Wish You Were Here: Chapter 7

“I can’t explain it,” Izzy said on Monday morning, clutching her coffee as if it were a life preserver.  “There’s just no chemistry.”

            “One date?”  said Emily.  “You could tell that from one date?  Come on, the guy seemed perfectly nice to me.”

            “I didn’t say he wasn’t nice.  I said there was no chemistry.”

            Emily sighed.  “Sometimes I think you just make this too hard.”

            Henry snorted from the vacant cubicle chair next to me.  He hadn’t left my side all weekend and for the first time in our married life, had accompanied me to work, something I will admit I wasn’t sure I was comfortable with.  But after what constituted my first argument with a dead guy, it was decided that I should go.

            “I don’t want to leave you tomorrow,” I told Henry on Sunday night.  We were lying in my bed (actually I guess I was lying in it, he was more lying over it) when we talked about what should happen the following day.

            “I know you don’t,” he said, his voice coming to me in the dark, which was somewhat disconcerting since I couldn’t actually feel him in the bed next to me and, therefore, he just sounded like a voice in my head.  “But let’s face it:  It’s possible I could be around for a really long time.  You can’t just stop working.”

            “Why not?” I said.  “The weather is pretty nice here.  I could stop working and just live in a cardboard box.  I mean, it’s not like you take up that much room.  And think of how low-maintenance it would be.”

            “If you quit working, lose the house, and tell everyone it’s because you’re living with your dead husband again, I have a feeling you won’t find yourself in a cardboard box – probably something a little more padded with plenty of prescription meds around.”

            “Well, what if I just take some time off?” I asked, desperately wanting to find a solution.

            “Jane, I’ve met your boss.  I can’t see her ever going for something like that.  Besides, as much as you want to stay home, going to work has been good for you, I think.  It at least forces you to get out of the house a little.”

            And that’s when we came up with the compromise:  Henry would come with me to work - something that, to be honest, I wasn’t too crazy about, but was better than missing a moment with him.  So, the next morning, we hustled off, chatting the entire way there until I noticed this woman looking at me like I was a lunatic as I was laughing at something Henry said.  It suddenly occurred to me that she couldn’t see him and, therefore, I probably thought that I was the funniest person I knew. 

Now, sitting with him in my office, I felt self-conscious.  I loved spending every minute with him over the weekend, but work had always been mine.  My space.  Henry had always speculated that Emily, Izzy, and I just sat around gossiping, trading recipes, and that I constantly talked about what a dynamo he was in bed.  And I always defended us, insulted by his assumption that we got absolutely nothing done.

            “We work,” I would always say when he would tease me about it.  “We work really hard.  Do you think the only people on the planet who know how to put in a full day are the ones who possess a penis and a law degree?”

            Now, listening to Emily and Izzy go over every little detail of Izzy’s fizzled romance (that had lasted all of 48 hours), I was starting to worry about the big “I told you so” that I would get when we left at the end of the day.  But I couldn’t think of how to make it stop.  I mean, I couldn’t very well say, “Would you guys shut up?  Henry is rolling his eyes and telling me that we’re the company’s in-house Oprah show.”

            I tuned them out a little while I opened my email and saw a message from my mother pop up in the middle of the list of requests for company t-shirts and water bottles.

            Aunt Marge has the flu so send her a card when you get a chance.  Have you checked your eggs lately?  Remember that expired eggs don’t taste very good and you won’t know it until you start eating them.  Do you have eggs on your grocery list this week?

Love, Mom

            “Listen,” Izzy was saying.  “I didn’t get married when I was fifteen years old like you two did.  I decided to wait, which means that as far as dating goes, I’m old and crotchety and set in my ways.  I can tell within the first few minutes of a date whether or not it’s going to work out.  And even though Jeff is really nice, he’s just not my speed.”

            “Nice is not your speed?”  Emily asked.

            “Not that nice.  That kind of nice is more Jane’s.”

            There was a moment of silence, which Henry broke only to me.  “Will you tell her to shut up?”

            I shot a dirty look his direction that Izzy immediately picked up on.

            “What?” she said.  “I’m serious.  He’s really nice, smart, and funny.  You two seemed to kind of hit it off the other night.”

            “What you do mean we ‘hit it off’?”  I asked her.  “We barely spoke.”

