BY NEW Year’s Eve, however, my mind is in charge again. My friends join me at the cemetery for a drink; five concerned faces watch as I pour beer on Sam’s grave.
“I don’t know how you do it,” Kristy says.
I look at her. “Do what?”
“Be so…accepting of all this.”
“Because she has to,” Jodie replies. “Adri doesn’t have a choice.”
Oh, but I do. And I just hope that when the time comes—as I suspect it will—I’ll have the courage to make the right one.
Smiling, I raise my beer bottle toward the white wooden cross. “To Sam,” I say.
NEW YEAR’S DAY, 2001
“WHAT ARE you doing?” I’d asked Sam a year ago today, after walking into our bedroom and finding him packing his suitcase.
“I’m leaving you.”
I’d laughed. Sasha had tried to stick her nose in the suitcase, but Sam had pushed her away.
“I’ve had it with you, Adri.”
“Why?”
“You know damn well what I’m angry at.”
I’d giggled nervously as he shoved in T-shirts and boxer shorts, socks and ties.
“You think I’m kidding?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Sam, chill out.”
He’d stopped packing and turned to me, his eyes black.
“It’s a day trip to the mountains,” I say.
“That’s not the issue and you know it. Why do you think I’m so pissed off?”
“Because I have to take my mother with me.”
He’d clapped his hands. “Bingo.”
I’d started crying.
“Today was supposed to be a special day for you to spend alone with Ed. You get to see him once a year, if that.”
“But…”
“And your mother just has to go along.”
“She loves that sort of thing,” I’d said, “and I don’t want to hurt her.”
“Then you know what?” He’d snapped the suitcase shut. “If you want to keep your mother so damn happy then go fucking live with her.”
Then he’d picked up the suitcase and walked toward the door. “I married you, Adri, not your mother.”
Sasha and I had followed him down the stairs. “Sam, don’t do this.”
He’d stood by the front door, his jacket in one hand, suitcase in the other. “I fell in love with an independent, free-spirited woman who dreamed of becoming a great writer.”
I’d slumped onto the stairs. Sasha crept up beside me.
“And what you’ve turned into is a thirty-one-year-old puppet who has given up on her dreams.”
“All this because I’m taking my mother to the mountains?”
“No. All this because you can’t say no.”
Sam didn’t leave me that day. He’d saved his grand exit until nine months later.
ON JANUARY 10th, Nick’s wife is scheduled for a 9:00 a.m. C-section. Why I, the nuttier-than-a-fruitcake recently widowed childless auntie, has been asked to attend the birth, I’m not sure. Perhaps it has something to do with my refusal to tell people how I’m really feeling. And still not having grasped the concept of saying no, off I go.
At nine thirty, a baby girl with the middle name of Hope arrives. When she’s shown to me, I shiver.
“You’re being held by Sam,” the baby’s maternal grandmother says to me.
“Huh?”
“The way your body just reacted,” she explains, “it looked like someone was standing behind you, wrapping their arms around you.”
I’m handed the infant to hold while her mother sleeps off the anesthesia. But as I look down at the baby, I realize with absolute certainty that all living creatures follow a cycle of life and death. Such a small and simple truth, yet finally accepting it dislodges the first pebble of a landslide. A human being is born and then, one day, he or she dies. There are no exceptions to this rule. Another pebble slips away. It’s impossible that anyone can physically come back from the dead. A stone breaks free.
“She’s cute, isn’t she?” Nick says to me.
I force a smile. “She sure is!”
“Sam would have loved her, eh?”
I nod, grinning like an idiot as he snaps a photo of Hope and me. Then I hand the child back to her father.
“Are you gonna stick around for awhile, Adri?”
“No. I uh…I gotta get going.”
Then I watch as he leans in and kisses his wife, who, though still groggy from the medication, smiles up at him.
Sam and I will never experience parenthood. A boulder joins the slide.
I excuse myself, drive home, make a cup of tea, give Sasha a pig’s ear, sit in my big blue chair, stare out the living room window and promptly have a mental breakdown.
Jesus is no more the Son of God than I am His Daughter.
There will be no Second Coming of Christ.
There is no perfect place called heaven where Sam is waiting for me.
Sam is not coming back.
I will never see him again.
I am alone. I am a widow.
To try and stop the slide, I drag myself downstairs to Sam’s perch to watch TV. I can hear his sister leave a message on my answering machine. Then a couple of friends leave messages. My mom does as well. People are obviously concerned about the impact of the baby’s birth on me. But I’m now past the point of wanting to be consoled. I just want to be out of the fucking pain, so eloquently labeled grief. I’ve had it with the mental anguish, the heartache, the loneliness, the guilt, the lies to myself and those around me, the confusion, and the self-pity associated with the realization that while other people are allowed to be in love and have babies, I am not.
Then I hear Tom begin leaving a message on my machine and it hits me: I do want to talk to him.
I pick up partway through his message. “Hi.”
“I just called to see how it went today,” he says.
“Brutal.”
