Digging Out (4 page)

“Ma’am? You awl-right? Anything I can do, ma’am?”

I shake my head. What can I possibly say to this nice attendant? I am icy cold, from the inside out—a temperature that is much colder than the human body should ever be allowed to feel.

Once on the road again, I try Dafydd’s cell phone.

“Momma,” he answers. “I’ve booked a flight that arrives at four thirty p.m. What can I do to help? What about phone calls from the car on the way to the airport?”

I can tell he is trying to pull himself together. I suddenly feel very tired.

“I’ll meet you at home,” I say. “Elodie’s taken Hannah to her house. By the time I get in and fetch her, it’ll be long after six. You should be home by then.” We are talking business.

“Okay,” he says and pauses. “Momma? How are we going to get through this?”

I swallow. For a moment I want to tell him just how afraid I really am. But instead, I say quickly, “We’ll be fine. See you in a few hours.”

After we ring off, I try Marc’s sister in Los Angeles, but she’s not there. Her message on the machine reminds me how Marc always referred to her as “My real mother.” Nine years older, she had been the one to set his curfew, point him toward his first girlfriend, roll him his first joint. Some mother. “It’s Alys. I’ll call you later,” I say. If I don’t get out of Cuba fast, I’ll miss the plane.

I reach Marc’s sister-in-law in Florida. When she says hello, I can
tell she is crying. Phillipe called her an hour before. Marc’s brother is out of town. He’ll be home tonight. “Come, please,” I beg. “Bring the children. There’s plenty of room in the house for everyone.”

I call my sister. I call Marc’s best friend in San Francisco. I call to make sure Hannah has been picked up by Elodie. I keep to the speed limit and continue to call everyone I can think of on the car phone. Each time I say Marc is dead it feels more unreal.

And the rain just keeps on falling, the sky so dark it doesn’t seem to exist, the clouds so low I can’t even see the mountains. I look at the clock. I wish I could go faster. For a moment I forget where I am going. And then it comes to me.
Home.
The word suddenly sounds so strange and empty. I say it out loud, like E.T. I want to go home. Phone home. But there is no one there. What will home be like without Marco?

I make Albuquerque, pulling in front of Southwest Airlines three minutes before flight time. A porter helps me with my bags and I beg him to call the gate and explain that my husband has died, my eight-year-old daughter is alone and I need to get to her in L.A.

“Sure,” says the man I’ve cut in front of. “Why is it someone has always died when they’re late?”

I turn around and glare at him. “How dare you?” I hiss, continuing to look straight at him, clenching my jaw, making two fists. For a second I actually think about punching him. Once when Hannah was three, maybe four, we’d been back east in New York at the Metropolitan Museum. A guard had caught Hannah petting a Rodin sculpture. He pulled her away and shouted at her. By the time I’d gotten to her, a crowd had gathered and she was petrified. I’d threatened the guard, told him I was certain there was another way to have handled the situation. Later, when I told Marc the story, he said I just should have hauled off and punched him. Even a small injustice would cause Marc’s anger to rise. Right then and there he’d taught me the mean right swing that I often think about using, but so far haven’t. Now I quickly turn away from the man in line.

In fact, they do hold the plane while I park the car. I race up the stairs and down a long passageway, through the metal detector to the gate, fumbling in my bag for my license and a credit card, giving up a metal nail file as the security people look over my shoulder. When I am on the plane, I thank the flight attendants and peek into the cockpit through the two metal safety doors.

“Fly carefully,” I plead. Comfortingly, both pilots smile at me.

In my seat, I buckle up, and then begin to shake. I close my eyes. Since 9/11, 1 absolutely hate flying. Now there is a new reason to feel fear: I am a single parent. As the plane starts down the runway I look out the window and try to imagine Marc’s soul in a better place. I think about his sweetness, all the good he has done, the stray dogs he has saved, his rose garden, the piles of music he’s written, his children, rather than all he’s left undone.

I glance at the woman sitting next to me. She smiles. I imagine her putting her arms around me, pulling me close, telling me, “Everything is going to be all right. Don’t you worry about a thing. Not one little thing.” She holds me, rocks me until I am calm and quiet inside. I turn toward the window. I hold my breath as the plane lifts off.

