The Best American Short Stories 2015 (10 page)

DIANE COOK

FROM
Tin House

T
HEY LET ME
tend to my husband's burial and settle his affairs. Which means I can stay in my house, pretend he is away on business while I stand in the closet and smell his clothes. I can cook dinner for two and throw the rest away, or overeat, depending on my mood. Or make a time capsule full of pictures I won't be allowed to keep. I could bury it in the yard for a new family to discover.

But once that work is done, the Placement Team orders me to pack two bags of essentials, good for any climate. They take the keys to our house, our car. A crew will come in, price it all; a sale will be advertised; all the neighbors will come. I won't be there for any of this, but I've seen it happen to others. The money will go into my dowry, and then someday, hopefully, another man will marry me.

I have a good shot at getting chosen, since I'm a good decorator and we have some pretty nice stuff to sell off and so my dowry will likely be enticing. And the car is pretty new, and in the last year I was the only one who could drive it and I kept it clean. It's a nice car with leather seats and lots of extras. It was my husband's promotion gift to himself, though he drove it for only a few months before illness swept him into his bed. It's also a big family car, which will appeal to the neighbors, who all have big families. We hadn't started our own yet. We were fretting over money, being practical. I'm lucky we didn't. Burdened women are more difficult to place, I'm told. They separate mothers from children. I've heard it can be very hard on everyone. The children are like phantom limbs that ache on a mother's body. I wouldn't know, but I'm good at imagining.

They drive me away from our house, and I see all the leaves that fell while I was too busy burying my husband and worrying what will become of me. The leaves, glossy and red, pile in airy circles around the tree trunks like Christmas-tree skirts. I see the rake propped against the rainspout. The least I could have done is rake the yard one last time. I had told my husband I would.

I am taken to a women's shelter on a road that leads out to the interstate. They don't let us go beyond the compound's fence, because the land is ragged and wild. The night skies are overwhelmed with stars, and animals howl far off. Sometimes hiding men ambush the women scurrying from the bus to the gate, and the guards, women themselves, don't always intervene. Sometimes they even help. As with all things, there is a black market for left-behind women, most often widowed, though, rarely, irreconcilable differences can land one in a shelter. A men's shelter is across the road. It is smaller, and mainly for widowers who are poor or who cannot look after themselves. My father ended up in one of these shelters in Florida. A wealthy woman who had put her career first chose him. Older now, she wanted a mate. They sent him to her, somewhere in Texas. I lost track of him. The nearest children's shelter is in a different county.

My room has a sealed window that faces the road and when I turn off my light I can see men like black stars in their bright rooms. I watch them move in their small spaces. I wonder what my new husband will be like.

There are so many handouts and packets. We have been given schedules and rules and also suggestions for improving our lives and looks. It's like a spa facility on lockdown. We are encouraged to take cooking classes, sewing classes, knitting classes, gardening classes, conceiving classes, child-rearing classes, body-bounce-back-from-pregnancy classes, feminine-assertiveness classes, jogging classes, nutrition classes, home economics. There are bedroom-technique potlucks and mandatory “Moving On” seminars.

In my first “Moving On for Widows” seminar we are given a manual of helpful exercises and visualizations. For one, I'm to remember seeing my husband for the first time—we met at a new hires lunch—and then imagine the moment happening differently. So, for example, rather than sitting next to him and knocking his water onto his welcome packet, I should visualize walking right by him and sitting alone. Or, if I let myself sit down and spill his water, instead of him laughing and our hands tangling in the nervous cleanup, I should picture him yelling at me for my clumsiness. I'm supposed to pretend our wedding day was lonely, and that rather than love and happiness, I felt doubt, dread. It's all very hard.

But, they say, it's helpful in getting placed. What I find funny is that since my husband died, as he was dying, really, I hadn't thought about the possibility that this would be hard. I thought it was just the next step. My Case Manager says this is normal and that the feeling of detachment comes from shock. She says that if I can hold on to it and skip over the bewildering grief that follows, I'll be better off. The grief-stricken spend more time here. Years, in some cases.
Practice, practice, practice
, she always says.

We're each given a framed picture of a man, some model, and I take it back to my cell and put it by my bed as instructed. I'm supposed to replace my husband's face in my memory with this man's face while being careful not to get too attached; the man in the photo won't be my new husband. The man is too smooth; his teeth are very straight and white, and there is a glistening in his hair from gel that has hardened. I can tell he probably uses a brand of soap I would hate the smell of. He looks as if he doesn't need to shave every day. My husband had a beard. But, I remind myself, that doesn't matter now. What I prefer is no longer of concern.

We are allowed outside for an hour each day, into a fenced pen off the north wing. It is full of plastic lawn chairs and the women who have been here awhile push to get chairs in the sun. They undress down to their underwear and work on their tans. Other women join an aerobics class in the far north corner. The fences are topped with barbed wire. Guards sit in booths and observe. So far I've just walked the inside border and looked through the chain. The land beyond is razed save for the occasional toppled rooty stump. Weeds, thorny bushes grow everywhere. This is a newer facility. Decades from now, perhaps young trees will shade it, which, I think, would make it cozier. Far off, the forest is visible; a shaky line of green from the swaying trees. Though coyotes prowl the barren tract, it is the forest that, to me, seems most menacing. It is so unknown.

On my walks I often need to step around a huddle of women from another floor (the floors mostly keep together, socially); they form a human shield around a woman on her knees. She is digging into the ground with a serving spoon from the cafeteria. It is bent, almost folded, but still she scrapes at the pebbly soil. I can't imagine the guards don't know what is going on. There are runners who try to escape at night. They think they will fare better on their own. I don't think I could do it. I'm too domestic for that kind of thing.

