Virgin Territory (21 page)

When we arrive at the house, the cookie tin is sitting in plain sight on the kitchen counter with its lid secured. The AC is going full blast, and the place is chilled and spotless. I can tell by the way the dishes are arranged that someone other than Doug has done the cleaning. I suspect that Mary Jo has been here, and
I’m guessing that not only will she be back in the near future, but also that she’ll be sticking around. I place the shopping bag alongside the tin and sit on one of the stools, just staring at this treasure trove that I’ve been dreaming about for years. Doug is standing over me, watching. What is there to say? I open up the tin and without any ceremony I begin flipping through the pictures one by one. I place them in small piles, using the dates printed in the corner or on the edges to create some kind of order, a story in pictures with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Doug picks up one of the photographs; it’s an informal shot of Kat and him that was taken back in 1990. Both of them are beaming into the camera like idiots, and he’s holding up their marriage license.

“I don’t need to tell you how broke up I was when she died,” he begins. “I guess we both were. But the one thing that kept me from cracking up was you. I thought,
At least I’ve got Dylan. He’ll need me now. We’ll make our way together. We’ll have a thing
. But it was like the opposite happened. You got more distant. I became Doug instead of Dad. And it was like you were saving the best of yourself for her. She got to be this person who was always perfect. Unchanging.”

He puts down the photo and picks up another one; it’s one of her standing on the beach in New Jersey, holding a bedraggled kite and wearing a floppy hat. She seems tired, flushed with excitement, and in need of a strong wind to lift the downed kite.

“Don’t get me wrong—your mother was amazing. I still love
her more than I can stand sometimes. But she was human, with faults and weaknesses and irritating crap that you just don’t remember because you were too young. These pictures, they catch her at the best moments of her life, always smiling or laughing, always showing off her better side. Perfect. That’s no way to remember a person. I hid them because I didn’t want you to think that this was the whole story. I wanted her to live inside of you. When you missed her, I wanted you to look into yourself to find her. I wanted you to have more than just these perfect moments from the past. Do you understand?”

“We could’ve looked at them together,” I say as straight up as I can manage and without a hint of blame.

“Absolutely,” he replies, and he places the picture back in its appropriate pile. “I kept thinking I’d know the moment, but well … here we are.”

“Right,” I murmur, and we both continue to stare at the pile of pictures in front of us.

“Maybe it wasn’t the smartest move on my part,” he says. “But I’m hoping that one day you’ll forgive me.”

I know that my whole life depends on the next few seconds; it’s as though my past and my future are perfectly balanced in the present moment, and everything will be determined by the simple action of whether I can say
yes
to Doug, or
no
.

“Sure,” is my response, but then I quickly add, “As long as you give me back my computer and let me get online.”

I laugh a little to let him know that I’m not dead serious. He
makes a face, and I feel pretty certain that within the week I’ll be Googling Lubbock, Texas, and watching videos on YouTube. Doug and I continue to sort through the photographs, putting them in order, and for the first time in ages, the past isn’t weighing on us and the future isn’t looming. We’re just here, the two of us, in the moment, remembering our old life, and a whole day is ahead of us.

“And what about Mary Jo?” I ask him, because I have to know. “Is she going to be living with us?”

“You know, son,” he says, slowly placing a picture back in its pile. “When you find the love of your life, it’s not a person. Not really. The love of your life is something you learn how to
do
. As your mother might’ve said: the love of your life isn’t a noun, it’s a verb.”

I need to talk to Marie. I have to tell her that I met Frankie Rey yesterday, and then grill her about how she managed to keep him a secret for so long.

As soon as I walk through the front door of the place, Sally, the receptionist, pops up from her desk and comes at me with her arms outstretched. I’m a regular, so usually Sally will just give me a nod and a wave as I walk past on my way to Marie’s room. But this afternoon, she’s obviously itching for a hug, and I can tell by her red-rimmed eyes that she’s been crying.

Okay, so crying is not that big a deal at
the place
. Crying is just something that happens during the course of a day; everybody does it. Like laughing, screaming, or farting, it’s just a function that’s natural and expected; and that goes for the residents and the staff alike. So I figure that Sally is just doing her thing, having her day. No big deal. But as soon as she’s got her arms around me, she starts saying stuff like, “I’m so sorry” and “It’s so sad,” in that way people do when they aren’t sorry about something that they’ve done and they are sad about something over which they have no control.

“We’re going to miss her something awful,” Sally mumbles through her tears. “Marie was one of our favorites. Ask anyone. Always a kind word, a funny story. Even when she didn’t remember you. She went quickly, though. And that’s a blessing.”

What?

I pull away from Sally’s perfumed embrace, and as soon as she sees my crumpled face, she realizes that Marie’s death is as much a shock to me as it must have been to Marie. This is no way to get bad news.

“Oh,” Sally says with a sudden intake of breath. “I thought you knew. I thought that was why you came. We called your father, but he didn’t pick up, and—”

“Where is she?” I ask.

“In her room,” Sally says. “Ora’s with her. Getting her sorted out. Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. I really am. I thought it was strange you were here so quick. Almost like you knew.”

As I race down the hallway toward Marie’s room, I busy my mind with every kind of useless thought. Did I eat lunch? No, I didn’t. What will I eat? And when? Should I call Doug? Do I want to be the one to tell him? And who chose this terrible beige industrial carpet? I think of anything and everything to keep myself from considering Marie’s current state of being.

