The Beginner's Goodbye (11 page)

“Thank you,” I said.

“And
last
Christmas, she was looking so well!”

“Yes … she
was
well.”

“How are you doing, though?” she asked me.

“I’m okay.”

“I mean, really how.”

“I’m doing all right, all things considered.”

“I ask because my girlfriend?—Louise?—she just lost her husband.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“He passed away yesterday morning. Leukemia.”

“Yesterday!” Aunt Selma said. “Christmas Eve day?”

“Yes, and you just know she’ll never celebrate a Christmas again that she won’t be reminded of Barry.”

“Also, it must make scheduling the funeral so awkward,” Aunt Selma said.

“But, Aaron?” Ann-Marie asked. “Do you have any words of wisdom I might pass on to her?”

“Words of wisdom,” I said.

“Like, how to handle the grieving process?”

“I wish I did,” I said. “Afraid I can’t be much help.”

“Oh, well. I’ll just tell her you seem to have survived it,” she said.

Roger said, “Honestly, Ann-Marie!” as if surviving a loved one’s death were somehow reprehensible. But the odd thing was, right at that moment I realized that I
had
survived it. I pictured Ann-Marie’s friend waking up this morning, the first full day of her life without her husband, and I thanked heaven that I was past that stage myself. Even though I still felt a constant ache, I seemed unknowingly to have traveled a little distance away from that first unbearable pain.

I sat up straighter and drew a deep breath, and it was then that I began to believe that I really might make my way through this.

And yet, just two nights later, I had one of those dreamlike thoughts that drift past as you’re falling asleep.
Why!
I thought.
Dorothy hasn’t phoned me lately!

She used to phone from her office during the early days of our marriage, just to say hello and see how my work was going. So the honeymoon was over, it seemed. I felt a little tug of regret, even though I knew it was only to be expected.

But then I came fully awake and I thought,
Oh. She’s dead
.

And it wasn’t any easier than it had been at the very beginning.
I can’t do this
, I thought.
I don’t know how. They don’t offer any courses in this; I haven’t had any practice
.

Really, I had made no progress whatsoever.

True winter arrived in mid-January. There was a snowfall of several inches, and then some weeks of bitter cold. But by that time the exterior work on my house was mostly finished and Gil’s men had moved indoors. He told me they were replastering the ceilings now. “Oh, good,” I said. I didn’t go see for myself. Nandina did, though. She reported it to me afterward; said she had felt that somebody ought to make up for my rudeness. I said, “Rudeness? Who was I rude to?”

“The plasterers, of course,” she said. “Workmen need to know that their work is appreciated. They did an excellent job on those ceilings. Not a flaw to be seen.”

“Well, good.”

“Next you need to choose your hall flooring.”

“Yes, Nandina. Gil showed me the samples. I voted for Maple Syrup.”

“You voted for Warm Honey. But how will you know what Warm Honey looks like in your actual hall, when you’re sitting on the couch in my living room?”

“Okay,
you
go,” I told her, “since you seem to feel so strongly about it.”

She went. She came back to announce that Warm Honey was all right, she supposed, but in her opinion Butterscotch would work better.

I said, “Fine. Butterscotch it is.”

I expected that to settle things, but somehow she didn’t look satisfied.

In the middle of the slack period between Christmas and Easter, Charles proposed a new marketing ploy. “Gift season’s coming up,” he said. “Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, graduation, June weddings … What do you say we offer a collection of
Beginner’s
books, slipcased together according to theme. For instance, wedding couples could get
The Beginner’s Kitchen Equipment, The Beginner’s Menu Plan
, and
The Beginner’s Dinner Party
. No new publications involved; just existing ones, repackaged in a single color. I see high-gloss white for the wedding couples. Pink for Mother’s Day, maybe. Are you all with me here?”

Nandina said, “Could you not have brought this up in this morning’s meeting, Charles?” It was late afternoon, and we were all in the outer office. Nandina was leaving early again. She had her coat draped over one arm. But Charles tipped comfortably back in his chair and said, “This morning I hadn’t thought of it yet. I thought of it over lunch. That always happens to me when I have a martini at lunch. I really ought to drink more.”

