The Year of Pleasures Read Online Free PDF Page A

bright. “Finally nice out, huh?” the driver asked. He was a middle-aged man, probably close to John’s age, wearing a Harvard sweatshirt.
    I swallowed, mumbled agreement, and pulled John’s suitcase closer to me on the seat.
    The driver’s eyes sought out mine in the rearview mirror. “Let me tell you,
I’ve
had better days,” he said, and waited for me to ask why. But I stayed silent, stared out the window at the beautiful synchronicity of the rowers on the Charles. They would not be out there much longer.
    When I arrived home, I wept, of course, walked around from room to room sobbing from a place deep in my gut. I cried until my eyes swelled shut, and then I slept, a black, dreamless sleep from which I awoke amazingly refreshed, at least until I remembered.
    I made calls to arrange for John’s cremation and memorial service in a kind of removed way that I realized was necessary for performing such a task. I’d argued against his cremation even though I had asked that he do the same for me, should I be the one to go first. But that had been when our deaths were an abstraction. When it became clear that John was going to die, I’d changed my mind—I wanted him to be buried. “I want a place to
find
you,” I’d told him, and he’d said, “In time, you’ll find the place.” He’d asked me to release him to the ocean as soon as I got the ashes, and I’d promised I would.
    I stayed in the house for a week after that, wearing John’s shirts during the day and John’s pajamas at night. Sometimes I felt on the far edge of reality, unable to understand the simplest things: an exuberant voice on the radio, an advertisement in the mail. The phone rang and I would look at it as if I were a visitor from a distant planet, wondering what sort of animal was making that irritating, repetitive noise.
    Other times, I went numb, as though vultures had landed inside and picked me clean. At those times, I did not quite taste or see or hear or touch or feel. And at those times, I thought cautiously,
Is that it, then? Am I through crying? Am I healing already?
And then would come another tidal wave of pain, nearly nauseating in its force, that had me pounding and pounding on the kitchen table. I knew it was a common story, the loss of a husband, widowhood, but it was of no use to me to know how many had experienced this before me. I remembered an eighty-nine-year-old woman who’d lost her husband many years ago telling me in her shaky voice,
You still sleep on your half of the bed.
I learned that it was true.
    Then around seven-thirty one evening, I suddenly became ravenously hungry. I didn’t want to cook and I didn’t want to go somewhere I’d been with John, so I walked to an Italian restaurant I’d never been to. It seemed darker outside than usual, the light from the streetlamps moody and insubstantial. I supposed this might be because of a thin layer of fog. But more likely, I thought, it was because I was walking in the dark by myself, something I’d not done in a long time. I could smell the sweet decay of fall, but it was warm, and I opened my coat to the moist night air.
    The restaurant was loud and bright, the tables covered with the commonplace but always comforting red-and-white-checked tablecloths. Tiny white lights ran across the ceiling and down the walls. There were beautiful wooden booths with wide benches and high backs, and I saw couples sitting there together, some with their heads practically touching, some ignoring each other in the tired way of many long-marrieds. I concentrated on looking at the bored couples so that I did not have to see intimate smiles, quick caresses, the open joy of those who clearly appreciated the person they sat across from.
    I ordered eggplant Parmesan to go, then leaned against the wall near the hostess station to wait for it. I checked my watch every few minutes. When thoughts of John and the resultant sting of tears came, I willed them away, thinking,
Later.
It was