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STRIPPED

by Hillary Schoelzel

For the first two months after Emily died, Andrew thought he saw her everywhere. This

was crazy and he knew it—he had been there when the doctors had unplugged the machines—

but each time he would catch the swing of a blonde ponytail out of the corner of his eye, there

was that sickening punch of hope in his chest that maybe it was her. That maybe she would be

back that night to cook the chicken she had been marinating. To watch the baseball game. To

bicker with him about that ridiculous painting of two enormous parakeets she had bought at the

flea market and insisted on hanging next to their bed. Oiseaux was the title that the artist had

given it. Lovebirds is what Emily had called it.

“It’s us!” She would exclaim whenever Andrew suggested that they replace it with

something better suited for the bedroom.

“It’s crap!” He would reply.

Now that she was gone, however, he couldn’t make himself take it down and would sit on

her side of the bed tracing the swirls of their feathers and looking at the black dab of paint that

Emily had added herself, believing that the bird’s original eye shape made him look too mean.

There was still so much of her everywhere.

“I mean, what am I supposed to do with this?” He asked, holding up his left hand one

night so his support group could see his ring. “I can’t just take it off.”

His hands were still red, raw from the tireless scrubbing. He had been so afraid that he

would make her sick, that he would track in some contaminant from the outside world that would

kill her, that he had taken to washing his hands obsessively. It became a routine—water, soap,

first the palms, then the backs, between the each finger, under every nail, even up onto his wrists,

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dried with a (clean!) towel, the faucet turned off with an elbow, repeated as necessary, which

was all the time. When he came home, when he brought in the mail, before he opened the

refrigerator, after he used his cell phone. And now, almost three months later, he kept scrubbing

and scrubbing his hands even though his skin had long since given up and had gone, germs and

all, down the drain.

It was normal, they said, to still look for her. To still wear your ring. He didn’t tell them

about the unwashed coffee mug he kept next to the sink. The lipstick on the rim was the only kiss

of hers he still had.

The group itself was small—eight or nine guys—who met one evening a week in the

cafeteria of the district’s new middle school, their plastic chairs unstacked from the far wall

where the tables were pushed at night and dragged into a circle in the middle of the room. In an

attempt to save money, the school had recently started shutting off the air conditioning at night

so the springtime air felt congested and heavy. Some of the guys had suggested they find a new

venue but their only other free options were churches and the group was committed to staying

free from religious affiliation. Grief belongs to everyone. That’s what they said.

“Always, always,” Andrew continued, waving his ring around. “That’s what’s engraved

on the inside. I thought she just was just tired from painting the living room but by the next

afternoon, she…”

He stopped there as the long fingers of grief tightened around his throat. Slumping in his

chair, he pulled the frayed bill of his Red Sox cap down over his eyes.

When the meeting ended, the group broke for refreshments, which was a generous way to

describe the instant lemonade and stale sprinkle cookies that they each took turns bringing. Some

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guys would mix a little something extra in from a flask in their pockets, but Emily was never

really one for drinking so Andrew steered clear of that.

“We’re gonna get fucking swept,” a voice next to him said.

Andrew looked up from his styrofoam cup at the dark-haired man talking to him He’d

noticed this guy in the meeting—there was always a newcomer or two, none of them ever stuck

around. Like Andrew, he was a couple decades younger than the others, too young to have lost

their wives.

“The Sox,” the man said, motioning toward Andrew’s hat.

“You’re from Boston?”

“My old man was. Die hard.” He glanced at his watch. “We could still catch the end of the

game, if you’re up for it.”

“Oh I don’t know,” Andrew said. He hadn’t gone out at all since Emily died. Not that he

had had anyone to go out with. They had just moved to town for her job and he hadn’t had a

chance to make any friends—a fact which worried his sister, who still called all the time to check

in on him. Things are good. Really, things are good. But how long would it be until he didn’t

look for her car in the driveway? Until he didn’t buy her favorite cereal at the store?

“Come on,” the man pressed, tossing his empty styrofoam cup in the trash. “This place is

depressing as shit.”

• • •

The next morning, Andrew woke up on an unfamiliar pullout couch to the sound of a

woman singing. He knew that he had let the man—David—talk him into having several rounds

of drinks, but it wasn’t until the throbbing in his skull kicked in now that he realized just how

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drunk he had gotten. He could never keep himself to just one or two. Emily knew that. She didn’t

approve.

Andrew squinted around the sunny living room and clutched at the hazy memory of David

trying to put him in a cab at the end of the night.

“Please,” Andrew remembered saying, “I don’t want to go home to an empty house.”

And now here he was.

