“Who I am as a person is because you loved me and made me your daughter,” she says. Spontaneously, our words of gratitude and love flow out of us like water bubbling over rocks.
I take off the top of the urn. A large plastic bag filled with silver ashes and dark gray fragments fills the inside. I pull out the bag. I cup my hand under it and untie the top.
Stephanie turns on the Native American chants and prayers he wanted for his spring ritual. I turn the bag over. The contents dust out onto the ground. The ashes puff into the wind and land gently in the grass. Our shirts are soon soaked with sorrow.
Then I hang a crystal in a branch. She puts a colorful pinwheel near the base of the tree. We do not speak.
As we drive away, the Gnarly Tree, with its lacy branches waving in the wind, disappears behind us.
ALONE IN AUSTIN
2011–2013
To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.
J. K. ROWLING
MIGHT AS WELL LIVE
When my car slides under the edge of the large truck, I relax. Double tires rush toward my windshield. Screech. The car swerves in a circle. Bang. The airbag slams into my chest. What feels like a giant hand pushes me violently back in the seat. Immediately the bag deflates. I fall forward. The car bangs into the median and stops moving with a lurch. I feel something dripping into my left eye. I lift a shaky hand to rub it, looking down at the red smear on my fingers.
I lean back against the headrest. “I get to die.”
Seconds tick by. Silence surrounds me. My left knee stings with pain. My heart drums in my aching chest. My ragged breath burns in my throat, but I keep breathing.
The passenger door squeaks open. A large bearded man sticks his head into the car. “Ma’am, you need to get out of the car. The engine is on fire.”
From the front of the car, a loud bang shakes the car. “That’s the tires exploding from the heat.” He urgently reaches in and drags me across the gear shift. My body protests the sudden movement.
“Stop,” I yell. I settle myself into the passenger seat. He squats down by the car. He doesn’t turn loose my elbow. His tanned face and worried eyes under his ragged baseball cap stare at me. He frowns and starts to speak.
I shake my head no. I mumble about finding my stuff.
“Ma’am, you’re going to die if you don’t get out of the car right now.” As if to emphasize his words, the hood flies up, slamming against the broken windshield. Glass fragments shower down around me. Flames shoot out from the engine.
I would choose death for me. I can’t choose it for him.
Allowing myself to move forward, I swing my legs out the door, and he puts his arm around my shoulders. He pulls me out of the seat. While I recognize this as the first time a man has held me in a long time, I take a faltering step forward. My legs collapse like Jell-O under me, and I fall onto my knees. The asphalt digs into my bloody knees.
He leans down and gently lifts me up. “We’re both going to get the hell out of here now. Do you hear me?” I weakly nod in agreement.
He marches me away from the car. The force of his movement drags me along with him. I can feel his hands digging into my shattered ribs. The car explodes behind us. The heat blows across our backs. We stumble faster down the hot pavement. We stop by a semitruck that he says is his. He sits me down with a thud on the footboard.
Sirens blare and come closer. I lean forward and look at the blazing remains of my car. The ambulance and police car arrive with flashing lights and an avalanche of sound. Doors fly open. Men in uniforms surround me.
A police officer looks at me. “Who was in the car?”
I raise my quivering hand. “Me.”
“You walked out of it?” He leans over and peers at me, assessing my injuries.
I point at the silent trucker. He just nods and pulls off his cap, rubbing his sweat-soaked hair.
The paramedics push the stretcher up to me. One of the paramedics clasps a stiff brace around my neck. Within seconds I find myself lying on the hard plastic of the gurney. Straps cinch tightly across my chest and ankles. I watch the pale blue sky above me move as they roll me down the highway.
Inside the ambulance a young man in a starched pale green shirt climbs in. His heavily muscled arms bulge from beneath his tight sleeves. In a flurry of movement, he takes my blood pressure, bandages my head, and cuts off my shirt and pants. He wraps me in a heated blanket. He lays a gentle hand on my arm. “Who do you want me to call?”
