I’m already two ambien in, so this might not make much sense. When do I ever? Anyway, I find the sleepier I get, the more honest I become. And so, it is a perfect time to blog. About what? I have no idea. I’m sure a few interesting things have happened since last I wrote. Let me see:
We just returned from Florida. A place I will visit very infrequently from this point forward, and will absolutely never live. So many reasons for this: plane and car rides with a motion sick 4 year old. She will vomit at least twice during the trip..of that you can be sure of. A 737 Boeing plane is not big enough to hold Sean. Worst two hours, ever.
The beaches were beautiful…the highlight of the trip…mostly because there was nothing else to do.
So…ahhhh..that was my week. Moist, humid, salty, and dreading the trip home. All in all, it was a good time. Oh yeah, and our bed was too short. When my feet hang off the bed, it’s too effing short. Poor Rick. I hope he still likes me.
So: here’s my latest draft of something from my class that I don’t know what to do with yet have at it and be brutal..that’s the way I like it:
“Grace….” It was the last word of his life spoken. His eyes rolled up and back searching every neglected corner of his memory for her. He found one, the last one:
“I won’t do it.” She had said. “I will not be there to watch you die. You go on about it like it’s some kind of ceremony, to get dressed up for and there will be finger sandwiches and drinks. It’s absurd. A goddamn side show. I won’t do it.” That’s what she had said to his proposal of her spending his last moments with him.
He replied with: “You’re only worried that you won’t find something suitable to wear for the occasion.” He smiled and gave her what was left of the shine his eyes once held.
“If you’re weren’t so sick, I’d slap you. Maybe throw my coffee in your face.” She looked down into her coffee cup, slowly swirling the light brown drink with her spoon. “No one wants me there, anyway.” It was barely a whisper. He reached across their small, round, cafe table and felt her strong, healthy hands.
“I do.” He said.
Chemotherapy attacks anything that stands in its way: cancer cells, healthy cells, the entire immune system. Relationships. He knew the cancer wasn’t going to kill, but something else would. He had loved her first, before anyone else. Even before she loved him. He loved her still, after it was too late: one marriage done in a hurry for convenience and the other out of spite. They both knew the irrevocable mistakes they had made at the moment of their separate “I do’s”.
She was right. It did turn into a sideshow, but without the finger sandwiches. His friends, his family, hovered around the sofa that had been his sick bed the last couple of weeks. If it wasn’t for the illness, it would have been death by suffocation. From his cocoon of quilts and pillows he could make out some pieces of their conversation.
“Grace? As in “State of Grace”? hmmm.”
“Grace. Yes. That makes perfect sense for a man in his…his situation.”
“Grace. Surely a dying man would think of such things.”
Their whispers buzzed around his ears like gnats that he didn’t have the strength to swat away. He wanted to shout at them from the depths of the sofa: “Wrong!”
At the mention of Grace’s name, his wife had not pulled her hand away from his. Her stomach didn’t knot. And she did not demand answers and confessions from her dying husband. She only looked into the face of the Grandfather clock that was keeping watch over all of them from his dark corner.
“Poor thing”, someone whispered. “I don’t think she can take another minute of this.”
It was around this time everyone began to notice that he was lying there, on the sofa, perfectly still. They began to panic, with the exception of his wife, and pulled their worried faces out of their pockets. Was the time here? How would they know for sure? What should they do? But he wasn’t gone yet. His wife knew as she stared down into his white, face. She knew he was with her. Grace. She swiveled around on the ottoman she had pulled up next to the couch, to check the clock one more time. Fifteen more minutes passed by and she glared at the pendulum, wishing her eyes held the power to stop its sway.
But every moment passing over the two of them was unstoppable, one tick of the clock after another; until she began to feel swept away and battered, unable to catch her breath between each new swell. She turned her eyes back down to the shriveled eighty pound man in front of her. How he had suffered…and for so long. And yet she would prolong this suffering? Yes. She leaned closer into him.
“Not yet,” She had whispered. “Please. Just a bit longer.”
His eye lids opened only halfway. There was his wife. Her hand over his. He wondered: How long had she been here? And why? Now, he only wanted to be left alone to die with a beautiful memory or two. And she makes a fool of herself, hovering over him, asking him to hold on just a little while longer.
Her hand fluttered to her neckline, fingers searching for the golden butterfly on a chain, which she fidgeted with when anxious.
“Can you hear me?” Just a whisper. The words she had to say right now were not for anyone else’s ears.
“Darling….” She laid her head on his paper thin hand. “Listen to me. If you can, love, hold on.” He wondered if she was getting satisfaction out of his slow demise. If he had the strength, he would have flung her off his hand as if she were no more than a fly.
But then he could suddenly feel her cool breath on the edge of his ear. “She’s coming.”
He closed his eyes again. She? She. Impossible. He did not hear his wife correctly. He was almost there. He closed his eyes again… telling himself, for the last time…to die inside a moment that no longer existed.
“No. Not Yet!”. Her breathing had become rapid and she no longer cared who overheard her.
The onlookers hushed their small talk with a cascade of hisses and gasps.
“…oh my…”
“Poor thing.”
“…it must be soon.”
“Any moment now….terrible, terrible.”
“God damn that woman!” She screamed, suddenly, pulling at her hair as she jumped off of the ottoman and sped toward the Grandfather clock. 3:30. She put her hands to her cheeks, feeling the skin flush and then burn.
“An hour late…”, she mumbled to herself. “An hour.” She began shaking her head, staring down at the perfectly varnished hard wood floor. “She’s not going to make it.”
She looked up into the eyes of the person closest to her. But there was no recognition of who it was. It was impossible to see through her tears and strands of hair. That didn’t stop her from grabbing this person by the shoulders and to begin rocking back and forth.
“Where is she?”, she asked this person. “Why hasn’t she come?” A pair of hands peeled her off the shoulders and shoved her away a few paces. She tried to compose herself, pushing the hair out of her face, and grabbing a tissue someone had shoved into her hands. She wiped at the black streaks of mascara she knew must be trickling down her face and made her way to the picture window across the room. Crossing her arms, she turned her neck slightly to take one last look at her husband. She felt the knife slice through her gut, the wind knocked out of her, and she had to put one hand on the wall to steady herself.
As she absorbed the truth of the moment, as family members rushed to the sofa at the sound of his last gasp for breath, she didn’t know why she did it, but her hand slowly pushed back a white lace curtain from the window. She saw across the street, in a black Mercedes, a woman hunched over the steering wheel, sobs rippling over her body.
man, do i give diana ross a run for her money,with a straightening iron in my hand and "someday we'll be together" playing on the ipod.
