Is This What I Want?

by Patricia Mann

  “Would you mind getting me a beer?” I asked, not wanting to put her out after she worked so hard to get everything ready.

  “Of course. But you haven’t eaten anything. The Costco sandwiches are really good. Want me to bring you one?”

  “I’ll eat later. Just the beer, please.”

  She was back in less than a minute and sat down next to me as she spoke to Kelly.

  “You know, Rick and I were thinking, maybe we could help out with the kids more, since, well, since your mom used to spend so much time with them. We could take them once a week so you and Tom can go out to dinner alone. What do you think?”

  Kelly tried to muster up excitement, and we knew she would take us up on the offer and appreciate it in time, but she couldn’t think about it yet.

  Beth’s mom joined us.

  “All the food and drinks are out. Is there anything else I can do?” she asked.

  You could bring my mother back from the dead, I wanted to say.

  “No, Mom. Relax, you’ve helped so much today,” Beth answered, as Kathryn sat down next to her.

  There I was with the three women left in my life, mourning the one who was gone, the one who always loved and knew me best. Are you allowed to use the word “orphan” when you’re thirty-six years old? I asked myself. I couldn’t admit it to anyone, but I felt too young to take on the rest of my life without my mother’s guidance.

  “The service was beautiful. And Rick, your eulogy was… it was so moving,” Kathryn said. I knew I was lucky to have a mother-in-law who I liked and felt comfortable with. But no one could take the place of my mother.

  I put my hand on Beth’s. “Well, I can’t take all the credit. I had a lot of help. My wife happens to teach speech.”

  Kelly smiled. “You know I was looking at the calendar and realized that Mom passed away exactly six months from the day the doctors told her she had no more than six months to live. Isn’t that weird?”

  “It’s actually not,” Kathryn said. “The power of suggestion can’t be underestimated, even when it comes to death. I see it all the time at work. People will wait until after their child’s graduation or wedding, or they’ll stay alive until a spouse goes first, so they can take care of him or her till the end.”

  We all nodded in solemn synchronicity.

  “I think it’s also because Mom is, uhhh, I mean was…” I corrected myself. “She was such a rule follower. If the doctor said six months, she had to make it six months. She always did everything she was supposed to do.”

  This time we all smiled, each remembering some time or other when she demonstrated this consistent tendency.

  I looked at Beth and Kathryn, realizing that losing my mother had made the two of them much closer. They both spent so much time with her in the final months. Kathryn’s years of nursing were invaluable to us as she worked to translate all the medical jargon. And I suspected that my mom and Kathryn spent many conspiratorial hours plotting ways for Kathryn to ensure that Beth and I stayed together for good this time.

  “Stop that! Get off of him!” Kelly jumped up to break her sons apart.

  Then Beth and Kathryn went off to check on everyone, and I was alone again, amidst all those people. They had already expressed their condolences at the church. Now it was just a party to them. I could hear their conversations about politics, the weather, sports. They all seemed to know that I didn’t want to talk about those things.

  Jack came up to me and sat on my lap.

  “Where’s Grandma Lucy again?”

  “I don’t really know, Jack. I hope she’s in heaven. Maybe a part of her is still here with us. I mean all that energy. All those molecules that made up Grandma Lucy, they couldn’t just vanish into thin air, could they?” He gave me a baffled look and took off to continue playing with the other kids.

  I watched Beth chat with her friend Shelly in the corner as they both cooed in her baby boy’s face. Crazy that they could still make a mistake like that with all the prenatal technology they had these days. Guess his tiny little wiener was hiding. I couldn’t hear them, but I saw Beth’s disappointment when Shelly shook her head in response to her question. It was much more surprising to Beth than to me that Shelly was still willing to let her husband get away with what he was doing without saying anything. My own parents stayed married for a good decade after their relationship was over.

  Once Kelly got her boys settled down, she came back.

