41. Becks Kinder Than Home
SATURDAY, AUGUST 28, 1976
Tip: Darling, in the end, entertaining, like life, is all about taking care of the people you love. It is about treating them well, easing their burden, putting something on yourself to make their day a little more palatable, their experience on this earth a little simpler. It is my great wish that, as a hostess, as a friend, as a wife and mother, I have made the right choices. But it is my greatest wish that, in what I have done and what I have not, I have taken some of life’s sorrow and fear and pain away from you and your brother. Creating an effortless experience for others is, after all, what being a great hostess is all about.
Becks let the staff go early. They hadn’t put away all the dishes yet, and, while she usually liked to leave her kitchen looking like it had been untouched, she had the utmost faith in Virginia’s capacity to handle that at a later date. Besides, time was of the essence. The sun had nearly set, and she wanted to see it. From the air.
Becks sat at her dressing table, finishing a letter to Virginia. After dinner, the children were going to Robert’s cousin’s engagement party at the Coral Bay Club and would be staying over at the beach. She felt a pang of nostalgia thinking of how they would dance to the band, of all the nights she and Townsend had done the same.
“Mom!” Virginia had hissed to her mother when they were finally alone. “That’s him! Peter! The doctor who murd—”
Becks had cut her off and rubbed her arms. “I know. I figured it out. I confronted him about it, too.”
Virginia’s eyes went wide. “Are you insane? You confronted him?”
Becks grimaced. “I know. Maybe not my smartest idea?” She paused. She had come to an understanding with Peter, she thought. “I wouldn’t get too tight with that one. I know everyone else seems to love him, but there’s something about him that doesn’t sit quite right with me.”
“Maybe that he’s a murderer?” Virginia whispered.
“Well, darling,” Becks said, wondering how much of Peter’s truth to tell, “not everything is as simple as it seems.”
“So he told you what happened?”
Becks nodded.
“Mother, the last thing you want to have from a murderer is information. You don’t want to be guilty by association.”
Becks waved her hand like her daughter was being silly.
“And, Mom, what was up with Daddy earlier when he met Robert? Is he okay?”
Becks knew Townsend was very much not okay. But that wasn’t important at this particular moment. “He’s just fine, darling. Overtired and sunburned is all.”
Virginia looked skeptical. “If you say so. I’ll be back in the morning. We’ve got to get to the party now.”
“I take it all is well with Robert?” Becks asked Virginia, glad for a change of subject.
She laughed. “Oh, yes. I don’t know why I can’t be more agreeable,” she said. “Why can’t I be more like you, Mother?”
Becks smoothed her daughter’s hair. “Always be exactly who you are. No apologies. Promise?”
Virginia nodded.
Becks pulled her daughter close so she couldn’t see the tears in her eyes. “You are the most exceptional daughter, and I love you more than all the grains of sand on the beach.”
“I love you too, Mom.” Virginia pulled away and studied her mother. “Are you crying?”
Becks shrugged. “Just thinking about how you will be the most beautiful bride.”
“And you will be the most beautiful mother of the bride.”
If only…
Sitting at her dressing table now, Becks spritzed perfume on her neck, wondering what Townsend was going to say about her idea, questioning whether this would be the last time she sat here, the last time she saw her own reflection. Knowing Virginia’s future was all but set, knowing that she had said a lovely goodbye to each of her children, she was surprised at how light she felt. She was pardoning them from an unnecessary season of suffering, and giving herself the gift of choosing her own time, before the shadows began to creep into the corners of the room, before she ruined her children’s lives and made everything hard. She could never, would never, be a burden. God would forgive her for that, certainly. And to think it was Peter who had made her see the light in the end. It was Peter who was helping her pull this off by sinking the car, creating the diversion. She, of course, had to consider that Townsend wouldn’t feel how she felt. But she believed in the very marrow of her bones that he would agree this was the solution to all their problems.
But it didn’t feel real until Becks slipped her ring off. Her beautiful ring. She had left in her wishes that she wouldn’t wear it to be buried. But she had assumed she would be dead when some coroner or her daughter or her husband removed it from her finger. Thinking of that made Becks even sadder. This ring had scarcely left her finger since the day Townsend got down on his knee in front of her in his office. She hated the idea of being without it. But really what she hated was the idea of being without him. And now she’d never have to be.
