35 New Amy Loads the Dishwasher

Amy without Chris is different from Amy with Chris. Socially, she is a whole new creature. She utters every damn thought that crosses her mind, so long as it’s true. She swears a shitload more than she used to: bad words shoot from her mouth unbidden, like the noxious and fiery ejecta from some long-dormant, unusually short volcano, or the pus from an unusually tall zit. (“Mom,” observes Mitchell, “You say the S-word a lot.”)

New Amy worries less, or not at all, about what people think of her. She second-guesses herself less. She interrupts more. She feels much more at ease in her own skin, much more fearless, much more confident—or no, it’s not that she’s confident. She still has a chronically low opinion of herself. It’s that she just doesn’t care. When you’re in this kind of pain, and for so long, nothing else can hurt you, really. As she explains to the children, “Only the end of the world is the end of the world. And even that’s the start of something new.”

Amy without Chris still misses her husband terribly. She wishes with every wriggling cell in her body that she were still Amy with Chris. But she’s not. She can’t move forward without acknowledging that she’s not. No matter how often her friends say, Amy, You Won’t Be Alone Forever, or Amy, You’ll Find Another Good Mr. Manly Pants, the fact of the matter is that right now, there is no Mr. Manly Pants. Right now, she’s just her own little self. And her own little self has, in recent months, become much, much more blunt. “Bluntissimo,” coins my friend Bev, a choral director.

I have always apologized a lot. A ridiculous lot. Lately I have decided to ditch this habit, because A) it’s pointless; B) it tends to bug the people I love; C) I often find myself apologizing for apologizing, a stupidly meta exercise in guilt inflation that can go on forever; and D) it’s pointless.

A scant week after Chris died, my dad left a couple of messages before I was able to call him back. When we finally spoke, he cut me off before I could spit out some idiotic mea culpa for being hard to reach.

“Amy,” he said. “Are you about to apologize? Because if you apologize, I’m going to come out there and shit on your head.”

A hollow threat. But still.

So the New Amy plans to disgorge fewer sorries than the Old Amy, or so I declare to myself and everyone who’ll listen.

A fine occasion for me to test this resolve is my parents’ 50th anniversary party.

They’ve booked a leafy old inn in Vermont for the weekend, and most everyone will be there: Dan (Dad), Pat (Mom), their daughter Betsy, their sons Danny and Randy, their families, and a few close friends. Plus their non-blood progeny: Connie and her daughter, and me, and Nils. Nils is approximately the nicest person on the planet and someone who apologizes as much as I do, maybe more. I look forward to trying out my new sorry-less persona in his presence.

I agree to arrive at the hotel by 3 on Friday. I pull up at 3:08. There’s my dad in his massive Honda Pilot, Nils beside him. Dad rolls down the window, wags me over with his finger. I get out.

“You’re late,” he says.

I know, I say.

“Aren’t you going to apologize?”

No, I say.

“Don’t you feel guilty?”

No, I say.

He gives me an incredulous but happy look. Nils is laughing.

“So you’re not going to say you’re sorry?”

Nope. This is the New Me, I explain—and the New Me doesn’t apologize. So watch out, I tell him.

And the incredulous, happy look becomes an enormous smile.

All day he tests me, trying to get me to apologize. He gets nowhere.

New Amy refuses to take the blame for anything. New Amy is resolute. New Amy is bold. New Amy cracks inappropriate jokes. New Amy is also hunk-o-man-hungry; she jokes to her parents that she plans to pick up a “random” at some wedding party being held at the inn, even though she doesn’t believe it herself. They clearly don’t believe her, either (HA HA HA HA that’s funny, Amy, HA HA HA go pick up a guy HA HA HA HA HA), and for good reason, as Old Amy continues to take the upper hand when it comes to sexual morality. New Amy does not even attempt to swipe some New Mr. Manly Pants from his plate of beef tenderloin medallions under the tent.

But the sorries! I will have you know that New Amy does an excellent job quashing the sorries. All day, my dad tries to prod a reflexive apology out of me, and all day, I resist. He asks if he should wear long pants or shorts, and I say shorts, but then I selfishly change into capris before dinner. He gives me shit for this.

“Don’t you feel guilty for making me wear shorts, and then changing out of them yourself?”

No, I say.

“You won’t say sorry?”

No, I say.

Go, New Amy! Go, New Amy!

This continues through Friday evening and Saturday morning. It goes on until, obeying some rare and uncharacteristic domestic-cleaning impulse, I take it upon myself to load the dishwasher in my parents’ hotel condo. Unfortunately, I space out and accidentally load it with concenfuckingtrated Tide, then turn it on and leave for a hike with the clan. Have you ever loaded a dishwasher with concenfuckingtrated Tide, either accidentally or on purpose? No? Well, this is what happens. THE DISHWASHER VOMITS SOAP.

On our return from the hike, Nils stumbles across this interesting scientific fact. He walks into the kitchenette, screams HOLY SHIT!! and then returns from the kitchenette with his feet encased in concenfuckingtrated-soap-lather so colossal that he seems to be wearing fluffy white moon boots. The suds reach halfway to his knee. At this point, the only thing for me to do is to yell OH MY GOD!! while falling to the floor with towels alongside Nils, who laughs and tells me he did something similar to a similar Richardson dishwasher a few decades earlier.

All I can say is, HA HA YOU’RE KIDDING and THANK YOU FOR HELPING, NILS, and HOLY SHIT!! and then of course I AM SO SORRY I AM SO SO SO SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY, this last string of apologies directed at my parents. Who are laughing. At me. And at the complete collapse of my newfound resolve to Not Express Remorse.

But flooding the kitchen surely merits an apology, I say. On this point, Dad yields. Later, after the rest of the family has arrived for the party, Danny tells me I shouldn’t apologize at all. For the dishwasher, or anything else. Ever again.

“You know what you have to say when Dad gives you shit.” This is more of a declaration than a question. I prep to receive this incoming dose of brotherly wisdom.

What’s that, I reply.

“Bite me.”

I’ve never been clear on the origin and meaning of this phrase (bite which part of me, exactly, and for that matter do I really want to be bitten?), but I try it out and repeat it at Danny’s instruction. I like how it feels. I like the percussive smack on my lips. I especially like the madcap invitation to outré dental violence. Old Amy never told anyone to bite her! No way! Then again, Old Amy was never attacked in the thigh by a deranged Ecuadorian German Shepherd.

It occurs to me that New Amy is markedly more Richardsonian than Old Amy ever was; that would certainly explain the uptick in profanity. I had always felt at home with these folks. I had always walked into Dan and Pat’s house without knocking—and what better, clearer affirmation of family love and acceptance can we ask for? In figuring out the shit of my new self, I figured out this: not merely that I love them, which I knew, and I need them, which I recognize, but I’m one of them. Which is obvious.

New Amy says: OK, so what the hell. Bite me.