            “Yeah, but it doesn’t take a full conversation to know if something might work or not.  You should give him a try.  If anything, he might be good for a fling.”

            The conversation was starting to make me feel uncomfortable, especially knowing that Henry was there listening to it.  Our eyes met for a moment, but I couldn’t tell what he was thinking and I wasn’t entirely sure if I wanted to know.  Right before I tore my eyes away from him, I noticed the screen on Emily’s computer flicker slightly, almost as if it had a short.

            “I’m not ready to be flung,” I said, shifting in my seat.

            “Why not?  If you don’t get flung sometime soon, your flingability might expire.  And let’s face it; you’re a widow, not a nun.”

            “Let it go,” Emily said, trying to defuse the situation in her mom-like way.  “If she’s not ready, she’s not ready.”

            “Yeah,” I said.  “Just because you seem to feel it’s necessary to fling every man in Texas and the bordering states doesn’t mean I do.”

            “Hey, just because I date a lot, doesn’t mean I’m – “

            “And just because I haven’t been…flung…in a while doesn’t mean – “

            “How’s it going, ladies?” Michelle said, entering our little nest of cubicles.

            “Fine,” we all said in chorus.

            Izzy gave me a foul look and turned around to face her computer.  Emily shrugged as if the two of us were so immature she was beyond us.  And Henry sat in a stony silence.

            “Glad to hear it,” said Michelle.  “Have a good weekend, did we?”

            “Yes,” we all replied.

            “Good.  Did you notice that it’s Monday morning now?” 

            “Yes.”

            “Perfect.  Can’t wait to hear those little fingers clicking away!”  She said with mock cheerfulness.  “Oh, and when you all get a minute, come into my office and sign a bereavement card for Sheila over in Accounting.”

            “Why?  What happened?” asked Emily.

            “Her dog died over the weekend,” said Michelle, shaking her head sadly.  “Jane, I’m sure that you’ll have something particularly helpful to say in the card, since you’ve been through a loss like that.”

            I stared at her for a minute.  “A loss like what?”

            “You know…losing something you truly love.  I know that it’s heart-wrenching.  I’m sure you can really sympathize with her.”

            With that, she turned and walked back to her private cubicle giving us a view of a skirt that was too tight in the back and a run in her tights she would find when she got home that night because none of us liked her enough to tell her it was there.

            “She did not just say that,” said Izzy under her breath.

            I could feel Emily and Izzy looking at me as if waiting for me to either say something that would smooth over the situation and make everyone more comfortable or come up with a plan to mess with the brakes on Michelle’s car.  But I was too stunned to say anything at that point.

            “I have to run to the restroom,” I said suddenly.  “Cover my phone?”

            “Sure,” Emily said slowly turning back to her monitor.  I could feel Izzy’s eyes on my back as I made my way out of our bullpen and I walked the gray maze to the women’s bathroom, Henry trailing behind me.  When I opened the door to let us both in, I did a quick peek under the stalls to make sure no one else was in there.

            “What?” I asked Henry, crossing my arms in front of me.

            “Nothing!” He said, trying to make his face look innocent, but still looking a little irritable.

            “Don’t give me that.  You’re annoyed.  At what? Michelle?”

            “While I’m not crazy about the fact that I just got put into the same category as something that drinks out of a toilet, no.  I’m not annoyed with Michelle.”

            “Then what is it?”

            “I just find it a little convenient that we ran into that guy the other day and then first thing this morning, his name comes up again.  A little coincidental, don’t you think?”

            “Well, I didn’t bring up his name.”

            Henry’s shoulders seemed to relax a little.  “I know.  I guess I’m just jealous.  I’m dead and I’m jealous.  It’s like I want to fight for you, but I know I can’t.  Or that I shouldn’t.  I mean, put yourself in my place.”

            “I know,” I said, trying to soothe him.  “But I meant what I said.  I’m not interested in dating him.  Or anyone.  And especially now that you’re here…I just don’t feel like I need to fill that spot in my life.”

            Henry looked at me for a minute, seemingly trying to digest what I’d just said.  “I think I’m going to go home.”

            “What?  Why?  I thought you wanted to be with me.”

            “I do.  But I think you need a little space.  I mean, if I were alive, I wouldn’t be coming with you to work.  I think you need some time with your friends without worrying that I’m…hovering.”

