If you are here, you’ve come through some tough times with Covid19. It is necessary that we go on and find new goals and meaning in our lives, after so much loss. So many loved ones dying without a family member by their side. Skip this one if you want to be done with it. I am posting a short story I wrote in April, 2020, when people in New York City were dying so fast that the crematoriums were breaking down. Such times! And so recent. The characters in this story are fictional. But if you want to write about real people, go ahead.
Noon in New York City, April 2020
“The clock says 11:11 AM. The morning has slipped right by me,” Carla said. “The noon hour is only forty-nine minutes away, but there is time to set the table nicely. More than enough time.”
Carla opened the glass doors of her grandmother’s china cabinet, and admired the neatly arranged contents. The cabinet looked out of place in the ninth floor apartment, but feng shui be damned, Carla had eagerly accepted it as her inheritance when Nana died seven years ago. The cabinet irked Tom, who claimed he was a minimalist, a modernist. He hated clutter, although Carla noted constantly that he was a quite messy. He left every kitchen cabinet door open, left the toothpaste uncapped on the vanity, left his dirty socks on the floor next to the bed. Tom rarely thought of his extended family members and barely tolerated Carla’s mental relationship with her dead grandmother.
Tom was not here now, so she was free to bring on the full memory of her grandmother, who had loved her so much. Who had encouraged Carla through frustrating hours of homework in grade school, when she could not understand her math. Who had not ever made a fuss about her life’s choices: the babies with Henry at a young age, the decision to put them in daycare and go to work, the divorce from Henry, the trouble her kids got into through their teens. Never a negative word from Nana. Always understanding and non-judgmental. So unlike Carla’s mother.
From the bottom drawer Carla pulled out the white linen tablecloth, so sheer that when she held it up to the sunny window she could see the city through it. Their table was small so she folded the tablecloth in half and then smoothed it across the maple surface.
From the cabinet’s shelves, she took out a complete table setting for two. The dinner plates, the salad plates, the bread plates, the teacups, the saucers. She arranged the place settings exactly as her grandmother had taught her to so long ago. “Put your dinner plate down first, Carla, salad plate on top of that. Bread plate on the left at eleven o’clock over the dinner plate, teacup and saucer just above the bread plate. Beautiful. You’ve got it.”
Crystal water glasses came down off the shelf next, and then the bulbous wine glasses, placed at two o’clock to the right of the plate. From the second drawer, she took two linen napkins—bright green. She wanted some color and the green seemed right. Renewal. Hope.
Silverware. She opened the mahogany silver chest and took out salad forks, dinner forks, knives, dinner and dessert spoons, and butter knives. Forks to the left, knives and spoons to the right, except for the butter knife which she placed horizontally across the bread plate.
There, look at that. An inviting table, sparkling in the sunshine. The vintage pastel pattern of the china rimmed with gold around each plate, saucer and teacup, what could be more elegant? She poured some water into the crystal glasses. More sparkle.
What would Tom think? He would not appreciate the table setting as the ceremony it was. He’d probably say something like, “What’s for dinner?” or “Did I forget your birthday?” or “Did you get a promotion?”
But Carla appreciated it. She opened the wine refrigerator and took out a bottle of her favorite Pinot Grigio. She poured herself more than a generous serving and took her wine glass to the sofa, where she could look down the long empty street. The traffic lights were still working, all coordinated to keep busy traffic flowing. She had precisely timed their green, yellow, red pattern this last week of being home alone.
There were five sets of traffic lights within her sight. When the one closest to her turned green, it took exactly ten seconds for the next one down the block to turn green, and so on down the boulevard. The last green dot she could see in the distance continued to the next block, out of view. Back at the first light below her window, it was a full minute of green before it turned yellow, and then so on into the distance. Only five seconds of yellow, not much of a warning. Not much of a warning at all. And then the lights sequenced from yellow to red all the way down to the vanishing point.
She occupied her time for a few minutes watching the changing of the lights. Very few cars passed by. She looked back at the shimmering table. She wasn’t cooking, but it was very pleasing to her that the table was set. She talked to the room, as she had been doing so much lately.
“Tom,” she said. “This is for us. We didn’t sit down for a good meal last week. I’m sorry. Too much microwaved food and too much tragedy on television. Too much time spent trying to sign up for unemployment.”
She grabbed up one of Tom’s sweatshirts and crushed it to her face. She had picked it out of the laundry earlier and carried it around with her all morning. She took several deep breaths and raising her head, she shouted angrily, “But you are gone now.”
The effort brought on the coughing. She coughed until her sides hurt, and then struggled to get her breath back.
“You are in some refrigerated trailer truck morgue down in back of the hospital, according to what I’ve seen on this damned television,” she mumbled. “How can that be? They say I can’t see you. I will never see you again.” Tears streaked down her face now, and dripped off her chin.
“And your doctor, he is so tired. He could barely talk when he called to tell me you never made it to a ventilator. He said he was very sorry. And I could tell he really was.”
Carla gulped her wine, and went to rummage in the medicine cabinet. She was out of cough syrup now, and Tylenol. But she still had a pill bottle of oxycodone left over from her mastectomy last November. And she had a blender, ice, and chocolate ice cream. And her table was set so nicely. Her kids were way out in California with their own young families to tend. They would understand if they were here. Thank God they were not.
Carla fluffed the pillows on the couch, and brought the comforter from the bedroom. The chills were coming again, she could feel it, but she was going to make this smoothie and drink it before lying down in the sun. She looked forward to it.
Irene M. Paine