Parker INSTANTANEOUS NOTHING

PEOPLE TALK A LOT ABOUT widows, but you don’t hear that much about widowers. I couldn’t think of a single famous one. That morning, I tried to because Greer’s Us Weekly, the one that had autorenewed for the three years since she died, was sitting on top of the stack of mail. Same with her Southern Coast, a magazine her father teased her mercilessly for loving, since it was not owned by her family company, McCann Media.

Maybe it’s because men bounce back faster and move on with their lives. People kept telling me, “At least you don’t have kids. You can make a clean break.”

They didn’t get it. I wanted to be a father, and I would have given anything for a kid with Greer’s blond hair and fearlessness. My wife was born bold. She didn’t take any prisoners and took down anything that got in her way. Anything except for ovarian cancer, which proved to be her kryptonite.

I lifted my head from my cereal bowl and glanced over at the neat stack of large black Moleskine journals on the white quartz counter. Greer was a creature of habit, introspective. She was the kind of person life coaches would call “self-aware.” Those journals were part of her daily routine. Sometimes she wrote a lot. Sometimes a little. Every entry, from the mundane to the extraordinary, was a part of the woman who had been so steadfast and confident that I’d believed she was invincible. I never would have imagined that I would be sitting here alone at the table she’d picked out—like she had everything in this house—over a bowl of soggy cereal, in the small Palm Beach home we had purchased six years earlier. The view of the Intracoastal didn’t seem nearly as awe-inspiring now that she was gone.

As I raised the spoon to my mouth I could almost hear Greer saying, Cereal has no nutritional value. She would have been in the kitchen throwing all varieties of plant matter into the Vitamix, going over the day’s schedule, and making something that looked disgusting but somehow tasted amazing. Although she would have been doing that at six, not nearly eleven. Now I stayed at the office almost all night sometimes. I was in charge of Mergers and Acquisitions for McCann Media, which meant my days revolved around finding new publications to purchase and transitioning their teams into the world of McCann once I did. That often meant corporate restructuring, which wasn’t always savory. But someone had to do it.

After Greer died, I couldn’t sleep, so I had rearranged my schedule, grabbing a few hours of rest in the early morning before heading back to the office. If he didn’t approve, the boss—my father-in-law—never said so. Everyone was still treating me like I’d crumble if they looked at me wrong. I would.

This morning I crumbled at the thought of Greer in a fitted black work dress and shoes that cost more than my first car. She was petite and pretty, but that girl was powerful. She would have taken the time to sit on my lap, to kiss me, to make plans for the night. She ran her own Florida-based arm of her family’s national media conglomerate, the nonprofit she had created, and the world. But she always took the time to make sure people knew how much she loved them.

And me? She loved me a whole damn lot. But not a tenth as much as I loved her. I stood up straighter when she walked in the door. I loved to look at her across the room at a party and know that she would be leaving with me, to see her throw her head back in laughter and know that I could make her laugh like that. She had been mine to protect. And I had let her down.

Everyone told me I had to move on, that this pain and emptiness would ruin me if I didn’t get back out there. I was young. I could still have everything I wanted out of life. That was what they said. But she was what I wanted out of life.

It had gotten to the point that my mother—my own Southern, pearl-wearing, churchgoing, never-said-a-dirty-word-in-her-life mother—had said that maybe I should consider a one-night stand. That is a conversation one does not ever want to have with one’s mother.

My friends had suggested I move. This neighborhood was full of wealthy, retired snowbirds. It was too stuffy for me. But Greer had wanted to be near her family when we had children. This was her world. How could I leave it? Leaving would mean taking the clothes out of her closet, throwing the rows of shoes from their racks into boxes, removing the purses from their storage containers and giving them away. I couldn’t do it.

I looked over at the journals, debating which one I would pack to take with me on my trip home to Cape Carolina the next day. I let myself read one entry every day, chosen at random. It was my way of holding on to her. Every day, I fought the urge to sit down and read them all, all at once. I held myself back so that I could stretch out the joy of those fresh words. When I had read through them, I planned to start all over again, read them in order. But then they wouldn’t be new. Then they would be a memory.

And then I would have to admit that she wasn’t coming back.

