The Wide Circumference of Love

by Marita Golden

  The affection she felt for Alan was deep, important. A kind of love, but not the kind he craved. Alan had resurrected her fluency in the art of affection and concern, it was acknowledged and received. That had been enough.

  But now her anger was a blazing, blunt force. She, too, had imagined a life free of Alzheimer’s. Only now did she allow herself to realize that she had not imagined a cure, a magic pill, a discovery to turn back the clock. She had only imagined and dreamed of an end. An end to Gregory’s suffering and with it, the end of her suffering as well. She had been noble and brave and terrified and confused.

  But she did not want to marry Alan. She would have to carve out some place that was her own, a place that nourished her even as she remained tied to Gregory but not tied down. She didn’t want to marry Alan; she wanted to marry herself. His offer of love and devotion inspired her to fight even more, for this new, gestating self she had yet to meet. What would she do with the rest of her life?

  Months ago, Diane had gone through all of Gregory’s papers with Lauren and decided what to donate to Caldwell & Tate’s archives and what they would keep. Looking through the stacks of photo albums had become a ritual of remembrance and gratitude. The photos captured a bountiful, blessed life, a life she had taken for granted. Her personal history was full to the brim—birthday parties, graduations, weddings, Thanksgiving dinners, awards ceremonies, Christmas mornings. And now a new album held photos of her grandson, Daniel Burris Stone, being breastfed while held by his mother, sleeping in his father’s arms, sucking his tiny fingers in his mouth, held by Gregory, baptized at two months old.

  One evening, Diane opened an album and on the first page saw the photos her father had mailed her a few weeks before his death. The photo of her parents on the day of their wedding: Her mother stunned, eyes bright. Her father solemn, wary, facing the camera but clutching Ella tightly around her waist. The photo of Diane sitting on her father’s lap as all of them—her baby brother, her mother, and father—lay sprawled on a blanket in Meridian Hill Park.

  She was the child of a family fractured by a crime and the loss and abandonment that consumed them in its wake, but the picture captured how her family had started, all the love and hope that had once formed the contours of their world. Her father had abandoned them. She had turned her back on her father.

  But Gregory, she thought, turning to a page of photos of her, Gregory, Lauren, and Sean, watching fireworks, he had offered Diane another chance. Another way. He had stood firm, stood tall, always facing her and never looking away, his arms open wide.

  The search for a new home was a pilgrimage. Diane ventured into the gleaming condominiums and apartment buildings, each walk-through a solo flight.

  She claimed her new home moments after stepping across the portal. Two months into evenings spent researching on the Internet, talking with a Realtor friend of Paula’s, and spending hours forgoing her car and walking the streets of the refurbished, remade city, Diane found the building. A twelve-story tower on New York Avenue. Sleek teak cabinets and quartz countertops in the kitchen. The stone shower, the small, elegant chandelier in the dining room were all touches that she was sure Gregory would have liked. The floor-to-ceiling windows ushered sunlight into all the rooms and lifted her as she stood in the model two-bedroom. She had been unaware of how stifled and choked she felt at home until she stood in the top-floor unit. Each day she would look out into a skyscape that reflected the design of the life she now planned: open, free-form as clouds. She chose the top floor to conquer her fear of heights. That would be one more thing she would have to get over. Give up.

  She had expected to feel some remorse, even regret as she began deciding what to donate and what to take with her to her new home. She had done this for Gregory and now she was doing it for herself. What was home and where was it?

  When she examined the house closely and saw how it had aged—the sagging gutters, the water-stained ceilings in the basement, the decades-old bathroom fixtures, the cracks in the drywall—Diane decided what to do. The mortgage had been paid years ago. She would let Sean and Valerie live in the house, make repairs, pay the property taxes. It would be their wedding gift. She was moving out and moving on but Diane wanted the house to remain in the family.

  “You looked surprised to see me,” Diane said. “Did you write us off? Fire me without notice?”

  She hadn’t called Alan in almost two months, afraid to risk summary rejection over the phone. Instead, she’d shown up uninvited, without warning. Waited, parked outside his house for twenty minutes before approaching the front door and ringing the bell. Now they sat in his living room.

  “I wasn’t expecting this, that’s all,” he said.

  She thought of the dance of their bodies moments ago when he’d chosen not to sit beside her on the sofa but in an armchair across the room. Silence froze them in place. They sat not looking at one another, as though the gaze they had once hungered for was now taboo.

  Finally, Alan asked, “How’ve you been?”

  “I moved out of the house into an apartment. A condo on New York Avenue. I’m having a housewarming party in a few weeks and I’d like you to come.”

  “So now we’re supposed to just be friends? I asked you to marry me. You said no.”

  “I said no to marriage. I didn’t say no to you.”

  “You’re talking like a lawyer, like a judge, playing word games.”

  “I’m asking you to think not just about what you want and need but what I can give. It’s not just about you, Alan. It’s about me, too.”

  “I didn’t call you because I figured we had said everything there was to say. I was all out of words.”

  That is exactly how I feel, she wanted to say but did not. “I’m glad you didn’t call. I needed time to think, to collect myself.”

