Maybe telling him, instead of keeping it to myself, would lessen my distress because I was scared now. Very scared. The data were clear—something was amiss when I couldn’t center a simple two-sided structure in the middle of a canvas.
He looked so solid, so dependable sitting there, the afternoon sun highlighting his blue eyes, that glisten of white in his gray hair—no doubt about it, Ash was devastatingly beautiful in a totally masculine way. Why I was pushing him away when I could have him closer didn’t make sense anymore. He was still in love with his late wife, but she wasn’t here; I was here, and he wanted me. I took a sip of wine, fixed my eyes on the colorful swaths of pink, orange, red, and gold that covered the darkening sky, and I told him about Sliding into the Deep and how I’d made four attempts to get the shed centered on the canvas.
“But the fourth attempt, that one worked?”
“Lynn was quite happy and so was I. Now, though, she wants me to paint the darn thing.”
“And you’re afraid that you’ll paint outside the lines, make the sky blood orange, and the structure a shed in shambles from a hurricane?”
I glanced down to where our clasped hands rested on the white tablecloth. He hadn’t let me feel alone, not once. Nor had he mocked me. My dad would have said, “Buck up, face what you fear, and stop being a baby.” Emory would have said, “You’ll be all right, babe,” and turned the conversation to his job, but not Ash. He clasped my hand tighter. That’s why I was able to admit my deepest fear.
“Sometimes that’s how I feel, Ash, when I can’t control what’s happening to me. My brain feels like scrambled eggs in a hurricane, and in the next minute, I come back to myself and I’m okay again.”
His hand tightened on mine as if he would never let me go. “You’ll be fine, Dart. This is just overwork and stress. Dr. McCloud is the best in the business, and if he didn’t find anything out of the ordinary, then believe that this too will pass.”
“But he asked me to come back in six months.” I hadn’t told Ash that part of the conversation. “Is this how it went for Jennifer?”
“No,” and now his gaze went to the horizon and the setting sun. “Every person is unique in this disease. Until the end, and then Alzheimer’s, FTD, Lewy body dementia—they all result in the same thing. The brain dies.” Despite his sad voice, his words were steady.
“While the heart lives.” My quavering voice wasn’t sad.
“You read too much, honey.” His deliberate attempt to lighten the conversation steadied me. “I prescribe no internet for the rest of the weekend.”
I looked at him, and that glisten of white in his hair distracted me, and my fingers ached to trace the pattern those threads made against the iron gray.
“What are we going to do, Ash?”
“You’re coming home with me.”
“I am?”
“You are.” He paid the bill and then pulled out my chair. Together we walked from the restaurant along the pier to the car. “We’re going to sleep in the same bed, so that each of us gets a good night’s sleep. We’ll hold hands, I’ll kiss you good night, and I expect you to be there, warm and snug against my side when I wake up. Since Jennifer’s been gone, I don’t sleep well by myself, and I suspect that you don’t either, Dart.” He looked at me. “Do you?”
I thought of the nights I woke at two a.m., again at three a.m., thinking what I would do if I were sick, and the fear I felt at what lay ahead of me wouldn’t let me go back to sleep, even though I desperately needed the rest.
“We’ll go sailing tomorrow. No one can have worries on the ocean. Not allowed, Dart.”
“Then I’ll leave them behind on shore.”
“Where the tide will take them out until there’s nothing left to worry about.”
“Will I be okay, Ash?”
He turned me toward him, took me by the shoulders, drew me closer there in the twilight of darkness, and pressed a soft, tender kiss upon my lips. “I’ve been trying to tell you, babe.” I smiled despite myself because he knew how much I hated that word. “What happens next won’t be your fault. Both of us will be okay as long as we have each other.”
I leaned back to look at him. “Tell me the truth”—before the light goes and I can no longer tell if you are lying to me or not. “Do you miss her?”
“Every day, but she told me to live and, with you, I want to.”
