Good Grief: A Novel Read online

  Now, I find a closed bedroom door and push it open.

  The room is dark and the air smells of cigarettes. Crystal lies curled on her side in bed, facing the wall. She’s so light that she hardly makes an indent in the mattress—a narrow boomerang lump that takes up only a tiny slice of space. A blue-and-yellow-checked down comforter is pulled all the way over her head. Just a few spikes of her blond hair stick out across her pillow.

  “Crystal?”

  “Unh,” she says, not moving.

  “Time to get up. Just because you’re not going to school doesn’t mean you can sleep all day.”

  “Un-unh,” she groans, tugging the quilt higher.

  I open one curtain, letting in a stream of sharp light. Sitting on the edge of her bed, I think of how this is like my dad trying to get me out of bed back in San Jose.

  “Come on. I’ll treat you to lunch.”

  Crystal rolls over on her back, the quilt falling away from her face. She stares at the ceiling, her cheeks flushed and creased from the covers, her eyes glassy, as though she has a fever. Her lips are swollen and chapped, with bits of peeling white skin.

  “Honey, are you sick?” I splay the back of my hand across her forehead, which is sticky and warm.

  “Un-unh.” She slowly turns her head toward the wall and blinks, trying to focus.

  I slide one of her arms out from under the covers and run my fingers lightly up and down her skin. I used to beg my mother to tickle my arms like this before bed. Crystal’s scars are fading. They could just be lingering poison ivy now. Maybe a mild case of eczema.

  “Your arms look better,” I tell her. “I’ll take you shopping today. Get you some new short-sleeved tops.” I feel myself being too cheerful, overcompensating for the guilt from a lusty night with Drew.

  Crystal doesn’t say anything. She licks her lips and closes her eyes.

  “Come on. Get up and take a shower and I’ll make your bed.” I slide my arm under her shoulders, trying to lift her. She curls toward me. I shove two pillows behind her to help hold her up.

  Then I peel back the covers and see what’s wrong.

  At first I think there’s something stuck on her leg: a purplish black leathery circle the size of a plate draped over her thigh. But then I realize it’s her skin, which has been burned all the way through to a white, sinewy layer of flesh underneath. The top layer of skin hangs in white wrinkly blisters that weep yellow, staining the sheet.

  Watery saliva rises in my throat. I’m afraid I’m going to vomit. I look away, at the floor.

  “Crystal,” I say slowly, “what happened?”

  She stares at her leg vaguely, as if she knows it from somewhere.

  “I burned myself,” she finally says through shallow breaths.

  “With what?”

  “Teakettle.” She winces as she tries to move her leg. Her pink tank top is hiked up, exposing her flat belly. She seems thinner than ever now.

  “On purpose?” But I know the answer. I look back at the burn. The two dark red rings around the outside must be from the bottom of the kettle. “Does it hurt?” Dumb question.

  Crystal nods. Tears stream down her cheeks, but her face remains still, trancelike.

  “Okay.” I take a deep breath and look around the room, unsure what to do. I head for the bathroom to look for bandages, wondering if I should call 911 or take Crystal to the emergency room myself. I decide to take her, since the hospital’s only five minutes away, and I’m not sure if Crystal’s medical insurance would cover an ambulance.

  Rummaging through the medicine chest and cupboards under the sink, I find gauze and antibiotic cream. But nothing in the room will hold still. The air is starry and my head feels split open above my eyebrows, as though my skull is floating away. I grab the edge of the sink, fall back against the wall, then slide down until I’m sitting on a green fuzzy rug on the floor. With my forehead resting on my knees, I count slowly to ten.

  “You’re going to be okay,” I call out to Crystal, hoping she can’t tell that I’ve collapsed. “But your leg will probably hurt more later.” My voice sounds far away and high-pitched. “The nerve endings go dead at first. That’s your body’s way of protecting you.” Why am I telling her this? I don’t even know if this is exactly how it works. It can’t be comforting information. “Which is why we have to get you to the hospital right away.” I try to say this more calmly.

  Wrapping my fingers over the edge of the sink, I hoist myself up, grab the gauze and antibiotic ointment, and return to the bedroom.

