The Last Odd Day (6 page)

I met her in the parking lot while the hearse was pulling away. Sunhaven was more than an hour and a half from where she lived, but she arrived before I had finished filling out the forms and packing up O.T.'s things.

She got out of her car, crossed herself like I had seen the Catholics do, and walked in my direction, slowly and easily, like she was worried that she was moving too fast. But in only the second it took to see her approach, her gait, her frame, so clearly her father's child, I remember thinking, rationally and calmly, Everything now is different.

Just as she came near me, the wind whipping her scarf from around her neck, a ribbon of pink flying past, my stomach knotted, my head spun, and I began to feel
dizzy. I reached out to steady myself, searching for the railing that I thought was behind me or the bench I remembered being near the door; and she caught me just as I started to fall.

“Jean,” she said and lowered me to the steps while I responded with a low and gentle hum.

A nurse hurried out and the two of them walked me to the family room. I drank sips of cola and kept a cool cloth across my brow. I ate a few crackers and said I wanted to go home. She stood near the door and watched.

The nursing home director put me in the passenger's side of her gold and white sedan and drove me to my house. I kept my eyes closed the entire way. It would be two days before I saw her again, before we finally spoke.

Lilly Maria Lucetti was born June 2, 1960, in Durham General Hospital, out in the hallway because she would not wait to come. She was a late spring baby. She is dark complexioned, olive-skinned, like a woman from Italy or France or somewhere on the Mediterranean.

She lived with her mother and her grandparents until she was ten. Then her mother, who never married, and Lilly moved out to a little house farther in the woods and just down the road from her parents. There was a lot of love and laughter, the days more sweet than sorry; and she considers her early years to have been serene.

She has large, oval eyes, like a delighted child; and she's as skinny as a teenager. She's held lots of jobs, predominantly public service positions; but she seems to feel most comfortable in a day care center where the children are allowed to play outside as long as they want and listen to music while they take their naps.

She finished high school in Chatham County, an average student, and completed two years at the university. Her educational possibilities were promising until she left when she was twenty to travel with a boy she thought would love her forever.

She met him in a park, both having planned to feed the birds and enjoy a late morning. They shared an egg sandwich she had brought and a six-pack of beer he had in his car.

He was bored with school, interested in what lay beyond, she said, with a roll of her eyes. So they left North Carolina and went west and west and west until they landed at the Pacific Ocean, saw the seals at Cliffside, and moved in with a friend who let them stay for free until they were able to find a place of their own.

Roger, the young man who swept her away from her studies, her home, and her common sense, left her in San Francisco, where the fog settles in like a family member and the streets are busy all the time. She was working in a shoe store then, persuading women that she could find
them just the right shoe that could make their legs appear longer and their feet smaller. She liked the job only because she said that the tips of her fingers always smelled like leather and reminded her of the hides and skins her grandfather soaked and tanned in the barn behind their house.

She stayed there, satisfied, she said, by herself, living in an apartment that was smaller than a closet, until she woke up one morning and couldn't remember the colors of fall or how a crocus bloomed in the snow, timid and yellow.

She missed the seasons, she said, the changes in the trees, the clarity at the edges of the sky, and the shapes of snowflakes. So she packed what she could and mailed it all to her mother's home, gave away the rest, sold her Yamaha scooter, and took a bus eastward to North Carolina.

Her mother met her at the Trailways station, eyes filled with tears. And Lilly's been in Durham working in retail or day care ever since she left California. Until now.

Her mother, she said, was glad to see her. Cleaned her room, redecorated it from something that belonged to a hippie adolescent to something that would be lived in by a young professional. She bought candles and picture frames and situated them nicely on the new Bassett light oak chest of drawers she bought at a furniture market
showroom sale. She slept on a waterbed, and she often dreamed that she was sailing across distant but always calm seas.

