“I get that, Dad. I just can’t—there have to be boundaries.”
“I agree.”
“And I have my girls to think about now.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I cannot have her influence over them at this stage of their lives.” She breathed out. “If ever.” Their eyes locked—the same eyes, green and intelligent—until she smiled and said, “So. Wait till you see the new skis the hubs bought me recently …”
Westley leaned back, away from the gnawed bones of fried chicken and the remains of mashed potatoes and gravy. Away from his shimmering green beans and sweet iced tea. He leaned back and crossed his legs slowly, listening to his daughter as she talked about the gift Sturgill had surprised her with. He smiled. Nodded a few times for good measure.
A success. His life had been a success. If he died in this moment, at this table, with this half-eaten meal in front of him and the clatter from the open kitchen and dining area nearly drowning out his thoughts and their conversation … he had accomplished all that he’d wanted. He’d married a beautiful woman whom he loved and who loved him, in spite of it all. Together, they’d raised a daughter—a good and godly girl, decent and kind by nature—and lived to see her married, a mother herself, and now an accomplished research physician. He had worked a job that hardly seemed like work at all. Hadn’t that been what he’d always been taught? Find a job you love doing and it won’t seem like work at all.
Well, it was true. Indeed. Life had been good. Good, all along.
Chapter Forty-one
Today
Allison
Isn’t life funny. For a moment, the briefest of time, one thinks one has it all. One is happy. Content. But one knows—or at least I knew—that if I were so satisfied, then life would suddenly turn, and I would no longer be.
I think—no, I believe—that since the evening Michelle came down the stairs and into the family room to tell us of Cindie’s impending divorce, I’d been consciously aware that “happy” and “content” are only temporary emotions. Fickle perhaps. Untrustworthy.
So much since has changed. Evolved. I am a woman in my mid-sixties now, my dark hair streaked with gray, which I pay my hairdresser to color away every six weeks. My body is still fit, if not a little pudgy. I’m a widow, my husband having passed away nearly a decade ago. A heart attack, of course. He could only run from the inevitable for so long, and then, there it was, knocking at the door of his life again. Only, this time, death would not leave without him.
And so, I buried my husband. My wonderful, remarkable, often impetuous Westley. I had already buried my mother and Westley’s father and Miss Justine. Since Westley’s death, I have also buried my father and Westley’s mother, a woman who never quite recovered from her oldest son’s death. “Untimely,” she called it. But I wondered. Perhaps Westley had beat death once and, this time, he headed toward a wave he couldn’t slice into.
It didn’t happen all at once, like with Miss Justine. I didn’t find my husband in bed, lifeless. Instead, I received a phone call at the downtown office we’d leased for the drugstores after Miss Justine’s passing. The available thousand-square-foot space with exposed-brick-and-plaster walls and scarred, unpolished wood flooring had, at one time, been a candy- and ice-cream shop where children gathered after school, the younger ones with their parents, the older ones without. Miss Penelope’s had been an iconic Odenville site until Miss Penelope, an old spinster with a knack for bringing joy to everyone around her, passed on to her heavenly reward. Without heirs, the shop closed and remained that way until Westley had the idea to turn it into the office/storage space for the drugstores.
“We’ll add a few walls,” he suggested. “Make a boardroom where local groups can hold their meetings.”
“What kind of groups?” I asked as we walked through the dust-laden space.
He slipped his arm around my shoulder and drew me close. “You know, sweetheart. Book clubs. Women’s meetings. Men’s clubs. They can go across the street to Mama Jean’s, grab a cup of coffee and some donuts … whatever … and then come here. We’ll be the spot for this kind of thing.”
“But what will we get out of it? Do we charge?”
He squeezed my shoulder. “No, baby. We’re giving back to the community. That’s all.”
