A Widow's Awakening

by Maryanne Pope

  I nod but don’t look up. It’s two fucking slaps in the face, is what it is.

  “Adri?”

  I lift my head. “Yeah?”

  “Do you wish you and Sam had a baby?”

  “I think I’ll go for a walk,” I reply, placing the half-beaded Styrofoam decoration on the table. I want to smash the goddamn ball and throw the stupid beads out the window.

  “Are you OK?” Megan asks.

  “I’m fine…just need a little break is all.”

  I try to zip up my jacket, but my hands are shaking too much.

  Megan struggles to stand up. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  I look her in the eye. “Yes. I do wish we’d had a child. Not having a baby with Sam is my greatest regret.”

  “Adri, I…”

  “If we’d had a boy,” I continue, “Sam wanted to name him James. If we’d had a girl, I’d chosen the name Alexandra Grace. Of course, that had been back in the old days, when we’d both actually wanted children—before we perceived this fucked-up hellhole to be an unsuitable environment in which to bring offspring.”

  Her jaw drops.

  “I’ll be back in a bit,” I say.

  Then I put on my runners, walk out the door and down the hill to the boardwalk where I last walked with Sam five months ago.

  Deciding whether or not to have a child had been an evolving process for us. When we were in our mid-twenties—before we were married—we just assumed we’d one day have a family. “You’d be an awesome mom,” Sam would say, “although I’d have to be the disciplinarian in the family.” A year into our marriage, when we were back in our hometown and Sam was a police officer, our conversations were more like this:

  Sam: You wouldn’t believe the brats I have to deal with every day. Kids have no respect for adults, let alone cops.

  Me: We’d be good parents, though.

  Sam: I’m not convinced that’s enough anymore. When I take the really rotten kids home, sometimes they’re from good families too.

  Me: Oh.

  Two years into our marriage, when I was working part-time as a receptionist and trying to write a novel, our conversations resembled:

  Me: Maybe we shouldn’t have a child.

  Sam smiles.

  Me: At least, not until I’m happier with myself.

  Sam appears puzzled.

  Me: I’m terrified of having a kid before I’ve written a book.

  Sam: How so?

  Me: I don’t want to live vicariously through my child.

  Sam: Not a good idea, no.

  Three years into the marriage, when I was still working on the novel—my protagonist, Liz, droning on and on about what’s wrong with the world and the wisdom of bringing another human into it, our conversations had shifted:

  Sam: When are you gonna finish that damn book?

  Me: It’s coming.

  One month before Sam’s death:

  Me: I’m getting closer to wanting to become a mother.

  Sam: You haven’t finished writing your book.

  Me: Maybe that’s not a realistic dream.

  Sam: Well sweetheart, you may be a good mom, but you’re gonna have to look elsewhere for a father. I am not bringing a kid into this world.

  I follow the boardwalk to the end and continue walking along the beach in front of the beautiful homes. I stop in front of a white mansion and close my eyes. I imagine Sam and me on the verandah, watching our kids laughing and playing on the beach. Is this what heaven will be like?

  THIS EVENING, I’d planned to drive across town to visit a friend, but the Lion’s Gate Bridge is too icy to cross. I call to cancel and end up talking to his wife, a psychologist.

  “You must get this question an awful lot,” she says, “but how are you doing?”

  “I’m all right.” I sit down on the guest bed where Sam and I used to sleep. “I’m writing about it and that seems to help.”

  “Like putting together the pieces of a puzzle, eh?”

  “Pretty much—except that now there’s no picture on the box to go by.”

  “And there was before Sam died?” she says.

  “Yeah.”

  “May I ask what the picture was?”

  I tell her I always wanted to be a writer who lived by the sea.

  “You live in the prairies, Adri.”

  “That’s where Sam’s dream was.”

  “But not yours?”

  “No. I was there for Sam.” I clear my throat. “I’ve been thinking a lot about heaven and hell.”

  “And?”

  “Do you think good will ultimately triumph over evil?”

  She chuckles. “Oh, I don’t believe in hell, Satan or evil.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. I think evil is simply pain manifested,” she states matter-of-factly. “If you love and are loved, you experience joy. If you don’t love and are not loved, you experience pain. And pain leads to fear and that leads to anger.”

  “Oh.”

  “Although I don’t agree with all aspects of Judaism,” she continues, “I do believe our bottom line—and that’s to heal the world. I think every person has a part to play in healing this planet, be that through leading a nation, writing a book or cleaning a toilet.”

  “Are you saying that it’s up to us to save ourselves?” I ask.

  “You could put it that way, yeah.”

  “So you don’t believe in heaven, huh?”

  “Sure I do. I just don’t believe it’s an external place. I think it’s a state of mind.”

  BEFORE FALLING asleep, I finish reading Tuesdays with Morrie and come across the part where Morrie, dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease, says that given the choice, he’d reincarnate as a gazelle. I smile. Me too.

  Tonight, I dream of Sam. I am again with him in the operating room prior to his organ removal surgery. Everything is exactly as it had been in real life except that when I go to kiss him goodbye, his eyes open and he says, “I love you.”

