THIRTY
There is something about struggle that changes you in irrevocable ways. I had spent more than a year waiting to feel like myself again, but as I packed my bags the day before Jean was to return from Italy, it occurred to me that I would never again be the version of myself that I had been searching for. Instead, the separation and divorce had reduced me to the very essence of who I was. As I passed before the antique mirror in Jean’s bedroom, I understood that this reduction had not made me weak—though I had certainly felt that way at times—but far stronger, like a sheet of metal that had been hammered into a solid, unbreakable sphere.
I was glad to be leaving town this way, even if I felt ambivalent about my departure. I would miss Jean’s house: her paintings and wacky survival novels, her yard and neighborhood, even the quiet. And I would miss Second Chance and Felicia, as well as the divorce support group, even if it had never felt the same after Charlie stopped going. I had not called him, though I’d considered it a few dozen times; after all, he knew I was taking off at the beginning of August, and he had not reached out to me. Our parting at the park had been final.
After I had packed everything but my toiletries and a change of clothing, I went outside to the small garden I had planted and called Rose.
“Maggie!” exclaimed Rose. “I’m so sorry about the other day.”
“Oh, Rose. It’s okay. You don’t have to apologize.” She was referring to the previous Sunday, when I had stopped to see her on my way out of Chicago. Our visit had started off well enough, but she had quickly grown agitated—I would say unusually so, but dementia was fast turning an unflaggingly polite woman into one who became angry at the slightest provocation.
“Maggie, what is this hellhole?” she had said, looking around with disgust as we sat on her sofa. At her neurologist’s urging, she had just moved out of her apartment and into a single room on the opposite side of the building, which was a traditional nursing home. And in that moment, she didn’t recognize where she was, which was precisely why her doctor had wanted her to move right away. Because of her dementia, the longer she waited to make a change, the harder it would be for her to adjust.
“It’s not so bad, Rose,” I had said, trying to soothe her. The room was spacious and decorated with some of her furniture. Nonetheless, it was still just a generic beige box with a hospital-style bathroom, and Rose’s perfume could not mask the nursing home smell that permeated the air.
“It’s a death sentence,” she muttered. Then she had gotten up from the sofa and, with much effort, gotten into bed fully clothed, kitten heels and all. I had sat by her bedside for a while until she told me to leave. “There’s nothing you can do for me, Heather,” she muttered. “Go home.”
She had mistaken me for the daughter-in-law she didn’t like, and I had been crushed. And when I checked in a few days later, she was having “another bad day,” she told me, and asked me to call another time.
Standing in Jean’s yard, I was relieved to hear that Rose again sounded like the woman I had known and loved all these years. “Rose,” I said, bending to pull a dandelion that had sprouted next to a tomato plant, “that’s part of the reason why I’m calling. You had a really rough time that day. I’m not sure if you remember, but you got in bed with your shoes on and told me to leave.”
“Oh my word. I hope you know I didn’t mean it.”
I yanked another weed and tossed it in the pile I had started at the garden’s edge. “Of course I do. But I think you and I should have another conversation about your treatment plan.”
She let out a long sigh. “Bad enough that I’m losing my mind, but to actually know it’s happening is worse. I wish it had happened all at once. Like an explosion—so I never knew what hit me.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said quietly. My other mother, as I thought of Rose, was leaving my life, one stolen moment at a time. I bit my lip, then willed myself to say it: “Forgive me, Rose, but I have to ask you to please, please consider taking the medication your neurologist recommended.”
“There’s no saying if it will work,” she said crisply, and I could just imagine her tilting her chin up the way she did when she felt she was right. “Knowing that, why would I subject myself to side effects?”
I bent down to pull another dandelion. “We all know it’s not a cure, but if it meant even a few more happy days—just a little more joy—wouldn’t it be worth it?”
She didn’t respond, and I wondered if perhaps I had crossed a line. But then she said, “Okay.”
I had been about to pull a ripe tomato from its vine, and I froze, my hand on the tomato’s taut flesh. “Okay?”
“I’ll try the pills.”
I let go of the tomato and pumped my fist into the air. “Oh, Rose. Thank you. This is going to mean so much to Adam. It means so much to me.”
“I’m glad,” she said. “I just hope it works, at least a little.”
Later, I stood in the kitchen, cutting one of the tomatoes I had picked while wrapping up my conversation with Rose. I salted a slice and took a bite. Its juice trickled down my chin, and I wiped it away with a dishcloth, savoring the sweet, acidic taste on my tongue. It was so much better than the hothouse tomatoes I bought at the grocery store. If I had known that earlier, maybe I would have started a garden in Oak Valley. Gardening, like traveling on my own and biking, was one of those things that had always sounded like a good idea but that I had never actually gotten around to.