And someone was singing.

An old song he hadn’t heard since his mother used to play it on summer-evening drives

home from long days spent at the swimming pool with his friends. I’m a wild wood flower

waving for you.

Andrew hoisted himself off of the couch, his hangover in full force now, and wobbled his

way toward the source of the voice.

When he finally found her, she was standing in the kitchen with her back to him, arranging

and rearranging lilies in large mason jars spread out on the counter in front of her. He could

smell them—the lilies. Their scent had always been elusive to him, caught somewhere between

paradise and death.

“David had to go into the office. I told him not to wake you,” the woman said after a

moment and turned to face him. Her wavy auburn hair pulled back off her tanned shoulders, she

wore her beauty casually.

“I’m Margaret.” She filled a glass with water and handed it to Andrew, who spilled it on

his shirt as he drank. “David’s wife.”

Andrew blinked at her, not understanding. He realized that it was possible that he may still

be a little drunk.

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“You’re not dead?”

Margaret frowned and ran her fingers through the hair at the nape of her neck.

“Did David say that I was?”

“I met him last night at a meeting. For people whose wives are…” Andrew trailed off, not

wanting to say it. Not wanting to have to admit again that Emily was gone.

Comprehension flickered in Margaret’s eyes and she became preoccupied with rubbing a

yellow spot of pollen off the back of her hand. “Oh. God. That. Really? Yes.”

Andrew shrugged at her, confused.

“It was our marriage counselor’s idea,” she explained, embarrassed at first but then with

the faintest glow of satisfaction. “You know, to see what it would be like if… I can’t believe he

actually went.”

“That’s pretty messed up.”

Margaret’s face fell solemn again.

“You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

To make it up to him, she offered breakfast and when he tried to turn it down, feeling as

though he had already been enough of a burden, she insisted and the two of them had Eggs

Benedict in mismatched lawn chairs on the back patio. It had been a long time since anyone had

cooked for him and while he ate, Margaret was happy to prattle away, as if it had been a long

time since she had had anyone to talk to.

David’s birthday was next week, Andrew learned, and she was preparing to throw him a

surprise party. Just a small one.

“My wife did that for me once,” Andrew said, his mouth full. “Scared the hell out of me

when I walked in, but the party was amazing. She’d strung up some lights inside and it made our

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house feel like a whole new place. Sorta magical, you know? And then… well, I probably

shouldn’t say this.”

“No, say it. The lights thing is gold. I need all the ideas I can get.”

“She would kill me if she knew I was telling someone this but after everybody left, she did

this sort of strip tease for me right at the dining room table. It was so out of character for her.

She’d gotten shy about her body but fuck, was it sexy. She was blonde, when she had hair, and

had all these freckles on her shoulders. I know it sounds weird but I wish I could have kept some

of them somehow.”

Margaret stood up and cleared both of their plates. He followed her back into the kitchen.

“It must have been amazing,” she said, scrubbing the dishes clean in the sink. “To have

been loved like that.”

“Buy a good camera,” Andrew said after a moment. “That’s my advice. Buy a good camera

and use it.”

• • •

By the time Andrew finally made it home, it was almost noon. Margaret had dropped him

off at the middle school to pick up his car on her way to run some errands.

“Are you busy tonight?” she asked as he was climbing out of her passenger seat. “David

and I are going over to a friend’s. It’s a charity thing. You should come with.”

He told her he would think about it.

When he arrived back at his house, he walked around the side of the garage to where Emily

had kept her concrete birdbath so that she could watch the robins through the kitchen window.

Sometimes Andrew would find her perched on the counter with her feet in the sink, gazing

through the lace curtains. Look at them, she’d say. Aren’t they funny?

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Standing at the birdbath now, Andrew could see a fragment of the sun glint off something

in the bottom of the basin. A flowered hair clip. He smiled as he fished it out and, as if it was a

wet butterfly, carried it in his palm up the steps into the house, past Lovebirds and into his closet.

Rummaging through Emily’s old clothes, he pulled a shoebox out from the bottom shelf, the

word “Crow” written on the top in her lopsided cursive.

Taking a seat on the floor, Andrew shimmied the lid off the box and studied the contents

inside—metal paperclips, screws, a set of car keys, coins, a few bottle caps. He smiled as he

picked up a silver pillbox and popped it open. Two Viagra and an aspirin rattled around inside.

Someone knew to be prepared, Emily would quip whenever Andrew mentioned that particular

treasure, which he often did in an attempt to make her laugh. Other notable birdbath offerings

had included a money clip with a hundred dollar bill and a floppy disk labeled, “Arturo’s Last

Will and Testament.”

