The end creeps up on us, and when it arrives, all we have left is the past...
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I don’t know how long I’ve been here, lying in this bed in a room with stuff hooked up to me, wires and equipment and all, nurses and doctors in and out all the time, day and night, coming and going so much it’s hard to tell whether the sun’s up or if it’s dark outside, as if it matters one way or another anymore. I guess I’m at the point now where nothing really matters much. I don’t need anyone to come and tell me it won’t be long now, that the time for me to go is drawing near, because I know already. I’m not that much of a fool where I don’t know my right from my left.
I’m never alone for too long, though, so I suppose that’s one thing to be glad about. Besides the nurses and the doctors coming to check on me and write things down on their charts or log it in their little handheld computers, there’s also my girls sitting here most of the time watching over me, watching TV or reading while they’re here. Both my daughters are readers, which I know they acquired from me and not their daddy, who couldn’t ever even read a menu without losing interest, although I haven’t always been that impressed too much with what they choose to read, since it’s most of the time those flaunty romance novels with women on the cover with their clothes half torn off wrapped up in the arms of some muscle-bound fellow who’s just finished rescuing them from being lost in a swamp in a bayou, or one of those mysteries where the heroine runs a bookstore and sleeps with two Pembroke Corgis named Hansel and Gretel and runs across a corpse every month and has to find the murderer because the police are too dumb to do it themselves. That part neither of them got from me for sure, because never in my life have I stooped to read anything like the trash they go through. I taught high school English, and I’ve never lowered my tastes to read drivel like that. Now Agatha Christie, certainly. Maybe even Peyton Place or Gone With the Wind, but I never slipped down further than that.
I guess this is the last stop on my journey, although nobody has come right out and told me as much. I hear them talking to me in gentle, positive, subdued tones though, wondering the whole time if I’m hearing what they’re saying or not. Oh yes, I hear them all right. I just don’t say anything back. To tell the truth I don’t know what it is I could say they’d really want to hear.
If I could make myself say anything, if I truly believe that this is my last day drawing a breath on this earth, I believe what I’d tell everybody is how I’m ready to go but for one thing. I’d let them know without explaining every last little detail that I’m waiting for someone to get here before I go, that I’m balancing here on the edge of life and death waiting on somebody to arrive so I can tell him goodbye one last time.
Clifford. I’m waiting for Clifford. Somehow, in my mind, I think he’s on the way.
Neither Patsy or Jennifer know anything about Clifford, not even in these last days while Patsy’s been going through my things over at the house. She ran across an old photo album among some of the things I’d stowed up in the attic behind all the old Christmas decorations. I’d been feeling so bad these last few months I didn’t feel like having anybody over for Thanksgiving or planning anything for Christmas, much less going through all the trouble of putting up a tree, because my heart just wasn’t in it anymore. I didn’t let on to anybody, but it hurt to stand up or walk, so I just did my best not to talk about it and ruin the holidays for everyone. Still, it got so bad I finally had to go to the doctor, and once he examined me for five minutes he didn’t waste time getting me into the hospital. You’ve had a stroke, Mrs. Hall, he told me, not just one but several of them. There’s going to be trouble up ahead if we don’t figure out what’s going on with you. He made a call and sent me to the Emergency Room so they could hurry and admit me. I didn’t even have time to go by the house and get anything.
Patsy was up in the attic rummaging around looking through all those old decorations trying to find something she could bring to the hospital room to brighten it up some for Christmas, and that was when she came across the bin with the photo albums. She opened one and saw those old pictures of me in high school and all those funny things my friends and I used to write in each other’s books. She thought I’d get a kick out of them and brought several with her to the hospital, thinking maybe they’d prompt me to tell her and Jennifer some stories they’d never heard before.
I never did, because that was about the time when I started getting worse and going in and out so much. I remembered Patsy holding up my senior memory book and saying there was a lot in there for the three of us to look at, but something took hold of me right about then and most everything has been sketchy and blank ever since. I know when somebody is with me here in the room, and sometimes I hear every word they say, but most of the time it’s like I’m on a stretcher or enclosed inside some container and being wheeled or pushed or carted off to a place where it’s just me and what’s around that only I can see.
