“I know. Count your blessings. Remind yourself every night of every good thing that happened to you that day.”
“No. I’m not talking about things that happen to you. I’m talking about things you make happen. I’m talking about purposefully doing one thing that brings you happiness every single day, in a very conscious way. It builds up the arsenal, Betta. It tips the balance.”
“A whole year,” I said. “When I can hardly commit to eating lunch tomorrow!”
“You’re taking it too literally,” Maddy said. “Don’t think of it as calendar days to cross off, or as an assignment with a beginning and an end. Think of it more fluidly—as a philosophy that you exercise daily. And the days turn into years. And the years turn into a lifetime.”
I nodded. “I think what you’re saying is what John was trying to tell me, too. But you don’t know what a confusing time this is!”
“I do know. I lost someone, too.”
“Who?” I asked.
“My eleven-year-old daughter.”
“Oh, my God. Oh, Maddy. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I had no idea. Lorraine didn’t say anything!”
“No, nor would she. She lets me decide who to tell.”
“How?”
“A diving accident, ten years ago. She was at a neighbor’s pool and went headfirst into the shallow end. We’d had a fight that morning. The last words I said to her as she went out the door were ‘And don’t think I’m making your goddamn bed again!’ ” She shook her head, remembering. “I thought I would lose my mind, at first. Seriously. I felt like I’d just realized the world was made of glass, you know? Thin as a lightbulb, and every step you took was at your own peril. And then, only a couple of weeks after Molly died, I signed up to take tap-dancing lessons. I’d always wanted to, but I’d never had the courage.”
“Did it help?”
“Well, it was a place to go where there was never any sorrow. Nobody there knew. Nobody there ever said, ‘Well, you still have your sons.’ It was just nice people who were all terrible dancers—we all goofed up together. I think the instructor must have felt like shooting herself, but she was remarkably patient. On the day that class ended, I went home and asked for a sign for what I should do next. I opened a novel and pointed to a word, and it was Greece. So Dan and I went there.”
“Huh! So you just . . . blocked it out.”
“Oh, God, no. No. Of course not. You can’t do that, even if you want to. But what I’m talking about is . . . well, I think that deep sorrow can make for a kind of . . . unloosening. You can get reoriented in a really important way. Losing Molly reminded me of how beautiful life is. I know it’s counterintuitive, but it’s true. The horrible stuff? I think it’s all a necessary part of the great pageantry.”
“That’s one way to look at it.” I heard the bitterness in my voice. I tasted it, too, pooled at the back of my tongue.
“Think about it, Betta. My pain over Molly ended up making me easier with the world and with myself. Don’t worry about backsliding—it’s all part of the process. But don’t worry about feeling good, either. You don’t dishonor the one you loved by being happy.”
She turned onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. “You know, in Greece, Dan and I took a walk one night down this twisty little street. It was so quiet, and the stars were so clear. And all of a sudden, both of us could feel her there with us. I remember we stopped walking and just looked at each other, and then we embraced. Later, when we talked about it, we agreed that we had felt her . . . beneficence, you know? We had felt her telling us that it was all right, whatever we did, it was all right—that she was all right. We really did feel that. She was telling us . . . well, anyway, her death changed our lives for the better, because it brought a kind of awareness, a specific sense of purpose and appreciation we hadn’t had before. Would I trade that in order to have her back? In a fraction of a millisecond. But I won’t ever have her back. So I have taken this, as her great gift to us.” She looked at me. “But. Do I block her out? Never. Do I think of her? Always. In some part of my brain, I think of her every single moment of every single day.”
“Yes. That lit place.”
“Right. It is like a lit place.” She reached over and took my hand. “Now listen to me. I want to tell you one more story, okay? Can you listen to one more story?”
“Yes.”
