The Walk (8 page)

Seven minutes later the dance stopped. My best friend passed away at 12:48
A.M
. The last thing I said to her was, “I love you, Mickey. I always will.”

A social worker came in and stood next to me. I don’t know how long she was there. I didn’t see her enter. She didn’t speak at first. She just stood there. Without looking up, I said, “She’s gone.”

The next two days passed in a foggy parade of events. The people at the mortuary pretty much dragged me through it all—an unwilling participant in an unwanted production. I remembered the mechanical nature in which my father had acted in the aftermath of my mother’s passing. My condemnation was gone. Now it was me mechanically attending to the minutiae of death: I picked out a casket, a headstone, wrote McKale’s obituary, signed papers, and selected the dress she was to be buried in—a beaded, black chiffon overlay gown that gathered in front. She had worn the dress at last January’s WAF award ceremonies. I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the room.

It became very clear to me just how completely I had shut everyone else out of my life. Outside of each other, McKale and I had no real friends, and the only people we socialized with were on our payroll. I never thought I needed anyone else. I was wrong.

Sam arrived Thursday afternoon with McKale’s stepmother, Gloria. I met them at the mortuary. Sam broke down when he saw her. “My little girl,” he sobbed. “My little girl.”

My father arrived two days later, the day before the funeral. In his typical manner, he said very little, which,
frankly, I was glad for. I could see that he hurt for me, and that was enough. He stayed with me and slept in the downstairs guest room.

It rained all that night, and I sat in the kitchen and listened to a million drops pelt the earth. There was no way I could sleep. My father came upstairs to the kitchen at three in the morning. I was sitting at the kitchen table, a cold cup of decaf in front of me, staring at nothing.

“I couldn’t sleep either,” he said. “Mind if I join you?”

I shook my head.

He pulled out a chair across from me. For a moment, we both sat in silence. Then he cleared his throat. “When your mother died, I felt as if half my body had been amputated. The half with the heart. At first I wasn’t sure if I could keep going on. Frankly, I wasn’t sure why I would want to.” He looked at me softly. “I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have you. I didn’t have the luxury of collapse.”

“McKale wanted to have children,” I said. “But I kept telling her we needed to wait.” I rubbed my eyes. “The assumption of tomorrow.”

My father had no response, and my words trailed off in silence.

“Do you want to come back home for a while?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“How’s your business doing?”

“Not well.”

“Maybe you should throw yourself into that for a while.”

I said nothing. We both sat in silence.

“Dad.”

“Yes?”

“How’d you do it?”

“I have no idea.” It was some time before he looked at me. “I love you, son.”

“I know.”

A few minutes later, he went back to his room. I put my head down on the table and cried.

The next morning it was still raining. I showered, shaved, and dressed on autopilot. As I looked at myself in the mirror, I said,
“God hates you.”
It was the only explanation for my life. I had loved two women, and He took both of them from me. God hated me. The feelings were mutual.

At 10:45, my father and I drove together to the funeral home. There was an hour-long viewing prior to the funeral. I stood next to the open casket, next to the still body of the woman I loved. Déjà vu. When they shut the lid, I wanted to scream out in anguish. I wanted to climb in with her.

The service was simple. “Nice,” I heard someone say.
Nice.
That’s like describing a plane crash as
well executed.
The meeting was conducted by an employee from the mortuary, and a pastor, also hired by the mortuary, shared a few words. I don’t remember what he said. My mind was a fog. Something about the eternal nature of man. McKale’s stepmother, Gloria, a former opera singer, sang a hymn. “How Great Thou Art.” Then McKale’s father said a few words, or at least tried to. He mostly just wept through his eulogy. There was a prayer, and then the
man from the mortuary got up again and gave directions for the burial proceedings.

McKale’s father and four of his friends were pallbearers, along with my father. They carried the casket out to the waiting hearse, loaded it in back, then walked to their cars. We drove in a procession less than a half mile, where the pallbearers again took up the casket, carrying it to the top of a small knoll.

