Perfection Read Online Free PDF Page A

with care. Cathy’s daughter, Amy, came over, and we found another tall stool for her. The two girls sat near each other and talked and gestured at Henry. The ease of their friendship comforted me as I watched from across the room, greeting guests. Henry’s family arrived and sat quiet and stunned in the seats near the front. Townspeople arrived, some just acquaintances, many complete strangers. Henry’s high school friends came together in a pack to greet me. One of Henry’s former girlfriends sadly shook my hand.
    I glanced over, searching for Liza near the coffin. I saw Cathy in her place. She was weeping hysterically, her head and arms draped over Henry’s lifeless torso. Steve stood next to her, stoic, uncomfortable. When she lifted her head, her face was red and wet with tears. Not even I, the widow, had allowed myself such public emotion. A woman from our wider circle of acquaintances, her face set with concern, walked over quickly to speak with Steve while Cathy wept on. Finally, Steve gently drew Cathy away from the coffin. The awkward moment passed. I watched with relief as everyone returned to handshaking and quiet conversation.
     
    I lay in bed the morning after the wake, my mind still soft and dreaming, in a tangle of sweaty sheets, light filtering through the dusty windows, obscuring the mountains and fog-draped river. Henry was dead; I was a widow. Irena lay sleeping next to me, her steady breath a small comfort. But soon she would have to go back to the city and I would be left here with Liza. Henry was gone.
    A cloud gathered above my body, vaporous fingers extending and reaching around my torso and into my secret internal spaces. My mouth was pried open tenderly but insistently. He was invisible but present, an essence that seemed to hold me firmly on the bed. I allowed him to wash over me, enter me, enfold me.
    He wanted something from me—to tell me something important, to be with my body. But he had no body; maybe he didn’t understand that yet. Irena stirred and opened her eyes. Now my arms were reaching up to hold him.
    “Are you okay? What’s happening?” Irena murmured.
    “It’s Henry, he’s here.”
    Why was Henry here? What did he want to tell me? He needed a body, but he was floating now without one. I felt anguished for him that he didn’t understand what had happened to his body, that I couldn’t speak to him and explain. Suddenly, I was floating too.
    My body felt light and airy in the bed while he visited me each morning after that first time, the intensity of the visits gradually softening. I floated through my days. People spoke to me, and I realized I wasn’t really present. I floated in the icy wind, wishing I could pass into his world, though I was unwilling to leave my child. I was in some in-between place, a dreamlike landscape where the horizon line vanished in a whiteout snowstorm.
     
    The memorial service took place on January 12. I stood before an overflowing crowd at the lectern of a local church that had kindly offered their space for the ceremony.
    “Henry was the love of my life,” I told the crowd, “but also a completely impossible person.” Nervous laughter. I had assumedthe audience would be intimate with Henry’s love of excess, his trademark lack of restraint. Surely some of the hundreds of friends, family, and local acquaintances packing this local church knew what I meant. Henry never liked to do anything small. Everything—from his romantic marriage proposal to his dinner party menus—was executed in grand gestures. A reserved twenty-seven-year-old when I met him, I had been drawn to that exuberance and to his forceful love. I had never before received such unabashed love from any man, and I’d welcomed it eagerly.
    Snapshots came to mind: our meeting sixteen years earlier at a winter party; a day during our first spring together when he positioned me under a blooming cherry tree to take a photo; Henry cooking one of many amazing dinners for me