I remember us in the park that day, six of us all acting silly and posing for pictures with statues and ducks and standing beside a pond with Ronnie acting like he was fixing to throw me in and Lois and Helen beside me carrying on like they were trying to stop him. We’d just come back from getting our senior pictures made, and we’d had lunch at Candyland and hopped into Ronnie’s car and drove over to the park. We were dressed up in nice dresses and suits and ties and it was three weeks before school was starting before senior year. Ronnie was my boyfriend for more than a year by then, and we’d made up our minds we were going to get married when we graduated in June.
So, it was me and Ronnie and Lois and Helen and Helen’s boyfriend, James, who died overseas two years later, and Clifford Mason, who was nobody’s boyfriend right then, who’d just moved to Nashville from North Carolina and hardly knew anybody yet but who Lois had seen at her church and all at once taken a fancy to.
Clifford was kind of quiet and shy because he was still an outsider and didn’t know anybody much, wasn’t in the middle of everything like everybody in our circle, but I could feel him looking my way that afternoon, like he was seeking me out or something, and I became more and more aware as the day went on I was looking his way too.
I can’t remember the last time I had anything to eat. There’s no way to know for certain but I’ll bet they’re pumping something into me to keep my nutrition levels up. I’ve got so many wires and tubes hooked up to my arms there’s bound to be some of that going on, but I’m not for certain. Every time I open my eyes and try to focus all I see are machines with numbers on them and screens with arrows and symbols flashing, and I hear whirring and beeping coming from devices working to keep me alive letting the people who tend to them know whether I’m still ticking along or if it’s safe to unplug them, because there comes a time when nothing more can be done and it’s all a waste of time.
It’s funny how I’m here one minute and the next second I’m way off somewhere else in a place I never thought I’d be again.
Pearl Harbor came and the country went to war. We managed to finish up our senior year despite everything going into high gear, life all interrupted and convoluted, and even though I wondered if it was the right thing to do, Ronnie and I still married in June like we’d planned, just before he enlisted into the Army. It wasn’t like it was any big choice he had—you either enlisted and had some say-so about where you went to camp, or you waited and got drafted and had the decisions made for you—and by the middle of summer Ronnie was at Fort Bragg for training before getting shipped out, and by Labor Day he was on a ship to England. I felt obligated to marry him beforehand, but I didn’t feel good about it, not so much that I was worried about Ronnie not coming back and me being a widow, but because by the time all this was going on I’d come to think that maybe I wasn’t as in love with Ronnie Hall as I’d made myself think I was all along.
I was pretty sure it was Clifford Mason I was in love with.
It turned out Clifford wasn’t eligible for military service like everyone else, because one of his legs was shorter than the other, so he stayed home when everybody else left and took a job working downtown at the Ritz Theater, working the ticket booth and the concession stand and playing usher, shining his flashlight on couples if they got to demonstrating public displays of affection in the seats, but since most of the boys were gone overseas he didn’t have to do that much.
Sometimes, when Clifford was taking tickets at the door, he’d slip me and my girlfriends in for free.
Most Saturdays we’d all go to the afternoon matinee, then, when it was over, we’d walk over to the park where there were refreshment stands set up and get corn dogs on a stick for supper and then go dancing at the pavilion, where there were tables and chairs and a wooden floor under the dome lights and a big band playing until the park closed at eleven. Usually we would all go home then because we had to get up the next morning to go to church, but on this one Saturday night in July—a few weeks past Independence Day in 1942, I remember it clearly—when Clifford showed up after closing down the movie house, and there he was, one of the few men present, and before I knew it he and I were out on the floor dancing, me a married woman and all that implied, and while I admit I was thinking about what I was doing long and hard there at the first, after a few tunes and a couple of times around the floor I wasn’t concerned about it at all. We just kept dancing until the band went home.
I suppose it’s nighttime, because when I open my eyes there’s Jennifer sitting there reading her trashy novel, because if it was daylight she’d be at her job and not here. I watch her a minute without saying anything, as if I could open my mouth and have any kind of conversation anymore anyway, which could be a good thing, since maybe if I could talk I might say something that was better left unsaid. At this point it might be better to just let things go.
