I'm Fine and Neither Are You(25)

Except death, she said. Even I couldn’t make that beautiful.

“She loved her family and friends so much.”

I looked at Matt. But not my husband. At least not the way everyone thought I did.

“As I’m sure everyone here can attest, she would give you the shirt off her back or all the cash in her wallet before you even realized you needed it.” I looked at Cecily, who was back at Matt’s side and watching me stoically, save her quivering bottom lip. “But more than anything, she loved Cecily. She was Jenny’s entire life.”

In the end, even my love for my daughter wasn’t enough to save me.

My eyes landed on Sonia, who was weeping into her pashmina. “Jenny was my closest friend.”

And yet you didn’t really know me.

I had planned to say that Jenny had been a role model to me. But even if her voice was a hallucination, I still couldn’t lie—not with her in my mind, taunting me with the truth.

I would always try to emulate her positive attitude and her zeal for gratitude. I would continue to channel her way of finding the best in every person. But I didn’t envy her approach to marriage anymore. As for her seemingly perfect life—how could I possibly admire it now, when I knew it had required what must have been an enormous amount of effort to conceal what never should have been concealed in the first place?

Sanjay was watching me. As our eyes met, I thought of our conversation in the car and how surprised he was when I’d vented. He was used to me biting my tongue in the service of keeping the peace in our marriage.

I felt like the air had been snatched right out of my lungs. Jenny wasn’t the only one who had been pretending.

I must have been quiet for a while, because everyone was looking somewhere other than at me, as if to allow me a private moment.

Inhaling deeply, I set my note card on the lectern and said what I believed Jenny would have wanted to hear. “Jenny taught me that kindness is a daily practice. Instead of simply accepting difficulty, she encouraged me to change my circumstances whenever I could and to help others do the same. She inspired me to be a better person, and I’ll miss her every day for the rest of my life.”

I returned to the pew-style benches, feeling as sorrowful and bone tired as I ever had. When I reached my seat, Sanjay extended his hand. I looked down at his long, elegant fingers—ideal for a surgeon, or so everyone said, though now I knew they were better suited for writing and playing the guitar.

I took Sanjay’s hand and squeezed it tight as I sat down. He looked at me with surprise and then squeezed back. His gold wedding band, which I had chosen for him, shined up at me. We had once been wildly in love; we had once been partners in this life. I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment that had stopped being true, but pretending I was fine and our marriage would fix itself wouldn’t get us back to that place.

Jenny’s last text to me came ricocheting at me once again. This time, though, I heard her say it aloud in my head: If you’re not happy, make a change.

How’d that work out for you? I shot back, maybe a bit more saucily than I would have under different circumstances. But she was dead, I reasoned (as much as one can reason while having a mental conversation with one’s dead friend). She could handle it.

Before she could respond, it hit me: Jenny hadn’t taken her own advice.

But I still could.





TEN

After the service, Sanjay and I had gone to the Sweets’ house, where their extended family and a few close friends had gathered. Imaginary conversations and thoughts pertaining to my marriage were quickly forgotten as I exchanged empty words about my beloved friend. Painkillers were not mentioned, and neither was her secret pain, because as far as I knew no one knew about either. Such a lovely, kind person was Jenny: that’s what everyone said, and I nodded because this, thankfully, was true.

But in the middle of a flimsy conversation with Jael and her husband, Tony, I suddenly couldn’t do it anymore—not even for one minute. I knew it wasn’t my place to reveal what happened, but I couldn’t continue to sidestep the giant prescription bottle in the middle of the room while people made stupid speculations, like how perhaps a genetic mutation caused Jenny to have a severe allergic reaction to an otherwise harmless drug. I was seconds from barking that there was no such thing as a harmless drug when I spotted Sanjay serving himself a drink in the kitchen.

I excused myself and strode over to him. “I have to get out of here,” I whispered.

“We can’t leave yet,” he whispered back. “We barely just got here.”

“I know, but I can’t do this. I’m on the verge of a breakdown.” Technically I was already in full breakdown mode, but this would become evident in short order.

He looked at me. I must have looked as wild-eyed and desperate as I felt, because he said, “Okay, we’ll tell people you’re not feeling well. Let’s go say our goodbyes.”

While he headed off to find Matt, I went upstairs, which was where I had last seen Cecily. She was in her room, in her bed, hidden beneath a pile of blankets. Kimber was beside her, saying something soothing in a low voice. She and Jenny had often butted heads, but Jenny’s mother always had a kind word for me, and she loved spending time with Cecily, whom she took for a week at a time during the summer and for school vacations. How terrible for her, I thought, to have had to live through the death of her daughter.