  I awake damn near ecstatic.

  I CHECK in for my flight to Kingston and am told I’ll be changing planes in Toronto. Then, perhaps inspired by my father’s lecture on physics, a book catches my eye in the airport bookstore: E=mc2: A Biography of the World’s Most Famous Equation by David Bodanis. I buy it.

  During the flight, I read all about energy, mass and light and am reminded that energy is neither created nor destroyed, it just changes form. A sprout of science breaks through the thin layer of Christian topsoil. I come to the part that explains how the 18th century scientific work of Émilie du Châtelet—the love of Voltaire’s life—contributed to Einstein squaring the speed of light in his famous equation two centuries later, and how she loved to work at her desk with a pile of books and a pad of paper, enthusiastically sorting out ideas. This sounds like me! Then I read how Voltaire’s Candide, written near the end of his life, reflected a strangely passive view of the world that suggested no fundamental improvement could be made. This was Sam at the end of his life!

  Unexpectedly pregnant at forty-three, Du Châtelet had been writing furiously to get her ideas down on paper because she knew she was going to die in childbirth. Here on the plane, I can feel her fear of wanting so passionately to write but knowing there wouldn’t be enough time.

  Why not?

  Because I’ll be dead by spring.

  Do you really believe that?

  Yes.

  Or does it just make you feel better believing that?

  I know a child would mean the end of my writing.

  I thought your greatest regret was not having a child with me?

  “Whatever you’re reading must be pretty interesting.”

  I look up, startled. The flight attendant is standing in the aisle, holding a thermos of coffee. “Top-up?” she says with a smile.

  I hold out my cup. “Sure…thank you.”

  I resume reading and come to Voltaire’s comment when Émilie died, three days after giving birth: “I h
ave lost the half of myself—a soul for which mine was made.”

  Clunk goes the coin. Was I Émilie du Châtelet in a past life and Sam Voltaire? Émilie had died young, leaving Voltaire behind to pick up the pieces. Maybe now it’s my turn to experience the death of a soul mate?

  I think back to the idea of love being the energy of the soul.

  Energy can be neither created nor destroyed, it simply changes form.

  “A severe snowstorm has hit Toronto,” announces the pilot over the intercom. “All flights from Pearson airport have been cancelled.”

  So then maybe love can be neither created nor destroyed, it just changes form?

  “If you were planning to catch a connecting flight,” the pilot continues, “please go to the airline check-in counter and you’ll be assigned a hotel.”

  I STAND outside Pearson airport, in my ridiculously high-heeled boots, for three hours waiting for the shuttle bus to take me to my hotel. When I finally get to my room, I race into the bathroom then go downstairs to the pub for a beer and a burger. Monday Night Football is on TV.

  Back in my room, I’m brushing my teeth when I glance over and see pee in the toilet. But I distinctly remember flushing the toilet before going downstairs. If it’s not mine, whose is it?

  Oh my God! What if Sam did come back from the dead?

  I stumble out of the bathroom and search the room, unsuccessfully, for the non-flushing intruder. Then I sit on the edge of the bed and watch as the snowflakes whip against the window. I think back to the funeral director’s suggestion about placing Sam’s casket within a concrete vault. Was that to ensure the body decayed as slowly as possible so that when Jesus came back, the raising of the dead wouldn’t be such a technical challenge? Or was that to protect against the body coming back from the dead?

  Sam isn’t in a vault.

  The wind picks up and the snow gathers in chaotic swirls. And I admit to myself that even if Sam could come back, I’m not ready for him to. I burst into tears. It is so wrong for me to think this. I’m supposed to want him back—at any time, in any place and in any form. But if he came back, then I wouldn’t have the financial freedom to write.

  Sobbing, I crawl into bed and listen to the storm raging outside and in. I don’t take a sleeping pill because I don’t deserve to escape one moment of guilt.

  Throughout the night, flashes of lightning illuminate the room and I half expect to see someone or something at the foot of my bed. Around 3:00 a.m., I awake to a car alarm and listen to it for a few minutes before calling reception.

  “Uh, that alarm is kinda annoying,” I say to the girl who answers the phone.

  “What alarm?”

  “That car alarm that’s going off.”

  “I haven’t heard it,” she says. “And no one else has called about it either.”

  I hang up and go to the window, but I can’t tell which vehicle is making the noise. However, I do see a red car, similar to my own, pull into the parking lot. While trying to park, the driver goes back and forth several times before finally stopping. Then he gets out, opens the rear door on the driver’s side, takes his knapsack out of the back seat then puts it back in. Then he takes it out and puts it back in again. He takes the knapsack out one last time then wanders off into the snowstorm, away from the hotel. The alarm stops.

  I shake my head. Why am I stranded in a Toronto hotel room, wondering if my dead husband peed in the toilet then hearing a car alarm that nobody else does while watching a drunk driver trying to park in the middle of a snowstorm?

  THE NEXT morning, I return to Pearson airport to find my flight to Kingston has been even further delayed. I sit in the departure lounge, across from the shoeshine booth, and continue reading my E=mc2 book.

