Bridge To Happiness (33 page)

“Listen to that,” Elli said. “If all the women in the city lose their ovaries, our Doctor
Harrie
, here, can have a second career as a barista.”

“Nope,”
Harrie
said. “Have you seen those lines in the morning? Too much work for me. I’d rather do a pelvic.”

Eugene choked and started coughing, and I laughed at the horrified look on MC’s face.

“Here.” Ellie shoved a glass of plain, pulpy orange juice into my hands. “You were more fun when you were fat.”

“Ellie! March was not fat.” MC flushed.

I gulped down half the juice. “She’s right. I wasn’t skinny.”

But the past couple of days had made me unsure about myself again, and I’d eaten a whole pint of
Häagen-Dazs
pistachio ice cream after I’d seen Mike in the kitchen. That ice cream was one of the reasons I was up and walking this morning.

It made perfect sense that we went to Sears for their divine pancakes and apple sausage because we always ate when we were together; but then I was eating without them, too . . . ice cream.

Later, feeling like
Jabba
the Hutt, I pushed away my plate while half the meal was still on it. “I’ll have to walk again, dammit. But maybe that’s better than going home,” I admitted.

I looked up at my friends and spilled my troubles. “I’ve been hallucinating. I see Mike all the time.”

“What do you mean you see him?” Ellie asked me.

“I’ll walk into a room or casually look up and he’s there, for just a second. The visions of him had stopped for a long time, but I saw him again yesterday, sitting in the kitchen.”

“Like a ghost? Topper? You’ve got to be kidding,” Ellie said. “Does he talk to you?”

“No. He’s not really there. I just think he is. It’s my head playing tricks on me.”

“The two of you lived together in that house for a long time. I’m not surprised you’d walk in a room and expect to see him.”
Harrie
reached out and grabbed my hand. “I think what you’re experiencing is common. Maybe time will make things better.”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Do you see him other places you went, like the Tahoe house? Did you see him over the holidays?”

“No,” I said, realizing for the first time that I never saw him anywhere but at home. “I only see him in the house. No where else.”

“I saw my mother the day she died,” MC said quietly. “She was standing in the living room. I don’t think I dreamed it all up. I heard her. She said ‘Goodbye, my sweet
MariClare
.’ You all know that’s what she called me. And then she was gone.”

We all looked at MC.

She was using her fork to stab the leftover pancakes. “I’ve never told anyone.”

“I understand why. You think you’re going nuts. At least I do. Mike’s dead. I know he’s dead.” I took a sip of my coffee. “And I must be doing weird things in my sleep again, because our photo keeps disappearing. It’ll be on the nightstand and then it’s in a drawer. I would never hide that photo.”

“Maybe it’s your cleaning lady.”

“I talked to them when it happened before. I don’t think it’s them. I have no idea what’s going on, but I’ve made a difficult decision. I’m going to sell the house.”

“Are you ready to make that kind of decision, March? It’s a major one,”
Harrie
asked.

“My sanity is at risk here.”

“But you love that house,” MC said. “It was always the only house you ever wanted.”

She was right. I
did
love the house. I couldn’t imagine anyone else living where I had spent so much of my life, my kids’ lives. I was caught between my visions and my memories—one I wanted to stop and one I didn’t want to end, or forget.

“That’s probably a good idea. Too much is tied to that place for you,” Ellie said practically.

“How do you think the kids will react?”
Harrie
asked.

“The kids? I haven’t told them. I just decided yesterday. Honestly? I hadn’t thought about them yet. God . . . ” I said on a groan and sank my face in my hands. “That’s the only home Molly and Mickey have ever known.”

“Based on the Molly we all know, I expect she will pitch a damn good fit . . . the little shit.” Ellie said.

“Ellie!” MC and
Harrie
said at once.

“Well it’s true,” Ellie muttered.

“I don’t think Mickey would like it if I sold his home out from under him the minute he’s gone off to college. Now I don’t know what to do.”

“When does he fly back to school?” MC asked.

“I’m taking him to airport this afternoon.”

“Talk to him, March,”
Harrie
advised.

“He’d tell me it was okay, even if it wasn’t. He’d just agree because he thought that was what I wanted. He’s been acting very protective.”

“Feel him out a little. Ask him how is it to be in school then come home. Does home feel the same?”
Harrie
offered. “Something like that and see what he says before you make the decision, or at least until you tell them.”

“I just don’t think I can live there anymore. It’s tearing me up.”

“You could redecorate,” MC said. “Get rid of everything that was yours together and make the place completely different.”

“You think Mike’s ghost will stop showing up if she changes the furniture?” Ellie asked facetiously, then she paused and apologized. “I’m cranky today.” She watched me for a moment then said, “You know MC’s probably right. Every time I get divorced, I redo the whole house. It always makes me feel better.” She held up a hand as the others started to speak. “I know divorce is different from losing your husband, but it works. New surroundings can’t be a mistake.”