  “Why are you shouting?” Crystal asks.

  She’s sitting up now. Together we swing her legs around so her feet touch the floor. She winces again, shaking her head at the burn. “My dad?” she says.

  “What about him?”

  She points to a fan of greeting cards spread on the floor by the foot of the bed. I lean over to see that each of the different-colored envelopes has her father’s name and address in Alaska printed in Crystal’s loopy handwriting. They’ve all been marked UNDELIVERABLE. There’s a faint purple stamp, a cartoon finger pointing to the words RETURN TO SENDER.

  “All the cards I sent him, like, came back.”

  “Oh, honey, I’m sorry.” I try to hug her, but I don’t want to hurt her leg. “It’s okay.”

  I push the covers aside, then help her stand and walk to the bathroom. Waiting outside the door as she pees, I worry she might faint.

  In her drawer I find a pair of soft cotton shorts. She steps into them and I pull them up over her legs, careful not to let the fabric touch her skin. Tears run down her cheeks, but she doesn’t make a sound. I decide against the ointment and gauze, figuring they might just add to her pain. I pull a sweatshirt over her head and slide clogs on her feet. Slowly we make our way out to my car. “Ow,” she yelps when her leg bends as she’s climbing into the front seat.

  “I know,” I tell her. “I know.”

  On the way home from the hospital, I try to comfort Crystal, telling her that the cards coming back is better than if her father had received them and not bothered to reply.

  “Yeah.” Crystal looks out the passenger window at a boy playing by himself in his yard. “Except now I don’t even know where he lives. Or if he’s even, like, alive. He could have died on a fishing boat. He could have fallen over.”

  The same emergency room doctor who saw me for my anxiety attack treated Crystal. Gentle and reassuring, he gave her a pair of scrubs to wear home over her bandage since we didn’t have any pants for her. He gave her antibiotics and a pain pill and showed us both how to change the dressing. Crystal seems more comfortable now.

  “I know, honey. It’s a terrible thing.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Well, I can’t imagine what it’s like not knowing where your dad is. But did you know that my mother died when I was your age?”

  “Really? How?”

  “Car accident.”

  Crystal considers this. “Were you in the car?”

  “No. I was home with my dad.”

  “Did you ever wish you were in the car?”

  Once I did wish that. Not that I was in the car, necessarily, but that I was with my mother, wherever she had gone. It was just before the first anniversary of her death, and my father was trying to help me hem my bell-bottoms. The stubborn denim fabric wadded up in the sewing machine, and he shouted frantically over the groan of the motor, “Is this the right needle?” Then he broke down and cried. Fathers weren’t supposed to cry. I wanted my mother there so badly that I slammed my fingers in a kitchen drawer. I wasn’t sure why, I just had to do something. Something had to be done.

  “No, honey,” I tell Crystal now. “I never wished that.”

  I remember waking up once in the middle of the night back in San Jose with a burning hole in my stomach from missing Ethan. I was certain something had ruptured inside of me. A tiny organ, maybe a spleen, was floating up into the back of my throat.

  I wanted to call Dr.
Rupert, but I realized there was nothing he could do. I wanted to call Dad, but I realized there was nothing he could do. I wanted to call Ruth, but I realized there was nothing she could do. No matter how much medication I took, or how many times a week I visited my shrink, or how many yoga poses I twisted myself into, or how many grief groups I wept through, or how many cartons of pralines and cream I polished off, it seemed there was no solace in the world.

  I look over at Crystal. Today it seems there’s solace in offering solace to others. Groggy from the pain pill, Crystal dozes off.

  23

  When the loan officer calls from the bank to tell me that my loan’s been approved, I fight the unprofessional impulse to shout into the phone: My own business! I picture the woman perched behind her big desk, as thin and dignified as an egret. Suppressing my elation, I coolly go over the details of the loan with her, as though several other banks in town want to throw money my way, too.

  After I hang up, I call Kit to tell him that I want to sign the lease to rent the old Fudge Shoppe. Then I head straight to Le Petit Bistro to give Chef Alan two weeks’ notice.