Jennifer’s the prettiest of my two girls. She came a year before Patsy, but Patsy looks ten years older. I guess having three kids will do that to you if you don’t watch it. Jennifer only had Keith and stopped after that. Of course, Keith is an only child and has been spoiled every day of his life. He’s sixteen now, so he’s old enough these days to take care of himself, which is good, since Jennifer hasn’t had his daddy around for three years and has had to basically raise him on her own, even though I’ll admit her ex has been pretty good about keeping up with child support.
I don’t guess I’ve been the best grandmother there ever was. I tried to show up for everything and have the grandkids over to spend the night when they were little, but after Ronnie was gone I could feel myself distancing a little all the time. I suppose I’m one of those people who can’t get a hundred percent involved in family and things. Most of the time I’m too wrapped up in myself, always wondering what it’s going to take to make myself happy.
When Jennifer was coming I still hadn’t accepted the fact of pending motherhood yet. It was like I was in a state of disbelief, inhabiting as I was some level of denial thinking this act of labor I was fixing to go into and having a baby didn’t truly apply to me and was one of those things that happened to others. Sure, I’d had morning sickness and yens and my stomach had blown up to outlandish proportions, but in my mind I’d not come to believe that such a circumstance could possibly happen to me. I was too young to be a mother. That was for old people. I had too many outside interests of my own to make time for a baby. This was for those women who don’t have important things taking up their time.
The good thing was I had no trouble delivering either Jennifer or Patsy. I don’t think it was because I was some kind of earth mama or anything or that my body was designed to pop babies out in an oh-so efficient manner. I was just one of the lucky ones when it came down to it, and I can thank the Lord for that blessing, because the way I was I certainly couldn’t have handled any complications. Having my daughters was something I just had to do and get it over with so I could get back to my real life. I know that sounds selfish and self-centered and like I was only interested in pleasing myself, but that’s the way I’ve always been. I had the philosophy that if you couldn’t please yourself and make your own self happy then you as sure as shooting weren’t ever going to be able to do it for somebody else.
The girls came along one after another, seven years after Ronnie got back from the War. It took us both some time to adjust when he returned; he was used to being with his army buddies overseas in places where he could do things and not have to worry about a wife asking questions, and I’d been having a fine enough time myself working my job at the restaurant and going to movies and dances in the park and spending time with Clifford when we could both get away, the two of us falling in love as we went along, so I don’t think either I or Ronnie was too anxious to get back together and start acting like we were going to live happily ever after.
Ronnie and I did it for a while though. Back then you didn’t have many options once you’d made a choice on how you were going to spend the rest of your life. You didn’t get a chance to do things over.
It’s getting harder returning from wherever it is I’m drifting off to. Sometimes I find myself in one of those places I used to be back when I was really alive and not creeping toward some uncertain end like a wounded animal, like has been going on for days now. I take it all in through my barely-open eyes and it’s hard to believe I’m still actually a part of the world.
I wish he would hurry up and come.
Ten years and the birth of two daughters passed before Clifford and I started seeing each other again. Of course, it wasn’t like we’d ever really stopped, even though Clifford did actually get involved with a woman he worked with at the post office and ended up marrying her. This was after I’d spent a decade with Ronnie, after Clifford told me he couldn’t wait on me anymore. He got married and five years later they had a little boy, so there we were both married to other people, both of us parents, with spouses and children to worry about despite the fact we were in love with each other. It was like we had some unspoken treatise between ourselves wherein we had to make sure our kids were grown up good before we did anything momentous, for both of us to stay married and keep up appearances so there was no scandal to be explained, and when everyone was safe in their own private existences and able to get by without being scarred by what we did, then that would be the time we could finally be together.
How I used to dream about such a day to come! To me, it was a golden time off in the future where there would be breathtaking sunsets and romantic music and a fulfillment of years of longing and whispered promises. The vision of it someday arriving made the days and years we’d spent apart go by faster, the anticipation of our love shaping the lives we were living in the present tolerable and acceptable.
