The Ride Home, From a Flower

A Story by BelAir

The story of a marriage

BelAir

The Ride Home, From a Flower

Grandma leaned in closer to her over the table, in case the little one was still lurking nearby.

"You know, I’ve seen your grandpa here a couple times. It could have been his ghost, or maybe just me and my memories trying to convince me he’s still alive. I don’t know which I want to be true, Stephanie. And you know what they say about houses, that they have their own memories of the people who lived in them. If that’s true, this house should have a novel to tell."

The woman was sixty-three—not exactly old—and the beauty she once was hadn’t been exactly forgotten from her features. She had been slim, bird-legs, freckles and high cheekbones, perms and dark-eyed. She was grey now, still permed, bespectacled. When Stephanie looked at the woman, she saw a number of things: a mother, another working-class employee, a grandmother. And as a wife. Her grandfather’s "flower."

As for that man, he had been rather short and as dark as any one of his Indian ancestors. The muscles of his arms normally bulged at the sleeves of his workshirts during the summer time. His hair was always combed back in soft, silver waves with Brylcreem. When he smiled it seemed his entire youth was seeping back into his eyes again.

A small smile showed itself on grandma’s lips, as if they were sharing the same thoughts.

"So you wanted to hear about us, huh?"

She made an amused sound.

Stephanie nodded.

A fly settled on the rim of Grandma’s coffee, unseen, and set off again as she picked it up and let the hot curls of steam work against her lips.

"Wanted to hear it from you."

"Yes. There’s some things only a wife knows. There’s a lot only she knows . . .

"So where do you want me to start? You decide, girl. You’re the one that wanted to hear it, and you’re probably going to get more than you bargained for."

"When you first met, I guess."

She sipped again.

"Well, we really didn’t meet in no certain place. I can’t remember if we did. Hell, for all I know we could have met when we were babies. Our families lived down from each other on the same street in Quincy, and they were friends. His dad and my dad got together and played music. My father could pick up anything and play it by ear, but most times it was a banjo. Our families, his brothers and sisters, my brothers and sisters, his parents, my parents, we got together a lot and fixed soup suppers and listened to them play. Elizabeth would bring whatever she had in the fridge, and my mom would bring what we had, and they’d throw it all in and make a pot of soup big enough to last us a few meals after that. We had those get together as far back as I can remember, and me and your grandpa wasn’t no love-at-first-sight deal. I thought he was gross, and he couldn’t resist my freckles." She laughed, and it was the first time Stephanie thought it sounded natural. Real. "All of us kids grab-assed around in the yard while our dads played and our moms chatted. It wasn’t no new scene for that time.

"I went to the same school as him. Think we all walked together some days. He liked to come to our house, too, so he could run around with my brothers in the evenings. I don’t know where all they went or what they did. Didn’t care, and neither did my dad, not even when they stole cigarettes off him for the occasion. There wasn’t no problem until I got to my teens and William was hanging around me. Then it got to be a big, big problem.

"I don’t know when I started liking your grandpa. I don’t know that it was a certain day or night. I think we just got . . . use to each other and decided we liked it. Asked me out for the first time while we were walking to school. I was fifteen. How’s that for original? Doo-wa-diddy.

"That wouldn’t have been my first date, because I’d been out with a few boys before, until my father heard something (and maybe he made it all up inside his head to start with; he was always a little crazy like that, my father was), something about me sleeping around and I don’t know what all. It wasn’t true. I never gave myself out to no boy, but he swore I did. There were times when I would ask him if I could go out with a boy from school, and he’d say yeah, okay, and so I got fixed up and was on my way to the door when he caught my arm and asked me where I thought I was going. And then make me explain to my date why I couldn’t go with him. You want to talk about humiliating. My mother was justa cooking and cleaning away and never said a word any of those times. She was one of the last housewife-generation, the speak-when-spoken-to kind." That laugh again. What she imagined the way her great-grandfathers’ music had sounded to their small ears. "I’m sure there were times when your grandpa wished I was more like my mother.

"Well, it got to where my brothers would say I was going out with them, and they would drop me off to meet a boy, and that’s how I went on dates. Came back and picked me up when it was over. The boy I was seeing knew not to get friendly with me that way, because he knew who was going to be there to pick me up.

"I don’t know how Dad came by knowing about William asking me out. It might have slipped from my sisters, or his parents. I remember him coming into my room just to tell me I wasn’t going out with him. That was considered nice, coming from him. Didn’t he get a surprise. I just shrugged. ‘I was just being nice,’ I told him. Dad, he patted my shoulder and smiled and left and that was the end of it, until that Saturday night, when your grandpa met me down in the parking lot of Fizzy’s. When the boys pulled into the parking lot, I didn’t see him no where. I started getting scared that my dad had found out, and all three of us just sat there for a second, watching. Then pretty soon here he comes strolling around the corner with his bike, and something jumped in my stomach. I still remember that.

"William was fourteen, and I was going on sixteen that winter, so he wasn’t old enough to drive, and his only wheels were that bike. He rolled it up to the car and traded cigarettes with my brothers, and they pulled away . . . Then William looks at me with this little smile . . . like he’s got me forever, just for getting me here on this one date. I hoped on his handlebars and away we went. Both of us didn’t have no money, so we got ice cream and rode around. That shoe repair shop on 12^th use to be this real good ice cream—"

"Grandma?"

The little one came around the corner, not bouncy, not exactly smiling. It was funny how children had a physic wavelength adults knew nothing about, how they could sense the mood of a room full of people without ever having heard a word of conversation spoken.

"What you got there, little sister?"

Lacy held it out and watched for her reaction. It was a wild daisy, picked cruelly short by her clumsy fingers.

"Thank you, sister. How many more do you think you can get so I can have a big pretty bunch of them?"

She was off and running before anything else could be said. Grandma smiled. Stephanie thought it sad, almost, as she laid the daisy on the table. Her eyes returned to the hills across from the house and studied them.

"Anyhow . . . Oh, it wasn’t a real serious date or nothing like that, but we still went together. Pretty soon he was walking me home every day after school even after he dropped out and ditching his friends to be with me, and me with mine . . .

