The Age of Grief

by Jane Smiley

  They make popcorn and crack beers, then turn out the lights and position their chairs before the bay window. Cars and semis rush past on the main thoroughfare nearby, and they make plans to jog, to swim, to learn to cook Middle Eastern food. Florence talks about Bryan. Most of her remarks are open-ended, so that Frannie can simply fall into telling all about it if she wants to. She doesn’t, even when Florence says, “If you ever want to talk about what happened, you can trust me completely. You know that, don’t you?” Frannie always nods.

  Florence can hardly help speculating, especially at home, alone in her own kitchen, staring out at Philip’s stained-glass windows. The thumps and sawings that occasionally sound from his house seem to her not the mysteries of the moment, but those of the past autumn, when she was so often inside, but never saw what was going on.

  She picks at the burned kernels in the bottom of the popcorn bowl. “You know what one of the mothers said to me today? They’d done Lamaze, I guess, she and her husband, and she said that when the pains got bad, he climbed up onto the labor table and held her head in his arms. She looked me full in the face and asked, ‘How can my marriage not be perfect from now on? We were splendid together!’

  “Philip and I lost a baby.” Frannie tips the beer can back and catches the last drops with her tongue. Florence runs one of the kernels around and around the buttery bowl. This is the moment. What Florence wishes to know is the story of their mundaneness: what was said over breakfast, and in what tone, what looks were exchanged, what noises Frannie could not help listening to when she was tending her own affairs, who would be the first to break a silence. “I was prediabetic without knowing it. She went full term, but when we got to the hospital they said she had died in labor, then knocked me out.” Frannie speaks calmly, expecting Florence’s expertise to fill in the details, which, regrettably, it does.

  “They should have suspected.” She is professionally disapproving.

  “The doctor was an ass. It was a long time ago. Almost eight years.”

  Needless to say, it was tragic, devastating, but how so? Florence sips her beer and glances into Frannie’s face. No more on the subject is forthcoming.

  Bryan joins them twice, but though he likes Frannie, his pleasure in her company isn’t as exquisite as Florence expects it to be. That he might sometimes be on the verge of criticizing Frannie annoys her, because she is beginning to have so much fun with him that it can no longer be called “fun.” It encompasses many things other than, and opposite to, amusement.

  He tells lots of stories. His past begins to assume the proportions of an epic to Florence. She likes his self-confidence and his ready flow of conversation, his thick, curly hair, and his willingness to be teased. She listens to all his stories with interest, but when he talks about his ex-wife, she can’t keep her attention on what he is saying. Images of Frannie, Philip, their pale furniture and their pale floors invade her imagination. “Marriage is such a mystery to me,” she says idly.

  “Well, it’s a mystery to me, too, even though I sometimes think I can remember every minute of my own.”

  “And you’re going to describe them all, one by one?” She smiles.

  “Only if you ask.”

  “And besides, there’s so much else to cover.” She pokes him in the ribs.

  “You don’t want to hear it?”

  “Every word, every word.”

  “The past is always with you.”

  “God forbid.” But she doesn’t mean it. She will remember, for example, every moment of this talk—the fall of light through the hackberry bushes fixes his words and his tones permanently; his words and tones do the same for the light.

  At the hospital, she surprises herself by recalling things she did not know she had noticed—the color of his socks, the titles of the books piled on his dashboard, what he almost ordered for dinner but decided against. When she relates these details to Frannie, Frannie’s smile reminds her that she is like the one- and two-day mothers who tell her exactly how the breast was taken, whether the sucking reflex seemed sufficiently developed, how five minutes on each side didn’t seem like enough. Like the mothers, Florence smiles, self-deprecating, but can’t stop.

  “Another thing about him,” she tells Frannie on the phone, “is that he acts as much as he talks. Don’t you think that’s very rare? We never sit around, saying what shall we do. When he picks me up, he always has some plan. And he thinks about what I might like to do, and he’s always right. I must say that this care is rather thrilling. It’s almost unmasculine!”

