Twenty

by Debra Landwehr Engle

  “That’s not too big a crisis, then,” she said. “Sounds like Joe can take care of it when he gets back. Or do you want me to run some down to your place to tide you over?”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I think I’m good for a while. Thanks.”

  “Well, you know I’m always here if you need anything,” she said.

  “I know, Mama. Love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  I wish I could say that I stayed calm, that my hormonal mind didn’t conjure up every worst possible scenario. But within five minutes, I’d decided that Joe was having an affair, probably with the new geologist who had interned in his office the previous summer. That was why he’d been “working overtime.”

  He couldn’t stand my girth and my sloth-like manner. He’d had enough of walking me to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and doing all the vacuuming and dusting. And who could blame him, really, when we couldn’t do any of the things we used to enjoy together? When he’d soon be saddled with a wife who might never shrink to her former size and a child who would depend on him to keep her safe?

  I envisioned myself as a single mother. I wondered how we’d negotiate visitation, especially if he married his mistress. How would I go on without him? How would I keep from ripping both of them apart with my bare hands?

  And then I heard a car in the driveway. I dabbed at my eyes with a wad of tissue and tried to dislodge myself from the couch.

  When Joe walked in, he was beaming until he saw my face. “What’s wrong?” he said, immediately concerned. “Are you okay? Is the baby okay?”

  “We’re okay,” I said, blubbering like a five-year-old. “But where have you been? And be honest with me. I know you weren’t at Mama’s.”

  “Uh-oh,” he said, his voice soothing. He gathered me up in his arms to console me. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you what I was up to.”

  He took me by the hand and led me to the side door and out onto the stoop.

  “What do you think?” he said.

  There in the driveway sat a brand-new SUV.

  “Joe, what did you do?” I said, overjoyed and confused. All thoughts of a mistress melted away. I wouldn’t have to raise Rose alone. And we wouldn’t be carting our baby around in our old clunker.

  “I’ve been saving up to surprise you,” he said.

  “You mean you’ve been keeping secrets from me?” I teased, now happy that he had. He helped me down the steps and over to the driveway, where I ran my hands over the beige hood as though I were petting a cat.

  “Yep,” he said, opening the driver’s door and adjusting the seat to accommodate my enormous middle. “I had a reason for all that overtime I’ve been putting in.”

  Before I tried to climb in, I looked in the backseat, and what I saw was even better than the vehicle itself: our infant car seat, the one Holly gave me at my baby shower. Joe had tied pink ribbons all over it. We’d been so afraid of losing this baby after all the miscarriages, we’d hardly dared to hope that this pregnancy would take.

  Those ribbons made it real, as though Joe acknowledged that it was going to happen, and that made it okay for me to rejoice in our child, too. Looking up at him from that driver’s seat, I could see it in his eyes, as though we both exhaled for the first time in months.

  He never gave me reason to doubt him. Never.

  * * *

  We went to the cemetery with flowers for Rose, Mama, and Daddy. Two days ago, I would have dreaded it. Today, I felt nothing but peace. The peace which passeth understanding. We walked through the cemetery arm in arm, and I felt I could gently lift off the ground and go perch in a tree like the robins and goldfinches flying around us.

  I’ve always hated cemeteries. The gray stones, the somber symmetry. The ache of sorrow and memory that lingers there. But today I sensed something much different.

  “Do you feel it?” I asked Joe when we sat down on a bench near Rose.

  “What’s that, Meg?” he said.

  “The joy,” I said, realizing I couldn’t explain it if he asked me.

  He didn’t seem startled. “Yes,” he said. “I think I do.”

  The flowering bushes growing in the cemetery look tired but regal. I could see every cut in the tombstones. The beauty of all the lives represented by those markers. The serene order of the military section—now like my house. Everything in place.

  Life has become so rich and full and endless. That’s the irony. It has become endless in the end.

