by Jill Barnett
“I like your hair,” she said. “Not many straight women can get away with wearing their hair that short.”
“Funny.” I flipped her off, and then played with the balance weights, but no matter how much I adjusted it, or even after I lifted one foot a bit, I still had to use the heavier black weight that read 150 pounds and then move the smaller weight up and up from there.
“The truth is I’m jealous,” she said.
“Why?”
“That haircut looks really good on you.”
“Thanks,” I said distractedly. Shoeless, the horrific number only went down a pound. “I wonder how much more my long hair would have made me weigh. Ugh.” I tousled my stubby, shag carpet hairdo with one hand and could feel the product in it. There wasn’t much to tousle. It was rather like patting your son on the head after his summer buzz cut was growing out. “At least now I know why I thought the haircut made me look fat,” I said. “And why I thought the cleaners shrunk my slacks.”
Apparently the easiest way to put on twenty five pounds in two months was living on a diet of Belgian chocolates, Wheat Thins, Froot Loops, margaritas, and the five dozen chocolate chip cookies Molly made but I ate. I had become a carbohydrate junkie.
To my chagrin, the day after my head collision with the coffee table, and after Molly had made all those cookies for me, I discovered I had missed the bake sale by three weeks. Weakly, I had trudged out of the school office in organizational shame, carrying a box layered with waxed paper and dozens of double-sized, really chewy, chocolate chip pecan cookies.
I had options. I could have taken them to the company office, which would have given me another excuse to show up there, but then I would have to admit to my sons that I screwed up . . . just one more thing their mother couldn’t handle. And what if they told Molly?
Scott had given me the third degree about my hair during my last family dinner at their house, and I could tell from the looks they exchanged that all my children were certain I was falling apart.
“Mom! What did you do? Your hair is gone,” Scott said.
“Scott! It looks fabulous, Mom,” Renee said and she elbowed my son in the ribs.
“It’s awfully short,” Molly said. Clearly she hated it.
“I love it,” Keely said.
Phillip frowned and walked in a circle, eyeing me like one did melons at the market. “Didn’t Indian women used to cut their hair as a sign of grief?”
I believe at that moment I regretted that Phillip took history classes. Why couldn’t he have been like those young people Jay Leno randomly interviewed on TV, the ones who don’t know who the President or Vice President are and who think cyclamen is a venereal disease.
My hair was a pointed topic of discussion during the entire dinner, and I left Scott’s feeling less good about myself than I had when I arrived. I didn’t know what people wanted from me, especially my children, and worse yet, I didn’t know what I wanted from myself.
Devouring the cookies became my home remedy, a chocolate and carbohydrate asylum I had committed myself to when I was all alone at home, when the loneness I felt for my husband was more than I could bear and I, too, began to question my sanity. Right at that moment, standing in Harrie’s office and looking at the scale, I wasn’t certain there was even one aspect of my life that was under my own control.
Harrie shoved her tortoise rimmed glasses up her nose. I always wanted Harrie’s nose. It was one of those lovely European noses, longer and pointed down just a little at the end, the kind that made her face look like it belonged to one those great De Havilland or Fontaine beauties of the past. “When did you stop exercising?” she asked me.
“Around 1984.”
She laughed. “At your age—”
“Our age,” I said.
“I stand corrected. Bone and aging studies have proven that women over fifty need strength training. You’re behind, March. Hire a trainer. Add cardio, walk more, and buy some weights.”
“And here I thought lifting those cookies to my mouth was enough.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know, I know . . . But I hate exercise,” I muttered quite petulantly.
“Next time we’ll need to do a bone density check on you. You’re probably fine, but make strength training part of your routine.”
What routine was that? Self-pity, I thought sourly.
“Start with some yoga.”
“I’d rather start with some yogurt . . . frozen, with hot fudge.” I held up my hand before she said something. “Okay, I know that was bad.”
Harrie did the exam and I got dressed and went into her office, where she closed the door and sat down at her desk.
“Am I going to live?” I said, joking.
“Do you want to?” She wasn’t joking.
“Somedays, no,” I said truthfully.
“Scott called me, which I why I had the office call you about an appointment. Your kids are worried about you.”
“My kids think I’m nuts because I cut and colored my hair,” I paused, then added, “And got drunk. And had a little fall. But I didn’t need stitches,” I said too brightly.
“Scott said John Cummings told him you had some kind of breakdown in the market.”
I groaned. “Scott knows about that, too? Damn . . ..”
“It sounds to me as if you’re having a tough time. And you certainly have a right to, March. I cannot even imagine. Grief is a terrible thing to deal with. It’s really okay if you need something to help you emotionally, at least something other than Ellie’s deadly margarita lunches. I can give you something. Some Zoloft.”
“You gave that to Ellie for her last two divorces.”
“And she got through them both without killing her exes.”
I laughed because Ellie was a pistol even when she wasn’t spurned or angry. Her divorces thoroughly pissed her off. “But I’m not angry,” I said defensively.
“Are you sure?”
