Just so you know, I’m writing from the patio of our gorgeous hotel in Turks and Caicos, and you’re sleeping in the bedroom. I can hear you snoring. Even your snoring is hot. I don’t know how you pull it off, but you do. You are definitely getting a little some-some in about fifteen minutes. This vacation is the BEST. Thank you, honey, for filling my life with so many beautiful moments.
Okay, back to the present time, or your present time, I guess.
Since this is the first month, I’m going easy on you, because I imagine you’re still wrecked. If you have a new wife already, I don’t want to hear about it. But I’m picturing you in a filthy apartment, unshowered, unshaved, looking like a pathetic ninth grader trying to grow a beard.
“You’re not wrong,” he said.
Are you ready? You are? Super!
Go to the grocery store!!!
Are you so excited? Listen. If I know you, there are dead veggies in the bottom drawer turning into green ooze. The milk is the consistency of cottage cheese. There are moldy leftovers and cold cuts that smell like feet. There’s plenty of food, but you’re not eating. You’ve barely left the house since I died. So go on! Take a shower! Shave. Brush your teeth. Go to the grocery store and stop eating food from cartons over the sink. Don’t be a loser!
I love you. I love you. I love you.
You can do this. You sort of have to. As the great Morgan Freeman once said, get busy living, or get busy dying.
Love, Lauren
“Don’t you Shawshank me,” he said, and he laughed, the sound rough and foreign.
Suddenly elated, he jumped from the couch. His wife had given him a chore, and he was going to do it. What was the weather like? Warm, right—Sarah had opened the windows. Was it Saturday? Could he go to the farmers’ market with Pebbles? Where was his phone so he could see the date?
First things first, clean out the fridge. Milk, lumpy and disgusting. In fact, all dairy products, see ya. Gross turkey slices—God, the smell. She was right. Some of the food he’d ordered and stuck in the fridge, some Tupperware containers of food from Sumi Kim, all of it way too old or mysterious. He filled the trash bag in record time.
Lauren was right about the vegetables. Those had been bought when she was still alive. When eating leafy greens was supposed to boost her immune system. “Fuck you,” he told the slimy spinach and liquefied zucchini. He opened the cupboard and saw the giant container of turmeric, supposedly so good for health. The vitamins and Chinese supplements. The lies, the hope.
None of this had saved her, so he jammed it all into the trash. Liars. False prophets. Snake oil. His mood plummeted back to the tar pits.
No. No. Lauren had written him a letter, had given him a task, and there were more to come, a dozen of them, and that was so amazing, so great, such a gift, he wasn’t going to ruin it by thinking about how dead she was.
With this letter, she was still here.
Ten minutes later, he had Pebbles on a leash. It wasn’t Saturday . . . it was Tuesday, so no farmers’ market, but that was okay, because he could drive to the Stop & Shop, which had been Lauren’s favorite grocery store. She hated Whole Foods and was mystified by Aldi. He’d take Pebbles for a walk first, because she did deserve some exercise, and then they’d get in the car so she could go for a ride, her favorite thing on earth.
Pebbles trotted joyfully next to him as he walked down the street, then into the park. It was mild out, in the midfifties, and the sun was bright and strong. People were all around, and maybe they recognized him as the guy with the brown-and-white dog, the guy with the wife on oxygen. Maybe they called out and said hello, but he was too buzzed with excitement to notice.
Get busy living, or get busy dying. Ha. Their joke.
He walked back to the apartment building’s parking lot. “You wanna go for a ride?” he asked their dog. “A ride?”
Pebbles answered with a nearly human string of sounds, her feathery tail swishing, those cute triangular ears at high alert.
“Let’s go, then.” He opened the door and she leaped in. He started the car, rolled down the windows enough so she could stick her head out, but not enough that she could jump out. It was a beautiful day. Very mild and sunny. The trees were turning faintly red with buds. That’s right. It was now officially spring.
At Stop & Shop, he parked, raised the windows enough so Pebbles could have fresh air but not lick passersby. He grabbed a cart and went inside and began zooming down the aisles. Arugula, broccoli, cabbage, tomatoes, peapods, red peppers, yellow peppers, oranges, ginger, garlic. Cheerios, sort of nutritious. Peanut butter, great on everything. Pasta, why not? Bread. Salmon, so healthy, plus Lauren loved it. Chicken breasts. Paper towels, the extra-soft tissues Lauren liked. Clorox Clean-Up, because they always had to make sure any contagious germs were . . .
Oh. Right. The germs were a moot point. And there was no they anymore. He wasn’t shopping for them anymore. Ever.
It was just him. The knowledge made him light-headed.
“Excuse me. Excuse me. Sir? Can you move?”
Josh blinked. Someone was trying to get around him, because apparently he’d stopped in the middle of the aisle.
“Yes. Sorry.” It was a mother, a toddler in the front of the cart and an older kid, maybe five, sitting among the groceries.
For the first time, it hit him that he’d never be a father. Not to Lauren’s kids. He’d always hoped that her IPF could be stopped, that she’d live decades more, and he wouldn’t give up on the idea of kids. Anything was possible. She’d only been twenty-eight. There was still time for the wonder cure that would put her IPF into permanent suspension, or even cure it.
But time had run out. There would be no kids. No genetic memory of her, no seeing her smile on a child’s face, no hearing a laugh that was just like hers.
The smaller child looked at him and started to cry.
“Sorry,” he said, and this time, he actually moved the cart.
Why was he here? He had to get home. He somehow had to figure out how to get these groceries put into bags, pay for them, get into the car—he had driven, right?—and get home.
“Hey, Josh,” came a mellow voice. It was Yolanda, their favorite manager here, who always wore earrings proclaiming her name. Lauren used to chat with her about Yolanda’s kids, knowing which grades they were in, what sports they played. How did she do that? How did she know Yolanda had kids? People just talked to Lauren. They trusted her. He was nothing compared to her. He was a piece of plywood, and she had been a rose. It was even her middle name. Lauren Rose Carlisle Park.
Yolanda tilted her head, her eponymous earring brushing her shoulder. “You okay?”
“She died,” he said.