“No one.” I flinch as he pumps up the contraption to take my blood pressure. “My husband died six months ago. There is no one to call.”
The ambulance rocks beneath us as it speeds to the emergency room. The EMT and the driver lift the gurney out as soon as we arrive. They roll me through the automatic doors, which slap shut behind us.
Doctors and nurses lift me onto a starched white-sheeted hospital bed. Thermometers pop into and out of my mouth. Blood pressure cuffs pump and release with a hiss. Soft wet gauze washes away dried blood. My arms fall into a backless gown.
Finally, I am scrubbed, examined, and tucked tightly into the bed. One of the doctors perches on a chair by the bed. He reaches over the rail and shakes my limp hand. He introduces himself as Dr. Sullivan. “You know how lucky you are?”
“Am I?” He raises his eyebrows at my answer. He explains that it was a miracle I survived the crash and the truck driver arrived to get me out. I nod in agreement, since I know that’s what he expects.
Silence fills the small room. The hushed sound of people and equipment moving up and down the hall can be heard outside the door. Somewhere a baby’s loud cry rises and falls.
“I need a phone,” I suddenly tell Dr. Sullivan. He hands me his iPhone without question, and he leaves the room to give me some privacy. After several frustrating minutes, I finally have the number for Sandra, my husband Dwayne’s cousin. I tell her where I am and what happened. I ask her to call my work and tell her who to ask for.
Then I call my daughter. Dr. Sullivan returns and interrupts our tearful conversation to tell me he’s sending me downstairs for an MRI and tests to determine if there have been any internal injuries. He cups my elbow with his hand as I sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed. I shakily stand for the first time in hours. The room tilts around me. I feel a wheelchair bump against the back of my knees. I flop into it. I am rolled into the bowels of the hospital basement.
Strangers lift me onto a flat surface sticking like a tongue out of the massive stainless-steel mouth of a machine. A soft voice tells me to close my eyes if I don’t like closed spaces. Of course, I open my eyes. Only cold steel and darkness surround me. I tightly close my eyes and imagine an Arizona road at sunset. My Harley rumbles beneath me. Dwayne rides on my right.
When I return to my room later, I find my friend Gina there. She sits in a chair by my bed and talks to me while my cuts are stitched. Twenty-eight in the left knee. Seventeen in the left hand.
Dr. Sullivan arrives with a clipboard in hand. His green scrub coat flutters behind him. He frowns at me as he stands by my bed.
I look up at him. “I’m not going home, am I?”
He shakes his head no, taking a deep breath. “Your tests were negative for any internal damage from the wreck.” He moves to the bed and pulls my gown away from my shoulder. He points to the deep purple bruises covering my chest and tells me they’re from the seat belt. They will heal in a few weeks.
He tucks my gown back on my shoulder. “We found a large mass in your right ovary. Do you know what that may mean?”
I nod. I understand all too well what a cancer diagnosis means. I choke out that I have lost two people I loved to cancer.
Dr. Sullivan stands quietly for a few minutes. He finally tells me there will be extensive tests in the next few hours. He leaves, and the door hisses shut behind him.
I tell Gina to go home. I need to be by myself to face the
tests and the outcome. I watch her leave the room and lie back against my flat pillow.
One agonizingly painful test after another follow each other through the night. In a dark room at midnight, I am lying on a cold metal table with my head down and my legs up at a ninety-degree angle. Someone thrusts a slick icy object into me. I cry out in pain. A disembodied voice tells me to be brave.
The ordeal ends at three in the morning. Getting out of bed after the last nurse leaves the room, I push the lone chair to face the window. I sit on the smooth chilly vinyl, wrapped in a blanket. The shadowy trees outside wave back and forth in a gentle wind. I press my hand against the cool glass. The darkness outside outlines my pale fingers. The lamp over the bed glows in the background. I have spent six months longing for death. I wake each morning to the disappointment of a beating heart.
I whisper to myself, “Our love story won’t end with us dying together.”