Nandina rolled her eyes, and Irene laughed without looking up from the catalogue she was studying. But I said, “I see your point.”

“It can’t be just
any
martini, though,” he told me. “I favor the ones at Montague’s. They seem to have special powers.”

“I mean about the boxed sets,” I said. It had been a slow day,
and I’d killed some time rearranging the
Beginner’s
series by title rather than date. All the subjects were fresh in my mind. I said, “For the college graduates, say, we could have
Job Application, House Hunt
, and
Monthly Budget
. Maybe
Kitchen Equipment
in that set as well.”

“Exactly,” Charles said. “And we could easily update any of the older titles that needed it.”

Peggy said, “But a slipcase is so limiting! Someone graduating from college might not be ready to buy a house yet. Or a bride might have bought
Monthly Budget
back when she first left home.”

“That’s the beauty of it,” Charles told her. “People like complete sets. It fulfills some kind of collector’s instinct. They’ll buy a book all over again if it’s changed color to match the others in a unit. Or they’ll say, ‘I’m sure
eventually
I’ll be needing to house-hunt.’ ”

“You’re right,” Irene said. She set her catalogue down, one long scarlet fingernail marking her place. She said, “I just bought a brand-new boxed set of
Anne of Green Gables
, even though I already own most of it in various editions.”

“
You
read
Anne of Green Gables
?” I asked her.

Peggy said, “Oh! That’s true! I did the exact same thing with the
Winnie-the-Pooh
books.”

Somehow, that was easier to visualize than Irene’s curling up with
Anne of Green Gables
.

Only Nandina seemed unconvinced. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” she said as she headed for the door. “I’m late for an appointment.”

“It’s an idea, though, don’t you think?” Charles called after
her. And then to the rest of us, since Nandina was already gone, “Don’t you think?”

“I do,” Irene told him. “It’s actually a brilliant idea.”

“Oh, just
Beginner’s Marketing
,” he said modestly.

“
Beginner’s Flimflam
, is more like it,” I told him.

“Hey! You said yourself that you saw my point.”

“Well, yes,” I said.

I was probably a bit jealous. Irene never said any of
my
ideas were brilliant.

I had one more commitment that day before I could leave: a meeting in my office with a Mr. Dupont, who wanted to publish his travel memoirs. The title of his book was
Contents May Have Shifted During Flight
, which I found promising, but the manuscript itself—at least as near as I could tell from leafing through it while he sat there—consisted of the usual eat-your-heart-out descriptions of breathtaking mountain views he had seen and delicious native dishes he had eaten. None of
my
concern, of course. We discussed costs, publication schedule, et cetera, and then I told him I was looking forward to doing business with him, and we stood up and shook hands and he left.

Peggy was the only one remaining in the outer office. She sat with her back to me, typing, and I was about to stop and make some friendly remark about how she shouldn’t work too late when she said, still clicking away, “Don’t forget your cane.”

That irritated me, so I didn’t stop after all. I said, “Got it,” and walked past her to the coat tree, where I had hung my cane that morning.

“Twice last week you went home without it,” she said.

“Yes? And? You admit I somehow managed to hobble back in the next day, even so.”

Behind me, the computer keys went silent. I turned to find her looking at me with her very wide, very blue eyes.

“Oh,” she said. “Are we supposed to pretend you don’t
use
a cane?”

“No, I … It’s just that in actual fact I actually don’t really need it,” I said. “I could do without it altogether if I had to.”

“Oh.”

I felt sort of bad about barking at her, but by that time she had gone back to her typing and so I just said, “Good night, then.”

“Night,” she said, without looking up.

It hadn’t escaped my notice that I was very snappish these days. I thought about it as I was driving home. At our office meeting that morning, when Nandina brought us to order by tapping her pen against her coffee mug, I had nearly bitten her head off. “For God’s sake, Nan,” I had said, “do you have to act as if this were the Continental Congress?” But Nandina, after all, could give as good as she got. (“Yes, I do have to,” she’d said, “and you know perfectly well that I hate to be called ‘Nan.’ ”) Peggy, on the other hand … A child might have drawn those eyes of hers, with the lashes rayed around them like sunbeams.

