Free Good Grief by Lolly Winston Page B

bun.
    I don’t think this is a sentence. Not in a hammer-this-out kind of way. No way.
    “Way,” Lara insists. “Flood mires grow blood brambles.”
    Supposedly, hearing is the
last
thing to go, but in my case it seems to be the
first
thing to go. I knock the side of my head, trying to get the water out.
    Is everyone speaking a new language starting today? I’ve always dreaded changes in the rules like this. Daylight saving time. The threat of a conversion to the metric system.
    “Flood mires grow blood brambles, hon,” Lara coos again, bending in closer. I’ve heard her on the phone calling her friends “hon.” It is a term of endearment for her. A derm of entearment for hoo.
    “Hoo!” I hear myself exclaim.
    I dig into the bowl of Starburst candies on my desk and begin unwrapping and eating them, first orange, then red, then yellow, then pink, then orange again. The orange ones are the best. The air is warm and Lara is fuzzy and then she’s gone.
    I swallow the candies and pat my hair, a tangled nest on my head. I try to tuck the clumps behind my ears.
    In a little while an HR guy is in my cube, a bearded man who wears a lavender dress shirt and black jeans. His eyes are brown—two mud puddles staring calmly out of his face. He touches me, a hand on my shoulder that gives off warmth, even through the thickness of my robe.
    Oh,
my voice echoes in my head.
    “Sophie, why don’t we go downstairs to my office?” he says, slowly pushing a box of Kleenex across the desk toward me.
    “That sounds good to me,” I hear myself stammer. I slide down in my chair and burrow my feet under my desk to hide my bunny slippers. I don’t want him to see how casually I’m dressed when it’s not even Friday. At least I don’t think it is. I believe it’s Thursday or perhaps Wednesday. Maybe
that’s
why he’s in my cube. There is a company dress code, after all. Jeans are one thing. But slippers? I’ve had them for years, since before Mother died, and the ears are frayed from getting stepped on.
    “Okay, then,” he says. I look at his hand on my arm. The fingers are big and square and pink.
    “That sounds good to me,” I repeat. Then I can’t stop saying “That sounds good to me.” I dig my hands into the sleeves of my robe. I want to move on and say something else, but everything’s stuck. “That sounds good to me,” I tell him.
    “Ready?”
    I nod. But I can’t get up. I need to rest a minute first. Some would argue that wearing your robe and slippers is enough of a rest, but I need something more. I lay my head on my desk, and the faux leather blotter is cool against my cheek. The branches of the ficus tree bend toward me, the small, pointed leaves stroking my hair.

6
    Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty. There are lots of white lines in the road on the way to Dr. Rupert’s office, and I can’t help counting them.
    Dad’s come to stay with me, and he’s been driving me to my appointment twice a week, just like when I was a teenager and he drove me to the library and community pool after Mother died. His wife, Jill, sent me a care package of apricot bubble bath and lotion, gourmet chocolate peanut-butter cups, and movie star magazines.
    Dad had only one girlfriend between Mom and Jill, an accountant from his office named Beverly who bore down on him like a tropical storm about a year after Mother died. Everything about Beverly was big and loud—big bones, big bosom, big white teeth that always had a dab of orangey lipstick on them. She stayed over once when I was at a friend’s sleepover party. I came home early the next morning and found her in our kitchen wearing chiffon baby-doll pajamas and frying bacon. She offered me a cigarette even though I was only fifteen. There were so many things wrong with her that instead of being angry I was actually drawn to her, the way you might be drawn to an exotic bird or lizard if one wandered into your yard.
    After he and Beverly broke up, Dad quit dating and