After a few weeks, Ash scheduled another meeting between Hendrix and me. Reluctant, I found all sorts of excuses, but these past few weeks of trying to keep up with my normal job responsibilities and TRI’s work had convinced me that I needed help. My brain seemed more sluggish and slower every week. I found myself preoccupied with counting. How many bridges did I cross on the way to Wilmington? How many boats did I see on the Intracoastal Waterway? White Acuras? Black Mercedes?
Maybe Ash was right that a partnership between TRI and the university might work.
Susan and Lynn were helping me with the training manual I was writing for TRI’s website; however, we had too many ideas. Obviously, TRI needed more members, but how to recruit them? That remained the question. What was becoming increasingly clear was that Susan and Lynn had very different ideas about how to do what needed to be done. The result was a mess of agendas that pulled us apart.
And Ellen promised me she’d call, yet Bill hadn’t heard from her, nor had I, nor had her relatives and friends. Bill wanted to give her another week. She’d indicated her spiritual guide in Mexico had specified a blackout period, effectively isolating her from those who loved her. More and more this was beginning to feel like a cult, but Bill insisted she was happy there and not afraid.
When I entered the dean’s suite, Ash understood why I put my phone on the conference table. Not so Hendrix.
“How rude to take a personal call during business meetings. Nothing, not even your cousin’s minor health issues, can be more important that solving Southern poverty.”
She was so good at making me look self-centered that I almost had to admire her for it. Odd, what one believes despite evidence to the contrary.
“This is the concession I’m willing to make.” I turned off the ringer. I could still see texts that came through, and it would vibrate instead of ring.
“They’ll call back if you miss the call, Dart.” Hendrix’s grimace seemed overdone to me, but Ash didn’t say a word.
I left the phone alone and turned to her. “Ash wants us to work together, and I have to admit I’m overwhelmed with all I have on my plate. How do you see us working together?”
Hendrix wasn’t pleased with my overture. She thought I was trying to make myself look better. Maybe it was the words “working together” that angered her. Those words didn’t fit her mind-set of me as a self-centered know-it-all who didn’t respect others because I had more experience and better credentials.
“TRI belongs here,” her finger hit the table. “The intellects that can think through complex problems and solve them are here—not out there.” She waved her hand toward the window of the dean’s office and the poverty-stricken neighborhood that bordered the university campus. A developer had bought up all the properties there and would soon bring the wrecking ball in to demolish the homes that had sheltered the poor. I was one of the few faculty members who thought the poor shouldn’t have been displaced, but Hendrix belonged to the other camp, the one that promoted growth and change no matter who was inconvenienced.
“Do you think those people”—and again she waved her hand toward the slum area—“can come up with ideas that might solve their plight? If so, wouldn’t they would have done it by now? No one in their right mind wants to live as they do, to go to bed hungry at night and not know where their next meal is coming from.”
“Most of them work two or three jobs,” I said. “They try their best to provide food for their families, and sometimes they fail.” I leaned toward her, willing her to understand. “All of us are one step away from where they are.”
“The system is
n’t broken. The poor need to work smarter, but they don’t have the intelligence to do that. This university does.”
She hadn’t read Lea’s risk and decision-making research. I leaned away from her, wanting nothing to do with that outdated rationalization. “You envision TRI as a think tank of university professors?”
“Yes,” she said, and her big contented smile made me pause. I still believed my grass roots movement, despite faltering at the moment, was the way to make a difference in the lives of the impoverished. University professors were too removed from the realities of being poor. We had a profession that offered us autonomy, not service jobs where we punched a clock or were at the mercy of quotas. Granted, some government officials and administrators wanted to bring that organizational pattern to the ivory tower, but ideas and truth, the quests we engaged in, didn’t conform to that business model.
Hendrix continued to outline her plans for TRI. I had asked her how we might work together, but I had ceased to listen. Breaking into her monologue, I said, “Dr. Hendrix and I can’t work together, Dean Wright. Her ideas about how she wants TRI to look are very different from what made my think tank the success it is today.”