She walked downstairs, into the library, where he was scribbling in his journal as she had seen him do a million times. She paused to watch him, study him, his brow furrowed, his stare intense. Every single day for the past forty-one years he had been her reason for living. Yes, even when her mother let her down so royally, she still believed in some of the things her mother had taught her. Namely, that her marriage had to come first, that a happy marriage made for happy children. Becks had never forgotten that. And, when it came to marriages, she believed she had had the happiest.
“Darling,” Townsend said, looking up, dropping his pen and closing the journal. Becks smiled when she heard his voice.
As Townsend opened the bottom drawer of the credenza to store his journal, Becks gathered all her strength. He sat back down in his chair, and she sat on the ottoman, facing him. She took his hands in hers and he looked at her expectantly. “Townsend, this isn’t easy for me to say.”
He looked as though he was about to interrupt but stopped himself.
Becks took a deep breath. “Sweetheart,” she said. “I’m dying.”
She didn’t know what to expect, but as Townsend calmly kissed her hand, she knew it wasn’t that. “I know,” he said.
“You know?”
“I’m a doctor, Becks.” His voice broke as he added, “But more important, I’m your husband. You thought I wouldn’t know?”
Becks was truly at a loss for words. Maybe he would be okay without her after all. Maybe she had read this all wrong.
Townsend took a deep breath. “Becks, since we’re making confessions… I have one of my own.”
Becks felt a lump rise in her throat. She knew what was coming. But hearing it out loud would make it real. “Daniel believes…” He paused. “Well, Becks, it appears I am beginning to get a touch of Alzheimer’s.”
She squeezed his hand tenderly, her eyes filling with tears. Then she smiled at him encouragingly.
“You aren’t surprised,” he said.
“I’m your wife. You thought I wouldn’t know?”
“Becks,” Townsend started. “I don’t want to live without you. I don’t want to spend the next years of my life in decline. I can’t bear the thought of losing you. Physically, of course. But from my mind and heart most of all. I can’t stomach the thought of not knowing my children and—” Townsend put his head in his hands. Then he looked up at Becks.
Becks smiled at him reassuringly, realizing that perhaps she had been right all along. Perhaps this plan of hers hadn’t been as foolish as she’d believed. “Townsend,” she said seriously, looking him straight in the eye. “What if we went together? Tonight.”
Becks held her breath for a few long moments. What if Townsend thought she was crazy? What if he wasn’t as worried about life without her as she was about life without him?
Townsend stood and pulled Becks up, in a gesture that revealed nothing. He drew Becks into his arms, kissed her, and said simply, “Darling girl, you have, as always, read my mind.”
“I have?” she asked, somewhat surprised. But, then again, hadn’t she and Townsend always been on the same page?
“Oh yes.” He kissed her again. “My very first day of flight school I had this overwhelming feeling that, from then on, up in the air is where we would solve all our problems.”
“Together?” she whispered.
“Together,” Townsend repeated. “Just like it always has been.”
“It’s such a nice night for a walk,” Becks said. “Would you like to stroll to the airport, maybe catch the last moments of the sunset from the air?”
He paused for a moment, taking her in. “That would be lovely.”
As they walked out the door into the cooling summer evening, she said simply, “I’ll fly us tonight.”
Townsend shook his head. “No, Becks, that isn’t fair. This should be on me.”
Becks inhaled deeply, savoring the summer scent of jasmine, gardenia, and magnolia that lingered in the southern air. She knew it was the last time she would ever smell this. It broke her heart to turn back and look at her house one last time. What happiness they had had here. Were they making a mistake? She looked at Townsend, who was looking at the house too. “It has been a good life, Becks.” Then, as if confirming what she couldn’t reason out, he added, “I am so glad we can leave it together, while it’s still good.”
His statement bolstered her. He was right.
Becks shook her head as they made their way down the street, thinking about Townsend’s offer to fly them. Peter wrecking the car would buy a couple days until they were discovered, throw everyone off the scent. But when they were found, Becks didn’t want people saying Townsend had lost his faculties and crashed the plane. No, that wouldn’t do at all. She would do everything she could to preserve him.
“You can’t fly, Townsend,” she said as they turned toward the airport, hands clasped and swinging. Passersby would have envisioned them as a couple without a care in the world. Townsend chuckled. “Daniel agrees, but that feels of little consequence now.”
“That’s not what I mean,” she said. “You are a decorated pilot. A hero. I will not have anyone saying that the plane went down because of your mistake.”
“And so I’m supposed to let the blame land on you?” He looked at her, stricken.