            “But I don’t mind that you’re hovering!” I insisted, even though I kind of did.  “I like being around you.  Don’t – “

            Just then the door to the bathroom banged open and in walked one of the women who worked in the Facilities department.  I was always friendly with Carla because she was kind and it was always helpful to be friends with someone who can expedite a new chair or a replacement lightbulb, but most of the time I did my best to avoid her.  I think she was a little lonely, working in a department of unsocial men, so if you got cornered by her, you could be in that corner for at least twenty minutes.

            “Hey, Jane!” she said in her I’m-glad-to-see-you-let-me-give-you-a-run-down-of-my-weekend-with-my-goldfish voice.  “How are you?”

            “Um…I’m good.  Fine.  Everything’s good.”

            She glanced around the bathroom quickly.  “Were you talking to someone?”

            At that moment, I looked behind me and saw that I was the only person in the bathroom.  Henry had left, not that she could have seen him anyway.  And that suddenly made me feel panicky.

            “No, no one,” I said, my voice jittery.  “Hey, I’ve got to go.  Catch up with you later?”

            “That sounds great!” she said.  “I can’t wait to tell you what happened to me this weekend – “

            I bolted out the door and over to my office where Izzy and Emily were busy working.  Henry wasn’t in the vacant chair and I felt a streak of fear run through my body.

            What if he was gone again?

            “I have to go,” I said, frantically picking up my purse and looking for my keys.

            “What’s wrong?” asked Emily and she and Izzy both turned around in their seats to face me.

            “Nothing.  Nothing’s wrong.  Stomach pains.  I’m worried I’m coming down with something.  Tell Michelle, okay?  Tell her I’ll call her later.”

            I didn’t wait for an answer as I raced out of our bullpen and out the door of the building.  I ran to my car, threw it into gear, and screeched out of the parking lot.  Getting on the highway, I swerved through the slight mid-morning traffic before pulling off on the exit to my townhouse.  By the time I let myself in the door, my face was streaked with tears as I dropped my purse on the floor and ran through the house.

            “Henry?  Henry?” I screamed.

            “What?  What?  Why are you home?  What happened?” He said as he emerged from the bedroom.

            “How could you leave me like that?” I said, hiccupping and crying.  “You were just gone.  I thought you’d left me again!”

            “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry,” he said, his face looking like if he could cry he would.  “I told you that I wanted to give you some space.  I thought you just needed some time with your friends without me standing over you.”

            “Well, we need to come up with a better system,” I said, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand.  “Promise me that you won’t leave me like that again without telling me first.”

            And although I didn’t finish the sentence, the rest of it ran through my head like a banner.

            Like you left me before.

~

            And so Henry and I fell into a pattern that week, not unlike how we lived before he died:  Apart during the day and then together at night.  I would go to work and spend my days organizing events that other departments and customers thought fell into the “life or death” category while I began to absorb how trivial what I did really was.  The frivolity was both a blessing and a curse:  It allowed me to concentrate at my base level without really investing myself.  But it also made me bitter when someone would walk into my office and make demands, assuming that there was nothing else more important going on in my life.

            Emily and Izzy didn’t seem to notice the change in me at first and how preoccupied I’d become.  I participated in our conversations as I always did, but as soon as work was finished, I bolted out the door to my car, making excuses why I couldn’t go out for a glass of wine with them or meet for dinner later in the evening.  Because while I appreciated Henry’s insight into giving me a little space, as I spent my physical day at work, my mind was always at home, yearning to be with him and fearing that one of those days, I would go home and he wouldn’t be there.

            “Maybe I should quit my job,” I said to him one evening at the kitchen table as he was watched me eat my Lean Cuisine. 

            “Why?” He asked.  “Don’t you like it anymore?”

            “No, I do.  At least I think I do.  But I don’t like being there when I can be here with you.”

            Henry gave me his stern look.  “We’ve already had the living-under-a-bridge discussion.  And I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but I don’t think that’s a good enough reason.”

            “What?  Why?  Don’t you want to spend time with me?”

            “Of course I do.  That’s why I’m here.  At least I think that’s why I’m here.  Frankly, I’ve had some time to think this week and that’s been the number one question on my mind.”

            “What?  Why you’re here?”

            “Yes.”

            “Haven’t we already established that?  It’s because I wished for you.”

            “I know.  But I think that answers the ‘how.’  Not the ‘why.’”