When the plane lands I continue to sit while most everyone files out past me. Finally, the flight attendant comes over and asks if I need any help. She has an enormous amount of hairspray in her hair. She runs her hand down her hairline and her entire blond flip moves up. I close my eyes.

“Are you all right?” she asks.

I nod, but I am not. I am pretending, smiling and pulling myself together in her presence. I don’t want her help. In front of me a couple with a small child walks up the aisle. They are telling the child to hurry, but she is moving as fast as her small feet will travel. I follow them off the plane, using them as car lights in front of me on a dark night, trailing them. They are my guides. I follow them to the baggage claim, wanting my own mam, my da, needing them so bad.

As I drag my suitcase away from the terminal, the day is gray, gloomy. I stay off the freeway and drive the back way, through the Marina, down along the Pacific Coast Highway toward the most magnificent ocean view I’ve ever seen—anywhere. It is a road I’ve taken almost daily since I arrived in Santa Monica.

Through bumper-to-bumper Friday afternoon traffic and forty minutes later, up Topanga Canyon Boulevard, I pull into the long drive lined with eucalyptus trees circling Elodie’s huge Mediterranean-style house. In the distance Hannah is jumping on the trampoline. She knows I hate tramps. In fact I’ve warned her several times about not jumping on the one here. Rolling the window down, I catch myself before yelling for her to stop, realizing that at least
Hannah has gone on with her day, isn’t holed up somewhere or hiding out, hasn’t downed a quarter bottle of Scotch. I am grateful for this moment of normality. I park the car and walk toward her. She jerks her head around at the sound of the car door. I know she sees me, but she continues jumping. I restrain myself. Right up next to the tramp, I put my hand out.

She stops but doesn’t come over. She just stares blankly and then says, “Don’t cry, Mommy. Promise.”

“Okay.” I know where she learned this.

What are you feeling?
Marc asked after I’d gotten a letter from Mam saying Gram had died.
I’m okay,
I’d told him.
I’m okay, really.

Hannah walks across the trampoline and takes my hand. I put my other one up and lift her down into my arms.

“I don’t want to talk about it, okay, Mommy? Ever. Let’s just try to forget about it. Please,” she says straightforwardly. We hold each other. Neither of us cries.

By the time we arrive home, Dafydd is already there with dozens of others, standing in the middle of the group. I didn’t expect there to be so many people. Actually, I didn’t expect anyone but Dafydd. I recognize Alex and James, Dafydd’s old friends from high school. Hannah runs over to Dafydd. He picks her up and wraps her in his arms. I let them be for a moment and then go wrap my arms around both of them. Dafydd is crying, shaking. “Don’t cry, Dafydd,” Hannah says. “Don’t cry. It’ll be okay.”

As I look around the room, it seems like everyone we know in California is here, and they’ve all brought food. Every surface has something on it. I have had nothing to eat all day and have no stomach for anything now. I’m told that some of our oldest friends will arrive tomorrow from New York, Boston, Washington, London, Venice, Helsinki, Rio and Australia. Those here tonight have driven from the farthest California points. Some of these people I haven’t seen in ten years. I try to smile and be gracious, but inside I am completely undone. Some part of me longs to be comforted, but I don’t know how to ask for it.

I see Phillipe across the room. He rushes over to me, putting his arms around me.

“Hello, Phillipe,” I say, stiffly.

“I’m so, so sorry,” he says. “This is too big for us to talk about now. I hope you feel it was the right thing for me to invite friends?”

“Yes, of course, Phillipe. Thank you. I appreciate your being with Hannah.” I am so stilted. He can tell.

“I will do anything for you and Hannah, Alyese.”

Except remember how to pronounce my name. I feel mean.

Through the French doors that lead outside, I notice my sister. Everything about Beti is practical. She is sitting in Marc’s chair on the deck, which under the circumstances actually bothers me a bit. Her hair is short and she has on a skirt and turtleneck. On her feet are Birkenstock sandals. “Health food shoes,” Marc called them. I want Beti to take care of me, put her arms around me and make everything that’s happened go away. But we don’t have that kind of relationship. We’ve never had it—she is not that kind of sister. She has always given me a place to run to, but when I get there, she is too busy and scared herself to pay me much mind. Beti looks more haggard than usual. It takes a lot of work to do what she does: raise two children and run her tea shop. She is used to hard work and would know how to handle her husband’s death. But Colin is here, rubbing her neck. Anwen and Morgan, who are grown now, sit cross-legged near Beti’s feet.

