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Executive Times |
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2005 Book Reviews |
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The Year
of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg |
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Rating: ••• (Recommended) |
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Grief Elizabeth Berg’s
13th novel, The Year
of Pleasures, presents the story of Betta Nolan,
and the journey of her grief following the death of her husband, John, from
liver cancer at age 55. As she’s done in prior novels, Berg finds ways to
capture the experiences of women and tell their stories in ways that will
resonate for all readers. Betta follows the dying
wish of her husband to move from I
woke up the next morning full of a cheerfulness I was afraid to trust. I ate
breakfast and felt as though I were really tasting
food for the first time in a long time. I put on some Duke Ellington to
shower and dress by, and tried to ignore the guilt simmering inside. To be
feeling so fine when my husband had so recently died! To become aware of the
relief I felt, frankly, that it was finally all over! On
my walk to the center of town to go grocery shopping, I passed a group of
young girls dancing on their lawn—they were the sisters I’d seen on the day I
first looked at the house, who’d been playing with the biting puppy. They
held their arms out, threw back their heads, stood on tiptoe, and took mincing
steps around and around in a circle. I wanted to watch, but I didn’t want to
make them self-conscious; I smiled and kept going. John and I used to like to
go to concerts and to the theater, but even more than that we liked going to
amateur productions. A high school’s version of After
the program, when he presented them to the girl, he said, “These are to
express my admiration.” She was embarrassed and looked down to say thank you,
and for a second I thought giving her flowers had been a terrible mistake,
one of those things that, rather than correcting a bad situation, compounds
it. But the girl held the flowers close to herself, and John had the good
sense not to go on and on— rather he made a quick and elegant departure, and
I saw that the girl smiled and raised her chin after we turned to leave. I
took his hand and he said quietly, “Do you think we can adopt her?” We
had decided against adoption after trying for years to get pregnant; John had
a low sperm count. By then, we’d grown used to our way of living. But John
would have loved the presence of so many children in this neighborhood, just
as I did. It
was a very nice shopping area that I could walk to: The town had a lot going
for it, despite its small size. Among other things, there was a bookstore
that felt like a bookstore and not a warehouse, and they had a wonderful
selection of poetry. There was a movie theater where they popped their own
corn. There was a clothing store for women, a few restaurants, a bakery, a
stationery store, an antiques shop, a florist, two
beauty parlors. Only one store was empty, a good sign for the town’s
prosperity. I stood before it for a while, imagining how it would look if it
were mine. There were two display windows; I’d put a big armoire in one and
fill it with beautiful and unusual things, and in the other I’d put a
claw-foot bathtub surrounded by sumptuous products, a red cashmere robe
draped over the edge. I grew excited, thinking about this, and started to
write down the number to find out how much the rent would be. But then I
noticed a small note saying the store rental included a two-bedroom apartment
upstairs, no separate rental available. No wonder it was still vacant. There
was a train station at the corner, and I saw a double-decker commuter train.
If I wanted to go to John
would have liked it here so much. He would have appreciated having the
antiques store especially; he had a wonderful eye. “Do you want a coffee?” he
would have asked, outside the place I was now passing—he could almost never
pass a coffee shop without going in. In honor of him, I decided, I’d go into Cuppa Java and have something sweet to bolster myself
before I bought groceries and then went home to unpack both them and more
boxes. I
ordered a coffee of the day and a lemon bar, then
sat at a tiny table next to the window. Along with the smell of coffee in the
air was the smell of newspaper, and the buttery
aroma of things baking. I wanted to sit and watch people, to learn about who
lived here, but it was difficult to concentrate on anything but the table
next to me, where a young man and woman were having a quiet argument. “Why
should it mean anything?” she said. “You fall in love with everyone!” “No,
I don’t,” he answered, his head down. He was shredding his napkin into long
strips. Both he and the woman were wearing blue jeans and colored T-shirts
with flannel shirts over them. Her long blond hair was twisted up and clipped
carelessly to the top of her head, and the effect was lovely. Backpacks lay
at their feet like dogs who’d been chastised for
begging but refused to relinquish their posts entirely. “You
do!” she said. “And your loving someone doesn’t mean anything! It doesn’t
mean anything about the person you supposedly love! I mean,
tell me one reason why you love me!” He
looked up at her, his face full of longing. He was remarkably good-looking:
soft brown hair, huge blue eyes, a dimple in his
chin. Cheekbones a woman would kill for. “Because. .
