After Wife's Death - Becoming Her - Chapter 1

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Everyone kept telling me that over and over and over. I was lucky that I had only been bruised in the accident that had ripped the heart from my world; the accident that had killed my wife, Trish. She had twice a normal person's life and joy and enthusiasm, so much that it overflowed her and showered down on those around, most of all me. 

Without her, the world had been reduced to drab, amorphous grays with no focus. But I was lucky.

I was lucky that she had lots of insurance, augmented by unwanted prescience with a triple indemnity for "Accidental death in a public conveyance." To wit: a taxi cab that had been crushed by a delivery truck. 

Everyone was pleased for me that the insurance meant I'd never have to work again. 

As though the writing was work instead of pleasure. As though I could work again, even if I needed to. 

Trish had insisted that only my name be listed as an author on the books we had written. But I knew that she had provided the sparks of brilliance that had made them work. All I did was plod along behind her leaps of genius, adding an almost mathematical rigor to the pure energy that had spilled from her creative soul. 

I may have done all the typing, but she made them art. The royalties would probably continue for some time more luck I suppose.

And I was lucky to have as a good friend that most unbelievable of oxymorons, a good lawyer. Benjamin Weiserman, inevitably "Bud" to his friends, had been my roommate in college. While I had wandered around trying to find some purpose for my life until it appeared in the form of the prettiest girl on campus  Trish Bud had always kept a clear focus on a law degree.

 I didn't really understand what all the honors and things he had achieved meant to other lawyers. What I knew they meant to me was that he was really good at his profession, yet he had never stopped being a nice guy. 

Bud had found out that the driver of the delivery truck had been on drugs and that his supervisors knew about it. In fact, there was a building case that they had encouraged it, amphetamines and such, as a way to make their guarantees of overnight delivery. I was going to go from "comfortable" to "rich" when the lawsuit settled. Lucky me.

"Brrreeeppp!!" the phone screeched, startling me from my stupor.

I realized I had been looking at my empty underwear drawer for some indeterminate time. Trish had always insisted that I have at least two weeks' worth of underwear, but I was out. I remembered that Bud's wife, Katy, had come by one time and did all the laundry, but I was out again. God, had it really been a month then since Trish had died?

"Brep!" the phone insisted.

The caller ID showed a name that I knew I should know, but I didn't remember why. Since I recognized the name at least a little I knew it wasn't a solicitor, nor what had become even worse, a well-wisher, so I picked up the handset and answered.

"Yes?"

"Tim? Tim Piper? This is Lonna," a voice that should have been familiar said.

"Yes?" I repeated stupidly.

"Lonna Roberts," she said. "You and Trish have hair appointments this afternoon and I was just calling to remind you."

"Oh, uh, no, we can't."

"I'm sorry?" she said, not wanting to hear what I seemed to be saying. Well, I certainly didn't want to say it.

"Trish, uh, she, she died." Maybe if I were really lucky, someday I'd be able to say that without my heart split down the middle.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" 

Lonna said. Unlike a lot of callers, I knew she was sincere. Trish made friends with everyone, but she had enjoyed a special relationship with her hairdresser. Even if I hadn't remembered her name right away, I remembered Lonna now. 

Usually, Trish had her hair done before I had mine cut, and the aftereffects of an hour with Trish caused Lonna to be bright and happy every time we met. She was a pretty girl, the best advertisement for her own skill she had ever needed; blonde, trim, always stylish, efficient without seeming hurried. Since Trish was the same, except for rich, dark hair, I could see why they had gotten on so well.

Lonna continued with some sort of explanation that Trish had made the appointments in advance after our last time in. While she chattered on I caught sight of myself in the dresser mirror and realized I really did need a haircut. Even if I hadn't gotten around to the laundry, I had always hated to be personally unkempt. Every day, even the day after the accident, I had showered and shaved and brushed my teeth dutifully. And breathed. All equally pointless.

But now I needed a haircut and I used a break in Lonna's monologue to say, "Actually, it would probably still be a good idea for me to come in, if that's okay."

"Oh, sure," Lonna said. "Um, well, if it's just you, would it be possible to come by in half an hour, instead of this afternoon?"