Beti, seeing me stare at her now, smiles sadly. I smile back, briefly. A wave of fatigue flies in my face and I look away. My bones feel heavy, like fresh-killed elk bones hidden under winter fields, raw, not like the lightly bleached bones I saw this morning in the summer fields of Durango.

Someone hands me a cup of soup. If only they would feed me. But I haven’t the strength to ask. I lean against the long pine table that Marc and I saved up for. “A Thanksgiving table,” he called it. “Big enough to seat all of us. Your sister and Colin, their kids. Our kids. Our whole family. I want big Thanksgiving gatherings.”

How many Thanksgivings did we actually have together? Nineteen? Lined up next to each other, they don’t seem like very many. Now who will hold up the turkey while I stuff it?

I sip the soup until it is gone. My friend Connie pulls a rocker over and gently helps me into it. She doesn’t try to have a conversation, just smoothes the side of my head and then takes the cup away from me, heading toward the kitchen.

My neck aches and my left arm is so heavy. I look at my left hand, at my wedding ring. With my thumb, I turn it around on my finger. It’s too wide; it weighs me down. I am convinced the reason my arm feels so heavy is because of my wedding ring. But that’s ridiculous. It is the thinnest band we could find. The night we picked our bands out, I was surprised at Marco’s insistence that he wanted to wear one as well, because he never wore jewelry. “It’s more than just jewelry,” he’d said.

Looking around the room I see Lybess and Kenny—all the way from Oakland. We met them in San Francisco the first year we were together. Lybess is a film editor and Kenny is a violinist. Terry and Josie—we always looked forward to their Christmas party, the singing, the potluck, the kids. And there’s Angela, such a fabulous Cuban cook. Almost everyone here invested as much as they could in her restaurant, Gaucho. So many familiar faces. Then it hits me square on why they are here and the tears start to fall. But Hannah has made me promise. I squeeze my eyes shut. I will not cry.

Before Beti left Aberfan to come to the States, she also insisted that I not cry. She tried to convince me that it was the right thing, her going. That I’d understand in time. “Don’t cry now,” she’d said. “There’s no reason to cry, Allie.”

When is it all right to cry? If it’s not when your husband dies, or when your best friend dies, or when you are buried alive, when? I bow my head, hoping the tears will stop. But they don’t. It surprises me when Beti comes over and sits down on the floor at my feet. She says nothing but the way she puts her head in my lap is reassuring. The weight of it makes me feel like I won’t disappear.

Long before anyone starts to leave, Hannah finds me still sitting in the rocker and tells me she wants to go to bed. I notice the lime green sundress she has on. Did she have that on when I picked her up at Elodie’s? I can’t remember. Her blond hair is pulled back in a ponytail and her blue eyes look washed out, dark shadows under them. She doesn’t look tired. Something else? Drawn? Vacant? I have never seen her looking like this. It frightens me.

“I want to sleep in yours and Daddy’s bed,” she says.

I nod and start to get up, patting Beti’s head. She grabs hold of my hand and looks up at me. “Will you thank them all for coming, Beti?” I look around the room. “Tell them I’m very grateful, please.”

She stands up, putting her arms around me. I hear her swallow. She pulls back. “You’ll be okay.” I almost laugh.

Before I start up the stairs with Hannah, Donald reaches out and puts his hand on my shoulder. His grip is firm, steadying. “Alys, you know how I loved him. I love you, too.” He is Marc’s oldest friend. Donald and Marco ate tuna sandwiches with the crusts cut off and rode horses over the flat, dry hills near their childhood home.

“I’ll call you next week,” he says. “When things have settled down a bit.” Next week won’t do. I need him now. I stare at him for a moment and then I turn away, starting up the stairs.

Halfway up, holding Hannah’s small hand, I hear Dafydd. He calls up after us from the bottom of the stairs.

“Momma, are you all right?

I turn to look at his tall, slender body. How is his knee? My son’s dark hair is buzzed short now, making his blue-green eyes look even bigger than they usually look. We haven’t spoken much. Now I’m too exhausted to talk and too weary.

I say, “I think so.”

“Is Hannah going to sleep with you?”

“You, too, Dafydd. I want you to sleep with us, too,” Hannah says.