The Diary (19 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Sarah and Emily were wiping their eyes as they turned the last page of the diary. Emily said in a choked voice, “So that's it? We don't get to find out how it ends?”

“We know how it ends,” Sarah said. “She picked Dad.”

Emily should have felt comforted by that fact—as Sarah had pointed out earlier, they wouldn't have been here otherwise—but she felt a strange melancholy nonetheless. “Poor AJ. He must have been devastated.”

“I don't doubt it.”

“Mom, too. They were obviously crazy about each other.”

Sarah cleared her throat, speaking briskly in an effort to keep her warring emotions in check. “Even so, she must have thought Dad was a better bet.” Naturally she wasn't sorry their mother had chosen their father over AJ. What troubled her was that it had been such a heartbreaking choice.

Emily was similarly torn. Yes, she was the daughter of Bob and Bets Marshall, but she was also a romantic. Her own marriage had failed because she'd married for the wrong reasons. What would have happened if she'd waited for the right man instead of settling for the first one to come along? If her mother had taken a chance on AJ instead of opting to marry her father?

She unfolded herself from the sofa, where she'd sat nestled beside Sarah, stretching her long limbs to release the kinks. “It could have had something to do with the war.” She wandered over to the fireplace, where half-a-dozen framed photos were still displayed on the mantel, ones she and her sister had yet to divvy up. She picked up an old black-and-white photo of their father in his army uniform, gazing at it with new eyes. “What if she'd sent that ‘Dear John' letter and he'd gotten killed? She would have felt partly to blame. Knowing her, she wouldn't have been able to live with herself.”

“You make it sound like she only married him out of a sense of responsibility.”

Emily turned to find her sister frowning. “I'm sure that wasn't the only reason,” she said. “He made her happy. And didn't she always tell us that being happy was the most important thing in life?”

Sarah, feeling suddenly restless, got up and carried the empty jelly jars and wine bottle into the kitchen. A few minutes later, Emily came padding in after her. She looked as lost as a prodigal daughter returning home after an absence of many years to find her family gone and her house occupied by strangers. In one hand was the diary and in the other what looked like an ashtray.

Emily handed Sarah the ashtray. “I found it under the china cabinet. It must've fallen out when we were emptying the cupboards.”

Sarah eyed it curiously—as far as she knew, neither of their parents had ever smoked—before deciding it must be a relic from a previous era when it had been considered polite to offer cigarettes to guests. Another reminder of the mysterious life their parents had shared before she and her sister had come along. She was about to toss it, then thought better of it and wrapped it in newspaper, tucking it into the carton with the glassware. Throughout the packing process, shed been ruthless, but now she couldn't bear the thought of tossing away even this small, worthless item. Tonight the house and everything in it seemed steeped in significance.

She straightened to find her sister standing by the breakfast nook, staring sightlessly out the window into the dark, the diary clutched to her breast. She looked so much like their mother that it gave Sarah a start. “I wonder if he ever got over it,” Emily said softly.

“AJ? I'm sure he did eventually,” said the more practical-minded Sarah. “He probably married and had kids of his own.”

“Do you think they kept in touch?”

Sarah shook her head. “If there'd been any letters from AJ, we'd have found them by now.”

“Maybe she didn't keep them. After all, she didn't save the ones Dad wrote her.”

“Well, it was a difficult time. I'm sure she didn't want to be reminded of it.”

Sarah finished tidying up the kitchen, throwing out the Chinese takeout containers, running the garbage disposal, and sponging off the counters. The day after tomorrow, the new owners, a young couple, would be taking possession of the house, but for her this would always be home—the home her mother had taken such pride in. She knew Bets would have wanted it left in order.

When Sarah looked up again, her sister was still staring out the window. “I wonder if he's even still alive,” Emily said.

Sarah squeezed the sponge dry and placed it on the counter by the sink. “How would we even track him down to find out? We don't know anything about him except that he had a rough childhood and that his uncle was a son of a bitch.”

