Holly sat in the third stall from the door of the bathroom and thought about why she had been asked out on a date twice in one week. Did she all of a sudden look ready to date? It wasn't that long ago that she would leave the office to cry in this very stall, when she first got back to work after the funeral. Was it really ten months ago? She couldn't believe that this giant, puffy sadness she had spent all her time keeping pushed down and tucked away could go on this long. The lack of crying still felt new.
At first, the tears had scared her. They came in waves of sobbing she couldn't control, like something washing over her. The kids were scared of her, the dog would whimper, and her mom would grab the whole lot and take them out for a walk. Andrew was her high school yearbook co-editor, best friend and confidante. They went to the same college for journalism and got married two months after graduation. She wasn't a widow; she was an amputee.
After her bereavement leave and vacation time had run out last September, she'd had to pull it together. But it's not like there was a smooth transition for her. After a week of crying jags at the office and a sick day long weekend contemplating how she could keep on going to work like this, she got in the elevator the second Monday back and it was like she flicked a switch and there was no feeling. She pulled herself together and that was that. It hurt every time she looked at Andrew's freckles and flaming red hair on the two children he left behind, but it was an academic thing, as if she were the chief lab technician registering her feelings and responses from behind a glass partition. Almost a year gone by now. First Christmas without him, first Valentine's Day, first Easter, David's Birthday... her emotions were removed from her, at a safe distance. Behind airtight, pressurized, tempered, shatter-proof glass.
A car crash. The kind of banal claim details that happened all the time here. The cruel indifference of the independent adjusters assigned to handle the file, not recognizing the name. The car written off, the death benefit paid, the Family Law Act claims honored. It was actually cheaper when they died. $25,000 puts them in the ground, as opposed to the millions of dollars it cost for the veggies and quads that hung on. All the gallows humor of the industry a background noise she heard every day: If you run over a pedestrian and see him in your rear-view mirror still moving around on the road, back up and finish him off.
It felt like her kids were on the other side of that glass, too. She couldn't connect with them the same way she used to. She only had so much patience for playtime and goofing around and then she needed a break from them altogether. Sometimes this felt like she was a bad mother. But at least she was there for them, still holding it together despite everything, and she was able to cut herself some slack for this reason. They knew about the glass, too. Could feel the difference in her, especially Ryan. It was the way it was for now, not forever. She hoped.
She put herself together, washed her hands, looked at her face in the mirror, no signs of cracks forming, fixed her hair (startled to remember she still had a hairstyle and still made it to the salon every couple of months), smoothed down her skirt and went back to work.