). “But we know it's about more than peanut butter, Ramona. I want you to start considering having a little fun again.”
“It's only been two years,” I told her, switching the emphasis to make it apparent I thought this was a very short time to be without your soul mate, even though every day had dragged on as if it had been years since I'd last seen him, last touched him. I'd been dreading the cooler days, the green draining from the leaves and falling to the ground like nature's countdown to the anniversary of his death.
“This is not a ‘moving on’ speech. This is one best friend to another throwing out the idea of a little fun. Not a lot of fun, just a little something to stir your spirit,” Anh spoke with authority, and it wasn't just because she was the CEO of a big accounting firm or because she was voted the Vietnamese Business Woman of the Year. Not a local award or even a national award, mind you, but an international award. This much I knew: I was absolutely no fun, though people tell me I used to be.
Fun. If some believe grief has an expiration date, does fun have a start date after losing a soul mate? Or does it just creep up on you when you least expect it? I knew my double-PhD girlfriend was not referring to frivolous fun, like a carnival ride or even a spa retreat.
She meant what da Vinci had: la vita allegra. Of course I wanted it, but my joy jar was as empty as the peanut butter. She understood how hard it was to step out in to the world of the living where I believed Normals take everything for granted: their relationships, their health, their marriages. Most people did not find joy in the mundane, and they had their families intact. So how could I? I'd gone to bed hoping for an answer, but I'd woken up in the same empty-bed feeling, the thud of loneliness that rose as ritually as the sun.
“At least you've got your class. Anyone interesting this semester?” she said, throwing a bag of old flour in the dumpster.
This would be a great time to tell her that I had done something insanely spur-of-the-moment, acting on impulse, letting fate be my guide-all those things Joel had been known for. He was the spontaneous one who pulled me along for the ride-since then I was as useless as a deserted red Radio Flyer with no one to take me away.
“Well, there is this one guy,” I started.
Anh held a loaf of moldy bread in her hands. I wish I could've blamed that on one of William's self-made science projects, but it was my own negligence. When Joel was around, the bread had never lasted long enough to grow mold. “A guy-guy? Not just-there-is-this-man-from-Timbuktu guy, but a guy-with-dating-potential guy?”
Dating belonged with fun-two words that could not be found in my personal dictionary. Most people had been patient with me, broaching the subject of “getting back out there” casually as if I didn't feel it like a sledgehammer. But when she said the word “dating,” it didn't feel like a blow. It sounded like a normal word, like “broccoli” or “sidewalk” or “orange.” Perhaps it was because she said it after she'd asked if there was anyone interesting and my brain had conjured the image of da Vinci and though he was very much foreign, the idea of him in a romantic sense was not foreign to me. But I hadn't thought of da Vinci as dating material for me -for the hot, under-thirty set, sure-but not for me, the over-thirty, widowy-type. “Hold up. I just said interesting. All of twenty-five, gorgeous, full of life, and happens to be named Leonardo da Vinci.”
Anh slapped my arm. “ Hoan hô! Hoan hô!,” she cheered, laughing. “Maybe that's just the spice you need in your life. Someone carefree and void of sticky emotional baggage. Take advantage now before he meets too many people.”
“What are you saying?” I said defensively. “That he would only be interested in me until something better comes along?”
Anh gave me the once-over, from my hair in the '80s scrunchie to the worn-down Birkenstocks on my feet. What lay between wasn't any better: an oversized hooded UT sweatshirt of Joel's and black sweatpants (faded to gray) with holes in the knees. Anh may not wear makeup tested on animals and use only organic hairspray and eschew leather, but she was stylish and put together. Anh, who was the first person I'd known to ever wear Birks, didn't even wear them anymore. “Well…”
“Just come out and say what you're thinking. I can see the motor turning.”
“Fine,” she said, putting one hand on her slender hip and the other hand on my shoulder. “Let's just say you and your bread have something in common.”
“I'm moldy?” I asked.
