Fairy Tale Blues (40 page)

A maroon SUV was angled against the curb, wavy air emitting from its tailpipe. A man stepped out of the driver's side, leaving the car door open, and I saw it was Nick. Still not out of the woods, I guessed by his careful actions. So I didn't wave. Jeter pranced in place. I bent down and unleashed him and watched as the dog raced, ears back, teeth exposed as if in a smile, across the grassy park toward Nick, who had squatted down to catch his dog's headlong run. Nick greeted Jeter, enfolding him head to toe; then he held my eyes for a long moment.

A sob gathered in my throat.

Nick stood and motioned for Jeter to jump into the opened car door; then he turned to me. We stared at each other another long moment. Nick made a fist. He knocked it against his heart, once, twice.

I answered. I knocked my fist against my heart, once, twice.

He got in the car, pulled off and was gone.

My shoulders heaved and I swallowed hard to hold my sob, put sunglasses on and walked away, down the boardwalk.

 

It was difficult to concentrate on wrapping up my school semester, while saying goodbye to people I cared about, and at the same time preparing to meet my life in Wyoming. Underlying all that, worry continually churned over Dad—were we doing enough, had we thought of every possible solution, could we have prevented his strokes? All concerns Daisy and I bounced back and forth between us, while lobbing questions to every medical authority we could find. Meanwhile, we followed Dr. Jack's advice to prepare for the future.

Today I was in Stuart for my last visit before leaving Florida. Daisy and I needed to sign legal papers giving us power of attorney. We picked up Dad on our way to the lawyers. We all felt uneasy. I sat in the backseat of Daisy's van, and as often happened to people during stressful occasions, my attention latched on to the mundane. I made a mental list of the array of items strewn on the floor and seats of my sister's vehicle—a curled-up bathing suit looking as if someone had just rolled it wet off their body, crayons, photos, candy wrappers, straws, beach umbrella, boxer shorts, a stuffed monkey, sandals, hairbrush. There were nail clippings in a cup holder, fishing hooks stuck in the sandy carpet and pairs and pairs of dirty socks. I recalled having heard one of the twins say, “Mommy, we need to go shopping. We don't have any socks.”

Gratitude rose whenever I thought about the success of our trip on the houseboat. Dad had seemed to remember his best self around the family, corny jokes and all. He'd played his old tricks on the boys, despite their being college students.

“Grandpa cheats at rummy,” Cam complained. “He makes me look at something, and when I do he takes an extra card off the deck.”

“He pulled that on you when you were eight, pointing out the window, then stealing a bite of your dessert. Time to catch on, sweetie. Don't look.”

“He told me there was a naked girl on the beach.”

Those memories of our houseboat vacation, that final family trip, both cheered and saddened me. When I had decided to spend the winter in Florida last January, I had never suspected how meaningful it would be.

After the lawyer's appointment, back at Daisy's house, I set out ingredients for making soto ayam, or at least my version of the Asian chicken soup. I began to poach the chicken breasts.

“Well, hell,” I said.

From the dining table, where she was reading the newspaper, Daisy asked, “What?”

I wailed, “The sugar ants are on the stove now.”

“Just turn on a burner. Heats up their tiny feet and they leave.”

I glared at her. She turned a page of the newspaper and continued to read. I stood before the stove for a moment, ready to give up and take everybody out to dinner. Then I turned on the burner beneath my chicken broth, and in seconds the sugar ants evacuated the stove top. I glared at her again.

Daisy laid her arm across the paper to hold it down as a breeze from the deck blossomed a page up from the dining table.

“I have a confession to make,” I said to her, keeping my head lowered to chop vegetables. “There's something I want to do before leaving here, at least something I want to say.”

Daisy said, “Forget it. I'm not getting rid of the sugar ants. They're part of the family.”

I tossed the diced onions and sliced carrots and celery into the chicken broth, then turned to her.

“It's just . . . well, I want Dad to know that it's okay for him to talk about dying.”

Daisy's eyes teared. “You think he's worried?”

