Digging Out (5 page)

There is hardly a moment’s beat. “Is there room, Momma? Do you mind?” His voice sounds almost as small as Hannah’s. As if to explain himself, he adds, “Then Uncle Jack and Aunt Martha can use my room.”

I know she needs my help, so I pull off Hannah’s shoes and remove her dress. She crawls under the covers as I undress, putting on one of Marc’s T-shirts. I throw Dafydd a T-shirt and a pair of sweats. He changes in the bathroom. Soon I am lying down between my two children, holding them, my arms wide feathered duck wings. I begin to hum the song Marc and I used to sing to each of them when they were tiny. Even after they have both shuttered down—Hannah next to me as close as she can get, and Dafydd on his side, back toward me, but still close, their small breathing sounds a comfort to me—I continue to hum quietly so as not to fly apart.

A
UGUST 17, 2002

W
hen first light breaks, I am staring at Dafydd’s sleeping profile in the early-morning half-light, and I remember my dream:

Certainly I have thought about Evan on and off through all these years. But I guarded against letting him in too deep or close. Of course it is obvious why I should be thinking of him now.

My breathing is short intakes of air. I close my eyes, trying to deepen it, and hear Gram’s voice like a soothing mantra.
You do not have to think about the whole of life all at once.
I can see her standing by my hospital bed, feel her down deep in my guts like I did every lonely day after I knew Hallie was gone. Gram, how I wish she were here in the flesh with me right now.
Think only about the moment you are in. That’s all, Alys. That’s enough
.

The moment I am in …

I shimmy down the middle of the bed between my children and out the bottom. Everything in the room is just as it was two days ago,
before I left for Colorado, including the pile of books next to the leather chair and Marc’s clothes strewn all over the chair.

Downstairs in the kitchen everything is back in place. I feel comforted by our friends putting things right. My friends now. And I wonder if they will continue to be my friends. How often did we see Sarah after Matthew died?

The fridge is full of leftover cold cuts and pickles packed in Tupperware, aluminum and wax paper. There are several loaves of bread in the breadbox, Danishes and cakes in pink boxes. The food looks alien, perhaps even genetically engineered to look like real food.

The real food is the jars of raspberry jam from last summer that Marc, Hannah and I made together. They’re organized on the inside of the door and labeled ALYS’ RAZZLE DAZZLE in Marc’s lovely, round cursive hand. My vision goes soft. I hold tight to the fridge door. He was so pleased with himself. Planting the raspberries had been his idea and last summer was the first they’d been prolific. His sweet smile, faded yellow T-shirt, tan arms holding a gallon tin bucket, a pipe in his mouth. I want to sink to my knees, but my children need me right now.

Should I make crepes for breakfast, Hannah’s favorite? Or omelettes, always Dafydd’s first choice? I stare into the fridge as the motor turns over for the third time. A stanza from a poem by Michael Leunig, which I’d used as a prologue in one of my first published books years ago, snaps into my mind:

* * *

A whole day goes by. In the night I awaken and don’t remember anything beyond standing at the refrigerator, except for the terrible moment of viewing Marc’s still body, the life of him so definitely somewhere else. I vaguely remember driving myself to the hospital, but Dan Wolfe had driven me home. He’d given me a sedative and I’d gone to bed.

On this morning, the second day of Marc’s being gone, after breakfast, we all pull ourselves into our brand-new public roles of “Grieving Widow,” “Man of the Family” and “Sad Little Fatherless Girl.” A limousine picks us up. Someone, probably Ed Meyer, our business manager and Marc’s executor, must have arranged everything. The limos, the three p.m. service at the Writer’s Guild in West Hollywood. I guess I must have signed something at the hospital for the cremation? Notices I learn later went out in late editions yesterday of the
Los Angeles Times,
the
New York Times
and the trades. But it is mostly word of mouth that has gathered the large group already queued up outside the door. I have on a simple knee-length sleeveless black dress and a long strand of pearls that Marc gave me on one of our anniversaries. My hair is pulled back in a ponytail and I am wearing sunglasses. Hannah is angry that I am wearing black. She has on a hot pink jumper and a polka-dot skirt. Dafydd is wearing a white T-shirt and jeans and a navy blue blazer.