“No, Ramona. Stale. And the thing is, I know that you know this. You're just refusing to do anything about it, because that would mean you have to wake up and breathe again and shed that coat of protection you've been wearing. You don't want men to find you attractive anymore because lo and behold, if they do, you'll have to do something about it. Like kiss them, or have sex, or have a man-woman relationship again. And I'm not saying that you should do that-definitely not until you're ready and only you know when that is. And the only person women should try to look good for is themselves, and you don't even want to do that. That's all I'm saying. With love, from Anh.”
I rolled my eyes, something I often did when the other person was right and I, the linguist, couldn't find the words for a decent refute. “I've been making an effort. I started wearing mascara again a month ago. Have you not noticed?”
She leaned in and studied my lashes. “Well, I'll be damned. Good for you. The blush and lip gloss must be jealous, though.” She swept her arm around me and planted a kiss on my forehead. Unlike my mother and sister, Anh was fairly lenient about my image, or lack thereof.
Most Normals agree Grievers should get some slack in the grooming department. I had taken that platitude for granted. I often wondered if Joel peered down from Heaven, wishing I would have some fun again. He was the type of husband who gave me compliments when I looked my worst, bed-head and morning breath included, so it wasn't about what was outside. What bothered me most was that my outside so clearly reflected my inside.
I placed the peanut butter back on its perch. So many Grievers put on the makeup like a mask and I had refused to do it. I would not dress the part of a Normal until I felt it. For the first six months, I couldn't believe he was gone, waiting for him to walk through the door at 5:30 p.m. sharp or step out of the shower or to catch a glimpse of him through the front window, watering the flowers. I searched everywhere for him during those six months, as if imagining him still living would make it so.
What I missed most of all was his presence, his sense of being, and even after two years, I wasn't content in an empty house. But after a year, I no longer had to remind myself to breathe, and though the pain still came in like a tide to shore, the tsunami had lost some of its strength.
When I would tell Anh that my mother dropped hints like little bombs about nice men she'd met, Anh would shrug it off with a laugh and say, “Tell her to send one Grandma's way.” Thanks to a one-night-stand in college, her son had produced a daughter, though the union had not produced two willing parents. So Anh ended up with her granddaughter Vi, though she denied she was raising her (which she was). Anh was one of those people who could remove the pricks of pain with a quick jerk and make it all better.
I shuddered. “I've watched those dating reality shows, and I have two words for you: Hell, no. I'm happy alone and that's why a makeover is a moot point,” I said, as if it were justification for my slobwear. The happy part was a lie, and everyone knew it. I hadn't been content in my misery, but it hung around me like thick coat I couldn't shed. I wasn't so naïve as to believe the phony smiles I put on for school or the grocery store were fooling anyone. But what man in his right mind wanted to date a grieving woman with two boys, anyway? I was about as attractive as a bug zapper on a summer's night.
Anh smoothed her jet-black hair and reapplied her red lipstick. I wished I could wear red lipstick, but much like the red suit, you have to have the red inside of you to wear it on the outside, and the one time I tried it in my twenties, I looked like a bad imitation of Anna Nicole Smith.
“What the hell do I know?” she said. “Never listen to a woman who's been divorced thrice, yet still throws herself to the sharks as if she doesn't have a brain in her head.”
“I'm not listening to you, but thanks for the permission. Besides, I'm going to be much too busy for dating. I've decided to finish my doctorate.”
“Look at you! Dusting off the old dissertation. It's about time. You know the world has a shortage of good word doctors.”
“You're just jealous because when we go out you won't get to be the only doctor anymore.”
“Right. I believe my doctorates in metaphysics and accounting have been a nice repellent to my love life.”
“All the more reason I should get mine, stat.”
“You'll be Professor Dr. Griffen before we know it. And I can say I knew you when you were just a geek with the New York Times crossword.”
“Some things will never change.”
“Like I've said,” Anh continued. “When you're ready, you can get your chakras in alignment again. Especially chakra two.” She pointed to my nether region.
I knew enough from listening to her chakra talk over the years that chakra two controlled sexuality. “That chakra's bulb blew out two years ago. How can I possibly have sex with another man and not have it feel like cheating?”
“Have you at least been using Mr. Pleasure 2000?”
“I threw it away,” I told her. “Right after my mother nearly had a heart attack when she found it in my nightstand.”