“When Molly was eight years old, she was an avowed atheist. She told her father and me at breakfast one day that she’d thought hard about it, and she just couldn’t believe in God. But then about a year later there was a fire in a house a few doors down from us, some electrical wiring problem. There was a big family living there, five kids, and everybody died—the whole family, they didn’t get out. It bothered Molly a lot, especially at nighttime—she’d been friends with the little girl her age. She would think about all those people she’d never see again, how they went to bed that night, you know, and then . . . After about a week, she told us she had renounced her atheism. She said she now believed in God and in heaven. And she said that in heaven, there were cards on which were printed the names of every person on earth. The cards were in God’s hands. I’m sure this came from Molly’s having heard someone say that very thing, but she added something. She said that written on each card, in real big print, were three words: I LOVE YOU. She found comfort in this, and so did I. I still do.”
“Maddy?”
“Yes, sweetheart.”
“I saw John. I saw him in that chair right over there.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“I believe you, Betta.”
I started snuffling, and she reached over for a tissue and gave it to me. “Blow,” she said, and after I did, she got another tissue and wiped under my nose. “Slob,” she said tenderly.
“I don’t understand anything.”
“Oh, nobody understands anything. We’re all just here, blinking in the light like kittens. The older I get, the more I see that nothing makes sense but to try to learn true compassion.”
“I’m so glad I found you all again,” I said.
“You’ll never get rid of us now. You’ll have to come on all our expeditions and wait in the waiting room if any of us needs surgery.” She yawned and pulled the covers up higher. “Can I sleep with you?”
“No. You kick, if I recall. Do you still kick?”
“So says Dan.”
“Right. So get the hell out of here. Tomorrow, do you want a Dutch apple pancake for breakfast or hash browns and eggs and bacon? Or French toast?”
“Yes,” she said, and then, kissing my forehead, “Good night.”
On a cold afternoon, made bearable by a bright sun, I drove over to Lydia Samuels’s retirement home. In addition to the box of letters and the radio, I was bringing a picture I’d cut out of the local weekly the day before. It was of an older couple who lived in the home, dancing. The chairs and tables in the cafeteria had been pushed back. Balloons and streamers were everywhere; one table covered by a sheet held a large plastic punch bowl and a tray of cookies. A couple of aides stood off to the side, beaming. Oftentimes such shots are condescending, patronizing, but that was not the case here: The couple was caught in a graceful turn, and on each of their faces was intelligence and enviable pleasure. I’d thought Lydia might like to have it, or perhaps pass it on to the people featured there, he in his well-cut suit, she in her blue dress, her thick white hair held back by combs studded with pearls.
When I asked for Lydia at the desk, the nurse told me she was in her room and directed me down the hallway to the last door on the right. I knocked softly, then, when I heard nothing in response, more loudly. “Come in!” she said, and I poked my head in, introducing myself.
She stared at me, saying nothing. She was lying in bed in a flannel nightgown, under several blankets. The television was turned on but with no sound—some soap opera, it appeared, an overly made-up woman speaking earnestly to an overly made-up man. Lydia looked paler than w
hen I’d last seen her, and though it was hard to assign a word like fragile to one so fiery, her voice was softer, her posture less erect. But her eyes were as brightly focused as before, peremptorily accusatory, and there was about her, even in repose, an air of hectic energy.
“Are you here to fix the television?” she asked. “About time!”
“No.” I told her my name again. “I’m the one who bought your house.”
She drew back into her pillows. “Oh, no you don’t. I have nothing to do with that house anymore. Any problems, you just take to somebody else. Now get out or I’ll call the nurse.”
I moved toward her. “I’m not having any problems. I just found something I thought you might want.” I pulled the radio from the box.
She reached out eagerly to grab it and inspected it thoroughly—sides, top, bottom. Her hands trembled and I saw that her nails needed care—they were overly long, and something was caked beneath them. “I told that Delores I’d left it behind, but she said, ‘Oh, no, no, no.’ I knew it was there! Plug it in, will you?”
