“Are you the cook?”
“We take turns,” he said. “If you brown your own beef you can make a pretty nice sauce. We get kind of competitive.”
It seemed early, but she saw an opening, and she liked him. “How long have you two—” Not quite. “When was—”
“Winter of ninety-four.” He stabbed and twirled. There was a small beat; kitchen sounds, other tables talking, laughing at something. “Christmastime.”
“I can’t imagine.”
Steve chewed his food for a minute, and swallowed, giving the moment the time it needed. “It’s all right now. Thanks, though. Honestly,” he said, and he meant it. From early on he’d had to hear lots of people tell him how Linda was in a better place now. Right out of the gate: She’s in a better place now. Why did they say that?
“How old—”
“Jeremy,” he said. “Sixteen. That’s really the hardest part, you know. You don’t know what to say. To him. To anybody, I guess, but … it was hard.”
“I am so sorry, Steve.”
“It’s all right,” he said. “We miss her, you know. But we know she’d want us to be strong, that’s what she would have wanted. I wish she could see our boy, you know. He—he’s a good boy,” he said, his voice breaking a little, because he hardly ever talked about it; he was surprised to find himself feeling so open.
“Good kid, I mean,” he said, clearing his throat, taking a drink of water. Jeremy hadn’t been a boy for many years. “He’s always been a good kid.”
“He is lucky to have a good dad,” Shauna Kinzer said very deliberately, reaching across the table and putting her hand on his. The warmth soaked into his skin, rain on cracked earth.
They ordered dessert: two hot fudge brownies; sharing just one would have felt awkward. Out in front of the restaurant they said their good nights and then drove off in separate cars.
*
Ken Wahl, M.S.W., M.F.C.C.: 15 years experience in central Iowa. Individual and couples counseling. Specializing in grief, loss, and transition—it had been the least flowery ad in the Des Moines Yellow Pages back in 1995; it was important to Steve that the people he chose to share his private troubles with weren’t the type to try to convince him to cry out loud, and that they lived at least one county away.
Ken Wahl saw Steve Heldt clearly; over the years he’d known lots of men who didn’t want to make spectacles of themselves, whose need to retain their composure often surpassed their desire to be healed. “Did you ever think about keeping a journal?” he’d asked casually during their second meeting, and Steve had said no, he’d never been much on writing: but Wahl had reached into a big drawer in his desk and pulled out a composition book.
“You might try to write a little in it every day,” he said. “Just to see if it helps. You don’t have to show it to anybody, not even me, unless you feel like it—we can do that, but we don’t have to. It’s not for reading. Some people just find it comforting to write all this stuff down.”
You or I, finding ourselves in Steve Heldt’s shoes, might fill this book with intricate reckonings of our grief, trying to empty ourselves of its burden. But Steve only ever finished a few entries, which he meant to share with Wahl, but never did. The first few pages were simple sleep diaries: Two hours, 11:00–1:00; awake, watched TV until 5:00, fell asleep on couch. He’d ventured a little inward later, remembering all the times he thought of Linda during a given day: at work, while driving, before bed. At lunch with a client, having to swallow it all down. And then, suddenly: this.