"I can't go back to that house, ever. I won't. No one can make me, and he's gone. I'm by myself. No surprises there." I didn't realize that I was speaking aloud, until someone behind me said, "Pardon me?" I turned in embarrassed surprise. "Oh, nothing," I replied, and hurried away.
It was a clear day, not a cloud in the sky, pleasantly warm, a small breeze nipping at the budding trees and flowers, at the dresses of little girls and their mothers, out to take the air. I felt a wave of longing for the simpler life I once shared with the man who was no longer here. There were no more tears, only a dry, pitiless anguish raking away at the coals of my heart, stripping it, breaking it anew each time. I walked to the park, and sat on a bench staring out at the river.
I wasn't old, barely forty, but we had been married for nineteen years, when he had left, suddenly without any warning. I woke up, yesterday it seems like, and he was there but absent. No one could wake him. My tears were like so much water off a duck's back. How would I live now, a mother of four, the youngest barely five years old, and still unable to understand that her daddy had gone for good? I had a job, and if things got bad I had a loving family to help me through, but what's a family without him? He had been my whole life so far. Every act was a celebration of our life together. Now, the party was over, the band had gone.
Someone sat beside me. I looked around vacantly. It was an old woman, hands shaking slightly, white head inclined toward the birds she was throwing breadcrumbs to. Could I ever be as content as she seemed? Would I ever not feel this slow, piercing pain squeezing me dry of laughter, of love, of hope? I watched her feed the birds, and knew I needed help. My plan for getting back into life was to go back to work and pull the tattered shreds of my existence close about my ears, hiding from everyone but myself the truth about how I felt. My kids still needed a mother, my parents still needed a daughter, and my siblings still needed a sister. So what if the one person I needed more than all of them was gone? I will survive.
I thought about those feelings I had had when we had first met. He was a very large man, and immensely tall, and as he helped my girlfriend change the tire on her car, I had wondered how to get him to ask me out. I knew I wasn't much to look at, well anyway that's what I thought, but I was educated. I was the only one of all my family to get past high school. Now here I was, a sophomore in college, and ignorant of the ways of the world.
He looked a lot older than me, but I wasn't a very good judge of age. He drove a station wagon, and he was neatly dressed. His clothes were worn, but clean and pressed. He looked like many of the neighbors I had left behind, honest men working hard to make their families comfortable. We must be meant for each other, I remember thinking. His name was Adam Maxwell, and he made me feel things I had never in all my life felt for another human being. I just came right out and said, "I'd like you to ask me out."
I remember he didn't bat an eye, just smiled a funny, secret smile, and asked me to go to the movies with him on Saturday night. We had a wonderful time, too, because he was such a perfect gentleman, although I could tell he was longing to be otherwise. I remember feeling tickled to discover that I could make a hulking great giant of a man tremble like a baby for want of me. I admit I teased a little, half hoping he would forget himself and give us both what I was asking for. But I also knew I could trust him, because for some reason, he really liked me. Me, Leah Rebecca Ellington. Not my beautiful and diminutive younger sister Elizabeth or my sexy older sister Naomi. He liked me, he wanted to be with me, he bought gifts for me.
He married me, after a long year of courting me on my father's front porch; in the back seat of his station wagon, where we did nothing more harmful than kiss each other senseless; at football games; at the movies; in church. There was nowhere that Adam felt was too sacred for him to tell me he loved me, and wanted to make love to me, and wanted me to have his babies. I felt treasured and loved more deeply than I had ever thought I could feel.
He taught me to love myself, too. I was not too scrawny for him, my hair was just the right shade of red, my eyes were a beautiful green, my skin was a warm honey. I never doubted that he meant every word he said, every compliment he ever paid me. I celebrated life with him. Each of our four babies was born to grand feasts and family reunions; our wedding anniversaries were happy affairs that we celebrated over an entire week; birthdays were always a reason to play and sing and make ourselves merry. Because we worked so hard to be happy, we even enjoyed all the hard times we weathered, like the time he was let go from his job, and I was a new mother with a very sick infant in hospital. Or the fifteen months which followed when we ate a lot of bread and drank a lot of water, and never told our families our troubles, because they had troubles enough of their own.
I was smiling and unaware of it. It must have caught the old lady's attention, for she suddenly piped up,
"It's a lovely day, isn't it?"
I smiled back, not wanting to talk, yet needing to. "Yes, beautiful." I felt awkward, not knowing what else to say. She must have sensed my confusion.
"Don't mind me, dear. You seemed a bit lonely, earlier on. I guess you must be feeling better." She smiled encouragingly, and I realized she was offering herself as a patient listener to whatever burden I cared to offload on her.
"Thank you, I do feel better," I heard myself say, and knew, in surprise, that I did.
"It always helps to think things through," she continued. "When I was your age, I used to come here often to think things through. I wasn't very popular with women, and I wasn't very comfortable with men. But a clear day and the sight of the river take my mind in other directions when I'm depressed."
How should I answer this strange old soul, who wanted to comfort me, or to be nosy, or both? I could find nothing to say, so I just smiled at her. Presently, I rose to leave.
"Goodbye dear," she said. "You should smile more."
"Goodbye. And thank you," I replied. I wasn't sure what exactly I was thanking her for, but she had pointed out to me that I was feeling better. At home that night, I cast my mind over our short conversation, and suddenly realized that what had lifted my mood was the memories I had been stirring up. As long as I kept the memories alive in my heart, in my mind, Adam would always be with me. A sudden rush of tears overwhelmed me, and I was thankful that I could cry again.
II
"Adam, it's time," I said in a rush, breathing deeply to relieve the pain. My husband looked at me and jumped off the kitchen stool.
"Okay, now. Lee, remember to breathe. I'll get the bags." He had scurried away before I could tell him he was going the wrong way. We laughed about the huge black-and-blue mark he wore for a few days after his first son, Todd Aaron Maxwell, came shrieking into the world. That boy was the loudest baby I have ever heard, except at night, when for some reason, he never cried. I would know he was awake because he would squirm, kick, and fret. Our bed was small enough that if a feather touched it I would be awake.