Westley had been right. What the good citizens of Odenville dubbed the drugstore office became the hub for club meetings, but it also offered me a chance to get to see how Westley’s work at the pharmacy had touched so many. Everyone loved Westley. Through the years, I’d become so enmeshed in raising Michelle—her schooling, her socializing—and my work at Miss Justine’s that I had failed to realize his influence on our small section of the world.
Now, I knew.
It was here, while a book club gathered in the boardroom early one afternoon as the summer’s heat gave way to autumn’s promise, that I sat at my desk, entering numbers into the computer as I had once entered into a ledger, that my phone rang and an anxious pharmacy tech told me to “come quick.”
And so, to the pharmacy I went. Just as I’d done that afternoon when I had a sore throat all those years ago. Only this time, I ran. Because, this time—unlike the day I followed Michelle’s dictate that her father needed me behind the house—this time, I understood. This time, I knew.
No, Westley wouldn’t dare leave the world in a snap. Instead, he lingered twelve days. Long hours upon hours where, every day, I sat by his bed where he lay comatose under a DNR sign. In a room where machines pumped and whirred, blinked numbers and codes, sending fluids in, drawing fluids out … keeping his heart beating and his lungs breathing. I stroked his arm, held his hand, worked his fingers when they curled inward as if in some wild attempt to hold on to a life that wanted him to let go. I spoke reassurances to him, telling him I knew he could beat this. That he had to stick around to see our grandchildren grow up and do all the great things we’d dreamed of. I reminded him how he’d planned to teach them to ski … and ride bikes—to enjoy life. I pressed into him the memory of how much we loved him—all of us—and that he had been the best husband I could have ever dreamed of having. The best father for Michelle …
Michelle, who had come down right away, leaving her work behind. Then, ten days after his heart attack, she and I made the godawful decision to end all life support. Michelle’s arm slid around my shoulder as my shaking hand scrawled my name on a solid line I barely could see … the final okay to bring our marriage to a close.
“It won’t happen right away,” his doctor told us. “Could be days. His heart is weak, but his lungs are still in good shape.” And then he left us.
“I have killed your father,” I whispered to Michelle when the door closed behind him.
“No,” she said, her voice choking. “You’ve merely allowed God to make the final decision.”
From then on, the only time I dared leave Westley, whether to get a cup of coffee or stretch my legs, was when Michelle insisted, saying she’d call immediately if anything changed. So, on those rare occasions, I kept my phone in my hand as I stepped down the now-familiar corridors, or entered the noisy cafeteria for coffee, and even as I sat in the tiny hospital chapel with its nondescript stained glass window and icons and books welcoming anyone of any faith to come in, to reflect, or pray.
Although I was able to sit quietly and draw strength from the words of those who had prayed there previously, I found saying my own impossible. Perhaps, I mused, their words lingered in this room of low lights and padded pews. Perhaps they rested on the heavy silver candlesticks or along the table near the front where a scattering of meditative books and pamphlets lay. Or, maybe, they skipped along the measures and bars of the almost imperceptible piped-in music. I don’t know; I only know that they were there, and it was upon a padded pew that I sat when the phone vibrated with a text message from Michelle. “Come quick,” it read.
I bounded up. Ran out. Dashed down hallways and up the staircase, not wanting to wait for the elevator.
“Please, God,” I said over and over. “Please God …”
I cannot tell you, even now, what I was asking God for. Please don’t let my husband die ever? Please don’t let him die without me beside him? Please let him, by some miracle, be okay? But I can say, with the greatest marvel, that as I bounded toward his room, a memory crossed my mind. A flash of the night we stood outside my parents’ home—my childhood home—standing toe to toe in our first real battle. Westley was leaving me to live in Odenville for the two months preceding our wedding. But, as he’d always been able to do, he’d won the skirmish and had pulled me into his arms, almost without a fight from me. And there we’d spoken the words that now seemed to reverberate between the narrowing hospital walls, the precisely placed opened and closed and half-closed doors of the patients’ rooms.
“I don’t like the idea of you not being here,” I’d said. “With me. Always.”
