“Hey, Rebecca,” I said as I walked up behind her. She turned, and I hugged her.
“Hey, sweetie. I want you to meet my mom. I know she’d like to meet you. Oh, I’m so glad you are here.” Rebecca took my hand and led me across the room. I smiled to myself. Her mother was there. I hoped she could see what I saw in Rebecca, a woman I barely knew, and feel some pride for what she did for another person. My love for Will was never ending, but I hadn’t been in a position to marry him for years. In the end, he was with his wife, a woman who cared for him, took him to treatments, hospitals, doctors’ appointments, and probably did various things at home none of us would know about. I may have seen the end of Will’s journey, but it probably wasn’t the worst of it. Rebecca was the one there for those difficult moments. The private times we’d never know existed. Except I knew, because I saw so much more than I ever thought I’d see.
“Mom,” Rebecca called quietly in a group of people talking together. “Mom, come here,” she beckoned.
“Hi, sweetie,” Rebecca’s mom said as she walked over to us and put her arm around Rebecca’s waist. She smiled at me and nodded in a quiet hello.
“Mom, I want you to meet Nikki. She was a very good friend of Will’s and has been with me the past several days. I don’t know how I would have gotten through all of this without her.”
“Hi,” I said, with a weak smile. I wasn’t comfortable with everything Rebecca had just said about me, and I didn’t even know the woman’s name, so all I could come up with was a simple greeting.
“Well, hello to you, my dear. I do think Rebecca has mentioned your name to me. Nikki, you say? I’m Gina. It’s such a pleasure to meet you. And thank you for being here for my Becca. I’m sure she needed a good friend during this time. Do you live around here, dear?”
“No, ma’am. I live in Colorado. I grew up here, and met Will when we were teenagers. We’ve been…we were friends for a long time,” I said quietly again. I hadn’t said ma’am to anyone since I was probably eight years old. Clearly I was nervous, but I had no idea why. I also didn’t know what Gina knew about me. Or about Will for that matter. It took me some time to develop respect, care, and almost love for Rebecca, but I sensed I would never find respect for her mother.
“Well, Colorado sure is a long ways away. Surely you didn’t just come out here for this, didcha?” Gina looked down at me through the top of her glasses. She reminded me of a school teacher scolding her student in a condescending way.
“Mom. Will wanted her here.” Rebecca saved me from punching her mother and having to explain anything to her. Yes, I left my husband and two small daughters 1800 miles away to come and watch my ex-lover die.
“I’ll be leaving tomorrow. I’m very sad about Will. But I do need to get back home.” I hoped it would be enough for her to move on from the conversation. I didn’t want to give her the benefit of seeing me cry over Will and know I had a family back home. I could just hear the berating she’d give me for having feelings and Rebecca for allowing someone else into her web of a deceitful marriage.
“Oh, I see,” Gina said. “Now, dahhling,” Gina’s attentions were now directed to her daughter. “People are bringing food over. You know, that’s what they do for families after funerals. Do you have someone in the kitchen setting up?”
“No, Mom, I don’t. I haven’t been able to see beyond my face lately. I’ve been greeting pe-”
Gina cut her off. “Well, people need to eat, my love. I’ll go put things out for people to eat. Once they eat at these things, they usually head on home. And I’m not staying down here tonight. So I’ll need to be heading back to Alexandria within a couple a hours, you know.” Gina walked away for what appeared to be playing hostess after funeral visitation.
“Sorry, about her, doll,” Rebecca said to me. I could tell by one meeting that Rebecca’s mother had spent a lifetime cutting her daughter down. “She’s in her own little world most days. And her world consists of art gallery openings, charity events, and country club dinners. She has no idea what the people of this town do, how they survive without a stoplight, and I think she even wonders why we all bother getting out of bed in the morning if we don’t have the poor to serve like she does with all of her extravagant charity events. Of course she wouldn’t know what the poor looked like if they kicked her in the chin and asked her for a can of soup.” Rebecca laughed. I suddenly liked her more. In different circumstances, we could have been friends.
