When he was finally done in the garage, the casserole, along with garlic bread and a salad, using some of that romaine, was almost ready to serve. Mike went to his old room to wash up and came back wearing a clean T-shirt he’d found somewhere amid the stuff he’d left behind. Anna was so happy to see him she put her arms around him and he embraced her.
Her cheek against his firm chest felt so good. It was then that she realized how much she missed touching. This was going to be yet another adjustment she’d have to conquer, being alone now.
“You doing okay, Mom?” he asked sweetly.
“I’m getting by pretty well,” she said. “There are a hundred adjustments. A hundred. I’m trying to figure out how to be the only person on the team—the cleaner, the bill payer, the investor, the worker, the shopper, the stocker of supplies, the list maker and the person who has to get things crossed off that list. Sometimes my head spins. I forget things—I guess I’m just distracted. And of course I miss talking to your dad.”
Tears began to gather in Mike’s eyes.
“Have you lost weight?” he asked.
“Let’s sit and eat,” she said. “Tell me about school. Tell me about Jenn.”
He piled spaghetti on his plate. “Your weight?” he asked again.
“I think I have, but it’s just the confusion and having no appetite and for some reason without your dad around I don’t know what will taste good. So I have a bite of this, a bite of that, and then I lose interest.” In the eight weeks since Chad had died she’d lost twenty-two pounds. “You know what Grandma said? She said I could spare it.”
“How is Grandma?” he asked.
“The same. Cranky and more forgetful by the day. But they know at the senior center and she’ll be moving over to the full-care facility soon. And to memory care as soon as there is room. Mike, tell me about you. How are you getting along?”
“I’m doing fine,” he said, scooping food into his mouth. “I have trouble with the idea that he’ll never be around again.”
“I forget that sometimes and start to text him...” she said.
“I know!” he said. “It makes me feel a little crazy!”
“It’s perfectly normal,” she said. “I’ve heard people talk about it going on for years. I’ve even shouted down the hall for him, getting his name half out before I realize... It’s strange.”
“Are you okay with this will business? The ten percent to the unknown person or thing?”
“I’m not sure okay would be the best word,” she said. “I want to know who, what and why, but then I always have those questions about everything. When you get down to it, it was part of my job to want to know, as a defense attorney and as a mother.” She added a laugh so he would know she was taking the light side on this subject. “How about you? Are you okay with it?”
He chewed, swallowed and took a drink of beer. “I’m okay with it.”
It gave her pause. “You really are?”
He shrugged. “It’s his decision. His business. His money. If he didn’t want it questioned... Yeah, I don’t care.”
“You truly don’t care or you can decide you don’t care because you think that’s what your father wanted?”
“What’s the difference?” he asked.
“There’s a huge difference,” she said, believing it to be accurate with every word. “You can have absolutely no interest to the point that if you found out the details, you might actually forget them because they’re that unimportant. Or you can make an emotional decision not to pursue the answers out of respect for someone else’s request. In this case, your father’s.”
He put down his fork. “God, you sound exactly like Jenn.”
“In what way?” Anna asked.
“In the way that she thinks it’s very weird that I can not care about something she finds so care-worthy and she doesn’t get it. Maybe that’s a girl thing. Ya think?”
Anna recalled there was a party once, a backyard thing. Just four or five couples. Three of the women had read a book in their book club about a woman who found a sealed envelope in her attic. It was in a box full of records—taxes, receipts, house records, legal correspondence. On the outside of the envelope it said, To be read by my wife in the event of my death. But he wasn’t dead.
Everyone at the party weighed in on whether they would read what was in the envelope. What if it was written by a woman for her husband, would the men read it? To the last one the women said they would tear open that envelope and read the contents immediately. Likewise, none of the men wanted to know what was inside, not even Chad.