After the pallbearers set down the casket, they unpinned their boutonnieres and set them atop the lid. Sam walked up to me. “I carried her when she was a little girl. No father should ever have to endure this.”

McKale’s grave was near the center of the Sunset Hills cemetery, surrounded by much older graves. The mortuary had set up a canvas canopy that shielded the family from the rain while everyone else huddled beneath umbrellas. The rain never ceased. It was a steady fall that turned into a downpour that, at the conclusion of the burial, sent everyone scampering for their cars.

As the congregation was dispersing, an older woman slowly approached me. I was certain I had never met her, though something about her looked strangely familiar. She was distraught. Her eyes were red and puffy, and her face was streaked with tears. When she was near, she said, “I’m Pamela.”

I looked at her without comprehension. “I’m sorry. Do I know you?”

“I’m McKale’s mother.”

I blinked in confusion. “McKale doesn’t have a . . .” Suddenly I understood. I had always thought of her mother as deceased. Seeing her reminded me of every pain-filled moment McKale had felt since the day I met her. The fact that she was here, now, filled me with rage. With all the emotion I held inside, it was all I could do not to explode. “What do you want?”

“I kept telling myself that someday I’d explain everything to her. That day just never came.”

“The assumption of tomorrow,” I said darkly.

“Excuse me?”

I rubbed my nose. “Do you have any idea how much you hurt her?”

I could see how deeply my words cut her. “I’m sorry.”

For a moment, I just looked at her tired, wrinkled face. “You missed out on someone very special. McKale was a beautiful woman. As sorry as I am for my loss, I’m more sorry for yours.”

Her eyes welled up with tears. She turned and walked away.

A few minutes later, Sam walked up to me. “You met
Pamela.” I nodded. He put his arms around me, burying his head on my shoulder. “Do you know how much McKale loved you? You were her world.”

“She was mine,” I replied. We both cried.

“Keep in touch,” he said. Gloria took his arm. “If there’s anything you need, Alan.”

“Thank you.”

They walked, arm in arm, down the slope to their car.

My father walked up to me. He was holding an umbrella. “Are you ready, son?”

I shook my head. “I can’t leave her.”

He nodded in understanding. “I’ll get a ride back with Tex.” He offered me his umbrella, but I just shook my head. He put one hand on my shoulder, then he slowly walked off.

I watched him cautiously pick his way down the hill. He had aged a lot in the last few years. I had always had issues with my father. I know, who doesn’t? It would seem that blaming our parents for our problems is a favorite national pastime. But at that moment, I felt nothing but sympathy. He had done this, too. And somehow he had endured. He was a better man than I.

As everyone departed, I stood alone next to her grave, the rain bathing me, drenching me completely. I didn’t care. I had no place else I wanted to be. A half hour later, only one other person remained. Falene walked up to me. “C’mon, Alan.”

I didn’t move.

She touched my arm. “C’mon, honey. You’re all wet. You’ll get sick.”

I turned and looked at her, my face more drenched by tears than rain. At that moment the emotional dam broke. “I can’t leave her . . .”

Falene wrapped her arms around me and pulled me into
her. She held me, in the rain. She just said over and over, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

I don’t know how long we were there. An eternity. But when I could cry no more, I looked down into her eyes. She, too, was crying. “Come back with me, please.” She took my hand. “I’ll take care of you.”

She led me to her car, then opened the passenger door, and I got in. She climbed in the other side, reached over me, and pulled my seatbelt across my chest. She drove me to her apartment. Neither of us spoke on the way.

When we arrived at her apartment complex, Falene pulled in under a carport, then walked around her car, and opened my door. Her building was four stories high, and her apartment was on the ground level, a half flight down. She unlocked the door and pushed it open. “Go on in,” she said.

The small apartment was dark, the blinds half drawn with only a little light coming through their openings. The room smelled like coffee grounds.

Falene helped me off with my coat, laid it over the back of a chair, then took off her own. She turned on a light, then took my hand and led me over to her couch, a small curved sofa with velvet upholstery. “I’ll get you some hot tea. Is it warm enough in here for you?”