  Around hour three, I decide to take a break and get my boots shined—the poor shoeshine guy hasn’t had a single customer since I got here.

  I climb up onto his raised platform, sit down and stick one foot out.

  “How are you?” I ask.

  “Fine thank you,” he replies, carefully wiping away the salt and dirt.

  “I’ve got a question for ya.”

  He nods.

  “Do you believe in God?”

  The man blinks in surprise.

  “Is that too personal?” I ask.

  “No. It’s just not a question I get asked very much.”

  “And?”

  “Yes, I believe in God. But to me, He is Allah.”

  I watch him polishing my boot. “Why did you come to Canada?”

  “Because my wife and I wanted a better life.”

  “Do you have children?”

  “One.”

  “That’s nice,” I say.

  He looks up at me. “For many years, my wife couldn’t have a baby and some people back home told me to find a new wife. But I knew that wasn’t right, even though it’s acceptable where I come from—to some. I’m glad I didn’t listen because my wife and I finally did have a child. I’m a very lucky man.”

  WHEN I arrive in Kingston in the late afternoon, my uncle picks me up at the airport and takes me straight to the nursing home to see my grandpa, who’s ninety-three and has severe dementia. He’s asleep when I first walk in, so I sit by his bed and rest my cheek on his arm.

  “I’ve lost so much,” I whisper.

  My grandpa opens his eyes and turns to me. “But you’ve also gained so much.”

  He’s right. I’ve learned more about love, life and death in the past two months than I did in thirty-two years.

  BACK IN Alberta, I return home to a cold house. I check the thermostat and find it’s stuck at thirteen degrees. I punch the “up” arrow to get the heat going again. An hour later, the house is still cold so I re-check the thermostat—it’s still at thirteen. I push the “up” arrow again. Another hour passes but the temperature doesn’t increase.

  I call Dawson and half an hour later he’s in my basement.

  “You better call someone right away,” he says. “The controls must be stuck.”

  I roll my eyes. “Great.”

  “Wasn’t thirteen Sam’s lucky number?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then just be thankful he’s still looking out for you.”

  SINCE I’LL be celebrating Christmas this year with a mischievous spirit instead of a husband, I forego the traditional tree. Instead, I loop two strands of small white lights through the plants, plaques, pictures and fountain accumulated on our fireplace. The overall effect at night is lovely, though rather shrine-like.

  Christmas morning is spent with my mom, Ed—home from Northern Ontario—and his new girlfriend. After opening up our stockings, including one for Sam (in which I put a chocolate orange), I unwrap my presents. My mom gives me a suitcase. A bolt of anger shoots through me; I don’t need a suitcase where I’m going.

  But I thought you were enjoying your newfound financial freedom?

  No! That’s not what I meant.

  What did you mean then?

  That in my own haphazard way I’m learning to live without you.

  If you could have me back, you would choose me over the money?

  After brunch, I load up a bottle of sherry, two brandy snifters and his chocolate orange then head to the cemetery, where I pour us both a drink.

  “Cheers, big ears,” I say to his cross.

  Christmas dinner is spent with his family, photo, and empty chair.

  Back home again, I down two sleeping pills with more sherry and pass out.

  “I HAD an interesting dream last night,” Ed’s girlfriend says to me on Boxing Day morning. “There was a dark-haired man in it. I couldn’t make out exactly what he looked like, but I knew I’d never met him before. And he really wanted me to go to a movie with him…he was very insistent about it.”

  This takes a second to sink in. I look at Ed.

  “I figured you’d want to hear that,” he says.

  How could a woman, who had never met Sam and certainly hadn’t known about his trad
ition of going to a movie with his buddies on Christmas night, dream about it—in his house—on Christmas night?

  IN THE afternoon, we host an open house for family and friends, during which Tom presents me with a plaque in Sam’s memory. He explains to the group that Sam posthumously received his district’s Leadership Award for the Most Valuable Officer for 2000—and that the award has now been renamed in his memory.

  After the presentation, I toss back a shot of left-over Greek brandy and am on my way upstairs when I pass Dale’s wife and Katrina closely examining our main wedding photograph of Sam helping me out of the car.

  “Have you noticed anything strange about this picture?” Dale’s wife asks me.

  “No.”

  “Look behind Sam’s head,” she says, “in the background.”

  I lean in to examine a mural painted on a building. Because of the angle of the photograph, Sam’s upper body appears to be in the middle of two hands that represent God in the mural.

  “Sam,” says Katrina, “is literally in God’s hands.”

  The white dove of peace, just released from God’s hands, is above my head.

  THE NEXT day, my family drags me to a local ski resort—another attempt to, as my mother puts it, “get me away from the sadness.”

  But it just comes along with me. I am a grieving butterball, rolling along the cross-country ski trail, huffing and puffing, dreadfully out of shape.

  At the lodge afterward, a group of us are hanging out by the fireplace when my eldest niece, perhaps catching a rare moment of honesty in my expression, leans over and gently whispers, “You miss him, don’t you?”

  My tears begin instantly. I nod and allow myself, for just a moment, to ignore the conflicting thoughts and simply feel the sorrow and agonizing sense of loss.