“That girl was living in a house with all women too,” my mother reminded me, hitching the strap of her purse higher on her shoulder and starting for the door. “Let’s go, Ruth. I need to get to the dry cleaner before it closes.”
I started to follow her out, then doubled back and tore off the tab with the counselor’s phone number, just in case.
“What if you drove me,” I suggested on the way home from the dry cleaner. We’d made it before closing, and the tailor was in that day. Things were going her way, which (according to my mother) was rare, which, rarer still, made her pliable. “We could check it out together. Make sure it is what the flyer says it is.”
“What is complex grief, exactly?” she wanted to know, sounding dubious that such a thing could exist.
I shrugged. “I guess they tell you once you get there.”
“But what if it turns out you don’t have it? Then you went all the way over there for nothing.”
I couldn’t tell you what complex grief was, only that I was sure I was suffering from it.
* * *
Squak Mountain was mere minutes from my parents’ house in Issaquah, where I’d been living since my father passed away the previous summer. Issaquah itself is located about twenty miles from downtown Seattle, tucked into the base of three mountains that make up the Cascade foothills. Evergreens umbrella the neighborhood, insulating each home and forming a natural sound barrier. Even on the populated streets with smaller lots, there is a hushed sense of isolation that I guess is part of the appeal.
“You never know what you’re going to get over here,” my mother commented as she navigated a tight, steep right. Squak is supposedly one of the hardest neighborhoods to price because there are so many kinds of homes, everything from ticky-tacky ranches to Queen Anne mansions, properties with steely gray views of Lake Sammamish and ones that don’t even have yards. The counselor’s home was somewhere in the middle: a traditional Northwest Regional offering a forest panorama. There were several cars parked in the driveway and young women waving and hugging one another on the front porch. I’d had to miss the first two sessions because my mother needed more time to think about whether I could be trusted to attend a complex grief group without a chaperone, and now I felt like a girl who had transferred to a new school in the middle of the year. If I wanted to make any friends, I had my work cut out for me.
“Do you want to come inside and check it out before it starts?” I held my breath, praying she wouldn’t take me up on the offer.
My mother surveyed the women on the front patio. “I don’t see any ax murderers.”
My mother didn’t usually make jokes, and I knew what she was doing. Ingratiating herself to me in case I was tempted to betray her. I laughed reassuringly, and she seemed to relax some.
But as I got out of the car, my mother told me to be careful. “And smart,” she added, which was what she really needed me to be. “Please, Ruth. Be smart.”
* * *
The counselor’s name was Frances. She was about my mother’s age, with a manly wedge of brown curly hair. She wore no makeup and no jewelry but a pinkie ring, which I noticed only because as the other women eventually started to talk and cry, she supported her chin in her hand while she listened to them. My mother always shooed my hand away from my face when I did that. Maybe my skin would clear up if I could just stop touching it.
“Help yourself,” Frances said, gesturing to the cookies and coffee she’d set out on a tray in the entryway. I had expected more rustic decor to match the stained-wood-and-river-stone exterior of the house, but inside I felt like I was in Morocco. (All those times I’ve been to Morocco, I should know.) There were real and fake plants tucked into corners, clay pot vases, brightly knit afghans draped over brightly patterned chairs, so much art on the walls I couldn’t tell you what color they were.
I reached for a cookie. “Are these pignolis?”
Frances beamed. “You must be Italian.”
“Polish through and through,” I replied. “But I have a good recipe for them. Haven’t made them in a while, though.” I took a bite and closed my eyes in ecstasy.
“Good?”
“Oh my God.” I laughed a little. “I have to start making these again. I forgot how much I like them.” My mother didn’t see the point of nuts in a cookie, and why were pine nuts so expensive, anyway?
Frances smiled and tapped the corner of her mouth, where I must have had a crumb. I wiped it away, blushing, but Frances only waved off my embarassment. “I’m wearing my breakfast most days. Come and meet the others.”
* * *
About ten women were clustered together in the corner of the living room, on their knees, heads bowed. Praying, I realized, and I felt my shoulders slump with disappointment. My Catholic high school had more or less expelled me.
Hearing us enter, the group broke apart to reveal the leader of their congregation—a woman in a beanbag chair, splaying open the lapels of her blouse to exhibit three thin gashes in her sternum. A black cat perched on the windowsill, licking clean his weapons.
“Nixon is an asshole,” the injured woman told Frances. She had long lemony hair parted down the middle, dark eyebrows, and dark brown eyes, like there was a protest going on inside her about whether or not she was truly a blonde. With her shirt pulled open like that, it was easy to see that she was small-breasted enough to not need a bra.
“There’s Neosporin under the sink in the kitchen,” Frances said. “Everyone, this is Ruth.”
The injured woman quipped, “Welcome to the party, Ruth,” then got up and went into the kitchen. She was tall, with a sporty, windburned quality about her, as though she had just stepped off the slopes after a long run. Like a complete idiot, I thanked her as she walked by. I could hear her low laugh from across the hall.
The other women got settled around the coffee table on floral pillows, chatting animatedly, in surprisingly chipper moods for having recently lost people they loved. A chalkboard on an easel bore a numbered list, the first two items already crossed out.
1. One thing you did that always made me laugh…
2. One thing you did that always made me angry…
Frances gestured for me to find a seat and took her place at the head of the coffee table. Everyone quieted down without needing to be asked.
“I want to briefly reintroduce myself and talk about what it is we do here,” Frances said. The other women glanced over at me and gave me polite, encouraging smiles. “My name is Frances Dunnmeyer, and I started the Complex Grief Group over ten years ago, after my husband died and I found myself feeling like no one else could possibly understand what I was going through. My late husband was not a bad person, but we were not in a good marriage, and the conflicting emotions that came up around his death were difficult to manage, even for me, and I’ve been a licensed therapist for twenty-five years. I started this group to help other women like me, women who are struggling to reconcile mourning the loss of someone you loved, who may have also been someone who hurt you, or treated you poorly, or held you back from realizing your full potential.”
Frances spoke directly to me now. “This is only the third time the group is meeting, so you aren’t far behind in our work. Each session, we concentrate on a prompt.” She indicated the chalkboard behind her. “The goal of the group is to tackle every prompt on the list, one for each week of the year, fifty-two in total. I say that you aren’t far behind in our work, because processing grief is some of the hardest work you’ll ever do. Time does not heal all wounds. Grief is just like a sink full of dirty dishes or a pile of soiled laundry. Grief is a chore you have to do, and it’s a messy one, at that.”