My phone rang in the bathroom, finally tearing me away from my soggy cereal. I got up, barely even noticing the pink-and-green lattice wallpaper that Greer had said was “very Palm Beach,” glancing at my hair, which seemed darker since it was wet, in the shiny white mirror, running my hand across the three-day stubble that I needed to shave before work. I was deeply tanned, even though it was December. Winters were mild in Palm Beach, and solitary days on the boat were what kept me breathing—the sea, the sky, the wind. Every day the water outside my door held something new. I kept thinking that maybe it would bring me something new, too, erase the fact that Greer was gone. As of yet, no luck.

A familiar but confusing number lit up my black iPhone screen. “Amelia Saxton.” Her Facebook profile picture popped up too. Her exuberant face on the screen, the way her wavy dark blond hair fell over her shoulders and her blue eyes shone, so full of life even on camera, almost made me smile back at her happiness. Almost. I briefly considered sending it to voice mail, but I didn’t. Instead, I answered, thrusting myself onto the sword of whatever inconvenience was on the line.

Just seeing Amelia’s name brought back the memory of the day Greer told me she wanted to end her life—before the cancer could. It took my breath away.

When Greer told me, my first reaction was to tell her no. But no one tells Greer McCann no. Not even her husband. When she said it, this eerie calm came over me, as though I were outside myself, receiving news that didn’t pertain to me. I had just faced that Greer was sick. I had never considered that my wife would die. She was too real to actually die. When she brought the subject up in our usual restaurant with my usual steak and merlot, I had nearly forgotten, seeing the way the light reflected off her pretty face, that she was even sick.

We had just been talking about how we would decorate a nursery when she got well, for Pete’s sake.

I swallowed a sip of wine, my stomach turning over. This was the only woman I had ever loved. I had changed so much of who I was and what I wanted because being with her was so much better than anything else. She made me happy in a new way, one I had never experienced before. My first thought, looking across the table, was, They’re going to have to kill me, too.

I would have given anything to trade places.

After that, I couldn’t stop touching Greer. I followed her everywhere, gauging her moves and her actions, trying to decide if she was getting worse, trying to keep her here with me. I didn’t necessarily agree with her idea to announce her plans via Clematis. But, again, Greer and “no” never mixed well. She wanted to frame the story to bring attention to her charity. I didn’t care what she did as long as I got to hover over her and breathe life into her while she did it.

She wouldn’t let me stay in the room with Amelia—the reporter who also happened to be my childhood friend. But I stood at the door. I could make out only snippets of the conversation. When I showed Amelia out of the house, I could tell she was shell-shocked. I’d known her since I was born. She was so quiet. “I’m sorry” was all she managed as she engulfed me in a familiar hug.

I nodded. “Me too.”

That was it, but maybe it was all we needed.

Back in the house, I found Greer in the shower, and I climbed in behind her.

I kissed her, quite intent on making love to her right then and there. In that simple gesture, something as familiar to me by then as brushing my hair, I finally broke down. Sobs escaped me, and, naked as the day I was born, I wept on the black-and-white marble floor of our walk-in shower.

“Babe,” Greer said calmly, “what is the matter?”

I pulled her down onto the floor with me, holding her in my arms. “I can’t know it’s the last time,” I said, pressing my face into her neck. She didn’t smell like death yet. She still smelled like her, like Shiseido shampoo and rose body oil.

She ran her fingers down my back, laying her head on my shoulder, the water dripping around us. “What do you mean?”

“I can’t have it planned, G. I can’t know when you’re going to go. I can’t know that it’s the last time I’m going to make love to you, or kiss you, or feel you in my arms.” I paused, catching my breath. “I know all that is coming, but it has to be a progression. I can’t know ahead of time.”

My dying wife was the one consoling me. I thought I was tough, but she was stronger. I expected her to argue with me. Instead, she whispered, “Okay.”

I looked up at her. “Really?”

She nodded sadly. “I wanted to get it over with for you. I didn’t want you to have to watch me go downhill. But if that’s what you need, if that will help your healing process, then that’s what we’ll do.”

“It’s like a really bleak ‘Gift of the Magi,’ ” I said, kissing her.

“I always thought that story was pretty bleak anyway,” she joked, trying to make me smile.

