Court of the Myrtles (16 page)

But Alice hadn't arrived yet. Maybe it was just as well, I thought to myself, parking my car in front of my mom's grave. It would give me a few minutes to ponder the whole whirlwind of the Spanish trip before hearing her know-it-all advice, even when her know-it-all advice was always right. Alice and her silly expressions, her stupid laughter, her annoying questions—God, those annoying questions….

But as I close the car door I hear distant voices from just beyond the cherry tree at Joy's stone. Ducking down to sneak a peek from behind the old maple tree trunk, I view a group of men gathered around Joy's headstone. Five of them.

Oh great, she brought friends, I think to myself. The more the merrier. Probably
all
here to say, “I told you so, Marla.”

But there's still no sign of Alice. These men are busy chatting, even chuckling, and drinking cans of beer. Not very respectful of them to be boozing it up at Joy's grave, is it? I'm sure Alice is going to give them a piece of her mind the moment she arrives, unless, of course, they're friends of Joy's.

But before I can figure it out, one of them glances up and spots me.

“Great day, eh?” he says, toasting his beer bottle in my direction.

“Yes, a winner,” I say, coming out from behind the maple tree trunk. “Starting a little early, aren't you?”

“Nah. Not today. Today's special,” he says.

“We always take this day off and have a beer for Scott,” says another. “Can't go to
his
grave. Philly's too far.”

“It's the anniversary of his death,” says a third, raising his can. “Did you know him?”

“Joy's husband?” I say. “Oh, is that today?”

“Yup,” says another guy. “He was one of us. On our squad before he was transferred down to Philadelphia.”

“We were in the academy together,” chirps another.

“Oh, that's nice,” I say. So they're cops.

“Great guy,” says the third guy. “You knew his wife, Joy, then? She was a good friend, too.”

“No, I wish I had known Joy. It's the saddest story on earth how they both passed.” I head over to join them. “But I know Joy's mother, Alice.”

“Alice?” says the first guy.

The men look confused. “
Know
her?” says the second guy.

“Talk to her every week,” I say matter-of-factly, and then glancing toward the gravel road where she'll be walking any moment. “Actually, she's about due here now if
you've got a few minutes.” The guys look up the road and then look at each other. I continue: “Here every Friday 11 a.m. just like clockwork. Just like me.”

Again the guys share a look.

“We talking about the same Alice?” says one, lowering his glance, placing his beer bottle on Joy's headstone, placing his hands in his pocket, and then awkwardly shuffling his feet.

“Scotty's mother-in-law?” says another.

“Yes,” I say.

“Joy's mother? That Alice?”

“Is there any other?” I add sarcastically.

The third guy lowers his head too and now the head-lowering thing is getting a little freaky. Did I say something wrong?

The first guy's eyes meet mine. “Uh… Alice, um…”

“Yes?” I say.

“She died a couple years back.”

“Died?” I say. “What are you talking about?”

“Killed herself.”

“Is this some kind of a sick joke?” I ask. “Alice? Joy's Alice? But I meet her every Friday…”

“She died from using her husband's shot gun—right in her garden—she was found still clutching her daughter's photo. Just couldn't handle losing Joy.”

“But—”

“I know it's true. I was the cop who found her.”

My limbs grow weak. I am instantly robbed of the ability to function, talk or walk, my mind struggling to put the pieces together. But I can't do it. I'm moving in slow motion. The pieces won't come together. They don't fit. My world just stops. All over again. Just like with my mom. “But she can't…” I say, grabbing onto a nearby stone for support.

“You okay, miss?” says two of the guys immediately assisting, either side of me.

“Yeah, I'm okay,” I say, pushing them aside and standing as tall as I can muster. My mind is smarter than I think. It's way ahead of me, in fact. Alice and I were never here with anybody else in this cemetery. We were always alone. Even on the boat it occurred to me that tourists talked to me, but not to her. And all that fuss she made about boats making her sick? She didn't even turn green.