The car drops us at the building’s austere entrance. My sister and her family are behind us in another limousine. Hannah, walking between Dafydd and me, sets the pace, moving too slowly for such a young girl.

In the lobby, there is a leather-bound book laid open for people to sign. “One-sheets” for many of the movies for which Marc did the music are displayed around the entrance, hung on the walls alongside the covers of his latest jazz CDs. A poster-size photo of Marc stares down at me.

“I haven’t seen that one,” Dafydd whispers. “It’s a good one. He’s smiling.” Marc’s hair had grown longish and his blond highlights are caught by the camera. He is tan and his hazel eyes shine. Several weeks ago, before he had it taken, I asked him if he was sure he wanted to wear a black T-shirt. He reached over, kissed me, and said, “All my Brooks Brothers button-downs are at the laundry.” He never
wore a button-down. Marc didn’t own a tie, except for one of his father’s, which he’d worn to our wedding.

We file past the doors leading into the auditorium. There is a “before performance” feel in the room. People are setting up speakers, pushing a grand piano to one corner of the stage, placing dozens of flower arrangements everywhere. The stage is covered with them. My nephew, Morgan, is passing out copies of a CD Marc put together only weeks ago highlighting his film music. Party favors. I wonder who made the copies. A photo of Marc on the cover has been added, and a poem called “Loving,” which I wrote years ago, is on the back. I grimace and look away. I hear a high-pitched laugh, an octave on the piano, a few notes on the trumpet. Someone drags the lectern across the stage.

“Eddie. Give me more blue in the lights,” says a voice backstage. “Testing …” The microphone. Marc would absolutely hate this to-do. He hated any fuss being made over him. I contemplate trying to stop it but can’t think of how.

We sit in the third row. In front of us, all the cousins, uncles and aunts have turned around and are trying to get my attention: Marc’s sister, his brother, their children. I want to escape the eyes on me, the grieving widow—to disappear from feeling or facing all of the difficulties that I know lie ahead.

The room is beginning to quiet.

“Mommy,” Hannah says. “I have to pee.” Behind me are the hundreds of people who have gathered and are now sitting down. I cannot ask her to hold it. She takes my hand and we inch our way out of the row and up the aisle. Almost everyone I have known since I’ve come to America is in this audience. People touch me, my arm, my hand.

Through the years, when I’d thought about which one of us would go first, it was never Marc. I have imagined Hannah’s death in a million scenarios, and Dafydd’s—but Marc was reliable, indestructible. Even though his father had a heart attack at thirty-three, Marc seemed ever present, indissoluble. I teased him about what he would do after I died, the kind of woman he’d end up with: big breasts, small waist, tight-bodice dresses and full skirts; a “Makola” woman buying all her clothes from that pricey shop on Madison Avenue in New York. She would be slow-moving, soft, easy, languid—the exact opposite of the intellectual, with my thrift store clothes and
overanxious attitude. I was the one who pressed for wills, guardians for Hannah. I was supposed to be the one to go first. I don’t want to be the one always left behind.

A week after the service, Dafydd goes back to New York. He will have his knee operated on there. “It will be easier,” he says. “For the first couple of weeks, I’ll have Barbara bring my work to the apartment. I’ll be back in the office in no time.” But he is back in L.A. with us the following weekend. “It’s too hard being away from you right now,” he tells Hannah. I know he also means it is too hard for him to be away from the town where the remains of Marc reside.

He takes a month off from work and has his knee operated on in Los Angeles. This is a good excuse not to get back to my own work. I have gone way beyond my editor’s deadline on the poetry book. I can’t face rewriting poems written when Marc was alive. I cannot work lines like:
“He moves toward the October of life” or “Setting ourselves like bulbs deep in hard ground …”
They mean nothing now. They are light, frivolous, stupid and empty.