Andrew set the hair clip inside the box and closed the top again. Gazing at the clothes

around him, he reached out to touch the silky sleeve of a rose-colored blouse. The fraying edge

of a pair of jeans.

• • •

“I hate this shit,” David said, leaning in so that only Andrew would be able to hear him.

“Valet and a bartender for a cocktail party? Give me a fucking break.”

The two men leaned against the expansive marble kitchen island and waited for the rented

bartender to finish pouring their drinks. Andrew fussed with his tie, which he regretted wearing.

None of the other men wore ties, just jackets—all of which seemed much more tailored then his

own. He had a black one at home that fit him much better but he planned on never wearing it

again.

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“I mean seriously, if these people actually gave a shit about the orphans or baby whales or

whatever the hell they’re raising money for, they wouldn’t be spending money on a damn ice

sculpture.”

David tossed a couple bills into the fishbowl on the bar, timing it to be sure that the

bartender was looking. He picked up his scotch and held it for Andrew to cheers with him.

“I’m sort of surprised,” Andrew said, the scotch making him a little bold. “I mean, you

know her better than I do, but this didn’t seem like Margaret’s thing.”

“She did the flowers.” He took a long drink and set his glass on the bar again.

“Excuse me, sir,” the bartender said behind them. “The hostess has asked me to remind the

guests to please use coasters.”

“Oh Jesus Christ.”

“Thank you,” Andrew said, grabbing a couple of monogrammed coasters from the bar.

“We’ll be sure to do that.”

David took another long sip from his drink, which was already half gone.

“I promise it’ll get more fun in a couple hours.”

“Oh, it’s been great,” Andrew said.

“Liar.”

They delayed for a moment, taking another sip of their drinks. It never mattered how many

scotches he had, Andrew had noticed, his mouth never dulled to its bite.

“I think that woman Margaret’s been talking to keeps checking you out,” David said,

motioning across the room with his chin to where Margaret sat talking to a curvy brunette. “You

should go talk to her.”

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Andrew looked down and took another, a larger, sip of his drink. He didn’t want to admit

it, but he had unintentionally caught the woman’s eye several times.

“I’m not ready,” he said.

“Ready?” David laughed. “I’m not trying to set you up with her. I just think a little old-

fashioned human interaction would be good for you.”

Andrew swirled the ice in his cup as David motioned to the bartender for another drink. He

told David that didn’t want to talk about, well, about anything. About what he’d been doing with

his time. About people who said they knew how he felt because their grandmothers had passed

away. About the way he kept Emily’s cell charged and relished in the misdials from her friends

who had been trying to call someone else. About how the fact that she was still in their phones

was proof she had existed.

David took a firm hold on Andrew’s left wrist and in one motion, pulled the wedding band

off of his finger. Reaching, inside Andrew’s suit jacket, he dropped the ring into the pocket over

Andrew’s heart.

“There,” he said. “Now you won’t have to.”

Touching the ring through the cloth of his suit, Andrew followed David back to the table

where the ladies were seated. Margaret, happy to be back in their company, was quick to make

introductions all around. She had put makeup on for the evening, which had surprised Andrew

when he had shown up at their house earlier. Dark mascara and blush on her cheeks seemed to

transform her. Emily used to be able to do that, to be two kinds of beautiful.

“I was just telling your wife,” the woman said to David, “I’m hosting my sister’s baby

shower tomorrow and I would love for her to do some flowers.”

The low buzz of a cellphone sounded in David’s pants pocket.

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“Would you excuse me a moment?” He asked but didn’t wait for a response and the group

watched in silence as he strode across the room to take the call. His boss had been fired six

months ago, Margaret had told him over breakfast that morning, and David had taken on both

jobs in the hopes of beating out his coworkers for a promotion that now seemed like it was never

coming. Sitting next to him now, Andrew could feel Margaret wilt more than he could see it.

Had he not been so close to her, he was sure that he would have missed it.

“He’s quite the businessman, isn’t he?” The woman said, turning back to squint at

Margaret down the point of her nose.

“David takes his job very seriously,” Margaret told her. She tried to hold the woman’s gaze

but glanced away to smooth a wrinkle out of the chiffon cocktail dress she had chosen for the

evening.

“You must be proud,” Andrew offered.

Margaret looked up at him and blinked, first at him and then at the woman.

“Yes. Very.”

• • •

David was right—the end of the party was a lot more fun than the beginning, and a couple

of drinks and several hours later, Andrew was climbing into the back of Margaret’s car. He

sprawled across the seat on his back, the light on the roof of the car seeming to sway above him.