  “I’m envious,” replies Frannie, and Florence, marveling at her good luck, demurs. “He does have something of a temper, though.” When Florence hangs up the phone, she realizes that Frannie didn’t sound envious. Florence smiles. She loves Frannie completely.

  That evening Bryan says, “Doesn’t your friend Frannie work over at the U?”

  “Off-campus programs. How come?”

  “Someone mentioned her at lunch today.”

  “What did they say?” Her voice rises, oddly protective and angry. Bryan glances at her and smiles. “Nothing, dear. Just mentioned her name.”

  Florence remains disturbed and later decides it is because she wants Frannie, Frannie’s delight, conversation, thoughtfulness, all to herself. That her name can come up among strangers implies a life that fans away into the unknown. She wonders about Frannie’s activities in the intervals of her absence. She feels none of this jealousy with Bryan.

  Florence rolls away from Bryan and grabs the phone at the end of the first ring. Bryan heaves and groans but does not awaken. Florence thinks it will be the hospital, but it is Frannie, who says, “My Lord, it’s only ten thirty!”

  “I got up at five this morning. How are you?”

  “Can you get up at six tomorrow? A friend offered me her strawberry patch. We can pick some, then have a picnic breakfast. “

  “Lovely. Let’s just have fruit and bread and juice.”

  “I’ll pick you up at six fifteen.”

  “Mmmmm.”

  The morning could not be fresher. Frannie’s new car is pearled with dew and smells, inside, of French bread. The strawberry patch is professionally laid out in neat rows, and among shiny dark leaves, the heartlike berries weigh into pale straw. The earth is springy and smells of damp. Two maples at the corner of the garden cast black, sharp-edged shadows; everything else sparkles with such sunlight that Florence’s vision vibrates. Ripe berries plop into their hands at a touch. Frannie, it turns out, has brought champagne. “And not only jam,” she is saying, “but a really delicious liqueur my friend has the recipe for. And look over there! Those two apricot trees bloomed this spring, and that peach. The one next to it is a Chinese chestnut. She lives here alone and hates to see it go to waste. In the fall, she says she has the best apples in the county.” Frannie shades her eyes and looks across the field toward the house. “I was hoping she’d come out. Anyway, last year there were seven bushels on one tree alone.”

  “Frannie, I’ve known you all these months, and I’ve never realized what an earth mother you are. I feel like I’ve missed something.”

  “Converts are the most ardent, you know. But don’t you love the romance of the harvest?” She sucks a berry off the stem.

  “The romance of putting up two dozen quarts of tomatoes and a dozen quarts of beans in one evening when the temperature and the humidity are both ninety-five?”

  “The romance of opening a jar of strawberry jam in the middle of December!”

  “I’d call that the romance of consumption.”

  “Call it what you like. Mmmmm!” She bites into another strawberry and glances toward the still house again.

  They sit under one of the maples with their shoes off, tearing hunks of bread. Champagne sizzles in their bowl of berries, and the butter is still cool, dewy. Florence is excited. She thinks she will penetrate the marriage mystery at last, then is ashamed of her unseemly curiosity. Still … She says, “Bryan and I sa
w Philip yesterday.” A lie.

  “How is Bryan, anyway? Are you in love yet?”

  “We’ve agreed not to say. He’s very compelling, though. Especially at six a.m., when I think he’s asleep, and he grabs my foot as I’m sneaking out of bed. I thought I was going to jump right out of my skin.”

  “Do you talk?”

  “Nonstop.”

  There is a pause here, where Frannie might mention her conversational history with Philip, but instead she rolls over and closes her eyes. Florence presses ahead. “I actually spoke to him, Philip I mean. I said hello, he said hello, Bryan said hello.” She looks at Frannie. Nothing. “He’s so boyish-looking. From a distance he looks about eighteen, and getting younger. That’s another thing about Bryan. Being prematurely grizzled makes him look very wise. Are you asleep?”