  “I was so surprised to see Dad at the cemetery,” she said, genuinely perplexed.

  “Mom told me she wanted us to give him another chance.” I hoped Kelly would be more open to it than she had been the last time I mentioned it.

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  “He’s all we have now,” I told her. “I know he wasn’t around much when we were kids and after the divorce he seemed to drop off the face of the earth. But now that she’s gone, all the anger between them is gone too. We don’t have to be in the middle of anything anymore. It’s just us and him. Maybe we can start over. Relationships can get a fresh start, if that’s what all parties want, anyway.”

  As soon as I said it, I knew she’d use it as a segue.

  “Yeah, well, you know the relationship Mom most wanted to see getting a fresh start before she would let go. How are things?”

  “We’re taking it slow, but honestly, it’s going really well. In the four months I’ve been back home, we’ve spent most of our time together watching Mom slip away. It made us realize how much we mean to each other and that the issues we were hanging onto aren’t really that important in the grand scheme of things.” Kelly wanted to know more. She always did. But I could never tell her the things that happened.

  “I still can’t believe you considered going out with Wendy. I mean, she’s my friend, but she’s a nutcase. You better hang on to Beth. You’ll never do better than her.”

  Although I appreciated the time and attention Wendy had given my mom in the months I was living there, I was even more relieved that, nutcase or not, she’d had the tact to decline the invitation to come back to my house after the funeral.

  I looked at Kelly with skepticism. “Come on, I could have my pick and you know it!” She punched me hard in the upper arm.

  “Jeez, Kelly, you still have a mean right hook!” We laughed.

  * * *

  I was relieved when all of our relatives, friends and colleagues from every stage of our lives had finally left. I didn’t understand why people you hadn’t seen in years felt the need to come out of the woodwork for a funeral. Personally, I preferred to avoid them. But I guess in a way it was nice to see how many people my mother’s life had touched, and who cared that she was gone.

  Beth and her mom were doing dishes and Beth’s dad was swinging Sam and Jack around in circles on the grass in the backyard.

  “All right,” Beth said as she stood in front of me with a dishtowel in her hand, “I’m going to pack up the kids’ things and then my parents will take them to their house for the night.”

  “Good. I’m ready for some alone time, aren’t you?”

  She smiled.

  Sam held on to me for longer than usual for his goodbye hug as we stood in the doorway.

  “Are you okay, Dad?”

  “Yeah, Sam, I’m okay.” I patted his hair. He looked at my face closely.

  “You don’t look okay. You look sad. I’m sorry you don’t have a mom anymore.” He looked at Beth and I could see he had been thinking about the possibility that he could lose his own mother.

  I pulled Beth into our hug and the three of us swayed a little as we worked to keep our grip on each other. Jack grabbed my legs from behind to join in. Beth’s parents stood watching the four of us.

  “I’ll be okay, Samo. Don’t worry about me. I still have your mom, and Grandma Kathryn and Aunt Kelly. Lots of great women in my life.
And I still feel Grandma Lucy with me. I even talk to her. You can too, you know.”

  Beth sniffled and mindlessly wiped her nose with the sleeve of her expensive new black dress, which made me laugh out loud. No one asked why.

  When it was just the two of us, I went back to my spot on the couch. Beth set down an open bottle of wine and filled two glasses for us.

  “Were you happy with the way everything went today?” she asked, in an eager-to-please tone of voice. Happy seemed like a strange word to use, given the situation. I knew she wanted appreciation. I knew I needed to give it to her more often too. I had come to realize how stingy I was with my praise in the past. But something opened up after spending so much time telling my mother how much I loved her and all the things I remembered her doing for me when I was growing up. I had six months to express a lifetime of gratitude, which was great training for my future with Beth.

  “Yes, it was perfect. Thank you for everything. You worked so hard to get the house ready and to order and set out all the food. And it meant a lot to me that you dealt with the church and the cemetery. I don’t know how I could have made it through all this without you.”

