He paused and sat up. He touched the diamond again, and he touched her neck. “Maddy?”
She laid still, the curls of chocolate hair on her cheek around the grey temples; her eyes closed softly, almost a smile on her quiet lips.
He put a hand on her bare shoulder—cool and strange to the touch.
He shook her arm and called her name. “Maddy! Maddy!”
But Maddy lay peaceful and still and pale. Peter took her wrist between his fingers, although he already knew he would feel no pulse.
The lightness in his chest turned to a jolt of pain. He lifted Maddy, clutching her in his arms to his naked chest. “Maddy!” he cried, “Maddy, wake up!” He lowered her to the bed and pressed his ear to her chest, listening for a heartbeat.
Nothing.
Peter covered his face with his hands, shaking his head, and cried out of the depths of his heart. “This can’t be. It can’t.” Sobs shook him as he bent over her, her lovely face tranquil and unmoving. He cried uncontrollably, completely lost in anguish, for a long time. He had known timelessness last night. Now he knew it again.
Eventually, he became calm enough to feel for her hand and then for her finger. The gold ring was in place.
Peter bent low and whispered into Maddy’s ear. “I do, my own love.” He could barely speak. “Forever and for always.”
Chapter 47
Surrender
2005
A year and three months after Maddy died, Peter stepped off the porch of the old Michaels house in Chatham onto the sidewalk.
“Remember the weather report,” Amy had fussed before she and Lance left for Boston for a chiropractic convention. “A nor’easter is expected to hit the Cape Cod region late tonight or tomorrow morning. We want you home before dark.”
“I’ll be fine.” Peter kissed her cheek. “Little worrywart.” He waved as she and Lance pulled out of the driveway as he called out. “Storm’s coming!”
Peter shook his head as he turned and inhaled the autumn air as the wind shook the branches against the garage. He stretched and looked up and down the street. He felt restlessness inside him.
After Maddy’s death, Peter had moved in with Amy and Lance in the old Michaels house in Chatham. He’d sold his house and all his possessions. He was finished—done—with everything.
In Chatham, he had developed a daily routine: every evening after dinner, he walked the beach. His doctors were shocked at how his arthritis had progressed in just one year. His right leg was turned in, and his foot had stiffened, wearing out the shoe. For a man in his early sixties, Peter seemed clearly ten to fifteen years older. Every step he took was a feat in itself, but he convinced himself walking the beach was therapy.
He walked the two blocks, stopping every few steps to breathe deeply and sometimes lean against a fence to remove his shoes and rest his feet. He had told Amy his walks helped him grieve, and he knew deep down she realized the beach was where he talked to Maddy. Every night he walked to the lighthouse, and on his way back sat on one of the lifeguard chairs to smoke his evening cigar. For an hour every single night, he was with his beloved.
One evening he had been startled by the sight of a couple making love beyond the rocks. Although the darkness shielded him, the beam of the lighthouse on its rounds lit their silhouettes. His intention was not to watch, but he had found himself fixated on the perfect rhythm of their bodies speaking wordlessly to each other. His chest ached. To be young and making love to Maddy once more, the way they had that afternoon on the beach, the way he had made love to her in Colorado on that precious last night.
Now he struggled across the soft sand toward the lifeguard chair, his windbreaker blowing in the wind. It took him a few minutes to climb up the chair, more stiffness than usual in his legs and hands. The breeze felt different that night, blowing as though with a vengeance. It took him several attempts to light his cigar.
He could still hear Amy’s tone. “Be careful, big brother. It’s going to be a strong one.”
He laughed and yelled into the darkening sky. “I’m not afraid of you!”
His young Madeline had a family of her own now. She’d married Nick and given birth to a son, whom she named Michael in honor of her maiden name. For her pre-med degree she had chosen Boston University, and she and Nick had found a small but lovely home nearby. School and the baby kept her constantly busy, although she made every effort to see Peter as often as possible. Peter loved Amy, but she too had her own life with Lance and their family.
Of course everyone eventually faces death alone. Peter knew that. Only the lucky have someone—a witness—to hold their hand, someone to grieve for them when they are gone. He thought of Tara’s last words. That’s what he and Maddy should have been to one another: witnesses, living testaments to each other’s lives. He had witnessed Maddy’s death, and for that he was profoundly grateful. He had been with his darling at the very last.
Peter wiped his long, white hair from his eyes as he gazed out at the sea. He looked up at the mysterious sky, tinted deep purple. There were few stars, no separation between the ocean and the horizon. Peter drew on his cigar and allowed himself to drift away in his mind.
Every evening now he dealt with his demons, a constant fight of wills. He had episodes of delusion, Maddy in the flesh next to him, talking to him, and moments of lucidity when his reality turned to rage, his voice rose in the darkness. He yelled at Maddy, he yelled at himself, he yelled at God. He shouted out to the sea, over the wind and the waves, until his shouts turned to silent sobbing.
This was one of those rare evenings when he wasn’t irate but in a strange, peaceful state. The ocean calmed him with a glance at the rolling waves and foamy ebb. He watched the waves smash against each other and the beach.
In all his life Peter had never been a praying man, but he had been a God-fearing man, believing in a strength and power beyond human reason. He respected God as he respected the ocean, with awe and slight trepidation—a monumental force that could never be tamed or truly understood. And although he believed in freedom of will, he found himself sometimes blaming God for not interceding in his life. That was why he might contemplate church but never enter one. He pictured in his mind what his life would have been like if Madeline had been Maddy’s daughter and if he had moved to Colorado in the 1980s with Maddy and started his life over again. He wondered if Maddy had never gone blind and disappeared in the first place, all those years ago.
