“You’re not pissed off, are you?” She frowned. “No, you’re sad. Really sad. I’m sorry.”
Portland is not like the small town in Minnesota where I grew up. It’s a city that takes pride in diversity and “keeping Portland weird,” so this was far from the first strange conversation I’d had since coming here. Two days before, a homeless woman who had recently taken up residence between two concrete planters a block from my apartment stopped me as I was getting into my car and asked, politely but with the same kind of grave intensity you might use to ask someone if they believed in life after death, if I had a Twinkie in my purse. A week before that, a man with pupils as big and shiny as black marbles, wearing a tattered blue beach towel draped around his shoulders, like the cape of a superhero who had escaped a methadone clinic, clutched my sleeve to ask if I was human or android.
For a girl who grew up in rural Minnesota, those kinds of exchanges were unnerving, but I was starting to get used to them. But those people had been glassy-eyed, high as kites, and so they were easier to dismiss. This conversation was somehow more disturbing because the woman was both sober as a saint and weirdly insightful.
She took another pull on her cigarette. This time she deliberately drew the smoke into her lungs. Instantly, her face turned red and she started hacking so hard her eyes watered.
“Are you okay?”
She didn’t look okay. Should I pound her on the back? Call 911?
“I hate these things,” she rasped after she finally quit coughing. “I’ve been trying to learn to smoke, but it just isn’t working out.”
Really? Apart from addlebrained adolescents trying to impress their friends, who wants to take up smoking?
“I know,” she sighed, rightly reading my expression. “But every day I wake up feeling like I want to punch somebody in the face. The Paxil my doctor prescribed made me gain weight. I thought cigarettes would be better.” She flicked the cigarette from her fingers and ground it out under her shoe. “This was a stupid idea.”
As I stood there, trying to figure out if I should say something besides, “Well. Okay, then. Good night, Crazy Lady,” I heard the chirp of a keyless car remote. The taillights of an SUV in the next row flashed. The woman with the red sneakers and embroidered jacket was walking toward us, her dog, now leash-less, padded alongside her.
“Smoke break? Or did you just have enough?” She thrust out her hand. “I’m Nan Wilja. This is Blixen.”
The retriever thumped her tail against my fender and looked up as if to say hello, her tongue lolling out of her mouth.
“Grace Saunders,” I said, taking her hand.
The lady with the frizzy hair pushed it out of her eyes and reached down to scratch Blixen’s ear. “I’m Monica Romano.”
“What were you two doing in there?” Nan asked. “Pilates meets in the same room on Tuesdays. I thought maybe you got the nights mixed up. Or you got lost.”
“I saw a flyer pinned to the bulletin board at the drugstore and I thought, you know, maybe I’d give it a shot.” Monica ducked her head, looking a bit sheepish. “It wasn’t what I thought it would be. Maybe I should try a drum circle?”
“Hmmm,” Nan murmured, which is what I later learned she did when she disagreed but was trying to be supportive. Nan says “hmmm” a lot.
“I heard you say something about being angry,” Nan said. “But not grieving?”
“Not. At. All.” Monica fumbled with the flap on her purse, as if she was thinking about getting another cigarette. “My husband was killed in a boating accident eight months ago. His girlfriend was driving the boat.”
“Ouch.” Nan winced. “I’d be mad too. And you?” She turned toward me. “Were you lost? Or did you show up on purpose?”
“On purpose, I guess. But it’s not the group for me. I’m not a widow.”
“But you are grieving.”
The way Nan said it, as a statement instead of a question and so directly, caught me off guard, the same way that Monica’s comment about me being sad had done. What was it about this place? Were people in Portland just unusually perceptive? Or had my expression become unusually transparent?
“It’s complicated.”
“It’s complicated” is shorthand for “I don’t want to talk about this.” Most people get that and will either leave it there, change the subject, or remember they’re late for an appointment. Not Nan.
“Hmmm. Grief comes in all kinds of forms, doesn’t it? Blixen and I have had quite a bit of experience there. She’s a therapy dog. We visit hospitals, nursing homes, that kind of thing.
“I’m a widow. My husband was killed in a private plane crash twenty years ago. The facilitator called me because she’s worried that some of these women have been with her for years and aren’t making any progress. She thought Blixen might be able to comfort some of them.” She looked down at the dog, returning her adoring gaze.
“Well, I think she did,” I said, and patted the dog on the head. Nan looked up with a brilliant smile, her face glowing like a proud mother whose child has just received an enormous compliment.
“Would you two like to come over to my house for a cup of tea?” she asked, then quickly added, “I know, I know. It’s sudden. And I’m a stranger. I could be crazy, a complete nut job. But trust me, I’m not. Not very.” She smiled. “I just thought that . . . well, you’re looking for somebody to talk to. I’m a good listener. You don’t fit in with this bunch,” she said, tilting her head toward illuminated windows of the big community room, where the white-haired circle was still in session. “But I have a feeling you might have a tough time finding a