Rather, I drive Hannah to school most mornings, come home and draw a bath for Dafydd, shop for food, cook breakfast and lunch for him, pick Hannah up at school, prepare dinner for all of us. I make extravagant meals, concoctions Marc would like: spicy shrimp with arugula; farfalle with zucchini, yellow peppers and spicy chicken sausage; chicken breasts stuffed with broccoli rabe; grilled lamb chops with roasted green figs; and pot after pot of mint chicken soup. This is something I can do. It is second nature to me. And I wait for the cooking to soothe me.

Mostly I think I am managing rather well. There are a few tricks that help—like setting the alarm but waking before it. A small thing, but it makes me feel I am in control. While brushing my teeth I tell myself to be glad I am alive. After some yoga, I pull myself together for Hannah and Dafydd. Getting Hannah off to school can be difficult. She’s afraid things will continue to fall apart in her absence: Dafydd will disappear; I will die.

One morning the alarm beats me. Somehow it has landed across the room and under a cushion and has been ringing for over two hours. Dafydd is calling to come help him run a bath. I blur awake. The yellow numbers on the clock read eleven thirty a.m.

“Momma!” Dafydd calls again. It is impossible to pull myself up. I am waiting for someone to help me. I will never be strong enough to pull myself out of bed.

I lie in bed the next day, and the next, and then for the next two weeks. Hannah gets herself up in the mornings. Dafydd, struggling on his crutches, walks her to the bus stop. Later, he finds an empty bottle of pinot noir under my bed. I don’t remember how it got there.

Dan Wolfe gives me Valium. He gives me Xanax. He gives me Prozac. I prefer a glass of wine or three.

One evening, after Hannah has made dinner—our third night of macaroni and cheese—Dafydd says quietly, “Momma, you’re a mess. You’ve got to get some help, please.”

Hannah is crying. “It’s not fair,” she tells Dafydd. “You have another father.”

I am folding the laundry and eavesdropping on a conversation between them.

“What do you mean?” Dafydd asks.

“You know, that man Mommy lived with in Wales. The one who made you with her.” She knows Evan’s name but isn’t saying it.

There is a long pause.

“But, Hannah, I don’t even know him. I’ve never even met him. When I was growing up, Mom never even spoke about him. Marco was my dad.”

“But you have someone else. You have another father.”

“Hannah. Please listen to me. Come here.” I walk to the kitchen door and peek in. Hannah climbs on Dafydd’s lap. “Marco was my dad, just like he was your dad. It’s true. … Evan is my real father, by birth and all. But when I was young, I never even thought about him. I’ve never known anybody other than Marco. For a while now I’ve been thinking I’d like to meet Evan someday, but it’s just out of curiosity. Not to find another father. He’ll never replace Marco. No one could, ever. Never.”

“I’d like to meet Evan, too.” Hannah’s voice is almost a whisper.

“Well, maybe we’ll do that sometime. Maybe we’ll just bebop it over to Wales someday together and meet him.”

“Yeah,” Hannah says. “Maybe he could be both our fathers.”

* * *

No matter how I try, I can’t figure out why Marc died. He had high cholesterol but he’d been on cholesterol medication for about ten years. He watched his diet—olive oil instead of butter, lean meat, oat bran, grapes. Maybe it was because he didn’t take vitamins except when he worked with his favorite director, which despite that final film had been quite a bit.

“Joe’s into this new regimen.” Marc holds out a small cellophane packet filled with vitamins. “Folic acid, Bu, multivitamin, calcium, ginko, ginseng, CO-Q
₁₀
, grape-seed extract. He’s sending me a subscription for Andrew Weil’s health newsletter.”

Several years before, he started drinking red wine, specifically cabernet, because Joe said cabernet grapes inhibited blood clots or something like that.

This past April, Marc had his annual physical exam, which included a stress test. His blood was normal. His electrocardiogram was normal. His reflexes were all normal. Marc said the doctors gave him a clean bill of health. “I’ve got the heart of a twenty-five year old,” he said, his hazel eyes beaming.

I feel Hannah standing at the side of my bed.