            “Well, do you have any theories on that, Dr. Stewart?” I asked playfully.

            But Henry’s face was serious.  “I do, actually.”

            “Let’s hear it.”

            Henry put his arms on the table and leaned forward toward me, a look of concentration on his face.  “I think that you and I had such a pull toward each other that we couldn’t let go of each other yet.  I mean, I’ve spent a lot of time with you since my death, because I can’t imagine being without you.  And I know that I’ve been the main thing that you think about all of the time and in many ways you’re not ready to live your life without me either.”

            “Well, I would think that’s normal.”

            “Maybe.  But with both of us so unwilling to move away from each other because we were always so dependent – and I don’t mean that in a bad way – it’s like we formed a bond that can’t be broken.  And I’m not sure that that’s such a good thing.”

            “But I don’t want to break away from you,” I said, hot panic rising in my stomach.

            “I know.  And I don’t want to break away from you either.  But I think until we figure out a way to let each other go a little, we’re both just going to be stuck.”

            “What do you mean?  You feel stuck?”

            “I think I am.  Here’s the thing:  I’m pretty sure there is something beyond this, something beyond what I’m doing.  Because I don’t see other people over here like I should.  Like, I don’t see my grandparents.  I don’t see the kid I went to high school with who was killed in a car accident the night before our graduation.  I don’t see Kurt Cobain.”

            “So?”

            “So where are they?  Where did they go?  Why aren’t there a zillion other people – spirits – around me?”

            “I don’t know.”      

            “I don’t either.  But it would make sense that they went someplace else.”

            I was silent while I thought about this.  And then I felt that familiar prickling behind my eyes and knew that if I said what I needed to say out loud, I would start to cry.

            “But Henry,” I said, taking a shaky breath in.  “I don’t want you to go anywhere else.”

            “I know.  I don’t want you to go anywhere either.  I don’t want you to move, to date, to get married again, and have a whole other life that I won’t be a part of.  But I think that until we both work through that, we’re both going to be stuck where we are.”

            I watched a look of pain come across his face.  “And think of what this is like for me,” he went on.  “I don’t want to go anywhere either.  I don’t want to leave you.  But staying here, not being able to touch you or to be the husband I once was…it’s like hell for me.  And I don’t want to feel this way forever.”

            We were both quiet for a minute, thinking over what had just been said.

            “So what does that mean?  What do we do?”  I finally asked, almost positive that I didn’t want to hear the answer.

            Henry’s face came as close to mine as it could.  If he had been alive, I would have thought he was about to kiss me.  My body couldn’t help but brace for what it hoped I was coming and my legs went weak and seized at the same time, but my heart hurt with the knowledge that it wasn’t possible.

            And then he whispered, his face so close to mine that I swore for a minute I could feel his breath, I could feel a piece of him pass through me.

“We help each other let go.”

Wish You Were Here: Chapter 6

(CLICK HERE to read from the beginning!)

I know that having your dead husband come back as a visible spirit may seem impossible, but for those of us who have experienced the death of a life-long partner, it really doesn’t seem that far-fetched.  In fact, I’m pretty surprised that I didn’t see the signs that Henry was here all along.  Because I’ve come to the realization that most of us widows are actively looking for them.

            During one of the first grief support meetings I went to after Henry died, the entire cast of widows started talking about how they knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that their husbands had visited them.  I was sitting in a windowless meeting room at a local church that I had never been to before, trying to pay attention but really focusing on the clock on the wall.  My mother had encouraged me to go out and find people in my similar situation – which is harder than it sounds.  Sure, there are a lot of widows out there, but I’m beginning to think that the young widows are meeting at some bar and aren’t as organized as the older ones because they don’t advertise.

            So there I sat on my third (and what would turn out to be my last) meeting, looking around at silver-gray hair, listening to women mourn the loss of husbands they had known for fifty years, keeping quiet as I usually did because I felt the fact that Henry and I had only technically been married for five didn’t give me the right to speak up, when the group started talking about signs they had received from their husbands.

            “I was sitting on my couch eating a family-size bag of Lays potato chips – you know Gary always loved potato chips, I told y’all that, didn’t I?” said Emma, one of the 70-year-old widows in my group .  “Anyway, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself when – and you won’t believe this – I picked up one of the chips and noticed that it had a burned spot on it that was a dead ringer for Gary’s profile!  I just knew he was with me.”

