“I’ll drink to that,” several shouted and we raised our drinks a little higher.
“To Jay,” I said to several cheers and we emptied our glasses.
Everyone started to leave. Many waved in my direction or gave my shoulder a squeeze as they passed by the table I was sitting at. Lanie made sure that one of the officers gave Harry a ride home as he was in no shape to drive. Lanie shook hands with the final guest and started to clean up the pictures, while Stella squared the tab with the bartender. When we were finally ready to leave, Stella called the car service she had ordered and we piled inside.
“Jill?” Lanie asked when we were sitting in the car.
“Hm …”
“Jay was a great guy. I’m so sorry.”
Her sudden expression of grief surprised me. I just nodded my head and squeezed her hand.
“He always treated you right and he treated us right, which made him alright with me,” Stella said, slurring her words a little bit.
I reached over and grabbed her hand with my free hand. “Thank you both. I wouldn’t have made it these five days without you. I love you both,” I said.
We rode the rest of the way in silence.
CHAPTER 10
S
aturday and Sunday went by in a daze. I moved from the bed, to the sofa and back again. The only exception was Saturday afternoon when Lanie insisted that it was unseasonably warm for October and suggested I sit outside to get some sun on my face. Harry stopped by at one point to see if there was anything we needed, but Stella and Lanie ushered him out, telling him that I needed my space. Stella and Lanie kept trying to get me to eat, but I refused and by Monday morning Lanie was looking at me as if I were a glass doll that would break at any moment. I could tell that Lanie and Stella were spending more time whispering about what was almost certainly my well-being, because they would stop abruptly when I entered the room, but I didn’t care. Nothing seemed to matter anymore.
Tuesday morning was different. Stella marched into the bedroom at nine in the morning and threw the blankets back.
“Time to get up sleepy head,” she declared.
“Are you insane?” I said, grabbing for the blankets.
“Nope, but if you don’t shape up, your good friend Lanie is going to ship you off to some crazy hospital,” Stella said.
“No, she’s not, and you’re going to leave me alone,” I said.
“Lanie, will you help me?” Stella called down the hallway.
“Sure. What do you need?” Lanie said, coming into the room.
“Jill needs to shower and get dressed. I was hoping you could help me pick her up and put her in the shower.”
“Fully clothed?”
“Fully clothed.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” I mumbled back. I was fuming, why couldn’t they just leave me alone. Lanie grabbed both my ankles and Stella grabbed my arms and together they dragged me into the bathroom, lifting me over the edge of the tub and placing me gently in the tub.
“If you wanted to lose some weight, I could think of better ways,” Stella commented.
“Seriously, you can’t do this. Let me go,” I shouted as I tried to wiggle free but it was impossible.
“Seriously, we can do this and we will,” Stella said as she turned on the shower. I started to scream as the cold water drenched my clothes. Each time I tried to stand, one of them pushed me back down. “Are you done feeling sorry for yourself?” Stella asked.
“Sorry for myself? Fuck you!” I screamed back. Who did they think they were? My husband had just died.
“Jill, this is for your own good,” Lanie insisted.
I didn’t comment as the cold water continued to cascade down over me. I was having trouble concentrating on anything other than my chattering teeth.
“Jill, we aren’t going to let you become a zombie. You need to start moving forward,” Stella said. I was about to protest when she added, “a little bit … every day.”
“If I agree, can I get out of this shower?” I asked, my body shaking.
“I think you’re agreeing too quickly and you don’t mean it,” Stella said.
“I agree,” Lanie said.
“But we will let you shower,” Stella added, turning the water off. They both gave me one final look and left the bathroom.
I slowly stood up and stripped off the cold wet clothes. This time I showered with hot water, dressed, and headed downstairs. Perhaps I could play pretend until they both left?
“There she is, all shiny and new,” Stella said, teasingly.
Lanie laughed and I scowled.
“Now what?” I asked. I was acting like a sullen teenager, but I didn’t care.
“Now you eat and then we go to Swanford and Sons,” Lanie said.
“Why do we have to go to Swanford and Sons?” I whined.
“To pick up Jay,” Stella said in a very matter-of-fact voice.
“Pick him up?”
“His ashes are ready,” Lanie said.