"Uh, okay, I guess," I said. What else did I have to do?

"Good, see you then," she said, hanging up and saving me from any need for further banalities.

After I put the phone down, I looked once more at the empty underwear drawer. It was more problem than I needed right then, so I looked around for some alternative. Yesterday's underwear had spent the night in the hamper with other clothes that had been there entirely too long. I just couldn't bear the thought of smelly, . . . ugh.

My eyes were drawn to Trish's end of the dresser. Maybe it was the thought of going to a hair salon, a sort of feminine bastion that allowed male intruders but never truly accommodated them, but the thought of sharing a bit of Trish's world seemed suddenly desirable. I opened her drawer and pulled out a pair of thin, shiny satin panties.

Actually, I had worn Trish's panties a few times before. 

We enjoyed role-playing sometimes, with pirate and damsel, terrorist and heiress, principal and school girl, and other games adding variety to our intimate times. Trish had voted for "girlfriends" a few of the times when it was her turn to choose. 

The first time I thought it was silly, but for Trish, I'd have done just about anything so I let her dress me up as Tammy, her giant Barbie doll. 

We drank tea and watched a romantic movie, and then she had seduced me, all the time pretending I was her college roommate coming to visit while hubby was out of town.

The second time I was a much more enthusiastic participant. The clothes themselves had been more bother than fun, although the erotic association had certainly made them arousing, but when the most beautiful woman in the world is using all of her charms to seduce you . . . 

Well, dressing funny was a small price to pay for the most fantastic intimacy we had ever shared. A part of me wondered just how close Trish and her roommate had really been, but I had decided to leave that question unasked. Now it would forever be unanswered.

Trish had always said that one day the "girlfriends" were going to go out to dinner together. She assured me that Tammy would pass as a woman with no question, but I had never left the house when dressed up. We had only done that game a half a dozen times in the 4 years we had been married and I never felt at all comfortable. But it was fun, at least in private.

 Of course Trish would never have forced me to go out dressed. Any sort of deliberate humiliation would have been as impossible to her as, well, deliberately hurting someone physically.

The hall clock bonged and I realized I had once again fallen into reverie. Grabbing the panties I slid them up my legs and reached for my jeans. They were almost too loose and I had to tighten the belt a notch. I must have lost weight since the accident. Since I couldn't really remember what I'd been eating lately, any surprise at that discovery didn't last long.

My jeans felt funny over the panties. One localized area felt cool and slick, while the rest was normal. Always before, Trish had carried through the masquerade with overtly feminine styles so the combination of panties and pants was a new experience. The continuing strangeness triggered memories that had lain dormant for a month and I found myself responding physically as I drove. It made me feel closer to Trish in a way that I thought would never happen again.

I sort of wandered, mentally, between distraction and reverie once I reached the salon. 

Getting my hair washed had always felt nice and relaxing, and Lonna's typical chatter washed over me with no more residue than the well-rinsed shampoo. 

Once we left the basin and moved to her chair, she ran her fingers through my hair and I sort of roused from wherever I had been.

"Same thing as always?" she asked. Then before I could answer she chattered on, "Your hair is so thick and soft. It seems a shame to cut it. Half the women who come in here would say it's 'to die for'."

"Oh, God," she spluttered, "I'm so sorry."

"Uh, that's okay," I said. But I sat up straighter as an idea came to me. "Um, Lonna, I, uh, was, uh, thinking about something."

"Yes?" she said, reaching for her scissors.

"I suppose you'll think this is sick or something," I blurted out, "but could you cut my hair like Trish's?"

"What?" she said.

I blushed, a response the mirrors threw back at me with cruel clarity, and shook my head. "Nothing," I said.

"No, really," Lonna insisted. "Did you ask if I can cut your hair like Trish wore hers?"

I nodded. "It was a stupid idea. I'm just, well, I just, uh, miss her I guess."

Lonna's look softened and she said, "Um, it won't look the same for quite a while, of course, but if that's what you want, I can cut it so it could grow into that style. If we don't do the bangs right away, it won't look that unusual on a man. And if you decide you really want to do this, we can work something out later on the really feminine aspects."