  Death is not an end, it is a beginning—it’s true. And when you live without fear of it, there is no shortage of moments. That’s the ultimate mystery. I have tomorrow, or maybe thirty more years. I can practically count the minutes to the time Sunday night when it will be exactly twenty days since I took the pearls.

  Yet I feel like moments are endless now, that each one of them contains a vast universe of potential. Like the stamen of a flower. Everything it’s connected to is eternal, and the drops of pollen it produces are infinite, too.

  I see infinity in a flower and realize that I don’t need to regret my decision or worry or fear or judge it. Because I have changed nothing that matters, and I have changed everything that matters.

  I was right that this isn’t a regular suicide. In fact, I can hardly bring myself to use that word. I said from the beginning that I simply accelerated the end of my cycle, the same way the drought has accelerated it for my flowers this summer. Yet my situation also is not like someone who receives a cancer diagnosis and has only a few weeks to live.

  I’m experiencing something in between—a death by my own hands, yet one that allows me to learn all the lessons of living I missed in the past fifty-five years. Like all the kids I worked with at the hospital, like Rose and my mom, I get to experience the end as the beginning, and to look at life without fear before I let it go.

  Why didn’t I know this? Why didn’t I realize that any day could be the beginning rather than the end?

  We sat on a bench in the rose garden at the cemetery, looking out over the neat rows of stones, recognizing names I’d grown up with, and that Joe had come to know. That’s when Joe asked me about looking ahead, about being together.

  “We used to know how to make each other happy,” he said. “I think we could remember how to do that.”

  I took a deep breath. “I’m not sure,” I said. My words were as much about my decision to share my secret as they were about our future.

  “Meg, don’t let death stand in the way of life.”

  “It may be too late,” I said.

  “No,” he said, touching my cheek. “We could start over.”

  “You don’t understand,” I said as I felt the struggle within my mind. Maybe that was the problem all along. I’d tried to figure out what was right rather than trusting my heart.

  As I felt Joe close beside me and looked out over the names of my family, I felt a surge inside me, as though a door in my heart opened.

  And so I told him the truth. All of it. My loneliness, the anger, the feeling of being done with life. I told him what it was like after he left and I couldn’t breathe anymore. I told him how Mama saved me by needing my care, and how I watched her disappear bit by bit, knowing I couldn’t do a thing to stop it.

  I told him how empty the house was when I came home every day. How I sometimes looked out over the hills and saw the ghosts of everyone I’ve lost.

  I told him about opening the freezer door and reaching to the back for the small bottle of pearls. About twisting off the lid and stirring the contents into my yogurt until they melted as though they’d never existed at all.

  I told him about Dr. Edelman’s peaceful passing and about my lab tests, as clean as the day I was born. About the regret and the anticipation, side by side. And I told him the one thing I know for sure: that today I would make a different decision. And yet I’m no longer angry. No longer lonely.

  And then I said the two words I needed to say not just to him but also to myself.
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br />   “I’m sorry.”

  He sat silent through the whole thing, staring off into the sky. I didn’t know what he would do, but I was certain he wouldn’t push me away.

  When I was done, he asked one thing: “Are you sure it can’t be reversed?”

  “I’m sure,” I said. “But I don’t know what will happen. Maybe nothing will happen. Maybe we’ll be sitting on the porch together night after night for the rest of our lives.”

  Joe turned to look at me, and I saw tears running down both of his cheeks.

  “That’s why it’s important every day to let you know that I love you,” I said, stroking his face. “Always have. Always will.”

  DAY TWENTY

  It’s cool outside. Joe is asleep in the bedroom. I can hear his soft snores as I write. It’s 10:57 p.m. Daddy’s clock will strike eleven in three minutes, and I’ll have just under five hours to go.

  I have no idea what will happen between now and daybreak, so all I can do is write. I feel that I need to say something profound. Do I wish I could be around to live this life with Joe? Yes, and yet it’s not so simple.

