I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“Jenny loved life,” I began.

But it was too much for me and I tried to escape.

My head shot up—her voice was in my head again. I commanded myself to stay calm; hearing her was just a manifestation of my grief. “Whether she was writing a post for her website, setting the table for one of her dinner parties, or just pointing out the good in someone, she brought beauty to everything she did.”

Except death, she said. Even I couldn’t make that beautiful.

“She loved her family and friends so much.”

I looked at Matt. But not my husband. At least not the way everyone thought I did.

“As I’m sure everyone here can attest, she would give you the shirt off her back or all the cash in her wallet before you even realized you needed it.” I looked at Cecily, who was back at Matt’s side and watching me stoically, save her quivering bottom lip. “But more than anything, she loved Cecily. She was Jenny’s entire life.”

In the end, even my love for my daughter wasn’t enough to save me.

My eyes landed on Sonia, who was weeping into her pashmina. “Jenny was my closest friend.”

And yet you didn’t really know me.

I had planned to say that Jenny had been a role model to me. But even if her voice was a hallucination, I still couldn’t lie—not with her in my mind, taunting me with the truth.

I would always try to emulate her positive attitude and her zeal for gratitude. I would continue to channel her way of finding the best in every person. But I didn’t envy her approach to marriage anymore. As for her seemingly perfect life—how could I possibly admire it now, when I knew it had required what must have been an enormous amount of effort to conceal what never should have been concealed in the first place?

Sanjay was watching me. As our eyes met, I thought of our conversation in the car and how surprised he was when I’d vented. He was used to me biting my tongue in the service of keeping the peace in our marriage.

I felt like the air had been snatched right out of my lungs. Jenny wasn’t the only one who had been pretending.

I must have been quiet for a while, because everyone was looking somewhere other than at me, as if to allow me a private moment.

Inhaling deeply, I set my note card on the lectern and said what I believed Jenny would have wanted to hear. “Jenny taught me that kindness is a daily practice. Instead of simply accepting difficulty, she encouraged me to change my circumstances whenever I could and to help others do the same. She inspired me to be a better person, and I’ll miss her every day for the rest of my life.”

I returned to the pew-style benches, feeling as sorrowful and bone tired as I ever had. When I reached my seat, Sanjay extended his hand. I looked down at his long, elegant fingers—ideal for a surgeon, or so everyone said, though now I knew they were better suited for writing and playing the guitar.

I took Sanjay’s hand and squeezed it tight as I sat down. He looked at me with surprise and then squeezed back. His gold wedding band, which I had chosen for him, shined up at me. We had once been wildly in love; we had once been partners in this life. I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment that had stopped being true, but pretending I was fine and our marriage would fix itself wouldn’t get us back to that place.

Jenny’s last text to me came ricocheting at me once again. This time, though, I heard her say it aloud in my head: If you’re not happy, make a change.

How’d that work out for you? I shot back, maybe a bit more saucily than I would have under different circumstances. But she was dead, I reasoned (as much as one can reason while having a mental conversation with one’s dead friend). She could handle it.

Before she could respond, it hit me: Jenny hadn’t taken her own advice.

But I still could.

TEN

After the service, Sanjay and I had gone to the Sweets’ house, where their extended family and a few close friends had gathered. Imaginary conversations and thoughts pertaining to my marriage were quickly forgotten as I exchanged empty words about my beloved friend. Painkillers were not mentioned, and neither was her secret pain, because as far as I knew no one knew about either. Such a lovely, kind person was Jenny: that’s what everyone said, and I nodded because this, thankfully, was true.

But in the middle of a flimsy conversation with Jael and her husband, Tony, I suddenly couldn’t do it anymore—not even for one minute. I knew it wasn’t my place to reveal what happened, but I couldn’t continue to sidestep the giant prescription bottle in the middle of the room while people made stupid speculations, like how perhaps a genetic mutation caused Jenny to have a severe allergic reaction to an otherwise harmless drug. I was seconds from barking that there was no such thing as a harmless drug when I spotted Sanjay serving himself a drink in the kitchen.

I excused myself and strode over to him. “I have to get out of here,” I whispered.

“We can’t leave yet,” he whispered back. “We barely just got here.”

“I know, but I can’t do this. I’m on the verge of a breakdown.” Technically I was already in full breakdown mode, but this would become evident in short order.