She got up, washing the soap out of her hair like we hadn’t just had one of the most emotional scenes of our lives. She pulled me up and said, “Parker Thaysden, you are the best decision I ever made, and I will love you for all eternity. Even when I’m not here.”

I kissed her again. “No man has ever loved a woman the way I love you.”

She smiled. “I agree wholeheartedly.”

The shower is where most people go to think. But for me, now, the shower is memory central. There isn’t a single morning I step in that I don’t think about that night. I feel guilty about it, but I stand firm in my decision. We had more time than we were told we would. I cherish every moment of it, even the bad parts.

With all of that weighing so heavily on my mind, I knew I couldn’t talk about Greer. Not even to Amelia, who I’d known all my life. Not to anyone. But then again, my urgently ringing phone reminded me, Amelia could potentially have some pressing news from Cape Carolina. Or maybe she wanted to do an article about the foundation, which would bring attention to the great work we were doing. Greer would want that.

The phone had already rung four times when I slid to answer and hit the speaker button. “Hello.”

“Parker,” Amelia said cheerily. Too cheerily. So cheerily that something was clearly up.

“What’s going on, Amelia?” I asked.

“Oh, same old,” she said. She was lying. Amelia and Greer were totally, completely different people, but they had similar sparks that made it impossible for them to sit still. Amelia was always moving forward, just like Greer. I admired that about her, especially since, as my inability to talk about my dead wife in the past tense for three solid years indicated, moving forward was not my strong suit.

I didn’t say anything. That was the tactic I always used when I wanted someone to get to the point.

It worked. “Listen, Parker,” she said. “I need to meet up with you. It’s important.”

Suspicious. The casseroles had started flooding in the day after Greer died. If I hadn’t been so devastated, it would have been a huge ego boost. For a moment, I wondered if Amelia might be coming on to me. But then I remembered that she was married to Thad, a fact that I tended to conveniently forget. My family had teased me for years about my crush on Amelia.

“You’re-on-a-tight-deadline-and-need-a-quote important? Or a-secret-uncle-has-died-and-left-me-twenty-million-dollars important?” I smirked.

“Um.” She paused. “It’s decidedly more important than either of those things.”

“Can’t you just tell me now? My interest is piqued.”

She was quiet. I could tell she was deciding. “Yeah, no. I don’t think so. It’s a face-to-face kind of thing.”

“Well, damn,” I said.

“I’m leaving for Cape Carolina in the morning,” she said apologetically. “Maybe next week?”

“Oh my God,” I said. “It’s my mom. Or my dad. It is, isn’t it?”

She laughed. “No, Parker. You’re killing me. Everything is fine. Let’s just get coffee when I get back to Palm Beach.” I could hear noise on the other end of the phone, and as I was saying, “Well, you might be seeing me sooner than you think,” she was talking over me, saying, “I’ll text you to set it up. I have to run!”

I am a harper. Once I want to know something, I can’t think about anything else. Fortunately, I was heading to Cape Carolina tomorrow, too. So I wouldn’t have that long to wait.

When we hung up, I rubbed shaving cream on my cheeks and chin and saw that I was smiling. Human interaction wasn’t my favorite thing these days, but that phone call had been less painful than most. It had to be that Cape Carolina connection.

When my face was smooth, I tapped my American Airlines app and checked in for my nine a.m. flight. I hadn’t been home in months, but now had seemed like a good time. I had all those points piled up, waiting. But who wants to take a vacation alone? I didn’t. All being on the beach would do was remind me that Greer wasn’t lying beside me. When I was at her office, I could be surrounded by her: her employees, her things, her energy. That’s why I had gone there almost every day since her death. Even more than our house, that office had become home.

Tomorrow, I would be in Cape Carolina, where I was defined by my baseball stats, not my marriage to a deceased heiress. Where I was the guy who made orangeades at the soda fountain after school, not the one running his dead wife’s company.

I walked into my bedroom. Even after three years, it still smelled like Greer. I pulled the green lattice comforter, which matched the wallpaper, up over the sheets so the bed was sort of made. I threw three shirts, three pairs of khakis, and three pairs of boxers in my roller bag.

As I walked out the door, heading to work, turning to put my key into the lock, it occurred to me, for the first time, that what Amelia had to say might be good news.