A flood of images of surgery and chemo fills me. Dwayne’s pale face when the hospice nurse told me he wasn’t breathing. Rosary bead memories of our life together click through my mind. The joy and the love of our marriage buried under the sorrow.
Sandra is with me when Dr. Sullivan arrives early the next morning. He clutches a stack of papers in one hand. He grabs the clipboard from the foot of the bed, and he clicks it open with a snap. He shoves his papers in it.
Moving to stand by my bed, he flips through the pages and tells me the results of the tests. I have a fibroid tumor. Not cancer.
He sticks his hand out toward me. I hesitate and then raise my hand from the bed. He takes my limp hand in his and holds it gently. “You’re mighty lucky, Mrs. Black. You’ve cheated death twice in twenty-four hours.”
I whisper softly to myself, “Death cheated me twice in one day.” Sandra and Dr. Sullivan watch me, and they lean forward to listen to my soft words.
I shake my head back and forth and tell them the lie that it’s not important. I am dismissed and sent home to heal.
Two days later Gina takes me for a follow-up appointment with the doctor. The check-up only lasts a short time, and then she drives me back to my house. As she helps me out of the car, she looks at Dwayne’s truck still sitting in the driveway six months after his death. “Are you going to drive the truck now?”
I lean against the car door and stare at the white Chevy truck. It hasn’t been moved since Dwayne parked it on a Saturday night after buying a lottery ticket. His last one. He died three days later. “I honestly don’t know if I can drive it.”
Gina walks with me to the front door. “Have you ever bought a car by yourself?”
I swing open the door and shake my head. “No. Dwayne was the car expert.” I tell her I am on my own now.
The next week is Thanksgiving, and I limp on a plane to fly to Washington, DC. I share turkey and pie with Stephanie and her boyfriend, Ben. When my plane lands in Austin, I take a shuttle home from the airport.
Then, early Monday morning, I push the button by the back door. The garage door rolls up with a squawk. The truck waits for me in the driveway. I clutch its keys in my right hand. I found them where he left them on top of the refrigerator, his daily habit when he got home.
I click the remote. The lights blink on, and the locks click open. I push my purse strap up on my shoulder. I take a deep breath. I walk slowly to the driver’s door. I wrap my fingers around the handle. I pull it open.
The dusty air inside the truck cab rushes out. His Modesto Harley hat sits crumpled on the front seat. Beside it, the lottery ticket in its plastic envelope curls from the heat. On the floor, several discarded empty bottles of Starbucks Frappuccino lie scattered—the only thing he liked to drink at the end.
I slam the door shut. There in the driveway with cars passing by, I press my forehead against the chilly glass in the weak November sunshine.
“I cannot fucking do this.” I focus on breathing. In and out. In and out.
After a few minutes, I open the door again. I quickly step up on the running board and slide onto the cold vinyl seat. I throw the cap and the lottery ticket into the back seat. I stick the key in the ignition and turn it. The engine roars to life.
Music blares out of the speakers. Louis Prima and Keely Smith. “Jump, Jive, an’ Wail.” An image of the two of us dancing across the kitchen floor to Louis Prima races across my memory. I hit the eject button. The CD pops out. I throw it over my shoulder to the back seat to join the other stuff.
I reverse out of the driveway with a lurch. The empty bottles rattle against each other as they roll around on the floor. I drive to work and sit in the garage with my head on the steering wheel, watching the minutes drop by on the clock. Eventually, I wipe my eyes and blow my nose and go through the daily routines of work.
On Saturday morning I drive to the nearest Chevy dealer. A smiling salesman rushes out of the building. “Can I help you, ma’am?”
“I need a car.” I hand him the truck keys and the insurance check I got in the mail. “Whatever I can get with the truck as a trade-in and the check, I will buy.”
He looks down at the keys and the check fluttering in the breeze. “I have a Malibu I think you’ll like.”
We look at each other without speaking. I turn to scan the cars on the lot. “Let’s go look at it.”
