dinner at the kitchen counter, I realized I was exhausted. Carissa had, as Abby would put it, tuckered me. I'd never in my life talked about myself for anywhere near as long as I had with the homeopath; I'd never examined my past with such purpose. I'd recalled things I hadn't thought about in years--some, perhaps, I hadn't thought about since they'd actually occurred.
I realized I'd told Carissa about the hour I'd spent staring into Elizabeth's closet the day after she'd died, when I was supposed to be picking out a dress for her to wear inside the coffin. Although the casket was going to be closed, what she was wearing still mattered greatly to me. Yet when I'd wandered upstairs to our bedroom and stood before the walk-in closet, I froze. Was I supposed to bury Elizabeth in one of the business suits and skirts she might wear during the week, or the sort of casual dress she might wear to a cocktail party on somebody's porch in July?
I still don't know what would have happened if Elizabeth's friend Lorraine hadn't shown up. Who knows if I would ever have made a decision. I might still be standing in that bedroom, a catatonic attorney more mannequin than man, while Abby was being raised by her grandparents in Florida, or my sister in New Hampshire.
But Lorraine had shown up, calling up the stairs to me when she'd found the front door open.
"You know she loved blue," Lorraine had said, choosing a white pleated jumper that was covered with tiny irises.
"It's sleeveless," I remembered telling her, disturbed on some level because even in June the Vermont ground could be cold. But Lorraine had been a step ahead of me: She was already pulling Elizabeth's favorite cardigan sweater from a bureau drawer.
"These always looked nice together," she had said.
And tonight, for the first time in my life, I'd verbalized the fact that I'd never been wild about the teddy bears my father's company had made. They cost a small fortune in upscale toy stores around the country, in part because they were made in Vermont (which mattered to people for reasons I just couldn't fathom--after all, it wasn't like the teddies were made of maple syrup), and in part because they were always eccentrically dressed. Over the years, Green Mountain Grizzlies had dressed its bears in girl group sequins, disco king leisure suits, and some extremely punk leather. In the seventies, there'd been a teddy dressed like a jelly-doughnut-filled Elvis Presley, and another that had looked more than a bit like Henry Kissinger.
No one suspected that my father's big idea of Desert Storm Grizzly was probably a sign of his oncoming Alzheimer's. After all, the camouflage-clad grizzly had been a huge success--due at least in part to my father's suggestion that the teddy come equipped with a toy gas mask.
But I had never cared for the bears, even when I was a boy. I didn't like the way the arms had joints at the shoulders, and the way the paws had claws made of a rubber that felt like a pencil's eraser. I'd just never found the bears very cuddly.
Yet my sister and I owned one or two of almost every single grizzly ever made. Abby must have had a dozen of the things in her room, and at least a dozen more in a sealed moving box in the attic.
With Carissa, I'd gone into the childhood embarrassments that were an inevitable part of what my parents would refer to eventually as their weird midlife hippie phase. There was my father standing beside the tiny bleachers at the Little League field in Burlington in the summer of 1971, his hair in a ponytail. There was my mother picking me up from the school nurse's office one morning in second grade when I had a fever that reached triple digits. My mother was wearing an Indian sari, and what I believe were called "granny glasses," with deep purple lenses.
"We were meditating," she'd explained to the nurse when the other woman had actually had the audacity to ask.
And I'd told Carissa what it had been like to witness my mother die slowly
I realized I'd told Carissa about the hour I'd spent staring into Elizabeth's closet the day after she'd died, when I was supposed to be picking out a dress for her to wear inside the coffin. Although the casket was going to be closed, what she was wearing still mattered greatly to me. Yet when I'd wandered upstairs to our bedroom and stood before the walk-in closet, I froze. Was I supposed to bury Elizabeth in one of the business suits and skirts she might wear during the week, or the sort of casual dress she might wear to a cocktail party on somebody's porch in July?
I still don't know what would have happened if Elizabeth's friend Lorraine hadn't shown up. Who knows if I would ever have made a decision. I might still be standing in that bedroom, a catatonic attorney more mannequin than man, while Abby was being raised by her grandparents in Florida, or my sister in New Hampshire.
But Lorraine had shown up, calling up the stairs to me when she'd found the front door open.
"You know she loved blue," Lorraine had said, choosing a white pleated jumper that was covered with tiny irises.
"It's sleeveless," I remembered telling her, disturbed on some level because even in June the Vermont ground could be cold. But Lorraine had been a step ahead of me: She was already pulling Elizabeth's favorite cardigan sweater from a bureau drawer.
"These always looked nice together," she had said.
And tonight, for the first time in my life, I'd verbalized the fact that I'd never been wild about the teddy bears my father's company had made. They cost a small fortune in upscale toy stores around the country, in part because they were made in Vermont (which mattered to people for reasons I just couldn't fathom--after all, it wasn't like the teddies were made of maple syrup), and in part because they were always eccentrically dressed. Over the years, Green Mountain Grizzlies had dressed its bears in girl group sequins, disco king leisure suits, and some extremely punk leather. In the seventies, there'd been a teddy dressed like a jelly-doughnut-filled Elvis Presley, and another that had looked more than a bit like Henry Kissinger.
No one suspected that my father's big idea of Desert Storm Grizzly was probably a sign of his oncoming Alzheimer's. After all, the camouflage-clad grizzly had been a huge success--due at least in part to my father's suggestion that the teddy come equipped with a toy gas mask.
But I had never cared for the bears, even when I was a boy. I didn't like the way the arms had joints at the shoulders, and the way the paws had claws made of a rubber that felt like a pencil's eraser. I'd just never found the bears very cuddly.
Yet my sister and I owned one or two of almost every single grizzly ever made. Abby must have had a dozen of the things in her room, and at least a dozen more in a sealed moving box in the attic.
With Carissa, I'd gone into the childhood embarrassments that were an inevitable part of what my parents would refer to eventually as their weird midlife hippie phase. There was my father standing beside the tiny bleachers at the Little League field in Burlington in the summer of 1971, his hair in a ponytail. There was my mother picking me up from the school nurse's office one morning in second grade when I had a fever that reached triple digits. My mother was wearing an Indian sari, and what I believe were called "granny glasses," with deep purple lenses.
"We were meditating," she'd explained to the nurse when the other woman had actually had the audacity to ask.
And I'd told Carissa what it had been like to witness my mother die slowly
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