            This declaration made me think that the woman was a raving lunatic but to my surprise, the entire group of women starting murmuring and nodding their heads as if they too had experienced a sign from their husbands in some sort of snack food.  I started questioning my skepticism and wondering if I should start looking into my ice cream for Henry’s likeness in the scattering of the pralines in the vanilla. 

            But I guess I really wasn’t so different from those women.  During the first weeks after Henry died, I would go to bed every night almost giddy with anticipation, thinking that surely he’d visit me in a dream.  And then every morning, I would wake heavy with disappointment, having only dreamed about insignificant things like flying to the moon with the Pillsbury Dough Boy or that I was back in high school getting ready to take a final for a class that I hadn’t attended all year. I once had a dream that I was living back in the house I grew up in, having a fight with my mother and it looked like Henry was in the background.  But I was never quite sure.

            Of course, it did occur to me, the morning that Henry appeared, that I might be suffering from some sort of grief-induced mental breakdown or that the neon make-up I had put on the night before had been laced with something that had seeped into my system causing me to hallucinate.  But the truth was, I really didn’t care.  He was there and that was all that mattered to me.

            I didn’t want to leave him for even a second, afraid he would disappear as suddenly as he had materialized, but I was suddenly conscious of how I looked, make-up smeared and only wearing my bra and underwear from the night before. And even though I knew at that point Henry and I wouldn’t be “hooking up” in the physical sense, I still wanted to look my best.  Dead or not, he was still my husband.

            “Do you mind if I hop in the shower for just a minute?” I asked.

            “Go right ahead.  I’ll be here.  At least I think I will.”

            “Okay,” I said, backing slowly into the bathroom while watching him, afraid he might disappear into a cloud of smoke at any moment.  And then I stopped, a thought suddenly popping into my head.  “You don’t…go in there with me do you?”

            “Naw,” he said, smirking a little.  “Well, once.  But watching you shave your armpits kind of killed it for me a little and I decided that you deserved your privacy.”

            “Once the romantic, always the romantic.”

            “I do what I can.”

            I took the quickest shower in history, spending the majority of the five minutes I was in there scrubbing at my face, afraid that once I got out Henry would be gone.  But when I emerged from the steam, my robe wrapped around me, there he was, sitting on the bed, looking at a picture of us on the nightstand.

            It was taken when we were in Europe, standing on the top of the Eiffel Tower.  We had asked another tourist to take the shot and right before he did, Henry said something funny – to this day, I can’t remember what – and in the picture I’m looking up at him laughing.  He’s looking straight at the camera with a smile on his face, happy and content and appearing as if life was just what he wanted it to be.

            It was one of my favorite pictures because he just looked so…Henry.  In the time he’d been gone, I had looked through so many pictures of him that I knew them all by heart.  But that picture somehow captured the spirit of him, truly the face I’d seen every day since I was 22-years-old.  It wasn’t posed or artificial.  It was just Henry as alive as he’d ever been, enjoying his dream vacation without a care in the world.  When I looked closely, I could see him – really see him – and it both comforted me and made me long for him every night when I went to bed and kissed the glass protecting the photo.

            “I look at that picture all the time,” I said.

            “I know you do.”

            “Do you know what I think about when I look at it?”

            “What?”

            “I wonder how we didn’t know.  How in that moment we had no idea that your life would be over in just a couple of months.  How we didn’t have a clue that something so huge was getting ready to happen.”

            Henry turned from the picture and looked at me.  For just a moment, I swore I could feel him and I noticed the vanity lights in the bathroom dim slightly and then come back on with full force.

            “Aren’t you glad we didn’t know?” He asked quietly.

            I thought about that for a minute.  “I guess so.  But you know me.  I’m a planner.  I don’t like to have things sprung on me.  And your death, needless to say, came as something of a surprise.”

             “Wasn’t on my agenda either,” he said.

            We looked at each other in silence for a minute.

            “Am I the only one you visit?”  I asked.

            “You’re the one I spend the most time with,” he said.  “I’ve gone to see my parents every once in a while, visit my brothers.  But you’re the one I don’t want to leave.” 

            My eyes began to tear and I moved to sit down on the bed next to him.