  Frannie shakes her head and slips her hand into the bowl. “Mmmmm,” she says.

  “Do you ever miss him?” This is so bold that Florence blushes.

  Frannie shrugs. “How’s Bryan’s work going?” Bryan’s work is to figure out how many ways the hospital can use the computer it has just purchased.

  “Terrifically,” says Florence. “Now they’re thinking of renting time to the county and making a profit on the purchase.”

  “But they bought it with county money.”

  “The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.” Florence sighs. “You know, you always turn the conversation over to me, and I always rise to the bait.”

  “More strawberries?” Frannie holds out the bowl, and Florence gives up. They talk about a movie Frannie wants to go to, then about the seven-pound twins Florence saw the previous week. Florence begins to think of Bryan and to wonder what time it is. The champagne in the bottom of the crystal bowl is flat. Just then Frannie says, “I hate the way Philip and I admired ourselves all the time.”

  Florence picks up the napkins and the champagne cork and the wrappings from the loaf of bread, and then it is time to depart.

  “Well, I don’t think life has passed me by.” Florence, in her bathrobe, strikes a pose on the stairs. Bryan looks up from his book, elaborately distracted. Florence lifts her chin. Lately, they have been debating whether life has passed Bryan by.

  “No, bitch,” he says, just containing a smile. “Life hasn’t passed you by.” Florence exhibits an ostentatious bit of calf. “You were standing in the road, and it ran you right over!” Florence laughs and runs up the steps. At the top, she hits the light switch, plunging Bryan into darkness, then she throws herself diagonally across the bed.

  When Bryan comes in, she is pretending to be asleep. He walks around the bed. “I’m so comfortable,” she groans. “You’ll have to sleep on the floor.” She stretches out her arms. “There’s no room.”

  “I see a spot,” he says. She can hear the smile in his voice, and she feels her body contract with the tension of imminent laughter. Then he launches himself diagonally across her. The weight of his body is delightful: for a moment they are still, and she seems to feel the muffled beat of his heart. Then they are laughing and floundering across one another. They have been laughing all evening, and this laughter, Florence knows, will bloom smoothly into lovemaking. “I love you,” he says. He has said it often lately.

  “Do you mind if I reciprocate at once?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “Ah.” They snuggle down and pull up the covers.

  Just when Florence thinks it is about to begin, when her skin seems to rise to meet the palm of his hand, he squeezes her closely and says, “Speaking of love.”

  “Please do.”

  “Your friend seems to have a new one.”

  “Which friend?” Florence’s eyes are closed, and she is trying to guess where his hands are, where they will alight.

  “Frannie,” he says.

  Florence opens her eyes and sits up. “Oh, really?” she says. “Who?” And then, in a less casual tone, “She didn’t tell me.”

  “A woman in the art school, I think.”

  “Which part do you think?”

  “What?”

  “What’s questionable, love, art school, or woman?”

  “Art school.”

  “Oh.”

  “I thought you’d be glad. They look very happy. I saw them having tea this afternoon.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m sorry I told you.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “Come here. Please. We’ve had such a good time tonight.”

  “We really have.” She kisses him on the nose and smiles, but in the end they settle into bed without making love. Florence says, “I think if we hadn’t had such a good time tonight then I wouldn’t be able to imagine their every moment together.” But she says it quietly, knowing that Bryan has fallen asleep.

  She’d intended to drop in at Frannie’s the next morning, a Saturday, on her way to the store, but now that seems like she’d be rushing by for the details. She doesn’t know what she would say, all she can think of are challenges and accusations.

  She stops on the way home, leaving Bryan’s car at the end of the block. No one is around, and she sees that Frannie’s belongings are in the street—the plant stand, two boxes of books; clothes in a large pile seem especially vulnerable. Florence looks around for Frannie’s winter coat to throw over them, but she can’t find it. While she is standing there, Frannie’s car pulls up. The other woman is with her, and Frannie’s “Hello!” is wildly exuberant. Florence attributes this to the presence of the other woman.

