CHAPTER ELEVEN
"It's benign, Mrs. Bartle," Diana said when she opened the door. Although her friend hadn't asked yet, Diana knew that's what she had come to find out. But Mrs. Bartle's response was very different from what Diana had imagined, completely unlike the "normal" reaction of her mother. She didn't smile. She didn't exhale like she'd been holding her breath ever since she'd first heard the word tumor. And she didn't thank God. All she did was stare at Diana with her large, penetrating blue eyes—the eyes that had always seen more than Diana could ever tell—in silence.
Diana looked at the floor. She sensed that Mrs. Bartle knew this wasn't good news, and it shamed her—so much that she began to wish she'd never dreamt of azaleas. If she had never had that vision of her father in the garden, then maybe she'd be glad that life had bitten her in the ass and given her that proverbial second chance. But as things were, she had no will to embrace it. All she wanted now was a reason to break the silence.
"Why don't you come in?" Diana invited. But Mrs. Bartle didn't move. She just stood there and stared, almost blankly. "Mrs. Bartle, are you okay?"
Mrs. Bartle's lower lip began to tremble and she seemed to fall out of her trance. "Diana," she said, looking into her friend's eyes as the tears began to spill from her own, "I miss Henry."
What was this? In the three years that Diana had known Mrs. Bartle, she'd never seen her get sad over Henry. In fact, it had always been just the opposite—Henry was her greatest thrill, her proudest treasure. It was apparent in the wonderful gleam that overtook her eyes whenever his name was mentioned. And even when no one said the name Henry, if Mrs. Bartle's eyes happened to glimmer, dance, dream or smile, Diana would know that her friend was in a brilliant place, a place that she, herself, had never personally been since she was probably the only grown woman on the planet who had never been in love. Mrs. Bartle had always seemed so grateful and content with the memories that Diana had never really stopped to think that in her private moments, she had to at least sometimes get sad that Henry wasn't physically around. For memories couldn't hold a woman; they couldn't whisper "I love you" while she slept. Diana scorned herself for having been such a clueless jerk.
This whole time, she'd envied Mrs. Bartle for the lifetime of true love that she'd had. But hadn't the word had ever penetrated far enough into Diana's brain to register any meaning? Had meant lost, as in "gone," "no more" and "never again." He had a turtle. She had a job. We had a house. Well, Mrs. Bartle had a husband. And she'd loved him in a way that she could never love any other human being again, in a way that was deeper and truer and more magical than any fictional romance classic Diana had ever read or seen. But it hadn't been a lifetime of true love because Henry was dead. Dead, dead, dead. Dead like Diana's father was dead. And happy memories of Daddy were shit compared to actually having a father. How could Diana have failed to realize that when it came to Mrs. Bartle and Henry? She should've known better than anyone how easy it was to mask pain. How could she have been so insensitive?
Diana couldn't find the words to make things better. She didn't even know what "better" was. All she knew was that her best friend was crying, and so she pulled her close, and the two women stood in the doorway hugging for a very long time. Diana's heart was so broken for Mrs. Bartle that the moments passed without distinction in an embrace that seemed to last both forever and not nearly long enough. There were tears, and there was silence. There was stillness, and there was trembling. And then, somehow, there was tea. They sat sipping it once calmness and perception of time had been restored, but Diana only faintly remembered making it. She must have managed to boil the water at some point during that haze of emotional overload, but she was too tired to wonder how and too overcome with the relief that so often follows such dramatic outbursts to care. All she cared about now was Mrs. Bartle and letting her talk about whatever it was that had triggered these feelings about Henry. Maybe talking about it would make her feel less alone. It seemed like a novel concept—actually being open about what made life so sad. Diana had never attempted it personally, but it always seemed to work on TV sitcoms. Perhaps if it worked for her friend, Diana might even try the honesty approach herself sometime. But at this moment, she cared light-years more about Mrs. Bartle's stability than she did her own. Maybe because she couldn't recall a single moment in her life when she'd actually been stable, so she didn't really know what she was missing out on. Mrs. Bartle, on the other hand, never broke down like this. She was always the pillar of strength in their friendship, the one who never needed any consolation at all—until now, when she suddenly seemed to need a lot.
"Mrs. Bartle, I've watched you talk about Henry tons of times over the past three years, and I've never seen you get sad over him."
"That's because thinking about Henry makes me so happy," Mrs. Bartle said, smiling softly. "It gives me hope for when we will be together again." Diana could relate to that. But only since the garden dream. Before that, thoughts of her father hadn't given her happiness or hope. Those things were exceptionally hard to find when every sweet memory ended in a fatal explosion.
"So, why are you so sad today?" Diana asked, refusing to dwell on the fact that her biopsy results had pretty much destroyed the short-lived hope she'd had of reuniting with her dearly departed. She couldn't pity herself now, not when Mrs. Bartle needed her.
"Because today is ten years since he died," Mrs. Bartle said slowly, as if she were testing the truth of something she still couldn't believe.
"Oh, Mrs. Bartle, I'm so sorry."
"I'm not, dear. Well, I'm sorry he's gone. But he's waiting in a better place for me. And I know we won't be apart much longer."
Her words sent chills through Diana's entire apartment, punching her in the heart with how harsh and wrong they were. How could Mrs. Bartle say something like that? She wasn't at death's door—she was far from it. This woman was more alive than anyone Diana had ever known. How could she just give up on what she'd been so obviously blessed with? God had drenched this woman with enough extra vitality to feed the lifeless for a lifetime. How could she be so cavalier about that kind of generosity? How could she even think of denying her God-given gifts?
"I don't know about that, Mrs. Bartle. You've got a lot of life in you yet," Diana said, trying not to cry at the thought of losing her best and only friend, and knowing that what she was really doing was begging Mrs. Bartle to keep on living.
Mrs. Bartle took Diana's hand and pressed it firmly in her own, and looking sternly into her young friend's eyes, she softly spoke the words, "So do you." And that was all that needed to be said. For afterward, Mrs. Bartle turned back to her tea and her private reflections of Henry, with a sneaky little smile that showed she knew that, although they would never discuss it, she had just changed Diana's life.
But how had she gotten so wise? How could she have known that Diana had prayed for malignancy and that those prayers had given her hope? How did she take a woman with a death wish and manage to make her realize the irony of her own livelihood? For in that instant, in that one singular moment when Mrs. Bartle began to deny hers, when that total epitome of all that was life seemed to welcome her impending death—a death she claimed wouldn't take much longer to find her—Diana came alive. For the first time, she had fight to argue with and insight to provide: a person could not just go around thinking herself as good as dead when she was still alive, especially when she was so alive, and so young. Mrs. Bartle was only ninety-three. And this meant that Diana was very young—young enough to start over, too young to want to die. She and Mrs. Bartle were both young enough to be alive. And alive meant living, not constantly looking for your ticket out of it. Alive wasn't being in a hurry to reunite with people who loved you . . .once. Alive was about right now. Diana loved Mrs. Bartle, and she knew that lady was meant to live. Apparently Mrs. Bartle felt the same way about Diana. And if Mrs. Bartle believed it with as much heart as she seemed to, with as much heart as Diana believed it about her, then it had to be true. Life was not about trees getting struck by lightning and tumor blimp reunions in the clouds. It was about living with what you were given and making the best from whatever you had. And what Diana and Mrs. Bartle had was their health and each other. It wasn't until Mrs. Bartle, a woman who had always counted her blessings, seemed to forget them all that Diana had to step in and come to her rescue by reminding her of something that she, herself, had never thought she knew—they were both full of life. Leave it to Mrs. Bartle to make Diana's rescuing words an apocalypse.