Free Season to Taste by Natalie Young Page B

back inside and put it on the edge of the bar so that Mike wouldn’t have to wade outside in the watery
     grass to get to it.
    â€œCold out,” he said, and then he began to whistle as he took the glass through to the kitchen. He came back to the bar with
     a packet of cigarettes. “Here,” he said. “Someone left a pack on the bar last night. I’ve given up, my girlfriend hates it.
     If you take them, you’ll be doing me a favor.”

    86.  You may feel that nothing is the same as it was before your husband died. There may be a strange feeling of stillness, as
     if everything is on pause. It may seem that the old thoughts and preoccupations have gone away. You may feel as if you are
     looking at the world through a different person’s eyes. Is there a new sense of light? Is there humor? Kindness?
    87.  Write down your name. If you want to. And your age. Don’t bother if it doesn’t make sense to you. Write down a few things
     that you like.
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    Coming home, walking up the steps with the ache of tiredness in her legs and her shoes in a plastic bag, Lizzie saw the ceramic
     bowl on the sill that he’d put there for loose change. And a book his mother had given him for addresses and telephone numbers.
     He’d not had friends. He’d explained that it wasn’t clear to him the exact reason why. He’d made a few at the prep school
     he’d been sent to, and then some at the boys’ public school in the Midlands. Sporty place, he’d said, drawing on a cigarette,
     and she’d seen something then in the tension around his eyes. She’d felt that she understood his isolation.
    â€œWere you always going to be an artist?” Lizzie asked him once, after they’d managed sex and were lying together in his room
     listening to the sound of the rain. She’d been at the house for months; he hadn’t tried to sculpt a thing. The cast was off
     his leg, but the three bags of clay were still in the shed. He had brought in a huge branch from the woods, and she had teased
     him about that. They’d put it on the kitchen floor. She had taken photographs and felt like the kooky girl in the weird tights.
     Jacob had been at ease, his face looking young and calm. Lizzie had taken the tights off. He’d gone to get the wine. She hadn’t
     had much sex in her life—a few unmemorable encounters at art school, and the virginity she’d lost on the beach at sixteen.
     She’d been very surprised, in the kitchen with him, by how much she’d enjoyed the feelings in her body. Then they’d gone upstairs
     and done it again, slowly this time, while looking at each other.
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    Lizzie hadn’t known if Jacob was any good at sculpture. Certainly she’d not been able to say anything to him about his work.
     No wonder he’d skipped about on Joanna’s encouragement. Joanna thought he was curious, that his work was “moving.” At her
     house in London she would have said so.
    â€œI just need to go to the shed. I need to do something,” he’d say.
    â€œNow?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œIt’s after dark. It’s dinnertime.”
    He’d reach for the wine and agree that she had a point.
    â€œI can go after dinner. That’s what I’ll do.”
    â€œYes, that’s an idea.”
    Somehow the two of them were sucking up all the air.
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    In the afternoon, she stood in the garden in her boots and coat and looked at the lawn. It had rained in the night. Not a
     great downpour, and certainly not the deluge she’d hoped for on the first day when the blood and clots had been about. She
     looked over to the spot where his body had been. There wasn’t much to see now, apart from a brownish stain by the hole he’d
     been digging. The sun had gone in.
    Still in her black interview suit with her skirt stiff around her knees, she took the spade from its hook on the