  “How can you do this to me?” he bellows, his breath smelling of sherry.

  The dishwasher peers around the corner from his station, a mop of brown hair hanging in his eyes. When he sees Chef shaking a ham-hock fist at me, he quickly ducks behind the wall.

  “I’m sure you’ll find someone else good,” I tell Chef. “I’ll work two more weeks and help train the new person.”

  “No!” Chef snaps, turning his head toward the wall defiantly. “That won’t be necessary. You are dismissed immediately.” His coarse, wavy black hair sticks out in crazy directions, and I think he’s had a bad night or maybe just a bad life.

  The fact is, I need a paycheck while I’m fixing up the bakery and testing recipes. “I can stay three weeks if that helps—”

  “I don’t want anyone working in this kitchen who does not wish to work in this kitchen,” Chef growls, still facing the wall. “Who does not appreciate the privilege of working here. Who thinks they are too good for this establishment—”

  “I don’t think I’m too good for anything. I like working here. Aren’t you a little happy for me, though, that I’m striking out on my own?”

  Chef marches toward his office. “It is very difficult to run your own establishment. You haven’t any idea. You are naive and inexperienced and doomed to fail.”

  “Fine. Thanks for the pep talk.” I wonder if maybe Chef opened his own place at one time and it went under. “I’ll just finish up here and punch out.”

  “Punch out immediately!” he barks, then regains his composure. “Please turn in your uniform on your way out.”

  He disappears into his office, slamming the door.

  “Open these and put them in the mixing bowl, please.” I hand Crystal a package of cream cheese and wedge of Brie. I’m nervous about perfecting my recipes for prime time at the bakery and want to debut the porcini-and-Brie cheesecake at the party on the last day of my pastry class.

  “I don’t feel like baking.” Crystal tosses the cheese on the counter. She licks her forefinger, dunks it into the open canister of sugar, then sucks noisily on it.

  “Crystal!” I grab her hands and push them under the faucet. “First thing, wash your hands. Here’s the deal: If you want to spend more time with me, you’ve got to help. I’m not forcing you; I’m giving you the option. Either we limit our visits to Sundays or we work together during the week. I’m going to pay you.”

  “How much?”

  “Eight dollars an hour.”

  Crystal’s eyebrows shoot up. “That’s pretty good.” She takes another pump of liquid soap and rubs her hands together vigorously, rinses, then dries.

  “Put this on.” I hand her an apron. She pulls it over her head, wrapping the ties twice around her straight, narrow waist. Then she opens the Brie and drops it into the KitchenAid bowl. As she flips the mixer to the highest setting, a glob of cheese flies across the room, sticking to a cupboard door. She doubles over, gulping with laughter.

  “Come on now.” I reach around her to turn down the mixer.

  She points to the stack of cookbooks on the counter and raises her voice over the mixer. “Hey! Who’s Fannie Farmer?”

  “A famous East Coast cook.” I hand her a container of porcini mushrooms. “Rinse these, put them in a small bowl, and pour hot water over them. Very hot, from the tap.”

  “These things smell like feet.” She sticks out her tongue.

  “They’re pungent.” I turn off the mixer. “This is going to be my signature item: savory porcini-and-Brie cheesecake.”

  “Whatever, Fannie!” She rolls up her sleeves, and I see stripes of fresh, white skin where once there were cuts on her arms. I’m relieved to see this cycle of healing, and make a note to buy her vitamin E cream later. For now, I put her to work chopping onions.

  “That dorky actor guy?” Crystal says, peeling away the papery skin of an onion, then cutting into it. “Is he, like, your real boyfriend now?”

  I shrug and get to work crumbling sesame crackers into a bowl for the cheesecake crust.

  “Do you think Ethan would want you to have a boyfriend?” Her eyes tear up from the onion. She wipes them with the backs of her hands, then pauses, considering her own question. “I think he would want you to.”

  “I saw Drew in town,” Ruth says slowly, deliberately. She eases a miniature cheesecake out of its mold, being careful not to let it crack. She’s helping me test the classic New York recipe, which I want to offer in a single-serving size.