Four weeks in, and I have gotten to be friends with the women on my floor. It turns out we're all bakers. Just a hobby. Each night one of us whips up some new cookie or cake from a recipe in one of the old women's magazines lying around the compound, and we sample it, drink tea, chat. It is lovely to be with women. In many ways, this is a humane shelter. We are women with very little to do and no certain future. Aside from the daily work of bettering ourselves, we are mostly left alone. I like the women on my floor. They are down-to-earth, calm, not particularly jealous. I suspect we are lucky. I've heard fights in the night on other floors. Solitary, in the basement, is always full. As is the infirmary. A woman on floor five who had just been chosen was attacked while she slept. Slashed across the cheek with a razor blade. The story goes that when the Placement Team contacted the husband-to-be with the news, he rejected her. There she was, all packed and about to begin a new life. When she returned from the infirmary with tidy stitches to minimize the scarring, she had to unpack and crawl into the same bed where her blood still stained the sheets. If she had been on our floor I would have changed the sheets for her. And I know the others would have too. That's what I mean about feeling lucky.

Last week, our girl Marybeth was chosen and sent to a farm near Spokane. We stood in a circle embracing, laying our heads on each other's shoulders, and Marybeth did not want to leave. We made her a care package; in our best handwriting we'd written out recipes on index cards of the things we'd baked together so she could always remember her time here if she chose to. She cried when we handed it to her. “I'm not ready,” she whimpered. “I still miss him.” A couple of us encouraged her. “Just do your best.” When, eventually, the guard led her away we heard her trying to catch her breath until the elevator doors closed.

A window has blinked to life across the road. A man is awake, like me. He pads around his small room in pajamas—hospital blue, like ours. I want to be seen, so I stand in my window. He sees me, steps to his window, and offers a quiet wave. I wave back. We are opposing floats in a parade.

If we had been poor and I had died, my husband would be over there now, waiting for someone to want him. How strange to worry about someone wanting you when we had been wanted by each other so confidently. Most people reach the age of exemption before their partner dies, and they are allowed to simply live alone. Who would want them, anyway? Ideally, you marry the man you love and get to stay with him forever, through everything you can think to put each other through, because you chose to go through it together.

But I had not prepared for something like this. Had he? Had my husband kept some part of himself separate so he could give it to someone else if he needed to? Was it possible I too had managed to withhold something of myself without even realizing it? I hoped so.

I look around my small cinder-block room, painted a halfhearted pink, the desk too large for the unread library book on it. I had a picture of us hidden under my mattress. It was one of those pictures couples take when they are alone in a special place, at a moment they want to remember. We smooshed our heads together and my husband held the camera out and snapped the picture. We look distorted, ecstatic. One night, I fell asleep while looking at it; it fell to the floor, was found at wake-up, and was confiscated. I still can't believe I was so careless.

In bed, I imagine my husband lying beside me, warming the rubber-coated mattress, beneath the thin sheet so many women have slept under before me. My scalp tingles as I think of him scratching it. We rub feet. Then I have to picture him dissolving into the air like in a science-fiction movie, vaporized to another planet, grainy, muted, then gone. The sheet holds his shape for a moment before deflating to the bed. I practice not feeling a thing.

A few women on other floors have been chosen and will leave tomorrow. I can smell snow in the air pushing through the small crack where the window insulation has peeled away. Late fall is now winter. When it is too cold, we aren't let outside for activities in the pen. I would give anything to run through a field and not stop. I have never been the running-through-fields type.

From what I can tell, being chosen is bittersweet. I imagine many of us wouldn't mind living out our days at the shelter in the company of women like ourselves. But then again, it wouldn't always be us. Marybeth's replacement was cruel and tried to start fights between us. She told me my muffins were dry. She squeezed one in my face; it crumbled between her fingers. She crept into sweet Laura's room and cut a chunk of her long shiny hair with safety scissors. Laura was forced into a bob that didn't suit her. Luckily, this woman was very beautiful and was chosen after only four days. We're waiting for her replacement. Even though there is uncertainty in being chosen, it seems more uncertain to remain among the women, a sentiment I've also seen expressed in the manual.

Something very special has happened. I met my window friend. He came over with the other men from the men's shelter for bingo. This happens occasionally. It keeps everyone socially agile.

Even though we wave across the road, when he walked in I recognized him instantly—the darkness of his hair and the general line of his brow. The nights we wave have become important to me. It's nice to be seen by a man.

My window friend spotted me too, stopped in the doorway, and waved. I waved back and then we laughed. A tiny, forgotten thrill bubbled up in me.

He sat next to me. Close up I found him handsome. He clowned around, pushed the bingo chips off my board whenever I wasn't looking. He was nervous.

He said, “I'm going to tell you ten bad jokes in a row,” and he did, counting on his fingers, not pausing for my laughter, which made me laugh through the whole thing. A guard watched us disapprovingly. We looked to be having too much fun. I guess it goes without saying that relations between shelter dwellers are prohibited. I mean, how could we survive together in the world if we have both ended up in a place like this?

At the end of the evening a whistle blew and the men began to shuffle out. Again my window friend stood in front of me and waved and I did the same. But this time he touched his open hand to mine and we pressed them together and smiled. I felt us quake like small animals that have been discovered somewhere they shouldn't be and have no time to run, or place to run to.

The next night, after we waved quietly, I undressed in the window, the lights bright behind me. He placed his hands against the glass as if to get closer and watched.

Tonight, his light isn't on and so we don't wave, but still, I undress in front of my lit window. I can't know if he's watching from the darkness, or who else is watching, for that matter. I loved my husband. I mourn his tenderness. I have to believe that someone out there is feeling a kind of tenderness for me. I'll take it any way I can.

I've been moved to another floor. Someone from the men's shelter reported me, and my Case Manager thought it best for me to occupy a room in the back of the building. Now I look out over the pen.