“I don't know.” In Dad's presence, Daisy and I had taken on the cheery position that all would be well soon, but I was feeling more and more uncomfortable with that falseness. Somewhere inside, our father may be feeling uncomfortable with that fiction, too. And if so, he was aware of the truth and facing it all alone. Dad, despite being the Big Typhoon, held some fundamental ideas that he'd left unexamined during his life.

I began to chop the cilantro. I was considering teaching Dad how to make clouds disappear. Since that morning years ago when the family sat on the beach together and made clouds disappear by following the directions in a book Cam read to us, I had held a different view of life and death. I carried the realization that nothing died; everything just changed. Clouds didn't actually disappear. They changed into another form of moistness—dew, rain, mist, another cloud.

Our family had shared the experience with Daisy and Marcus one day while on their boat, so I bounced the idea off her.

“The experience might inspire Dad and give him comfort,” I said.

Daisy said, “You thought he'd be inspired by seeing the Hale-Bopp Comet, too. Remember? You took him to the beach one night to view it. Then those thirty-nine people committed suicide, and for years afterward Dad called it ‘your killer comet.' ”

I'd completely forgotten how he used to refer to my “sentimental crap.”

Daisy said, “I don't think he'd be comforted. He'd just blame you for every drought on the planet.”

Daisy and I decided we'd stop our positive talk about the future and watch more carefully for Dad's need to know the truth.

 

When I returned to Hibiscus, I invited Sara, Perry and Marcy to a picnic on the beach for our final gathering. Trip after trip, I carried food, wine and blankets from my car up and over the dune bridge. I had collected driftwood during the week and cached it in the sea grape for a fire tonight after the sun went down. After carrying over my last load, I pulled out the firewood and stacked it. One by one my friends appeared over the dune and walked barefoot, sandals swinging from their hands, to where I waved.

We walked along the shore before eating, stopping now and then to examine special shells, though most often we stood ankle deep in the warm salt water, waves occasionally wetting the hems of our shorts, caught up in talk. For each one of us, school had become a lively focus and had changed every part of our lives. We loved to talk about how that was going.

Perry had settled her sights on becoming a decorator; next semester she'd be taking the textiles class I had taken. Sara wanted to teach middle school. That career excited her much more than being a paralegal, which her husband had been promoting; Sara loved the energy and possibilities of preteen kids. Marcy hoped she'd discover a direction for her studies soon. She said Guy was pressuring her to choose a major and she couldn't decide on one.

I asked Marcy, “What do you want to do?”

“Thanks. I thought you were on my side.”

“Sorry. I should know better. That's how I felt every time someone asked me exactly why
did
I leave on a marriage sabbatical.”

“Yeah, why did you?” Marcy said.

“Okay, we're even.”

“So it's the same deal,” Perry said. “You had to leave Jess and create the time and space to figure out why you left, and, Marcy, you have to take some classes to figure out what you're interested in besides new cookie recipes, after all those years of being a mother and housewife.”

We stayed on the beach long after dark, talking around the bonfire, hating to say goodbye. Eventually we gave in to the reality of final hugs.

Tonight I was spending the last night in my apartment. Tomorrow after packing the car and having breakfast downstairs with Shank and Lucille, I would hit the road for the long drive to Wyoming with my bird, Kia, and my pup, Bijou, in the backseat.

I had come to love so many things in Florida that I was going to miss. Hidden courtyards in Old Town Stuart with twisted ancient vines holding up the walls and stone fountains with algae-covered grout and mossy corners. The sound of raindrops on tile. Small stretches of exposed creeks between town buildings in Hibiscus surrounded by patches of dense growth. Tiny frogs leaping from trees. Blossoms wafting heated fragrance.

In Jackson Hole, extreme skiers called the response to facing something difficult “flashing the crux.” When the sudden appearance of an exposed boulder looms while skiing the narrowest part of a couloir, a skier must blow through it without hesitation, just make the jump to fresh snow. That's how I'd have to leave Florida, blow through the severing without hesitation, flashing the crux.

