Chapter 39
DEB
AN INCH OF MORNING LIGHT streams through the air where the bedroom curtains aren’t quite shut, and dust motes hover in the beam above my head. Billy is already out of bed.
I shuffle to the bathroom and open the cabinet where the pill bottle is tucked away like a loaded gun.
It was only from our many years together that I was able to decipher which choice would grant Billy a moment of peace.
Which isn’t to say that I’m not still furious.
He kept calling it an “option.” I thought about my father.
And in those seconds with my shaking hand clasped around that cocktail of pills, I knew that keeping them would give Billy some thin layer of comfort. A belief that he will not ruin my life.
Only, the last time he ruined my life, it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. And I hate having these pills in my house. I hate that he took it upon himself to get them, as though they wouldn’t destroy me just as much as the Alzheimer’s.
I shut the cabinet and splash water onto my face.
When I go downstairs, Billy is scowling at a book. Reading has become frustrating for him, but he keeps forgetting that. He glances up. “Morning.”
“Morning.” I shuffle past him. “It’s so quiet.”
“Yeah, everyone’s—” He frowns. “—somewhere.”
I smile in spite of myself. “That they are.” I can’t stay too mad at him for attempting to make sure my life won’t be ruined.
The expanse of his sacrifice sends a shiver through me, and I walk over to refill his coffee.
His morning-stubble profile, his focus on that book, his chaotic tufts of hair—it could all make me weep.
I take a breath and ask, “Do you remember what we’re doing today?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says. “I checked the calendar. And I’ll have you know that I will be wearing my leopard-print shirt.”
I let out a snort of a laugh. That shirt was part of a costume years ago, and he always jokes about wearing it. But today is the right occasion because we’re going to see Josie in the matinee.
I notice the time. “Oh, Rachel’s bringing her dress soon.”
Sure enough, the doorbell rings within minutes, and Rachel and I take her wedding dress into my bedroom swiftly, though Cameron isn’t even home. I shove aside a laundry basket and all thoughts of those colorful pills. The wedding is in less than two weeks, and there is work to do.
Rachel tries on the dress. When I tell her she looks radiant, she blushes a little, the picture of promise. A wedding is a duet of hope.
“Thanks for your help with this strap,” she says. “My mom is useless with this kind of thing—she was infamously the only kid in her home economics class who didn’t get an A.”
I chuckle. “Happy to help.” It’s a simple adjustment, and we’ve already told Cameron he is not to go into my closet for any reason. Not that he would. I don’t think he’s been in my closet since he was an elementary-aged kid snooping for Christmas presents.
Rachel stays for a cup of coffee, and I’m tempted to ask whether Cameron decided to get tested.
But it isn’t my place. Such an awful part of being a mother when things having to do with my own children aren’t my place.
Instead, we talk about our respective wedding dances.
It’s another reason I didn’t want a wedding: my dad wouldn’t have been there to dance with me.
But now at least I’ll get to dance with my son.
Rachel thanks me again for the coffee and alteration. She puts her mug in the dishwasher, turning it to align with the others. Then she’s off to meet Cameron at Hudson House for an early lunch, and I go to find Billy, who has given up on the book and turned on ESPN.
“Hey, you,” I say. “Should we get ready?”
He grins, puffing out his chest. He has not forgotten the leopard-print shirt.
An hour and a half later, the two of us take our seats in the center orchestra section of the Music Hall at Fair Park, holding hands atop the plush green armrest. Playbills rest on our laps as the house lights go down.
Stage lights rise like a jungle sun, the orchestra cues that familiar opening line, and giant animals of the Savannah begin to make their entrances from behind us.
We turn to watch them parade down the aisles, and my jaw drops.
I knew what was coming, but I wasn’t prepared for how grand and impressive it would be.
When Billy spots Josie, he pats my arm excitedly.
How many times we’ve done the excited parental arm pat when our kids have appeared on a stage or sports field over the years.
It’s not that I’m not proud of Josie. It’s just that she centers her whole life around this, and I worry. But I let that worry fade to the background as we applaud the costumes and sheer marvel of the human body, the human voice.
After the curtain, we go backstage as Jo removes her makeup. Her friends stop by the dressing room and enthusiastically approve of Billy’s shirt with things like, “Get it, Dr. Russo!” He undoes not one, but two top buttons.
Eventually, we squeeze Josie goodbye. She’s staying to steam her throat before the evening show. On the drive home, Billy turns on the soundtrack and asks which characters we would be.
“I’d like to be Sarabi, but realistically I’d probably be—”
We both say “Zazu” and laugh.
Billy says, “I’d want to be Mufasa, but I’m definitely not cool enough. Maybe Pumbaa?”
I laugh. “Or Rafiki?”
He considers. “I’ll take Rafiki.” He sings along with the soundtrack, grunting a few times like a jungle animal. I assume he’s being funny until I glance over and notice his discomfort.
“You all right?”
“Stomachache.”