“I bet.”
I start crying. “I can’t take this much longer.”
“I don’t know what to say, Adri.”
“There’s nothing left to say.”
I hang up and remain on Sam’s perch for another hour, staring into the fire. Then I go up to my bedroom, turn on the light, walk into the middle of the room and stand there.
Why am I still here?
I don’t have to stay.
There’s a bottle of Tylenol 3’s in the bathroom.
Sasha jumps on the bed and rests her snout on her paws, watching me carefully.
I stare at the bathroom door.
Don’t go so close to the edge!
“I’m nowhere near it,” I snap at the periwinkle walls.
Yes, you are. Don’t be stupid!
“Fine.” I sit down on the bed, still a few feet from the bathroom. “Then give me a good reason to stay.”
I already did.
I take two sleeping pills, curl up in bed with Sam’s badge and fantasize about a romance with Tom. Sam’s not coming back on his white horse to save me. But it’s not just saviours who ride white horses. Knights do too.
Plan G.
JANUARY 11th, 2001
THE DOORBELL wakes me in the morning. Wearing Sam’s boxer shorts and Hawaiian shirt, I stumble downstairs to answer the door. Standing on my front porch is the detective in charge of Sam’s investigation, final police report in hand.
He takes one look at me. “We don’t have to do this today.”
“I’m OK.”
“Honestly, Adri, I can come back another time.”
I give him the wave. “I can handle it.”
He frowns. “I’m going to stay here with you while you read the report.”
I go into the kitchen to start coffee then join him in the living room.
“Now, I’ve covered up all the photographs of…” He coughs and hands me the document. “Well, that I don’t think you need to see.”
“Thank you.”
As I begin reading the
report, it occurs to me that typing up incident reports had been my job; understanding and questioning the investigative findings from Sam’s death seems to be my work. Plus, it’s the least I can do, considering the transgression of the heart committed last night. Only, what’s the first thing I notice reading through the list of officers who were at the scene? That the digits of Tom’s regimental number also add up to eleven. What are the odds of this?
After reading through the witness statements given by police officers, paramedics, firefighters and hospital staff, I look at the detective. “It was over very quickly for Sam, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Then I read through the scene exam and investigative details. “Do you think Sam thought he was stepping from one safe surface to another safe surface?” I ask.
“Sam is the only person who could answer that question.”
“I’m only asking for your opinion.”
He nods. “Sam stepped to the side of the ceiling, where there was a beam but unfortunately it wasn’t wide enough for his boot.”
I think about this. “Are you saying that maybe he knew it was a false ceiling—and was stepping to the side for better footing?”
“We’ll never know that either. It was dark, Sam had his flashlight out, he was looking for an intruder and had every reason to believe there was one in the building.”
“In other words,” I say, “he was just trying to do his goddamn job.”
“That’s right. And both you and I know that Sam was very good at what he did.”
“Would a safety railing have saved his life?” I ask.
“Again, I can’t answer that question with absolute certainty.”
I fold my arms across my chest. “How about with some certainty then?”
“Yes. It would have.”
“And the alarm—what happened with the follow-up on that?”
“The employee insisted he heard an unusual sounding alarm when he came into work that morning. But the alarm company has checked the system thoroughly and it was not malfunctioning. The employee may have been mistaken about what he’d heard.”
I throw up my hands.
“Adri, quite often during an investigation, there’s one piece of the puzzle that just doesn’t fit—so we have to focus on all the pieces that do.”
SINCE I can’t force the missing piece of the investigation to materialize, I instead direct my energies into putting back together the pieces of my own life. I spend my days crying, walking Sasha, reading, writing a little, crying, feeling guilty, kissing Sam’s photos, daydreaming about Tom, returning the occasional phone call, and crying some more. I also begin to put some of Sam’s things away. The last towel he’d touched still hangs in our bathroom. I hold it up against my face then gently place it in the laundry basket. I move his deodorant and cologne from the bathroom counter to under the sink. Each act is another little goodbye and I’m not even throwing or giving anything away; I’m just changing its location in our home. For some reason, however, I can’t bring myself to move his calculator and copy of the police contract with the City from where they sit on the back of the toilet.
As the end of January approaches so too does my three-month leave from the police service. “When are you going back to work?” I am asked over and over again.
I want to reply that I am working my ass off, thank you very much. Grieving, writing about it, and trying to figure out what to do about the circumstances surrounding Sam’s death is the toughest work I’ve ever done—especially since I’m trying to do it inside a goldfish bowl with people constantly tapping on the glass.
Gawker 1: Look at the little widow swimming around in circles!
Gawker 2: Gee…do you think she needs more food?
Gawker 1: Actually, she’s looking pretty chunky. Have you been feeding her?
Gawker 2: Yeah.
Gawker 1: Whoops! So, have I.
“I’m writing a book,” I tell the inquiring masses.
“Uh huh,” is the usual response. “But when are you going back to work?”
I phone the head of Records to request a year off, explaining I need more time to sort everything out.