“Me either. But it’s just a little while, sweetheart. Not forever. Never forever.”
I ran into Westley’s room to see two nurses working, although I could not register what the work of their hands entailed. Michelle stood next to her father, her hand on his chest, her arm stretched out as though she were casting some type of healing spell on him. I didn’t know what it meant, but I did the same—I pressed my left hand against the blue-and-white hospital gown, watched my wedding set rise and fall in the rhythm of the ever-slowing heartbeat of my husband, my life partner. His breathing had become more labored than before and the monitor’s beep-beep-beep slowed to vast spans of time between.
One of the nurses said something—I don’t know what—and left the room, then reentered. I looked up at Michelle whose eyes spilled tears but without her sobbing. “What?” I asked her. “Why aren’t they doing something?”
Michelle glanced at the DNR, telling me without words that there was nothing they could, by law, do. Westley had a directive, as did I. We’d signed them together. Only, I never thought we’d need them. Somehow, I’d believed we’d live forever … never truly growing old, never really growing tired. That, even though we’d buried our loved ones, Westley and I would carry on and death would never separate us.
The beating under our hands thumped in finality. His breath came in puffs. Once … twice … three times. Finally, a fourth intake of air—a last gasp of our time together—followed by a long sigh, and it was over. Westley’s life. My life. “Oh, Wes,” I cried, my knees buckling, my hands gripping the siderails of the bed.
Michelle came around, gathered me up and helped me to the chair I’d let out to sleep in every night, then slid in beside me. Together, we sobbed until our own breathing became normal again. Michelle whispered, “Mom, we need to let the nurses take care of things.”
I nodded and we rose to leave the room, but not before I gave Westley a final kiss. While his lips were still warm. While his spirit still hovered. While he could see—oh, surely he could—how much I would always love him.
An hour later, Michelle and I left the hospital to plan a funeral. To make the necessary calls to family and friends. To somehow … somehow … begin a new normal.
Southern women are strong by nature, my grandmother once told me. We are the true Scarlett O’Haras. We raise our radishes into the air and declare that, “as God is my witness we shall never go hungry again.” Remember that …
And so I stayed in Odenville and continued to run the drugstores. I joined one of the book clubs. For a while, I became active in a Single & Over Fifty group at our church, which too often was made up of men looking for “a nurse or a purse,” or women who wanted to man bash. I wanted neither. I would never marry again; this much was for sure. I’d had too many years of wonderful to ever settle for anything less. Perfect? No. But wonderful. Always easy? Definitely not. But … wonderful. I wouldn’t trade a moment of the bad with Westley for a second of the best with someone else.
Westley never fully left me. I sensed his presence. I caught the trail of his cologne as I walked within the rooms of our home. I talked out loud to him, then “heard” his retorts.
Your favorite movie is coming on TV this weekend …
Which favorite movie…
When Harry Met Sally …
Ali … that’s your favorite movie … Mine is, and always will be, Black Hawk Down.
I laugh. No, Westley … When Harry Met Sally is yours. Remember? I want what she’s having …
Oh, yeah … Let me see your best Meg Ryan …
Each night I held his pillow close to my breast and imagined kissing him goodnight. Then, as my eyes closed and I slipped into dreamland, I felt the heat of his arms coming around me. The strength of them. “I love you,” I whispered into the dark of every night. This sustained me.
During those first years, for the most part, I filled my days with work, which didn’t seem like work at all. Westley had always told Michelle: find something you love to do and then figure out a way to make money doing it. Well, I had. I wasn’t changing and touching lives like Westley had or my old friend Elaine continued to do, and I missed my time with Miss Justine and Ro-Bay, but I enjoyed my days. Routine days at times, but I knew I could count on them.