  I intertwined our fingers.

  “It’s strange how easy things have been between us since you moved back home, isn’t it?” Beth mused. “I mean, we had so much to work through—why I said those terrible things in Vegas, the mess of my night with Dave, and all while we were watching your mom… Thank God for Carly. But I still can’t figure out how with all of that, we were able to get to this place where things feel right again. Wait, I’m sorry, I don’t mean that! Of course things aren’t right. Your mom is gone. That is not right. It’s so wrong. I just meant, with us… it seems like it should have been harder.”

  I brushed strands of hair hanging down the side of her face behind her ear.

  “I know what you mean. I think when I had to accept that my mother would be gone, it forced me to decide what I wanted, what really mattered to me. The only answer I could come up with was that I wanted my family to be together and happy—you, me, and the kids. I wanted to learn how to be the husband you need me to be. How am I doing?” She kissed my lips. I grinned and winked. “You think I might finally get lucky tonight?” I asked.

  “Rick, after today?”

  “Today of all days seems perfect to me. It’s been a long time. We’ve cried so much. We’ve kissed and hugged so much. Maybe it’s time to rediscover the rest.”

  She took a sip of her wine and stared into the glass. I tapped her shoulder and she looked into my eyes.

  “I meant it when I said I forgive you. If a man has to live with the fact that his wife had sex with someone else, it helps a lot to know it was really bad sex.”

  She never told me what was so bad about it, but I knew it was true from her facial expression and the way her body tensed up whenever we talked about it. Now she gave me the same look of regret she always did and I wished I could take the moment back for her. It seemed to cause her more pain than me.

  We drank our wine in silence for a few minutes. I thought of something to say on the subject that never occurred to me before.

  “To be honest, given the choice, I would rather that you had shitty sex with him than have you always fantasize about how great it might have been because you never got to do it.” Her eyes grew wide and she gave me a playful slap on the wrist.

  “So by that logic, I did you a favor?” she asked with uncharacteristic sarcasm.

  “Let’s not get carried away now,” I said, starting to laugh for the first time in a long time.

  “Okay,” she said, “let’s go.” She took my hand and showed me her bedroom eyes. My body responded right away, but I had some things to take care of first.

  “Not yet. There’s no hurry. We have all night, right?”

  I took her left hand and ran my finger over her wedding ring.

  “I know,” she said. “It means so much more now that she’s gone. It used to bother me that I had to wear your mother’s old wedding ring because we chose a honeymoon in Paris over a new one. I thought it might curse us because your parents’ marriage failed. But now, it’s like we still have a part of your mom with us to keep our marriage strong.”

  I wasn’t expecting that. I liked her way of looking at it. But it didn’t work for what I had planned. I continued to stroke the ring and the finger it was on from top to bottom.

  “That’s actually a beautiful thought, Beth. I bet the stone would look nice in a necklace too, don’t you think?”

  She looked bewildered, but I knew she was too smart not to get it in a second or two, so I had to strike quickly. I pulled the little black box out of my suit jacket pocket and she gasped.

  “Oh my God, Rick. What did you do?” Her words were stern but her face lit up like a Christmas tree.

  I opened it and her jaw dropped so far it almost erased the pain of seeing all the zeros on the bill.

  “Is this…? This isn’t the one…? How did you…?”

  I wasn’t sure she’d remember, but I should have known. We’d seen it in Paris. It was custom made. She gawked at it in the store window for too long, which pissed me off at the time. Then she made me promise that if we ever won the lottery, I’d come back to Paris and figure out a way to have the jeweler recreate the same exact ring. I never told her, but I did my best to create a sketch of the ring and made sure to keep the name and address of the shop in my records.

  “Well, I didn’t sneak away to Paris, though that would be fun. Thanks to the Internet and a picture of the ring I’ve kept since that day, the owner and I were able to make it happen.”

  I slid off my mother’s ring and put the new ring on her finger.

