I'm Fine and Neither Are You(23)

I hung up the phone feeling like a hollowed-out vessel of a person.

The truth.

Which was fairly straightforward, wasn’t it? Despite all evidence to the contrary, Jenny had not gotten along with her husband. She had turned to a terrible habit to cope with the secret pain hidden beneath the shiny surface of her marriage.

And she had chosen to hide all of it from me.





NINE

After much bargaining on Sanjay’s part, Riya made the drive from suburban Chicago to help us with Stevie and Miles for a few days.

“Don’t worry about me,” I said, imitating Riya as Sanjay plopped down in the driver’s seat of his car, which was slightly less battered than mine. “It would be sooo much easier if you had cable, but I’ll be just fine. You two go have fun at your funeral.”

“She came, Penny,” said Sanjay, turning the key to start the car. He was wearing a gray suit, and though his shirt was too loose and his tie was longer than it should have been, he looked as good as I’d seen him in months. “I’m not sure what else we can ask for.”

“We can ask your mother to not be a jerk,” I said. “We shouldn’t have to guilt her into spending time with her own grandchildren so we can go mourn my closest friend.”

“Whoa,” said Sanjay as he backed out of the driveway. “That’s not like you. I know you’re upset, but let’s keep our eyes on the prize, okay? Mom’s here and she’s helping us.”

Upset? Upset was realizing your best black dress was now several shades of maroon because you had entrusted the laundry to your husband, who had confirmed your long-standing suspicion that high standardized test scores had an inverse relationship to practical intelligence. Upset was discovering that your son had peed the bed yet again and failed to disclose that he had done so, and then learning that no amount of odor-neutralizing spray could rid his room of the smell of two-day-old urea crystals.

I wasn’t upset. I was irate.

“Maybe I’m not myself, because right now I’m thinking that if your mother makes one comment about Stevie not losing her baby fat, I will personally cut her,” I said, smoothing the fabric of my black skirt. I wore it to work twice a week; it didn’t seem right to be wearing it to Jenny’s funeral. But since my favorite dress had been ruined, it was either that, another black dress that cut off all circulation south of my stomach, or the bank-teller pantsuit. If Jenny were still alive and I were attending someone else’s funeral, she would have lent me a roomy yet stylish black shift and helped me put my hair up in a twist or braids that somehow didn’t make me look like Heidi. She knew how to do things like that.

Damn it, Jenny, I thought as I turned to glare at my husband. I need you right now.

I’m here, she said back.

My head jerked back. I had just heard Jenny’s voice clear as day—as though she, not my husband, were sitting beside me in the car.

Which could only mean one thing: I was officially losing it.

Sanjay, oblivious to my mental meltdown, sighed and gripped the steering wheel. “I’m going to remind myself that you’re hurting. And maybe a little nervous about giving a eulogy.”

Not nervous—just calmly watching my marbles roll right out of my head. Nothing to see here! “I’m fine,” I said through gritted teeth.

I had wondered whether Matt would ask me to speak at Jenny’s service. After all, he had just revealed that I didn’t know his wife nearly as well as I thought I did. Which made memorializing her a mite tricky.

But it had been Jenny’s mother, Kimber, who had called to ask me if I would give a eulogy. “I know you meant the world to Jenny,” she had said. “She was always talking about you—how funny you were and what a good friend you were to her. It would really mean a lot to Paul and me if you might say a few words at the service.”

Naturally, I agreed. Only afterward did I begin to panic about what I would say.

“Okay, you’re not nervous,” said Sanjay in a way that made it clear he didn’t believe me.

“Would you like me to cut you, too?” I said. “The steak knives are dull, but I’m told that the vacuum shop on Fourth Street can sharpen the whole set for less than the cost of one new blade.” I knew this because I had wanted to buy new knives last winter, but Sanjay had said he would bring our old ones to said vacuum place instead. I was still waiting to be able to slice through something tougher than butter.

“Self, she’s struggling,” he said.

“Now who’s being a jerk?” I said, but I had just spotted the funeral home in the distance and my voice lacked conviction.

Sanjay pulled into the parking lot and turned off the engine. Then he put his hand on my leg and squeezed lightly. “I love you, Penny,” he said.

When had he last said that? I looked out the window to hide my eyes, which were filled with tears. It had been a good long time.



“I want to thank you all for being here.” Matt was standing at a lectern at the front of the funeral home. He had just replaced Jenny’s father, Paul, who had spoken little but had shown a slideshow. The photos of the joyful, freckle-faced girl Jenny had once been had gutted me, and that was even before the Beatles’ “In My Life” began playing.

“I’ll never forget the day I saw Jenny through the window of a restaurant in San Francisco,” said Matt. “They say when you know, you just know. And I knew. I went in and asked if she was waiting for someone. And she smiled and said she was waiting for me. We were together from that day on. Jenny was the love of my life.”