My fury sends me up out of my bedroom. It throws shoes on my feet. When Ana asks what I’m doing, my fury tells her I’ll be back later. It pushes me out the front door, into the June heat, and then it leaves me there.
I stand outside, unsure of how I feel or what to do. I stand there for a long time, and then I turn around and walk right back inside. There’s no walking away from this problem. There’s no cooling off from this.
I have to pick out an outfit for tomorrow,” I say when I come back in.
“No, you don’t,” Ana says. “I pulled out what you’re wearing. You shouldn’t have to think about that.”
“What am I wearing?” I look at her, grateful and confused.
“I tried to find the perfect balance of sex appeal and decorum, so you’re wearing that long sleeveless black shift dress I found with black pumps. And I bought you this.” Ana pulls something out from under the couch. It occurs to me this couch has been her bed for days now, when I’m not using it to avoid my own.
She returns and hands me a box. I set it down in front of me and pull off the top. Inside the box is a small black hat with a thin, short black veil. It’s a morbid gift, a gift you can’t really say “thank you” for or say you always wanted. But somehow, this small gift fills a small chunk of the huge hole in my heart.
I slowly move toward it, delicately removing it from the box. The tissue paper crinkles around it. I move the box from my knees onto the floor and I put the hat on. I look to Ana to help me set it straight, to make it right. Then I walk into the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror.
For the first time since Ben died, I look like a widow. For the first time since I lost him, I feel like I recognize the person in the mirror. There I am, grief-stricken and un-whole. Widowed. It’s such a relief to see myself this way. I have felt so insecure in my widowness that seeing myself look like a widow comforts me. I want to run to Susan and say, “Look at me. Don’t I look like a woman that lost her husband?” If I look the part, everyone will believe me.
Ana is behind me in the bathroom. Her shoulders are hunched; her hands are clasped together, fingers intertwined. She is clearly unsure if she’s made a huge mistake in giving me the type of gift one hopes never to receive. I turn to her and take off the hat. She helps me set it down.
“Thank you,” I say, holding her shoulder. For some reason, I don’t need to rest my head on it right now. “It’s beautiful.”
Ana shrugs, her head sinking slightly as her shoulders sag in. “Are you sure? It’s not too much? It’s not too . . . macabre?”
I don’t actually know what macabre means, so I just shake my head. Whatever bad thing she thinks this gift might be, she is wrong. Given the circumstances, I love it.
“You are a friend that I could never . . . ” I choke on the words, unable to look her in the eye. “No one deserves a friend as wonderful as you,” I say. “Except maybe you.”
Ana smiles and seizes my temporarily not-miserable mood to slap the back of my thighs. “What can I say, kid? I love ya. Always have.”
“Should I try on the whole thing?” I ask, suddenly somewhat eager for an old-fashioned game of dress-up. Ana and I used to play dress-up in college, each of us going into the bathroom to try to come up with the most ridiculous outfits for the other one to wear. This is different; this is much, much sadder, but . . . this type of dress-up is where life has taken us and Ana is on board.
“Do it. I’ll wait out here.”
I run into my bedroom to see that she’s set aside my dress and shoes. I put them on quickly, adding a pair of black panty hose to complete the ensemble and mitigate the inherent sexiness of the veil and bare legs.
“Is it appropriate to be a sexy widow?” I call out to her while I put on my second shoe.