I drive home an hour later in my new car. In my rearview mirror, I watch them drive the truck into the used-car garage to be prepped for selling. In a brown paper bag by me on the passenger seat are all of his belongings from the truck. I reach in the bag and pull out the Prima CD. I push it into the stereo. Louis sings me home.
THE RING
I don’t notice it, but evidently I have been sighing a lot the last few months since my wreck in November. Tonight I went to my first grief group meeting.
“You actually forget to breathe,” the hospice counselor says. She tells us that excessive sighing is a symptom of grief.
All of us in the group sit in silence as we consider whether we are sighing more. I stop and feel the breath flowing in and out of my nose. I glance around at the others sitting around the table with me: seven women and two men. The youngest is twenty-seven and the oldest is sixty-eight. Cancer has crippled all of us.
None of us have removed our wedding rings yet. They glint in the fluorescent lights. To the rest of the world, they proclaim we are still married, but in this room we know the union has been broken forever. We are now single and alone.
The counselor announces that we will all share our story, since this is our first meeting. My stomach clenches in anticipation of saying Dwayne’s name and using the word dead to describe him. I sit up straight in the hard chair. I focus on one of the inspirational posters on the wall. Luminous sunlight pierces dark thunderclouds in the picture. Light always breaks through the darkness.
What a lie, I think. I believe darkness usually wins the fight.
I listen to each tale of sorrow and loss. I tense when the woman sitting by me finishes her story. I take a deep breath and begin. I roll the tissue in my hand into a tight ball and grip it while I describe what hospice calls “my cancer experience.” I finish as quickly as possible.
Finally, the evening ends with a moment of silence for our lost loved ones. I rush out of the room and drive quickly home. When the garage door rolls up, I am again stunned by the emptiness. No tools on the wall. An empty workbench. No half-built car or motorcycle waiting to be created.
Crawling into bed without removing my clothes, I clutch the pillow on his empty side of the bed to my chest. I stare at the soft glimmer of my neighbor’s yard light outside my window until I fall asleep.
The next day at work I tell my friend Gina about the counselor’s describing the excessive sighing from grief. All that day I feel her step into my cubicle and lay a gentle hand on my shoulder when I sit frozen in front of my computer screen. Sighing. Not breathing.
I take a deep breath. I nod. She smiles and walks away.
Spring turns into summer. Each Monday I
return to Hospice Austin. The rest of the week I go home right after work. I walk quietly down the hallway past the closed door of the room where Dwayne died. I never open it. I go directly to bed and wait out the night.
The hospice grief group ends, and I decide not to sign up for the next series of meetings. I can’t imagine sitting through another introductory meeting and talking about the dark void inside of me.
On some nights after work, I begin to stop for dinner at restaurants on the way home. I sit alone at the counter, where it is easier to eat alone. Everyone knows you are by yourself when you sit on one side of a booth with no one on the other side. I watch the crowd of couples enter and leave the booths and tables.
One night an older man and woman lean toward each other with the light from the candles on each table flickering across their faces. He leans over the plates to look at her as she talks. I check to see whether they wear wedding rings. They do. I look down at the ring still on my left hand and envy them their future.
On the second anniversary of Dwayne’s death, I stop outside the closed bedroom door, one hand on the doorknob. The room where he died. Cautiously I open it. The musty smell of an unused room drifts past me. I drop down on the bed. I reach over and pull out a drawer of the nightstand. I stare at his dead cell phone. His reading glasses sit on top of a hot rod magazine. A small box is jammed into the back of the drawer.
I open it. The carved silver Harley ring he wore for over forty years lies inside, the one I saw on our blind date. In those last months, he got so thin the ring kept falling off his finger, so we put it away. I close the box. I clutch it in my hand for a moment and then put it back in the drawer.
I curl up on the bed, and the room darkens as the sun goes down. Finally, I close the door behind me and go to my bed.
Now after that first opening of the door, I sit in the room every day after work for several weeks. I know I am surrounded by all of his possessions, since he always used the guest room for his clothes. During his illness, we put his hospital bed in here, inside these walls, where he stopped breathing.
She Rode a Harley Page 18