Before I Go (23 page)

But he promised we’d go on vacation to celebrate his graduation. We’d been talking about it forever, tossing out ideas of where we could go. Realistic destinations: Seaside, Savannah, Miami, mixed in with unrealistic ones: Capri, Mykonos, Bora Bora. Where we ended up didn’t really matter to either one of us. We were just in awe of the idea that we’d get to spend seven full days together. Jack’s school finally behind us. Our entire lives ahead of us.

Now I realize that since my diagnosis, neither one of us has mentioned the trip. No tickets have been booked. No new bathing suits have been bought. And I realize that maybe that’s because I won’t be around to take it.

I shake off the thought and turn to Kayleigh: “You should be a flight attendant,” I say. “Or a pilot.”

“Ah, no,” she says, digging the toe of her boot into the dirt at our feet. “Flying terrifies me.”

“Really?” I say. It’s hard to picture Kayleigh being terrified of anything. “Well, have you thought about—”

“Daisy,” she cuts me off and shoots me a warning with her eyes.

“Sorry,” I mumble. It’s not the first time I’ve made career suggestions to her and I know it irritates her. And I know she has to figure it all out on her own timetable—that something, someday will inspire her, or point her in the right direction—but I can’t help but try to encourage her to pick up the pace sometimes.

“Oh, did I tell you Karmen got a promotion?” she asks, and I know she doesn’t mean it in a I’m-so-happy-for-my-sister way, so I don’t say anything in response.

We stare in the direction of the fedora girl, who’s now engaged in light banter with a skinny guy in Ray-Bans and a vintage concert T-shirt.

“You snooze, you lose. Dude beat you to it,” Kayleigh says.

“She wasn’t Jack’s type!” I say, annoyed. “Look at that guy. Now he’s totally her type.”

“Yeah, they probably met at Goodwill buying vests.”

“Or at the tailor making their skinny jeans even skinnier.”

“Or on, like, Fuck-the-Mainstream-Match-Dot-Com.”

I laugh. And then I stop laughing. Because that’s it. And I don’t know why I haven’t thought of it until now. The one place where there are more single women looking for partners than anywhere else on earth—the Internet.

KAYLEIGH’S APARTMENT STILL smells like fresh paint even though she moved in two months ago. Once inside, I immediately walk over to her windows and begin opening them.

“What are you doing?”

“You don’t smell that?”

“What? Did I forget to take out the garbage?”

“No, the paint,” I tell her, explaining that it’s full of VOCs, a
major cause of cancer. “I know the management didn’t spring for the ecofriendly kind. It’s like fifteen dollars extra a can.”

Kayleigh just stares at me, the same expression I get from Jack when I turn my nose up at conventional fruit or nonfiltered water. I know they think I’m crazy, but now that I know all of this stuff, I can’t not know it.

“I’ll go get my laptop,” she says.

For the next forty-five minutes, Kayleigh briefs me on the merits and pitfalls of the seven different dating Web sites she has personally used.

“Seven? How are you possibly still single?”

“I’m picky,” she retorts.

I scoff, but she shoots me a look, so I refrain from bringing up the slew of college boys she is decidedly not being picky about.

We narrow it down to Checkmates.com, where potential daters must pass a background check before being allowed to join the site, and Loveforlife.com, which guarantees you’ll find someone in six months or your money back. I ask Kayleigh if she actually asked for a reimbursement, since it obviously didn’t work for her. She explains she had to cancel her subscription after a month because a guy she met started stalking her.

“Crazy Mike?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “Weird Cal.”

“You met Weird Cal online?” It catches me off guard because I’ve known Kayleigh so long it feels like there’s nothing I don’t know about her, and it’s unlike her to be secretive. “I had no idea.”

“I wasn’t hiding it. I just don’t think I dated him long enough to share all the sordid details.”

In the end we go with Checkmates, because I think Jack’s future wife is going to be cautious about meeting strangers online. I know I would be.

“OK, we’re in,” Kayleigh says, handing me back my credit card.

“Great. First question?”

Kayleigh stares at the screen. I wait. Her computer must be running slow.

Thirty seconds pass.

“Kayleigh?”

“Um . . .” She turns the computer to me.

What’s your relationship status?

Single

Divorced

Separated

Widow/er

The word “widower” jumps off the screen and slugs me in the gut.

Widowers are supposed to be hunched, with unruly eyebrows and nose hairs. They wear Mr. Rogers cardigans and shoes with thick rubber soles and smell like boiled chicken. Widowers do not have thick brown hair and firm abs beneath a cotton T-shirt and smell like summer grass just after it’s rained.

I look up at Kayleigh and notice the water rimming her lashes. “I’m sorry,” she says, putting her hand up to her mouth. “It just . . . it hit me.”

“That’s OK,” I say, careful not to touch her, knowing that any contact will shatter us both. “It hits me all the time.”

I grab the edge of the computer screen and slide it closer to me. Then I run my index finger over the mouse pad, click “Widower,” and move on.