Lilly said that her space in her mother's home was lovely, blue and mauve, like the feeling of dusk. She felt right about being there, welcomed, and unashamed for having left. And they lived together, mother and daughter, like roommates, like friends, for sixteen years. She left Durham only after her mother died.

When we finally talked, the day before O.T.'s service, sitting together in the parlor of Mackay's Funeral Home, she said that she left her hometown because she thought that Durham was just too full of death. Every road a reminder of a trip, an ordinary thoroughfare that calls up memories of her mother, the places where they traveled for groceries or dinner or just to get out of the house.

She said that even though she is beginning her middle-aged years, she might like to return to college, finish her degree, and teach. She claimed that she favors the thought of her own room in a long line of rooms at a school, her name on the door, and bulletin boards that she can change every few months to celebrate a new cycle of time.

When she told me of her plans, I thought they sounded fine, that it appeared to be a good thing for her to return to school, that it seemed like something that
would make her happy. I didn't, however, comment on what she was telling me because in spite of the appearance of my goodwill, I was still trying to find a place in my mind where all of this could settle.

I was simply trying to figure out who we were to each other, whether or not it was even possible that I could accept her in the midst of such awkward and forced circumstances, whether simply knowing that she existed was already more information than I could handle.

When I did finally respond to all she had shared, all the reports she had given me, I asked her only how it was to have all of her family dead, to be without a mother and a father, thinking that this was something we had in common.

She was quiet for a moment and then answered, thoughtfully, decidedly.

“I have sat with so much grief,” she said, “that I feel like I have acquired a new angle on life, that I have finally figured out the unprofessed secret that most folks never fully grasp.” And here she paused again.

“Life happens in a moment,” she pronounced as the funeral home personnel walked around us, trying to appear sympathetic and unobtrusive.

“Love is, at first, always a surprise, and the good things never last so they need to be savored.” She contin
ues as if she had been asked this before, as if she had already planned an answer.

“I understand now that life is quick and unpredictable, so that you need to pay attention to everything that happens because it is somehow intended to shape who you are.”

I just listened as she went on to say that she believes in something beyond this existence, beyond this life, because otherwise, “our brief stays on earth,” she said, as we sat in tall overstuffed chairs, “are such a flash on the screen of time that they would mean nothing.”

Another family came in the front door. We both turned toward them.

“There must be another place,” she added, “beyond this one, for all the dead souls to go.”

I dropped my eyes away from the other grieving family members and faced the far wall.

She, of course, had not yet been told about my parents, the baby brother I never met, or my sister. She certainly had not heard the story of Emma. And as she talked on, so doubtlessly, about her thoughts and ideas of life and the hereafter, I wondered what she would do in a house where dead ones would not pass. I wondered if she could make them move on because she was convinced there was another world waiting for them or if she would stay awhile, living with them, like I did, until her own
breath smelled of theirs. I almost asked how she could let love slip away so easily.

But I didn't ask such a question because I knew how it would sound. I knew that no matter how carefully I phrased it, no matter how I accented it with a touch on her arm or a slight, honest smile, it would come out spiteful and poisonous; it would seem like an attack.

And though I was certainly thrown off balance by her presence, dealing with this new knowledge of the betrayal of my husband, trying to sort through a death and now an unexpected life, I knew that she didn't deserve the consequences of all that I was feeling. None of this was her fault, her responsibility, or her doing.

We sat together in the funeral home near the body of a man whose life had touched both of ours, and I realized that she was not there to do me harm. She came to see my husband, her father, without the intention of ruining our marriage or causing trouble. I don't believe there was ever a single thought of malice in her head or in her heart.

She simply wanted to see the man her mother loved, tell him that he had never been forgotten, and show him how she was not abandoned or afraid. She thought she owed that to herself, to her mother, and to the father who never knew he had a daughter and who might just want to know.

In spite of how difficult it was taking in all of this information, trying to let this young woman be a part of my husband's death, inviting her to speak freely of her life, I knew there was no way that she should be the target of my anger or disappointment. She, after all, had her own losses to suffer.

