Goodbye, Miss February

by Sally O'Brien

  “Uh-huh.” He helped me off with my coat and hung it on one of the two wire hangers in the closet. “Been cleaning things out, getting ready to sell.” He put his arms around my waist, his lips to the back of my neck.

  I broke away so he wouldn’t feel me trembling. “You have anything to drink?” Was that little squawk my voice? “Or a glass for water? They say you should drink eight glasses of water a day. I know a woman who carries a gallon jug with her all the time, and you see people with those Evian bottles everywhere but . . .”

  He stepped in front of me, cupped my face in his hands, and kissed me. Oh, my. In all my back-to-Dusty fantasies, the kisses were exactly like this one, a two-armed, thorough, accomplished kiss that pressed the length of my body against his. It tasted of peppermint and left me breathless. All of me tingled and the world faded away, leaving only Dusty and me. As it should be. I buried my face against his neck.

  “I missed you,” he said in a voice hoarse with emotion. My spirits lifted like Thelma’s head when she heard the can opener. I snuggled against him and could feel his smile. Without saying anything, we went upstairs, climbing the steps slowly so we wouldn’t get out of breath. I’d noticed his middle-aged wheeze. The hair on his chest was gray, a shock, and I was nervous about the backs of my thighs and my sagging stomach.

  At one point we ordered pizza. I’m not sure we ate it. I called Andy and told her it was snowing and I’d better stay in Beamer another night.

  When morning came we were wrapped around each other and I nearly burst with happiness. I kissed his shoulder and thought how lucky I was. I felt eighteen again. I could run marathons or climb mountains. No more arthritic hip.

  I made coffee in a temperamental machine I’d found in the kitchen cupboard and carried two cups of fresh-brewed to the table, walking carefully to avoid sloshing when I wanted to jump and skip. The coffee was so hot swirls of steam fogged the glasses I hadn’t known Dusty wore.

  “Good morning,” he said, reaching across the table to place his hand on mine. He took a sip of the coffee and frowned at its taste.

  “I couldn’t find any cream or sugar.” I said.

  “That’s okay. I don’t use them.”

  I remembered my smug “one cream, two sugars” yesterday and wondered how many other things I thought I knew but didn’t.

  We sat in silence for a full minute, listening to the cat clock ticking behind us. Dusty broke the silence. “I’ve spent most of the last few days talking to that cat. He hasn’t answered me yet.”

  “Thelma’s not a big talker either.” My smile was weak. I didn’t want to ask but there was no way not to. “Why didn’t you come back? Didn’t you care about me?”

  He stared at me for so many heartbeats I wondered if I’d actually spoken the words. “You got married,” he said.

  I could feel my face flush. “Not right away. Didn’t you think about me at all? Miss me? Wonder how I was managing without you?”

  He looked uneasy and raised a hand in apology. “Of course. It’s just . . .” Dusty coughed. “Why didn’t you wait for me?”

  “Wait for you?” I was stunned. “Wait for you? I can’t believe you said that.” I jumped to my feet and started pacing around the room, looking for something to kick or hit. He had a lot of nerve! How dare he play dead all these years and then wonder why I hadn’t sat quietly until he reappeared? “Are you kidding? You were dead!”

  “I was coming back—after the army. I thought you’d be . . . Oh, never mind.”

  “Never mind? Never mind?” My voice rose, filled with righteous anger. “How was I supposed to know you were still alive? I would have waited until you got out of the army. I would have waited forever if I’d just known.” Suppressing the urge to throw my cup across the room, I lowered myself onto a chair before my shaky knees could give out. “By the time you sent the first postcard, I was already with Marvin.”

  “Didn’t take you long to replace me.” Dusty’s voice sounded bitter. “I knew you’d have a hard time managing by yourself, but you had Andy.”

  Letting my breath out slowly, I closed my eyes and concentrated on the beat of my heart. “Andy was in college,” I said, “and I still had a year of high school. The other kids avoided me—they didn’t know how to act around me, what to say, probably didn’t want my gloom dragging them down—and no one wanted to date the dead hero’s girl.”

  “I wasn’t a hero.”

  “When you’re eighteen and dead, you’re a hero.”

  “Oh. Sorry. I never meant . . .” Dusty studied my face. “Were you happy with him?”

  I delayed answering an instant too long. “Yes. He wasn’t you, but he was smart and funny. He made a good husband.” I felt my lips quivering. “He died two years ago. Didn’t you know that or didn’t you care?” I hated the caustic tone of my voice.