Well, I was doing them now, I thought with pride, staring out the window at the plot that was overflowing with the tomatoes, cucumbers, summer squash, and chives I had planted.
It hit me, then, how many other things I could still learn and try. How many other chances I wanted to take, even if it meant risking failure. Rose had been right. On some counts, at least, there was still time.
After finishing the last bite of tomato, I wiped my face and washed my hands. Then I retrieved my computer from one of my suitcases, sat down with it at Jean’s table, and began to write.
Dear Adam,
I saw your mother when I was in Chicago last weekend. I’m sorry to say that it did not go well. As her neurologist predicted, the move to the single room was confusing and upsetting to her. (She called me Heather.) Her dementia is getting worse, and even though I’m not her biological daughter, that is so damn hard to witness.
But when I called her this morning and discovered she was her old coherent self, I asked her—yet again—to consider medication. I explained how much it would mean to me and to you, and to my amazement, she agreed to give it a try. I believe she meant it and, provided she is lucid, that she’ll remember agreeing to it. Could you please make an appointment for her to see Dr. Niall? I’ll keep checking in with her, but it would help if you and Rick continue to encourage her.
I apologize for changing the subject abruptly, but there’s no easy transition for this: I can’t remarry you. Not now, and not in the future. I understand that you did love me even though you claimed otherwise, and I believe that you still do. I accept that your affair was a bad decision, and your leaving was a worse one. I know you regret both. I don’t think I told you this yet, but I forgive you, fully and completely.
This email will hurt you, and that’s the last thing I want to do. But I also want you to have a firm answer, so that you can move forward and find new happiness. I know that you will.
I’d like for us to be on good terms one day—if not friends, then two people who love their children enough to behave like they are. I’ve loved hearing about the changes you’ve made in your life, and I’m proud of you for having the courage to make your dreams come true. But I think we shouldn’t be in contact for a while. I need the space and clarity to continue learning how to live without you. I don’t know how long, but I’ll tell you when I’m ready to be in touch again. If there’s anything urgent that you need to communicate in the meantime, have Zoe or Jack reach out to me.
Adam, you have given me love, my beloved children and our family, and many of the best years of my life. For all of that—and so much more—thank you. Please be good to yourself.
Love always,
Maggie
I closed the computer and exhaled. It pained me to turn down Adam and the new life he was offering. But it wasn’t the absence of a guarantee that led me to say no.
It was the knowledge that I no longer needed a guarantee to be happy. I hadn’t wanted to be alone. Now that I was, though, I knew that there was a whole new world out there waiting for me. And within this world happened to be a man whom I wanted to take a chance on. I wasn’t sure if it was too late to take that chance, but like Rose, I was going to have to give it a go.
I ran to the bathroom to make sure I didn’t have dirt on my face. Then I grabbed my sunglasses and a water bottle, went to the shed to fetch my bike and helmet, and set off down the road.
The late afternoon sun beat down on my skin as I biked, sending beads of perspiration rolling down the back of my neck and between my breasts. Still I pushed on.
I had traveled three miles when worry began to make its familiar trek through my mind. It was ridiculous to do this at this stage in the game.
The heat beat down on my shoulders as I hit the fourth mile, and I nearly had to walk my bicycle up the last hill. But I kept pedaling until Charlie’s house came into view.
A “For Sale” sign with a “Sold” banner had been staked into the sloping front lawn. How could this be anything other than a literal sign I had waited too long? Charlie was leaving. He had moved on.
Yet I got off my bike, left my sunglasses and sweat-soaked helmet in the basket, and walked to the porch. I was about to knock when the door flew open.
“Maggie?” Charlie stood there staring at me as if I were a ghost. He had grown a short beard since I had last seen him, and was wearing a pale blue polo shirt. He looked even better than he had before.
“Hi,” I said quietly.
Behind him, boxes were stacked throughout the house. “I was about to go out, and I saw you through the window,” he said. “I would say it was the bike that tipped me off, but I’d spot your face from across Times Square.”
Would he? In spite of all the cynical thoughts running through my mind, my heart began to swell.
“Sorry I didn’t call first,” I said. I had considered it, but I didn’t want to have a conversation with him, even a brief one, over the phone. My mother had always said an apology didn’t count unless you could see the other person’s face.
“That’s all right. I’m surprised to see you, though. It’s been two months.” He grimaced self-consciously. “Not that I’ve been counting.”
“I—” I started, just as he said, “We—”
“Go ahead,” he said to me as I said, “You first.”
