The New Woman

         The funeral had been lively. The Professor was a well-loved woman. The first eulogist was a former student, and was mainly about his own life. NW almost faulted him for it, but if she had written a eulogy it would’ve been about herself, too. How could it not be? There was no selfless way to say I loved you so much, and now you’re gone and I’m a little lost.
NW wondered what she would have said if she’d known the last time she spoke to the Professor was in an innocuous email eight months before. She’d meant to reach out again, especially after hearing that the cancer had returned with vengeance. It just hadn’t worked out.
         The second eulogist was the Professor’s son. NW had never met him, but had heard of him often, when the Professor talked about him fondly during lectures. Now he spoke to a room of two hundred of his dead mother’s friends, family members, colleagues, and students. The speech was calm, and his voice only wavered sometimes. He described his childhood. He was brave about it. NW wondered about his ability to describe childhood experience to a full cathedral, and her disability to describe hers to one therapist.
         “She gave me unbridled joy.” He said toward the end. “I think, at times, it was like she had found a way to bottle joy, and every day she would collect it up and give it to me.”

         The memory of those words haunted NW. She couldn’t take it anymore. She had to know. For the first time since Christmas, she pulled out her phone and dialled that horrible number.

         It rang almost six times. NW imagined her mother trying to figure out how to swipe up on the phone screen. When she answered, her voice was tight and cautious. She probably assumed it was an emergency. It sort of was.
         “Hello?”
         “Hi.” NW said.
         “What are you up to today?”
         “Not much,” NW answered, fiddling with the beading on the bodice of her wedding dress. “Same as usual. You?”
         “Yeah, we’re having a lazy day. Like usual.”
         “Ha, yeah. Hey, Ma,” NW stared at the door in front of her. It was painted white. On the other side was a crowd of seventy friends and family, all waiting with bated breath for her entrance. She studied it as she spoke. “If you could bottle joy, what would you do with it?”
         “What? What?”
         “I said.” NW had no patience. The words came clipped. “If you could bottle joy, what would you do with it?”
         “Oh. That’s a nice idea. Um. I’d open it up and drink right from it. Then whatever’s left, I’d pour it in the garden for the tomatoes.”
         “Nice.” NW said.
         “What would you do?”
         “I’d give it away.”
         “Oh.”
         A regular pause.
         “Is that why you called?”
         “I guess, yeah.”
         “Okay.”
         The silence continued. NW took the phone away from her ear and looked at the screen to make sure the call was still connected.
         It was. She drew a breath. “Okay, I guess that’s all, then.”
         “Alright.”
         “Goodbye.”
         “Bye.”

         NW hung up and slipped the phone into the pocket sewn into her dress and gathered her bouquet. She walked the aisle alone, to the one she would bottle joy for, for the rest of her life.
         She did not keep her maiden name.