“Everybody. You think I’m paranoid? I’m not paranoid. Every time I run into people, they give me this look, even now, it’s subtle but I see it, as if they’re surprised, as if—”
“As if what?”
“As if something’s wrong with me, and I shouldn’t still be walking around, I should be—”
“Yes?”
“Dead. Because Tommy’s dead.”
It was the first time she’d said it and she wanted immediately to take it back. The words had fallen out of her mouth like marbles, rolling this way and that across the floor, irretrievable.
And people were right, she thought. Why should she keep breathing? All these years she’d kept it together not only for Charlie but also for Tommy: so that she would be intact when he came back to her.
But she couldn’t pretend any longer: Tommy was dead and she was a—what? Not a widow, not an orphan. There was no word for what she was.
“I see,” Dr. Ferguson said. He slid the tissue box closer to her across the side table.
They looked at each other. He was waiting, she realized, for her to cry. The square box gazed at her expectantly, its cardboard skin swimming with absurd pink and green bubbles, one tissue protruding obscenely from its slit, calling out for her tears, for her—what did the books call it?—catharsis. He wanted to see her break at last. Well, damned if he was going to get her to do that. What did it get you, catharsis? You still had to pick yourself up and go on with your life, your life that was a pile of shit. She stood.
“Where are you going?”
“Look. Are you going to give me the prescription or not?”
“It’s not advisable—”
“Yes or no? ’Cause I’ll go elsewhere.… You know someone else will give it to me if you don’t.”
He hesitated, but he gave her the slip of paper. “Come back soon, all right? Next week?”
*
You still had to pick yourself up and walk out that door and face the glare of the afternoon sun on the windshields of the cars in the parking lot.
You still had to find your car and put your key in the ignition and hear its full-throated cry as it came to life. You had to steer it onto the road with all the other living, moving things, all headed somewhere or other as if the rotation of the world depended on their trips to the dry cleaner’s or the mall. You had to pull off the road into the parking lot of the CVS and get out of the car and stand waiting at the counter with all the other people seeking the potions that would buy them another hour or another day, whether they wanted it or not, and you had to put half a pill in your mouth, just half, and swallow it, hard and dry, feeling it scrape down your throat. And then, since you had no food in the house and you had a human being besides yourself to look after, you had to walk down the sidewalk to the Stop & Shop. You had to stand there inside blinking under those bright, bright lights, all those rows and colors leaping out at you, tomatoes so red they hurt your eyes, fiery orange bags of Doritos, neon green six-packs of 7-Up, everything chirping out to the living: Pick me! Pick me! Pick me!
And you couldn’t stand there forever, as if you’d never seen a supermarket before. You needed, even then, especially then, when your momentum began to flag, to keep moving. You filled your cart with what your family needed. You put a dead, skinned chicken in there and a big box of cornflakes and a gallon of milk. You put broccoli in there for Charlie, the only vegetable he’d eat, and some Vidalia onions for Henry in case he came over someday and you also put in a bag of grape tomatoes. You knew that Charlie wouldn’t eat them and you yourself preferred beefsteak but you grabbed them anyway, didn’t you, their smooth red skins peeking out at you through the mesh of the bag, grabbed them because Tommy liked them, liked to hold them in his teeth and squirt them across the room, and you wanted to show yourself that you still remembered what Tommy liked, even if it did blast a hole in your heart.