“You think I’m mad at Mike? Oh that’s right. Denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. It’s part of the grief process. Yes, I did buy some books. Why would I be mad at him? Believe me, I am absolutely certain Mike would have rather kept right on living. However, I don’t want to ever accept his death,” I said vehemently.
“And there are days when I feel as if my life is spinning out of control.” I was quiet and thought about what I had just said. Harrie wasn’t condemning me or judging me. She was my friend. “Well,” I said more quietly. “I’m a little pissed off at God. I wouldn’t mind doing a few rounds with Him.”
“Oh, March. I’m sorry. That can’t be easy to admit.”
“Actually, I’m so angry, it’s not all that difficult,” I said and was surprise by the bitterness in my voice.
Harrie shook her head. “No one, least of all me, has a right to tell you how to feel. What you decide to do about dealing with all this is up to you. You do what you want to do. I just want you to think about the options, especially when you’re feeling lost and out of control. There are resources to help you.”
I stared down at my clenched hands for a long time.
“Look, if you try them and they don’t help you, you don’t have to stay on the pills, but if they can help why not at least give them a try? That’s why these drugs were created.”
“Our Prozac nation?” I said sarcastically, but she merely stared at me. “I don’t know . . . ”
“Grief counseling isn’t a crutch. For some people, it helps to talk to someone, privately or in a group. I have some names here.” She handed me some business cards. “I think you should consider getting some help. I’m talking to you because I love you. You know that.”
I didn’t want to hear this. I closed my eyes and leaned back in the chair. “I’m not sure medication is for me. And I’m certain group speak is not.” Sitting in a room and telling strangers how I was feeling? I shuddered. “I’d like to think I can be stronger than that. And if I take the meds, doesn�
��t that mean I’m giving in to this abysmal state I’m in and admitting I can’t go on?”
“Is that such a bad thing to admit?”
“It is when it might mean I’m even a worse mess than my children believe I am.”
“It doesn’t make you a weaker person because you might choose to take an antidepressant. This medication is not addictive. The risks are minimal. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to take it. But it takes about six weeks for them to start to have an effect. I’m going to give you this prescription. You’ll have it if you need it.”
So I left her office more confused than when I went in, and headed for my car, but I stopped and turned, looking up and down the street. Figuring I needed the exercise, I might as well start immediately. After checking my watch—as if I actually had something to do—I walked up the hill, and down another, and another, stopped at a toy shop and bought some puzzles for my grandchildren, then left and went down along Market Street to Nordstrom’s.
I tried on dresses for Mickey’s graduation; the size fourteens were tight and the few size sixteens that even existed in this new world where a size ten/twelve was an extra large, fit in the hips, but gapped in the arms and bust. The size-two saleswoman suggested I check out the plus size department.
Though I had always been a twelve, sometimes a ten, even in maternity clothes, I wasn’t any longer. Eventually I found a black, boat-necked, cotton designer sheath with five percent spandex in size fourteen and a black Spanx that pretty much went from neck to knee.
My mother would have laughed and called it a full body girdle. I could hear her goofy laughter in my mind. She cackled like a chicken when she laughed. We all teased her about it, but my father was the worst. He used to say, ‘Beatrice. You’re going to lay an egg any minute.’
She had died five years ago, gone quietly one night just about six months after my father. You hear about those couples who grow old together and one dies first and other soon after. Both quietly. I had thought Mike and I would be one of those couples. Still I missed my mother, especially now without Mike. She would have been my rock. I made a mental note to call my sister May tonight. There were only the two of us Randolphs left, and I hadn’t been very good about calling her back lately, and still she called regularly from back east. She knew how lost I was.
I sat in the Café, eyeing the fifty-grams-of-fat, six hundred calorie muffins—chocolate and carrot, both with pecan-crusted tops—the thick cheese and meat paninis, and wedges of bacon quiche, but only ordered two big glasses of iced tea with extra lemon. When I finished them off, I gathered my shopping bags and took one of the silver, snaking escalators up to a beautifully displayed, truly yummy, designer handbag department. I had decided to have leather for lunch.
I understood I was not in a healthy state, that Harrie had a point, so I took up exercising. Power-walking to be exact, which was actually better than running over all the city’s steep hills and curving streets. I wasn’t certain I should even start running in my fifties, and since that sounded like a really good excuse, I used it.
I had hated track and field in high school and tried to ditch the class as often as I could. Back in the seventies, when jogging overtook the nation and health came to the forefront of our social culture, there was this great Henny Youngman joke: ‘Everyone’s jogging. I can’t jog. My cigarette goes out and the ice cubes fall out of my drink.’
Even now it made me smile. To make Harrie happy, I bought a set a weights—an excuse to also get a cute little pink and black Prada gym bag—and couple of books and DVDs on strength training, and learned I had muscles in places I didn’t know could be sore. I took pictures of myself lifting weights, then contorted on the floor in mock pain with a digital camera and emailed them to Harrie.
I ate grapefruit for breakfast and more lettuce and cottage cheese than anyone without long ears and a cottontail should. I snacked on frozen grapes, and if I ate any more fish, especially tuna, I would eventually have so much mercury in my system I’d be as mad as a hatter and run through the streets yanking out my hair. Then I remembered I didn’t have much hair left to yank out.
