34 Seconds (34 page)

“Yeah, maybe she didn’t know how it would all end, but she did sign up for something the rest of us aren’t privy to; knowing our spouse will die, and it will be sooner than anyone would be ready for. I guess there is some nobility there.” Dad plucked a cigarette from his shirt pocket and twirled it between his fingers.

“Will you go with me, really?”

“Of course, Buttercup. I don’t have a suit though. And you know I hate funerals. So if you are okay with me just wearing a button down, I’m good with driving you up there and standing with you. I’ll even iron the shirt,” He got up, squeezed my shoulder and lit his cigarette as he walked away. Even without my children around me, he wouldn’t smoke in front of me anymore.

“Shit!” I exclaimed.

“What?” Dad turned around at the bottom of the steps to see what had gotten me. I was sure he was thinking some very tiny spider had crossed my path or something similar.

“I need a dress. I’m going to run down to Newport News real quick. I’ll be back for dinner,” I said. But then I laughed. Real quick and going to Newport News from Deltaville didn’t connect somehow. Newport News was an hour away. But at least I was alone and knew where the mall was. A simple black dress should be fairly easy to find. Maybe I’d have a chance to stop at Dunkin’ Donuts on my way back. They were Dad’s favorites, and I was Dunkin’ deprived in Colorado.

I watched Dad walk around his property just so he could enjoy a smoke alone. Then I called Chris and my girls.

“Mommy. Volcanoes killed the dinosaurs. Daddy got me a new dinosaur book, and there’s a picture of them right inside. It was a volcano. I remember the man at the museum told us it was a spaceship!”

I laughed. My girls were growing so quickly, changing so fast, and I was on the other side of the country missing it.

We spoke for a few more minutes, and I told everyone while they were all on speaker phone I would leave the day after the funeral. I’d take the rental car across the country and drop it off in Boulder. I flew out and figured I’d fly back home, but I hadn’t counted on having things to bring home with me. I promised my girls I’d be home within four days. Chris wanted me to promise to stay at least one night on the road.

“I love you all, and I’ll see you all real soon, okay?”

More tears streamed down my face. I hadn’t expected to be there so long, and I hadn’t expected to not talk to my babies several times a day. The past few days I’d only spoken to them once. I needed to get back to my life, but something nagged in my mind. I had my own journey to make across country. Right after I watched some strangers put Will six feet under.

Chapter Twenty-One

Dad and I showed up at the funeral home about fifteen minutes before services were to start. The funeral home had a separate room for family, and I had been on that side of the room more over the years than in the public room. The family room had angled wooden slats so people inside the room could look out into the main room where guests spoke at a high podium, the casket lay in waiting, and the crowd dabbed their eyes with tissues. But the way the wooden slats tilted, the public audience couldn’t see the family. It was built for privacy. Wives often cried so hard their makeup would run down their cheeks, and they’d be rushed out a back door to freshen up before greeting the crowd. Rebecca decided not to use the family room. I was happy to know of her decision beforehand, as I had been afraid she’d ask me to sit in there with her. But then I wondered who else would be there in the private room. Will’s family were his friends. Local people he’d grown fond of over the years. Once his grandfather passed away, he had no other family. No cousins, no one to leave a legacy, no one to sit behind the privacy wall. Except his wife.

Rebecca was in the receiving room when we walked in. She hugged us, asked us to sign the guest book, and told us where she would be sitting. I walked into the room and thought my knees would give out. I sank about an inch before Dad grabbed my arm and led me to a seat about three rows behind the first row where Rebecca had indicated she’d be sitting. Neither of us were sure if she’d told us because she wanted us near her or if she told us so we didn’t take her seats. I hoped her mother or someone from her family would be here for her and decided if no one sat in the front row, then Dad and I would move up there to be with her. Despite what her family thought of her decision to marry a man she knew was dying, she did something for him not many people could do. And it was damn hard. She deserved company and support at this time.