“You don’t have a choice,” Hendrix said before the dean could speak.
“Yes, I do,” I said. “TRI is my idea, my work, my quest, mine. What you’re proposing will lock its light in darkness. Universities are no longer the center of thought in this country.”
“You’ve lost your mind.”
“And we did it to ourselves, locking ourselves into an ivory tower, refusing to get our feet wet, our hands dirty. We have to work with the people, not hold them at bay.”
“You want to teach the masses how to think?” Hendrix looked aghast at the very thought of that. “Dart,” she said, edging closer, “they don’t want to think. Edison said it best: five percent of the people think, ten percent of the people think they think, and the other eighty-five would rather die than think.”
She pitied me, she did, and I hated it.
“I took a group of older women from all walks of life, some of them impoverished—”
“One of them a criminal,” Kathleen interjected.
“Mary Beth didn’t commit a crime.”
Hendrix paid me no attention. “And the other a slut of a bar-maid who can’t keep her pants on.”
“Classy’s not a slut and she’s happy with Sandy.”
Had Bill’s text not diverted my attention I might have hit her, she’d made me so angry with those false accusations against my friends.
Ellen missing.
Went for hike in mtns this morning and has not returned. I’m leaving for Mexico tonight. Will keep you posted.
He’d copied their kids and myself. I felt dizzy with dread and wondered why Bill hadn’t let me know earlier. I would have gone with him. I must have looked devastated because Ash leaned nearer, and said, “You okay?”
“Ellen went for a hike in the mountains this morning, and she’s missing.”
“I’m sorry, Dart.” He reached out to touch my hand, and if Hendrix hadn’t been in the room, I knew he would have pulled me close. That’s what I wanted him to do, for I wanted the touch of his hands on my shoulders, the warmth of his body against mine, to drive away the cold that had swept me up when I read about Ellen.
“Dart—” he started to say, but my phone pinged again, another message coming in. Maybe Bill had been wrong, and I turned my attention from Ash to the message. But it wasn’t from Bill. This text was from the Salzburg Global Seminar.
Congratulations. We’re pleased to announce that you are our choice to lead the Salzburg Global Institute symposium on world poverty.
“Now what?” Hendrix snarled the words because I wasn’t paying attention to her. I was rereading the text because they wanted me to host, they really did.
I looked up from the text and told Ash, “The Salzburg Global Seminar has asked me to host a symposium on world poverty.”
Hendrix started to smile in anticipation.
I ignored her and said, “I’m willing to work with the university, but Dr. Hendrix doesn’t deserve the honor of being with me on the world’s stage at Salzburg.” I had Salzburg and I didn’t need Hendrix’s fire or energy to keep me going. I would do whatever it took to keep the fury in check long enough to get me to Salzburg and to take TRI international.
Hendrix started to sputter, but Ash ignored her as well. “I understand,” he said. “The university will support you in any way we can. Just tell us how.”
“Now, wait a minute,” Hendrix said.
She was still yelling at him when I told Ash we’d discuss details later and excused myself to contact Bill.
TWELVE
CLASSY AND SANDY were waiting for me when I got home that night. I pulled the old Volvo into the parking space on the street and walked up the steep flight of concrete stairs to where they sat on the porch swing. Seeing them there brought back memories of eating cookies with Emory, my ex-husband, on that swing while he told me he’d come home to die, of my sister-inlaw, Sarah, buying those blue ceramic pots and filling them with red geraniums. Although she’d divorced my brother, David, I filled the pots every summer, and the blooms lasted deep into fall. Classy knew my memories tantalized me here, and she had plans to add yet another one.
I set my briefcase down and settled into my brown wicker rocking chair. Nice of them to leave me my favorite spot. Across the front yard, the street, and the park beyond, the Cape Fear River flowed into the Atlantic Ocean, and I could smell the salt and the sea and feel the wind in my hair.
Sandy grasped Classy’s hand. She returned the squeeze and looked to him for help.
