by Jim Kraus
I’m not sure why today felt different from a thousand other days—but it was—and I began the process of moving on.
I packed a bag full of men’s shoes—just shoes. I had no idea that my husband owned so many shoes, and all very well cared for, albeit dusty at the moment. These items would provide money to the church’s charity, and good attire for someone less fortunate. And not one of them would grow teary-eyed when looking at an old t-shirt from a Cubs game. (I was more a Sox fan—but not a very faithful one. I only followed them, barely, if they were in contention at the end of the season.)
I emptied the drawers in the kitchen desk. Of course, I tested every pen to see if it would produce a legible line. Maybe a third of them did. The rest made me feel so wonderfully free and alive when I tossed them into a discard bag. I should have started this process much earlier. I had no idea that throwing away worthless things could bring about such contentment and . . . well . . . joy. Maybe that’s true in life too. Get rid of the worthless things that tied you down and held you back. That’s what I was doing. That’s what was making me feel whole for the first time in a long time. Well, perhaps not totally whole, but closer to whole than ever before.
Ava came over later that afternoon. She made a big fuss over the injured Rufus, who appeared to revel in the sympathy, rolling onto his side, displaying his broken leg like a toddler holding a scrawled crayon picture to his mother. She made herself a cup of coffee, and wanted to go through the bag of useless pens I had already discarded. I refused to let her do that, insisting that I could tell if a pen had indeed run out of ink.
What is it about pens that resist tossing? In the old days a pencil became short or it wasn’t. A fountain pen had ink or it didn’t. You could tell when things were done. Now, no one could tell if there was still some recalcitrant ink left in the barrel of the pen. Life is more complex and ambiguous these days.
That night, after a long day of packing and discarding, and sharing a few tears with Ava when she left, Rufus clumped about in the front yard, his cast protected by a plastic grocery bag held up by a small strip of duct tape. I did not turn the front porch lights on, knowing that Rufus did not like doing what he had to do in full view of the neighbors. He stood out there, in the cold, sniffing the air, obviously, I thought, wishing he could take one of the normal routes on our walks. He could not, of course.
I huddled in my puffy coat, hunching deep inside the folds, trying to stay warm. The weather felt so different when we were not walking—colder, more boring, actually.
“Rufus,” I asked in a soft winter voice, “why did you decide so quickly that going to the ocean was the right thing to do?”
“Gus said it was warm there. He went there once. He liked it. I like warm. I’m tired of being cold.”
I nodded, then added, “I am too,” not certain if Rufus understood the meaning of a nod.
“Will that man come back?”
“What man?” I asked, pretty sure who Rufus meant. After all, he did not know that many men.
“The man who let me off my leash.”
“Brian.”
“I guess, if that’s his name.”
“It is. I don’t think you will ever see him again.”
Rufus snorted in the cold, a puff of breathy vapor visible in the frigid air. “I never liked him.”
That, of course, was a revelation to me. The most I had gotten from Rufus was that he “seemed nice.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, the wonderment, or better yet, bewilderment, hopefully, apparent in my voice. “You could have said maybe God didn’t like him or want us to be together or something. Then all of this could have been avoided.”
I bet Rufus would have shrugged, had he been able to shrug.
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask God about him.”
I furrowed my brow as visibly as I could to show this dog that I was getting close to being exasperated with him and his reticence.
“Why not?”
Rufus snorted again, this time, I thought, in a nonverbal way of answering me. Rufus did not do ironic or cynical well.
“People have free will. Right? I think I heard you say that. Or maybe it was God who said it.”
“Free will? Really?”
“Yes,” Rufus replied, frustratingly calm. “So it was not my place to say anything. And I’m not a biter. So I couldn’t very well bite him . . . that man. And a dog in the pack does not bite the leader of the pack.”
“But Brian wasn’t the leader.”
Rufus paused a moment, then spoke softly. “Oh. Yes. I guess he wasn’t the leader, was he? Him, I could have bitten, couldn’t I?”
“You could have. Maybe you should have.”
Rufus turned back toward the front door, snow already clumped about his three good legs.
“But . . . Then, I’m not a biter. I said that already, didn’t I?”
“You did.”
“So the decision was up to you.”
Sometimes knowing who was ultimately responsible for a bad decision was not all that comforting.
Not at all.
The next morning, still dark and cold, we stumbled outside, Rufus stretching and yawning. I never feel quite civilized during our early morning walks—but no one in their right mind is out at 5:00 a.m. in the dead of winter. Other than the lady who delivers the newspapers.
I stopped getting the newspaper a few years ago. Up until then, I could be counted among the most loyal of readers, scanning every headline, reading nearly all the opinion pieces and editorials, feeling virtuous at remaining a solid citizen and dutifully informed over everything that was happening in the world. Then my eyes started to go. Not that they were great before. I had begun squinting years earlier, but newspapers were using such tiny fonts. Seriously. And it became harder and harder to read the newspaper in the faint light of morning. Plus, I could get the same material—for free—on the Internet. What are those editors thinking? “We’ll give the news away for free and expect people to pay for it as well.” Like that makes a lot of sense.
Anyhow . . .