Routine days include routines. Each morning I woke at the sound of an alarm, put my feet on the floor, tossed the covers back over the bed, then padded into the bathroom. Minutes later, I slipped downstairs and into the kitchen where I made my morning coffee, sat at the breakfast table, opened my iPad, answered emails, then played Spider Solitaire to help wake my brain along with the caffeine. Then I headed back upstairs for my shower. I dressed, then went to the downtown office. Every day, the same thing. Except Saturdays and Sundays.
Saturdays I slept in. During the day I took care of things around the house, did my shopping, took in a movie … that sort of thing.
Sundays I slept in and went to church, then came home, grabbed a book, curled up in my chair, and read until I fell into the best sleep ever—a Sunday afternoon nap.
But routines can be interrupted and so it was that one Thursday morning as I took my shower, life’s minutes slowed to a stop. I sucked in my breath as I glided the loofa sponge over my right breast and felt the abnormality. A lump.
I dropped the sponge, pressed my fingers against the area. Raised my arm and rubbed in circles. Yes … a lump. Small, but it was there.
As soon as I got out of the shower, I found my phone and, while sitting on the edge of the bed, called Michelle and explained what I had felt.
“How big?” she asked me.
“Like a pea?” I said as though unsure.
“Hard or soft?”
“Soft.”
“Painful?”
“No. Not at all. Is that good or bad?”
“Does it move?” she asked, not answering my question.
“No. Michelle?” I said, my radish raised and my voice remarkably strong. “Is all this good or bad?”
“Mom, I can’t say. I mean, my gut tells me that your first step is to call your doctor and get in to see him as soon as you can. When was your last mammo?”
“Six months ago, I think. Wait … yes. Six months. Maybe seven.”
“But within the last year.”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Call and get an appointment. They’ll probably want to do another mammo.”
“I’ll call when I get to the office.”
“Do not get distracted. Call.”
“I will. I promise. But … Michelle, what do you think?”
“It’s probably nothing, Mom.”
Chapter Forty-two
I was right.
Not initially, because life, and its complications, comes in stages.
“The doctor said it’s nothing but that we’ll watch it,” I told Michelle a little over two weeks and a mammogram later.
“Let’s get a second opinion,” she suggested.
But I nixed the idea. “I’m sure it’s nothing, Michelle,” I said, because that’s what I wanted it to be. Nothing.
&n
bsp; Over the next year, however, as the world dealt with a pandemic and civil unrest, the lump grew from a pea to a grape. Still unmoving. Still painless. But growing. I spent those months lying to my daughter, telling her everything was okay. That nothing had changed. When I finally admitted the truth, she immediately took time off from work and drove down to be with me through the next round of office visits. The new doctor. The next mammo. The sonogram. The biopsy followed by gene testing. And Michelle sat beside me in the new doctor’s office when she pronounced the diagnosis—invasive ductal carcinoma, Stage II, Type II—and listened while the discussion of lumpectomy versus mastectomy was beat nearly to death.
“I want you to come back to Wilmington with me,” Michelle told me as soon as we’d settled in her car but before she pushed the Start button. “I mean it. I won’t take no for an answer.”
“Michelle,” I said, pulling the safety belt over me and locking it. “I’m sure that—”
“I swear, Mom. I will pack your bags myself and throw you into this car.Hear me?”
“Lord-a-mercy, you sound like your father.”
“Dad would want you to come back to Wilmington with me. Especially these days.” She paused long enough to give me her best I’m-a-doctor-I-know-what-I’m-talking-about smile. “I guess a global pandemic wasn’t enough for you, huh?”
“You know me,” I returned. “I don’t do anything halfway.” I also smiled, but inside my heart squeezed. She had played the “Dad” card. Thing is, I knew she was right—Westley wouldn’t ask me to go, he would demand it.
And so, I went, hopeful I would hear a completely different conclusion to the tests. But the diagnosis was the same. However, this new doctor gave me a third choice: double mastectomy. “To avoid future issues,” he said.
I allowed myself days to decide, finally settling on having both breasts removed. After all, I wasn’t planning to marry again—or date for that matter—and I surely wasn’t going to nurse a baby.
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