I parked in front of Nandina’s and thought,
I’m turning into one of those grouches that kids are scared to visit on Halloween
.

Nandina’s car was in the driveway, I was sorry to see. I had hoped she wouldn’t be back from her appointment yet. I sighed
and heaved myself out from behind the wheel. Maybe I could head straight upstairs to my room—bypass her entirely.

But when I opened the front door, I heard her talking in the kitchen. Evidently her appointment was here at the house; some workman, perhaps. And then the workman answered her and it was Gil. I recognized his voice even if I couldn’t catch the words. Still in my jacket, I went out to the kitchen. “Hello?” I said.

Gil was sitting at the table, with his parka draped over his chair back and the sleeves of his flannel shirt rolled up. Nandina stood at the counter, slicing an orange. “Aaron!” she said, turning. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Hi, Gil,” I said, and he raised one baseball-mitt hand and said, “How you doing, Aaron.”

“Everything okay at the house?” I asked. He didn’t usually come by till later in the evening.

But he said, “Oh, yes,” and then started patting his shirt pockets. “I did bring that lighting estimate,” he said. “
Somewhere
here …”

“I’m making Gil a drink,” Nandina told me. “Would you care for one?”

“What’s in it?”

“Orange juice, a kiwi, ginger root, a papaya—”

“Wow.”

“—half a cantaloupe, two stalks of celery …”

She had her juice extractor out on the counter—a complicated piece of equipment I hadn’t seen in use since that time a few years back when she was dating a vegan. It had turned out to be a lot of work, as I recalled. Supposedly you could clean the thing in the
dishwasher, but that wasn’t very practical, since the various parts constituted an entire load in themselves.

Wait.

When she was dating a …

I looked from her to Gil, who was sitting there placidly waiting for his drink. I looked again at Nandina.

She blushed.

I said, “Oh.”

5

H
ow could I have missed so many clues?

Nandina’s frequent intrusions on my meetings with Gil, for instance. Granted, she had always been a bit nosy, but this was extreme: if Gil and I were conferring in the living room, she just happened to need a book from the living-room bookcase, and then, while she was at it, she had to offer us some refreshments, and when she returned with a tray, she would oh-so-casually linger to contribute her two bits, eventually drifting toward a chair and dropping into it as if without realizing what she was doing.

And her willingness to drive over to my house on the slightest excuse—to empty my fridge, check on the plastering, verify my choice of caramel or whatever-it-was flooring. Always in the daytime, you notice. Always when Gil was most likely to be there as well.

And those questions she had asked about his background. Why, she hadn’t been asking out of suspicion! That was personal curiosity. She was like a high-school girl who ferrets out the most trivial details about a boy she has a crush on—his gym schedule
and his homeroom number. And, exactly like a high-school girl, she seized on every opportunity to speak his name. “Gilead,” she had said, and her spoon had halted in the saucepan.

Plus, she never changed into a housecoat anymore. I hadn’t seen her in a housecoat in weeks.

But did Gil return her affections?

I felt a twinge that was almost a pain. I couldn’t bear it if I were forced to pity her.

Consider this, though: Gil really hadn’t needed to meet with me as often as he did. More than once I had told him that the work appeared to be going fine, and he should just let me know the next time he had any issues to discuss. It seemed he constantly had issues. And at every meeting he was more talkative; more extraneous subjects arose; it seemed more like a conversation with a friend. Here I’d been flattering myself that it was me he was warming to! I’d sniffed the air when he’d walked in recently, caught the scent of Old Spice, and said, “
Somebody’s
got plans for the evening,” expecting we might embark on a little chitchat about his social life. But he had merely turned red, and I had wondered if I’d overstepped—assumed too quickly that we were more than employer-employee.

Besides which, how come he had told her, but not me, that he’d be coming unusually early that evening?