Lilly was not the reason for any of my grief or pain. She was only trying to discover her place, only trying to understand from where it was she came, only trying to find peace for herself.

I had nothing to gain from being rude or unwelcoming to O.T.'s daughter. She was not the cause for the break in my marriage. She bore no answers to my many questions. She was no different than I. We both were simply seeking solutions for the great mysteries of our lives.

Widow
is such a lubberly label. Used like a medical condition or an exposition for unsavory behavior, it creates an illusion, a false image in people's minds that they suddenly think they know all about you. “Oh,” they'll say, with just the right amount of familiarity and sympathy, “that explains everything.”

At first it enraged me, then it merely irritated me, but now resolved, I simply use it to my full advantage. “I won't be able to get that library book back on time,” I'll confess to the librarian, “because I'm a widow.” And just like that I'm given an extension so that I can read the book at a speed I'm comfortable with.

“Won't be able to manage that volunteer food drive,” I say sadly to the director of the soup kitchen. “You know,” I say with just the right pause, “I'm widowed.” And quickly I'm forgiven.

To the person at the bank I report, “Could you please handle all this paperwork for me?” Then I sigh and stare into space like somebody close to the edge. “I'm only recently widowed.” And I don't have to worry about unwanted phone calls from collection agencies or investment personnel.

Maude says it's unfair and very unattractive for a person to use her weaknesses in this way. But I say, “Power to the people!” If they want to believe women are only as smart as they are married or that they lose their ability to create order or make decisions when their husbands die, then who am I to mess with a prevailing perception? Use it, I say, because life offers very few concessions.

It's been almost two years since I became the dominant figure in our marriage, since I first had to decide stuff for us, figure out things. Once the strokes started O.T. was no longer very clear or helpful. Dick and Beatrice helped some, but mostly I was on my own to take care of everything. On paper and involving the matters of detail, legal and otherwise, I was organized and even prepared for his passing.

In my more compulsive and lonesome moments when O.T. became institutionalized, I had taken the notion to get things ready. Power of attorney, safe deposit box, deeds, insurance payments—everything had been arranged and clarified. So that when he did die, there was so little to do I actually found myself bored. And especially with all the permission grief gave me to be slow and unproductive, I found that I had too much time to reflect upon the past and too much opportunity to think about the future.

Perhaps that's one of the reasons I was open to this young woman who had only recently made my acquaintance. Perhaps, because I enjoyed the luxury of an uncluttered mind, hours without tasks to complete, I was able to think about the possibility of letting her into my life. The other reasons, I suppose, had to do with common courtesy and understanding that she wasn't the one to be blamed, the desire to keep O.T. alive, and the hole that his death had left me with.

I think that if she had come at another time, appeared at a different place along my journey, I might not have made room for her, been as ready for her presence. But as soon as O.T. died, I realized that I was completely alone. I had no one to call family, no one to care for, no one to depend upon. Maybe I let her in because for the first time
in such a very long time I was painfully unattached. I was lonesome; and I let her into my heart just because she arrived at the exact moment when the last one who took up space had gone.

There is no doubting the fact that she looks just like O.T. She has his narrow lips, the smooth Witherspoon brow, the stern chin. There is the loose way she stands that reminds me of his rangy, long, poised profile when he used to stop in the field and measure how far he had to go, eager and unassuming.

O.T., of course, was bigger, stronger than Lilly, but there was still a clumsiness about them both that made him and makes her easy to approach, comfortable to talk to. And it was more than just these physical attributes that they shared. There's a way about them, an air of comfortable familiarity like an old pair of shoes, that in the beginning made me want to be around her, keep her near, so that my good-bye to my husband didn't feel so final.

