Before I Go (22 page)

And then, even though I never pictured Jack’s wife already having a kid, or being a widow, or having dimples like Heather Lindley, it strikes me all at once that maybe all of the above should also be added to my list.

I inch closer to her, trying to think of an opening line, something that could engage her in conversation so she can open up to me about her dead husband and how hard being a single mom is and then I can tell her my sob story and we’ll bond over chai tea in the tiny coffee shop while we hatch a plan to introduce her to Jack.

I’m so close now I can see the raw skin around her fingernails, where she has chewed and bitten them down to the quick, and I nod,
understanding that her grief has driven her to that. She looks up at me and there are tears in her eyes. I clutch my chest with sympathy for her.

“Are you OK?” I say, my voice filled with concern.

“Yes,” she says, her voice squeaky in return. She runs the back of her hand across her dripping nostrils and sniffs. “I’m sorry.”

I smile gently at her, wanting to share that I was just crying in the bookstore, too. That we can bond over this embarrassing display of overemotion. That I get it. But I just wait, allowing her to take her time in unburdening her grief.

“It’s just—” She takes a deep breath, and I think maybe she’s pulling it together, but a few more sobs tumble out. “Oh, Max,” she breathes.

I nod. Her husband’s name was Max. It’s a good name. A strong name. I instantly imagine a man with equally deep dimples and straight teeth, his dark locks contrasting with her blond. And then I realize I’m picturing the man on the Nora Roberts book I’m holding.

A high-pitched wail startles me, and the adult Heather Lindley wipes her eyes and leans down to pick up her squawking baby. “Shh,” she croons. “It’s OK.” Like magic, the crying stops and the boy snuggles his downy head into his mother’s neck.

“Was Max your husband?” I prompt, not wanting to break the moment we seemed to be having.

Her eyes grow large as she looks at me. “Oh, no. No,” she says, and she stops jiggling the baby for a second so she can dig into her jeans pocket for a ratty Kleenex. “Not my . . . he’s my”—she dabs at her nose—“well,
was
my . . .” The tears start flowing again and I wait expectantly. So Max wasn’t her husband, but still, she doesn’t have a wedding ring and she’s good with kids, and those dimples—

“My cat,” she says, then blows her nose into the tissue. Her son briefly opens his eyes at the commotion and then closes them again.

“Your cat?”

She nods. “He was sixteen. I got him in middle school, and when
he was a kitten he would suck on my hair and knead his little paws onto my chest while I slept. And then . . .”

The woman continues delivering the eulogy for her beloved feline while I peer more closely at the book she’s holding:
Losing a Pet, Losing a Friend: Coping with the Death of Your Animal Companion.

My first thought: That is a really long title.

I voice my second thought. “So are you married?”

She stops midsentence and I realize I’ve interrupted her.

“Um, no,” she says, assessing me and my strange line of questioning. I chide myself for not being more patient, for not trying to glean the information I’m seeking in a more subtle way. But really, time isn’t something I’ve got in spades right now. “Not really,” she continues, still sniffling. “Tristan’s father and I don’t believe in marriage. You know, just a piece of paper and all that. We’re like Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins.”

I nod, more irritated at myself than at her for jumping the gun. But I’m irritated at her, too. At her perfect dimples and magic baby-calming powers and her son who will probably never be the kid in the cafeteria who can’t afford a Lunchable.

“You know they broke up,” I say.

“Oh,” she says, stepping back as if this news is an extra weight that I’ve handed to her. “I didn’t know that.”

And then I feel bad because it’s not her fault that Max died or that her boyfriend is alive or that one of Hollywood’s oldest power couples couldn’t make it after all or that I have cancer all over my body.

I take a step back, too, cradling my books as if they’re a peaceful baby with blond feather wisps of hair, and say with as much heart as I can muster: “I’m really sorry about your cat.”

