“It’s OK, Mom,” I answered, waiting for the interrogation to start. I tried to catch Harvey’s eye, but he’d wandered over to look out the window. Trying to be considerate, I guess.
“It’s not all right, darling,” she reasoned and pushed back from me to look at my face. “You’ve just lost your husband. Of course you’re not OK!”
Her words sank into me. She was right, I shouldn’t be OK. I shouldn’t be able to hold a conversation, let alone sit upright in bed. Widows were meant to be in a ball of agony, unable to think of anything but the loss of their loved one. I nodded my head and brought my gaze down, just as my twin sister, Anita, came hollering at me. Her loud, whiny voice cut through the migraine that was beginning to settle in my skull.
“Oh my gosh, Sara!” she screeched. She flopped down onto the bed and placed her handbag down on the carpeted floor. “We were all so worried about you.” At the age of thirty-two, my sister lived the perfect life I’d dreamed of; she had a normal husband and two wonderful kids. My niece and nephew meant the world to me, but my relationship with Anita was always teetering on a knife’s edge as the years went by. She criticised every aspect of my life, and though she never quite got around to saying it, I knew my mediocrity made her feel better about herself. If I fucked up, she would insist on telling me how she would’ve handled the problem, but then again, she wouldn’t get herself into the messes I somehow managed to get myself into. “Married an abusive husband did you?” she’d say, “Well that was silly of you, wasn’t it? You must’ve done something to provoke him…”
“I’m sorry we couldn’t be there yesterday,” my mom said. “Your stepfather had a work thing, so I had to wait till Anita could bring me. And then we had to find a sitter for the grandkids, of course.”
“It’s OK,” I reassured her again, pasting a weak smile on my face. It was probably best they hadn’t arrived last night, I thought. They would’ve hovered around and pestered me with their lukewarm, drama-induced sympathies.
Facing away from me, my mother looked over her shoulder and sent a grateful but cold smile towards her stepson. “Thank you for looking after her, Harvey,” she said, her voice taut and forcibly polite.
“No problem, Victoria,” he replied without looking at her. I could feel the tension in the room rise and felt helpless to do anything from my weak position in the bed. Trapped between my mother and vile sister.
“Well, we’re here now. There’s no need for you to stay,” my mother continued.
My mom divorced my father a long time ago, and there’d been a string of relationships, and more than a few marriages until she met Harvey’s father, Russell. But my mom and Harvey had never seen eye-to-eye. He saw her as just another gold-digger, a woman who used marriage as her meal ticket. And like a career, each marriage proposal was equivalent to a promotion, a rung up the never-ending ladder.
From my position on the bed I saw a flicker of annoyance cross the side of his face. He turned. “Fine, I’ll go.”
I mouthed a “thank you” as I watched him leave and close the wooden door to my room, leaving me with two women that would, as soon as Harvey was out of earshot, peck at me and ask me how much Eric’s life insurance policy was worth.
5
Sara
Days flew by in a blur after Eric’s death. Later in the week, I found out that the cause of his death was a head-on collision with a concrete lane barrier about ten miles down the road. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the idea of losing him forever. That he was actually gone. I fully expected to see him walk through the front door at any moment, or to be there lying on the bed staring at me with his curled up lips when I woke up first thing in the morning.
I stood by my husband’s coffin, a dry tissue clutched tightly in my hand as I watched a couple of bystanders lower his cold body into the ground. A light shower spattered against the polished wood surface. Mud, tears, and sniffles surrounded me. How could they cry for a man they didn’t truly know?
But I nodded my head and accepted their condolences while they patted my arm.
Mourners stood beside me, their hands gripping their handkerchiefs and swiping at their tear-stricken faces. My mother dabbed at her eyes; she made a great widow, I thought. Her husband before Russell gave her the opportunity to play the part so well—she knew exactly what to say, knew exactly how to act around the mourners. But I couldn’t be as tactful and was in danger of slipping off the handle at any moment. If anyone else told me “Eric was a good man”, I was likely to scream in their face.