"The problems with my father were just getting worse all the time. My father would cus me every night I came home, and, oh Lord, he called me every name under the sun. Dirty, awful words. He’d accuse me of things I wouldn’t even dare thought of. It came to the point where he wouldn’t let me leave the house with nobody. My sister, they were fine, sure, let them go. Even while Melinda was seeing Rodney Stauffer behind the barn every night. That was an old barn standing in this pasture on the end of town we hung around. There were dances there sometimes, but usually just fights and weekend romances. I love my sister dearly, but she was the wild one, not me. I was working most of the time—after school and every weekend—and then I was the s**t. Finally I got so tired of him accusing me of everything I tried it with your grandpa and, hell, I got pregnant." Grandma nodded, one hand over her mouth to hide her laughter. "The first time, and I ended up pregnant. That was just my damn luck.

"I cried when I found out. I cried and I cried and I cried. For one, I couldn’t imagine what my parents were going to do, and then there was the big question: keep it and get married or terminate it. Those were your options back then, because adoption wasn’t as easy as it is now, or terminating it, for that matter. A woman couldn’t support herself and a child alone, either, and if she tried anyway, without marrying the father, Lord, you thought she’d gone and maligned her name for all eternity.

"Well, I couldn’t terminate it, just because that’s against my morals. It wasn’t an option. And I loved your grandpa. Even before the romancing I knew I did, and that made marriage easier, but a hard-working girl trying to save money for some future doesn’t try to let too many things get in her way. But it was there. We both were kids at heart, still nine years old racing each other around an Oak trunk, but then again we were trying to be seventeen and face the world like adults together. The thi—"

Grandma’s voice became crippled and choked. She produced a ragged tissue from her pocket, removed her glasses, and swept away any tears that might have fallen. Her nose was cherry-red. She sighed.

"The thing was . . . the thing was I wanted to marry William, sure, but when I thought about it I saw me with a good-paying job out of high school, a respectable house at least, chicken dinners every night, him coming home and kissing my cheek. And then would come the baby.

. . . Just like I saw us elbow and elbow helping each other to the mailbox mornings and watching our great-grandchildren from this porch. Not me watching the Western channel on that tv in there to make up the time and then crawling into bed. Or reaching over to his side to wake him up, asking the silence what he wants for breakfast."

This brought fresh tears. Stephanie let her cry, looked away. Part of the worst had been how she wasn’t able to comfort them. She wasn’t prepared for this. How was she supposed to comfort them?

She heard Grandma’s voice echoing in her head, the day they had brought him home:

Oh, Stephanie, I could just cry.

Her voice steadied quicker than expected, and a smile appeared. It was a bitter smile.

"Well, life throws curve balls at you when you want it straight, and that’s how it is.

"I told . . . I remember I told William when he was taking me home from work one night.

He was probably expecting another story about my dad’s rants, and, oh, was he surprised. I just came out and told him—not been one to grab-a*s around things. He looked at me for a while and then looked forward out of the windshield with his brows drawn together and kind of

frowning. He moved his jaws together, like he was chewing on something. I know you saw your grandpa do it before when he was thinking. The first thing he said was, ‘okay.’

" ‘Okay what?’ I asked him.

"Didn’t answer me; he just kept looking forward and pondering on this. Then he ran his hand back through his hair and started the car and we headed to my house. That was it. ‘Okay.’

That was all the discussion over it.

"William let me out a few blocks down from my drive like usual, and the only thing I said was I wanted to know what he thought we should do, and he left.

"He was there to give me a ride to work after school the next day. There was still about an hour before my shift—a lot of times I got overtime making doughnuts at the café for the next morning when business was slow. Your grandpa’s first job was washing dishes at a café across the river, but he had just stepped up to a short-order; I guess everybody decided they liked the cheeseburgers and fries that were coming out of the kitchen when the main cook was gone better. Anyhow, William took me by to grab an early supper, and he was willing to talk about it, able to look at me most of the time and not out the window the food, and here’s what he decided: we should keep it. Termination was out of your grandpa’s mind, too.

" ‘And, well, Win,’ he says, ‘I’ve been thinking about it long before all of this. You know that. So now it just looks like we’ll have to get hitched a little earlier.

"I wanted to say no, and your grandpa saw it in my eyes because he touched my hand. He grabbed a straw wrapper and tied it around my finger. ‘We’ll have something this spring, when it gets warmer—’

"No, couldn’t have a wedding with me as big as a barrel rolling down the aisle, and I would be by the time we got around to it. It had to be soon. ‘Like a few weeks soon,’ I said and William nodded. If we got married early, they wouldn’t have to know I was pregnant. You know, Stephanie, that was suppose to be a big shame on you and your parents back then. Now it happens every day on that tv in there, doesn’t it?

"So the next thing we had to deal with was my dad. His weren’t a problem. They liked me, treated me as good as one of their own girls. Hell, I felt like I was already a Starrett, and why shouldn’t I, when I’d been around them since I was about seven? The plan was I would just go home and tell him what was going on and tell him I was getting married. So that’s what I did when I got home.

"William and me were already looking ahead by the time I told him. Talked about buying us an apartment with the money we’d saved from working. I mentioned dropping out to work full-time, but he wouldn’t let me, even thought I hated it and hated the work and the teachers. I was still passing every year, though, and William kept me in it until the end. He picked up two jobs, and I worked until closing most nights. All of this starting just a week after we found out. Both of us were good at looking ahead. The way and the times we grew up in we had to be.

"I planned out all my time at work what I was going to say to my dad. By the time I got home that night he was in his recliner, about half-asleep, so I went into the kitchen and told mom about marrying. Just that, and not the baby news. There was this look in her eyes as she smiled, though, that said she knew better.

"He was sleeping, but it was better to do it then than when he came home mean from work. Mom watched from the kitchen, I remember. Everybody else was gone, except for Sarah, in her room.

"I woke him and sat across from his hair on the footstool. We eyed each other—I

remember that. The first thing he said to me when he sobered was, ‘What? That little Indian down the street got you pregnant, Win?’

"I clenched my teeth.

" ‘No, Dad, but he asked me to marry him, and I said yes.’

"He gave me this dumb look and scrubbed his hand over his chin. Still giving me that look, like how dumb can you be, girl? It made me so mad that I got up and went to my bedroom door. Sometimes I wondered which look was worse, that one, or the fury in his eyes when I didn’t obey.

" ‘Ah no. End of story,’ he said when I was thee. I turned around.

" ‘In case you forgot, I’m turning eighteen.’

"I closed the door behind me, locked it, and left it at that. Dad didn’t, though. Practically tried knocking my door in, calling me all the old names, wanting to know if I was pregnant, until when he finally gave up.

"It was behind schedule, a month instead of two weeks. It was held in a little Baptist church on the far side of town, kind of down by the barn. It’s not there no more, either. Time always overcomes the past eventually, whether you want it to or not.