Once we were seated, I started looking around. His casket was sitting in the front of the room. I imagined our flowers were up there amongst the several standing near the casket. Chris had ordered flowers with my name and his name on the card. I would have forgotten otherwise. On either side of the casket almost hiding behind two large arrangements were easels with large photographs of Will. The one on the left was Will on his grandfather’s boat. It was from a more recent time. He looked older, but full of life. Smiling with a ringlet of hair touching his nose as he looked up for the photographer. I wondered if Rebecca had taken the picture before his skin had gotten hollow and thin. The picture on the right hit me like a ton of bricks. The last time I had spoken to Will over the phone, he was going through a box of memories. Pictures, notebooks filled with songs never finished, journals, movie stubs, and maps. He must have found the picture himself and requested it be used for this purpose. It was a picture I had taken in Northampton, Massachusetts. Will was on the beach with his red Takamine guitar, strumming, singing, likely thinking of the singer we’d heard in the Northampton bar and how she was making it happen in her life.

***

“A-Mazing! She was amazing! Did you hear that song? What was it, ‘climbing mountains in life?’ Weren’t we saying something about those mountain walls along the interstate on the drive up here? What did she say about the paths we take down the mountain? Damn, I couldn’t be so poetic while describing the view from the interstate. Oh my God. She was amazing.” Will was spinning in the street. If it had been raining, I could say he was dancing in the rain, but as it was it just looked like he was spinning around in the middle of a road.

“I heard her too, Will. She was very good. I think that song was called What’s Coming…or was it What’s Next? And yes, it was beautiful.” I was laughing at him, but also wondering if he was on a natural high or if someone had slipped something in his drink.

Will stopped spinning so suddenly, I thought he’d topple over. “Nikki Jay. My beautiful Nikki. I am inspired!” As he shouted, he ran across the road, skipped up the curb, and lifted me up from the waist all in one gentle movement. “I am inspired. Tonight I will make love to you as an inspired man. I will pull you up and over those walls of stone into oblivion. And tomorrow, we write. We can do this, Nikki. We can get up there on a stage and harmonize together.” He spun me around then stopped my momentum by grabbing my waist again. “We have such great harmony, baby. We can do that, you know.”

Will seemed to find a new breath of life in this new found excitement. We’d seen several great bands on stage before, but the level of energy coming from Will was a first for me to witness.

The lovemaking shattered records that night; Will performed more than twice. We both fell asleep with smiles on our faces and new life in our chests. After a Tavern breakfast the next morning, Will asked me to wait downstairs while he went upstairs to grab his guitar. With the heavy hard case in his hand, he also skipped down the stairs and into the hotel lobby. “Let’s go, baby!” he said and pulled my elbow with his free hand.

I had no idea where we were going or how Will knew how to get anywhere other than the hotel and the bar we’d discovered. But once we and the guitar were safely buckled in the car, he started driving in a different direction from the one that led us into town. After about ten minutes of driving, I could see water, a train track bridge, and a small beach. He pulled over into a makeshift dirt lot and jumped out.

“Grab the blanket, if you want to sit on something, Nik.” He grabbed his guitar, searched the console and between seats for two pens, and grabbed the notebook he carried everywhere. They all looked the same, a black and white composition book, but he filled them so quickly he almost never had the same one twice. I had seen several office boxes in his house filled with them. He’d been writing and journaling for many more years than I had known him.

Will beat me to the beach as I went back to get a couple of bottles of water and my camera. Once on the beach, I could see him setting up in the sand, a new determination written all over his face.

“I brought the blanket, why don’t you and the guitar sit on it, so you don’t get sand in the sound hole, goofball,” I said to Will laughing. He was like a kid on Christmas, and I was left not knowing Santa had arrived yet. I spread out the blanket and sat down, rolling the bottles of water out of the way. Will sat near me, strumming and humming along.

“We are writing today, but bear with me, baby Nikki Jay. I’m not going to sit here and write in one spot. I feel I need to move around, baby. These walls are talking up here. That bridge up there. Look at it. It speaks to me. You relax, I was just thinking of this hook and rhythm.”