He looked at me. I must have looked as wild-eyed and desperate as I felt, because he said, “Okay, we’ll tell people you’re not feeling well. Let’s go say our goodbyes.”

While he headed off to find Matt, I went upstairs, which was where I had last seen Cecily. She was in her room, in her bed, hidden beneath a pile of blankets. Kimber was beside her, saying something soothing in a low voice. She and Jenny had often butted heads, but Jenny’s mother always had a kind word for me, and she loved spending time with Cecily, whom she took for a week at a time during the summer and for school vacations. How terrible for her, I thought, to have had to live through the death of her daughter.

“Hi, Penelope,” she said quietly. “Cecily’s having a rough time.”

“I can understand that. Cess?” I said, sitting at the end of the bed. “You there?”

She peeked out at me from under the covers.

“Today was hard, huh?” I said. Tomorrow would be hard, too. And next week, and next month, and two years from now. And while it would get easier at some point, Cecily might one day find herself wedding-dress shopping and suddenly burst into tears because several good friends could not take the place of the one woman who was not there.

Her blue eyes were glassy with tears. “I miss Mommy.”

“Oh, love, I know. I do, too,” I said. “So very much. I know I’m not your mommy, but I’ll be here for you anytime you need me—and I mean that. I’m going to be around so much that you’re going to get sick of me. You’re going to say, ‘Aunt Penny, please get out of my house, because I can’t stand to look at you anymore.’ But I’m going to come back anyway.”

The corners of her lips turned up, and I smiled at her. “Your mommy loved you so much, Cess,” I said. “And we all do, too. Your daddy, and Granny Kimber and Grandpa Paul and Nanna and Grandpa Joe and your aunts and uncles and Stevie and Miles and everyone else. This is going to be hard—I won’t tell you it won’t be. But we’re going to surround you with so much love.”

She sniffed.

I paused, considering what to say next. Yes, she could hear it, I decided. “Did I ever tell you my mommy went away when I was six?”

“Went away?” she said.

“She decided to leave my family,” I said. “I didn’t hear from her or see her after that.”

When Cecily was much older, maybe I would tell her the whole story. Shortly after I graduated from high school, my mother attempted to reinsert herself into my life after more than a decade of being a nonentity. She seemed genuinely remorseful—a wretched childhood had led her to make a terrible decision, she claimed. But she was ready to be the mother she should have been all those years.

I fell for it. I fell so hard that two months later, when she moved to Arizona with a man she had just met and stopped taking my calls, I considered—for the first and only time—whether it was worth it to continue living. Because if my own mother could not love me, then who would?

Yet Cecily’s situation was worse. Because she could never cling to the hope that Jenny would stride through the door one day. No, of the many possibilities in Cecily’s future, one thing was certain: she would never have a mother again.

“My mommy would never do that,” said Cecily indignantly.

“That’s for sure,” I agreed. “Your mother wanted to be with you more than anything else in the world.” I had been aiming to comfort Cecily, but found that these words consoled me, too.

In spite of my plan to flee, I stayed with Cecily for more than an hour—telling her stories about Jenny, reading her books, and rubbing her back until she fell asleep. Then I told Kimber, who would be staying in town for at least the next week, to call me if she needed anything at all.

Sanjay had parked across the street from the Sweets’. I got into the car and stared out the window as he started the engine. Their lawn was freshly mowed, and there were ceramic pots filled with blossoming flowers on the porch. The front door was open, revealing a home full of people, all of whom Jenny had loved. Anyone who didn’t know better would think she were throwing a celebration.

A familiar anger resurfaced in my gut. Intentional or not, Jenny had left Cecily, and that never should have happened. She was a highly intelligent person. Even if she had not known the danger of the medication she was taking, she had the resources to get help.

Why could she tell me to make a change, but not bring herself to admit she was due for one, too? Why couldn’t she confess she was struggling?

Everyone expected me to be perfect, I heard her say. I spun around toward the backseat, half assuming I would find her there. But there were only a couple of crumb-covered car seats and a candy-bar wrapper.

Maybe she was right, I conceded. Many of her readers scrutinized her every word and photo, and she was routinely raked over the coals for the most innocuous things, like posting a makeup-free selfie that apparently made her skin look too good. The year before, she’d come across an online forum dedicated to making fun of bloggers and so-called “social media influencers”—including her. “They call me Sweet’N Low,” she told me half-indignant, half-tearful. “They say I’m saccharine and artificial.”