“Maybe you've been seeing her ghost?” says one of the guys chuckling. “Wouldn't be surprised.”

“You too, eh?” suggests the other guy, toasting me and toasting the idea of it. “Wouldn't be the first time,” says the third one.

“No, wouldn't be the first time,” I manage to say, concealing what's really going on in my head. This is death, again, and she's never coming back. Like prison without parole, the gavel of death has slammed for good. This is really it. My dear, annoying, infuriating, wise friend is gone. Or is she?

With every bit of strength I act as normal as possible. An odd calm descends upon me. Wouldn't want these officers to think I'm crazy. I keep my inner secret and unleash the widest grin on earth. “Well,” I say, “thanks for our Alice moment. Gotta get back to my watering. Have classes to get to.”

Legs on automatic, I head beyond Joy's grave in the wrong direction instead of turning to go back to my mom's.

“You sure you're okay?” calls the cop.

I wave a hand. I'm fine.

A nearby wind chime moves on a small lilac tree just ten feet beyond Joy's grave, clacking against its branches. Drawn to it, I decide oh, what the heck, do what Alice said, go in a new direction, look left and right, look up, and look…

… down.

An epitaph faces me. It was always there just a couple feet away but I was too busy living in the past to notice.

Alice Beal

Beloved Wife, Mother & Grandmother.

You'll be missed

1933–1987

I gasp.

I can remember the first time Alice and I bonded over her question to me. I can hear her voice now loud and clear, “Why do you suppose people write ‘Beloved Wife, Mother and Grandmother' on a gravestone? I mean, what if that woman wanted to be remembered for her opera singing or her sewing class?” Or was it ballet class? I can't remember now how Alice had phrased it. “Maybe she wanted to be an individual, not
somebody's
beloved
mother?” Of course not. Alice didn't want to be remembered as a beloved mother. Not if she thought she was such a
bad
mother.

Oh, my Alice, my heart calls out, as my eyes look up the road just in case, desperately wanting her to show up, wanting to prove this is all some bad dream and at any moment my dear, strange friend will be here so we can plant, chat, laugh and spray that rubbery old hose. Even if she is only a ghost.

I look up again. Still no sign of her on the road.

My heart goes desperate. Did I get to say all the things I never got to say? Did I ever thank her for being my friend? I can't remember now. But I know she said something about how we all start out the same when somebody we love dies. Shock and denial. Then it's anyone's guess which way it will go…

Reality washes over me. She won't be coming back. Her work is done here.

“See the world all around you,” she said, and here she was all around me. “I ran out of time and dreams…” Hadn't she said that at the whale watch? Oh God, what did she say? That was it, wasn't it? And now I'm furious with myself for not paying attention to that last bit of advice.

Then I look up to see the guys all standing there staring at me. “…I said, you okay? Hey lady? You look like you've seen a ghost.”

“I guess I have,” I say, wiping the tears of joy from my eyes and turning myself around to head toward my mom's stone. “Have a good day.”

The comfort of their conversation continues to carry in the wind so that I can hear them chatting as I kneel down to pull weeds.

“Good ole Alice, eh?” says his voice. “She loved that garden. Best tomatoes in August.”

That was the last time I ever saw those five guys.

That was the last time I ever saw Alice.

But this was the first time that everything in life made sense.

I married Brian, the photographer from National Geographic. One year to the day
after
Thanksgiving, but not before devouring a succulent turkey dinner with all the fixings prepared by his grandma Babs, up on the coast of Maine. His family welcomed me with open arms—running down the sea-cliff walk as our car pulled up front.

Remember Julia? She and I met our husbands-to-be in the same year. Her husband, Richie, is a stockbroker. We decided to have a double wedding in Japan, filing our licenses at Boston Town Hall, before hopping on 95 North for Maine, for that big feast. We all waved goodbye to Brian's family at Logan Airport and I watched them from the tiny plane window sending us air kisses. Brian was covering a story on the Gardens of Kyoto, so it was perfect to have our double ceremonies in the forest near the Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion.