I put the box of letters down on the bedside chair and did as she asked. She immediately tuned in a talk station to a low volume and then hid the radio under the covers. “We can’t have these here. Some idiot rule so people don’t sue for electrocuting themselves. Don’t you tell a soul; they’ll take it from me. What else have you got there?” She was almost smiling.
I regretted not bringing her something else: a little bouquet, instant cocoa, some nice soap. “Well, that’s letters, Lydia, addressed to you. They were up in the attic.”
Her mouth opened, then closed. Then she sat up straighter and pointed her finger at me. “You read them, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t! Well, to be honest, I started to read one, but I stopped. Anyway, here they are. I thought you would probably like to have them.”
I put the box in her lap, and she stuck her hand in and pulled out a pile of letters. She stared at them, unmoving, then laid them on the bed beside her. Then, abruptly, she put them back in the box. “Take them away. I don’t want them.”
I hesitated, then took the box from her and put it back on the chair. I moved in closer, grabbed hold of the bed rail. I spoke quietly. “I’m sorry for invading your privacy, Lydia, but I must tell you that what I read was very beautiful, and I just thought—”
“He died a long time ago and I died with him. Yes, I did. That same day. My major regret is that I didn’t take my own life on the day I heard he lost his. Didn’t have the courage then and don’t now, either, I’m sorry to say.” She gestured outward, toward the hall. “This place is a hellhole, don’t you doubt it. A bunch of slobbering, crazy people, tied into their chairs. Visitors looking for money to inherit. That’s what’s here. Pig slop at every meal, and they wonder why you don’t eat. And a staff that can’t speak the English language and thinks nothing of leaving a thermometer in your mouth for half an hour every single morning!”
I did know about that. I remembered when John was in the hospital and a nurse would run around checking everyone’s vital signs and be gone from the bedside for far too long. “You might take it out,” I suggested. “You can just take it out after a couple of minutes. If you don’t shake it down, it will still register.”
“Helpful hints from the ignorant,” Lydia said. “You know what they do if you take it out of your mouth? They put it in the other place! And if you take it out of there, they tie your hands!” Her voice had grown loud now.
“Okay,” I said, picking up my purse. “Well, I—”
“I don’t know what possessed you to bring me those letters. What did you think? That I would be happy to be reminded of him?”
“I did think that.”
“Why in the world would that make me happy? To be reminded of all I missed!”
“I’ll just take them,” I said. “I’ll leave my phone number at the desk. If you ever change your mind and want them, call me and I’ll bring them over.”
“Throw them away!”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think I will.”
I walked out of her room and down the hall. Lydia was right: There were people in the home who were tied into wheelchairs, staring vacantly ahead, lost to themselves and to others. But only some of the people were like that.
There is a story about a Navajo grandfather who once told his grandson, “Two wolves live inside me. One is the bad wolf, full of greed and laziness, full of anger and jealousy and regret. The other is the good wolf, full of joy and compassion and willingness and a great love for the world. All the time, these wolves are fighting inside me.” “But grandfather,” the boy said. “Which wolf will win?” The grandfather answered, “The one I feed.”
John used to talk about finding the soft spot in people, how that was step one. Then came the next step, the harder one, getting them to trust that you would not violate that place. He said patients would often become the most furious just before they were ready to make themselves vulnerable, that you had to withstand the fire in order to earn the cease-fire, and that it was always worth it to do so. He said that inside everyone there was a place that shone. But John’s compassion was legendary and his patience far greater than my own. I wouldn’t come here again.
Still, I stopped at the desk on the way out and left my number with the indifferent nurse’s aide there. She watched with crossed arms and raised brows as I wrote it out. She didn’t believe any more than I did that Lydia Samuels would call me to come and see her again, and I doubted she would take much care in putting the information somewhere safe. When I put my hands in my pocket for my gloves, I felt the newspaper picture I’d brought along. I started to take it out to throw it in the trash but changed my mind.
When I got home, I saw Benny standing on my porch. “My mom needs an egg,” he said. “Can we borrow one?”
