When the clock on the stove hits noon, I pour a tumbler of pinot grigio. I make myself wait until noon so that I know I still have a modicum of control. I pull my robe tight and slip onto the front porch to sit. The sky is dark—a pebble gray—and the air is crisp. Across the street a car pulls into the driveway. Ginny DaLuca has forgotten something, it appears. She opens the car door, and the speakers inside exhale light jazz music as she runs in and then back out of the house quickly, holding her forgotten item. I notice an autumn wreath on her door. It’s barely September, but she can’t help herself. The same bronze and orange wreath of twisted twigs and foliage with a tacky scarecrow face in the middle welcomes her guests, of which I no longer am one. I don’t bother to wave the way I once did because she’d pretend not to see me, or maybe give an uncomfortable smile and nod. I used to be someone who secretly (very secretly) swelled with delight when I saw a row of Christmas decorations pop up next to the back-to-school supplies in late August, but now, this forcing ahead of time is intolerable. If anything, I want to slow it down. Reverse it even.
The Sunday newspaper, in its plastic sheath, lies at the end of the driveway, half of it immersed in a puddle from last night’s rain. How many times have I said I’d go online and change my subscription to digital only? It’s so wasteful. Liam liked the feel of the paper though. He liked the inky film it left on his hands, the smell of it. He didn’t want to look at his laptop on Sundays. “It’s exactly why we have a big front porch,” he’d say, after promising to recycle the paper. I sip my drink, wishing I would have poured a red—more suited for the weather—and wonder how many newspapers would have to pile up at the end of the drive before one of the neighbors would check to see if I were dead.
A soft tapping of rain starts up again. The Pattersons give up on raking leaves from their sugar maple that’s shedding early this year. They laugh at their attempt to spend the gloomy Sunday in the yard, and with a shrug of defeat, Al Patterson puts an arm around his wife as she shields her head with her hands and rushes inside. How I long for Liam’s hand on the small of my back for any reason at all. If he were here, he’d comment on how illogical it is for them to rake before all the leaves have fallen for the season. There’s a small window between the end of fall and the first snow, and he’d always plucked out those few days, like feeling the rain coming in one’s bones, and timed it perfectly.
I rescue the paper from floating down the gutter. It’s bloated with rainwater, but I take it inside and lay out the swollen pages on the kitchen table anyway. I’m relieved not to see my face looking back at me; maybe enough time has passed and they’re finally on to the next life to ravage with speculation and statements of “alleged” involvement. At my desktop, a chat bubble blooms on my screen. It’s Ellie, and although she means well, the sisterly concern she tries to communicate with daily check-ins is becoming exhausting. There are only so many times you can circle the same conversation and get nowhere. She’s sorry for my loss. I know she is. She wants to make sure I’m eating. She encourages me to work.
Her intentions are golden, but it will take a shift into vodka gimlets before I breach that tired conversation today. I ignore the bubble asking me how the weather is holding up, and I try to do a little work.
Since taking a leave of absence from my practice, I still communicate with a few patients who didn’t take the news of my time away very well. Paula Day is suffering from stage four breast cancer and no matter my own hardships, I would never abandon my weekly video chat with dear Paula. Eddie Tolson’s panic disorder exploded when I explained I’d be away, so I chat with him now and then. In my private practice, I’ve pretty much kept on anyone who wildly protested my leave, but most of them took my referrals quietly and sympathetically with the promise of my speedy return. I respond to a few emails, but it’s hard not to think of Liam. It’s hard to concentrate on anything else.
I click on a folder on my desktop titled “Liam.” I’ve kept every email and photo, even the everyday notes he used to leave around the house that I took photos of because I thought they were so sweet. I uploaded them all to the computer over the years: “Sorry I drank all the almond milk, I’ll pick up more tonight,” taped inside the fridge; “Meet me at Luigi’s at 7?” on a stick-it note on my car. It’s silly to keep such mundane remnants, but it was all part of our evolution together.
I never wanted to forget, even when he was here, the swoosh at the top of the L in his signature or the inside jokes we exhausted. “Hardy Har” scrolled at the bottom of dozens of these old notes, a secret, stupid one-liner, just between us, which we’d stolen from some long-forgotten TV comedy sketch and made our own language. I cherished each one. All of the photos and instant messages strung together; this was our life. Even our ranting text arguments—I never deleted those from my phone. Now, the pettiness of them fills me with shame.
I scroll through some of the last photos of him—of us. His work as a food and wine critic meant the lion’s share of our photos were at restaurants. We’re pictured together, with that stagey, for-the-camera pose, sharing a Scotch egg at a gastropub, or taking giant bites of lobster rolls off a pier in Cape Cod. There’s a short video of him explaining why romesco sauce can go on darn near anything. I click to play it even though I’ve watched it countless times. I took the little clip with my phone at an Italian place in New York that I don’t recall the name of, but I remember so clearly the drippy candles and the Dean Martin song playing in the background.
We’d taken a cab there right from the airport to make our reservation on time, so we were dressed too casually for the place, and we’d had a few Makers Mark and sodas on the plane to celebrate a television spot I’d gotten. It wasn’t like him to drink often and certainly not before he reviewed a restaurant; I guess that’s why I love this clip. Just thirty-two seconds of Liam preaching the utilitarian nature of romesco sauce with a dot of it on his cheek, slightly buzzed.
My face has become rinsed with tears before I notice, so I close the folder and graduate from wine to vodka and turn a house-flipping show on TV to fill the silence. After a couple of miraculous and seamless home renovations, I pull on a wool coat and start my daily work. I print a hundred more missing persons posters from my office printer and head out. I look at Liam’s face on the poster. It’s a photo we took at Sapori Trattoria last year. My face, along with the veal scaloppini we shared that night, are cropped out. I thought it was the clearest photo of him I could find.
Today I’ll just go to shops, hang them inside restaurant front windows so the rain doesn’t dissolve him.