. you’re you,” he said. “You know?” He smiled, reached out to touch her hand. She
pulled it away impatiently. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” she
said, her voice rising. “What does that mean? What does it say about me as an
individual?” It
was all I could do not to lean over and say, “Sweetheart? Maybe this isn’t
the time or the place. Also, maybe if you’d stop being such a bitch he could
tell you why you’re so very special.” “I
don’t understand,” the man told her, and she sighed loudly and looked away
from him, directly at me. I turned quickly toward the window. There was a
flyer for used furniture taped to the glass, an ad for a massage therapist,
and one for someone looking for a roommate. Sunny back bedroom, the ad said.
Nonsmoker. Three hundred dollars a month. None of the tabs with phone numbers
had been torn off yet, but I saw from the date that it had just been posted
today. What was it like when young people lived together these days? Did they
write their names on their cartons of milk? Did they sit at kitchen tables
and talk as my roommates and I did, or were they all hunkered down in front
of their computers, lost in link land? It seemed to me that you couldn’t look
at one thing on a computer without enduring a barrage of suggestions for
related topics, or pop-up advertising. For me, computers were like the kids
in the classroom with their hands always raised, saying, Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! On
more than one occasion I had been known to have words with my computer for
its infuriating interruptions. Once, as I sat in my chair deleting things and
yelling, “No! No! No!” John walked into my office, saying, “Who are you talking
to?” Still,
computers were good for some things. Perhaps my computer would help me find
my roommates, those old soul mates. For so many years now, the conversations
I’d had with women had been halting and false; I’d often snuck looks at my
watch when we talked about the mostly superficial things we focused on. I
knew it was my fault—I didn’t make the effort to go deeper, to do what was
required to achieve a true closeness. With my roommates, intimacy came by way
of propinquity, and from the brutal honesty of youth. Now I longed to have
that kind of friendship again. I needed to diligently pursue something I
never should have abandoned in the first place. “Fuck
it!” the young woman said. She stood and slung her backpack over her
shoulder. “I knew there was no point in trying to talk about this. What’s the
point? It’s too late—I mean, I am gone. I told you,
but you. . . Good luck, whatever. And don’t call me!” She walked out of the
coffee shop and moved quickly down the sidewalk. I
looked over at the young man and smiled sympathetically. Embarrassed, he
smiled back. “Sorry,” he said. “She’s just. . .
anyway. Sorry.” “No
problem.” He
took in a huge breath, raised his eyebrows. “Not my day, I guess.” He grabbed
his backpack and walked out, heading quickly down the block in the opposite
direction. I felt bad for him; I wished I could have come up with something
soothing to say. I watched him go, watched the wind lift his jacket and rush
up underneath, wondered if he felt it. “This will be nothing in a few months,”
I wished I’d said. But he would not have believed me. I knew something about
others predicting how long pain would last. Pebbles
flung against a mountainside, that’s what that was. Little bits of
speculation thrown against an overwhelming fact. In
the grocery store I walked down the baking aisle, thinking I’d get some
chocolate chips. It was Benny I was thinking of, but I was not opposed to
having a bit of the dough myself—I preferred it to the cookies. I reached for
flour, saw out of the corner of my eye a bottle of molasses, and it came to
me what John meant by gingerbread. One night for dessert, I’d made
gingerbread, complete with my mother’s famous warm lemon sauce. When we’d
eaten it, I’d told John that I wished I could have it for breakfast. “Have
it, then,” he’d said, and I’d offered reasons galore for not doing so—I was a
big believer in sensible breakfasts. “Don’t let your habits become
handcuffs,” he’d said, and I’d asked him if he’d gotten that out of some dumb
self-help book. “No,” he’d said. “It’s my own dumb idea.” Now I reached for
the bottle of molasses and reminded myself to buy lemons, too. It
had gotten colder when I came back outside: dark clouds hung heavy in the
sky. December had arrived without my quite knowing it. One reason was that
the weather had been so mild, but the other reason was, I still wasn’t really
paying attention to what day it was. I walked home quickly, and my arms were
aching by the time I climbed the front porch steps. My street was deserted
now; no children outside—I saw no signs of activity at all, in fact. It came
to me that serious winter weather would soon arrive, and with it temperatures
so extreme a deserted street would be the norm and not the exception. I
carried the groceries into the kitchen, put away the items needing refrigeration,
and left the rest. I needed to lie down. A sudden despair was rising up
within me, and I wanted sleep’s defense. “After it’s all over,” John had
advised me, shortly after his diagnosis, “I want you to take really good care
of yourself. Don’t get too hungry, too tired, or too sad.” “Is
that advice for widows?” I’d asked. “For
drunks, actually,” he’d said. “They use it in AA. But it’s good for widows,
too.” We’d laughed—laughed!—and I had felt proud of us, that laughter was
still in us. And I had felt afraid, knowing that it was because nothing had
made itself real yet. I
turned on a light, lay on the sofa, and closed my eyes. I felt a deep
despair, a vague longing to go to sleep and not wake up. I knew it was
self-indulgent and phony, really; if death appeared and said, “Ready?” I’d
gasp and plead. What a change this was from my cheerful start to the day. But
it was not surprising, really—so much of grieving was holding things at bay,
resisting a great force bearing down. Every now and then it broke through.