“I’m fine,” David’s muffled voice came through the closed windows.

“Please just get in,” Margaret said.

And then Andrew was waking up to Margaret, who had reached into the backseat to nudge

him awake. Her hair, which had been down earlier, was swept back up again in a messy knot.

“This isn’t like me,” he said, his vision blurry and his tongue dry in his mouth.

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“I know,” she told him.

David had already gone upstairs to bed by the time Andrew and Margaret had made it into

the kitchen. Margaret handed Andrew a glass of water before reaching to pull vases out from the

cabinet under the sink.

“You’re doing that tonight?” Andrew asked, lowering himself into a wooden chair at her

kitchen table.

Margaret stepped out of her high heels.

“Trying but there’s not much to work with. She wants the arrangements first thing in the

morning but the flower market won’t open until later.”

“What will you do?”

“I have white hydrangeas I can cut in the backyard,” she told him and held up a pair of

scissors. “Then I guess I’ll have to go midnight pruning.”

What Andrew did not understand at first, but soon figured out, was that when she said,

midnight pruning, she meant snipping flowers out of her neighbors’ yards.

“Is this legal?” He asked as he followed her out the front door and down the stone walkway

leading up to her house. She was still wearing her cocktail dress but her bare feet were nearly

silent on the sidewalk.

“The branches hang out over the street,” she whispered.

Andrew trailed her down the block and around the corner to where a cherry tree, popping

with blossoms, stretched a few of it’s knotted arms over the sidewalk above their heads.

Margaret couldn’t quite reach them and so Andrew, who had only come along as a spectator, was

the one who had to do the trimming. Except the branches were too thick for the scissors and

Andrew had to break them off, the wood snapping in between his hands.

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“I am proud of him, you know,” Margaret said, quiet as a breeze, as she collected the

cherry blossoms Andrew was passing to her. He didn’t respond, not sure if she was talking to

him or to herself.

An hour later, Margaret had finished her arrangements and Andrew felt steady enough to

drive himself home. He went the long way, past the cherry tree, slowing down to look at it again.

A dozen or so petals were scattered on the concrete where the two of them had been standing,

but the tree looked, as far as he could tell, untouched.

By the time he made it to his house, his eyes were already starting to close. Leaving his car

parked on the street instead of taking it around back to pull into the driveway, Andrew grabbed

his jacket and wrinkled tie out of the passenger seat and trudged up the steps into the dark house

with them draped over his arm.

He wouldn’t discover his ring was missing until the next morning as he leaned into the

bathroom mirror to look at the creases that wrinkled sheets had left behind on his face. They

would make him wonder how it would be to grow old. Always, always.

Picking his jacket up off the bedroom floor where he had dropped it, Andrew would reach

inside to retrieve his ring and, tracing every fold of the pocket with his fingers, would realize that

he’d lost it.

• • •

By the time the night of David’s surprise party the following week, Andrew hadn’t seen

Margaret or David in a few days. Margaret had called to check in a couple times but since she

had gone back with him to the hotel ballroom to look for his wedding band, he hadn’t seen her.

They had crawled around on their hands and knees, just as they had done at her house and in her

car, straining their eyes for the small silver ring, but found nothing. Asking, practically

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interrogating, hotel employees had likewise yielded no results and Andrew was left to swallow

the fact that his ring was gone. Maybe it’s actually a good thing, Andrew said but he didn’t

believe himself.

The night of the surprise party, Andrew parked his car around the corner underneath the

cherry tree and walked a block to David and Margaret’s house, not wanting to tip off David to

the surprise when he came home from work. A bottle of wine in his hand, Andrew knocked on

the front door. It was red. He hadn’t noticed before.

Margaret answered. Her hair pulled back, she wore a snug black dress with a silk scarf

knotted loosely around her neck.

“Oh dammit,” she said when she saw him. “You didn’t get my message.”

“Is everything okay?” Andrew asked.

“Of course. David came home early and ruined his own surprise party. Actually, he’s asked

me to cancel it. You know, the headaches.”

In fact, Andrew did not know anything about the headaches.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said and held out the wine for Margaret to take. She clutched

the bottle by the neck and examined the label. A duck, floating on the surface of an invisible

pond. Its treading feet absent, hidden by the imagined water.

“He’s showering,” Margaret said. “But at least come in and have a piece of the cake I

made.”

A few moments later, Andrew was sitting on the couch he had slept on a week before with

a slice of almond cake on his lap. Twinkle lights had been strung in loops around the room.

Margaret poured herself a full glass of champagne from a half-emptied bottle.

“Want any?” She asked.

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Andrew politely turned it down. He was trying to cut back.