"It was a little ceremony with just our close relation and friends. We had a cookout at his house beforehand, because my father wouldn’t allow it at mine. King of did things backwards that way. My dad didn’t show up to nothing but the wedding itself, but, hey, that was fine by me. Both of us dressed downstairs, but we didn’t run into each other until I was walking up the aisle, so I guess we did it half-right." She chuckled and tried her coffee and laid it down quickly, grimacing. " . . . I had a beautiful little dress on that went to my knees with lace around the bottom. The sleeves were long and went about to my forearms and ended in white lace, too. Then some ribbon at the top and a pink rose pinned to my bosom and white heels and I was ready.

"Your grandpa was a sharp man no matter what he was wearing. I remember for our wedding it was a white dress shirt, blank pants, shoes shined up like mirrors, dark tie, and a brownish suit jacket to top things off, with a white rose in his pocket. His black hair slicked back . . . Through the whole ceremony his eyes were justa sparkling. And through the whole thing nobody knew about the little life pressed between us.

"The women in out families did up the basement and bought us a cake and wine. There were matching pink streamers and balloons and the cake was small and just enough: ‘Congratulations Winnie and William.’ There was just enough room down there for taking pictures and dancing. Chatting, visiting. By the time the thing got over it was well into dark, and we were exhausted. Your grandpa took one picture away from it all, of me smiling as we were leaving to go to the Ford, just the devious smile you ever saw. He kept it in his wallet for years and years after tat, until it was worn into a plain white piece of paper.

"So we went back to the apartment—we showed you it before, didn’t we?

"Yes. It had just one bedroom, one bath, and a living room-kitchen split. I’d been living there with your grandpa for two weeks because my father finally kicked me out. He started in on me one night when I came home from work, and besides being pregnant and dealing with bad bouts of nausea, and I had impatient customers on top of that, and him, ranting over the same old things. I smarted off . . . let my tongue slip once, and then I had a fist hurtling into my face. My mother was out. I picked myself up, packed, and that was the first night I spent in our apartment. Going home he saw the lights on and practically busted the door in trying to get in. He saw it was just me, with my lips and chin swelling up already, and he left. Not saying a word.

William had always secretly hated my father, and that night he was going to use it as an excuse. I didn’t see my dad for about a week or so after that and I didn’t care to. I don’t even know what William said to keep him from calling the police. It could be the fact that he was the one who assaulted his daughter in the first place. All I know is Dad is damn lucky William didn’t kill him.

"Well, he came back and I was crying. I’m not a crying king of person, but I was worried that night, I didn’t know if this thing would ever work itself out or what it was going to be like in the future, and he held me and coaxed me like I was a child again."

Lacy came back to make a complete interlude. She carried a bouquet in her hand this time, grinning. She didn’t bother with a vase but rested them on the table and returned inside, as Cartoon Network was calling her name. Grandma used the opportunity to fill her coffee cup, and sat again, thinking. She touched a flower.

"I never could—and, well, hell, I still haven’t figured out why my dad didn’t like William. He even still got together with his father, but not near as often as before, of course. It could have been I had the potential to go out and do something better than marrying him . . . but I really think it was more selfish than that, I really do. Could have been he hated to see his oldest daughter get married away from him, a piece of property he was losing. You know, Stephanie, I just really don’t know.

"Anyhow, both of us kept up our same jobs after we were married and settled in. I graduated that May, seven months pregnant. My parents didn’t bother to throw me no kind of thing. William did, though. He got off and before it started went out and got me a little cake and flowers and surprised me when I got home. That was just one more example how it was just William and Winnie Starrett against the world, for the longest, longest time.

"Your aunt Tabitha came at the end of July. The day I went into the hospital I had been at work, sicker than a dog. I ended up vomiting a couple times in the bathroom and that’s all I remember. One of the girls found me passed out on the floor, and then I woke up and there I was in the hospital. I was sick because I’d been overdosed the evening before when I went in. Some damn intern gave me too much of something to help with nausea, and it stayed in my system. There was a chance the baby might have got some of it, too, they said, and like that I was lapsing back into sleep. I was terrified because I knew there was a chance that when I woke up I wouldn’t be in that hospital no more, or if I did the doctors would be standing around me, shaking their heads, and one would say, ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs. Starrett.’

"Now I’ll let you in on a little secret: nobody knew where your grandpa was that day I went into the hospital. Everybody in the family tried every phone number they would, and nobody had seen him. You know, he was suppose to be at work, so somebody called Martin Waters, his boss down at the grill, and he told my mother William hadn’t been working for him for the past week. Told him I was doing bad all the time. So my mother called the shift manager at the Dairy Farms factory where he had his second job, and no luck there. Made some excuse about me again is what he said.

"William’s mom and dad were there with me, but, you know, I didn’t know nothing. I was just told all this weeks later—Melinda’s never been known to hold back from me. And I wasn’t suppose to know this. Not about William not showing to work (which was something I had never seen him do in all the time I knew him), or how his mother slipped away from the family downstairs and made a single phone call to bring him to my bedside. Nobody knows even today who she called or why, but there’s been ideas, of course, and some of them are closer to the truth than some. Like I told you, sister . . . sometimes a wife knows things. When I came

out of it and the sickness cleared your grandpa was there holding my hand, should-to-shoulder with doctors, and I didn’t know no different.

"Aunt Tabby came two days later. July twenty-first, 1963. I was almost nineteen, your grandpa seventeen. He stayed all that time with me. Our families were, too, whether we wanted them or not.

"I was worried about being a mother, sure. One, I was still a kid myself, like they say. Both of us. And we didn’t have so much money, especially after the nice hospital bill I racked up. Then there was that I didn’t know much about being one. My mom was never much of a mother to me. (By the way, my father let me know before Tabby even came that I wasn’t going to go to them for a babysitter, and Mom just stood off in the kitchen, minding her own business like she did . . .)

"We had your aunt Tabby, and she was a joy, Tabby was. All of our kids were good. I think we did an okay job with her. I remember her sleeping next to me in our bed a lot, with your grandpa on the couch. See, we didn’t have no baby shower, but we did get things from people, like Elizabeth knitted me the prettiest pink blanket you ever saw and some outfits. Then the roles switched and Tabby was on the couch when she was old enough, with pillows propped against the open side with a laundry basket so she wouldn’t fall again. Your grandpa’s workings, of course. He was still a monster craftsmen even back then. That summer he was helping some men down the street build a triple-car garage . . . What they couldn’t get done and struggled with for a week your grandpa got done in two days," she said with a smile.

