Year After Henry Read Online Free Page B

golden raisins instead of regular. And this macaroni casserole is for Chad.”
    Jeanie stepped back so Frances could come inside. She followed her into the kitchen and put the pan of squares down on the counter. Frances opened the refrigerator and found space on the upper rack for the casserole.
    â€œJust put it in for twenty minutes at three hundred and fifty degrees,” she said. “Warm it up nice. Chad will love it, and you won’t have to cook.”
    Jeanie smiled. How could she not? The last thing she felt like doing that warm afternoon, now that the orange bonnet had floated to the surface of her life, was cooking something for supper. Even when Chad did appear at the table, washed and hungry, the two of them barely spoke. Compared to the boisterous suppers the family had known when Henry was alive—talk of sports, fishing, hunting, race cars—Jeanie and Chad now ate almost silently, the clink clink of their forks replacing Henry’s vivacious conversations with his son. What did Jeanie know about hockey, trout lures, archery, or car engines? Nothing. Not a damn thing. It had become so apparent at suppertime that Henry was missing forever that she and Chad had slowly fallen away from eating together. That’s why Jeanie had been pestering Chad lately to bring some of the boys home for supper. She assumed he still kept up with his school friends. Assumed, for the truth was that she didn’t know much about him anymore. He had grown slowly away from her, and in her own pain over losing Henry, she was too worn out to go look for him. Now, Jeanie thought of her son as a boy standing on the back of a train as it’s leaving the station. And there she is, his mother, watching that train roll farther and farther down the track, watching that face she loves so dearly growing more and more indistinct. Disappearing.
    â€œI need to talk to you about the memorial service,” Frances said, once she had made coffee and poured them each a cup. She had grown too thin since Henry’s death, her face now gaunt beneath the short gray hair, her neat slacks and blouse looking as if they were thrown onto a rack rather than onto a body. Jeanie watched as Frances got two plates from the cupboard and cut two raisin squares from the pan. She didn’t mind. Let Frances wax the ceiling if she wanted to. Let her mop the front yard. Dust the roof. Who cared? This is what unexpected death can do to a person. It can surprise them into a long, dark corridor where they will gladly stay forever, unless forcibly pulled out.
    â€œDad and I have been talking,” Frances was saying now. “The postal workers want to do a floral wreath, but they also think a plaque would be nice. You know, one that mentions Henry’s years of service. We can insert it in the ground at his grave, a bronze marker, like the kind you see for men who have served in the military.”
    â€œDo whatever you want,” said Jeanie. “It’s fine with me.” She picked up the fork Frances put in front of her and took a bite of the raisin square. Funny how everything tasted the same in the year since Henry had died. Golden raisins. Regular raisins. Apricots. Plums. It all went into her mouth and she swallowed it. Mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, scalloped potatoes, hash brown potatoes. Rice soup. Chicken soup. Onion soup. Unless she had reason to pay attention, as she did now, what with Frances hovering over her, all food was colorless and tasteless. It did what nature intended it to do: it sustained her body, provided fuel, got her through another day of hell.
    â€œWell?” asked Frances. She waited. Jeanie saw that her mother-in-law’s eyes were puffy. Sometimes, she even hated Henry for what he did to them all, for those plates of French fries loaded with cheese, those thick steaks, those cigarettes she knew he smoked down at the tavern even though he always swore he had kept his 1987 New Year’s