I thought about Lovey, Mom, my great-grandmother and my great-aunt, those pillars of strength and stability, the women who would fight through anything to make good on their promises, the women who would do whatever it took to keep their families together. Lovey had made some mistakes, sure. We all do. But she had kept her family together. Holding Ben’s hand, standing across from him on the lawn, it made me sad to know that I wasn’t the woman that they were. I wasn’t as strong or determined. I wasn’t going to ride out the hurricane and see what happened on the other side. Because, right now, at this point, I had very little skin in the game. No children. No joint property. No retirement funds. No complications. I could get out now and never have to regret, years down the road, when the bomb eventually went off again—and it would; you could just see it in my family members’ faces—that I had stayed and made a life with a man who couldn’t give me what I really needed.
I sat down beside Ben on the bench and, with a final surge of love, kissed him for the last time. I rested my head on his shoulder, the sore space in my abdomen making me tired, the anger I felttoward Ben floating off into the sky like the seeds of a wish flower. “I just can’t, Ben. It’s not going to work.”
He put his head in his hands, and you could tell by the way his back moved that he was crying again. “Oh, God. I can’t believe that I made the one woman I have ever loved hate me so much.”
I rubbed my hand up and down his back. “I don’t hate you,” I whispered. And I didn’t, not really. I was mad at him. I was humiliated that he would put me through something so publicly scandalous. But I didn’t hate him. And that was the problem. If I had hated him, I would have had something left to give. But, instead, I felt largely indifferent. But I knew where he was and what he was feeling, that devastation that had taken hold of me weeks earlier. But I had had time to sort through these feelings, to come to terms with the fact that we were over. And he had had no idea.
“So what am I supposed to do now?” he asked.
“Get a lawyer.”
“A lawyer?”
“Yeah. You know, to handle your side of the divorce. But, don’t worry, I don’t want anything from you.”
“How can you even say that, Annabelle, when I still want everything from you?”
I shrugged sadly. “I will always love you, Ben, and this will always hurt. But, for now, I just want it to be over.”
I turned to walk into the office, feeling so stupid. How could I have been so naïve? How could I have thought that this could possibly work out?
I stood in the hallway for a moment to catch my breath, to swallow the tears back from my throat. I put on my best fake smile and walked into Rob’s office. “Good morning, Rob!” I said sunnily.
He pointed to the chair in front of his desk, and I sat down,glancing at the built-in bookcases on either side of the ancient fireplace, wondering if there were any books in there about how to move on after a terrible divorce from a man you trusted completely who cheated on you with the woman who was your biggest fear all along. Probably not. That seemed like a pretty specific topic. “What’s going on?”
I smiled brightly. “Oh, nothing. What do you need today?”
He gave me a sideways look. “No, I mean, what’s wrong?”
I pursed my lips together in a tight smile and rolled my eyes toward the ceiling. I guess there’s no hiding things from a priest. I wanted to tell him, I really did. There was something about him that just made all of your secrets want to come spilling out like stuffing from a ripped teddy bear. But I had two more weeks at my little bed-and-breakfast haven. I had two more weeks before I would have to leave town and face the music. I had two more weeks of getting to be in this cozy office with this wonderful man doing a job that felt really important to me.
So, instead of falling into a pile of distress on his desk, I put my happy face back on and said, “So, what exciting adventure does the Holy Spirit have in store for us this morning?”
He gave me that look that meant he knew I was hiding something, but he was going to let me be, and said, “We’re going to go read with some kids at the elementary school.”
I said, “Amazing!” But what I thought was that story time with a bunch of precious children wasn’t exactly what I needed to take my mind off the one that I had lost only the night before.
Lovey
Weight
The best things in life are the unexpected ones. That’s what my momma thought. But me? I’m on the fence about that one. I generally like to be prepared.
And that day, I felt on top of things. I felt ready; I felt like the pieces of life were finally falling back into place. I had graduated from rehab and was out of the nursing home. I could walk, praise the Lord. Dan and I were settling back into our routine, our regular nurses, our assisted living apartment that, while still new, was beginning to feel more like home. I was playing bridge again, seeing my friends.
Things seemed relatively ordinary. I had even managed to forget Annabelle’s outburst for a moment or two.
So maybe that’s why it didn’t happen like I thought it would. I expected some sort of emergency. Ambulance, EMT, defibrillator, extended hospital stay, devastation over pulling the plug... So, I guess the reason I didn’t cry right away is that I didn’t believe it.When I woke, stretched, listened to the birds chirping outside my window, thought of the delicious French vanilla creamer I had for my coffee, I expected it to be a normal day. Maybe I’d make bacon and eggs for breakfast. Kelly would be there to roll Dan down to lunch while I shuffled behind with the cane I had graduated to, thankful that the cumbersome walker was folded safely in my trunk for long walks and grocery store trips. I would play bridge in the afternoon while Luella sat with Dan, maybe read to him, maybe let him help her with the crossword if he was speaking that day. Then I would come home, have my scotch and we would sit together, probably with a few friends, have dinner, watch the news, and a nurse would put Dan to bed while I read for a while on the couch. That’s what Iexpected.
When I sat up and looked at Dan in his bed, my foot nearly touching him in the crowded room, I actually smiled because he looked so peaceful. I got up, taking my robe from the chair beside the bed, rubbed my tight hip just a little and tiptoed as best as one could with a cane so as not to wake my husband. Had a voice in my head not told me to turn back around, I probably would have had another hour or two of normalcy, another hour or two of life the same as it always had been. I would have been happily sipping my first cup of coffee of the morning, whisking the eggs, laying the bacon in the pan.
But I did turn back around, and, when I approached Dan’s bedside, I realized that, besides peaceful, he seemed very, very still. When I touched him, he was cold. Perhaps still not understanding what was happening or maybe in denial, I pulled the blanket up around him tighter, touching his chest, which was when I realized it wasn’t rising up and down. I put my finger to his neck. No pulse.
Then I sat down beside him in the little chair by his bed and tookhis hand in mine, staring at him, memorizing the lines of his face, his hairline, his bushy eyebrows.
I had pictured this day in my mind many, many times before. Who wouldn’t? In the scope of old age, when you realize that, in all likelihood, you are going to outlive the man you married, it is only practical to imagine how you might feel when he is gone from you. I had pictured hysteria and nausea, tears and screaming. But that supposed that he left me in a flurry of doctors, nurses and hospital workers, syringes and beeping screens.
It was so calm now, a sliver of light rising through the windows and onto his sleeping face. The first thing I did, right then and there, was thank God. Because I was eighty-seven years old, and He had given me the two things I had prayed for most fervently over the last few years. I had outlived my Dan, and it seemed terribly likely that all five of my girls would outlive me. As I exhaled, a tremendous weight lifted off of my shoulders.