  As Diane spoke, Alan stood up and neared the sofa, leaning on the baby grand piano.

  “I wanted to put those pieces back together,” he said.

  “Only I can do that.”

  “What do you want, Diane? Why did you come?”

  “I can’t be your wife, but I’m yours if you will have me.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  SEPTEMBER 2016

  Sean and Valerie married in the chapel of the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, where the funeral of abolitionist Fredrick Douglass was held. Where First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and poet Paul Laurence Dunbar spoke from the pulpit. The site of the memorial for Ramsey Tate.

  This was the Tate’s family church.

  Uncle Ray had walked Diane down the same aisle. Paula was her bridesmaid; Mercer, Gregory’s best man.

  She had faced Gregory, holding his hands, imagining flight even as she held on to his fingers tighter with that thought. Her mother’s face had unfurled in her mind, and she vowed to have all the happiness Ella had been denied, all the happiness that had been stolen from her, all the happiness she had not lived long enough to reclaim. Her mother, whom she had never forgiven for denying her knowledge of her father, for being small, afraid, selfish, and protective of her secrets and lies. On that day of frightful exhilaration, holding Gregory’s hands, that tiny stone of anger had lifted.

  So lost in thoughts of her mother was Diane that she had to be asked twice, “Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?” Gregory’s thumb wiping away her tears brought her back.

  She’d whispered, “I do,” and then shouted, “I do,” as the congregation had broken into laughter.

  Metropolitan AME was still not a large structure. But its red brick facade, white spires, steeples, and stained glass windows imbued it with the feel of a building both grand and welcoming. Its design was an architectural conversation that captured the aspirations both heavenly and earthly of the original founders of the denomination, and this, one of the city’s oldest African American congregations.

  When Diane and Gregory arrived, the pews were half-filled and people were filing in. Diane saw Valerie’s mother and
sisters. Valerie’s uncle would walk her down the aisle. Cameron would be the ring bearer. Family and friends surrounded them; Gregory the nexus of hugs and kisses. He bore it and took it in. Margaret entered on Bruce’s arm and her approach parted everyone. She reached for Gregory’s hand and draped it over her arm as they entered the sanctuary. During the ceremony, Gregory was flanked by Margaret on one side and Diane on the other.

  Sean and Lauren were baptized at the church. But the family’s attendance had been sporadic and occasional. Despite the years of distance, whether it was due to Gregory’s cancer, business troubles, or Alzheimer’s, something occasionally brought Diane back—for the community, for the collective affirmation of faith in what she could not see and did not need proof of. The new, young pastor had visited them at home before Gregory went to Somersby and even now sometimes visited him there.

  There had been so much she felt she could not bring here. Her anger. The day she slapped Gregory. Her wish for it all to end. Her longing for Alan. Everything she did at Somersby was sacred, an act of faith, but she loved this place. Her union had been sealed here. Once, she had feared Sean would never see a day like this, pledging to care for and love another. Diane smiled at the sight of Lauren rocking Daniel on her knees and rubbing his back. Beside her, Gregory snored lightly and she clutched his hand. Then Margaret nudged Diane in time for her to see Sean slipping the ring on Valerie’s finger.

  The office would have to do for now. The walls were bare and she would take her time decorating. The tapestry from Istanbul would probably fill the wall facing her desk.

  Diane surveyed the wooden bookcase, most of the shelves bare. On the middle shelf, photos of Gregory were lined up: there was Gregory, beaming and triumphant, accepting an award from the Architectural Society of America for the Main Library. Mercer stood beside him as he held the statuette aloft for them both. Then there was a photo of him at Somersby, sitting on his bed, the window and shades behind him; the photo captured the absence, the vacancy clouding his eyes. The last photo was of all of them, before the beginning of the end, before Alzheimer’s. She and Lauren sat on either side of Gregory on the sofa, their heads resting on his shoulders. Sean sat at Gregory’s feet. On this bookshelf in her campus office, she would find her family each time she looked. Next week she would bring in photos from her weeklong trip to Aruba with Alan. The photos showed her dark and radiant on the sand, beneath the sun. The photos showed her laughing.

  On the desk were copies of speeches and articles Diane had written over the years. As a family court judge, she had spoken at conferences, before civic and nonprofit groups, before foundations, before other judges and other lawyers. An invitation from the editor of a small press anthology of essays about new trends in family law had prompted Diane to go through her papers and speeches, to look back on her work, and to begin thinking on a topic to write about.

  Her colleagues were a mix of legal scholars and practitioners who loved teaching the law as much as practicing it. A ruddy-faced professor of civil law had arranged a coffee date with Diane right after the first faculty meeting last week. The chair of the department had asked her to do an informal presentation at the monthly faculty brown bag lunch in November. A part-time adjunct, who was also a partner at one of the big K Street law firms, wanted Diane to contribute to his blog.

  This was what she had begun to call the third half of her life. There had been the years with Gregory as they created a family, lived a life, then the arrival of Alzheimer’s, massive, merciless leaving nothing untouched. And now there was this, all this, that she had taken on and all that she still looked forward to.