I laughed and hugged her again. “I hope we can stay in touch, girl. I’m liking you!” We both laughed, then hugged again acknowledging it was not only good to laugh but also okay.
We walked around the sunroom saying “hello” and “thank you” to people we saw. As much as I hadn’t wanted to play the supportive role for Rebecca earlier at the funeral home, after meeting her mother, I found I fit right into the role and was pretty good at it too. After about fifteen minutes, Gina brought us both plates filled with macaroni and cheese and fried chicken with a buttery southern biscuit on the side. I didn’t see a single vegetable, and it so felt good. This was what we needed, down home southern comfort food. We took our plates into the formal living room and each sat on a white couch. I laughed, causing Rebecca to turn toward me with her plate in her lap and a questioning look on her face. No one else was in the room, so my laughter felt completely inappropriate and loud.
“What?” Rebecca asked with her head cocked to the side like a puppy.
“Oh nothing,” I started but then changed my mind. “Well, these couches. They were forbidden back in the day. When Will’s grandfather was here, this was a parlor like room where no one was allowed to be. I always wondered if something had happened in the room, because I couldn’t imagine not using an entire room in the house.”
Rebecca laughed again. “Oh my! I had no idea! I read in here all the time. Will never said anything. But,” she took a bite of macaroni and cheese, then laughed again. I was afraid the white couch was going to have a yellow stain on it. “Come to think of it, I never saw Will in here either.” We both laughed again. We were cleansing. And it felt good. “I think it’s my new party room.” More laughter. “No, I probably won’t party, I’m not a party kind of girl, but it is close to the kitchen, so maybe it will be my new living room. I can put the TV up there,” she was looking around the room through a square she’d made with her fingers. “I don’t know,” she said, putting her hands back on the plate balanced on her lap. “I just know it won’t be a room off limits.” She looked down at her food. I could tell her mind was wandering.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah. You know. I hadn’t really even thought about it. I don’t know what I’m going to do with this house. I love this town. I love the house. So I’ll live here. For a while at least. It’s only worth about $200,000. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining, it’s nice. But for waterfront, it needs a lot of updating, so it’s not worth the price of waterfronts in the area. If I decided to sell one day, it would be enough to get me going, but I think I’ll stay.” She took a bite of her chicken, then looked up at me as she wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “You know I was a waitress when we met. I haven’t worked in almost two years. I’m set up okay, financially, you know. But I don’t know what I’ll do for work when I have to go back to it.”
“Oh, honey,” I leaned forward and put my hand on her knee almost dumping my plate onto the white couch. “Oh, shit!” We laughed again. Once I was composed, with two hands on my plate, I continued. “I haven’t worked in years either. I guess giving up my career was easy because I traded it to become a mom, but if something happened, I’d have to go back, too.” I stopped and looked at her. “I’m sorry. I…I’m just…well, I mean, I still have Chris, of course. I’m sorry. That was a callous thing to say.”
“No, doll. It wasn’t. You can relate. I understand. I don’t know what I’d do if I had kids. But I don’t, so in a way, my situation is easier than if you were to lose Chris. It’s just
me here. The house is owned outright. I just need to keep up with it, pay utilities and taxes, and I can live here as long as I want, I guess.” We both got quiet. Hearing about Rebecca’s financials wasn’t top on my list, and I think she finally felt the discomfort in the air. Maybe one day we could be good friends, especially after all we shared during the time we shared Will. But at the moment, I didn’t want to know personal things about her and Will. She broke our silence with, “He really loved you, you know. He talked about you a lot.”
I wasn’t feeling much more comfort with that line of dialogue. I didn’t want to hear about how much Will loved me, cared for me, or missed me. My reality was he’d hurt me a lot over the past several months of his life, and then I went there only to learn not only was he dying, but he knew years ago he wouldn’t live a long life and didn’t want me in the position his wife was in now, a widow.
