Good Grief Read Online Free Page A

or service mark, how long it’s been on the market, whether it’s part of a joint marketing and distribution agreement. Then there are the common side effects, adverse reactions. But since Ethan died I can barely retain a seven-digit phone number. I slide one finger over the button on the phone, hanging up. The man will think we got disconnected. When the phone rings again, I let it drop into voice mail.
    I open a new file on my computer and start typing what to say to the
Herald
reporter about the patch story. This is a trick I employ when I have to make a nerve-racking media call: Type my story pitch or sound bite in all caps, then follow the script.
    MUST PATCH THIS ALL UP. HA, HA, HA!
    I remember when I first joined the company how I felt I was finally making it in Silicon Valley. I stood in the coffee line chatting with the women from marketing, all of us wearing cute but sensible chunky black pumps, my day planner bulging, my checkbook balance growing, my self-esteem swelling. But now I feel like an impostor in a cubicle—like the artificial crabmeat of public relations managers. Then there’s the fact that I have to say “scrotum” to people all the time. Is this really the color of my parachute?
    If Ethan were alive, I’d call him and we’d meet for lunch. We often did this when one of us was having trouble at work. We had a knack for solving each other’s job quandaries, maybe because our ignorance of each other’s fields made us objective. Sometimes he’d pick me up after work and I’d be so flustered by this new job, I was ready to quit and start a yard service. By the time we got home, though, Ethan had me laughing and contemplating a solution.
    Of course, I can’t call my husband. (But why not! What good is all this technology if you can’t call a deceased loved one? Who cares if you can buy movie tickets and bid for antiques on-line if you can’t dial up your dead husband?)
    The cursor on my computer screen pulses impatiently, and the red voice mail light on my phone flashes. My stomach growls and my head throbs. But I can’t call my husband. Because, here’s the thing: I am a widow.

O REOS
    2
    Ethan’s former boss invites me to a party at his house. It’s nice of him and his wife to include me. What do I do to thank them? Drink too much Cabernet and swipe Xanax from their medicine chest.
    The problem is, it’s a family-friendly party, and everyone seems to have a baby. Babies with sweet doughy arms and tiny toes like erasers. Ethan and I tried for two years to have a baby, up until his prognosis was terminal.
    Month after month, I peed on the drugstore pregnancy test sticks while Ethan pretended to be busy in the next room. I closed my eyes, listening to the clanky whir of the bathroom fan, trying to will the second pink line into the result window. But it was always empty. No one home. Like the vague Magic 8 Ball message:
Try again later.
    I felt duped by my body. What’s going on in there? Who’s in charge here! Ethan held my hands in his, rubbed my neck a little too hard, and said not to worry. There was always next month. Then he’d come up with a fun, kidless activity: a late-night dinner at a French restaurant or an R-rated movie or a pitcher of beer and game of pool.
    I studied fertility books until their diagrams haunted me. The vines on our quilt turned into fallopian tubes and the inverted U shape of a papaya half in the refrigerator looked like a uterus, its slick black seeds a crazy wealth of eggs. Our sex life, dictated now by the coy, shadowy purple line on the ovulation test sticks, suddenly seemed like work.
    We went to a fertility specialist, who concluded after several tests that I was ovulating but possibly had an “egg quality issue.” Suddenly I felt about as feminine as a log. I imagined my ovaries shrinking like those little Japanese roasted peas, my eggs reduced for quick sale. Neon orange stickers shrieking
Half off!
    Now, thirty minutes into the party, I feel a