“She’s got a point, March,”
Harrie
said. “Maybe you will stop seeing him if the rooms don’t look like they did when he was living in them.”

So my decision to sell the house lasted all of about fourteen hours. Instead, when I got home from breakfast, I called the decorator. I would start with our bedroom.

A room the size
of our master bedroom echoed badly when it was empty. My voice seemed to bounce from the stark walls and bare wooden floors it as if I were shouting. There wasn’t a single stick of furniture, the drapes were gone, the art, even the rug had been rolled up by the movers and added to the truck.

My decorator gathered her tapes and laptop, print outs and portfolio intending to follow the mover out, but she paused in the doorway. “You’re certain about this change, March? I remember how much you loved the room.”

“I’m absolutely certain,” I said and handed her a house key and my contact numbers—I was going back to Tahoe for a while.

We had started only two days ago, when I came home from breakfast with my friends and told her I wanted a whole new room, and that I wanted to do this immediately, then I took Mickey to the airport and by the time I got home, she had booked movers for today and begun her plans, ones that didn’t use the same colors we had before.

The master bath would be redone completely, walls, floor, all the fixtures changed, and all the light fixtures replaced with something different, everything was to be changed but the wood floors, the fireplace, which was original, and the windows and doors.

With nothing in the room, my decision seemed easier and felt right, as if I were standing in front of a huge blank canvas, brushes in hand. What I felt was sheer freedom. I could do anything I wanted. As I turned slowly around and looked at the vacant room, there was no way the place felt like our bedroom anymore.

Like a stage set broken down after the last show, what had been there before seemed fake and unreal now that it was only in my memory. I was so overwhelmed with relief that I sat down on the hard wood floor and cried my eyes out.

Maybe it wasn’t exactly relief I felt. Maybe this was how I said goodbye.

I arrived in Tahoe not knowing if I was running away from something or toward it. My original thought was that being on the mountain would bring me some kind of peace. From the mountains and snow and altitude, a pure closeness to the majesty of life usually settled over me. Riding down a ten thousand foot mountain at a top speed tested my control, my technique and balance. Boarding had always given me joy, and perhaps a sense of power. Now I pushed myself more and rode faster and harder.

Years back there was slogan—a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Well, my mind must have been wasted, because when I first decided to go up to Tahoe, I had painted a rosy mental image of the new me on the mountain—traversing one of the most important places in our lives, and in doing so, erasing the past. Cathartic. Healing. A how-to on making a fresh start.

At some point on the drive there, I even did the mental math on what portion of my life had been spent on the mountain and figured conservatively, over thirty seven plus years, two thousand five hundred days of my life, I had been riding snowboards at Heavenly Valley.

But now, on the first full day on the slopes, I didn’t find comfort on the mountain. Riding alone was not the same. There was no one to trade stories with at lunch. There was no one to share the thrills and spills. There was just no one.

Stubbornly, I kept trying to use the mountain to rediscover myself but after riding down every challenge trail or bowl or run on the whole mountain, both California and Nevada sides, after pulling tricks that would test the skill of someone half my age, all I discovered was I was hauntingly alone, and everything I did was uncomfortably different.

I felt trapped in another dimension—standing at a clear glass wall, hands pressed to the glass and watching the whole world go by. I was the fly caught between a screen and a window. All around me were lovers kissing on the chairs or at lunch, wives and mothers, teens and kids. I had been all those things once upon a time. My fairytale life was gone.

A depressing thought, and here I thought I had made some progress. I did know for certain I was bone tired of lapsing backwards, and tired of letting myself fall back into feeling lost and pitiable.

Perhaps I had set myself up, because I had been too anxious to find a new life, or maybe because I was alone after a lifetime of never being alone. But what I discovered was that I actually didn’t know what to do with myself.

One of the good things about age was I had experience to nibble at my thoughts and guide me. I knew that life worked out best when you took charge yourself rather than letting life take charge of you—no getting sucked into the whirlpool of poor me.

I was alone. Okay. Mike wasn’t coming back. So now what? I had to find my new path.

At the top of the mountain I knew so well, paths snaked down in every direction—so many possibilities to my future, so I closed my eyes and touched the trail map with a finger, trusting that the Grand Scheme of Things would lead me where I needed to go.

Methodically I rode every trail on the mountain, and when I was done, I had a plan: each day I would ask something new of myself—a test I had to do alone, completely alone.

My first self-test
was the easiest. I went to the movies the next night. Sitting alone in a dark theatre seemed doable, and it was. I ate a small bag of buttered popcorn and watched a charming film about a young teenaged girl who bravely chooses to give her baby up for adoption. As I observed the family and friends fictionalized acceptance of this girl’s situation and her choice, I found it fascinating how much times had changed over the past decades.

The movie took me back in time, when I was so obviously pregnant at my wedding, which pushed the morality boundaries, more so than nowadays when stars and celebrities proudly announced their pregnancies on the tabloid shows, and the ones with big souls sold photos of their children for charity before a wedding ever took place.