So Rufus and I were out in the cold, and I was obsessing about packing and when to hold the estate sale to sell all the material that I didn’t want, couldn’t use, or didn’t know what to do with.
“Do dogs pack?” Rufus asked, looking up from a dark corner of the front yard.
“No, Rufus. They don’t.”
“What about my bed?”
“Well, that I will bring with us. And your crate. I’ll take both of those things in the car with us.”
Rufus snorted as if he was in agreement.
“And what about my crunchy treats? Do you pack those? Will you remember to pack those?”
“Of course, I will.”
“That’s good,” Rufus replied, and began to hobble toward the front door.
“Can you buy crunchies at the ocean?”
“Yes. They sell them everywhere.”
How wonderful to be a dog with such simple needs, so few necessities.
12
The days surrounding Christmas were somewhat of a blur to me. As usual, at least usual for the last several years, I did not go anywhere on Christmas morning. In the past, Bernice had begged me to fly to Arizona.
“Being alone on Christmas . . . well, that’s just not right,” she’d said. “Only communists ignore Christmas.”
I didn’t think she was accusing me of being a secret, suburban communist, but she meant well. The first Christmas alone had been terrible, but it would have been more terrible had I been around people who were enjoying it. The second time became easier, and I actually did agree to go to a friend’s house for dinner, later on, late in the afternoon on Christmas Day.
This year, the holiday came and went, and I had reheated Chinese food on Christmas day, amid a flurry of boxes and packing and feeling overwhelmed.
Beth came to visit two days before New Year’s Eve. If there was one day worse than Christmas to be alone on, it was New
Year’s Eve. This year, I thought, would be easier. I would be busy, not watching a cadaverous Dick Clark announcing the ball drop in Times Square. I mean—really—what kind of person goes to Times Square on New Year’s Eve? Any sane or rational person? I don’t think so.
Beth arrived with a plate of homemade cookies. Call me a scrooge, but I don’t like homemade cookies. I mean, I know how dirty my kitchen can be, and I’m a clean person. What happens in other people’s kitchens is best to remain a matter of conjecture. But these were lemon bars and I like lemon bars and Beth said she made them herself and I usually trust Beth to maintain a modicum of proper sanitary procedures. So I made her a cup of decaf coffee. I made a cup of real coffee for myself and we sat in the cluttered kitchen.
Rufus did his now-usual dance with a broken leg, seeming to revel in the sympathy it aroused. And Beth gave him a bite of her lemon bars. He likes lemon bars too.
I nudged a box, half-filled with plates that I would not be bringing with me. Why anyone needs five versions of dessert plates is beyond me. Yet I had five sets. I would bring with me only two.
After a long pause, Beth drew in a deep breath, pushed the hair from her eyes, and tucked it behind her ears—again. It was a habit I would not miss.
I knew she was working on the best way to broach the subject, and I even knew what the subject was: am I making a rash decision?
“Mary . . . You are one of my oldest and dearest friends . . .”
I don’t think I am, but it still made me feel good, in a weird sort of way, to be valued by someone. I mean, I knew that we were friends and had been friends for nearly a decade now. But I would have sworn there were other people in Beth’s life who were dearer to her than I was. Still . . .
“I know what you’re going to ask,” I said, preempting her, and saving her a bit of anguish of bringing up perhaps a touchy subject. “And I am not being rash. I’ve thought this out pretty thoroughly.”
Beth looked both surprised and relieved.
“Are you sure, Mary? I mean, really sure? I know that God doesn’t want us to do foolish things just because of our emotions. Or just because your dog got hit by a car.”
Beth might have been the only person who made that connection, and in a sense, she was the only person with the right answer as to my reasons for going. Or partly right, anyhow.
“Doesn’t God seem to reward people who move slowly and cautiously?” Beth asked. I would bet that she had no evidence from the Scriptures, but slow and cautious reflected her take on the proper evangelical path to heaven.
“Emotions can’t be trusted,” she went on. “They can make us do things that we maybe shouldn’t do. You have to be careful.”
“But don’t emotions help us do the right things sometimes?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” she responded. “Well, maybe sometimes. But not usually. We sort of tell ourselves what we want to hear and the more we do that, the more we begin to agree with ourselves—and maybe get fooled into thinking what is wrong is actually right.”
Beth is a wonderful person, but not a student of logic. Yet Beth, like so many other people in my life, did not truly understand my life, and just who I wanted to be. So now I felt like a teenager again, complaining that my parents didn’t understand me, since neither one of them, obviously, had ever been a teenager. In one sense, though, I was correct. None of the people in my life right now had suffered as I had suffered. Sure, people lost aged parents, and aunts or uncles or grandmothers passed on, but no one I knew had suffered as I had.
And that suffering allowed me to act in a way that made sense to me—even if it did not make sense to others. Not only did it allow me to do so, it forced me to do so.
“Maybe . . . maybe you’re running away. A little. From the past, I mean.” Beth grew more uncomfortable, as if she were accusing me of using the death of my husband and son to rationalize my irrational desire to leave this place and head to an ocean. With my talking dog.