  This is new for me, to look at death not as an ending but as a sign of continuity. In a way, Daddy’s passing served as a bridge to my life with Joe. Even though I couldn’t see it at the time, Rose’s death and Mama’s opened doors as surely as they closed them. We are all connecting links. And sometimes when we step out of the chain, we allow new connections that could not have happened with us there.

  I’m ready. That’s a big statement, I know. I don’t even know what I’m ready for. If I die, I feel sure that Rose and Mama and Daddy will be there to meet me. And if I don’t, I’m ready for whatever life looks like after today.

  I’ve never said that before. I’ve always thought I had to have the answers, to control what life looks like. For the first time, I’m willing to live today and not know what will happen after this.

  * * *

  Joe and I spent the day together. Again, he had the coffee ready when I got up, and we sat nestled together in silence on the porch while the morning still felt cool. No blame. No judgment. No trying to fix something that can’t be changed. Just the deep comfort of acceptance.

  The trees are turning, partly from the drought, but also from the approach of fall. There’s a hint of red in the burning bush, and the leaves on the lindens are prematurely golden. I sat on the swing with Joe, his arm around me, and looked out at the hills where I’ve walked my whole life.

  This may be my whole life. It may end today. I haven’t seen any more moles disappear, there are no other signs that the pearls are working, or that the shutoff moment is going to happen.

  We did a little bit of nothing today. He finished patching and painting the ceiling in the bathroom, fixing it so completely that you’d never know there had been damage.

  I picked a bouquet from the memorial garden and put the flowers in one of Mama’s vases. Long stems of hosta blooms and fronds from the painted ferns—the perfect combination of strength and softness.

  I laughed every time Joe opened a cupboard or a drawer because he gave me the strangest look. “I thought I was the organized one,” he said when he opened the bathroom closet.

  All the towels were stacked neatly and grouped by color. I put all the unopened toiletries in one handsome basket and threw away the old cough syrups and half-used jars of Vaseline. One shelf had just my hair dryer and a package of toilet paper—nothing else.

  It’s that way everywhere in this house. All those clothes and boxes that were half hidden or covered in cobwebs are gone. Receipts and paid bills sit in an accordion file in Mama’s desk rather than spilling out of a drawer, and all the old paperwork has been shredded, returning to the earth as mulch in the flower beds.

  The whole place feels lighter and stronger at the same time.

  Over lunch, I pulled out an album with photos of Rose, and we looked at it together. All her first-day-of-school pictures. The photo of her with Brent and Mark after Mama taught them how to make fake teeth from watermelon rinds. A picture of her saddled up on Romeo for the very first time, looking perfectly at ease.

  “We were lucky to have her,” Joe said.

  “We were,” I agreed. “Even for a little while.”

  She’d be twenty-six now. I think about what she’d look like, what her voice would sound like. Maybe if Joe and I had taken it one day at a time after Rose died, rather than looking back and looking forward, we would have stayed together.

  Maybe losing a child isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you. Maybe the worst thing that can happen is to not live the life you’re given, to let guilt and anger steal your life from you.

  I tried not to read double meaning into everything we did and said today, but I couldn’t help it. Everything mattered.

  This afternoon we played gin rummy and each won a game. “Two out of three?” Joe asked, waving the cards in front of me.

  “I think I’m good,” I said. “I like calling it even.”

  We joked that, after such strenuous card games, we deserved ice cream sundaes, so we got out two of the biggest cereal bowls in the cupboard, filled them with butter brickle ice cream, and piled on chocolate chips and nuts.

  And later in the afternoon, when I called Holly just to say hello, I told her I had a surprise, then handed the phone to Joe.

  “Hey, Holly,” he said, winking at me.

  “Joe? What are you doing there?” I could hear the joy in her voice all the way across the room.

  When I got back on the phone with her, she nearly burst into tears.

  “This is one of the best days of my life,” she said.