Nowhere to go then, but to tears or the nether land of sleep. I
slept briefly, and when I awakened I went into the kitchen and began putting
groceries away with an intense focus that was close to rage. There! A small
jar of peanut butter on the top shelf of the cupboard. There! Tinfoil in one
of the long drawers. A loaf of bread, where would it go? I had yet to unearth
the basket in which I kept bread. I turned around and around in a circle,
saying out loud with mounting hysteria, “Where is it? Where is it? Where?” The
doorbell rang and I jumped as though I’d been caught stealing. I went to the
door to find Benny, looking up at me with a half smile. “Surprise! I came to
help you unpack—I got done early with my other jobs.” “Oh!”
I said. “Good!” “But
I can come back.” “Why?” He
laughed nervously, looked over at his house, then back at me. “Because. . . are you crying?” “No!”
I put my hands to my face and felt the wetness there. “Well, not anymore.
Come in. Guess what I got?” “Dr
Pepper,” he said, striding in confidently and again dropping his coat in the
hall. This time, though, I picked it up and hung it in the closet on what an
efficient and rehab-minded part of my brain christened “Benny’s hook.” And
then I confessed: It was the chocolate chips I’d wanted to tell him about;
I’d forgotten to buy Dr Pepper. He
sighed. “That’s okay. Everybody does. Want to get to work now?” I
nodded, then followed him into the living room. Such
a small person to be such a savior. At
ten o’clock I took a bath, then came downstairs to
make a cup of tea and sit in the chaise to contemplate my finished living
room. An hour earlier, I’d paid Benny twenty dollars and felt like a thief.
He’d been tireless: except for a dinner break with his mom, he worked
straight through until nine o’clock, when he headed home for bed. We’d
unpacked every box, and though not everything was put away, at least I
finally knew where everything was. Surely a celebration was in order. I
moved to the stereo and put on a Thelonious Monk CD
I had always loved and John had always hated. There were these things, these
random compensations. I stood listening for a while, thinking that no other
musician made music talk for me the way Monk did. No one else had such a
transparent sense of humor. My roommates had loved him, too: we’d nearly worn
out the grooves in our only album. I
started to go to the computer but went instead to the kitchen and picked up
the phone. I was going to find those women. I was going to find them and
suggest a reunion. I called directory assistance and asked for Forty-five
minutes later the number still rang, unanswered. Fifteen minutes after that
it was the same. I turned out the lights and brought the number upstairs with
me and put it on the bedside stand. In the morning, then. She’d always slept
late; I’d call early. I
lay in the dark, full of an odd kind of surety. I only had a phone number,
but it felt like a major accomplishment. And I somehow felt positive it was As
for me, I liked things that couldn’t be explained. I liked outrageous
statements of faith; defiant acts of belief that flew in the face of science
and practicality. Dia de los
Muertos, for example: I loved the idea of bringing
food and cigarettes to a grave site. The Japanese rite of sending out
offerings on burning paper boats. The Irish custom of setting a place at the
table for those who have gone on. I appreciated not only the intent behind
such rituals but the form. In a curious mix of sacredness and absurdity,
these things suggested—perhaps insisted—that the dead do not entirely leave
us. Was it really only wishful thinking? Or was there old knowledge in our
bones, a stubborn holding on to things ancient and true that, though they did
not mold themselves to our current way of thinking, were nonetheless valid? I
resettled myself under the covers. Probably better not to think about such
things now. In the morning I would make gingerbread, and on my most beautiful
dish, I would set one piece aside. My little boat, anchored. Anchoring me. Berg’s writing
in The
Year of Pleasures is lyrical, and her dialogue, especially among the
female characters is like eavesdropping on natural conversations among
friends. For anyone grieving the loss of a loved one, the experiences
described in The Year
of Pleasures will ring true. Steve Hopkins,
May 25, 2005 |
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ã 2005 Hopkins and Company, LLC The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the June 2005
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The
Year of Pleasures.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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