  “Did you say hi?”

  “No. I was on the other side of the street. He didn’t see me.” She licks some crust off her finger. “He wasn’t alone.”

  I turn off the mixer. The cheesecake batter emits one bubble of air, as if sighing.

  “He was with that actress,” Ruth continues. “The red-haired one.”

  “Oh, her. I hate her.” I nod, slightly relieved. “But they’re just friends. She has a boyfriend in New York. He’s a big, rich soap opera star.”

  Ruth raises one arched brow doubtfully.

  “They’re engaged,” I tell her.

  “Well, Drew looked very smitten by her. They were arm in arm. Sort of leaning into each other.”

  “They’ve known each other for years. Went to Juilliard together.” I turn the mixer back on.

  “Un-hunh.”

  “Maybe they slept together,” I ponder, raising my voice over the whir of the beaters. “Back in school?”

  “I don’t know. The point is they seem involved now. They had that nothing-else-in-the-world-matters-because-we’re-in-lust aura.”

  I turn off the mixer. “What are you telling me?”

  Ruth rearranges the cheesecakes on a platter unnecessarily. “That you should be careful. Don’t get too attached.”

  “I’m not getting too attached.” I bite into one of the cheesecakes that fell apart. It’s warm and smooth and sweet, and I would like to plow through the rest.

  “Oh, yes, you are. I know you.” Ruth shakes a spatula at me.

  “Fine. But so what? I told you, they’ve known each other for years and she’s engaged.”

  “To a guy three thousand miles away.” Ruth scrubs the cheesecake molds in the sink. “I just want to be sure that Drew’s actually available before you fall in love with him.”

  “He pursued me, remember?”

  “I just can’t bear to see you get your heart broken again.”

  Ruth’s so jaded. Jaded and bitter and just plain wrong. Isn’t it time you got going? I want to ask her. Don’t you have to be someplace?

  “Whatever!” I tell her.

  Drew and I are good together.

  In the evenings after work we stroll through Lithia Park arm in arm, the sky a starlit navy bowl over our heads, tiny frogs singing to us. In the mornings we linger in bed, drinking lattes and working the crossword puzzle. We go out salsa dancing, and I teach h
im to program his VCR and make French toast, and he turns me on to Dixieland jazz and adds me to his speed dial, and I write his name down in case of emergency on my yoga sign-up sheet. I imagine collapsing during my extended wheel and Drew driving me to the chiropractor, holding my hand the whole way.

  “I met someone,” I tell Dad over the phone.

  “Oh, sweetie.” I picture him all the way across the country, sitting at his kitchen table in his khakis and chamois shirt. “When do I get to meet him?”

  “Soon. He’s an actor. You and Jill could fly out to see the plays. Drew can get you great seats.”

  But then late one Monday afternoon after a picnic in the park—I brought champagne and a cold frittata and fresh sliced tomatoes with basil and a wedge of chocolate rum cake—Drew says he doesn’t feel well and would like to make it an early night.

  I’m disappointed, because Monday is the only night when we’re not working and can get together at a normal hour for a date.

  I tell him sure, he probably just has a tension headache, and I’ve got aspirin and antacids back at my place. I’ll set him up in front of the TV with the heating pad behind his neck.

  “I’m an excellent nurse,” I tell him.

  “I don’t think so. I have to get up early tomorrow.”

  “Since when do you get up early?”

  Drew leads an actor’s life, rolling out of bed around ten, going out for coffee at eleven, and hitting rehearsals at one. When I sleep over we stay up as late as two in the morning, making love and giggling and drinking wine and eating cold pizza in bed.

  “I have a meeting.” He winces, turning his head stiffly from side to side.

  I rub the back of his neck, and his shoulders drop, relaxing.

  “I’ll walk you home,” he says.

  We walk in silence; he’s studying the sidewalk as though it might crack open suddenly, while I’m too afraid to ask what’s going on. A meeting? With whom? His wife? His drug dealer? His Mafia boss? What is the big secret?

  When we get to my front porch he kisses my cheek: an airy sibling peck.