Her insistence that connecting mind and body and getting my chakras in order would cure my heartbreak and improve my life was as annoying as my mother's insistence that joining her church would kill two birds with one stone-Jesus would heap blessings on my life and land me a nice Christian man, to boot. When that time comes, she would add. But the sheer fact she had to add that as a footnote told me that she believed I might shrivel into a lonely cat lady after the boys were grown if I didn't play nice with others.
“It's not about finding a man,” Anh said. “It's about living again. That's all we want for you, Ramona. It's the one thing me, your Jesus-freak mothers and your Energizer Bunny sister all have in common.” My mother and mother-in-law were both evangamoms at Life Church. Joel used to joke we were book-ended with the Lord. Judith was the first to embrace my mother Barbara when she “found the Lord” at the age of 45. It had been Judith's personal mission to bring all of us into the holy fold thereafter. I was in college, having spent the better part of my childhood bounced from church to church while my mother tried to find one that fit her like a designer suit. She found her fit at Life and a best friend in Judith, which is how Joel and I met.
Joel preferred to tell people we met at a chocolate-wrestling tournament where I was a contestant (and blue-ribbon winner). “One lick and I was hooked,” he would tell the shocked listener.
Truthfully, our moms set us up. Joel had just gone through a tremendous break-up, his wedding to the she-devil Monica called off, and besides some quality time with the Lord, Judith thought the best remedy was for him to “get back out there.” Sound familiar? As for the remedy for my broken heart After, she only recommended the Lord. “You'll never find anyone like my Joel,” Judith tells me on a weekly basis. And I wholeheartedly agree with her.
The doorbell rang. “Speak of the devil,” I said, knowing it would be my mother on her daily visit.
“You mean speak of the Lord,” Anh corrected me with a wink as she headed out the garage. “And find da Vinci. American women will be crawling all over him like horny ants at a hunk picnic.”
She was gone before I could tell her that finding da Vinci would not be a problem since he was all of ten yards away, and that he was not just a student, but a tenant. If anyone would confirm that I was off my rocker for moving him in, it was Anh. But I couldn't date a student, even if he was an adult, as if the idea weren't preposterous enough if he wasn't.
A little companionship might be nice, though. Dinner had gone well the night before. Da Vinci was a tremendous cook and a quick learner. The boys got a kick out of running around the room pointing at objects and making da Vinci guess what they were in English and giggling when he was wrong. He called a clock a wheel and a fork a spoon and the butter butt. At least he was trying. And if da Vinci could tackle the English language and a foreign world, I could make a go of a new world, too.
I'll admit I liked that they liked him. If they hadn't, I would've handed him his walking papers, gorgeous or not. I'd nearly backed out of letting da Vinci stay in the studio when we entered and I found Joel's things exactly where I'd left them, where he'd left them, and I wished for a sign from Joel that I wasn't making a huge mistake, that he was fine with using his space for rent, but the guilt chewed at me like a puppy on a shoe. Unlike some Grievers who claim to “feel” their loved ones with them everywhere they go, I couldn't feel Joel. All I felt was anger, sadness, loneliness. Besides, I didn't believe in signs, did I? I believed in words. Even if a brisk breeze suddenly whirled through the room knocking his pencil cup off the desk, I'd demand it in writing. A note from the beyond. Still.
Choking back tears, I had moved Joel's coffee cup to the cupboard, left the sketch of the hospital he'd been working on on his drafting table, and asked that da Vinci try to leave everything as is. He seemed to understand, though immigrants often nod their heads when they have no idea what's being said.
“I see you're bright and shining as usual,” Barbara said upon entering, in a sing-song voice that was really meant as a put-down of my attire and lack of spit and polish. Pre-Joel's death, I would've gotten a “why-can't-you-be-more-like-your-sister” speech. My dear sister, who, after she found her husband keeping a mistress on the side, lost forty pounds and in two years became the “go-to girl” for fitness in the Lone Star State. After she was nice and rich and famous, she dumped her husband and now dated with incredible ease. I actually preferred her when she was fat.