WHEN JACK GETS home from work just after nine thirty, I’m already in bed, half reading the Nora Roberts and realizing that it wouldn’t be quite so sad to die without having finished one. That perhaps I should concentrate on going through the classics that I always meant to read someday. Like
Lady Chatterley’s
Lover
or something by Proust. I dog-ear the corner of the page that I’ve reread three times and close the book, sliding it onto my night table. Jack shrugs off his jacket and slings it over the back of the blue velvet wing chair in the corner. His shoulders are curved over his long frame and when he looks up at me his eyes are bloodshot.

“Rough day at the office?” I say, offering him a smile.

He groans. “Yeah, if you consider three back-to-back surgeries and then staring at a computer screen for eight-plus hours trying to compile as much research as I could find about equine prosthetics for Ling a rough day. I don’t even think I scraped the tip of the iceberg.”

He peels off his T-shirt. “How was class?”

“Fine,” I say, swallowing down the guilt at my little white lie. I do still go to class sometimes, but not nearly as often as Jack thinks I’m going.

“What else did you do?”

I shrug. “Not much. Bookstore. I ordered you a few button-ups online. Called and got some quotes for the beams in the basement.”

He raises his eyebrows in question.

I shake my head. “You don’t want to know. Let’s see . . . what else? Took Benny for a walk. I should’ve started caulking instead but it was too pretty outside.”

Jack doesn’t respond and suddenly I’m self-conscious about my lack of interesting activities or news to share about my day. I used to have intelligent things to say about my classes or stories that I couldn’t wait to share with him when I got home. I search the crevices of my brain for something noteworthy or fascinating that happened that I can comment on, engage my husband in some way.

Oh, and I consoled a crying woman at Barnes & Noble who I thought you could marry because she had just lost her husband, but it was her cat. She was totally crying over her cat
.

It’s one of those awkward social moments that Jack would have found entertaining, but I can’t exactly explain why I was talking to her and I’m afraid the mention of death will just make Jack’s shoulders tense even more, so I stay silent.

Naked, except for the tube socks that hug his calves, Jack walks over to his side of the bed. I hold my breath as he glances down at the self-help book I left on his nightstand. What will he say? Will he be irritated? Intrigued? Will the words leap out at him off the cover and shake him out of his denial? Will he throw himself into my arms sobbing “I can’t lose you” while I knowingly brush his hair off his forehead and whisper “Shh” and “Everything will be OK”? I quickly dismiss this option, knowing it’s just a scene that I saw in a movie once. Jack has no penchant for drama.

I watch Jack’s eyes graze the cover and wait for his reaction. But there isn’t one.

His expression doesn’t change as he lifts the comforter and sits down on the mattress, stuffing his legs under the blankets. He removes his socks, drops them on the floor, sets his glasses on the nightstand—on top of the new book—and reaches for the lamp.

“G’night,” he says, leaning over and kissing my shoulder. “Love you.”

He rolls over and within sixty seconds, his breathing deepens and I know he’s asleep.

“Night,” I whisper to his back as I let out the breath I was holding.

I pick up my Nora Roberts from the nightstand, blink a few times, shake my head, and resume trying to get lost in a world of ripped bodices and sweaty cowboys.

thirteen

N
OW THAT I’M dying, the sky seems larger. Or maybe it’s that I feel smaller. Or maybe it’s just that dying or not, when you really stop to look at the expanse of blue hanging above us, you can’t help but feel inconsequential. Overwhelmed at how meaningless your tiny life is in the grand scale of things.

I tip my face to the sun and let it warm my skin, closing my eyes and leaning into the bench Kayleigh and I are sharing. The dog park is full, people shaking off their winter inertia and embracing the first weekend of temperate weather.

“She’s pretty, in an urban hipster kind of way.”

I open my eyes and look in the direction Kayleigh is staring. A paisley scarf engulfs the neck of a diminutive woman in a white tank and skinny jeans, her head topped with a fedora. A large mutt—some type of pit bull mix—trots beside her on a leash.

“Too trendy,” I say. “And she looks young.”

“I think she just has one of those faces. I say twenty-five, maybe twenty-six.”

