I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“I know we’re all operating on borrowed time, but I never expected—well, something like that to happen to someone like Jenny,” he said as he filled his mug.

“I know,” I agreed. Rationally, I understood that I was lucky it had been her and not one of my children; my worst fear was that I might outlive them. Hell, I was even glad it wasn’t me. Stevie and Miles needed me, and truth be told, Sanjay would be up a creek if he became a widower.

But knowing it could have been worse did not ease my grief—not even a little. Because Jenny hadn’t been felled by an incurable form of cancer. She hadn’t been caught in the line of fire while fighting for our country. Her death had been entirely preventable.

“It just makes me think,” Sanjay added.

I looked at him over the edge of my coffee mug. “About what?”

“Life,” he said, meeting my gaze. “How ridiculously short it is, even if everything goes right.”

How long had it been since we had last locked eyes? Since I had felt like he understood how I felt, and maybe even shared those feelings?

“Maybe it’s too soon for any big decisions, but this . . . it just makes me feel like maybe I should be doing some things differently,” he added.

“Yes,” I said, because I agreed—even if I had no idea yet what those things might be or how they needed to change. I stood at the counter, drinking my coffee in silence as Sanjay did the same. I wondered if he was still thinking what I was thinking.

Which was that it was a crying shame it had taken something so terrible for us to enjoy one lousy connection.

After I had finished my coffee, I picked up my phone. Was I supposed to call Matt? Email or text him? What was the etiquette for reaching out to a newly bereaved person?

I settled on a text. It’s Penelope. Just checking in. How is Cecily?

As soon as I hit “Send,” a wave of nausea came over me—true nausea, like the kind that I got when I was pregnant. Cecily no longer had a mother. Because Jenny was dead. Yet again, it was almost as though I was realizing it for the first time.

Phone in hand, I dashed upstairs to the bathroom. Once I was propped over the toilet, however, I couldn’t even retch; I just kept gulping air and feeling like my heart was seconds from giving out. Was this how Jenny had felt as she was dying? She had looked peaceful, but that didn’t necessarily mean she was at the time. She might have been alert. She might have been in pain. Maybe she even knew those moments were her last.

“Pen?” I could see the shadow of Sanjay’s feet coming through the crack of the bathroom door. “You just bolted back there. Are you all right?”

“Fine,” I gasped. As I turned back to the toilet bowl, I spotted the bare toilet paper holder out of the corner of my eye. “Seriously?” I said, even as my stomach continued to roil.

“What is it?” he called.

I had been forced to use paper towel the night before, as we had run through the wipes, and had asked Sanjay to go to the store in the morning. Clearly that hadn’t happened.

It wasn’t worth the fight. “Nothing,” I croaked.

My phone had begun to ring, so I took a deep breath and righted myself. The call was from an unidentified local number, and I immediately wondered if it was about Jenny. Inhale, I told myself. “This is Penelope.” Now exhale.

“Mrs. Kar?”

It’s Ms. Ruiz-Kar, I thought, but at least my nausea had started to let up. “Yes?”

“This is Brittany at Knowledge Arena.”

“Is everything okay?”

“I’m not calling about anything urgent. Miles is fine, though he’s having a bit of a tough time this morning. He seems very tired. Stevie is working on an art project right now.”

Neither child had broken a bone, had suffered a head injury, or was freaking out about the previous night’s events? I was immediately impatient. “ So?”

“Oh,” said Brittany, like she had forgotten why she was calling. “It’s just that neither of your children brought a lunch. We are able to provide a nut-free meal for them, but there’s a fee of fifteen dollars per child. This is a onetime courtesy call. In the future, we’ll simply make them lunch if one isn’t provided and send you the bill.”

“Fifteen dollars ? Are you serving nut-free foie gras?”

“Mrs. Kar? I didn’t get what you just said.”

“Never mind. I’ll bring them food.”

“Awesome! We eat at eleven thirty.”

Of course they did. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I told Brittany. Then I hung up and stared into the vanity mirror. I looked like I hadn’t slept in a week, which was about how I felt. Lunches to make and deliver. Toilet paper to buy. A car that needed to be retrieved from whatever far-flung lot it had been towed to. It didn’t matter if none of it mattered. It had to be dealt with all the same.

