Comfort Food Read Online Free PDF

said, fairly bursting with excitement. “We’ve got to make good time.”
    “Ma’am,” he said pleasantly, as he helped Gus into the back. “I’ve got the directions. Buckle up, now.”
    She waved him off. The truth was that she was a bad one for riding in cabs and cars without a seat belt, a fact she hid from her daughters and her producers. It’s just that she hated the sensation of being squished in, hated the feel of the strap on her neck.
    The driver put on his own seat belt, then turned and looked at her expectantly.
    “I’m liable if you don’t put it on, and we can’t have that now, can we?” he asked, waiting, still smiling.
    Christopher had worn a seat belt. That’s what she’d been told by the police. There had been no indicators on that particular day in 1988, no sense of dread in the air, no feeling that anything remarkable was going to happen. Later she’d wondered if she missed some vital clue, if there was some moment of portent she had ignored. But try as she might, she could never discover any such memory. On a normal, routine day, Christopher left for the office, and then, later, as she put together a mushroom lasagna, a police officer came to the door. That was all. She wondered if cops still did that, came to the front door and knocked, bad news to deliver. She couldn’t ever remember exactly what the policeman had said to her. Gus recalled the detail of Christopher’s seat-belt-wearing and the somber look on the man’s face. Her neighbor, Mrs. Clarkson, three doors down, had come over to stay with the girls; they hadn’t known each other well but she hadn’t hesitated when Gus asked. That was a kindness. And then Gus found herself at the hospital where Christopher had been a jagged, swollen mess and the doctors were saying things that made no sense. Like brain dead.
    “What are you, brain dead?” Gus had said that to Christopher on more than one occasion when the girls were small and she was angry with his insistence that no, he didn’t know how to pick out their clothes and couldn’t she just do it because she was really so much better at it anyway? And she’d dress them and get them off to school and punish him with snappishness. He would reciprocate in kind. Theirs had not been a perfect marriage. No, indeed.
    But they had loved each other deeply, with the kind of intensity that sprang from great passion and an unconditional trust that grew out of deep friendship. They’d seen a lot of despair when they were in the Peace Corps together and remembered enough to appreciate each other before getting carried away with petty annoyances. Never, not once, had she ever worried that their joint frustrations with the day-to-day grind would lead to any permanentdamage. Even at her crankiest and most tired, when the girls were small and she was hopping mad every time he got to go out for lunch because of his job (while she had to stay home watching Sesame Street ). Later, he’d make it up to her—even though there was nothing really to make up for— and he’d take Aimee and Sabrina to the park early on a Saturday so that Gus could sleep in.
    “I’ll lock you in the bedroom so you take a nap,” he’d say. “Don’t you dare get up before we get back.”
    And many nights they’d lain awake in that very same bed, sometimes tired from making love, sometimes tired from running after two rambunctiouslittle girls, whispering animatedly to each other.
    “Bring those Popsicles over here,” Christopher would say, fake-moaning in horror as Gus tucked her always cold feet under his knees. They’d snuggle up to talk about all the places they wanted to take Sabrina and Aimee and all the ways they wanted to fix up their home and what Christopher’s next career move should be and what was it, really, that Gus wanted to do? Their future, to them, was endlessly fascinating and exciting, a mysterious gift they had all the time in the world to unwrap.
    The doctor on call had insisted he was