“Of course. Come on in.” He followed me in, and I took off my coat and lay it across a kitchen chair, then went to the refrigerator. “Is just one enough?” I asked.
“That’s all she said to get, is one.” Benny bent down and picked up something from the floor, the newspaper picture. “This fell out of your coat.” He looked at the picture. “What is it?”
“Just a picture I liked,” I said. “I’m going to put it in my story journal. What is the story there, Benny?”
He smoothed the picture out on the table and studied it. “Well, today is her birthday and he gave her a surprise party. And her name is Edna and his is Samuel. No. His name is Garcia.”
“Wonderful!” I said. “And how old is Edna today?”
He looked carefully, thought for a moment, then said, “Fifty.”
On Saturday morning when Matthew came over to paint the bedroom, he brought along Jovani. “Do you mind if Jovani helps?” he asked when I answered the door. “My other friend couldn’t come.”
“Of course not.” I pulled the door open wider.
Jovani stared triumphantly at Matthew. “I telled you,” he said. “Is it not?” He came through the door and then stopped to look around the living room. “Niiiicce!” he said, and I said, “Thank you.”
“Niiiiicce!” he said again, and again I said thank you.
He turned to face me. “This is very nice house.”
“Jovani,” Matthew said. “Jesus.”
I led them upstairs and helped them set up, laying out newspapers and covering my furniture with sheets, then went out shopping to look for a new outfit while they began stripping off the wallpaper. I’d agreed to have dinner with Tom Bartlett, who’d apparently decided to overlook my behavior at the end of our last time together. And I was glad; I thought we could at least be friends who might enjoy going places together. Tonight, though, he had invited me to his place—he was going to cook dinner. At first I’d hesitated, thinking that his place suggested something I wasn’t ready for. But then he’d said, “Just dinner, Betta,” and I’d laughed and agreed.
By the time I got back, a new blouse and sweater in hand, the boys h
ad begun applying long strokes of blue to the walls. I liked the room much better already, and I told them so.
“I am wonder,” Jovani said. “If you don’t mind, can I ask something?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Okay. Why is a woman alone buy a house so big?”
“I just liked it,” I said. “It has things I always wanted in a house and never had.”
“But . . . so many rooms to be in one person?”
“I doubt I could have found a smaller house that had what this one does. And it was . . . well, it was kind of an impulse buy. You know what that is, right?”
“Of course. But it’s too big, the house, not good for you. Your bedroom is far from the door. Someone come in, and you don’t know, you can’t hear.”
“Jovani!” Matthew said.
“I’m sorry for scare you. But sometimes the truth is want out on you.”
The doorbell rang, sparing me from coming up with a response. It was Benny, staring off to the side, deep in thought. When I opened the door, he asked quickly, “Can I come in?”
I opened the door wider, and he stepped into the hall, removed his boots, then headed for “his” chair at the kitchen table, the place he’d begun doing his homework every Wednesday after school before we had dinner. I sat opposite him.
“I’ve got girl trouble,” he said.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Two of them like me.”
“That doesn’t sound like too terrible a problem.”
“Actually, it is.”
I envisioned two girls vying for his attention, then remembered the strong longings I’d felt when I was Benny’s age, sitting lovestruck in Mrs. Menafee’s fifth-grade classroom. I remembered watching Billy Harris do a math problem at the chalkboard, with his plaid shirt and narrow brown belt and corduroy pants, the comb lines in his hair courtesy of Brylcreem. I’d felt dizzy with a free-floating form of desire, and I wrote Mrs. Billy Harris in tiny print on my notebook paper, then quickly erased it. One day, he’d walked me home after school, and afterward I’d lain on my bed with my eyes closed, embracing my teddy bear, trying to think of something to clinch the deal, to win him for my own forever. But the very next day Tish McCollum took him away from me, and that was that. “I’ll never love anyone again!” I wailed to my father. “Oh, I think you might,” he said.