While email may have been pointless, I was still a creature of habit. After spending much of the day crying, pacing, and mindlessly cleaning my house, I took a peek at my inbox.

It was an exercise in futility. Every message was a blur; whatever information I was able to glean flew out of my head as soon as I clicked on the next message.

The last email I opened was from Russ. He said he was sorry and wanted to see how I was doing. Nicer than usual—but then again, tragedy had a way of bringing out people’s better angels, and I knew it wouldn’t last. He wanted to let me know that he had nailed the presentation, but that George Blatner had requested a follow-up on a few particular items of business, and we would have to work together on a second proposal when I returned. I shouldn’t worry about Yolanda, he assured me; he had placated her for the time being, and she was flying to Hong Kong with a team of researchers to meet with the Asian Pacific alumni board to discuss an upcoming genome project that required non-grant funding. I was about to attempt to respond when my phone began vibrating its way across the dining room table.

It was Matt. I took a deep breath and picked up.

“Hi,” he said.

I paused, unsure what to say next. “Um, hi. How’s Cecily?”

“Not well. I told her this morning. She hasn’t left my side since, though she finally exhausted herself crying and is napping in our bed.”

My eyes immediately filled with tears. “Can I help?”

“Yes, but not yet.” He sniffed, or maybe it was a sigh or a small sneeze. “I’m calling to let you know we’re going to have the funeral on Monday night at Barron’s on Plymouth Road. Jenny will be cremated, so it’s just a memorial service. Our families are flying in today and tomorrow . . .” His voice trailed off.

“Is it okay for me to begin telling people?”

“I don’t know . . . yes. I guess people have to know. They’ll find out.” I could tell he was really talking to himself.

“Matt? I don’t know what to say. About how Jenny died, I mean.”

He didn’t respond right away, and I wondered if I had crossed a line. Then he said, “I suppose you should probably keep it to the bare minimum.”

And what was that? “Um.”

“Tell them she accidentally overdosed on a prescription medication.”

“You’re . . .” I stopped and tried to compose myself. “You’re positive? Did they run a toxicology report?”

“The full report takes weeks to come back, but I was told it was ‘fairly clear.’” He laughed bitterly. “That’s actually what the coroner said. He sees it all the time, he said. Jenny hadn’t taken enough for it to be suicide, and there was no note or anything like that. Given her history . . .”

What history? I wanted to ask. But I said nothing.

He continued, “They said sometimes all it takes is one or two pills too many.”

And then you’re gone.

“She stopped breathing. That’s how it happened,” he added quietly. Then, louder: “It was an accident. It’s important for people to know that. She didn’t try to kill herself. She never wanted to die.”

My stomach turned again, and though I hadn’t eaten more than half a protein bar all day, I closed my laptop so I didn’t throw up all over the keyboard. “No, of course not,” I whispered.

“Thank you for understanding.”

“Absolutely.” I paused. “I had no idea she was even taking painkillers.”

“I’m sure that part wasn’t an accident,” he said.

I felt stupid. As his comment implied, if Jenny had wanted me to know, she would have told me. But why had she wanted to keep me in the dark? I wouldn’t have judged her. I wouldn’t have spread it around town. I wouldn’t have even told Sanjay, if that was what she had wanted.

“Penelope, about the other night.”

“Yes?”

“No one else needs to know Jenny and I were having trouble or that she had a problem.”

I was so numb, a needle to my skin would have barely made me flinch. “Right,” I said.

“So, please,” Matt continued, “if you and Sanjay could stick to saying it was a prescription error, it would mean a lot to me.”

“Right,” I said again.

“Thank you,” he said. Then he added something that ended all discussion on the matter. “You understand that Cecily is my number-one priority. I don’t want her to hear bad things about her mother before she’s old enough to know the truth.”

“Absolutely,” I said. My voice sounded like a computerized message, or maybe a recording of someone who had lost the ability to emote. “I understand.”

I hung up the phone feeling like a hollowed-out vessel of a person.

The truth.

Which was fairly straightforward, wasn’t it? Despite all evidence to the contrary, Jenny had not gotten along with her husband. She had turned to a terrible habit to cope with the secret pain hidden beneath the shiny surface of her marriage.

And she had chosen to hide all of it from me.