“Look, hon,” Rebecca started. “I like you. I knew I liked you before I ever met you because Will talked so darn much aboutcha. But I know it’ll take some time before you really know me. Maybe we can talk on the phone. Maybe we can email. And maybe when you come out here to visit your family, we can have dinner together. I’d like to stay in touch with you.” She paused to look down. “But I understand if you don’t want that. You just remember if you ever have any questions about Will, well, questions I can answer, you just ask ‘em. Okay. Promise?”
“I promise. Thank you, Rebecca. Really. Thank you. I’m sorry I’m not ready to really open up just yet. I may not at all. This is my past that has been locked up for so long.” I wiped my mouth with the napkin hidden under my plate. The fried chicken was good. I needed to make sure I made a plate for Dad before I left. My appetite hadn’t returned just yet. My stomach had been feeling weak for days, like anything I was planning on eating was working its way out before I even put it in my stomach. I hadn’t been sleeping well and had been through what I thought to be the most difficult thing I’d ever done. I was sure some distance would heal my tummy issues, but at that moment a few bites of chicken and macaroni surrounded by rich cheese was plenty for me.
“Come on, hon, let’s go put you in the boathouse with those boxes. I can help you load your car. And we can’t forget the guitar too. But I want to make sure you at least see what these boxes are. You can stay as long as you’d like if you want to look through them, but if you just want to look and then go through them in Colorado, well that’s fine too.” She got up, took my hand, and started walking me toward the kitchen where we left our plates with Gina to clean. Then she led me out the kitchen door to the backyard and down to the boathouse. The lights were on, but no one had decided to gather here.
“I have them behind the bar, over there. Three boxes. And a note with a list of things Will wanted to make sure I gave to you. I’m gonna head on back up to the house. If you need anything, you holler. K?” Rebecca hugged me and walked back out to the yard and up to the house. I watched her until she closed the kitchen door behind her.
I sat in the same chair I’d sat in just days earlier to read a letter Will had written me. The box of tissues was still there. I looked around, sighed and got back up and headed behind the bar. Behind the bar there were three small office supply boxes with lids. The first one had MA written on it and the other two were blank. I dropped to my knees and opened the MA box. Inside were three notebooks, papers, guitar picks, the hotel receipt, a T-shirt from the North Star Bar, and a Neila Lees CD. I just closed the box, picked it up, and carried it to the chair. I glanced at the other two boxes, lifted their lids at the same time and saw things I didn’t want to look at; CDs that looked blank, but I was certain they contained Will’s music, cassette tapes and thumb drives, guitar tablature books for song writing and more. There was a small ukulele in one box, too many notebooks to count, envelopes, a wooden box I recognized as the keepsake box Will used to put shells and movie ticket stubs in, and at the bottom of the box, songbooks for singer songwriters. Paul Simon’s collection was on top of the stack.
“I can’t go through this stuff here,” I said to myself. “God, Will, what did you want from me? What am I supposed to do with this stuff?” I carried both boxes and stacked them on the chair, then I sat on the floor and grabbed the box of tissues. My eyes weren’t exactly dry, but they weren’t leaking tears uncontrollably either. Leaning against the chair, I put my head back and sighed. My time with Will had come down to thirty-four seconds and three boxes filled with memories I had let go of over the years. I had my own boxes, in my basement, in my head, and in my heart. But I hadn’t opened a box of memories in any of those places in years.
“Oh, Will. I miss you so much,” I said to no one.
I stayed with Will’s boxed memories for about twenty minutes, wiped my eyes, and walked outside. Sitting on a stand near the door was the Takamine guitar. I strummed my thumb across the strings along the neck, and headed to the house.
Rebecca and Liza were in the kitchen cleaning up. The house was fairly quiet.
“Oh, honey, I was about to leave, but I wanted to say goodbye,” Liza said, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. She hugged me and said, “I’m sorry, sweetie. I know it’s hard. I’m gonna miss him too. Don’t be a stranger, hear? Don’t you go back to Colorado, to those beautiful babies of yours and forget all us locals. We think of you, you know. We miss you. You keep coming back here to visit us, ya hear me?”