"I went back to work when she was two weeks old. I was thinking about getting a part-time job for the rest of the week, but I couldn’t leave Tabitha that long. William’s mother took and sat her when we were working, bless her soul.

"So everything was okay until that day some weeks later when my sister came over. Melinda was the only person from my immediate family that had come to visit since Tabby was born. She let me have it, detail by detail, including what happened with my husband. I wasn’t shocked he wasn’t there at first. The thing was, nobody could find him. He lied. He wasn’t where he said he was. That made me curious. I didn’t let Melinda know it—I just made up some excuse for where he would have been and shrugged it off. But it did, and it didn’t leave my mind for the rest of the night no matter what I tried.

"Fixed dinner like I always did, ate, fed Tabby her bottle (none of my kids would take the tit, hard as I tried), and I wrapped his up for when he got home, like I always did, and this time I waited up for him with it.

"I remember him walking through the door at about eleven. He was surprised to see me up, but pleased. I visited with him as much as I could—most nights he would tell me stories about his day, but not this time. William was quiet and hardly looked at anything but his food . . . A man’s not good at hiding things as well as a woman is.

" ‘Are you okay?’ I asked him.

"He looked up to me this time, and there was a funny look in his eyes, and a little bruise forming over one of them.

" ‘What happened there? Your eye.’

"He touched it. His eye was already swelling up, so I got up and got him something from the freezer to hold on it, a bag of green beans while he was eating the same thing. Might have been a little humorous if it had happened in some other way.

" ‘I don’t know, but I’ll bet you a nickel,’ he said, ‘it was where I got hit by that plywood. I was pulling it out of a pile at Jimmy’s and some idiot kid was . . . pushing on the

other side and at the wrong angle. See this?’ There was a little cut in the middle of it that he was touching. ‘That’s where the edge got me,’ he said and grinned. ‘The thing rocked me back on my heels for a second, but then I just kept right on working.’

"I nodded and put the bag against his eye again. Nodded and played dumb. Anybody could see how fake that smile was, sister.

"I didn’t ask nothing else because I didn’t need to. We went to bed, and while he was holding me I thought to myself it didn’t matter what he was hiding, at least for that moment. He was still bringing in money and still coming home. But I sure knew I didn’t like that look in his eyes.

"So, well, we went on. I went to work, came home, picked up around the house and walked down to William’s mom’s to get Tabby. I never once asked Elizabeth about it, and I still wouldn’t even if she was alive. Never went out of my way to follow him to work or what not.

I just . . . picked up little things on my own. They weren’t hard to find. Like maybe how his ‘paychecks’ were getting cashed before I saw them, how cuts and bruises would show up on him here and there worse than they should have been. Or how one night I woke up because Tabitha was up and heard a car creeping around in the parking lot. I peeked out the window and saw a big Elderado moving past the front of the apartment real slow, stop at the end of the drive, and get back onto the highway. It was almost like I could see the figure in the driver’s seat looking back up at me in the dark.

"By now I think you have an idea of what was going on, and it doesn’t need to be said."

Stephanie nodded, unaware of it.

"That started to become frequent—cars circling the parking lot at all hours of the night and our phone (when we got enough to afford one) ringing with nobody on the other end. More money coming in. A lot more than before, I knew, and I never saw a penny of it.

"There was one night, a real bad night, that was my breaking point. I woke up to the sound of somebody beating on our door. At first it was several knocks. Then they came again, quieter, and Tabby woke up and started to cry and they didn’t come again. For a minute I was too scared to get up and get her, and William worked so hard he slept through everything most nights. If what I thought was going on was, a lot could have happened. Maybe they thought they had the wrong apartment when Tabby woke up . . . And who knows who was on the other side of that door.

"I had to put an end to it. I couldn’t keep acting dumb to his secrets and maybe risk my life and our daughter’s and, most of all, him and everything we’d worked for. The money was nice, but money comes to nothing in the end. So after I had rocked Tabby for a while and put her back to bed I snuck into the kitchen and got out a memo pad and a pen. I wrote it down and left it by the coffee pot for him to find in the morning. I remember it word for word: whatever you are doing, I want it to stop, for the sake of our family. That’s it. I crawled back into bed and nuzzled against him, wrapped my arms around him and wondered what I would do if he wasn’t there no more.

"In the morning the note was gone with nothing left behind. Some mornings he left me notes, have a good day, I love you, but there wasn’t zip.

"All I know is everything came to an end in a matter of a week. Our money dropped back to what it had been like before, not spiking here and there, William telling me he had done some extra building and repairing around the factory. There wasn’t no night visits or slow cars or bruises on my husband after that.

"I remember hearing the Bel Air pull into the parking lot below the next night and feeling

nothing but relief. Every night I was worried, so much sometimes I got sick in the toilet.

"Came home around midnight, and that was late even for him. I listened to him eat his supper and go into the living room like he did to see Tabitha. Then William came into our room, changed, got into bed. He moved against me and whispered in my ear he loved me, like he was telling me everything was going to be okay from then on. Not that I . . . now that I think about it, your grandpa knew I was awake, because just after that he scooted over to his side of the bed, facing the wall, and everything was silent except for our cheap humming fridge and him.

" ‘I’ll always do what I have to do, Win.’ "

Grandma waited, tasting his words. She was looking out at the hills again. After a moment she had to dab at her eyes.

"Well, Stephanie, the only thing I can think to tell you next is I found out I was pregnant. It turned out what I thought was a case of the nerves when your grandpa was gone was really your aunt Shelly messing with my stomach. Got you there, didn’t I?

"William didn’t know it, but I had stopped monitoring that time of month. I guess you could say I planned it. It wasn’t that I only wanted another little one to look after. I was scared. When it came to your grandpa and our future, he scared me. There are a lot of ways women know how to go about tying a man down, and children’s the best yet, don’t you think?

"This time around it went better. There were times with Tabby when I couldn’t get out of bed I was so sick. With Shelly I never even knew until I took a stick test when a little melon appeared where my stomach use to be. With this one William wasn’t going to have to worry about running to the hospital more than one night and being told he was going to loose them both.

"Stephanie, what can I say? We didn’t have real interesting lives. Just loving each other and our children and working. I picked up another job at the nursing home as a nurse’s aid with the diner on the weekends, both of them until I was eight months along. Your grandpa switched over to building stoves at Comstock and doing so many odd and ends here and there I couldn’t keep track, and sometimes I don’t think he could, either. This was the spring of 1961. Aunt Shelly came along one April morning and everything was okay. Then we had one on the couch, one in bed, and William on the floor. Our bed was only a full," Grandma laughed.