“So what if I am?” I replied. I was not angry, not at all. I simply wanted to know how she viewed this decision as a bad decision.
“Well, I’m not sure,” she said, a little flustered. “But maybe you leaving is . . . well, I mean . . . maybe you have to stay and face the past. Face it rather than run away. That’s what I’m saying.”
I still did not get angry, and am not angry even now, even though I could have been. I could have let the ire rise and snap back at her and slam my palm on the table scaring both her and Rufus. It might have felt good to me to do that, but it would serve no useful purpose. Instead, I remained calm and collected. Impassive, almost.
“Beth, I know you mean well. I do. But . . . I have lost everything. I have been alone these past years and people still think I am not facing the past. What have I been doing all these years? I have faced it. I have dealt with the loss. I know what it is to be alone. I have lived with that reality every day of my life since the accident. There is not a single hour that passes that, somewhere in my thoughts, that terrible day intrudes on my reality. I am done facing it. I can’t face it anymore. I can’t deal with it anymore. It has been dealt with. I am ready to move on. And I don’t think I need to prove anything to anyone. Or even explain it. I know that I am doing the right thing.”
Beth offered me a half-sideways pickerel smile, looking like a fish that bumped into the unseen glass wall of an aquarium. “Well, I don’t want you to do anything rash. Patience is a godly virtue. It is. Make sure what you’re doing is God’s will.”
I looked around at the small mountain range of boxes—some packed and taped, some half-filled—that littered my interior landscape. It was too late to urge caution against making rash decisions. The die had been cast. The page had been turned.
And my dog wanted to go to the ocean.
“Beth, you are a dear friend, but moving to the ocean, I think, is the first positive thing I’ve done in my life . . . since they died. It’s right, Beth. It is.”
She kept her wary smile.
“Are you sure? Have you prayed this through?”
I lied to her. Lied right to her face.
“I did, Beth. I really did.”
Lying about praying. How far I had fallen.
“I have prayed so much about this it’s not even funny.”
February clumped over Chicago, cold, gray, windy, bone-chilling, marrow-draining, and filled the weak with the numbing dread of an endless winter. I inured myself to the brutality of the midwestern variety of winter, hoping, praying (not really) that it would be my last. Snow fell and stayed, fingers of drifts edging onto homes and streets and mailboxes. Snippets of snow clutched about Rufus and me as we walked. His cast had been removed, his leg was healed, his pain was gone (so he said), and his hair became scraggly and withered, as it slowly regrew on the shaved portion of his leg. Because it did not have protection from the cold, I cut off the end of a child’s sock and slipped it as a legging over his foreleg, and held it snug, not tight, with a length of Velcro. His paw remained exposed to the cold, but his pink and wrinkled leg remained warmer.
Both of us had had enough of winter.
Bernice called me several times. She never once tried to talk me out of moving. In fact, she said that she wondered why it had taken me so long to decide. “Our house back in Wheaton had become much too big for two people, Mary. I get winded just thinking about vacuuming the place.”
She asked one important question: “Can we visit you when you find a place and get settled? I do like the ocean.”
Of course I said yes.
Validation.
And then I decided to buy a new car. Or a car that would be new to me. I had been driving around in a small, nondescript car for years. There was nothing wrong with it, but if I was going to head east, and be on the road for weeks and perhaps months, I needed something bigger.
After all, Rufus would be with me. He needed space.
I decided to buy a used Volvo station wagon. They are safe cars, right? Volvos are
for thinking people. Right? Nothing flashy or pretentious. But bigger. Roomier. I could carry with me enough stuff to start over again—once I found a place. Until I could have the rest of my furnishings shipped to me.
I had some money set aside that I could use. Plus I’d have the trade-in dollars, even though that wouldn’t be all that much. A car could not be considered a luxury, but a necessity.
I found a Volvo wagon at that used car franchise that has locations all over the country. It was eight years old, a XC something or other, with low mileage and a luggage rack on top—not that I would use it, though it might come in handy. One huge plus: it had cruise control—a luxury I had never enjoyed on any of my previous cars. And leather seats. With seat warmers. What decadent people we have become, needing our tender bottoms gently warmed as we make our way through a frigid environment.
I felt rich.
And the Volvo had plenty of room for Rufus’s crate.
February slipped past, a blur of gray and cold.
I began to get nervous about the selling of the house. Only a handful of potential buyers had visited, and none of them had been interested enough to make an offer.
Maybe God, if he actually got involved in petty matters like house sales, would use this as a means to get me to stay put. Maybe that’s what the Divine wanted of me. Open doors and closed doors. Isn’t that what people often include in their prayers? Really now—some people boldly pray for open doors, and some people are too polite or righteously humble to come out and ask for them directly.
I hadn’t asked God about this—or anything else. I had felt guilty about lying to Beth, but it stilled her concerns. And that’s what our “pretend” prayers often do—offer a balm to the nervous and timid. And make us look more spiritual than we are.
I can be terrible, can’t I? I am sorry for being such a horrid person at times.
But I needed to get out of this cold and this bleakness and this avalanche of memories that kept threatening to engulf me, to bury me forever beneath the suffocating folds of the past.