  Dusty shrugged. “With my job I couldn’t . . . Things are what they are.”

  I was learning to dislike that phrase. “How about you?” I asked. “Ever marry?” I’d already noticed he didn’t wear a ring.

  “Once, briefly. It didn’t work out.”

  “Sorry,” I said. A lie. “So we both, as you said, adapted.”

  Dusty looked out the window, apparently fascinated by the view of bare branches and dirty snow. The light struck his face, and I noticed an unfamiliar scar by his left eye. Where did he get that? And when? Another part of his life that didn’t include me.

  After several minutes, he reached for my hand, closing his fingers over mine. “Let’s not do this now, okay?” he said. “We have to go soon.”

  My anger melted away at his touch and I ventured a tentative smile as I lifted my face to his. He touched my hair, smoothing down an uncooperative strand. “When are you going back to California?”

  I hesitated, wanting to promise I’d live in this room forever, never let him out of my sight again. Instead, I said, “In three days—Wednesday. Andy’s almost well enough to stay alone and I have things to do there. What about you?”

  Dusty coughed and with a wince put his hand over his right side.

  “Your ribs hurt?” I asked.

  He waved off the question. “Just a pulled muscle. I’m headed back to Texas, tomorrow maybe. Have a little place there.” He laced his fingers through mine. “Janie, there’s something I want to ask you.”

  “What?” I sat, unmoving, giving him time, pulse hammering. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t down on one knee. Our movie was reaching its happy ending.

  He inhaled and I heard his chest rattle. “I have to go away—soon. And if I can’t be here when Mother . . . Well, you’re the closest thing she has to family.”

  The screen faded to black and I pulled my hand away. “Other than her nephew, you mean?” My voice sounded sharp. “That’s pretty selfish, Dusty. You’ve ignored your mother all this time. Surely you can spare a few days for her now.”

  “Can’t be helped. Please. You know I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have to. And it’s not definite I won’t be here. This is just in case, okay?”

  “Whoever you work for is certainly inconsiderate. You’d think they’d give you time off.” He didn’t say anything and I gave in. “Okay, I’ll talk to Andy about taking care of her.”

  He rubbed his hand along my arm, and I fought the urge to purr. Then he coughed again and I realized how much he’d been coughing.

  “Dusty, are you sick?”

  “Nah, just smoke too much.”

  But I saw it in his eyes. “There’s a hospital in Texas, isn’t there?”

  He smiled. “Probably several of them.”

  “You’re wheezing. You should see a doctor, maybe get an antibiotic. You might have pneumonia.”

  “I don’t.”

  My breath caught. As though neon lights were flashing the words on the wall, I knew he was right. All the signs came together—th
e thinness, the hair loss, the cough. There was no mean employer. The horse was going to ride into the sunset without us.

  I reached over and put my hand on his arm, traced my fingers to his hand. “Come to California,” I said in a soft voice.

  The answer was on his face.

  “Then I’ll go to Texas.”

  “‘Where I’m going, you can’t follow. What I’ve got to do, you can’t be any part of.’”

  I felt the burning behind my eyes but managed to keep my lips smiling as I searched for the right words. “Oh, Dusty, it can’t be that bad. We can’t change the past but we could be together now.”

  “You’d regret it. ‘Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.’”

  I might never watch Casablanca again. “Stop it, Dusty. This isn’t a movie.”

  He stared at the floor. “There’s something I have to tell you, okay?”

  Should I admit I already knew, save him the pain of saying it out loud? I braced myself.

  “I’m allergic to cats.”

  “Ha,” I said, “no wonder you didn’t want to move to California.” Forcing myself to smile, I held my head motionless to keep the tears from spilling down my cheeks. “Tell you what, I’ll get rid of Thelma.” He had no idea what it cost me to say that. Ripping off my arms would be easier—and I’d do that too.

  With a rueful smile, he shook his head.

  I felt like cold bands were squeezing my heart. “But there must be some kind of treatment—pills or shots or something.”

  Shaking his head, he reached out and touched my face. “Jane, stop. I’ve tried them all, and nothing worked. It’s just something we have to accept.”

  “Things are what they are?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  My mind swirled. “We can get through this together, I said. “‘Come and grow old with me.’ Remember?”

  Dusty shook his head. “Don’t get sappy, kid.”