"Obstacle number two: William’s friends. When I think back on things I think they got him into a lot of bad choices and caused the trouble there was. There’s no doubt in my mind they were the ones who introduced him to their little way of making some extra cash on the side. Your grandpa was a bad boy when he was younger—always getting into fights and doing things to get kicked out of school. When we got older and we married they weren’t ready to let go of the William they knew, and he wasn’t either. That got him into most of his troubles. And some nights when I was lying in bed I would think how unfair it was that we had to grow up so fast. I would think how unfair it was of me to do my share on him, too, giving him two children before he even hit nineteen. But in a way we stayed young as long as we could, long as we had each other. Anyhow, his friends were always coming by when they found out where we lived. Some of them I liked, a lot of them I didn’t. Some of them didn’t know their boundaries, if you know what I mean. Those were his drinking buddies.

"I started noticing his drinking around the time Tabby was turning a year old. You know how hard your grandpa worked, and anybody who does appreciates a good time. That and the stress he carried, not just work but me and the financial burden of two children. William started going out more after work and not step in until about one or two in the morning. I could hear him stumble around the place and smell booze on him when he finally settled down to know he was drunk. Sometimes I felt like I hadn’t seen him in weeks.

"I didn’t say a word about it, though. It was just one more thing I would be nagging him about, and he didn’t need that, and I didn’t think I had the right then, quitting my two jobs because two babies were too much for even me sometimes. I didn’t mind him going out and having a good time, but, just like his buddies . . . like everybody once in a while, William forgot his boundaries. He started stumbling in with company in the middle of the night. They scavenged through the fridge and found what they could and sat down and played rummy until God knew. The first night I let it go. I just laid there smelling their smoke and listening to their slurred jokes and rambles. They weren’t waking my babies, at least. Came a time when they did, though. So I got up, and I mean to tell you I raised hell. Back then, sister, I had a mouth on me. I let them have it and showed them the door, and they left. That set Shelly off in the bedroom, too, so we had both babies wailing loud enough to make the dead want to hold their ears, and me yelling at your grandpa on top of them and his buddies stumbling downstairs. Lord knows what the neighbors thought.

"I turned around and shut the door and there was your grandpa, at the table grinning and card and beer cans scattered over the place. He really got his share then, too, and not once did he fight back. If there was one thing I was thankful for, it was that your grandpa was never a mean drunk. To me, anyhow. I remember him coming home a few nights, though, with his face a bleeding pulp, and the only thing he said was, ‘I won, Win.’ So those nights I would sit him down on the toilet seat in our bathroom and clean his cuts with rubbing alcohol, and he screamed and just hollered. I would bandage him up, kiss his forehead. ‘That’s my boy,’ I’d say with a mocking smile on my lips, ignoring the cloud of beer smell around him. Then I sent him off to bed, like he was one of our children. Your grandpa never knew until later just how many times I stood behind him when I didn’t have to, or, if you will, how many times I put up with his s**t and didn’t walk out.

"Now, his little adventures at the bar weren’t every night. Twice a week about. The only time I got worried was when I saw the six-pack he had bought and stowed away in the fridge to pack in his lunch. That was the only time when the word ‘alcoholic’ popped into my mind, and I was smart enough to know William was still far from it . . . He did get control of himself later. It was a phase, seemed like, that passed when he saw what it was doing to our money.

"When our first anniversary came, William, I don’t know . . . He felt like he needed to make it up to me. It fell on a Sunday, and so your grandpa was off unless he was doing some handy stuff for somebody in town . . . Your grandpa wasn’t no romantic, but he was sweet, and that made the difference. I was surprised he remembered it all, actually. Might have had something to do with my little mention of it a few days before, though.

"The house was empty when I got home. That was unusual because William hardly ever took the girls out by himself. There was just a little note scribbled out on the table. ‘Win,’ it said, ‘if you want to see the kids ever again, come to Lincoln Park. If you don’t they will be forced to eat candy every meal hereafter.’

"I smiled and played along, hoping to God he remembered their coats.

"The park—well, you know where it’s at. I walked. Your grandpa and the girls were the only ones there, I could see that from the sidewalk, and the strands of white lights he had hung from the park gazebo. William had moved a folding table under it with four chairs, and Shelly was cradled in his arms and Tabitha was clinging onto one of his knees, standing.

"When I got to the gazebo, I saw this big, gentle grin on his face as he looked at

me. The lights—the sight of it—they were dazzling in the plain winter landscape. I saw the pizza boxes and paper plates and I couldn’t help but do the same right on back to him.

"And Shelly and Tabitha did have on their winter wear. Buttoned up sloppy, not matching at all, but still buttoned up. I kissed them, grateful for it.

" ‘Don’t think they’re yours yet,’ William said and pointed to the chair across from him. I did as I was told, and we sat there and ate Gem City’s pizza together, watching the headlights of the cars that passed. Pizza wasn’t the most romantic meal in Quincy," Grandma said, smiling, "but it was the best-tasting.

"We finished up. I wrapped my arm around his on the table and leaned against him, and right about that moment he moved away and brought out a box from the girls’ diaper bag by his feet. I looked up at your grandpa, and he knew what I was going to say (a combination of thank you, but the money’—it was always the money), and he just gave me this look, like he was daring me to say it, and that it didn’t matter because there wasn’t nothing I could do about it. Too late. Inside was that pretty turquoise bracelet I showed you earlier. It’s ancient now, but, Lord, you should have seen it then. I didn’t ask the price because I didn’t want to know, and we left it at that. Kissed him, with Tabby pawing at my neck.

"Moments you wished would last forever.

"I have dreams of that night at the park since your grandpa’s been gone. He’s just sitting there and sharing the pizza with me and bouncing Tabby on his leg. Shelly’s still young, too, and she’s cradled in my lap and looking up at the both of us under the Christmas lights, smiling."

She searched the hills beyond the house for something that couldn’t be seen. Before tears could well in those eyes again, she moved from the table with her coffee cup for a refill, or at least to heat it in the microwave. There was a little smile touching her lips, one that she was likely unaware of. The front door closed behind her, on that of long and fading memories time had stepped over and left in its trail. The kind of memories you kept locked in your heart, until you could no longer, even knowing that words diminish--they are never fully yours again when spoken aloud.