“Oh.”
It was after one in the afternoon by the time Stella and Lanie could convince me to head to the funeral home. When we arrived, there were several cars in the parking lot.
“I hope we’re not interrupting,” Lanie said.
“We did have an appointment earlier this morning, but Mrs. Greenfield here was too busy throwing a fit,” Stella commented. I stuck my tongue out at her.
“Be nice,” Lanie cautioned.
“This is me being nice,” Stella said.
“Let’s get this over with,” I said and trudged up the steps.
Once inside, we could hear several voices off in the distance, so we decided to wait on one of the sofas in the lobby.
“Ladies.” We heard Gary address us after several minutes.
“Sorry we are late. We had some … trouble,” Stella said after Lanie elbowed her.
“No problem. Just wait here a minute.” He motioned he would be right back and left.
As he turned to leave, another man escorted a woman and her children into the lobby and told them that Gary would be right with them. I stared at them. The woman appeared to be in her mid-thirties. She wore jeans, a sweatshirt and running shoes as she carried two children’s coats and a very large bag from which toys were sticking out. Her daughter appeared to be about 10 years old and wore a similar outfit to that of her mother. The little boy was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and was climbing over all the furniture. I could see myself in this woman. In another five or six years I wanted to be this woman. Jay and I had recently started talking about having a family. We had always wondered about the best time to start one. We would ask ourselves whether we had enough in savings, if our jobs were stable enough, how many children we would have. I sighed over the endless possibilities.
As my mind wandered over the idea of carrying Jay’s child and how that could now never happen, I realized that I had missed my last period. Terror, panic and hope suddenly electrified me.
“We need to go home,” I whispered to Stella. I could no longer sit still. There was a chance that I could be pregnant. I did the math in my head again, noting I was six days late.
“You can wait like five more minutes and then we will go.” Stella rolled her eyes.
“You don’t understand—” I started to say but was interrupted by Gary coming back down the hallway with a small, unassuming, gun-metal-gray canister and a small, brown paper bag in his hand.
“Mr. Greenfield,” he said, handing the canister to me and turning to hand the bag to Stella. I didn’t know what the right reaction should be after being handed my husband’s ashes, so I decided to just nod.
“What’s in the bag?” Lanie inquired.
“Mr. Greenfield’s wedding band,” Gary replied. I again just nodded in his direction. “Till death do us part” seemed to take on a new meaning.
“Is everything settled with the bill?” Stella inquired.
“Oh yes, everything has been cleared. It has been a pleasure,” he said and then turned to help the woman and her children.
“Okay. Great. Let’s go.” Both Lanie and Stella shrugged and we headed toward the car.
As soon as Stella pulled up in front of the house, I raced out of the car and into the house and up the stairs. I slammed the bathroom door shut, locking it behind me. I could hear Lanie and Stella shouting after me, but I didn’t care. I rummaged through the cabinet, looking for the pregnancy test I had gotten several weeks prior when we had started talking about having a baby. I ripped open the packaging, quickly skimming through the directions. After following the directions, I sat the stick down on the counter, waiting the obligatory three minutes for either a positive or negative sign. A pounding on the door startled me.
“What the hell is going on, Jill?” Stella demanded from the other side.
“Just a minute,” I called back. I could hear her pause and mumble something to Lanie.
“Come on, Jill. Unlock the door,” Lanie called through the door.
“Really. Just give me a minute,” I called back. I must not have been very convincing, as I could again hear them whispering back and forth. I glanced down at the test again, thinking that three minutes must have passed. Slowly, the indicator on the stick started to light up. My heart sank and a low moan escaped my lips as I sank to the floor with the indicator stick in my hand.
“Jill, what’s happening?” Lanie was now calling a little more frantically while banging on the door.
Hot tears streamed down my face and my shoulders heaved up and down.
“Jill,” Stella yelled. I could hear them, but I couldn’t reply as each sob ripped through my body, making me incapable of communication.
“Lanie, is there anything to open this door?” Stella shouted frantically.
I could hear them shuffling outside the door. It sounded as if someone were playing with the lock from the outside. Finally, the door burst open and Stella stood there with a butter knife in her hand. Horrified, she looked at me. “What the hell is going on?” she repeated.
