“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.