"Your mama came two years later. I named her after William’s mother. That didn’t settle too well with my parents, but it stayed that all the same.

"Just twenty-two and we had three little ones by 1964. We spent most of that summer looking for a house. Now Elizabeth and George were coming over together to watch the kids. My parents came over to help with babysitting once in a while, as well, but we had lots of help after everybody decided our marriage was okay." She rolled her eyes. "I took the night shift on at the nursing home and hardly ever saw your grandpa except when he came home for lunch in the afternoon, and sometimes he didn’t even get that.

"We found the house on State and moved into it in June. The years in that house were the happiest, they were. That was the biggest house I’ve ever lived in, for sure. Three storeys high, if you counted the storage attic nobody ever wanted to set foot in as a floor. Me and your grandpa both were crazy about it—he had a place to put all of his toys and I could finally hang pictures on the walls. The girls’ rooms were upstairs—Shelly and Tabby shared, and Liz had her own—with our room just down the hall, one bathroom in between and one downstairs. That extra came in handy, with three girls growing up together . . . The only way we were able to afford the place was with the money your grandpa was making at Comstock and loans. Lots of loans. The furniture we got from relatives and second-hand stores.

"The first time I remember noticing something different about it was during one of our first nights, how we would hear somebody on the stairs. Now, all of our girls were too small to be walking down them with that kind of weight. Shelly and Liz were wedged between us, but Tabby was in her own bed, so I got up and checked on her anyhow. She would always be sleeping just as peaceful as you please, and the stairway was always empty. Once or twice your grandpa would follow the footsteps all the way to the bottom.

"There were other things like that, too, all the time. You wouldn’t even notice because you got so use to the sounds: footsteps, doors banging open and shut, people talking and laughing. Look there! It gives me goose-bumps just talking about it, sister.

"But there wasn’t never . . . never a feeling of not being wanted there or welcome. Shelly and Tabby, I know they’ve got different stories. Shelly said she saw a man with a dog standing in her doorway at night, or her blankets would be tugged and her fingers bitten when she woke up. Tabby about the same. Saw people standing at the windows." Grandma touched her arm. "Now all you have to do to mess with her is say, ‘Hey, what’s that in the window over there, Tabby?’

"It never did nothing to your mom but tease her. She said it felt like a grandpa figure to her.

"The only thing I ever saw was a white mist floating over your mom when she was a baby. I came out of the kitchen to get her and she was laying on the couch in her carrier and there it was. William and me both smoked, sure, but wasn’t no cigarette lit in the entire house at that time. . . . And it was a cold feeling. I saw the cat we had perk up while it was looking into a corner once. That was about it. Apparently it wasn’t too hard on us, because we lived there for fourteen years. My kids grew up fine. Pretty soon Tabby and Shelly were racing each other around the house, and Liz was waddling in her diaper behind them. They started school in 1966.

"I was twenty-five and your grandpa was twenty-four and we had to really work to keep the house and raise the girls. I hate to say it, but they never saw much of William the first decade of their life because he was always gone, always working. Just like he lived for the good times at the bar, he lived for the little moments, too: when he got to wake the girls for school in the morning or kiss their heads goodnight after they were already in bed. The times when we got to eat supper together and the girls would be fussing with what I made and then they would decide to grab-a*s around the table instead, doing little impressions of each other. Sometimes we joined in. There were a lot of moments like that.

"Some of the best I remember from the holidays. When we had enough extra coming in I got to decorate the house for every one of them, and I always did Christmas. Didn’t matter if I even had to sell off a few things at the pawnshop there downtown to afford everything (and that might have been where my wedding dress ended up to). Usually, though, we started saving three months ahead and came out all right.

"When the time came, Lord, you couldn’t keep the girls down. Always had their matching pajamas on and their hair done up in pigtails. They ruined the secret of Santa Claus themselves because they would sneak onto the stairs when we would be sliding presents under the tree. We would hear giggling, and then William would have to usher them back to bed all over again. The moment they finally got back to sleep and we got into bed and our heads hit our pillows they were screaming and scrambling down the stairs. Every time, like clockwork. Then William would have to jump out of bed and pull his Santa suit on that he always wore and pass out presents. I usually found all they wanted after searching the stores in town for I don’t know how long.

"I started a nice big ham dinner that morning so it would be ready for company by noon, not that there wasn’t plenty of time between—the girls usually woke us up somewhere around four or five. All of our family came, for better or for worse. My cooking wasn’t nothing to hoot about; I just had the house big enough to hold all of them, and most of the time we were divided—I cooked and entertained the women, William took beers out into the garage with his brother-in-laws, the girls ran around with cousins and showed off what they got. That house didn’t get quiet until midnight or later, and it was always that way. I can see everybody as clear as I can see you: my father giving more candy to the little ones and the way Rodney’s wife would bring her fruit salad every years and leave with just about as much as she had brought.

"We did other holidays, too. For Halloween we went trick-or-treating, and Easter I made dinner and we went to evening services with the girls still surged up from their candy baskets I made them. You name it, we did it . . .

"I don’t regret quitting again to raise my kids for a second. We weren’t getting no where with my job anyhow, and William was doing just fine.

"Our marriage was good, and the rarest thing was it stayed good. Sometimes there were fights so bad I would be ripping things off the walls to throw at your grandpa as he was trying to get to the door. But there wasn’t nothing we couldn’t work out.

"Both of us were good with our kids, too, because they were good. Kids throw tantrums like they do (I saw plenty a share from you, sister) and when our girls did I would spank them hard enough to bruise my hand and send them to their rooms and that’s how things were done. If any of them were bad at school, I gave them permission to do the same. But William . . . he could never bring himself to hit one of those girls. He would scold them, sure, but that was it. When he was growing up Elizabeth didn’t allow his dad to touch none of the girls, just the boys. Something like that rubbed off on your grandpa, and it was no wonder. Your grandpa always wanted to so everything like his father because he looked up to him so much—rolled his cigarettes because George did, used the same brand of tools as him, same cowboy boots—and of course he found out that wasn’t always possible and became his own man.

"It tore William up when he passed. Never saw it coming. The three of us were just in his garden the day before. We were helping him plant, I remember, and he looked at me and he said, ‘Now, Win, you go ahead and take all that you want from this and enjoy it because I won’t be around to.’ You know, we laughed and joked about it and didn’t pay much attention to that look in his eyes. Two days later we found out, and that was the first and only time I ever saw your grandpa cry during the whole coarse of our marriage. In a situation like that a wife hardly knows what to do, because the roles had always been switched.