“Jill?” Lanie rushed to my side and tried to check my vitals. Someone tried to pry the indicator stick from my hand, but I wouldn’t let it go.
“What’s in your hand?” Lanie asked.
“It’s negative,” I bellowed, burying my face in the bathmat.
“What’s negative?” I could hear Stella whisper.
“This!” I finally said, shoving the stick in Lanie’s face.
“A pregnancy test?” Lanie and Stella both said, shocked.
“Well, I didn’t see that coming,” Stella said, sitting down on the edge of the bathtub. Lanie started to rub my back until the heaving slowed down and my breathing half returned to normal.
“Jill, why don’t you tell us what is going on,” Lanie said quietly.
I nodded slowly, sniffling and wiping the tears from my face.
“When we were at the funeral home, I saw the lady and her two kids and I thought that would have been me sooner or later and then I realized that I was late with my period and that
really
could be me.” I paused to sniffle again. “I had so much hope that maybe I was pregnant and then there would still be a piece of Jay left in this world.”
“Oh Jill … it doesn’t work that way,” Lanie said.
“It could have,” I said, waving the indicator stick in her face.
“Jay is gone and you can’t bring him back,” Lanie added.
“But a baby …” I started.
“Wouldn’t solve anything,” Stella said, finishing my sentence for me. I just nodded and adjusted my position on the floor so that my head now rested in Lanie’s lap instead of on the floor.
“You gave us a really big scare,” Stella said.
I crinkled up my forehead in confusion.
“Lanie thought you were racing in here to take a bunch of pills or something,” Stella said.
“What?” I asked in disbelief.
“Well, in my defense, you have been supermoody and depressed … Rightfully so,” Lanie added when I made a face at her. “But something changed at the funeral home, which I now know was false hope, but at the time I thought it was you reaching your breaking point over receiving Jay’s ashes.”
“Jay’s ashes! Where are they?” I asked in a panic, trying to sit up. I had forgotten about the ashes in my rush to get upstairs.
“Calm down. They are safely on the kitchen table,” Stella said as Lanie pushed me back down.
“When we got home, you raced out of the car like a bat out of hell and locked yourself in the bathroom,” Stella continued.
“You didn’t really give us anything to go on so we just had to assume the worst,” Lanie said, finishing Stella’s words. The three of us sat there for a while in silence while I thought through the events of the previous couple hours—and week.
“This has been the craziest week of my entire life,” I finally said.
“Agreed,” Lanie and Stella said at the same time.
We all stopped to look at each other and then we all burst out laughing. Nothing about the situation was funny, but something about it made laughter the only solution.
“Look, I know I have been sad and all those things you said about me are probably true, but I wasn’t trying to kill myself. I really just let myself believe that maybe the family Jay and I dreamed about could still come true.”
“It would never be the family you wanted. Jay wouldn’t be there,” Stella pointed out.
“You’re right. I know you’re right, but at the time it didn’t seem to matter,” I said trying to defend my crazy antics.
“Which is fine but you need to communicate that with us, Jill,” Lanie said. “We don’t know what is going on with you right now,” she added.
“Fair enough,” I said, yawning.
“Time for bed?” Stella asked and I nodded. Stella helped me stand up and took the pregnancy test that I was still clutching in my hand. She stood over the trash holding it out in one hand and looking at me for confirmation. I nodded that it was okay and she then unceremoniously threw it away.
“Jill, you don’t really want a baby anyway,” she said as we made our way to the bedroom.
“Why is that, Stella?”
“Well, it will ruin your figure and then for the next 18 years, it would whine and complain. Eventually it will learn to talk back and spend all your money … Who wants that?”
“You’re right … Who wants that when I have all that already … You are my friend after all,” I said, grinning at her.
She considered my statement and shrugged. “I can’t argue with you there.” We all broke into laughter one more time and the tension of the evening seemed to dissipate. I quickly changed in my pj’s and crawled into bed, motioning for Lanie and Stella to join me. They both sat on either side of me, quietly talking. I curled up in between the two of them and drifted off to sleep to the slow and constant hum of their voices, knowing that tomorrow was going to be a better day. Each day was going to get a little better.