Sweet Ruin

Chapter One I suppose, for literary effect, I should start with how everything was dying that year -- how the riverbed dried up into a brown Brillo pad, the wisteria shriveled on their vines. But the truth is, that brilliant April, after rain had soaked us all March, it felt to me as if the earth and the plants, the insects and trees just couldn't stay in their pants. Daffodils unfurled and grinned into bloom; tulips reached up their orange and crimson cupped hands. Across the street, the Japanese weeping cherry tree exploded into a firework of lilliputian pink clouds, while down the block Mrs. Zuppo's lily garden peeked out from its bed weeks early. All the world was a stage, and I walked around in a daze beholding the spectacle that was life. It seemed to me it had never been this way. But then, I was waking up again, after all that time. During the more than two years since Oliver's death, my goal had been simply to get myself through the days. After dropping Hazel at preschool or kindergarten or first grade and dragging myself through the errands (grocery shopping, bill paying, dry cleaners for Paul...all those things that plague the work-at-home wife), I'd simply returned to my house and crawled back into bed, where, between the empty escape of deep naps, I did my editing work -- its own kind of refuge -- until it was time to pick up Hazel again. Then, with what felt like superhuman effort, I would act out the role of the cheerful, inspired mother I was not, somehow getting us through the hours until we were at last back in bed again -- her bed, this time, where we'd both fall asleep, me half-waking only to switch to my own bed and continue my dreamless coma. I never felt Paul slip into bed hours later when he finally got home. Really, it was as if I were dead, except when taking care of Hazel or working, and then I operated on automatic pilot: numb, simply soldiering on. But this year, with the first signs of spring in my New Jersey town -- a slowly gentrifying commuter and college hub where octogenarian Dominicks and Guiseppes bordered thirtysomething Manhattan transplants like me, with handfuls of crunchy Gen X-ers tossed throughout -- something had started to change. I felt my old self, the one I'd thought was gone forever, sending out tiny shoots from deep in my bones -- stiff, strong, green tips to tell me the roots were still in there, I was still in there, somehow...and wanting, at last, out again. On the day this story begins, I had taken a morning walk, peeling my old Eileen Fisher cardigan from my arms to let the sun drench my pasty, winter-sapped skin. I'd headed to the fish market for two slabs of salmon, then to the bakery for a crusty ciabatta. Then a bottle of sauvignon blanc from the liquor store and a bar of fine dark chocolate for dessert. I suppose I was celebrating my rebirth. At any rate, when I got home I was ravenous, and by the time my piece of fish was done broiling I'd already sampled a few bites, standing at the oven forking the salty pink flesh into my greedy mouth, burning its tender skin. I didn't care. It was worth it to taste that delectable bliss, and to finally crave food again. On the way to the table, I dragged my hunk of bread through the circle of salted olive oil I'd drizzled onto my plate, bit it hard, and swallowed it practically whole. Unlike Paul, who'd always been someone who eats to live, I had been -- and now, it seemed, was on my way back to being -- a happy fat person inside a genetically thin body: always anticipating my next meal, savoring it when it came. Today, I'd fixed Paul the other piece of salmon -- lemon, olive oil, splash of tamari -- and left it front and center in the fridge, just so he'd know, when he got home, having long ago eaten the dinner his law firm had called in from some trendy restaurant nearby in the financial district, that I had thought of him, that I loved him. ElHanauer, Cathi is the author of 'Sweet Ruin ', published 2006 under ISBN 9780743277341 and ISBN 0743277341.