"He was all right after a while. The biggest comfort for him, I think, was that his dad didn’t suffer. He burned out with his pride like a Starrett did and didn’t waste away. It was hard for me, because George was more of a father to me than my own, and the girls took it hard, too. I guess they know something of what you’ve been through.

"I started noticing your grandpa’s drinking again sometime after that. I’m not saying it was because of his dad’s passing, but it could have played a part. When he got off work he walked down to the bar and spent most of the night there. Twelve packs were appearing in the fridge . . . One time he got a surprise when he opened one and saw all of them were gone, every last one lying empty in the sink instead. I believe the night before he tried to get friendly with me drunk and, well, that didn’t work out like he planned. As for his drinking and the bars and the fights—William was getting close to thirty and he still fought dirty like a teenage boy—as for all of that, it’s no wonder they say history repeats.

"We carried on anyhow. When he was home a lot more his visits to the bar were becoming frequent, and he would come home and let the girls see him drunk. They were starting Quincy high school then, and I was working at another hospital as a physical therapist assistant." Grandma paused, looking around the porch. "Tabby told me here not too long ago that she hated him those nights when he came home like that.

"I made up some story about how I’d be much happier in the country. I never told nobody my real reason for moving out here, to lure your grandpa away from the bars and back into living. Everybody believed me right along with him, and that was fine.

"The girls didn’t care for the move at all. One, because there was no running water here for the first year and no built-in bathroom. Two, they were going into a school with about forty kids per grade instead of per class. They just complained and complained. It was a hard adjustment for all of us, I remember.

"Well, now, I got pregnant again. This was 1979. Big changes that year. While I was having my last baby (because your grandpa, the smooth-talking son of a b***h he was, convinced me to try for a boy), Tabby graduated and Shelly finally ran away with that boy from Arizona. We were sad to see her go, but we couldn’t keep her down for the rest of her life, either. Tabby, on the other hand, stuck with us another year, until she found her own place back in Quincy . . . I delivered Randy just fine, even with me being thirty-eight . . . And your grandpa retired at Comstock.

"The good thing of waiting so long for our boy was that William was home a lot more, and there was more time to spend with each other. A boy needs that. William showed him how to hunt and fish out here just like his dad taught him. He was a real good kid (and, Lord, a hard-working boy when he wanted to be). Always dickering with model cars and scoping the woods for something interesting. Your grandpa showed him how to build, too, from all that he did out here.

"Lizzie came to us one night when Randy was still a baby, begging us to let her marry your dad, because, you know, he was leaving for the base in Seattle and that was the only way she could go with him, married. Just sixteen years old. Elizabeth dropped out that same year, but she would have been at the top of her class. Smartest little thing you ever saw. She told me one time, ‘Mom, you know I was never getting no where in that school,’ and she was right. Looking back I have a lot of regrets about not keeping her in and sending her off to college, where she belonged. But if I had, who knows, you might not be sitting here with me today.

"I said no. I wanted her to finish school. Your grandpa said yes. He wanted her to be happy. ‘Win,’ he said, ‘she deserves this,’ and he finally talked me into it and we signed her off. Liz paid for the whole wedding herself, did you know that? It was just a small one in that church farther down the road, even so . . . And it was even harder to give away our baby girl.

So by 1981 the house was empty and silent, except for Randy. We had letters and postcards coming in all the time from Shelly in Arizona and your mom in Washington. She had the twins right after you, you know, and Shelly got mixed up with the wrong people and the wrong things. Tabby didn’t wonder too far from us, though. Even when it wasn’t the smartest decisions our kids made we stood behind them. I was damned if I was going to treat one of my daughters the way my dad treated me.

"Randy graduated average in his class in Philadelphia and stayed with us until he was in his twenties. He started at the Pizza Hut in Monroe besides all of his side jobs, where he met Jenny."

Grandma waved her hand in a dismissing gesture. She looked at Stephanie.

"Randy changed after that. I like Jenny just fine, and I don’t think she was all the cause of it. It was probably a combination of having kids and taking on the responsibilities and stresses of being a husband and a father. After a while he stopped coming over to see us, and when he did he seemed distant, or distracted, even. In some ways I think Jenny did try to tear him away from our family after the kids were born and they started building defenses and schedules around them. Schedules we didn’t fit into. Once or twice they let me know I was there at the wrong time because they were having dinner. William stopped going over at all when I went. We just didn’t feel welcome. Your grandpa tried to make it out like he didn’t care, but deep down in his eyes your could see it wasn’t the truth. That’s why Uncle Randy has regrets, from all the times he pushed us away and made us feel like strangers. And—I hate to say it—I’m glad he does.

"There was a time between Randy’s getting married and William’s passing I think of as our golden years. Sometimes they were even better than living on State. During those years we were together. All that working that came between us wasn’t there no more, and, best pf all, we got to be grandparents.

"Every morning he would be up drinking coffee and watching out the front window like he did, waiting for me. Usually after that he spent the day working on some new project or other, for me or somebody in town. They still knew who was the best damn carpenter on this side of the Mississippi. Or he would go looking for arrowheads, or, when winter came, hunt or be inside with me watching westerns. We were always in the comfort of family and old friends, holidays or not.

"We carried on like that until that last winter. It was like something changed in his eyes. Sometimes he got this funny look in his eyes. He started getting sick a lot more, and even with how much your grandpa smoked, he hardly ever got sick. We just ignored it, thinking it would pass like all te other times . . . But I think your grandpa knew better, even during all that time.

"So, next . . . well, I guess it comes down to the day we found out. A week or so before William started feeling real sick to his stomach, and he was getting blinding headaches. Then the morning when he couldn’t walk. When he got up, it was like watching a drunk stumbling all over the place. Ran into everything, because he said it was like the whole room was tilting, and one night he fell out of the shower and went to clean his mess and fell back into the shower. I remember helping him up, scared to death. Later when he was back in bed he whispered, ‘Wow, Win, now that takes talent.’

"You know, all of us were positive it had been a stroke because of the way he woke up with it, just like I did in ‘93, remember?"

Stephanie remembered well.

"Bam, your husband has three masses on his brain.

"Bam, they’re cancerous.

"Bam, he has less than three months to live.

"All in the course of half an hour . . . Hardest day of my life.

"You all dropped me off that night, and I thought I would never get your mom to believe I was okay . . . and the truth was I wasn’t. That was probably the first night I spent alone in decades. I just washed up and climbed into bed, and cried and cried and cried.