Maude said that there was discussion and even a vote at her church women's meeting about whether or not Lilly had the right to come into our lives. “It was six to five,” she said, “that she should have stayed away.” And then she added, “but you really can't count Marcella's vote since Janice Smith told her when to raise her hand, and because, after all,” and here she cleared her throat, “she was only recently widowed.”

She said this without even realizing that she was talking to another one of these women whose brain everyone assumed was now missing in action. After she said it I couldn't decide which part of Maude's stupid report made me the angriest. But I guess it was the part about making judgments about Lilly and what she did or did not have the right to do because this is the part I would not let go.

“And people wonder why I quit going to church.” I said, hot and fast. “If that's all you women have to do on a Tuesday night during your so-called Bible study, then I suggest you examine the choices those in the group made.” Then I was loaded and shooting.

“Why didn't you take a vote as to whether or not Masie Reece should have had breast reconstruction or just used a prosthesis? Or whether Carol Ingle should have bailed her son out of jail on the third time he was arrested? Or whether Linda Masterson made the right decision to raise her sister's child like she was her own? Maybe you should spend your time judging the choices you all have made rather than picking apart the lives of those you know nothing about.”

She was backing out the door, but I drew her in. She had started it, and I was going to finish.

“Did you know your daddy?” I asked, already sure of the answer because her parents lived with her until
they died. She had always been close to both her mother and her father. Say what you want about Maude, she was a dutiful daughter. She nodded.

“Did you know how he looked when you pleased him? What you did that made him laugh? Do you remember how he picked you up when you were a little girl and danced you around the kitchen table or helped you climb a tree? Do you recall how it was to be wrapped up in his arms, feeling so completely safe that you were not afraid of anything? Of anything?”

I was not to be stopped.

“Do you remember when you were angry how he teased you in just that silly way that made you forget why you were mad in the first place and the special name that he only had for you? Can you say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, because of all these things you alone have, things that are only yours, things that you pull out to cushion your withered heart that confirm for you what you had always suspected, that he loved you?”

I was a streak of anger.

“You answer me that, and then you tell me that a child doesn't have the right to find the man who's responsible for bringing her into this world! That she doesn't have the right at least to see his face, learn his voice, hear him say his daughter's name, her name. Because whether she does or doesn't isn't for anyone else to decide, anyone
but her. She gets to make up her mind all by herself. All by herself,” I repeated.

Maude was afraid of me, but that did not make me hush.

“And I strongly suggest that you and those nosy, backstabbing church ladies remember that the next time you carelessly raise your hands to vote on something you know nothing about. You remember that.” And I walked out of my own house, leaving my neighbor alone to sort through what had just exploded before her eyes.

By the day of the funeral we were friends again, and in spite of all the screaming I did to Maude about her church cronies, they all showed up at the funeral. They were fidgety around me, careful with their words, and just a little too affable toward Lilly. They probably came more out of obligation or curiosity than concern, but I appreciated the effort and was kind to a fault. I think they all mean well and that their intentions are generally honorable. It's the meddling and the malicious appraisals rendered without thought that leave a bitter taste in my mouth.

The church is full of self-righteous people who love to claim grace for themselves and their families but who have a hard time doling it out to those who don't quite measure up.

O.T. was active in his church while he was growing up, his mother took care of that. But after the war when
he wasn't convinced that he still believed in God and couldn't sit without moving for more than ten minutes at a time, he went only for family weddings and necessary funerals, making sure he sat on the end and near the back.

Since I was used to going to church services in a tent, a living room, or out under the trees near a creek, when I got married and moved down from the mountain, I never found a church building in which I felt comfortable. So that when O.T. came home and made his religious change I was glad not to have to sit in a luxurious sanctuary pretending that the gold and the stained glass and the well-rehearsed choral music ordered things and helped me to pray.

If I worship anywhere, I go to the A.M.E. Zion Church just up the road and situated down a long driveway in a grove of trees. The music, like the people who attend, is soulful and ardent, the sermons fiery and made plain, and the love and the pleasure are without pretense or burden.

