Cindy comes in through the garage door, hangs her winter jacket on a hook next to the washer in the mud room, and drops her keys on the kitchen counter. She never bothers to use the coat closet anymore, and just keeps a little pile of keys, hair clips, pens, grocery lists, and other junk on one end of the counter. Otherwise, she thinks the place looks pretty neat. She makes her bed every day, after all.
She hits the start button on the electric kettle and drops onto her chair at the table in the corner. She taps her fingers, counting: today is Valentine’s Day; exactly four months to go until she retires. It never used to be like this, coming home ready to slump and have a cup of tea, and it’s only Wednesday. There used to be the kids racing in from school, heading for the refrigerator and the bathroom; there used to be dinner to think about, Kevin to wait for. Now she’s just tired. Tired of being the only speech person for six schools. Tired of doing everything that needs to be done around the house and yard. Sick of being sad.
Her phone rings, buzzing and vibrating in her pants pocket. Now she’s home, she can take it off silent. “Hey, Cin.” It’s her friend Julie. She leans back and smiles. A call from Julie always brings a little ray, a little buzz, like a lightning bug flying around her head.
“Hey Julie,” she says. “Good to hear your voice.”
“You too. I hate that it’s been too cold to walk lately, let alone ride bikes.” They haven’t even seen each other in person for about three weeks. “But hey, it’s Valentine’s Day. You don’t have any plans, do you?”
Cindy gets up to pour boiling water over the tea bag in her mug. It’s not a question. Julie knows better. Cindy has had to blot out Valentine’s Day except for the crazed first graders, old enough to giggle and scamper through the day with no interest whatsoever in speech therapy in her tiny closet of an office. She can’t let herself remember stirring up romance with Kevin, exchanging cards and chocolate, cooking a nice dinner with candles. She can’t let herself remember sleeping with him, even though just lately she has let herself creep onto his side of the bed at night. It’s been two and a half years since Widow Maker Day, her private name for that horrible day, ever since she overheard someone call Kevin’s heart attack “the widow maker” at his memorial service. “Nope,” she says. “No plans, of course. Just me and the TV. I think I have some frozen chicken tenders.”
It’s in her mind now, standing in the memorial chapel with Becca, taller than Cindy but leaning against her, saying, “I’m not ready for this, Mommy.” Becca, her tall and strong neonatal nurse daughter on one side and Ryan with his muscled, tattooed arms on the other, holding her tight.
“Well, get that chicken out right now and start cooking,” laughs Julie. “You and I are going out for a drink tonight.”
“We are?” Every place will be crazy crowded. What about Julie and Bill? They’d want to spend the evening together. Besides, Valentine’s Day?
“I know what you’re thinking.” Julie is right, of course. “You know Bill and I never have a date on Valentine’s Day, just like you and Kevin. They throw in extra tables, you can’t even have a conversation—never again. We went out last night. He’s wiped out.”
“So, really, Julie? I’m wiped out too, and just from the normal. We could stay home and read or watch a movie. We should. I’m not ready for Valentine’s.” Couples everywhere, leaning toward each other, holding hands in the dim light, the clink of silverware and glasses. Love, or something like it.
Julie’s voice is quieter now, tender. “I know you aren’t, honey. But let’s just have one drink. We can go to the Windmill. You know nobody’s going to be at the bar tonight—all those old people will be at the tables starting at five o’clock.”
Cindy spreads her left hand flat on the table, looking at her rings. She should do it, something tells her Julie’s probably right. She’s not looking for anything, but it would take her mind off everything. At least she could see some grownups. “Well,” she sighs, “well, maybe. Well, okay, I guess.”
“Oh, good, good. This will be good. Just eat something now, and I’ll pick you up at a quarter to seven.” Julie pauses. “There’s just one thing, sorry, but we’ll have to make a short stop at my church, maybe just forty-five minutes, okay? You know me, I have to go. This is weird on Valentine’s Day, but it’s Ash Wednesday.”
What is Ash Wednesday, anyway? Cindy racks her brain as she gets a chicken tender from the box and tosses it onto a baking tray with a handful of frozen sweet potato fries. She’ll cook some green beans, and that will be it. She has a vague memory of Lent, the time before Easter, her older sister Kitty going off to church and coming back with a spot of ash on her forehead. Cindy never paid that much attention—she had better things to do. She smiles, picturing lying on her back in their bedroom while Kitty was downstairs practicing piano or going to church or something, talking to Kelly for hours, sometimes sneaking in a quick call from Kevin back when they were starting to flirt.
She stands in front of the bathroom mirror studying what’s left of her makeup. At least she’s lucky with her hair. She still has her waves, and she has absolutely kept up with her highlights, so she does not look like what Kevin used to call a bottle blonde.
What does a person even wear to a bar with a friend on Valentine’s Day? She will not let herself look like someone who wants to meet anyone! She remembers the last time she and Julie went to a bar, that crazy Halloween night at Crumpy’s when it was so loud and crowded with college kids. But this would be different. They were going to the Windmill. They were going to be with the older folks tonight. They might be the only ones at the bar. Well, except for the boomers who might be looking for someone to strike up a little something with.