But he still sings about the circle of life, remembering more lyrics than I do. I commit the moment to memory. I want to keep the mundane, the ugly, the off pitch, the whatever. I want all of it, all of him. He belts out some incorrect Zulu, and I smile.
When we get home, he goes to take a nap, and by the time I change out of my dress, he is snoring. The grandkids are in Argyle, and only April is here, flipping absently through my playbill when I return to the kitchen.
She glances up. “Can we talk?”
“Of course.”
I panic that she might have found the Greenwood Hills paperwork.
I make a plate of crackers, pear, and smoked Gouda, and we sit down at the table. She grabs a cracker and asks, “Will you tell me about the start of your marriage? It’s hard to believe it was ever bad, seeing you two come in singing ‘Hakuna Matata.’ ”
Oh. I chuckle. This.
“Well.” I force myself to think back. “It was bad, and that’s God’s honest truth.”
It’s hard to trace how we got from A to B to C. Hard to remember the sincere desperation at the start now that it has passed. But this is important to April, so I try.
I tread carefully as I recount the harder memories that include her. Though whenever I hesitate, she says, “I want to know. Please.”
So I tell her about the surprise pregnancy, the day of our “union,” the ensuing fights and silences and feelings that life was over.
It hurts to recount it all, but April is hanging on to every word.
We had many heart-to-hearts at this same table during her teen years, and she has always been my hardest child to read.
Looking down to pair a cracker with a slice of Gouda, she says, “But now you love him.”
“Now I do.” In the spirit of honesty, I add, “He still infuriates me sometimes. But yes”—warmth blooms in my chest—“I love him more than life.” This, I don’t tell her, hurts almost as much as when I didn’t.
She is quiet through a few more bites, so I ask, “Is everything moving along with everything?” I grimace at myself. I don’t know what questions to ask about the divorce.
“Not really.” She shrugs. “I don’t know what to do.”
“About what?”
“It’s like Leo and I were different people when we got married. And we can’t go back to those people, but we also can’t move on from them.” She shakes her head. “I can’t explain it.”
I lay my hand on hers. “I understand.”
“Really?”
“Definitely.” It strikes me now what a disservice it was to hide our imperfections from our kids. We presented a false picture of our life. I say again, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you all this sooner.”
“I get it,” she says. “But it’s nice to be able to talk like this.” She squeezes my hand. “I have to get some things done before the kids get here, but thank you.”
I nod. We are, both of us, losing our husbands.
Left alone with time and quiet, I put the sleeve of crackers back in the box and tuck myself away with the Greenwood Hills paperwork.
I should start thinking about what would need to happen to get our house market ready.
Which reminds me that Billy and I met a Realtor a few years back whose card we accepted out of politeness.
I think Billy kept it, though I’m sure he wouldn’t remember where. So I decide to go rummaging.
Fifteen minutes later, I have not found the Realtor’s card, but I have found something else: a small stack of handwritten letters. The first one is dated 1987 and addressed to Billy. Actually, it’s addressed to Bill. Signed Patsy. His college girlfriend. I’ve never seen these.
Maybe I shouldn’t, but I take the full stack into the bathroom and I lock the door.
Sitting on the side of the tub, I read them start to finish. There are eight or nine. Of course, I don’t have Billy’s side of the correspondence, but I can easily fill in the story.
They were very much in love. For years. She broke up with him not long before he met me. He was—it seems—quite heartbroken. But she sought him out again in ’88. Told him she had made a huge mistake and that he was the love of her life.
By that time, I was soon to have April.
I read Patsy’s last two letters twice over. He had told her about the baby. About me. And she had still asked him to choose her.
It’s clear that part of him wanted to.
In her final letter, she wrote, I’ll always love and remember you too. I pause at that “too.” We had something so beautiful. But you’re starting a family now, so this will be my last letter. I hope you have all the happiness in the world.
The others are signed, Love. This one: Always.
I lower the letters, stunned.
And why should I be? We all have pasts. Billy told me about Patsy.
But he never told me it was serious, and he did not tell me they were in contact after we got pregnant. That he was still in love with her when he chose to marry me.
I think about what he got in return: years of distance, work, arguing, and not knowing whether that would ever change, until the night in the kitchen when I finally said I loved him and he looked as though he had been waiting ten lifetimes to hear it.
All that time and he never went back to her.
I sneak out of the bathroom to go check his phone contacts.
No Patsy. I search her name on the computer and find a Facebook account.
She is gorgeous. Never married, it would appear.
From Texas, but now living in the Pacific Northwest with two golden retrievers.
There’s a photo of Mount Rainier on her page, and I imagine Billy there.
Billy, who is napping here in my house. My Billy; Patsy’s Bill.
I put the stack away exactly as I found it, careful with the old letters as though I’m handling the very hearts of the young lovers.
A life together is forged in ten thousand choices.
Resolute, I go back to the bathroom. I open the cabinet and get out the bottle of pills. Billy’s leopard shirt hangs on the closet doorknob. He said he wants this to be my choice, and I want to make it now.
My hand does not shake.
I dump the pills and flush.
To some, this is a ruined life. To me, this is love.