  She sometimes wondered if the disease would afflict her. Paula had told her about an NIH trial study to test if the level of plaque in one’s brain predisposed one to Alzheimer’s. Paula had signed up, and Diane had signed up to be part of the study as well.

  When she told Alan, he’d said, “You’re braver than me. I’m old-school—I wouldn’t want to know.”

  “Even though you saw what it did to your mother?”

  “I can’t think of any ways her life would have been different if she had known in advance. And some people might not be able to handle it. Think what they might do.”

  “Knowledge can be a powerful, liberating thing. I want to know. If the news is bad, yes, I might be so depressed there will be no way I can live each day I have left to the fullest or plan or prepare. But at least Alzheimer’s wouldn’t have the last word. I could say good-bye, still knowing what that word means. I could hear it from others and appreciate it more.”

  She would teach. She and Alan were going to Italy next summer. She would let herself love him. She would care for and love Gregory until he died. And she would love him after he was gone. Be a grandmother to Daniel and when Sean and Valerie started their family. Where was the fragility, the diminishment that was once the only promise for this phase of life? How could she have known it would be like this?

  How did anyone ever know what they were capable of?

  Looking at her watch, Diane gathered her briefcase and left her office. She took the elevator to the second floor and entered her classroom, a seminar with eighteen students. As she settled at the head of the conference table, she listened to the conversations now winding down and snippets of gossip. Diane smiled and handed out the reading for the next class meeting. After a discussion of the required reading for this week’s class, she looked around the conference table at the faces of her students and said, “Tolstoy wrote that ‘All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ In my twenty-five years on the bench, seventeen of them in the family court system, my goal was to make it possible for children and adults to sustain happy families. I was never able to actually order, to mandate happiness. But I tried to.”

  As Diane stood up and began writing on the whiteboard, she thought of her own happy-unhappy family. A family that included a woman more adept at loving her husband than she, a lover who regularly joined her when she visited her ailing husband. Her children, now adults, but who would always be her children. And there was this woman, older, more beautiful and loving than ever, who had stepped forth into the world. Stepped forth into the world in her name.

  Acknowledgments

  This is a novel that I never imagined I would write. Like all my most satisfying writing projects, this is one that I was literally “called” to write. While unprepared for the summons, I reported for duty because there was no other choice. My goal was not to write “about” Alzheimer’s but to use Alzheimer’s disease as a way to explore the way we live our lives, how we love, create families, survive, and endure. Every novel I have written has been about families in crisis journeying to redemption and love. There are many people to thank, who opened their worlds to me. The world of families with loved ones with Alzheimer’s, caregivers engaged in honoring the needs of these absent but still present members of our communities, the world of architecture, contracting, and family law.

  The secret weapon that all writers rely on is good editors. I was lucky to work with two exceptional editors, Krishan Trotman and Chelsey Emmelhainz. Both were sharp readers and both in different ways taught me how to shape and envision this book. I thank Carol Mann, my agent and good friend for over three decades. My husband Joe offered, as always, love and support and belief in me beyond measure. I also want to thank my dear friend and mentor Sidney Offit who, year after year, makes me feel so lucky to be his friend. John Bess, always there to help. Judges S. Pamela Gray, Tara Fentress, and Anita M. Josey-Herring. Marshall Purnell, the late Barbara Laurie, Edward Johnson, and Andre Banks for giving me new eyes with which to look at my city. Aminata Ipyana, Rosemary Allender, and Bettye Wages for close reading, wise insights, and an investment in making sure I got this story right. Loretta Bowers and Denise Love for sharing with me the details of their journey of supporting loved ones stricken with the disease. Cissy Stoner, Renay Blackwell, and Iracy Wooten for inviting me to “sit, be still, and know”
as I spent time in a memory care unit, and for inviting me to read and discuss writing before one of my best audiences, men and women living with Alzheimer’s. Sam Taylor and Walter Woodyard, Julie Daigle, thanks for your input and suggestions.

  About the Author

  Marita Golden is a veteran teacher of writing and an acclaimed, award-winning author of over a dozen works of fiction and nonfiction, many of which are taught in college and universities around the country. As a teacher of writing she has served as a member of the faculties of the MFA Graduate Creative Writing Programs at George Mason University, Virginia Commonwealth University, the Fairfield University low-residency MFA program, and as Distinguished Writer in Residence in the MA Creative Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University. She cofounded and serves as president emeritus of the Hurston/Wright Foundation.

  Among her books are the novels After and The Edge of Heaven and the memoirs Migrations of the Heart, Saving Our Sons, and Don’t Play in the Sun: One Woman’s Journey Through the Color Complex. She compiled the collection of interviews The Word: Black Writers Talk About the Transformative Power of Reading and Writing. Her most recent book is Living Out Loud: A Writer’s Journey. She is the recipient of many awards including the Writers for Writers Award presented by Barnes & Noble and Poets and Writers, and the Fiction Award for her novel After, awarded by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.

  Visit Marita at www.maritagolden.com.

  For a free copy of Marita’s e-book I Want to Write, a helpful and inspiring guide to creating a productive writer’s life, visit maritagolden.com/book-bonus.