The pastor, the Reverend Vastine Yarborough, works full-time at a sheet metal plant an hour and a half away and is only at church the first Sunday of every month. The other three Sundays a deacon or an elder, a college student or Bible teacher, leads the service. I have found that with the humility of a lay leader fumbling with the words of Jesus and the soft, low hums of the elders help-
him or her along, it feels the most like church to me I have ever known.

The message is always simple, informal, and to the point that God is not partial to anyone. We must all, regardless of what we have or have not done, kneel at the throne of grace with only ourselves and the risen Christ, who stands ready to intercede. It is just simply a reminder to love, and I feel the same way there as I did with the church folks in the mountains. God is most impressed with us when we undo ourselves before him; and church happens when, without judgment, we allow others to do the same.

It was because of the ease and the acceptance I have received both before and since I have become a full member of the Sharpley Grove A.M.E. Zion Church that I decided to have O.T.'s funeral there. He went with me to worship only once, but it was the only time since the war that I have seen him sit still through an entire church meeting.

I watched him out of the corner of my eye for the entire two hours. He relaxed while he was there, sat in ease, the lines on his face softened. When we got home and were sitting at the table eating lunch, I asked him, “O.T., how did you like worship?”

He smiled. “It felt good to be with you there,” he replied in his clear, simple way. And he reached over and
touched me on my arm. “That's a good place,” he added, giving me the clear indication that he approved of me being a part of that community. It was as if he understood why I joined, why I liked to attend.

Even with his guard slightly lowered at Sharpley Grove, however, he still only went with me that one time. And I never pushed for him to join me. I have always thought each person has to find his or her own way, chart their own path. I suppose in O.T.'s mind because God had not yet made clear to him personally the answers to the questions that rattled him and because there had been no undoing of the recollections he continued to clutch and could not let slip away, communal worship was not the place he sought comfort, church was not the safe harbor for him to dock.

He never spoke of his questions and memories with me, never let me know. He took them all with him to his grave and, I guess, on and beyond. I figure this because the gospel is clear that what is loosed here is loosed there and what is bound here will remain bound there. Even heaven cannot pry open the things we will not release ourselves.

The funeral was probably noisier than most of the other guests were used to, a little too long for O.T. But I'm quite sure that he wasn't there anyway; and I could have cared less what anybody else thought. I was pleased.
There were flowers, but not so many that the church smelled like an artificial death. Words of sympathy and assurance were read by the trustees. Acknowledgments were given. Loretta Parker sang a solo. The men's choir rendered two songs, and Pastor Yarborough preached about the sacrifice of the soldier, the qualities of a good husband, and the ultimate price that Christ paid for all.

I think Lilly thought he was a bit too heavy with the Jesus talk, but I was satisfied. It felt just like what it was supposed to be, a service of celebration with a reminder that there is something bigger than us, something weightier than our own desires, our own heartaches. It was exactly what I needed, especially since I was now having to find ways to deal with O.T.'s infidelity and, further, the fact that he loved another woman more than he had loved me.

Dick and Beatrice were there, from Hope Springs. Jolly came, without Sally or any explanation of where she was or where he had been; and there were more than just a few well-wishers and old friends. The reunion was sweet. I'm sure everyone went home satisfied that O.T. had a nice send-off and that his widow was doing better than they imagined. I'm sure there was lots of talk about Lilly and who she was and how unbelievably strong I appeared in the midst of such strange circumstances. I must admit, I put on a very good face the entire two-day event.

But late that night, when the service was over and everyone went home and the house, having settled, was as quiet as a stone, I discovered that I was exhausted, tired down in my spine, up along the curve of my neck, and in my somersaulting mind. I felt yanked and pulled like a piece of old rubber. I drank some hot tea, tried to lie down and rest; but I was one long, raw, pulsing nerve. I had extended myself beyond the point of ease.