“We could try calling Information. Maybe he's listed in the phone book.”

“We don't even know his last name.”

“Good point.” Emily fell silent. “I wonder why the entries stopped after that Christmas,” she said after a bit.

“For one thing, Mom and Dad got married right after that,” Sarah reminded her. Their parents had eloped before the year was out. “And what if Dad had stumbled across the diary by accident? It would have been hurtful for him to find out that she still had feelings for AJ.”

“Not that he would have let on,” observed Emily.

Their father hadn't been one to wear his heart on his sleeve. Their mother had blamed it on the war. Whatever the reason, he hadn't been forthcoming either in emotional displays or in talking about the past. Yet there had been no stinting in the affection he'd lavished on his two daughters. He'd known how to have fun, too, despite his serious side. Sarah recalled how he had entertained them every night before bed when they were little, doing magic tricks or strumming on the ukulele. Every summer they would go camping by the lake, and he'd tell stories by the campfire—not tales of his childhood but fantastical made-up adventures—and do goofy things like turn cartwheels on the beach, making them shriek in delighted embarrassment. After church on Sundays, while their mother fixed breakfast, he would read aloud to Sarah and Emily from the Sunday comics—
Dick Tracy, Gasoline Alley, Dagwood and Blondie
—giving voices to the characters and acting out their parts while the two girls sat on his lap, transfixed.

That reminded Sarah …

“Speaking of Dad, we have to decide what to do with his ashes.”

They had been debating the matter all week while packing up the contents of the house. Emily thought the ashes ought to be scattered on the lake where they'd gone camping every summer. Sarah was in favor of keeping them in the rosewood urn their mother had had specially made to house them; she'd volunteered to take custody of it. They hadn't discussed what to do when their mother's time came; it was too much to contemplate on top of struggling to cope with the day-to-day reality of watching her slip away bit by bit. The one thing they agreed on was that her remains should also be cremated. They were sure that was what she would have wanted.

Emily turned around to face her sister. “There's no rush, is there? We don't have to decide right away.”

“What are we waiting for?”

“You know,” Emily hinted darkly.

Sarah said it for her. “You mean we should wait until Mom goes.”

Emily winced at hearing what they both dreaded spoken aloud. “The doctor said it could be any day.” There was fear in her voice but also resolution: She wanted to be prepared when the time came.

“I know, but I'm not ready,” Sarah said in a small voice. Usually she was the strong, sensible one, the one everyone else leaned on, but she didn't feel very strong at the moment. Wasn't it their mother who'd always said the tree that didn't bend was the first to break in a storm?

“I don't think we'll ever be,” said Emily mournfully.

Sarah set aside her apprehension for the time being. “Let's talk about it tomorrow, shall we? I won't be able to think straight until after I've had a night's rest.” She and Emily finished taping up the last of the cartons; then Sarah reached for her coat, draped over the back of a kitchen chair.

“See you in the morning?” Emily said, picking up her own coat.

Sarah nodded. “Ten-thirty. I'll meet you there.”

It had become their ritual to meet at the nursing home every Sunday morning after church. The rest of the week was catch-as-catch-can, with Emily and Sarah taking turns visiting their mother and Sarah's husband and sons occasionally tagging along. But Sundays were for the sisters alone, a time when they drew support from each other and discussed what needed to be done.

“What do you think we should do with this?” Emily retrieved the diary from the kitchen table, where she'd placed it while putting on her coat. It was the last item from the house that hadn't been packed, thrown out, earmarked for Goodwill, or set aside for sentimental reasons.

Sarah was about to suggest that Emily take it home with her and tuck it away in a safe place, but then she had a better idea. “Bring it with you tomorrow when we visit Mom. She should have it.”

Emily looked dubious. “I don't know. She's pretty out of it.”

“Still.”

Emily tucked it into her shoulder bag. “You're right. It's what she would have wanted.”

