ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: The Writer, His Wife, and their Afterlife
Book One, Part Two, Chapter l37: An Egg Without a Basket
Jeanette and I meet at the cafe for tea and talk.
She’s dressed in her usual black, but a tiny diamond sparkles on each ear. There’s always a bit of color or sparkle to Jeanette.
“How are you?” she asks in her soft, warm voice.
I hand her a scrap of paper. “This is a note I wrote to myself. What do you think it means?”
We’re standing just inside the cafe’s door; we haven’t even ordered yet. She reads the note, then gently hands it back to me. What I wrote, in the midst of a night of deep despair, is this: I do not know how to survive without killing myself. I look at her almost beseechingly. “This makes no sense to me. How can I kill myself and yet survive?”
“Actually, this makes perfect sense. It’s a very Zen thing to say. You have to kill your old self in order to be re-born.”
“Is that what it means?”
“I think that’s what it means.”
If it means what Jeanette thinks it means, it will bring me a measure of comfort. Perhaps I’m not cracking up. Perhaps I won’t kill myself. Some nights, I’m not so sure.
Balsamic rice with curried vegetables is the cafe special tonight, but first Jeanette orders a pot of English breakfast tea and I, iced green tea I spike with lemonade. We go to a side table set against a wall lined with theater posters. Jeanette sips her tea.
“I feel like I’m withering on the vine,” she says. “I put all my eggs in one basket. Jim was everything to me. My family’s in West Virginia. My son is engaged and will soon move out. I don’t have any close friends here. My house is paid for, that’s all.”
“I did the same. Now I’m an egg without a basket.”
“My first marriage broke my heart. I gave and gave and gave to Peter, and he never gave back. Not enough, anyway. So we divorced. I took a job. Jim was a co-worker who seemed arrogant to me, but for some reason he went after me. He decided I was the one for him and wouldn’t give up.”
Jeanette has never before opened up about her marriage, her life before Jim died. I keep quiet.
“We married, and I realized the arrogance was just a cover, armor he wore to protect himself, but the first five years of our marriage, he gave to me but I held back. I didn’t want to be hurt all over again. Jim called me cold. I was even thinking about having an affair — I had my man picked out. That was my wake-up call. I said to myself: Jeanette, why are you thinking about this other man? You don’t even like him nearly as much as you like Jim. And Jim loves you. Then I said to myself: Take the risk. Love Jim back. Give Jim all of you. Trust him. Trust that he won’t break your heart, that he won’t leave you just when you can’t live without him, just when he knows he’s the world to you. Trust that he won’t hurt you.”
“Did it change your marriage?”
“It changed everything. The more I gave, the more he gave. Our happiness just kept spiraling upward. It just kept getting better and better. There was no top, no end in sight.” She pauses. “I’m lonely, and I’ve come to realize I might be lonely for the rest of my life. But the joy I felt with Jim is worth the pain I’m feeling without him.”
“I would rather be you than me, Jeanette.”
She gives me her level look. “I would rather be me, too.”
