Mrs. Woolf showed up at the gallery that night. It was a shock to glance around the room and see her standing there chatting casually with my father. My mother and I looked at each other.
“You didn’t know she was coming?” I asked.
“No,” my mother said. “We invited her, of course. Jack too. But she wasn’t sure. She hasn’t gone out socially since Jimmy died.”
“I should go over and say something.”
“She’d like that.”
“I don’t know what to tell her. I don’t know what to say about ditching Jimmy’s funeral.”
“You don’t have to say anything. Enid understands.”
“I don’t know.” I walked over to Mrs. Woolf slowly. When she saw me, her face broke into this terrific smile, and I caught a glimpse of her famous dimples. It was just automatic that we hugged.
“I’m glad you came,” I whispered.
“I’m glad too.”
“Is Mr. Woolf coming?”
“In a minute. He’s parking the ear.” She held me at arms’ length and looked at me. “Your mom says you’re having a rough time.”
This was so characteristic of Mrs. Woolf: to turn it around and worry about me.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve had trouble sleeping and panic attacks. Outside of being a little crazy, I guess I’m fine.”
Mrs. Woolf laughed. “You can’t go through what we have and not end up a little crazy.”
“Mrs. Woolf . . . I’m sorry about not going to the funeral. But once I got there, once I got to the church—”
“Oh, Morgan.” She reached over and squeezed my hand. “You were Jimmy’s friend, and you were there for him when it counted.”
“I wanted to say something to you at the funeral . . . and that night at the hospital, too. I know that was a terrible time for you.”
“The hardest part was the not knowing,” Mrs. Woolf said. “No one at that hospital would tell me anything definite. Your aunt was the one who finally gave me a straight answer. She was in the emergency room a very short time. Something like two minutes. Then she came back out and told me Jimmy was probably not going to make it. And she asked me if I wanted to see him.”
“Did you?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Woolf said. “Even though I had talked to the police and the nurses, there was part of me that wouldn’t believe he was in there. I had to see him . . . I wanted to say good-bye to him.”
I bit my lip. Hard. I was not going to give in to a big emotional scene.
“I looked in on him for a minute, but your aunt stayed in the emergency room with him the whole time. I know it was terribly difficult for her to come out and tell me he had died.”
Mrs. Woolf’s eyes filled with tears. So did mine.
“Why is it,” Mrs. Woolf said, “that I never seem to have a handkerchief when I need one?”
I patted my jacket pockets: no handkerchief, no Kleenex.
“Here,” my mother said. She dug in her purse and handed Mrs. Woolf some Kleenex. I backed off. I was probably the one person in that room who understood exactly what Mrs. Woolf was going through, but I couldn’t talk to her about it.
Mrs. Woolf blew her nose. She was smiling and crying at the same time. “I talked to your sister-in-law,” she said to my mother. “She recommended a therapist out near Glen Ellyn. She says he’s very nice.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“Next week.”
This was really news to me. I couldn’t believe it. The gallery was packed, but I pushed my way around people until I found my aunt. She was sipping wine and talking and laughing with a bunch of her friends.
“Could I . . . I need to talk to you a minute.” She stopped smiling when she saw me and followed me to a quiet corner a few feet away.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Mrs. Woolf said something about seeing some therapist you recommended.”
“Yes,” my aunt said.
“She’s okay, isn’t she? I mean, she’s not having a nervous breakdown or anything, is she?”
“No . . . she just feels she needs a little professional help right now, that’s all.”
“I didn’t know what to do. She started crying. I didn’t know what to say.”
“Fay’s talking to her,” my aunt said, glancing across the room. “She’ll be okay.”
“She must be in really bad shape if she has to go into therapy, huh?”
“No . . . I think she’s coping well.”
“How can you say that? Look at her. She’s really falling apart.”
“Enid’s not falling apart. She’s coming to terms with some of the pain she’s feeling. She’s handling it.”
“God, I thought I was having problems, but at least I don’t need any professional help—”
The minute the words were out of my mouth, I thought about the panic attacks and not being able to sleep. I thought about the bottle of pills in my jacket pocket. They didn’t just drop out of the sky. A doctor had prescribed them for me. I was getting professional help, and I hadn’t even realized it.
I looked at my aunt. “I didn’t want to come to you about not being able to sleep. That was Dad’s idea, not mine.”
“I know,” my aunt said.
I stuck around that gallery for twenty more minutes; then I just had to get out of there. It was too smoky, too loud, too crowded. And everyone in that damn gallery seemed to be paired up: my mother and father, my aunt and her boyfriend, even Mr. and Mrs. Woolf. I knew they were going through a rough time, but they had each other. They held hands and walked through the gallery. They took time and really looked at the paintings.
I walked out onto Madison. I didn’t go far, just a little way down the street. When I crossed the bridge over the Chicago River, I stopped and looked down into the water for a little while. A couple of years earlier Jimmy and I had stood in the same spot and watched them dye the river bright green for Saint Patrick’s Day. “Hang in there, kid,” Jimmy had said to me that day. “Spring is just around the corner.” Right now that green river and the promise of spring seemed a million light-years away. Right now, in the dead of winter, I stood looking down into a gray river, chunky with ice floes. I reached into my jacket pocket and took out the bottle of sleeping pills. I pitched them over the railing and watched them disappear into the water.
I didn’t need the lousy pills.
I didn’t need anything.