AROUND SIX , I pull the car into our driveway. But instead of tapping the gas to accelerate to the end of the slab of concrete, my right foot
slams the brake pedal, jerking my upper body forward. I barely notice. I gape at the front of my house, my mouth poised to catch flies. My flower bed. It actually has flowers in it. Hydrangeas and . . . I squint. Is that a stone edging? It is. A beautiful, natural river-stone edging. I put my car in park and leave it where I stopped—not bothering to ease it the last ten yards where I usually park by the back door—and get out. I walk toward the freshly mulched, beautifully manicured garden that now borders my front porch. Small blooms of purple verbena sprout from between the larger hydrangea bushes. I’m dumbfounded. Struck speechless, which hardly matters since there’s no one around to talk to. It’s as if garden gnomes sprang to life while I was gone and created this masterpiece. It’s exactly how I pictured it, exactly how I had explained it to . . . Sammy. I tip my head back and laugh. Sammy. Of course she would take it upon herself to dig up my unsightly weeds, even after I told her not to.

And even though I didn’t think I wanted the charity, I can’t help but be touched by her thoughtfulness, the obvious hard work she put into this flower bed that I probably never would have gotten around to doing, if I was being honest with myself. I lean over, inspecting it closer, staring at foliage that I don’t recognize. Hosta? The name comes to me from nowhere. I hadn’t planned on hosta, but it does make for perfect ground cover between the two flower shrubs. I smile, wondering if the man at the Home Depot had recommended it to her. And then I wonder, though the chances are small, if it was the same man who helped me pick out the caulk. He had nice eyes.

I stand rooted in my front yard, soaking in the last warm rays of the day—and the unexpected feeling that there are people in this world who still have the ability to surprise me.

fourteen

I
’M NOT SURE how people who date online have time for anything else. For the past five days it’s like I’ve been sucked into a black hole—one that’s wallpapered with hopeful women’s head shots and swimming with statistics: height, weight, eye color, religion.

From the moment I get up in the morning until the time I crawl into bed at night, I’ve been wading through pages and pages of profiles. I feel like a headhunter searching for the perfect job candidates, which I guess in a way I am. I’m fascinated by what people will share about themselves, and I wonder how much of it is true. Are the majority of women really “spontaneous and fun,” or do they think that’s what men are attracted to? Wouldn’t most women prefer at least a few days’ notice before being whisked away on a romantic beach trip so they could stop eating carbs, shave their bikini areas, and pick up new underwear?

By day three, I started rereading profiles that I’ve read before.

By day five, I’ve received forty-two “nudges” and twenty-three messages (four don’t count as they’re from women who don’t have a firm grasp on the English language and/or appear to still reside in eastern Europe).

I’m not surprised Jack’s gotten so much attention. According to
Kayleigh, Athens is a “buyer’s market” for guys. For every decent man with straight teeth and a car, there are hundreds of hot, intelligent coeds. “You can’t throw a rock without hitting one,” she said. “And believe me, I’ve been tempted.”

I also used my favorite picture of Jack—he’s staring straight at the camera, a broad crooked grin punctuated by the deep smile lines carved around his mouth, his eyes, one slightly bigger than the other, bright and magnetic. The collar of his shirt and sport coat are visible just below his neck, but his tie is unknotted, emphasizing his casual, devil-may-care attitude that I fell in love with; the same attitude that at times wiggles under my skin and sits there like an itch I can’t scratch. This photo is Jack in all his imperfect glory—on our wedding day.

It was a Friday in July at the Athens-Clarke Courthouse. And my heart erupted with joy when the judge looked at me and said “wife.” It was the kind of manic happiness that confuses your nervous system, and I giggled and cried in turns, not caring how foolish I appeared. I was foolish. And I was in love.

“Please tell me you see the irony in using a picture of your husband on your wedding day to try and help him score chicks,” Kayleigh said when I grabbed it off my Facebook page.

“Not chicks, plural,” I said, uploading it to the Web site. “Just one.”

Now, staring at my husband on the computer screen staring at me, my heart pings. I do want him to find a wife and I even hope he’ll be able to find that joy again, on another wedding day in the future. But I also secretly hope that while that day will be lovely and warm and good, that it’s not quite as bright as the sun that once shone down on a girl and boy kissing on the hot brick steps of a courthouse on a Friday afternoon in July.

Maybe it will rain.

I click off Jack’s profile and read through a few of the new emails I’ve gotten.

A new message from CatLady63

Subject: Hi!

I have three cats. You’re a vet. Match made in heaven? Ha-ha. Just kidding. What do you like to do for fun? I’d love to learn more about you.

Madeline

A copper curly-headed woman peers at me with squinty eyes. Her mouth is small. Ratlike. Meh. She’s not overly unattractive, but I don’t trust cat people. Maybe it’s the inside knowledge of growing up with one, but I think they’re often like the animals they love—unpredictable and emotionally unstable. You never know when they’ll be aloof and distant or senselessly desperate for your affection.

A new message from GoodLuckCharm

Subject: Hi there

New to online dating. Be nice! I see that you like Micheal Critton. I thought the Stand was a really great book.

Oh, no. No, no, no. Where do I begin? Spelling. Ignorance about classic modern literature. I hit delete. The next four emails are no better. Maybe Kayleigh’s right and I’m too judgey. Maybe I look for things to find fault with. But I’m choosing a wife for my husband, and if that’s not cause for being picky, then what is?

I need a break. I open Facebook and get lost in other people’s whitewashed versions of their lives. With social media, I’m a voyeur, not a poster. It weirds me out to think that people would be interested in what I had for dinner or how long I waited in line at Kroger or “Oh, hey, I have cancer now.” As personal as it is, it seems so impersonal.