            “I watch them struggle with my death sometimes,” he continued, “but they struggle together.  My parents have each other.  My brothers have people they can lean on.  When I’m with you, I feel like you’re struggling alone.”

            “I think that’s what I get the angriest about…that you left me here to deal with all of this on my own,” I said, letting a few tears fall.  “I know it wasn’t intentional.  But that’s the way it worked out.  And everyone does their best with me, but you knew me.  You were the one I could be the most honest with.  And, frankly, it gets a little old, saying over and over again, ‘I’m sad because my husband’s dead.’  It’s like I can hear everyone else say, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Get a new story.’”

            “I know,” he sighed.  “And for me, it’s been frustrating knowing that you’re going through what you are and that you don’t know that I’m here, that I’m still trying to be here for you.”

            “I kept waiting for you to come to me in a dream or something.”

            “I tried.  Once I even tried to give you my picks for the football pool.  But you were so freaked out about some high school test, you weren’t paying attention.”

             “You’d think after five years of marriage we wouldn’t still be having communication issues.”

            “I guess a little hiccup in the communication department might happen when someone’s been hit by a truck.”

            I smiled a little at Henry’s attempt at humor about our situation, but I was disappointed in myself for not seeing him for so long, for not seeing the signs.  The truth was, every time one of those other widows would talk about the outrageous things she encountered, swearing up and down that it was her husband contacting her, I felt like I didn’t love Henry as much because I didn’t have any stories to contribute.  And I felt like a failure.

            “I know you’ve always loved me,” Henry said as if reading my mind.

            “I did.  I loved you so much,” I said.  “I don’t think I knew how much until you were gone.  We were just so us, you know?  If there was anything I was sure about it was you and me.  And then when you died, I wasn’t sure of anything anymore.  Except how much I loved you.  And with you gone, I didn’t know if that even mattered anymore.”

            “I know.  I’ve always known.  And it will always matter.”

            Henry moved to hold my hand, almost as if it was a reflex and then slowly pulled away when he realized that it wasn’t possible.

            “Okay.  Enough of this,” he said, suddenly standing up.  “We’re going to get out of this house.  I’ve watched you long enough to know that all you do is go to work and then come home and sit here alone.  You’re becoming a hermit.  And I don’t know if you realize this, but there is an age requirement before you can enter Hermitville.”

            “There’s a Hermitville?” I asked.  “If only I would have known!  Then I wouldn’t have been so alone in my hermiting.”

            “Well, the one thing I did notice when I made my surprise shower visit was how pasty you’ve become from all of your hermiting.  And I don’t mean this as an insult, but it’s not becoming.”

            “What in the world would make you think I would take that as an insult?  It has always been my dream to become a washed-out hermit.”

              Henry smiled his old smile.  “Get dressed, Pasty.  Let’s hit the town.”

~

            Henry and I walked out onto the front stoop of the townhouse and I took a moment to blink away the sun and get my bearings.  The humidity wasn’t as heavy as it tended to get in the middle of full-blown summer, but it was still there and made me feel wet the moment I stepped out of the dry air conditioning.  I leaned against the front door, feeling slightly dizzy for a minute thanks to my bender the night before, and ready to go back inside and work on my pastiness.

            “Bet those vodka tonics don’t seem like such a good idea now, do they?” Henry said, a little smug.

            “I may be hungover, but at least I’m not dead,” I countered.

            “Good point.”

            We walked down the steps to the sidewalk that weaved around our community and I paused for a minute, as I did every time I came out of the house, looking at the spot on the street where Henry had died.  Some people had encouraged me to move from the townhouse, but I knew I wasn’t ready.  The weird thing was that I usually felt closer to Henry when I looked at that spot.  I didn’t visit the cemetery where he was buried very often because I really thought of that spot on the street as Henry’s final resting place.  It was the last place he was Henry. 

            “What’s it like?” I asked.

            “What?”

            “To die.  What did it feel like?”

            “To be honest, it didn’t feel like much.  One minute I was crossing the street and the next I was looking at myself.  I think there was a minute when I didn’t even know it was me because the first thing I thought was, ‘Ouch.  That had to hurt.’”

            “And did it?”

            “No.  It was actually like a weight had been lifted.  I don’t know if it was the losing my body or what.”

            “Well, you had been talking about dieting before you decided to wrestle that Fed Ex truck.  This was a quicker way to go about it.”