"You think it's stupid and sick," I said, disgusted with myself.

"No!" Lonna insisted. "I think it's kind of sweet, wanting to keep some aspect of her in your life, part of you all the time."

She sighed and looked wistfully into my reflection in the mirror, showing her own longing to me at the same time, "I wish I could meet someone who would love me that much."

The moment stretched on, both of us lost in our own longings until our eyes made focused contact again and we both grinned sheepishly. Lonna covered her own embarrassment by becoming smoothly professional.

"Okay, Trish wore her hair basically all one length except for her bangs. 

But it will take a lot of care to make that work well, especially when your hair gets longer. Right now all you'll need to do to make it look neat is blow dry it over a brush, but blow drying is hard on hair so you'll need to use some conditioners and a good shampoo. I'll show you how once it's shaped.

 It'll look a bit 70's retro, at least as far as guys' styles go, with more fullness over the ears than men do now but that's not a big deal."

She chattered on about how hair grows at different rates, and how I'd need to come in at least as often to keep the hair on top trimmed while the lower parts grew out, and this and that and a dozen other things that started to wash over and past me again. I paid a little closer attention when she explained how to use the brush and dryer to give it a little body, once again reminded me of Trish who had often done the same thing. 

Eventually, I was dutifully buying the recommended shampoos and conditioners and whatever else she said I needed, half determined in my own mind to call the whole thing a stupid idea as soon as I got home. 

Lonna was right that my hair looked well within the range of men's styles so there was nothing irrevocable done so far. But somehow I also found myself making another appointment for six weeks down the road, this time scheduling a longer block of time than I had ever needed before.

Strange as it was, a plan to do something different with my hair seemed to energize me. At least it was a plan, not a continued drift. I busied myself straightening up the house, washing clothes, and carting out trash from who knows how many takeout meals. 

Later that afternoon, when I was taking a necessary break to use the facilities, I realized I had forgotten about my forced underwear choice.

Would it be wrong, would it be obsession if I wore some more of her clothes? We were about the same size. 

She had been quite athletic, trim but a bit more than slender. Perhaps lean would be a good word. She hadn't had much body fat, not even in the place, um, places, she had wanted some. 

Even before I had lost some weight, she had found enough among her own clothes to give Tammy a different outfit each time we played her "girlfriends" game.

I snorted to myself and thought, "That's even more stupid than letting my hair grow out."

Still, I was feeling better than I had for a while so I decided to go out to eat instead of just ordering something. 

There was a nice, family-style restaurant that Trish and I had often gone to on spur-of-the-moment occasions, and somehow I felt like repeating those memories instead of avoiding them. Eating alone is no picnic, but I pretended Trish was with me, holding a silent conversation about the food, about the way the waiter was flirting with her, and how she was encouraging him. She told me about her day, finding outrageous humor in the most mundane situations.

None of it was real, of course, and I knew that; I wasn't quite that far around the bend. But all of those things had happened at different times in that place, and I cherished the memories. 

I tried to remember every single detail of her, how she held her head, the way she liked to twirl her fingers in her hair, the way she scrunched up her nose when she was kidding, the way the little lines crinkled in the corners of her eyes when she was really amused, the way those same little lines stayed hidden when she was just being friendly with a stranger. 

I knew she had never really flirted with anyone we had met, no matter how friendly she seemed. She had always saved those little smile lines for me.

It was the most enjoyable meal I had eaten since . . . well, since. I kept up the mental game until I got home, though it was starting to run a bit dry. 

Not that I couldn't remember more details of Trish, but I felt sort of stupid to be pretending she was still there. Even silently, and alone.

It was well into the evening, but I knew Bud Weiserman would still be awake so I called him.

"Hello?"

"Bud, it's me, Tim."

"Well, hi, Tim! I've been wondering if you were going to hibernate forever."

"Thanks, friend. I appreciate the sympathy," I replied, dryly.

Quietly now, but unrepentant, he said, "Tim, you know I loved her as much as anyone in the world besides my Kate, but you have to move on with your life."

"I know," I said. "In fact, I got my hair cut today, and did the laundry, and just got back from going out to dinner."

"Well, good for you!"