The whole idea of hiring a trainer didn’t appeal to me. The word trainer brought to mind the image of a man with a whip. But my goal was set: no Spanx. So I took up power walking through the streets of San Francisco . . . mornings or afternoons, and I even bought a bathroom scale and set it to match the weight on Harrie’s vile professional scale, which I still think was wrong.
After the first few days of exercising, I made good friends with eight hundred milligram ibuprofen. By the second week, I found I enjoyed walking all over the city, as long as I stayed off congested streets where you could smell the exhaust, and I stayed away from the cable car line because of the temptation to hop onboard.
I was sleeping better. Soon, my cleaning service actually had some work to do when they came. As I slowly powered and lifted and starved away the pounds, my mood changed and I started to laugh more.
Mike only appeared twice more, once in the kitchen and again in our bedroom, and both times I put on my athletic shoes and walked away. When I came home and flopped on the bed, sweaty and exhausted, I was more concerned about a long shower than my fear of what I might see when I came out.
By Mickey’s graduation, I could wear the black dress without the body girdle, and the family made it through the event with only a few tears.
Publicly, the Cantrells stood together, and the pride we had for Mickey and his valedictorian speech superseded anything else. That day, I came home thinking that we had each taken on the role of standing in for Mike instead of mourning his absence. Both Scott and Phillip had done overtime trying to make up for Mike’s absence and by the end of the day, their jokes were a little harsher than normal and I thought Scott was annoyed with Phillip’s mouth.
It did seem that we were changing how we dealt with life, and for the first time I wondered if we could ever truly heal.
Summer came in and Mickey was working at the company five days a week. I dropped by in spite of the fact that Scott thought I needed protecting, and I began to have our Sunday dinners again. But now I seldom served lasagna, because I had lost the extra weight and was almost hooked on exercise.
One sunny afternoon I was out for a long power walk, and I took the route past the old apartment. I hadn’t driven past it for a couple of weeks. I had just picked up my pace and was trying to get my heart rate up, when I rounded the corner.
Across the street, a large area was sectioned off with construction tape and big yellow barricades. Behind them were a group of giant orange construction machines. A couple of workers in hardhats were smoking on the corner.
“Hey guys,” I said, waving away the smoke. “What’s going on here?”
“That old brick warehouse is coming down.”
My stomach was instantly somewhere around my ankles. I didn’t say anything, but could feel something inside of me just snap, and I turned back around.
A crane was shifting position and I could read the side. Golden State Demolition Co, Inc.
Before me, covered in graffiti, was the beginning of my life with Mike. Somehow, in my mind over the years, this building had stood for us, where we’d been and from where we’d come. That it was still there, unchanged, fooled me into making it a symbol of us. Had this happened before Mike died, I might have only been disappointed. But now I wanted to scream hysterically.
Instead, I casually made my way around the barricades, went under the construction tape, and power walked straight toward our old apartment.
Chapter Eighteen
Jail was a new experience for me. Somehow I expected it to look different in real life from all those television cop shows, but I was wrong. It looked the same: all gray; cement and metal, along with extremely questionable janitorial services.
The biggest difference between television jail and real-life jail was sensory. Sight and sound were the only senses you used to watch TV. Smell was not part of the equatio
n. As long as I live, I will never forget the smell of jail. It is uniquely vile.
Pine-Sol and Clorox would have done wonders for San Francisco’s slammer, which I was told was only a holding cell, a large square, barred, fifteen by fifteen foot windowless box, where I sat incarcerated with an interesting collection of other female misdemeanants. If I hadn’t attacked the poor police officer who tried to pull me off the building, I would have only been ticketed for misdemeanor and let go. Various officers told me this at least seven different times.
There were six of us in the cell. However I was the only one with an embroidered designer logo on my sports clothes. When they first locked me away and I turned around and faced the others, I was a little nervous. That was the only moment when I honestly might have regretted my actions. (Well, biting the cop wasn’t good either because when they first took me in, hand-cuffed, I had to get a blood test. It hadn’t been much of a bite. They didn’t think I was very funny when I told them I’d had my rabies shot.)
From the corner of my eye, I caught one of my cellmates eyeing my navy jacket with the gold charms on the zippers and matching striped track pants. Her name was Suki, and she wasn’t young, in her forties, and had long wavy hair shot with gray that hung down halfway her back.
She wore a 1980’s multi-colored Michael Jackson jacket with big padded shoulders, and when we talked she explained she could wear two or three cashmere sweaters under it and no one at Saks or Neiman’s could tell she was stealing. Suki was a professional shoplifter. And an eBay Power Seller. She was also a single mom of three.
The cell’s youngest occupant was Danica, a law student overloaded with student loans and who was arrested on a warrant for twenty seven unpaid parking tickets. She was facing three days in jail and fines she couldn’t pay.
Cherry and Lola were streetwalkers; neither looked like Julia Roberts, though they both could snap their chewing gum like champions. My children would have considered that as my punishment, since listening to someone pop their gum was one of my pet peeves.