  “This signifies a new start to our marriage, okay?” She nodded, tears dripping down her cheeks. I kissed the salted streams.

  “Rick, this is the most wonderful thing anyone has ever done for me. I love it. I just… I don’t understand… I don’t want to ruin the moment, but how can we afford…?”

  Perfect, I thought. I couldn’t have planned it better. Well, actually, I did plan it, I reminded myself.

  “That’s exactly what you were supposed to say, because it leads to my next surprise.”

  She sat straight up.

  “Another surprise? I don’t know if I can take much more.”

  She didn’t have to say it, but I knew her well enough to know she felt guilty about being excited and celebrating on the night of my mother’s funeral.

  “My mom and I, well, we talked through how I would do all this tonight. She didn’t want us to be sad. She said it would help her when it was time if she knew I was going to follow through on our plan. So she’s here with us, I’m sure of it.”

  Then a disturbing thought crept into my mind and I had to make my request out loud, just in case she really was there.

  “But you’re going to have to leave pretty soon, Mom, because, uh, you don’t need to be part of what happens later.”

  Beth burst into a fit of laughter. Then she covered her mouth to stop herself.

  “It’s okay. It is pretty funny,” I said.

  “So what’s the other surprise you and sneaky Miss Lucy have for me tonight?”

  I exhaled and reviewed the way I wanted to say it first.

  “She had a life insurance policy. Kelly and I had no idea. She never had much money, but out of the little she had, she kept up the policy.”

  Beth looked incredulous. My mom was the most spendthrift person we both knew, except when it came to toys for her grandkids, but even those were usually from a discount shop.

  “After taxes, our share will be just over two hundred thousand.”’

  She swayed and I thought she might faint.

  “You okay?”

  “Did you just say…?”

  “Yeah, I did. I’ve had a lot of time t
o think about it and I have an idea. But my mom made me swear that I wouldn’t do a thing with a single penny of the money without your approval. It’s not my money, it’s ours. So, you can say no.”

  Her head moved up and down just twice, to let me know I’d better continue fast.

  “I was hoping you’d be okay with me using half of it to start my own practice. You know how much I hate my job. It would be a little risky, but I have a lot of contacts and I’m pretty sure I would do all right.”

  “Yes! Yes! Yes! Of course, that’s the best idea I’ve ever heard. I felt terrible about how unhappy you were at work but I couldn’t imagine what I could do to make it better for you. Why not use all the money to start the business, or should we set the rest aside as a financial cushion?”

  A financial cushion. Clearly, I had influenced her more than I thought in our years together. And the response I was about to give would show how much she had rubbed off on me.

  “Sure, a little cushion would be a good idea, maybe ten or twenty thousand. But I think we should use the rest to fix up the house the way you’ve always wanted to and to travel. Maybe take the kids on a trip to Europe next summer?”

  She stood up and jumped up and down just like Sam did when we told him we were going to Disneyland for his birthday. Then she pulled me up too and as silly as it felt, I jumped with her.

  We hugged and kissed and fell back onto the couch, breathless from our jumping celebration.

  “So that’s it,” I said. “That was my last surprise.” She rested her head on my shoulder and I took her chin in my hand, looking deep into her sexy green eyes.

  “Well, I might have more thrills in store for you tonight, if you’ll give me a chance. I don’t know if they’ll be a surprise, but it has been a while, over six months. The longest we’ve ever gone in ten-and-a-half years of marriage. So I hope I can control myself. I want it to be the way you want it.”

  “The only way I want it is with you, only you, always. I had to learn that the hard way, and I’m sorry for what I put you through. But it’s all over now. I promised your mom I would never hurt you again. I promised her that since I was the only woman to take care of you now, I would finally be the wife you deserve. And she promised to be our guardian angel, to watch over us and fill our lives with love for each other and the kids and all our family. She said she’d be here to bless and protect us always.”