Outside, Sarah hugged her sister good-bye before they headed off to their respective cars. “I'm glad we found the diary—or it found us,” said Emily in parting. “It's weird to think of Mom with another man, but at least she got to experience true passion in her lifetime, even if it wasn't with Dad. How many of us have that?” It made it a little easier letting go of her, knowing she'd had those memories at least.

The Miriam Hastings McDonald
extended care facility didn't advertise itself as such. There were no signs out front, and casual passersby might take the gracious old brick building with its impeccably kept grounds for a private school, or perhaps a church retreat. As Emily pulled into the circular drive, she noticed that the dahlias in the center island, going to seed just two days before, had been replaced by rows of hostas and sweet william. Here, death wasn't a cause for mourning. Whenever a resident passed, a memorial was printed “in celebration of” that person's life. Unlike other extended care facilities, where such events were downplayed or swept under the rug, MHM even held a memorial tea for those who wished to pay their respects. The staff encouraged the residents to think of one another as family and the families to feel connected to the painful and sometimes long-drawn-out process of letting go of a loved one.

The more sentient and able-bodied residents lived in the main house, with its antique furniture, well-stocked library, and daily ritual of afternoon tea. Those whose minds were gone or who were bedridden occupied a separate wing, reached via a pair of double doors secured by a keypad and wide enough to accommodate a gurney. Beyond those doors, the setting was purely institutional. Each of the rooms in the B wing held a hospital bed and various outlets to accommodate monitoring and life-support machines, should the need arise. The nurses, licensed RNs as opposed to the LVNs who made up the majority of the staff in the main house, wore blue scrubs and were trained in life-saving techniques. Those machines and techniques were seldom put to use, however: The majority of the residents at MHM had living wills stating that no extraordinary measures should be taken.

Elizabeth Marshall was no exception to the general rule. In the wills she and her husband had had drawn up years before either had become ill, they had made it clear that neither wished to survive the other for any longer than was humanly sustainable. In fact, they'd often expressed to each other, privately so as not to upset the girls, the wish that they not be separated at all. Their preference would have been to go together, like the old couple who'd gone down with the
Titanic
rather than be parted in death.

But life took its own course. At the age of seventy-nine, Elizabeth's husband of more than fifty years had been diagnosed with cancer and was gone within six months. Their daughters were surprised by how well she appeared to cope with his loss. Even so, Sarah and Emily began imploring her to sell her house and move into something smaller and more manageable, closer to where they lived so they could keep an eye on her. After weeks of such entreaties, Elizabeth took both of her daughters to lunch and, over iced tea and Cobb salads, set them straight. “I don't want you girls to think that just because Dad is gone, I need looking after,” she told them in the same firm tone she'd used when they had tried to push the limits as children. “You have your own lives. I'll manage just fine on my own.” What she didn't tell them was the reason she was coping so well: She knew it wouldn't be long before she'd join their father.

There was nothing wrong with her at the time aside from the general aches and pains of old age, but she had a strong and not entirely unwelcome premonition of her own death. She didn't believe in ghosts, nor was she given to superstition. Nonetheless, she kept smelling her husband's aftershave wherever she went, not just on the clothes he'd worn. She was aware of his presence in other ways as well, as she went about the daily business of reorganizing her life on a smaller scale, as keenly as if he were sitting across from her at the table when she took her solitary meals, or lying beside her in bed at night. So palpable was his presence at times that she reached out to touch him, and it came as a mild shock to have her fingers meet with nothing but air.

Not being one to leave for others what she was perfectly capable of doing herself, Elizabeth proceeded to put her affairs in order. She cleared the closets of all her husband's things, donating his suits to Goodwill and giving away the more personal items to her daughters and grandsons—his watch, his wedding ring, his leather briefcase, the trophy he'd won in an amateur golf tournament—keeping only a handful of photos and mementos for herself, along with the rosewood urn that housed his ashes. She hired a handyman to take care of the long list of house repairs she'd put off while her husband had been ill and, last but not least, had her lawyer draw up a trust placing everything she owned in her daughters' names.