As I completed my packing, I found Jess' note to me.

I held the card to my heart and suddenly experienced a burst of awe over the force that had kept us together during our long history and that even now pulsed with new life and promise. I realized Jess may go only as far as he needed to in order to keep peace between us, and then backslide as usual, but we were surely more related to each other than to anyone else. Though science claimed that siblings were the closest biological relationship, Jess and I had breathed each other's moist night breath for twenty-six years, those exhalations that carry the tastes of the same foods eaten and the fragrances of each other's dreams.

Jess resided within my body. I resided within his.

Jess was a different man today from the thirty-year-old of two decades back, dressed in layers of rugged outdoor wear, coddling an infant in the crook of one arm, while promoting the merits of a Rossingnal ski held in the other. Or later when he put our toddler sons in adult-sized ski boots at the store to keep them from walking too far, too fast. Or later yet, when the four of us together skied the slopes of every mountain that circled Jackson Hole. I loved Jess then; I loved Jess now.

 

I pulled into my driveway, exhausted from the five-day drive across the country and exhilarated to finally be home. I sat for a moment filling my eyes with the sight of my house, its old log porch with the uneven chinking, the hundred-year-old Engelmann spruce rising beside it. I knew that any moment Jess would burst through the front door, and my heart beat fast in anticipation of seeing his face. I opened my car door and slammed it loudly. Still no Jess.

Suddenly our three dogs rounded the corner of the house, spotted me and seemed to sprout wings as they flew toward me. I bent down and held all three in my arms.

“Oh, girls, I missed you.”

Tails flung themselves side to side and noses pushed into my neck, while soft, almost human sounds rumbled in their throats.

I said, “Take me to Jess.”

Off they trotted, swinging their heads behind them to be sure I followed, around the side of the house where they'd come from, all the way to the small cabin in the backyard, where Jess stored his snowmobile, kayaks, fishing rods and other gear.

The cabin door hung wide-open and I stepped in.

I stood there stunned at the transformation.

Once, this cabin was piled nearly to the log rafters with Jess' junk. The floor, in the few places it had been visible, was covered with patchy old linoleum; cobwebs had draped the windows and the logs had been dull with dust. Now it was cleared of gear and boxes, carpeted, filled with sunlight, and the logs shined and smelled of Murphy's Oil Soap. The windows had been replaced, the old stove reblacked and a beautiful stone pad sat beneath it. The walls were lined with new carpentry work. Below a counter that stretched along one wall, a pair of familiar denim-clad legs protruded.

The dogs each gave a sharp bark.

Startled, Jess jerked upright and whacked his head on the ledge.

“Shit.”

“Jess!”

“Annie!”

He flung aside a screwdriver he'd been holding, scrambled up and wrapped his arms around me. It felt so good to be home and held by Jess. I breathed in the fragrance of laundry soap from his shirt, cupped his warm neck in the palms of my hands and felt the length of my whole body melt into his.

“Hey,” he said, pulling his face back to look at me. “How do you like your new studio?” He stepped aside, keeping one arm around my shoulder so that I could get the whole view.

“Really? For me?” My smile spread wider and wider as I took it all in—the long expanse of countertop, the shelves and cupboards. I moved around the cabin, my hands touching the smooth, clean wood. “Oh,” I breathed. “My very own work space.”

“I put in lighting, baseboard heat, insulated windows, and I'm just screwing the plates on the electrical outlets to finish it off.”

I looked at my husband. Was this the same guy who had given me the gift of blue topaz ear studs twice in a row?

I said, “This is the best gift I have ever received.”

Once, I had thought love would transform me. To me, love had that power. I had the romantic notions of a naive girl, yet I hadn't been proven entirely wrong. I looked at Jess now through different eyes from those of the girl who married him, eyes surely transformed.

So it didn't happen the way I imagined it: love through its ecstacy soaring me into magical kingdoms, inflating my world. It happened like this instead: love through its unrelenting demands pushed me farther and farther into new territory that enlarged me.