The wind shushed in his ears as the hood on his windbreaker flapped against his neck. He lifted the hood over his head as he rested his head on the wooden chair.
He was tired. Tired of the daily mundane rituals. Tired of making small talk while feeling alone in the world. He and Lance argued about it, but he knew no physician or psychologist could ever make him whole again. He remembered Plato.
Peter simply longed for his other half.
He closed his eyes to the sound of waves hitting the rocks in the distance. The autumn wind blew his white hair back, the chill stiffening his bones. He saw Maddy before him, beside him, holding his hand. The chocolate brown of her hair falling casually over her shoulder, the little wrinkle at the top of her nose when she laughed, the depth and innocence and, finally, wisdom in those mesmerizing hazel eyes flecked with green.
This would have been their chair. He tried to rest his thoughts, to concentrate only on breathing. The rhythm and syncopation of the waves and wind came together in an overture, the heartbeat of the evening, the same overture that had played throughout his life.
When he awoke, Peter was disoriented. The wind whipped around his head, startling him. It took him a few seconds to realize where he was. He didn’t know how long he had dozed, but his cigar had fallen by his side, burnt down to a stub. He gripped the ends of the lifeguard chair and leaned forward to find his footing. To his surprise the chair was immersed in water. The tide came up to
his feet.
The nor’easter had arrived.
Amy had warned him. She had said he had to be careful with his condition. That he should avoid being alone at night by the ocean alone. Peter wasn’t wearing his watch, but night had fallen, and not knowing the time made him feel lost. The howling wind grew louder and stronger, and the strength of the waves hit the chair as they rolled toward him. He knew Amy would be worried. When he looked down he realized the force of the waves had pushed the shoreline inland past his chair. He turned and glanced behind him. He thought of the couple he had seen making love. Perhaps if he called loud enough they might hear him.
The water must have become three feet deep by now. He had to make his way to dry sand, but the evening current would be frigid and rough. Carefully he took off his shoes and held the laces in one hand, then climbed down the chair into the water.
His hands weren’t much help, and he had to make three attempts to grasp the tall wooden chair legs below. He felt a sharp pain as his knee hit the sand. The water was so icy-cold that he gasped, and he could feel the violent current sucking at him as the waves rolled back into the sea. He clutched the legs of the chair and tried to pull himself behind it, but the waves crashed forward again into him, making it impossible to steady himself. He stretched out a hand, a shoe slipped, and the waves carried it away as quickly as it dropped.
When he turned, the sudden movement pushed him off-balance, and he fell backward. Waves rushed over his head so that his ears popped, and he swallowed a gulp of salty water. He knew he had to get to his feet quickly before the waves carried him further out. He tried to climb to his knees, even as the rough current pulled him down again. With all the force in his body he jumped up and landed on one foot, but to his astonishment the water was now up to his chest. The lifeguard chair was out reach.
The beach was dark, almost black now. Only the light of the rotating beam from the lighthouse illuminated it. He was treading water, his feet barely touching the ground, and his knees were jammed up too tight to fight the pulling waves. He relaxed his legs and started to swim.
He used his arms as best as he could to jerk his torso forward, although it didn’t get him very far. He knew soon his feet wouldn’t be able to feel anything. He tried swimming under the waves, but he had swallowed too much water, and his fatigue grew stronger every minute. He took another hit as a wave surged past. Maybe the light of the lighthouse would pass over him and someone would see him, even though he knew in his heart the stormy night was too dark for even the strongest beam.
He called out. When he made another attempt to swim, his arms tightened as well as his chest. He kicked his feet and turned onto his stomach to swim, but there was a tremendous pain in his right leg. It was starting to cramp in the freezing water. He tried to pull it straight, but that only pushed him under. He swallowed water, and as he coughed his body went down again. He came up a second time and pushed his leg out with his heel, and once again his body was thrust downward. The third time he took one long breath and released his leg. He could no longer feel the ocean floor. He was wading in the sea, thrown back and forth with the pounding waves. He took a short breath and let air out, his chest tighter with every move he made. The lifeguard chair stood in the distance, his faithful friend. It resembled a shadowy white figure in the night, and as his body drifted deeper into the ocean, he watched it with tears in his eyes.
“Thank you.” Peter whispered as he made the effort to breathe.
Now he knew he wasn’t going home tonight. He wasn’t going to see Amy or Madeline tomorrow, or the next day, or ever again. For the first time in a long time he felt neither grief nor fear. He didn’t try to fight the current. The waves were too strong, and the wind blew water crashing into his face. He allowed his body to float, and he felt one with the ocean, staring into the pitch-black sky.
So this is what it had come to. An entire life ending in a single moment in a single night alone in the dark, in this cold and uncompromising ocean—this force he had loved all his life, knowing he could never tame or truly understand it.
“God!” he said under his breath. “I’m so scared.”
Peter’s eye was caught by a sparkle of light, and he turned his head, swallowing water. A tiny diamond necklace flashed and twinkled out of the darkness at him. Then there was his Maddy smiling into his eyes, young and beautiful again. She laughed, her nose wrinkling a little at the top, and when she put out her hands a gold ring glimmered on her finger, surrounding her with a golden glow.
Peter took a long look around him, as he closed his eyes and let all the air out of his chest. The weight of his body pulled him down and with it his last breath. He reached out his hands, his own gold ring gleaming when it finally touched hers.
“Maddy—”
THE END
The Shoebox Page 30