Her closet is full of old stuff. She hasn’t felt like shopping since Kevin died, so she doesn’t have anything interesting to choose from. She slides hangers across the rod. Nothing tight, no cleavage, not that she should be considering cleavage at her age! Okay, the usual black pants, and she can probably dig out a red sweater.
Cindy keeps her better things in the hall closet, and as she’s buttoning her wool jacket with the fake fur collar, she sees Julie’s headlights out front. When she gets in the car, Julie is grinning. “You won’t believe what Bill just said,” she laughs. “He’s sitting in his chair in front of the TV, and he says, ‘Just go. As long as some guy doesn’t try sticking his tongue down your throat, I couldn’t care less.’ He waved me out the door. He says, ‘After last night, I just want to sit here and do nothing. So just go, get out of here!’”
Julie’s church is small, made of brick with a modest steeple, set back from the street, some ordinary-looking place, nothing imposing or too serious-looking, so Cindy relaxes. This won’t be a big deal, she thinks, just a quick little service, and she’ll see how they do the ashes thing. When she asked Julie about it, Julie just shrugged and said, “I don’t know, you just go up there in a line, and they wipe some ashes on your forehead from a little pot.” Cindy always thought it was funny that you’d see a few people in the hallways at school or now a couple of the teachers she works with, walking around the next day with a gray smudge on their faces, almost as if they were showing off.
They sit in the back with a couple of empty rows behind them. There aren’t many people, a sprinkling in the front pews, clusters in the middle, a few fuller rows in front of Cindy and Julie. An organ is playing soft music, the lights are dim, and candles line the windowsills on the sides. At the front of the church, one woman sits next to a small stand with an open Bible, and another woman sits on a bench next to the pulpit. She must be the priest, Cindy thinks, or the pastor, or whatever they call it in this church, although she isn’t wearing anything that churchy looking, just a simple white shawl thing over a dark dress. She hasn’t even asked Julie what kind of church this is, but she doesn’t think it really matters. It doesn’t have creepy statues hanging around, so it’s fine.
Julie leans close and whispers, “Is this okay? It won’t last long.”
Cindy doesn’t want her to be embarrassed. “No, no, it’s fine,” she whispers back. It really is fine. It’s actually sort of relaxing to sit here and think about nothing, to let pictures slide past in her mind, Becca and her boyfriend Ben coming into the kitchen on Christmas morning grinning and twinkling to say they were engaged and were going to look at houses in Cleveland when they got back; Ryan checking his phone every minute to see if he was getting the assistant sous chef job he was dying for in San Diego. Everything is changing. She is wearing a red sweater for the first time in forever. She and Julie are going to sit at a bar on Valentine’s Day!
They stand for a hymn, something about Jesus in the wilderness. Some Bible readings and then another hymn, something about waiting. Then the woman with the shawl steps up one step to the pulpit and talks for a while about preparation, reflection, reconciliation, words Cindy is not used to hearing or thinking about. When she sits down for silent prayer, Cindy decides to pay more attention. The ashes part must be coming soon.
Now everyone is standing. Maybe it’s the soft organ music, maybe it was the singing or the silent prayer, but somehow Cindy is thinking that this is a group now, not just a scattering of people in the pews. It’s strange, she thinks, but kind of nice, too. The preacher is on the step with a small dark pot cradled in her hand. People are starting to line up in the center aisle. Julie looks at her with a question in her eyes, bending her head to the side. Cindy shakes her head. “You go, I’ll just wait here,” she whispers.
The reverend says, “You may come forward now to receive the imposition of ashes. This is to remind us that we are all mortal. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
Cindy is pierced. She feels a jolt to her heart. She thinks, Kevin. And two years before that, Mom. And now she thinks, me. Becca, Ryan. Julie, Bill. All of us, even the little kids.
She is swept with it, a rush of wordless thoughts and feeling, the dim light, the music, the flickering candles. She is washed with it. Oh, Kevin, she thinks, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Maybe they said those same words at his service, she doesn’t remember, she didn’t hear them at the time, she was unable to think about anything then, in a blur of emptiness and loss and fear and anger and grief, clenching her hands so tightly that they stayed red and white until she looked down and shook them. But now these words don’t really feel final, the way they sound. They just feel somehow right, somehow real. And it’s okay.
She and Julie will walk out of this little building into the cold, windy night of Valentine’s Day, into the normal night with cars and headlights and streetlights and the Windmill with its crowded tables and its long wooden bar and its chattering people. They will sit there with their lemon drop martinis, and she will feel the weight of life on her shoulders, life and ashes, knowing she will go home to a warm and empty bed. She will think about Kevin. She will remember how it felt with their bodies lying close together. Tonight she will let herself do that. She still has her own body, at least for a while. She will lie there in the middle of their bed and remember, and think about dust, dust and ashes.
Susan Groff Johnston grew up in Ohio and has degrees from Miami University. She also studied at the University of Louisville. Her stories and poems have been published in The Louisville Review, Christianity and Literature, The Christian Century, and Loch Raven Review. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.]