"We brought him home the next day, and we had that cookout, like we were celebrating life instead of death. I guess it was is welcome-home gift. The only thing that could go through my mind was, do they know this is where it all begins? I’ve worked in a nursing home for sixteen years, so you bet I knew, and your mom did, too, but regardless we also knew we had to enjoy the time we had left with him.

"The first thing he did when he got home was take a seat right here and light a cigarette. It was the only place he wanted to spend the rest of his days . . . The news didn’t seem to get to him as much, but when everybody left, sister . . . when the sun went down and it was just us, you could see something else in his eyes.

"It’s sure strange because this summer was the best and worst summer I can remember. Worst because I lost him. Best because it let us see how much he meant to us, how strong our family is, and that we were surrounded by them everyday. All of the water fights in the yard, the cookouts, the fireworks the twins put on that time, all those games of cards and washers. Friends we hadn’t seen for years."

Grandma paused as the memories came ripping through her mind again with the sweetest of winds. She welcomed them now, on the verge of a smile, and said nothing.

"He got worse over the weeks. His appetite vanished, headaches got worse, slept more, had trouble breathing on the hottest days, even with his oxygen at night. In the morning that was the first thing he would say to me, how much he hated that damn mask. I was standing in the bedroom doorway one morning as he woke up, ranting about the oxygen, holding in my laughter . . . because his mask was wrapped around his forehead, backwards, pushing his hair up into craziness. William saw where I was looking and reached up. His face just dropped, and I busted out laughing, and after a while so did he. . . . But then you had to laugh a lot. It was your only revenge.

"I remember one of our last long conversations, I do. It was the night of the fireworks, after everybody went home and it was just the two of us sitting out here with our mosquito lamps lit. I asked him if he was scared.

" ‘No, Win,’ he said. ‘I got over all that a long time ago.’

" ‘Good. That’s good,’ I told him, and after a little while: ‘Is there anything you regret, love?’

"He looked at me and smiled.

" ‘No, ma’am. I don’t regret anything, especially marrying you. Smartest move I ever made.’

" ‘So you’re ready?’ I asked.

"I saw him nod with that thinking look on his face. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I think I am.’

He looked at me. ‘What about you? You’re probably glad to get rid of me after all these years, huh?’

"I knew he was joking, but I still couldn’t keep nothing back. Told him no, of course not, and I knew how he hated to see me upset, so I got up and went into the house. Most of the times I did that he let me cry, because sometimes that was better.

"I knew his time was getting close the night I woke up smelling the most sweetest, beautiful scent I ever smelled. Better than anything I’ve ever smelled. I can’t even begin to describe it. The room was dark, and I sat up and looked around, but nobody was there. Pretty soon the smell moved out. I touched William and he was okay, just sleeping like a baby. I knew they were getting him ready.

"He didn’t mention nothing about it in the morning, so neither did I.

"His first seizure was about a week before he passed away, and it was just a small shiver in the night and that was it. Anyhow, not long after that he got to where we had to help him with simple things we talk for granted every day: walking, putting your shirt on in the morning, smoking a cigarette . . . He hated that more than the cancer. See, he was the one waiting on me hand-n-foot.

"But it didn’t get real bad up until the morning he passed away. Only bad seizure he had on that morning, like it was our warning sign. Got it while he was still in bed, and of course it scared the hell out of me, even if it was expected. He slept most of the day after that. Once he tried getting up to use the bathroom, but he fainted. It wasn’t just that he was too weak to stand that was telling us he was going to go—there was something in the air, I think; we didn’t have to speak about it to know it was there.

"We stood by for the rest of the afternoon, only Tabby had to leave. She’s never been able to see me or your grandpa hurt, so she said her goodbyes to him, kissed him, and waited it out here. William, he was coming in and out of it enough by then to talk to us a little . . . He was talking about you, you know . . . Did you know that?"

Stephanie nodded. Her mother had told her. She wondered sometimes if she would have been better off without that, to know he was lying there, speaking of her, and she wasn’t there to answer.

"Oh, yes, he was worried about his Steffi.

"And, you know, we called everybody that could come, and, like he appreciated the fact, William came out of it long enough to see them. Randy got to tell him it was okay for him to go, holding his hand, tears slipping down his cheeks. I think that helps, don’t you? When you tell them it’s okay?

"The kids came in and talked with him, and they were crying, too. They understood what was going on more than I had expected. We underestimate kids, we really do . . . He told Sam he loved her more than ‘Cupcake’ did, and I could have sworn, sister, for just a second her tears cleared and a secret smile passed just between the two of them."

Grandma sighed. Her hands were very still, resting around the coffee cup in front of her.

"Well, the time came. The time always comes. It seems like all of the world stops and holds its breath for it.

"Your mom was holding his right hand, Randy his left. I was up by his head, stroking his hair. His breathing was slackening. I remember the last thing I said to him.

"I was whispering in his ear . . . I just told him it was time to go, and he better go soon because Uncle Larry was waiting on him with two hot mamas, and this—this little peaceful smile came on his lips. Told him I loved him. Minutes later his breathing just stopped."

Grandma was wiping at her eyes again and again. They were red from the effort.

Stephanie rose after a minute to light the mosquito lamps, even though they had already arrived—it was almost full dark now. How long had they been talking?

Her hands shook.

"Yes, we’re always trying to remember what that last thing was. We were lucky because we got a chance to tell him our goodbyes, of course. At least we’ve got that."

Lacy was at the front door now, listening attentively to the conversation that had kept them so long.

"There was something incredible about that summer, sister."

She spoke as if it had been decades ago. Stephanie supposed, in her mind, that was what it seemed to feel like.

"Incredible power. Something that could withstand that dark cloud that was always hanging over us . . .

"You know, I never thought there could be so much hurt in one person’s heart at one time. It comes and it goes—you have good days and then some where the past leaves you as weak as a kitten in a matter of seconds. I thank the Lord for the memories I have, even if he is gone. And sometimes—some days it’s like he’s not gone at all, when I’ll pass through the kitchen and smell the smoke from his cigarette and feel a touch on the elbow, and for a minute he’s so close I could almost touch him. I see him in my children,too . . . the way they smile sometimes. Other nights I have dreams we’re rocking in our swing over there, and he’s got his arm around me and I’m justa kissing him like we were a young couple again, and then I wake up. But once and a while (call me crazy), there’s the smell of his aftershave in the room, and I think maybe that’s just what I was doing at that."