“I insist on it.”
He smiled. “When Rebecca Saint James insists, a smart man knows he has lost the battle.”
So that solved it. She would fly.
When they reached the hangar that they knew so well, Townsend leaned over and used his key to unlock it, then slid the door up. Becks stopped for a moment to admire the plane, kept so clean and shining by Townsend. The silver propeller practically gleamed against the aircraft’s white paint. The plane’s two stripes—one burgundy, one silver—were so shiny she could see her reflection in them. It seemed a shame to waste it. But, well, sometimes these things couldn’t be helped.
She looked at Townsend, her heart swelling. She loved him so much. The idea of their being apart was impossible. Becks kissed Townsend and hugged him with all her might. “I love you, Townsend Saint James,” she said. “This life with you has been more than anyone deserves.”
“I love you too, Rebecca Saint James,” he said. “And I refuse to live a moment without you. I cannot, will not do it. I’ve always wanted to protect you, Becks. To take care of you. Sometimes I forget how very much you have protected me too.”
She kissed him hard in affirmation. Townsend helped her up onto the wing of their Bonanza, opening the door on the co-captain side and helping her slide into the captain’s seat. Then he climbed out again. As she glided the plane out on the airstrip, he closed the hangar behind him, locking it even though nothing remained inside. What a nice touch, she thought. No one was here to see them take off, and no one would suspect they had locked an empty hangar.
As he resumed his place beside her, Becks disregarded the checklist for the first time in her life. She didn’t call in their flight plan. It would be obvious what had happened, she knew.
“I left a poem on the counter for Virginia,” Townsend said. “She’ll know right away what happened, where we are.”
Becks just smiled as the plane took off and they rose higher and higher into the sky. She believed in an afterlife. She believed there was a God who painted this sunset a fiery deep yellow and wild pink tonight, her favorite combination. She believed God would see their actions for what they were—an act of great love—and have mercy on them. But, just in case, she at least wanted them to share as many living moments as they could.
Townsend reached over and took Becks’s hand as their plane glided effortlessly through the evening sky. She smiled at him.
“I was reading my journal entry from the day we met,” Townsend said. “It was the best damn day of my life, Becks. We are so lucky.”
“So lucky,” Becks said. That they could be in this position and still believe in their own good fortune meant the world to her. She was, indeed, a blessed woman.
“It’s heaven up here, isn’t it?” he said, looking up. “This has been one of the best parts of my life, being in this plane with you, being a part of the sky.”
She nodded. “We’ve gotten to experience so much,” she said. “Together.”
“Together,” he repeated.
“I have this dream where you and I are flying,” Becks said. “Not in a plane, just flying like birds in the night sky, gliding past the moon, dancing among the stars. Where the sky is dark, but it is also so very bright.”
Townsend squeezed her hand. “Becks,” he whispered, “I have that very same dream.”
Becks laughed. “Naturally.”
She started to get the tiniest bit nervous as she approached the place she was looking for, where the land disappeared from view, where the clouds began to blend seamlessly with the water below. A flock of birds streaked across the horizon, floating along the air, diving into the deep endless blue. She and Townsend were one of them now. She took a deep breath. “This is the place,” she said.
“Hasn’t it always been?” He leaned over and kissed her for what she knew would be the last time. He gripped her hand tighter, and she killed the engine. It was smoother than she imagined, peaceful even, like descending a staircase to a place even warmer and kinder than home. In her mind’s eye, she saw her daughter’s smile, heard her son’s laugh, imagined each of them the moment they were born, when the doctor placed them on her chest. She saw Townsend’s face in the flickering candlelight the night they married in a ceremony so intimate, so special, that it had carried them through a lifetime.
Becks opened her eyes and saw that Townsend’s eyes were fixed on her face. She fixed hers to his, her other half, and now, in these final moments, her last link to life. For a moment, Becks faltered. She could change this; she could correct it. But then she thought of the weeks ahead, of her drowning in a sea of pain that Townsend couldn’t soothe, of him facing the blinding tunnel of losing all his memories, all their dreams, and she knew they had made the right choice; she knew they would be forgiven.
The blue of the water, the blue of the sky, the blue of his eyes. Becks and Townsend were suspended for one beautiful, fleeting, silent second in the majesty and mystery of the most spectacular place they had ever known, where now they would get to be together always. Just as it was meant to be. Suspended forever. Lost in time. Reborn into the light.
Where the sky meets the sea.