We both laughed. Then I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left things the way I did. I was struggling over the situation with Adam, but that wasn’t an excuse for leaving you hanging like that.”
“I’m sorry, too,” he said, putting his hand on my arm. “I should have reached out to you—at least to check in, if not to tell you I missed you.”
“Why didn’t you then?” I asked.
His eyes locked with mine. “A proposal from your ex-husband isn’t exactly a small deal, and I didn’t want to run the risk of influencing your decision. I hoped I would hear from you sooner, and when I didn’t, I assumed you told Adam yes. But you’re here . . .” He grinned at me, all dimples. “So maybe I was wrong?”
Minutes ago my limbs had felt leaden. Now every one of my nerves was buzzing. “You were wrong. That part of my life is over.” I looked at him and laughed, even though I could feel tears pricking my lids, too.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I’m just . . .” I stammered, because I was not sure how to explain the joy I felt, having just realized that what I had mistaken for a tale as old as time was only a small part of a much longer story. “It’s really good to see you,” I said.
“And it’s even better to see you,” said Charlie, pulling me to him. Then he leaned forward and kissed me like he had been waiting months to do so. So I kissed him back to show him he hadn’t been the only one waiting.
“Maggie,” he said when we had parted, “it’s almost August. Isn’t your friend Jean coming home soon?”
I nodded. “Yes, tomorrow.”
“So where are you headed next?”
I looked at the road in front of his house, and up at the vast blue sky, and then back at Charlie. “I don’t actually know,” I said. “Do you want to come?”
He smiled. “Yes.”
What was I offering? I wondered as Charlie put his lips on mine again. I had no home, no actual destination in mind. And this man, who kissed me in a way that made me feel as alive as I ever had, might one day offer only the closed-lipped kiss of someone whose passion has gone missing.
But even if things with Charlie ended tomorrow, I would be glad that I had tried to find out what was possible for us. For today, I was just happy to be with him.
“Can I take you to dinner tonight?” he asked. “We’ve got a lot to discuss, and I have to tell you, I have seriously missed talking to you.”
“I missed talking to you, too,” I confessed. “And yes, dinner sounds lovely. But,” I said, pulling my damp t-shirt away from my skin, “I should probably head home and shower and change.”
“Why?” He grinned, sniffing me. “You smell good to me. Like a ripe peach.”
I grinned back. “Do you want to pick me up?”
“Six thirty?”
“Perfect.”
He looked at my bike, which I had left propped in the driveway. “It’s crazy hot out. Can I give you a ride back?”
I thought for a moment. “No, I’ll head back on my own.”
“Okay.” Charlie pulled me to him and wrapped me in his arms. “Maggie? I’m really glad you came over.”
“I am, too,” I said.
On the ride back, a deep sense of peace came over me. As I pedaled, the road before me faded and I was again with my mother. We were in her hospice room, and she wore a scarf on her head; her skin, which hung on her brittle frame, was almost gray. Though the doctor had not said as much, we knew these days were her last.
“Going to be soon,” she rasped.
“Oh, Ma,” I said, clutching her hands. “Are you afraid?”
“Course I am. Only a fool doesn’t fear death, and even then he’s a liar.”
“You can hold on.”
“Oh, love. No amount of holding’s going to keep things from changing.” Her voice was faint, her breath ragged as fluid pushed against her cancer-riddled lungs. The morphine helped her feel like she wasn’t suffocating, but it put her to sleep for long stretches of time, and she loathed using even the smallest amount. And yet I was selfish: I encouraged her to ease her pain, because I thought maybe this would keep her with me a little longer.
I blinked back my tears and entwined my fingers in hers. “How lucky we are,” I said, “to have had each other.”
She smiled at me the best she could. “How lucky to be able to say goodbye.”
“Not goodbye,” I insisted. “Not yet.”
I can’t remember if she nodded, or if I have since filled in that detail in my mind. “It’s just about time for me to go see what’s next,” she said. Then she unlatched her fingers and slowly placed her hand on top of my own—a gesture that reminded me that she was my mother, and on this matter, she knew best. “You’re my heart, Maggie. It’s been so very good, being with you.”
This would be the last thing she would say; she slipped out of consciousness that afternoon and, three days later, passed out of this world and into the next.
The warmth of the sun on my shoulders felt like my mother gazing down on me. I pushed into the pedals and lifted my face to the wind, thinking about the time I had been given. If I, too, had only fifty-four years on this planet, it would have been too short. And yet it would have been enough.
For now, I had the good fortune of more chances to fail and succeed, more love to give and receive—more life. And while I didn’t know what my future held, I would follow my mother’s lead. I would summon my strength and go find out what was next.