"Yes, it was good for me," I agreed. "In fact, that's why I called. I know I have been, well, hibernating is as good a term as any. Is there anything I need to be doing? I don't remember paying any bills or, well, anything since the accident."

"That's what you hired me for, Pie-eyed," Weiserman said, resurrecting my college nickname. I had gotten drunk exactly one time. But after that occasion, admittedly a memorable one, I was the Pie-eyed Piper to everyone who had been with me or saw me the next day. Bud had taken care of me then, too, as he was gently reminding me.

"Thanks, Bud. I really do appreciate it. So there's nothing I need to be doing?"

"Just taking care of yourself, Tim, and getting on with your life."

"Okay, thanks. Tell Katy I said hi. One of these days I'll take you out to dinner."

"One of these days you're going to do a lot better than that. You're going to make me a really rich man, as opposed to filthy rich, which is what I'm going to make you," Bud said, laughing. Then he got quiet, and coldly serious. 

"We could settle now for $100 million, but I want some heads on a pike for what they did to Trish."

"Go get 'em," I agreed. If I could, I'd have arranged the literal fulfillment of his demand. In today's "civilized" age, the best we could do was to destroy them financially, and that was not too much at all for what they had done. If they hadn't killed my wife, it would have been someone else.

We hung up on that somber note, but I still felt more alive than I had in a long time. Even revenge is an emotion or righteous anger, or whatever I was feeling. I slipped into my freshly made bed resolved to keep doing something, anything, rather than slip back into the grayness.

The sense of purpose was still with me when I woke the next morning. Not a lot of purpose, but I felt more like doing something than not. Since I had taken care of a lot of the cleaning things the day before, I decided to get some groceries as a way to get myself out of the house. 

I hadn't often gone shopping. That was something Trish really liked to do and even when I had gone it had been with her. So when I got to the store there were more of the memory triggers around to remind me of her.

I played the pretend game with myself for a while, imagining each thing she would do, but it lost interest pretty quickly. The very act of envisioning her in the store also pointed out the void where she, well, wasn't. However, when I was trying to decide which of the many items to choose, I found myself trying to remember the things she had done in making her choices.

That had a strange effect. Maybe it was the props, the cantaloupe or the lettuce or the package of meat, but when I picked something up and tried to do what she would have done, I could almost feel a pleasant memory being renewed and a sad one being pushed further back in my mind. 

Even things that didn't really work for me, worked for this. I didn't have nearly enough hair to twirl, but lifting my hand near my cheek while I mused about a choice just felt, um, comforting somehow. By the time I completed the shopping, I found myself copying several little mannerisms I knew she had done. More weirdness, I suppose, but I really didn't care.

I started my pretend game over on the drive home, this time playing the part of Trish to an invisible Tim. Since there wasn't anyone else in the car with me I even spoke out loud, laughing and giggling in the musical cadences that Trish had used so beautifully, then pitching my voice artificially low to make an exaggerated response as Tim.

"You really are slipping around the bend," Trish said, her eyes dancing with teasing amusement. "Not only talking to yourself but answering!"

Tim answered with a wry shrug, "What's wrong with going crazy? You've been doing it for years."

"Good point," she snickered. "But I was just trying to keep up with you."

"Yeah, right," Tim said with a snort. "Like there was ever anything worthwhile in our life, where you weren't there first and pulling me along."

"Yeah, right," I said, dropping the game and speaking in a quiet, natural voice.

That sense of touching Trish, somehow, renewing her presence in my life was like the almost-remembered identity of an actress in a film. I knew I knew that person from somewhere, but I couldn't quite remember the other role that had truly defined her to me. I felt like some essential part of her, something I should remember, was not quite clear in my mind. I wouldn't have believed I could ever forget an instant of our life together, but that nagging feeling just wouldn't go away.

Not that I wanted it to go away. I didn't want anything related to Trish to go away, least of all some aspect of my memory of her. 

While I was putting the groceries in the pantry and refrigerator, I wondered if there were some way to help focus those memories. It was obvious that a lot of things had broken through my dark mood once I quit lazing around and did something. Even more so if I did something like Trish would have done, acting out her part. That sparked an idea.