Now my mom took it relatively easy on me, too busy worrying about me to nag. I had to remind myself that she made her daily invasion into my personal life because she cared. She couldn't imagine a life without my father and she had loved Joel nearly as much I had. As a result, she took my little family on like a fulltime job-keeping up on everything from the latest parenting advice to what's cool with boys so she could somehow make up for what my kids were missing without their father. Of course, we knew this wouldn't work, but when Joel died she and my father did turn into Super Grandparents, taking the kids on quarterly vacations and spending more quality time with them than they ever did with my sister and me growing up. With them and Judith and her new banker husband Bob, my kids got plenty of attention, though I still worried every day it wasn't enough because it wasn't from their father.
Barbara handed me a stack of magazines-she hated to be wasteful and throw them away-and I cringed. I don't believe in signs. Anh does. My evangelical mothers do, of course. God is trying to tell you something, they would say to me. If this was true, what did it mean that Monica Blevins was on the cover of Austin Monthly? I preferred to believe it was just a coincidence; as for the cover, well, she was like Anh, a mover and a shaker. Movers and shakers often get photographed for covers of magazine. It had nothing at all to do with my desire to confront her about Joel.
I placed Better Homes and Gardens on top of her picture and sat the stack next to the chair on top of the stack from last week. My mother really should know better. The stack would eventually cause its own avalanche and my boys would step on them, using them as roller skates on the carpet, and eventually my mother would pick them up and throw them in the trash without my ever having read them, which is what she should've done in the first place.
Barbara clicked on my sister's show, Get Up and Move It, Texas!, her statewide fitness show that I TiVoed, vowing to work out to it later in the day (unlike her, I wasn't a morning person), but I never got around to it, morning, noon or night. My mother, who watched the show faithfully every morning while sipping her coffee, liked to come over and watch my sister again while she helped me do laundry. (While many single moms take care of these duties on a daily basis without any help and Joel didn't even know how the dryer knobs worked, she insisted.) I'd always hated laundry and wished she would've volunteered for the chore years ago, but after Joel died, I missed doing his laundry. Normals believe it is a menial task-wear clothes, dirty clothes, wash clothes-an endless cycle. But a Griever sees laundry as a spoke in the cycle of life. No laundry, no life.
My mother wore slacks and a button-down blouse more appropriate for church or a business office, though she'd never worked a day in her life outside of her home. She considered the church her other full-time job, and belonging to a congregation of 10,000 people meant she was never bored.
Some might say my mother was an enabler, keeping me from cleaning up my own messes, but others might just say she was a mother who loved her daughter and could see that her daughter, for whatever reason, still needed some help. Even with my mother annoying me no end, I weighed the pros and cons and decided that I could put up with whatever she had to dish out-so long as she also did the dishes.
Besides bringing good food and helping hands into the house, she brought commotion with her. It was the stillness of the world without Joel that rattled me the most. I missed the quiet noise of having a partner in my life-the sound of his shuffling down the hall, his heavy breathing in his sleep, his throaty laughter during dinner, his spirited cries during a football game on TV. At first I'd gone to crowded places, believing that any noise could make up for it-the mall, fairs, sporting events. But all I did was prick my ears for the sound in the crowd I longed to hear most, and it never came.
“I met the nicest fellow last night,” Mom said as she separated our brights and whites. I started to roll my eyes before reminding myself that I was docking my boys' allowances each time I caught them rolling theirs. It was rude and where there were rolling eyes, there were words not being said. So far I'd be dinged $2 today, but who would hold me accountable?
“Not now, Mom.”
Barbara shut the washer door with a thud and shook her head. “Is this what it's come to, Ramona? I can't even have a conversation with you if it involves a person of the opposite sex? I feel like if I even say the word ‘man,‘ you'll snap at me.”
I immediately thought of da Vinci pointing to his chest in the doorway of the classroom bellowing the word, man. I definitely preferred the way he said it.
My mother flinched (she'd always been sensitive) and I knew that deep down she only wanted the best for me. I apologized and hugged her and went to pour her black coffee, as strong as her religious convictions. “Tell me about the person of the opposite sex if you really think I should know.”
We sat on the back patio and drank our coffee. The cool morning required a jacket, and I gazed at the empty flowerbeds thinking how pretty maroon and gold mums would look in them, and orange pansies. They were Joel's favorite, though he made me promise I would never tell anyone a feminine-sounding flower like pansy was his favorite. If I planted flowers, that would mean autumn was here and I wouldn't do anything to speed along its coming.
