Chapter Twenty-Nine
Twenty-Nine
Joseph
May 2002
The sun pierces the drawn blinds and I grimace, roll toward her side of the bed. The sheets where she should be are cold, a stray silver hair glitters against her fluffed pillow, the quilt taut. Beside the rug, her slippers are left cockeyed, the door to her closet ajar. On her nightstand, a water glass, the edge faintly imprinted by her lips.
Three mornings I have woken without her. My eyes raw and bleary, the air is heavy and pins me beneath it. I watch the red digits on the clock blink ahead. Birds chirp outside the window, the waves roll at Bernard Beach. I stroke the corner of her pillowcase with my thumb. The complete emptiness reverberates through me, renders me motionless. Hollow.
Kissing her in the hospital bed, monitors beeping, unresponsive, but there, she must be there, she must be, her eyes closed and her body warm, I crawled right in beside her, held her and stroked her face. Telling her, I love you, I love you, come back, don’t leave me, I love you. Come back. My love, my life, I love you.
Feeling her slip away, the children beside me then, all of us gripping her hands, her arms, holding and hushing her, soothing her, knowing there was nothing left to do except to assure her, to comfort her, to kiss her forehead and her cheeks, to say, It’s okay, if you have to go. Okay? It’s okay, my love. It’s okay. I’m here. We’re here.
The tiny squeeze of my hand, the only way I know she heard me, knew we were all there beside her.
Then, she was gone.
Last night in my restless, tortured sleep, I dreamed she was swept out into the ocean, and she yelled for me through roaring waves. I treaded water, desperate, her screams sharp, but I never reached her. She appeared again at the bottom of the ocean, floating peacefully, eyes closed, hair drifting in the current, and I grabbed for her hand, to drag her to the surface, but she sank deeper, and I dove but she slipped from my grasp. I woke crying out, but there was no one to answer me. Now I lie awake, sure it was all a cruel dream, and imagine the curve of her body tucked into mine, her heat radiating beneath the covers. I plead for another whole life together. This one wasn’t long enough.
The children have been here and there in fragments and blurs but I can’t understand when they speak. I am underwater, sounds muted, diving toward Evelyn. I drift alone in the waves. Plates are pushed my way, but I have forgotten how to swallow, and I refuse them. Three days have passed without my permission, with only my vague knowledge of the sun rising and darkness falling once more. Time ceases to exist, and so do I.
Can she really be gone?
We had planned the details nearly a year ago. We selected the funeral home across town, instructed that the bouquets should be trimmed fresh from the garden, requested Billie Holiday’s “I’ll Be Seeing You” on the piano. We were to be cremated, our ashes scattered by our family on Bernard Beach. It was all a surreal to-do list, hypothetical logistics of which I felt completely removed. I was never supposed to see her carried out to sea.
I haven’t dressed or brushed my teeth or shaved. I am thick with the stench of my grief, my stale tongue and bristled cheeks. But today I stand in the scalding shower and let it burn, my vision spins from the heat. I press my forehead against the wall. Soapy rivulets sting my tear ducts until the stream runs cold, and I am gooseflesh and shivering. Her towel hangs on the rack next to mine and I resist the urge to wrap up in it, wanting to cocoon myself in her floral scent and also preserve it, to leave it there, folded and ready for her.
I dress in the suit I wore when we married. It had been tucked in the attic beside her wedding dress, and the purple one she wore as she stepped off the train. So many clothes came and went over the years, boxed to be donated or handed down in overstuffed bins, but we could never bring ourselves to give those away. The jacket is musty and loose in the shoulders but it still mostly fits. If she’s watching, I think she’d like to see me in it again. I will get to see her in her favorite dress one last time today. I don’t know if I will be able to bear it. She has always been so beautiful in violet.
A button on my sleeve is loose, and without her, that is how it will stay. A tube of her lipstick lies on its side, tipped over on the vanity, and I stand it upright. Raise my gaze to the mirror and am startled to see an old man in my suit, weathered skin, body stooped and withered. I don’t recognize him. I look away, search for an alternate truth, but the hand I find toying with the button is liver-spotted with protruding blue veins. I expected to find her small fingers interlaced with mine, but they are empty and ugly and clammy and I thrust them in my pockets. Her skin soft as petals, after today, will be ash. Ash to scatter across the beach where we hunted on our knees for razor clams, where we first kissed, where our children learned to swim, where we sat side by side in sand chairs as golden afternoons faded to twilight. The shoulders, the stomach, the inner thighs I kissed, the map that has always led me home.
How will I find my way, without her?
I pad down the hall, my hand glides over the worn banister, down the creaking steps to the kitchen. No one creaks behind me, no clink of dishes before me. Her aprons hang by the pantry, her half-finished mug of tea beside the sink. Step with leaden feet through the swinging doors to the living room, past the pianos with their silent, gaping mouths, through the foyer and out the screen door, to our last goodbye.
It isn’t fair. It hasn’t been enough. It could never be enough.