  “Mine, too,” I told her.

  * * *

  Joe and I decided to have a date at home tonight, so I changed into my new dress. I gathered up my hair the way Miriam had during the power outage, and I put on lipstick and a touch of mascara.

  When I reached into the bathroom closet for a towel, I pulled out the white tufted one—the one that made me realize how my vision has changed. I felt the luxuriousness of it all over again, running my hand over the texture and seeing the beauty in its folds.

  I’m seeing everything with those new eyes now, including myself.

  When I walked into the living room, Joe looked up from the couch and whistled.

  “You look beautiful,” he said, “just like the day I met you.”

  He cued up some music, took me in his arms, and we danced in the living room, swaying in rhythm with each other. It felt as familiar as putting on a comfortable pair of shoes.

  “You always were a good dancer,” I said.

  He kissed me lightly on top of the head.

  And then I saw them. The colored lights, swirling all around me.

  “They’re here,” I said to Joe, and he held me closer.

  He’s the only living person I could say that to and know he understands what I mean.

  * * *

  “Can I tell you a secret?” I asked Joe over dinner.

  “Another?” he said, reaching across the table and taking my hand. “At this point, I think you can tell me anything.”

  I’d given it a lot of thought, and I wanted to share something with him that I’d never told anyone—not even Mama, who, toward the end, seemed like my priest. I’d tell her things in confession because I knew she wouldn’t remember.

  One day when she stretched out on the sofa under the crocheted afghan, I sat down to rub her feet, which prompted a memory.

  “I used to go down to the creek by myself when I was little,” I told her, “even when you warned me about the danger. One day I fell in the water and got my tennis shoes covered with mud, so I rinsed them off and set them in the sun to dry. I hid the evidence and made sure my shoes didn’t squeak when I came home.”

  She peered at me sideways, and I thought maybe this time she was upset by my disobedience, even if it had happened forty years earlier.

  “Don’t you think it’s time for a haircut
?” she said.

  Like I said, complete confidentiality.

  I confessed to smoking a couple of cigarettes when I was fifteen and babysitting Miriam. I confessed to having sex with Joe in the shed while we were dating, while Mama fixed pork chops for us in the kitchen. I confessed to wishing Mama would marry the man who owned the variety store because he smelled good and I figured he probably had money, and I thought he might make her happy.

  But I never told her about the joy I felt when Rose died.

  Tonight, it felt right to share that with Joe.

  “Remember the moment when we were both in the hospital room with Rose,” I said, “the moment when we knew she was gone?”

  “Yes,” he said quietly.

  “Before the grief hit me,” I said, “I felt a jubilation.”

  I told him how, just for a moment, I wanted to shout, “We did it!” He and Rose and I created a trinity that sailed her through this life and into the next as clearly as a boat crossing in the light of the moon. For just an instant, and totally without warning, my soul celebrated our triumph.

  Maybe I felt the joy of the other side, I told him. But immediately after, the full impact of the grief rolled over me like a freight train and turned the joy to guilt. What was wrong with me? How could a mother feel joy at the loss of her child?

  Joe listened quietly and took it all in.

  “I can see everything more clearly now,” I said. “I wasn’t celebrating the loss, but the feeling that we expressed the fullest love we could while we had Rose with us.”

  He squeezed my hand, tears in his eyes.

  “Now,” I said, “I can see that the joy, just like the sadness, has been with me all along.”

  * * *

  Will I wake up tomorrow morning? I don’t know. The colored swirls didn’t take me by surprise, but they didn’t answer any questions, either. Are they here because they’re welcoming me into the next world, or because my vision has opened up, the way it did when I was little?

  Maybe I’ve already awoken. Because I know, in a way I didn’t just three weeks ago, that this life is precious and beautiful and mysterious and wondrous even in its pain. I have spent so much of my life asleep, and now, just at the point where it might end, I see it as though it’s all new.