Laurie Breton - Die Before I Wake

But I didn’t allow myself to wallow in it; I had no sympathy for people who sat around bemoaning their fates. Pity parties aren’t my style. I had far too much to do. Since I’d decided against making a run for it, I needed to unpack and try to find space for all my things in Tom’s bedroom. Our bedroom, I reminded myself.

I headed back to the house, rummaged through my purse for a notebook and pen, and sat at the kitchen table to make a list of what needed doing. I’m a compulsive list-maker. I simply can’t seem to stop. Jeffrey used to make fun of me because of it, but list-making helps me keep my life organized and running on track. If I didn’t make lists, I’d never remember anything. I use them in both my private and business life, and my friends and coworkers always point out how utterly organized I am. I just smile enigmatically and accept the compliment, while mentally thumbing my nose at my ex-husband. What can I say? Sometimes even a mature woman has to let her inner child out once in a while.

First on the list: Go to bank. I’d already closed my bank account and had the balance transferred electronically to Tom’s account, but I still had to drop by the bank and fill out paperwork to make it official. I’d managed to put away a small amount of money in savings, and the sale of my Miata had added a couple thousand to that. I’d hated selling my car, and I’d nearly cried when the used car salesman drove it away. But Tom had said that come winter, the sports car would be useless in the snow, and he’d promised to replace it with a brand-new four-wheel-drive SUV of my choice. So I’d caved. My life in California was over. Big changes were taking place. If I intended to live year-round in Maine, I needed to start acting like a Mainer. I would drive the SUV, even if my heart did secretly ache for a two-seater sports coupe.

Items two, three and four on the list were more housekeeping stuff: Get a Maine driver’s license, Apply for a new social security card, and Notify credit card company of new name and address. Item five was more generic: Contact old friends I’ve lost touch with. People I talked to once or twice a year, exchanged Christmas cards with. Old school chums, friends of my dad, people Jeffrey and I used to socialize with. A couple of great-aunts. People I had little in common with, but that I didn’t want to lose complete contact with.

I paused at number six. Chewing absently at the cap of my Bic pen, I pondered. At some point, Tom and I needed to figure out where to store my household belongings, which were in a moving van headed east on an Interstate highway somewhere between California and Maine. My entire life, packed into a green-and-yellow box truck. The ETA was next Sunday; I expected it would take me some time to go through everything and decide what to use, what to keep in storage, and what to discard. But we hadn’t yet discussed where the boxes and furniture would go in the interim. Number six: Talk to Tom about storage! I underlined it, then circled it several times in heavy black ink just in case there was any chance I might miss it next time I looked.

I thought about putting Find a job on the list. I’d been working since I was fifteen. No slacker, I’d worked my way through college, then bounced around the L.A. job scene for a couple of years before I landed at Phoenix. There, I worked my way up the ladder to store manager. I’d always been a high-energy person, and it seemed odd to have no place I needed to be every morning at eight, hi-test cup of java in hand.

But looking for a job now would be pointless. Tom and I had talked it over, and in January, I was going back to school to get my master’s degree. I’d been thinking about it for some time now. Although I’d loved my job at Phoenix, I didn’t aspire to a career in retail. Actually, to my surprise, I’d realized that what I most wanted to do was teach. My degree in business management hadn’t prepared me for that particular career choice, so it was time to hit the books again. Tom had been extremely supportive, reassuring me that he was fully capable of supporting me financially while I trained for a new career.

When my list was as complete as I could make it, I went back upstairs to unpack. The master bedroom suite had been designed with his-and-hers walk-in closets. I opened the door of the left-hand closet and found Tom’s clothes, his suits and shirts and pants, arranged by color and hung with care, evenly spaced a half-inch apart. His shoes were lined up neatly on two shelves. Some fancy contraption built into the wall held his neckties, hung with a meticulousness that prevented any one tie from touching any other. Good God. I hoped he didn’t expect me to share his neatness fetish. I generally took off my clothes and flung them. If I managed to hit the chair instead of the floor, I figured I was doing exceptionally well.

Because snooping in my husband’s closet seemed like an invasion of his privacy, I closed the door and moved to the other closet. Not so much as a dust bunny inhabited its vacant space. Ditto for the bureau drawers. Tom kept his underwear and socks—stacked with razor-sharp precision—in the upright dresser. The bureau must have been Elizabeth’s territory. I was a little surprised to find no evidence that she had ever lived here. No clothes, no knickknacks, no wedding photos, no froufrou female stuff. At some point after her death, Tom had removed all her belongings. Now that I thought about it, I’d seen no evidence of her presence anywhere in this house. Downstairs, photos of the girls were displayed here and there: school photos as well as candids of them with Tom, and with their grandmother and their uncle Riley. But not a single likeness of Elizabeth graced the house.

I wondered why this made me uneasy. It seemed odd that a man who’d loved his wife, a man who’d spent years with her and made babies with her, would keep no physical reminders of her after she was gone. No little personal objects, no mementos of any kind. It was as if the moment Elizabeth was gone, Tom had tried to pretend she’d never existed.

Had their marriage been unhappy? Tom hadn’t mentioned any problems with his first marriage, so I’d simply assumed theirs had been a satisfactory union. On the other hand, I hadn’t bothered to ask. For all I knew, they could have been on the verge of divorce when Elizabeth died. If there were problems, that might explain why all trace of her was gone from the house.

Trying to rationalize away my unease, I told myself I was probably just identifying too closely with Tom’s late wife. More than likely, my subconscious was wondering what would happen if I died. Whether I, too, would be erased from this house as though I’d never set foot inside it.

Because that thought bothered me more than I cared to admit, I distracted myself with unpacking. It didn’t take long; I’d traveled light. Most of my clothes were packed away on that moving van. Until they arrived, I’d manage quite nicely with the jeans and casual shirts I’d brought with me. I’d packed only one “serious” dress, and I doubted I’d be needing it here; I couldn’t imagine that, as the wife of a small-town Maine doctor, I’d have many formal social engagements.

I managed to fill one bureau drawer, and I hung the rest of my clothes in the closet. They looked pathetic hanging in all that empty space, as did my toiletries, lined up on one end of the massive white marble bathroom counter. I sneaked a peek in one of the medicine cabinets. Empty. I opened the other and found Tom’s toiletries—razor, toothbrush, deodorant, aftershave—all shelved neatly, again carefully spaced so that no two objects touched. I closed the cabinet, looked at my cluster of mismatched items cluttering up the counter, and decided to move them to the empty medicine cabinet, where my neatnik husband wouldn’t be forced to look at them every time he walked into the room.