During our vows, my husband, Brian, talked of not being afraid that my life will end—but to be afraid it might never begin. And from that day forward, it did.

It took a couple years longer than I intended to finish my degree. I was too busy helping my husband on all his adventures—not to mention becoming pregnant with our first child, Matilda, in Switzerland. Not that that stopped us for long. We headed to Machu Picchu in Peru, where I snapped photos of our baby's little face sticking out of a knapsack on her father's back. Five more years went by before the arrival of two sons, and that's when we decided to finally ground ourselves in Camden, Maine.

We used the money from the magical key, the one that opened the safety deposit box to about twenty thousand dollars in stocks and bonds—Esso, Disney, AT & T and Exxon—stocks that my father had given my mom and my mom had saved for me for a
rainy day. It was just enough for a down payment on an old Victorian house—a real fixer-upper.

Little “Mattie”—that's what we called her—would begin first grade in the same school Brian had attended decades ago, while I would stay home to care for the boys full time. It was a complete life.

I had been a world traveler and now I would raise my children. All because I took that risk and did something in the
now
just as Alice made me promise. How I only wished she were here to know how it all turned out.

Spring turned into fall at least twenty-five times over. Our life was full—full of grandchildren. Five of them! Matilda named her youngest daughter Rosie, after my mom, which you can imagine, made her my favorite—the love of my life. I just didn't want to let-on to the others.

It never went away entirely—the pain of Mom's death. It always hit me with every milestone along the road of my life: the graduations, the weddings, the birth of my first child, the birth of my first grandchild, my twenty-fifth anniversary with Brian and then even our fortieth-fifth anniversary. Her death was always there to remind me that dead is dead. It is the one event in life that can never be undone. But I was also reminded—thanks to Alice—that we must go on and live life to the fullest, if only in memory of loved ones lost.

I'll never know if the whale that appeared on that sailing expedition was really my mother giving a sign to her daughter, but I know this: my mom's death and that whale's
life made me what I am today—a strong, determined survivor. Ironically, it taught me to explore so much more than I would have, had she lived.

Sometimes I loved that my mom and I were poor, and then sometimes I hated it, and hated her. Sometimes I felt like I was the daughter of that fun-loving, silly, dancing mother named Rosie. Other times I felt like the daughter of the angry, lonely woman who got pregnant by the town politician and never had a husband. I felt things that only a woman who lived beyond my own mom's years could understand.

And I lived long enough to give my daughter far more insight than my mom lived to give me. I answered all her questions about my past, my hopes and dreams, so that someday when I was gone, my daughter would know the answers.

I passed the age I was when my mom passed, and even passed the age that my mom
should have been
when she died. My fiftieth birthday left me pondering what life would have been like for her, had my mom survived that murder. And I found myself reflecting on my own mortality, why I needed to be here to live out my life and my destiny, just as Alice had taught me.

Which brings me back to today, and where our tale began. I'm an old woman now, and I can hear voices outside my bedroom door telling me “it's nearly time.”

My time.

I awaken to the clock on my nightstand—half past nine—and to the voice of my youngest granddaughter, Rosie, her big button eyes staring up at me. Her little chin can barely reach the mattress as she struggles to see me.

“Can Grandma hear us?” says little Rosie.

“Boo!” I say, using what little energy I have left. She jumps back and then giggles through her gap-toothed smile.

“Grandma! You're a silly goose. You
scared
me!”

With barely any strength in my frail frame, I reach out my arm to take her tiny hand in mine. The last time I'll use this hand for the sense of touch. My wonderful husband, Brian, is on the other side of my bed, stroking my hand and kissing my head, loving me.

My beautiful daughter Matilda stands at the foot of the bed smiling at me. Her face tells me she is glad she could be here in these final moments. My face telling her I'm happy that she gets to say goodbye to her mother.