  Frannie introduces them. The woman’s name, Helen Meardon, is certainly conservative, even old-fashioned, and her thighs are too fat. Otherwise she is very pretty. Florence listens for Helen Meardon to say, “I’ve heard so much about you,” but she does not, in fact, smile again after the introduction, although her inspection of Florence, whose clothes are a mess and whose hair is dirty, is frank and lengthy. Helen Meardon is a person of style. “I didn’t know you were moving,” Florence says heartily, thinking of a recent evening together.

  “Darling! It’s very sudden. The house is terrific! Remember where we went for strawberries? Helen’s just put in the most beautiful red enameled wood-burning stove. It’s practically her place, she moved in so long ago, and the rent hasn’t been raised in years, so it should cost next to nothing to live there.”

  “That’s great.”

  “You’ll have to come over as soon as you can.”

  “I’m so surprised.”

  Helen Meardon is moving away, toward the apartment building. She exchanges with Florence a suspicious sidelong glance before passing her and climbing the porch steps.

  “Maybe I will come over,” asserts Florence.

  “Or we could have lunch together downtown.”

  “Can I help you move? I’ve got Bryan’s car.”

  “We can handle it, I think,” announces Helen from the porch. “We’re nearly finished.” She goes into the building.

  “Helen’s terribly shy,” says Frannie, looking after her.

  “You must be good friends with her to be moving in.”

  “We met almost my first week on the job last fall. Sometimes I feel like I’ve known her since kindergarten, and sometimes I feel like we’ve just met.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Frannie! What about this?” Helen is holding an object up at the window screen. Frannie turns to squint at it.

  “I better go. Bryan will be expecting his lunch,” Florence says.

  Frannie smiles at her.

  “Not that I’ll make it for him, I mean. I’m not his slave, of course. I just went to the store.”

  Frannie continues to smile. “He’s a nice man.”

  “I think we’re in love now.”

  “You told me that last week.”

  “Yes, right.” It is impossible to leave. At length, Florence simply turns away and runs down the street to the car. She imagines Frannie and Helen meeting in the doorway of t
he empty apartment, the same height, kissing.

  Florence is drawn outside by the odors of cut grass and privet. Bryan should be coming soon to take her swimming. It is a glorious day, and Philip is snipping his hedge, his back to her, his progress slow and neat. The grass he has mown is already bagged and sitting on the curb. Before going back inside, Florence watches him for a minute. She hasn’t spoken to him since her spring antagonism. Now she fears that she has found out the secret of his marriage, and he would know by looking at her.

  He sets down his shears and wipes his face in his shirt. When she turns to go inside, he calls to her, “What do you think, Florence, shall I trim it into birds and perfect spheres?”

  “What is that called again?”

  “Topiary. How’s the baby business?”

  “Bouncing. How are you?”

  “Sorry not to see you more often. And this is your slow season.”

  “I haven’t been home much, I’ll admit.”

  “Ah, love.” He speaks with only ordinary irony.

  “I’ve been around enough to hear a lot of thumps and bangings across the way. Are you haunted over there?”

  “Only by the spirit of remodeling. I took out the kitchen bar and put down new linoleum, and let’s see, put in some new windows and repainted a little.”

  “My goodness!”

  “Would you like to see it?”

  He has also had a new sofa re-covered in a pattern of green leaves and lemons. The place is even more spacious now than before, if that is possible. Philip’s furniture, director’s chairs and yellow canvas deck chairs, recalls the ocean. His floors recall sandy beaches. Nothing recalls Frannie, and Florence feels suddenly calmer. He has brought his desk downstairs and set it up where he can survey his solitary realm. There is an air of satisfaction about the furnishings and their arrangement, as if they have spread themselves this way and that, unhindered. “I should have come over sooner,” Florence says, not remembering till then that she wasn’t invited to come over. Still, she feels that she has missed the transformation itself, and having missed it, she will never know what it was that has been transformed. “You know how nosy I am,” she adds.