A Widow’s Story: A Memoir

“Oh Reynard! How could you.”

It seems that our elder tiger cat Reynard has urinated on a swath of documents which in my desperation not to misplace anything crucial among Ray’s many papers I’d spread out on the floor of his study.

A dozen or more manila folders, spread out on Ray’s desk and spilling over onto the floor—in block letters carefully designated MEDICAL INSURANCE, CAR INSURANCE, HOUSE INSURANCE, IRS DOCUMENTS (2007), BANK/FINANCES, SOCIAL SECURITY, BIRTH CERTIFICATES, WILL etc.—and sometime within the past several hours Reynard has surreptitiously defiled a copy of the death certificate and the IRS folder so that I must A) wipe the pages dry B) spray Windex on them C) wipe them dry again D) place them in our (unheated) solarium in the hope that by morning they will have A) dried B) ceased smelling so unmistakably pungent.

“Reynard! Bad cat.”

My vexed/raised voice provokes both cats to run in that panicked way in which domestic pets will run from irate masters on a hardwood floor—skidding, sliding and slithering—toenails scraping like cartoon animals. I feel a sudden fury for the cats—both Reynard and the younger long-haired gray Cherie—that they have ceased to care for me. In this matter of Ray’s disappearance they blame me.

You would think that, with Ray missing, they would be more affectionate with me, and want to sleep with me—but no.

Barely they condescend to allow themselves to be fed by me. Eagerly they run outside, to escape me. Reluctantly they return when I call them for meals and for the night.

The defiled IRS papers are not the first evidence that the cats are taking a particular sort of feline revenge on me since Ray’s disappearance, but this is the most serious.

Where grief couldn’t provoke me to tears, cat pee on these documents does. It’s the weeping of sheer despair, self-loathing—This is what I am, this is what I’ve become. This is my life now.

Chapter 23 Probate (#ulink_aef68f46-2d9f-5115-a4f3-f6b9c9f9c5fb)

“Mrs. Smith? You can wait here.”

And here too—Mercer County Surrogate’s Court, Trenton, New Jersey—is a place where memory has accumulated in small stagnant pools of tears. Almost, you can smell grief here, an acrid bitter odor.

This high-ceilinged waiting room, inexpressibly dour! Rows of badly stained and uncomfortable vinyl chairs in which individuals sit impassively as in an anteroom of the damned.

Unlike the waiting rooms at the hospital, this waiting room holds not even the delusion of a happy ending. For these individuals, the death vigil has ended. We here are survivors, “beneficiaries.”

It’s evident that there are other widows here this morning. Several appear to be accompanied by adult children. Mostly these are black or Hispanic citizens, for this is Trenton, New Jersey. In their midst my friend Jeanne—in oversized designer sunglasses, shoulder-length blond hair spilling over the collar of her stylish winter coat—is a vivid and incongruous presence, drawing eyes.

Jeanne has explained what we are doing here, what “probate” is—of course, I know some of this, or would know except I seem to be operating in a mist of incomprehension. Very tired, yet alert and excited—sorting through the documents I’d been instructed to bring which include the photocopied pages now only just faintly smelling of cat pee—in this new compulsion of mine, which began when I’d been visiting Ray in the hospital, of ceaselessly rummaging through a handbag or a tote bag to see if somehow I’d lost something crucial like car keys, or my wallet, or a death certificate.

In fact, I have not misplaced the death certificate. Of several copies hand-delivered to me by Elizabeth Davis of the Blackwell Memorial Home—a gesture of kindness which I will not forget—just one was defiled by Reynard, and has been disposed of.

(Though later, I will retrieve this copy of the death certificate from the trash. For I am fearful of running out of copies—so many parties seem to want one, as if doubtful that Raymond Smith is deceased. That one of the copies exudes a sour cat-smell is unfortunate.)

Many times in a curious breathless trance I have read this Certificate of Death issued by the State of New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services. You would think from my concentrated interest that I might be expecting to learn something new, to be surprised. Like one digging at a wound to make it bleed I am drawn to reading the sparse information again and again, to no purpose since I have memorized it—

Cause of Death

Immediate Cause

Cardiopulmonary Arrest

Due to (or as a consequence of)

Pneumonia

A minimalist poem by William Carlos Williams!

Now in the dour waiting room of the surrogate court as I reread the death certificate it occurs to me to wonder—is this true? Did Ray die simply of pneumonia, or were other factors involved?

A secondary infection, I’d been told. There is no mention of a secondary infection in the document.

I think that I remember having been asked at the medical center if I wanted Ray’s body autopsied. In whatever haze of confusion at the time quickly I’d said no.

No! No.

Could not bear it. The thought of Ray’s body being mutilated.

I know!—the body is not the man. Not “Ray.”

And yet—where else had “Ray” resided, except in that body?