“I brought over the mail,” Eric says. My mother is dead. What could any piece of paper possibly say that would be worth reading?
“You hungry?”
It takes me a moment to realize that my father has asked this of Eric, and another second to understand that the answer is yes, actually, Eric is nodding his head yes, and a third, still, to realize neither knows how to prepare a meal. My mother cooked for my father, for all of us—she was great at it. She’d make elaborate breakfasts: goat cheese frittatas with scooped-out bagels. Fruit salad and cappuccinos. When my father retired five years ago, they’d begun to eat outside, setting up on the veranda for hours. My mother loved the New York Times on a Sunday, and an iced coffee in the afternoon. My father loved what she did.
Chuck, my dad, worshipped Carol. He thought she hung the moon and painted the stars in the sky. But the deep secret, although it couldn’t have been one to him, is that I was her great love. She loved my father, certainly. I believe there wasn’t a man on earth she would have traded him for, but there was no relationship above ours. I was her one, just like she was mine.
I believe my love with my mother was truer, purer, than what she had with my father. If you’d have asked her Who do you belong to, the answer would have been Katy.
“You’re my everything,” she’d tell me. “You’re my whole world.”
“There are some leftovers in the fridge,” I hear myself saying.
I think about dishing lettuce onto plates, heating the chicken, crisping the rice the way I know my dad likes.
My father is gone, already in pursuit of the La Scala chopped salads that are no doubt soggy in their containers. I can’t remember who brought them over, or when, just that they’re there.
Eric is still standing in the doorway.
“I thought maybe we could talk,” he says to me.
I left last night and drove here. I let myself in like I had thousands of times, with my own key. I tiptoed up the stairs. It was nearly midnight, and I poked my head into my parents’ bedroom, expecting to see my father fast asleep, but he wasn’t in there. I looked in the guest room and didn’t find him there, either. I went down the stairs into the family room. There he was, asleep on the couch, their wedding photo in a frame on the floor.
I covered him. He didn’t stir. And then I went upstairs and slept in my parents’ bed, on the side that was hers.
In the morning I came downstairs to find my dad making coffee. I didn’t mention the couch, and he didn’t ask me why I was up there, or where I had slept, either. We’re forgiving each other these oddities, what we’re doing to survive.
“Katy,” Eric says when I don’t respond. “You have to talk to me.”
But I don’t trust myself to speak. Everything feels so tenuous that I’m afraid if I even say her name, all that would come out would be a scream.
“Do you want to eat?” I ask.
“Are you coming home?” There is an edge to his voice, and I realize, not for the first time in the past few months, how unused to discomfort we both are. We do not know how to live a life that the bottom has fallen out of. These were not the promises of our families, our upbringings, our marriage. We made promises in a world lit with light. We do not know how to keep them in the darkness.
“If you just communicate with me, I can help,” Eric says. “But you have to talk to me.”
“I have to,” I repeat.
“Yes,” Eric says.
“Why?” I realize how petulant this sounds, but I am feeling childish.
“Because I’m your husband,” he says. “Hey, it’s me. That’s what I’m here for. That’s the point. I can help.”
I am overcome with a sudden, familiar anger and the boldface, pulsating words: Unfortunately, you can’t.
For thirty years I have been tied to the best person alive, the best mother, the best friend, the best wife—the best one. The best one was mine, and now she’s gone. The string that tethered us has been snipped, and I am overcome with how little I have left, how second-best every single other thing is.
I nod, because I cannot think what else to do. Eric hands me a stack of envelopes.
“You should look at the one on top,” he says.
I glance down. It’s marked United Airlines. I feel my fingers curl.
“Thanks.”
“Do you want me to leave?” Eric asks. “I can go pick up sandwiches or something…”
I look at him standing in his oxford shirt and khaki shorts. He shifts his body weight from one foot to the other. His brown hair hangs too long in the back; his sideburns, too. He needs a haircut. He has on his glasses. Dorky handsome, my mother said when she met him.