She didn’t even let me reply. She silently hugged Rebecca, left her towel on the counter, and walked out.
“Did everyone leave?” I asked.
“Yeah, with a three o’clock funeral, I guess it gave everyone time enough to come over here for some dinner and then head home to bed,” Rebecca laughed. “Even my mom had some charity thing in the morning and started her drive up north. I bet having Starbucks with a girlfriend and tipping the barista is considered charity for her. She probably writes it all off,” she laughed again. “Oh, my goodness. My family.” She finished wrapping the plate she had in her hand with plastic wrap, held it up for me to see and said, “For your Dad. Believe it or not, I’ve gotten to know him a bit this past year. I bet he’d like some dinner, huh?”
“Hmph, yeah, he would. Thank you. Can I help you clean up?” I asked.
“No, doll. But let me help you with those boxes, and there’s a case out there for the guitar. Let’s get it all packed up for you,” she put her arm around my shoulder and led me back out to the boathouse.
She carried two boxes and I carried one box with Dad’s dinner sitting on top and the guitar to my car. After loading, we stood next to the pool where I’d parked, just staring out at the bay. It was quiet enough to hear the rhythm of the waves hitting the beach. By that time it was high tide, bringing the waves closer to the rock wall that helped to stop the land from eroding around the area.
“Honey, I don’t even know what to say to you. How can I thank you? How can I say goodbye to you?” She shivered, hugged her arms, and I watched a tear fall from her chin.
“I feel the same way. I can’t thank you enough. I don’t have the words to form to tell you how special this experience was, how much I love and respect you for what you did for Will, and how much it meant to me, keeping me alive in his life. I just…” I couldn’t find any more words.
“Will you try to stay in touch with me? Call me and ask me anything. I might not have the answer, but I might.”
“I will. I promise.” I turned to get in the car. “And, Rebecca? If you ever find yourself west of the Mississippi…well, if you ever find yourself in Colorado at least, you have a home there. You are welcome. And we’d love to have you.”
“I just might have to take a trip out west.” She turned and walked toward the house. I started the car, then sat and watched her until darkness swallowed her image. I could see the lights on at the house I’d probably never visit again. The lights were on along the dock as well, and though I couldn’t see them all, I could see the ones at the end and the boathouse that held ghosts of two young people
falling in love, writing songs about it, and singing their hearts out. I wondered what others ghosts lived there. Will’s cancer lived there. He knew, even back then, he wouldn’t live to see middle age. After holding his life’s last breath for thirty-four seconds, he let everything go. Maybe those ghosts went with him.
Making a three point turn in the grass near the pool, I turned around and didn’t look back. I took every speed bump at a good enough speed to keep moving forward. I feared if I stopped and slowly rolled over a bump, I’d roll all the way back to Will’s…Rebecca’s house and would want to walk through each room, touch his bed, feel the carpet, sit on the white couch, look at the pictures along the mantel. I couldn’t go back anymore. I knew I had to move forward.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Saying goodbye to Dad, Natalie, and Nana, though I didn’t see much of any of them on my trip, was difficult, but quick. Dad helped me pack my rental car before we’d gone to bed the night before. I got up at six o’clock in the morning and ate a bagel with black coffee. As I was getting into the rental car, Dad asked what was in the boxes, and all I could say was “Will.” Will was not in the boxes of course, but everything I could ever have of Will was in those boxes. We all stood in Dad’s driveway and hugged, said all the right things, and I promised to call from the road and once I got home. Home. To Colorado. To Chris. To my babies, Emily and Bella, who I desperately hoped would remember me once I got there.
I drove out of Deltaville on the same road I had driven in. I passed all the familiar sights and noted the few new ones, wondering if they were here the week before, the year before even, and if they’d last long enough to be there when I came back. I’d never come back for just Will, except to see him and Rebecca exchange lifelong vows to be together until death did they part. The next time I went there it wouldn’t be for Will, but I knew I’d never come that way again without thinking of him. Deltaville will never be the same for me again.
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