“Take as long as you want,” she says.
“I appreciate that.”
“I hear you’re writing a book.”
“I’m trying to.”
“I think that’s wonderful!”
“Thank you.”
“Adri?”
“Yeah?”
“Go to your destiny.”
But since I don’t know where my destiny is, I go to Sam’s—every few days. While hanging out at his grave, I’ve taken to smoking the wine-tipped cigars he used to like. Since I’m a dreadfully naughty widow, dreaming of a new lover when the old one hasn’t been dead four months, smoking fits my new bad girl self-image.
In late January, I pay a visit to the psychologist to run the Tom-thought, occurring with increasing frequency, by him.
“I don’t know what your future holds,” he says, “but right now, I’d say you’re still very much grieving the loss of Sam.”
“So how do I control my thoughts?”
He suggests I think of a recurring thought as a tangible entity and when I find myself thinking about something I’m not ready to deal with, gently push it away.
“For good?” I ask.
“Not necessarily. Assign a timeframe if you want…say a few months.”
I’m sure this is a very useful tool—but I don’t want to use it. I enjoy the quasi-good feeling that accompanies romantic daydreaming. It sure as hell beats grieving. As I’m leaving the psychologist’s office, the I-am-Jesus-thought pops into my head again.
“Let’s say a thought comes back and I am ready to deal with it. Is it OK to use a baseball bat?”
He smiles. “If that’s what’s needed, sure.”
AT THE end of January, the K-9 officer comes by for a visit. “I remember you mentioning that you wanted to meet the dog that was working with me and Sam that night.”
I follow him out to his car and, after snapping and snarling at me through the glass, the police dog cheers up considerably once out of the vehicle. He gives me a quick sniff then proceeds to pee all over the front lawn.
“He’s just marking his territory,” the officer explains.
But inside the house, Sasha’s going nuts at the window. That’s her territory he’s marking. The K-9 officer puts the dog back into the car then comes inside for a coffee. I ask him about the night Sam died.
“When I arrived at the warehouse,” he begins, “Tom, Sam and his teammates were waiting outside for me. I looked straight at Sam and said, ‘You. Let’s go!’”
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“Why Sam?” I ask. Then I take a huge drink of water, my thirst returned.
“Because he was the best person for the job. We went in and Sam went up the ladder and a couple of minutes later, I saw him fall through the ceiling. I yelled into the radio what had happened and then ran looking for him.”
The K-9 officer pauses, running his hand through his hair. “I found him in the lunchroom and started CPR. It took a few minutes for Sam’s team to find us and when they did my dog went berserk with all the chaos, so two of the teammates had to take over CPR. Then Tom took control of the scene and I remember watching him, directing everyone what to do…it was amazing to see a leader like that in action, especially when you consider how close he was to Sam.”
Oh boy.
“Thank you for getting Sam’s breathing going again,” I finally say. “Not only did that mean his organs could be donated, which in turn saved other people’s lives, it also meant that I was able to spend his last day with him.”
The officer looks at the linoleum then back at me. “There’s something else I have to tell you.”
“OK.”
“About a month before Sam fell, I was clearing a building with another K-9 officer and his dog, which meant I was the one searching the upst
airs level. One minute I was walking along and the next, I was sitting on some guy’s desk one floor down.”
“Huh?”
“I fell through a false ceiling a month before Sam did.”
I give him the goldfish.
“But I wasn’t hurt,” he continues, “so I just got up, kept going and didn’t think anything more about it…until Sam fell.”
“Didn’t you have to file some sort of report?”
“Yeah but that was the end of it. There are thousands of unsafe buildings in this city. Until Sam died, I just accepted that was part of our job.”
“And now?”
“I don’t.”
I think of the map in Sam’s duty bag. Are unsafe workplaces the “bad guy” issue?
“I also wanted to tell you,” he continues, “that I really appreciated the letter you wrote me last fall. I showed it to my wife and we both thought it was the nicest letter we’ve ever read.”
He stands up. “In fact, I keep it with me whenever I’m working. If that’s what you can do with a letter, Adri, then the book you’re writing will move mountains.”
WHEN THE phone starts ringing at nine the next morning, I don’t answer it. I don’t putter around the house, rearranging knick-knacks and kissing photos of Sam. I don’t think about the calls I ought to be returning and the months’ worth of unopened mail. I don’t stare at the water fountain thinking about writing nor do I daydream about Tom. I sit down at the computer to do my job. Sam’s breathing wasn’t the only thing the K-9 officer kick-started—he just got me writing again.
IN THE first week of February, I go for lunch with Charlie and Mark.
“I think I’ve figured out a way we could give some of the money raised in Sam’s memory back to the police community,” I say.
Charlie nods. “Let’s hear it.”
“Well, they’ve renamed Sam’s district’s Leadership Award in his name. So how about we give the annual recipient some sort of cash award along with the plaque?”
“Hmmm…” is the collective response from across the table.
A Widow's Awakening Page 20