The Urn

Jerry’s urn wouldn’t fit on the fireplace mantle and it looked disrespectful and obnoxious on the hearth. Where else do people keep these things? Is it a rule they need to go near fireplaces? Do ashes need to stay near other ashes? The vase we … he had chosen was a hefty onyx teardrop capped with a crucifix. Oh, he wasn’t religious, no. But he understood the importance of “optics,” even in your left-behinds — which is why I think we made good partners. Conceit for no reason is just vanity; conceit for an audience is good business.

I didn’t know how I felt, yet. Jerry was gone. I knew the difference between what a grieving widow should look like and what she actually looked like. I can’t be ashamed to say I erred in favor of the former. You can avoid puffy, sunken eyes and skin dried out from crying if you want to. There were photographers there. Grief-chic is a practiced look.  Widows only gnash and wail in Bible stories – I think; I’m not religious, either. And no one would have expected gnashing and wailing from me, anyway. It would have been too much. It would have looked disingenuous.

It’s important how things look to other people.

Where was I supposed to put this thing? Tacky people had curio cabinets — probably because they didn’t have fireplaces. The more I looked at it, the gawdier it looked. Why do people keep these things? What an odd fixation with death. I wish Jerry had requested them to be scattered somewhere. I supposed that perhaps Jax, my PR guy, could come up with a good spin and photo op of me scattering them somewhere.

I was a little surprised at how angry I was about where to put this damned urn. What would Jerry want? Why did I care?

The week of the event – his eventual death, the arrangements, the announcements and pressers, the services and funeral, etc … had been a whirlwind. Now that I had a second to examine myself in my full-length mirror, I saw the tell-tale signs of dehydration and lack of sufficient beauty sleep – due to night sweats and not grief. Imagine how much older I would have looked were I properly bereft. What would that feel like? To be properly bereft?

Both my sisters flew in for a couple of days. I probably wouldn’t have cared if they had or hadn’t, but it did look good to have a show of support from my family. Even though nobody had pretty fantasies about the nature of my marriage, it looked appropriately intimate to lean on my sisters during the more somber moments of the weeks’ events. We even had some “sister-time,” as Jamie called it. And my sisters are the only ones who don’t ask me too many of the wrong questions.

Jaimie, the oldest, had used her advantages, just as I had used mine. She was an average-looking girl with no particular hobbies or talents; but she was singular in her abilities of concentration and memorization. She knew her only way out of Elk’s Grove was to get an education. And she knew this early in life. She was never distracted by boys because Robert was her only crush from the age of fourteen and he was just as nerdy and practical as she was. She earned a full scholarship, finished school and married Robert a month after starting her first job as a research assistant on her way toward a higher degree, as did he. These days, they both had comfortable consultant-level salaries, a 26-year marriage and a precocious eight-year-old son. If she watched Robert get older and sicker and die, she wouldn’t need to fake her grief.

My younger sister Casey fell in love at least once a year. Her lovers were as flighty as she was, so there was never any money in it. She didn’t seem to care. Her romantic Lazy Susan had given her experiences of which she was fond of boasting. The Artist taught her how to throw clay; The Vagabond took her backpacking through southeast Asia; The Mechanic taught her to pull an engine; The Drummer taught her how to set up a kit; The Professor introduced her to Keats and Lord Byron at one of the many salons where they all hung out into the obscene hours as if she had been born into the leisure class. She hadn’t been. And no amount of pretending would make it true. When I was feeling particularly sisterly, I worried about her.  But she always said she was happy.

I used to think, “You can have ‘happy,’ I’ll take the cash.”  I’ve never really understood either of my sisters – but then, I don’t think I’ve ever really been in love – with neither a person nor a passion. Only myself. There was never any room for anything else and I am not ashamed of that. They say good looks and charm can only get you so far, but they lack imagination. Jerry wasn’t my first wealthy patron, but he was the first who didn’t insist that I be in love with him. He had no delusions about me. And, ironically, I loved him a little bit for that. It made his marriage proposal an easy one to accept. That was sixteen years ago.

And now here was Jerry — my practical, shrewd, vain and meticulous partner – a pile of nothing in an expensive shiny urn.

And here I was.

If I had detested him, I would be overjoyed to be left alone at last with his fortune. And it was a vast fortune. I would want for nothing for the rest of my life.

But, I felt … empty. Wanting for something and not knowing what that was.

Was it a child? Did I long for what Jaimie had? No. The tickle of a thought was an artifact of The Change that was soon coming for me. Jerry and I agreed that a natural child would be devastating to my good looks and that women who spent fortunes trying to recover them post-partum always looked to be faking feeling good. Equally fake was the look of adopting a child. It was cliché and desperate.

Was it a career? No. To tabloid readers, I was a vapid housecat, but I actually did have a career and I earned every penny. At times, I was Jerry’s spokeswoman, his liaison, his informant, his bait … . When people think you’re arm candy, they tend to underestimate you. Let them snicker, but being a “golddigger” is actually hard work when done right. Maybe Casey learned windsurfing, but I learned politics. And the idea of doing any of that for anyone besides Jerry felt like more of a betrayal than any indiscretions I’m sure he would have permitted me (or even requested of me).

Besides, I was no longer a young trophy wife. I was a 46-year old trophy widow.

What happens to housecats when their owners die?

An unease was settling in my chest. It was this stupid urn. I hated every place that I set it down. It didn’t fit anywhere. And that damned reporter was going to arrive in any minute for the paltry little pull-quote and photo. I would call him a vulture, but I’m more practical than that.

Jerry used to like to take reporters out onto the lanai because it afforded the best view of what his life afforded. He said it was a power move to talk business while distant waves distracted “average minds” from business. He said you could get people to agree with you with more ease when there was sunlight and wind to tempt them.

This is exactly how he had proposed to me. But, as he would later admit, I wasn’t “your average ‘average mind.'” He said I had surprised him.

I moved the great hunk of black stone onto a shelf on the lanai where we had kept the Bird of Paradise. I staged the patio and imagined Jax and Jerry arguing about how to do it correctly. Jerry always wanted two glasses and a crystal decanter on the table and Jax said it looked too much like a business meeting. In my mind, Jerry won. Everything is a business meeting. Even now.

It seemed okay there on the lanai. Imposing. Jerry’s death there among the tastefully-placed palms and caladiums. A real power move that forces you to think of his absence – therefore making him never absent. I laughed. I hoped he would approve.

I poured into the two glasses from the Waterford decanter, surprised because I didn’t remember filling it.

I raised my glass to that silly vase filled with Jerry and said, “To you. You … Thank … .”

And then I wept. All alone without an audience.