She was leaned against the doorway, her crystal glass dangling between her fingers. It took

Andrew a moment to realize that she had begun to hum.

Andrew reached to the speaker behind him and turned down the music she’d been playing

to hear her better. He knew from the moment he heard he singing in the kitchen, she had the kind

of voice that made a person want to pay attention. She paused.

“I borrowed your idea,” she said and took a long sip of her drink.

“The lights look great.”

“No, the other one.”

She straightened in the doorway and held her champagne flute pressed to her lips.

“It was going to start like this,” she said after a moment and swayed her hips a little from

side to side as she stepped into the room.

Humming again, Margaret set her drink down on the side table next to the flowers. White

roses in a tall, skinny vase. She unknotted the scarf at her neck and draped it over the lamp next

to the couch. She trailed her fingertips up her legs and the insides of her arms, down her neck

and across her collar bone. She pulled at the hem of her dress to reveal her thigh. She unpinned

her hair and shook the wavy red strands loose around her face. She asked, “He would have liked

this, right?”

Andrew nodded and she kept dancing that way until the champagne was gone.

When the last note of her song finished and the silence crept in, Andrew stood up from the

couch and pulled her to his chest. She was slender and it had been a long time since he had held

anyone, since he’d rested his chin on top of someone’s head. Her hair, he noticed, smelled like

gardenia.

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In a moment he knew that she would make him leave, and that he would not see her or

David again.

• • •

“Whatever happened to your friend?” An older man asked Andrew as he bent to re-fill his

styrofoam cup with instant lemonade. The meeting had lasted longer than usual that night and the

middle school was sweltering.

“My friend?”

“Yeah,” the man said. “The guy who came with you a few weeks ago. Young guy like you.

Your friend.”

Andrew looked down into his cup at the pale lemonade, chucks of powdery mix still

floating in the top. He gave it a swirl until they disappeared. “I didn’t know him actually.”

“Oh,” the old man said, biting into a cookie from the box on the table. “Too bad. I thought

you guys would be good for each other. You know, support.”

“That’s what I have you guys for.”

Andrew was only half-serious but the older man smiled, pleased. Andrew gave his

shoulder a squeeze and thanked him. He watched as the older man crossed the room to join a

group huddled in the corner. They reminded him of the penguins from the documentary that he

and Emily had watched once. Hey fellas. Great meeting today, huh? The men opened up the

circle to make room for him.

Digging his car keys out of his pocket, Andrew slipped out of the cafeteria unnoticed. He

took the long way home, the humid night air blowing in through his open driver’s window, and

when he reached the corner with the cherry tree, turned up a block to drive past Margaret and

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David’s house. Andrew could see through their front windows that the string of lights was still

up in their living room.

He stopped across the street and waited there, his car engine running, for one of them to

walk past the windows and see him. How is it this warm already? David would ask, stepping out

onto the porch to wave Andrew inside. This summer is going to be hot as balls. But after twenty

minutes, no one had opened the front door for him and Andrew decided it was time to go home.

Later, as he stood at his kitchen sink washing his hands, Andrew gazed through his own

window and into the darkened garden outside to where several yellow tulips had pushed their

way through the soil and were starting to bloom. He rummaged through his cabinets for a vase,

but seeing none—would he ever find where Emily had hidden things?—he settled for a glass

juice glass.

Scissors in hand, he picked his way through the flower beds, mostly brittle from lack of

care. There were seven tulips in all, he counted, but cut only three. Holding their waxy-petaled

heads with his fingertips, he snipped them loose at their roots and carried them gently back

toward the house.

Had the light from the kitchen window not been on and had he not taken his eyes off of the

flowers to glance down into the concrete birdbath as he passed, he would have missed it. He

would not have seen that there, beneath the glassy surface of the water, was his wedding ring. He

stared at it for a moment, afraid to reach for it. Afraid it was only a trick of light. Or worse, that it

belonged to someone else. But when he pulled the ring from the bottom of the basin, tulips in

one hand and water running dripping down his sleeve from the other, he could feel with his

fingertip Emily’s words engraved on the inside.

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In the coming weeks, he would wear it sometimes as he drove past David and Margaret’s

house, checking to see if both of their cars were still parked in the driveway and if the lights were

still visible through the front windows. The rest of the time, the ring would sit in the cardboard

box in the bottom of his closet with the rest of the crow’s shiny offerings. And, in a few months,

when the kitchen and the closet and the birdbath had all been packed up in the moving van, and

the cherry blossoms had fallen away to make room for leaves, Andrew would stop by on his way

out of town to leave Emily’s painting leaned against the red front door.