He just stopped talking, hummed along to his constant strumming. G, C, D, typical folk song chords. I just watched him from one fingering to another. Then he stood up, pulled a capo out of his pocket, clipped it on the neck of the guitar, and started strumming again as he walked away. He walked slowly stopping every few moments to look at his fingers, nod his head, and then move on along the small beach. As he turned a small corner, and paused for a look at his fingering, he was almost facing me, but I could tell he didn’t have clue I was watching him. He was in a world alone with his guitar. I picked up the camera and took a picture. We didn’t know for weeks until I took the time to get the pictures from our trip developed what an amazing picture that one was. I wasn’t sure how I did it, but I managed to capture his excitement, nervousness, and personal will to get through the writing journey he’d just started a few steps down the beach. It was a perfect picture. After I snapped it, he leaned the guitar against a rock and ran over to the blanket, picked up his notebook and pen, then ran back. While he was running toward me, I took a picture of his lonely guitar on the beach. Behind his guitar I could see those stone walls showing themselves way beyond along the interstate miles away. I also took a quick photo of Will as he looked up at me with his notebook in hand but his pen still six inches away. He was alive and filled with energy only he could turn into something magical. I let him do it. I sat back, grabbed a bottle of water and kept my camera close by while he traveled the beach writing.

***

I came back to current day when I heard the booming words, “Life and death are one as the seas and rivers are one.” Someone I didn’t recognize was at the podium starting the service. I had been staring at the picture of Will I had taken so long ago, losing myself in his ecstatic smile and the spiral curl that had fallen into his face. I gave the photo a smile as if it knew my feeling by my expression and then looked for Rebecca in the front row. She had two people sitting next to her. I hoped they offered enough support for her. I was feeling as if I should have been there next to her for some reason, but I didn’t want to assume she needed me. It wasn’t she who requested I even be there at all over the past few days. That was Will’s request. I figured now Will was gone, she should be around those she loved, not just those who loved Will.

Brian got up and said a few words about music, how they used to write, play in boats along the shore for anyone who would listen, and how Will had fallen in love with a little town, a girl from the little town, the people in it and decided the little town was where he wanted to spend the rest of his days. He thanked those people there who had supported Will and Rebecca over the past year and those who had supported Will for the many years before. It made me wonder how many people knew Will was sick and for how long local folks knew before I knew.

There was a small graveside service at Philippi Church in Deltaville. The funeral home moved all the flowers to the church and were setting the last one in place as Dad and I walked up. There were six chairs under the green canopy. Dad and I chose to stand out in the sunshine with most of the rest of the crowd. From where I was standing, I could see my name on a beautiful flower arrangement. It wasn’t one of the huge graveside arrangements. It was a pot filled with lilies on a tall stand. Chris had thought ahead and gotten an arrangement Rebecca could take home. I smiled at his ability to multi task and think about the big picture. From 1800 miles away, trying to work from home and take care of two very demanding little girls, he was still able to think about what Rebecca might like instead of simply filling a grave side with so many flowers people from the road could tell the plot was new.

Rebecca came to me after the very quick ashes to ashes dust to dust speech. “Nikki.” She looked down, wiped an eye with a balled up tissue she’d had in her hand. My hands we also holding two wet and very used tissues. I just hugged her. She didn’t need to say anything beyond my name.

“Nikki. I can’t begin to thank you enough. I didn’t know what to expect, doll. I didn’t know it was going to be like that. All I knew was he wanted you here, and he did everything he could think of to make sure that happened. He told me once after talking to your husband on the phone he’d tried for years to live his life unselfishly, but he was trying his damnedest to be selfish and get his Nikki Jay with him while he died.”

She put her chin on her balled up fists, sniffled, paused to gain composure, and then shook her arms out on front of her. “He had a lot of requests, actually. I know you have the letter. And that guitar is yours. But there are other things at the house he wanted you to have. He,” she paused, took a deep cleansing breath and then continued, “he left me a list and left the same list with his lawyer. I have it all boxed up in the boathouse. I wanted to give it to you the day I gave you the letter, but he wanted you to have some while he was here and the rest after he was gone.”