“What happened?” I asked, for I could tell that something had dimmed their expectations.
“The Southport police department downsized the force,” Sandy said, his brown eyes resigned to the inevitable. “I’m on an unpaid leave of absence for a few months, and I’m not old enough, nor do I have enough money to retire.” He looked out to the ocean. “The thing is, Classy and I don’t have a place to go.” The ocean breeze lifted his hair back from his high forehead. “Without my paycheck, all we’ve got is Classy’s Social Security, and we can no longer afford the rent on the house we moved into.”
My dad would have given them a few dollars for gas and kicked them down the road, but I wasn’t my Dad.
“I can get my job back at the bar,” Classy said. “I already talked to them about that. Don’s happy to have me, but Sandy and I were hoping that if my old room wasn’t taken, we could stay here for a bit, just until we get ourselves on our feet.”
“We would love to have you back,” said Susan. She and Lynn came up the steps, their arms wide open. Classy screamed, jumped up, and hugged them. Sandy seemed nervous, and when I nodded, he nodded his head as if to say, I owe you one, and went down to get his and Classy’s suitcases from the car.
As the porch erupted into noise, I sat there, in my own world, stunned by how the fury within my mind had disrupted reality. Classy’s room was still empty. So was Mary Beth’s. Without that income, I’d be in the red in a matter of months.
I remembered I’d had the rooms cleaned, but I’d closed the door to each bedroom and forgotten about them. That I’d passed those closed doors every night on the way to bed and hadn’t thought once about renting them out or fretted about the loss of income shocked me.
What else had I overlooked?
What else wasn’t I paying attention to?
Dinner that night was noisy and loud with plenty of laughter. Classy kept reaching out to pat Sandy’s shoulder or include him in the conversations with Susan and Lynn. The poor man couldn’t find time to eat the meal Lynn had prepared.
When my phone rang, I recognized Bill’s number and motioned for Sandy to bring his plate and fork, and together we went out on the porch so we could hear Bill’s update on Ellen.
Outside, the night was as bright and full of silvery moonlight as if it were dayligh
t. I put the phone on speaker and told Bill that Sandy was with me.
“You’ve got to come down here, Sandy,” Bill said. Search and rescue had searched all afternoon he told us, found nothing, and would begin again in the morning. The frustration in his voice broke into demand. “They won’t listen to me. You’re a cop, Sandy, they’ll listen to you.”
“Bill, I’d be glad to help you out, but I don’t know those fellas.”
“They aren’t out searching for her.”
“Night falls quickly there. They’ll find her in the morning.”
“She’s alone.”
“Don’t do anything stupid, Bill. They’ll find her. She’ll be okay.”
“It may already be too late.”
“Don’t think like that. She’ll be happy to see you in the morning. You stay put tonight. You hear me, Bill?”
“I need you, Sandy. Please, you have to come.”
Sandy looked at me, and I nodded my head. The money I’d been saving for a new furnace would get him down to Mexico.
“Your friend Thomas, in Anchor’s Pointe,” Sandy asked, “should I contact him or catch a commercial flight out of Wilmington to Mexico in the morning?”
“Tom’s ready and willing to fly anytime to help me out with this. He’ll bring you down. I’ll call him tonight. Just be ready first thing in the morning.”
“No sense you falling off a mountain in the dark between now and then,” Sandy said. “Promise me you’ll stay put in the motel.”
“I’ve no choice. It’s too dark to see anything.”
“You won’t be able to bring Ellen home if you’re laid up.”
“Just get here, man. I need you. They won’t listen to me.” He hung up on us.
Sandy started pacing the porch once I disconnected. “That little gal out in the wilderness. . . .”
“Ellen gets lost in Walmart,” I said. “If she’s stumbling around those mountains in the dark, her body weakened with cancer. . . .”
Sandy paced fasted. “Not to mention what that faith healer has her taking,” he said. “Could be hallucinogenic weeds for all we know. She had to have been out of her mind to go into those mountains.”
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