I don’t know how many times Clifford and I were together in the flesh through those years—I guess I could number them on my fingers—but somehow or another, even though huge chunks of time would go by, we would always think of each other and it would build and we’d end up having to find a way to be together again. I never felt bad about our trysts because I had the suspicion Ronnie had some detours of his own going on too, and maybe Clifford’s wife—her name was Sharon—was doing the same, so it wasn’t like anybody was being wronged by the cheating going on in the real sense of the term, because it was partitioned out equally among us.
It’s just that life went on all the time, and there was always somewhere to go or something that had to be done, and suddenly through no one’s fault at all, the day came when I had to stop and take stock and come to the conclusion that Clifford and I were so far from each other in our lives that it might be impossible to ever get back to that wonderland of love we inhabited together once. I looked at it so long and hard that it became almost impossible to not think of what was between us that we had once shared together being now a thing of the past.
Everybody’s in here now. I can’t make them all out but I feel them milling around. I think I can hear all their hearts beating.
I guess it’s now or never, so I suppose I ought to say something.
“Is he here?” I ask.
“Is who here, Mama?” Jennifer says. “Who are you looking for?”
“I think she’s looking for Daddy,” Patsy whispers, like she’s in church or something. “I think she believes she’s fixing to meet him again.”
I wanted to laugh out loud, and if I wasn’t dying right then I probably would have, so it’s probably a good thing I couldn’t talk anymore, because I might have spent my last breath telling everyone how wrong they were. I’d tell them how I wasn’t waiting on their dear old daddy at all.
But they’ll never know I’m hanging around waiting on Clifford to come. They won’t know how it has always been between us.
“You know I’m never going to love anybody the way I love you.”
Clifford was talking to me that last time we were together. I don’t know how many years ago that was.
We were in his house that night. His wife was gone off to some educational conference for three days and his son was with his grandmother. I’d made up some tale to get away and come by for a while to see him, but I wouldn’t spend the night like he wanted me to. It was too risky. Sharon might come home early or somebody might see me leaving in the light of day.
“Maybe you and I are just not meant to be,” he was saying, “but there’s always the next life to come.” He kissed my forehead and smiled at me in that way he always had, like he knew something that was a secret and was letting me in on it. “I’m a great believer,” he told me, “in a better world coming after this one’s over and done.”
Well, that was a lot of bull, and I knew it, but I let it go. I didn’t want to open my mouth and spoil everything we’d nurtured over the years by spouting out the truth. There was a part of me that had sense enough to know the end was near for me and Clifford, that there really wasn’t going to be a lot more than this to follow, so I kept my thoughts private. It seemed like the best thing was to let this moment pass and keep the fond memories and recollections intact.
Amen.
That’s what’s going through my head when I come back to everyone. Amen, because I know this is the last time I’ll be here with them, and because I want to see a few things once more. I want to see my girls and whoever’s with them, grandkids and all, maybe take one more glimpse to see if Clifford got here after all.
But I know that’s not true, because there’s a part of me that knows Clifford’s gone before me already, so there’s nothing left of him in this old world now.
I do see my memory book laying on the table beside me. Patsy brought an armful of my albums and yearbooks in for us to look at, but I started going down so fast we didn’t have the chance to open them. I suppose in the end she’ll gather them up with all my clothes and things, after I’m gone, and put them back into the plastic bins and store them somewhere until the house gets sold.
I know one thing that’s inside that book, and I don’t need anybody opening it up for me to see it, because it’s just as plain as day already in my mind. It’s etched there for good, one of those things that no matter how long I go without seeing it or touching it it’s always there for me.
I hold it in my heart of hearts. I keep it always in my soul.
There’s a red rose in that book, pinned inside the yellowed-plastic cover on the page, a rose that never seems to fade.
Never forget our time together. Signed with a C.
C for Clifford.
From a trellis in the park, down by the lake, after a Saturday night dance.
Funny how so much happens and goes by, but when you get to the end you remember it all.
Remember it whether it was true or not.
Because what you remember is the only truth that matters in the end, when everything is said and done.
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