Marcia Talley - Sing It to Her Bones

I studied the pin oak tree that Paul had planted on our tenth anniversary. Tiny green buds shimmered on the branches, promising spring. What did the future hold for us? Suddenly I saw it plainly. We were living in a cheap one-bedroom condo off Bestgate Road with Paul writing articles for sailing magazines and me working as a Manpower temp. For richer, for poorer .

“A job,” I heard myself say, as if from a great distance.

“What did you say?”

“A job. I’ll need to get a job.”

“Hannah, I think that consideration is a long way off.”

I shook my head and studied the man who had been my husband for twenty-five years. “Paul, you know I’ll support you one hundred percent. I’ll take on the secretary of the navy if I have to. But I need some time to take all this in.”

I left him sitting in his solitary misery while I shut myself in the bedroom with mine. I lay on the bed and let the tears fall freely. I felt as if some alien from outer space had sucked out all my blood, leaving my bones to rattle around loose inside my skin. I wanted to believe Paul, but I had been so sick. Could I really blame him for wanting a break from all the illness and taking comfort in the arms of a young and healthy woman? Maybe I should have had the reconstruction! The doctor had recommended using a flap of muscle from my abdomen, but I’d decided I could worry about only one thing at a time. “Let’s get rid of the cancer first,” I’d told him. “Why spend all that money on a patient who’s likely to croak?” He told Paul he admired my spunk.

Spunk. That’s what I needed. A bottle of spunk. It would give me the backbone I needed to support Paul, the way he had always supported me. In sickness and in health . But there was a difference, I argued. I couldn’t help getting cancer, for heaven’s sake, but he could have avoided sitting around in hotel bars drinking ill-considered beers with creatures named Jennifer, screwing up our lives.

I must have fallen asleep at some point in the night because the next sound I heard was the front door closing the next morning. Paul’s side of the bed was undisturbed. I splashed cold water on my face, hating the woman on the other side of the bathroom mirror who stared back at me with blotched cheeks and swollen eyes. I extracted a pair of shorts and a faded T-shirt from the heap of clothes lying at the foot of my bed, pulled them on, then padded downstairs in my bare feet.

Before leaving for work, Paul had stuck a Post-It on the microwave-“I love you,” written with black Magic Marker on the yellow square in solid, bold capitals. A tea drinker, he had made me the gift of a fresh pot of coffee. Overcome by new tears and a growing sense of desperation, I carried my coffee to our basement office, to try to take control of the situation the only way I knew how. I typed up my résumé on the PC, and clicked on the print button. I watched while ten copies spewed out, then printed two more for good measure.

Afterward I toasted a bagel and ate it dry, washed down with orange juice. When the morning paper came, I was half afraid to pick it up, expecting to see a screaming headline, NAVAL ACADEMY PROFESSOR CHARGED WITH SEXUAL HARASSMENT, but there was nothing. Just the shenanigans as usual in the District of Columbia. In the Metro section, though, a small story about Katie Dunbar caught my eye. The medical examiner had released her body. Katie’s funeral would be on Wednesday.

Suddenly nothing seemed as important to me as getting back to Pearson’s Corner. There was nothing I could do in Annapolis anyway, except brood about my crumbling marriage and my nonexistent career. I would attend Katie’s funeral, meet her family, talk to her friends. Who among them, I wondered, could have been responsible for her death?

Figuring Paul would never miss them, I packed up the Post and Sun classified sections and stocked up on envelopes and stationery and a roll of stamps from Paul’s desk. I threw some clean underwear and a simple black dress into an overnight bag.

Tomorrow I’d start some serious networking. I’d call all my friends and let them know I was job hunting. In the meantime I’d bunk with Connie. I wondered how much she’d have to know.

But Paul had already called his sister. I knew that the minute I walked into Connie’s studio, two hours later after what seemed the longest drive of my life.

“Hannah,” she said. An open-ended sentence. And I was bawling again, in her arms.

When I purchased my little black dress atHechts in Annapolis Mall, the label said it was crush-resistant and wrinkle-free. It also fitted as if it were made for me, or so I had been assured by the plump sixtyish saleswoman, the one who always managed to tap on my dressing room door-“How are we doing, hon?”-just as I had my head caught in the lining of some garment or was struggling, half naked, to zip up a pair of pants one size too small. The perfect travel outfit, she declared when I emerged from the dressing room to check the fit in front of a three-way mirror. If so, the manufacturer had never tested it out on a consumer like me. When I extracted it from the overnight bag at Connie’s, that perfect little black dress was a mass of wrinkles, as if I’d spent a restless night sleeping in it or on it. Connie doesn’t own an iron, so I hung the dress in the bathroom while I took my shower, marginally improving the situation. A colorful gypsy scarf with an elaborate fringe borrowed from Connie’s extensive collection completed the transformation. With luck, everyone would notice the gold, purple, and turquoise flowers and not the remaining wrinkles.

But I didn’t think anything could be done about the middle-aged face and puffy eyelids I was seeing in Connie’s bathroom mirror. I looked as if I’d been stung by bees. I hadn’t given my eyes much of a chance to recover, either, having spent every night since Saturday crying myself to sleep.

On the vanity, Connie had a flat wicker basket of cosmetics to choose from, many I recognized as the free-gift-when-you-buy-fifteen-dollars’-worth-of-our-products variety. I selected a beige foundation and smoothed it on, stroked my cheeks with blusher, then began working on my eyes with a bluish liner. Because of my unsteady hand, I only made matters worse. In addition to puffy, my lower lids were now rimmed with blue and smudged, like bruises. It looked hopeless.

I sat down on the toilet seat and fought back fresh tears of anger and frustration. Connie had reassured me, about twenty times since breakfast, that everything would be all right with Paul. But what did she know, really? As close as we had become, I knew that she was biased in favor of her brother, and who could blame her? Earlier I had overheard her on the phone with him, reporting in some detail on my current condition and reassuring him that everything would be all right with me: “Just give her time.”

Time! Why was there never enough time? I checked my watch, made sure my wig was on straight and appeared before Connie in the kitchen, as presentable as I would ever get under the circumstances. I caught her leaning against the sink, drinking coffee, her head tipped way back to get the last few drops, which I knew would be thick with sugar. Over a long-sleeved black cotton dress she wore a stunning vest elaborately embroidered with gold and silver threads.

“You look like the proper mourner,” she said, placing her empty cup in the sink. “Love the scarf!” She examined my makeup. “You should let me work on your eyes. You look like a raccoon.”

“Too late now. Have you seen my sunglasses?”

Connie pointed to the kitchen table.

I slipped the glasses on. “I just can’t stop crying, Connie! People at the funeral are bound to think I’m overreacting. I’m not a member of the family, and I didn’t even know Katie.”