Preview Doris Diaries

Doris Kaminski had counted fourteen of them in the three weeks since Harold's funeral tuna noodle, chicken and rice, something with cream of mushroom soup that she suspected came from a can but ate anyway because it was warm and someone had made it for her. The neighbors meant well. The church ladies meant well. Everyone meant extremely, exhaustingly well. 

And then, as if by some unspoken agreement, the casseroles simply stopped. The phone calls thinned. The sympathy cards on the mantle began to curl at the corners.

Harold had been gone eleven weeks now. The world, apparently, had decided that was long enough to grieve. 

Doris had not gotten that memo.

She was seventy-eight years old, five-foot-two on a good day, and the yellow house on Clover Street their house, the one they'd bought when Linda was in diapers and the elm tree in the backyard was barely taller than Harold, had never once felt so large. She'd rearranged the bedroom furniture twice, trying to make it feel less like a room with something missing from it. It still felt like a room with something missing from it. 

Harold's recliner was still in the living room. She knew she should deal with it, one side had started to sink, listing like a ship going down. Linda had offered to haul it away during her last visit. Doris had said she'd think about it, which was her way of saying absolutely not yet.

She was of the firm opinion that asking for help was something you did only after you'd exhausted every other option. Harold used to say she'd argue with a stop sign. He hadn't been wrong. 

Today's challenge was the pickles. 

A jar of Claussen dill pickles sat on the top shelf of the pantry, placed there by her daughter Linda during last month's "helpful" visit. Linda had reorganized the entire kitchen "for efficiency," which apparently meant putting everything Doris used daily on the highest possible shelf and everything she never touched at eye level.

"You don't need to reach for things constantly, Mom," Linda had said, stacking the pickles next to the good china.

Doris needed a pickle. She needed it very    

much. She was making her egg salad, which simply could not happen without dill pickles, a fact she had tried to explain to Linda, who'd said "just use relish" like that was a perfectly reasonable thing to say to a human being.

She eyed the stepladder in the utility closet. She eyed the shelf. She eyed her own two feet, which her doctor had recently described as "untrustworthy on uneven surfaces," which she felt was a rather dramatic way to say she'd twisted her ankle once.

"I am a grown woman," she said aloud. She glanced at Harold's photograph on the refrigerator, his fishing trip smile, the one where he'd caught a twelve-inch bass and acted like it was a marlin. "I have earned the right to my own pickles."

He would have gotten them for her without being asked. That was the thing nobody warned you about. Not the big losses. The small ones. The ten-times-a-day ones.

She retrieved the ladder.  

It was a two-step folding ladder, perfectly safe, and Doris had used it a hundred times. She set it up, tested it with one hand, and climbed the first step with the careful dignity of a woman who was absolutely not going to fall.

She reached. The jar was just barely out of reach. She went up the second step.

She had the jar. She had it. Cold glass, beautiful, triumphant. 

And that's when Biscuit, her fourteen-year-old beagle, chose to sneeze directly onto the back of her ankle.  Doris did not fall. She would like that on the record. She did, however, make a sound, a sort of surprised squawk and grabbed the shelf with both hands, which meant she was now hugging the pantry shelf from a stepladder with a jar of pickles pressed against her collarbone.

It was in this position that she heard a knock at the back door.

"Mrs. K?" called a voice. "I saw your light on. I've got your mail, they delivered it to me by mistake again, are you... are you okay in there?"

 Doris did not fall. She would like that on the record. She did, however, make a sound, a sort of surprised squawk and grabbed the shelf with both hands, which meant she was now hugging the pantry shelf from a stepladder with a jar of pickles pressed against her collarbone.

It was in this position that she heard a knock at the back door.

"Mrs. K?" called a voice. "I saw your light on. I've got your mail, they delivered it to me by mistake again, are you... are you okay in there?"

That was Marcus. Twenty-six years old. Moved in next door in September. Brought her tomatoes from his garden without being asked, which Doris considered the mark of a genuinely good person. 

"I'm fine!" she called back, in the bright, firm tone she used when she was not entirely fine.

A pause. 

"Are you... in the pantry?"

Another pause.

"...Possibly," said Doris. 

She heard the back door open, she really needed to remember to lock that and footsteps crossing the kitchen tile.

Marcus appeared in the pantry doorway. He looked at her. She looked at him. Biscuit wagged his tail. 

To his very great credit, Marcus did not laugh. His mouth did do something, briefly, but he controlled it admirably. 

"May I?" he said, holding out his hand for the pickles. 

Doris considered her dignity. She considered the pickles. She considered the fact that her arms were getting tired.

"You may," she said.

He took the jar gently, set it on the counter, and offered his arm as she stepped down. Neither of them said anything for a moment. Biscuit sneezed again. 

"Egg salad?" Marcus guessed, looking at the bowl on the counter.

"Egg salad," Doris confirmed. 

"My grandmother made it with dill pickles too," he said. "Relish is not the same thing."

Doris pointed at him. "You," she said, "are a very intelligent young man."

She made enough egg salad for two. 

Over lunch, Doris learned that Marcus worked from home, lived alone, and hadn't talked to anyone in person for four days either, not since his girlfriend moved out. He learned that Doris had once played semi pro softball, hated the word "moist," and had strong opinions about the designated hitter rule.

It was, she thought, a perfectly fine Tuesday. 

But later, washing dishes, she glanced at the pantry shelf. At the stack of good china that hadn't come down since Harold's last birthday dinner.

She wondered, not for the first time, how much longer the yellow house was going to feel manageable. It had always been the two of them managing it together, him on the ladder, her handing things up, both of them pretending it wasn't a whole production. Now it was just her. And a beagle who sneezed at critical moments. 

*Linda had been dropping hints about a "really lovely community" twenty miles away. Doris had been ignoring those hints with Olympic-level focus. This was Harold's house. Her house. The elm tree in the backyard was fifty years old now and she'd outlasted plenty of things that seemed permanent. 

"Not yet," she said. Same as she said every night. 

But the stepladder went back in the closet, and this time, Doris left it just a little more within reach. ---

**Next issue:** Doris receives a letter, not from Linda, and not a bill. The return address is from a town she hasn't thought about in forty years. And a name she once promised herself she'd never look up again.

*Don't miss Episode 2 of  “The Doris Diaries”!