            “No, I meant that the things that I would have normally worried about…I suddenly just didn’t anymore.  Like getting the oil changed or fixing the leaky faucet in the kitchen.”

            “Yes, well, that all conveniently fell to me.”

            “I know.  And I’m sorry.  Actually the one worry that didn’t go away was you.  Which was funny because I’d never really worried about you before.  I always knew that you could take care of yourself.  But the moment I realized what had happened, I felt pulled to you.  It’s been a pretty helpless feeling, wanting to take care of you and knowing that I can’t.”

            We began walking down the sidewalk, falling back into that companionable silence that I loved so much about us and had missed since he’d been gone.  Here and there, neighbors were out in their yards, weeding or sitting in lawn chairs and enjoying the day, but for the most part the neighborhood was quiet and we walked, unnoticed and unacknowledged as we rounded one corner and made our way to the park across the street from our neighborhood.  Since the weather was less intense that day than it had been the weeks before, the park was full of people picnicking, running, and playing with their kids.  The good spots under the shade trees had all been taken and a group of guys who looked to be in their early twenties had set up a volleyball net in the far corner of the park.

Suddenly, another thought occurred to me.

            “Henry…can anyone else see you?” I asked.

            “I don’t think so.  There was one time when I walked in on Jimmy after he’d had his 13^th beer and I thought he could see me.  He looked right in my direction and squinted really hard.  I started waving at him and then he threw up.  I didn’t know how to take that.”

            “No, I mean can anyone see you now?  Like I can.”

            “Oh.  I don’t know.”

            At that moment, I spied one of the single girls who lived a couple of blocks away from us jogging on the path around the park.  Henry and I didn’t really socialize with many of our neighbors much more than an occasional “hello” in passing, but Katelyn was different.  If Jimmy and Henry had had a few beers at our house after work, one of them would turn to the other at around 7:00 and say, “Is it time?”

            “Yup.  It’s time.”

            “Let’s assume the position.”

            Then they would go outside and sit on the front steps of our townhouse and wait for the show.

            Katelyn didn’t just jog.  She bounced.  All of her bounced.  Her feet seemed to have extra springs in them that lifted her whole body in a perky mini-jump and then she would land with all of her wiggly parts touching down a millisecond later.  And then the next foot would make it happen all over again so that everything moved up and down at a rapid pace, much to the delight of my husband and our lonely and horny neighbor.  And Katelyn didn’t believe in clothes that might constrict or inhibit this motion, preferring to wear sports bras in colors I didn’t even know were in the spectrum and bottoms that, as my grandmother would say “barely covered possible.”

            “Hey Katelyn,” the boys would say in unison as she passed by our townhouse at 7:05 on the dot every weekday.  Their grins would be a combination of leering and boyishly charming and I swear I saw Jimmy drool once.

            “Hey, boys,” she would say with a little wave and bounce on by.

            Even if I sat out there with them, Katelyn would never acknowledge me and I knew she performed this show on purpose.  I mean, there were other routes she could have taken, but jogging by our house was something that she never changed.  She never really stopped to engage in conversation, something I was kind of disappointed about.  I was sure that if she did, we would find out that she didn’t know any words over two syllables.  And then my status would be confirmed as the maybe-not-quite-as-physically-sexy-but-intellectually-sexier-than-Katelyn girl on the block.

            Judging by Henry’s expression as he watched her jounce her way toward us, it was plain that death had done nothing to curb the 12-year-old boy hormones he seemed to carry with him to the age of thirty.  He stared and stared and if I had been able to, I would have elbowed that stare right off of him.

            “Seriously?”  I said. 

            “What?”  He said, blinking away his stupor.

            “If you thought she was unattainable before, how do you think it would work now?”

            “Oh, come on.  You know she does nothing for me.  You’re the only woman I’m truly attracted to.”

            “Yeah, right,” I said, rolling my eyes.  “Just remember:  All of that looks good now, but someday gravity will take over and those things will be down to her knees which she’ll have to have replaced thanks to all of that ridiculous jogging.”

            “No they won’t.”

            “Of course they will.  It happens to everyone.”       

            “They’re not real.”

            I stared at her again.  “How do you know that?”

            “Look at the way they bounce.  Real boobs bounce differently.  Here…jump up and down and I’ll show you.”           