Ora steps out of Marie’s room wearing a grim expression. When she sees me, she closes her eyes and holds up her hands to stop me from going any farther. Then she closes the door behind her. We stare at each other and feel the truth of Marie between us, the absence. Then she grabs me and pulls me to her. She smells of coconut, and I’m grateful to be smothered against her shoulder because I’m crying. But it wouldn’t be the first time that her hospital scrubs have soaked up someone’s tears, so I just let it rip.

“Oh, yes, child,” she says, letting out a great big sigh. “We got to wear this world like a loose garment.”

“So she’s really …,” I say, unable to utter the word.

Ora nods, pulls me closer.

“Like a loose garment, I tell you.”

I never got to say good-bye to Kat. Not properly. We kept postponing it, which I suppose was our only way of exerting some control over a situation that was beyond our control. Neither of
us was all that busy, but time moves at a completely different pace when someone you love is on their way out.

Back when Kat was dying, my way of killing time was to sit under the fluorescent lights in the tenth-floor waiting room of the hospital, to ride the elevators, to visit the gift shop, and to check for loose change in the courtesy phone booths. I became a regular feature around the hospital hallways. The nurses and doctors got to know me by my first name, and though they had their hands full with matters involving actual life and death, they always seemed to have time for me.
“Hey, how’s our favorite guy today?”
they’d call out to me. They were quick with a handshake, easy with their touch, and occasionally would slip me a Blow Pop, a Tootsie Roll, or a Pixie Stix. When they had the time, they played a board game with me and asked if I wanted to talk. I didn’t ever want to talk. I was only six years old; what was there to talk about? But still, they were kind to ask.

Meanwhile, a parade of friends and relatives came traipsing down the corridors as regular as rain. They carried cakes, flowers, cards, candy, stuffed animals, and balloons. They stood at the foot of Kat’s bed presenting their best selves, their most upbeat attitudes, and many worn-out get-well wishes. Despite the fact that they worked hard to hide their true feelings, they couldn’t disguise the fact that they were scared: they were scared to see how Kat was fading away, scared to ask her how she felt, scared of her answer
(“Like shit, actually. And you?”)
,
scared of the plant that would surely outlive the patient, scared of their own dying.

At a certain point, Kat made a pronouncement: she didn’t want to see anyone except Doug and me. She was too ill, she said; the effort of making everybody feel better about her condition had become too much for her. Doug made excuses, rules, and apologies.

And then the day arrived when Doug informed me that I wouldn’t be going to the hospital. “Maybe tomorrow,” he said. “Maybe she’ll feel better tomorrow.” I didn’t mind. I was willing to wait. As long as Kat and I didn’t have to say good-bye, there was always another day, a better tomorrow, a little more future. She wasn’t going anywhere. We had forever—until the moment when we didn’t.

It was the same with Marie; I always believed that there’d be more time—right up until the moment when there wasn’t. And now I’m sitting on the floor outside her room, and I don’t know what else to do, where to go. Everything seems pointless. I notice that I’m holding my cell in the palm of my hand, grasping it so tightly that it has left an impression of itself on my skin. I flip the phone open and scroll down until I come to Doug’s name, his number. I dial, and he picks up.

“Dad?”

I can hear him choking as though he’d just swallowed dust. I guess that’s what happens when your kid calls you Dad for the first time in years.

“You there?” I ask.

“Yup.”

I can tell by the way he clears his throat that he hasn’t heard the news about Marie. And for a moment I’m scared he’s going to launch into a big speech about how much it means to him to hear me call him
Dad
, but he has something else on his mind.

“Never in a billion years are you gonna guess who I ran into this morning at the breakfast place.”

I agree with him; I will never guess.

“Corey,” he tells me. And when I don’t respond right away, he adds, “Y’know, your old friend, Corey McDermott.”

“Great,” I say. But Corey is so old news, and since I haven’t received so much as a text from him throughout the summer, I’ve been assuming that our friendship came to an end somewhere in the Alps, without either of us needing to acknowledge it. Moving on. And besides, there is real, up-to-the-minute news, and I have to break it to him.

“I’m at
the place,”
I say, and then I gulp and add, “Marie’s gone.”

Silence.

“Geez. Not again,” he says finally, and I can hear him stamp his foot on the grass where he’s standing. “All right. I’m on my way. We’ll go looking for her. This has got to stop. I’m telling you, we’ve got to do something about her running away all the time.”

He hangs up before I have a chance to explain.

In the rec room, a few of the oldies are milling about by the snack table; some of them are propped up in chairs, some are swaying to the music or tapping a slippered foot. Two ancient women are actually dancing; they cling to each other for dear life in the middle of the room, and despite the caution of their steps, they’re managing to keep the beat, and you can see that their muscles and bones are remembering a time when they actually could dance.

There’s a long table set against the far wall and covered with a paper tablecloth left over from Christmas. Refreshments are on display, and they consist of several baskets filled with potato chips, pretzels, and peanuts; a few family-size bottles of soda next to a stack of red plastic cups; and a bowl of hard candies. There’s also an arrangement of artificial flowers, a couple of vanilla-scened votive candles, and a photo of Marie. This isn’t just your ordinary evening get-together with refreshments and a big-band beat. We’re here to honor Marie, to remember her.