I hadn't mentioned da Vinci yet, though I could see him stirring through the window of the studio across from us, but as usual, my mother didn't let me get a word in edgewise.
“He's a doctor,” she went on. “An anesthesiologist at Mercy. Has a daughter from his first marriage, been divorced for three years and he's on the building committee with your father at church. Noble just thinks the world of him. They're playing golf together this Saturday.”
I couldn't take my eyes off of the window, where every few seconds I could see his dark hair pop into view. After awhile I figured out he was doing sit-ups, something I hadn't done since scrunchies were in style. Thinking about his abs, though I'd never seen them, turned me into butter.
“Are you listening to me, Ramona Elise?” Her gaze followed mine, but da Vinci was nowhere in the frame. “Whatever are you looking at?”
“Of course I'm listening. Dad's golfing with a doctor from Mercy this weekend. Just what I need. Someone that puts people to sleep for a living. Is he handsome?”
“Quite handsome, though I only have eyes for your father,” she said. My mother pointed out handsome men everywhere we went, yet she always followed it with that statement as if it made her less guilty for noticing. “And what's wrong with an anesthesiologist? He keeps people alive while they're unconscious. It wouldn't hurt to find a new friend. That's all. A friend. Judith and I have discussed it.”
“So now you and my mother-in-law are discussing my having male friends? Did the Lord send you a sign?”
Barbara batted her eyelashes. Unlike me, my mother claimed to get signs from the Lord on a near-daily basis. “It just came up. There's a singles mixer we thought you might be interested in. Just for making friends, that's all. Doesn't have to be romantic.”
“I have friends,” I told her, glancing back up at the garage studio window. In truth, I had Anh and my international friends of my cul-de-sac, mostly former students, and a couple of friends at work. Parenting and Joel had taken up all of my time for the last ten years. More friends would've seemed a luxury I couldn't afford. “Besides, Judith has told me repeatedly how uncomfortable it would make her if I began dating.”
“Of course it would. She's not ready for that, but then neither are you, so what does it matter? But a friend wouldn't hurt, darling. Even Judith thinks so.”
“Yeah. You said that already.”
Barbara sipped her coffee, her bright eyes taking in the outdoors. My mother had a peppy personality (inherited by my sis, not me), but then she wasn't yet a Griever. Even my grandparents were both still living. Judith on the other hand, was a Griever. Her world had been wrapped up into Joel, her only child, and she had transferred that attention to her grandsons, which was both a blessing and a curse. “Why don't we do something fun today, Ramona? What do you say? We could meet your sister for lunch and buy you a new outfit. You haven't let me shop for you in ages.”
I recalled the moose sweater she'd given me for Christmas last year and shuddered. I'd cried not because I hated it, but because I couldn't laugh about it later with Joel. I peered at the window again and then down at my slob wear. Well, a new outfit couldn't hurt. Fun had been taken from its dusty box in the basement, brushed off and ready to open.
“Something nice for a singles mixer, maybe?” I said, half-kidding. “Why do I think this won't end well? But what the hell,” I said and her right arm shot into the air as if Bob Barker had told her to “come on down, you're the next contestant on The Price Is Right.”
The one thing my mother loved nearly as much as her church and volunteering was marathon shopping. I had to admit she was devilishly good at it. “Really?” she'd said as if I were pulling her leg. “I'll call Rachel and Judith and we'll make a day of it. You go get washed up and changed then.”
While my mother went back into the house to call Rachel, I watched the Panchal taxi cab pull into my side driveway and honk for da Vinci to take him to the center for his job placement interview. A moment later, he emerged wearing corduroy jeans and a T-shirt, his hair still wet from a shower. I imagined how cramped he would've been in the tiny shower stall, and thinking of him naked, stooped under the low shower head, made me feel weak.
Leonardo descended the rickety steps and looked at me, the sun shining on his flawless face, and waved to me. “ Buon giorno. ”
“Good morning,” I said back, and meant it.
Like the little devil on my left shoulder, my mother exhaled behind me, “My Lord, Ramona. Who in Heaven is that?”