            “Do you really expect me to start jumping up and down in a public park so that you can evaluate my breasts?”

            “I was just trying to help.  Women get so bent out of shape about other women’s boobs.  I think if you could all figure out the difference between real and fake, you’d be a lot less bitter about it.”

            Just then, Katelyn jogged past me without giving me a second glance.

            “I don’t think people can see you,” I said.  “If she could have seen you, she would have given you one of those wiggly waves like she used to.”

            “Jane?”  I heard behind me.

            I turned around and there was Jeff with a Frisbee in one hand and a golden retriever that looked so happy his whole body seemed to be wagging.

            “Jeff?  What are you doing here?”

            “I just live a few blocks away.  I thought I’d give Bandit a thrill and take him someplace bigger than the postage stamp I have for a yard.  What are you doing here?”

            “Just…taking a walk.”

            “Oh.  Do you come here a lot?”

            “Not really…I mean I used to…with Henry…,” I stuttered, suddenly nervous and not sure why.

            “Were you…talking to someone a minute ago?” Jeff asked with an amused expression on his face. I looked at Henry who, to my surprise, was giving a Jeff what looked like a glare.

            “Oh.  Ah.  No.  I was…brainstorming about something for work.  Sometimes I get really into it and talk out loud.  Drives Emily and Izzy crazy.”

            “It’s weird how I’ve never seen you here before, but we live so close.  Do you come over here very much?”

            “Not so much anymore.  Henry and I used to come over and walk every once in a while when the weather wasn’t too hot, but since he’s been gone it’s just one of those things that I don’t like doing because I’m scared it will make me miss him too much.”

            I blurted all of that out before I even realized what I was saying.  Since Henry had been gone, I found myself overly conscious of what was coming out of my mouth because the few times I’d talked about him with people I didn’t know very well, an uncomfortable silence usually followed.  This would then be followed by attempts from me to make the other person feel better, rather than the other way around, and I just didn’t have the energy for that anymore. 

            But Jeff didn’t allow that awkward moment to happen.  He nodded and said, “I can understand that.”

            I cleared my throat and allowed my eyes to dart over in Henry’s direction and then back to Jeff.  “So I guess you come here quite a bit?”

            “I try to,” he said.  “But like you, I just come when the weather cooperates.  Bandit is a little bit high maintenance like that.  But I guess if I had to wear a full-length fur in one hundred percent humidity, I’d probably feel the same way.”

            I bent down to give Bandit’s head a pat and was rewarded with what I thought looked like a grin around his panting tongue.  “Yes, I only wear my mink when it’s eighty degrees or less.” 

            Jeff let loose with my favorite kind of laugh – the kind that you can’t help but laugh right along with.  “Hey, maybe since we live so close, we could meet here some time.  There’s nothing Bandit likes more than playing Monkey in the Middle.  He’s really a whiz at it.”

            Henry began moving closer to Jeff and even though he had never been much of a fighter, I could tell he at least wanted to poke him in the eye or something.

            “Um.  Sure.  Maybe.”

            “Okay,” said Jeff.  “I’ll see you around.”  And he turned around and walked away, leading Bandit’s wagging body behind him.

            “That’s right, buddy,” Henry said under his breath.  “Just move along.  Nothing to see here.”

            “What’s your problem?”  I asked.

            “I guess I just don’t like watching someone make a pass at my wife.”

            “A pass?  You’ve got to be kidding me.”

            “Are you really so out of it that you don’t know when someone is hitting on you?”

            “By asking me to meet him for a suggestive game of Frisbee?  Besides, he’s dating Izzy.”

            “Oh and we all know that Izzy is all about commitment.”

            “At least we definitively answered our question.”

            “That men are assuming you’re on the market?”

            “No, you jerk.  He couldn’t see you.  Which means that everyone around me is assuming that I’m talking to myself.  All I’m missing now is a tattered crocheted afghan around my shoulders and a bottle of ripple in a paper bag.”

            “Well, then I guess it’s a good thing that your friend Jeff apparently finds crazy sexy.”

            Now it was my turn to glare.  “It’s a non-issue anyway.  Okay?  I’m not dating him.  I’m not dating anyone.  I will probably not date anyone ever again and become a lonely spinster.  Does that make you happy?”

            Henry’s annoyed expression suddenly changed to one of deep sadness.

            “No.  It doesn’t.”

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