I close my eyes again. Inhale the grass-scented, earthy air. The smell used to make me tingle with anticipation—a presage reminding me that the long, alluring days of summer were near. Now that feeling
is mixed with something else. A sense of time tumbling out of control. Wasn’t it just winter? How did spring unfold so quickly? The urgency with which I used to live life suddenly seems gratuitous. Always yearning for something—for Jack to graduate, summer to get here, Fridays. Now I long for Mondays that last all week and sun rays that refuse to surrender to moonlight.

“So,” Kayleigh starts, then pauses as if trying to find the right words. “What are you going to do when you actually find someone?”

“What do you mean?” I reach down and scratch Benny behind the ears. He strains at the leash, whimpering for freedom to sniff other dogs, tree squirrels, find a dead bird and roll ecstatically in its decaying carcass.

“I mean, what’s your plan? Your opening line?”

I avoid her gaze and continue stroking Benny. I’m embarrassed to tell her I haven’t gotten that far. I had been spending so much time on my list, choosing the specific qualities that Jack’s perfect wife should have and not much time on what I would actually do when I find her.
If
I find her. As evidenced by my encounter with the woman in the bookstore, finding someone is proving to be more difficult than I anticipated. And apparently I’ve become terrible at making conversation with strangers.

“You don’t know.”

“I don’t know
yet
,” I say, not ready to admit to the multiple holes in my plan. While I’m more convinced than ever that I need to find Jack a wife—particularly as I try to quell the rising anxiety that with each passing day, I get a day closer to leaving Jack completely and utterly alone—I’ve realized that knowing it and doing it are two completely different things. I know exactly what I’m looking for—my list is solid. But what if I don’t find her? Or what if I do? Then what? How do I introduce them? And what if Jack doesn’t like her? Or she doesn’t like Jack?

“You should practice. Go talk to that woman.”

“The fedora girl?”

“Yeah.”

“No. That’s stupid. I’m not going to waste time talking to someone that’s not even his type.”

We’re interrupted by a strain of Lionel Richie singing “
Hello
 . . .” then four slow chords on an eighties synthesizer . . . “
is it me you’re looking for?
”

Kayleigh digs into her pocket for her cell phone and silences it.

“Harrison?” I raise my eyebrows.

“No,” she shoots back.

“Who was it?”

She mumbles something.

“What?”

“Bradley Cooper,” she enunciates.

“You’re kidding.” Benny starts yipping furiously. I tug the leash to rein him in. “The guy from the coffee shop? I thought you were done with nineteen-year-olds.”

“He’s twenty-one,” she sniffs. Then shrugs. “And he’s hot.”

“You. Are hopeless,” I say, though I’m happy to have a respite from thinking about my problems.

“Whatever. Oh, before I forget, I need you and Jack to come to open house and pretend to be prospective parents.”

“Um—no.”

“No, seriously. You have to. I’m supposed to bring five parents and I don’t even have one. Pamela’s already got eight.” She rolls her eyes, but I notice she’s only half involved in our conversation. Her thumbs are furiously typing a text. I try to ignore it.

“So claim some of hers.”

“I can’t. It doesn’t work like that. Will you please come?” She hits send and slides her cell back into her jeans. Then looks at me. “Pretty please? I don’t want to look like I totally don’t care.”

“You don’t.”

“I know. But I don’t want my principal to know that.”

I sigh. “I’ll think about it.”

“Great,” she says, smiling and sitting back into the bench, because we both know that I’ll go. That I can’t ever say no to Kayleigh.

I lean back again and look up at the sky. An airplane that looks like a small sparrow, it’s so far away, streaks across the blue, leaving a trail of white smoke in its wake. A sudden urgency grips me. I want to be on that plane. I think back to the question Kayleigh asked me in the coffee shop about my biggest wish. Why
didn’t
I travel more when I had the chance? Study abroad or backpack around Europe. Or go see that bicycle in Seattle. How hard is it to get to Seattle? And I know it’s because of Jack. He never had the time to take off and I didn’t want to go without him.