  I started to say something but he held up his hand. I knew I’d lost. “Aren’t you going to tell me we’ll always have Beemer?”

  I caught the grin before he ducked his head to check his watch. “It’s getting late. I want to stop by the nursing home and you need to get going.”

  I saw his hands shaking. “You’re right. I should get back to Andy.”

  “Want breakfast first? Buster Burger has a pretty good omelet—made with real eggs.”

  “No, think I’ll just head out. I’m not hungry.” I never thought I’d hear myself say those words. In all my years I’d missed maybe three meals, none of them because I wasn’t hungry.

  As we both rose, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small pearl earring. “I’ve been waiting to give this back to you. My good luck charm. Here, take it,” he said, placing it in my hand and folding my fingers around it. “I won’t need it anymore.” Then he put his arms around me and kissed the top of my head and my cheek. He smelled like soap and coffee. I rested my forehead against his chest and felt his heart thudding. As my arms circled his waist, he flinched.

  I put on my coat, Dusty’s hug still warm on my back and shoulders. “Call me?”

  “Sure,” he said in a tone that meant don’t sit by the phone.

  “Hey, kid,” he said as I opened the door. The old Dusty looked out of his eyes. “Don’t expect any more postcards.”

  Life goes on. Until it doesn’t.

  Forty-One

  I made it to my car before breaking down. The black pickup parked in front of me had Texas plates and a portable oxygen tank in the back that my eyes had been too full of stars to see last night. I knew I couldn’t drive to Cherry Glen feeling like this but I had to get away before Dusty came out.

  The car found the cemetery, seemingly on its own. Andy had given me directions to our parents’ graves (left at the big angel, right at the tree by the pond where we used to ice skate). I parked and pulled on the boots Andy had insisted I bring. The ground had turned slushy in the spring-like weather.

  I squished to the headstone and traced the letters with my fingers. Together in Life, Together for Eternity. My folks were lucky. If anyone had offered Dusty and me thirty good years together, I’d have taken them.

  I sank down on the wet ground and felt sorry for myself, mourning the loss of too many—my parents, Marvin, Dusty, old friends. As I looked around, I could see stones for people I’d known all my life. When did John Mason die? He was Andy’s age. And my teacher, Miss Strasser. She’d died last year at eighty-six. I thought she was that old when I was in first grade. My whole childhood seemed to be in this cemetery. I reminisced about marching in my Girl Scout uniform on Memorial Day, carrying the American flag, standing at attention during Taps. With a little smile, I pictured skating with Dusty on the frozen pond—although to be accurate, I needed to picture me sitting in the warming hut. So long ago, all of it.

  Like a chill I couldn’t shake off, I knew then. It was over.

  When I returned to Cherry Glen, I told Andy about Dusty—how he’d been alive all these years as Rick Laine, how he’d sent me postcards, how he was sick and probably dying but wouldn’t let me be with him. She nodded as if she knew what I was going to say and just waited. I started to cry. “I’ve lost him. Dusty’s gone.”

  Andy handed me a box of tissues. “Janie, he’s been gone. You lost him forty years ago, you just didn’t admit it.” I gasped, feeling the blood rushing from my head. She patted my hand. “It’s time to give up the dream you’ve been living with. No handsome hero is going to carry you off into the sunset.” Did she know about the horse too?

  “He needs me. I want to take care of him.”

  “And he doesn’t want you to. Think about it. When he left, you were delicate and vulnerable and he was your knight. Did you ever consider he wants to remember you that way?” Her thumb brushed tears from my cheek. “He has no idea how you’ve changed.”

  I couldn’t seem to stop crying. Andy put her arms around me until I was down to a trickle and a few shuddering breaths. “Now, come on, you have a life—and Tim’s a nice guy.”

  “Oh, Andy! He grows tobacco.”

  “So?” She paused. “Okay, I see the irony. Well, there’s nothing wrong with raising tobacco, plus Tim likes you.”

  I caught her smile before she could hide it. “You know about the kiss,” I said.

  “The entire town knows about the kiss.”

  “How . . .?”

  “Esther told me. She heard it from Florence, who got it from Marilyn Atkins, who got it from her granddaughter who works at the hospital and said these two really old people were making out in front of the elevator on West 5.” While I was stumbling over really old people, she added, “Tim’s a good person. You don’t have to live with a ghost.”

  “I know.” My voice quavered. Then I blew my nose and said, “If Dusty can’t be there when his mother dies, I told him we’d take care of the arrangements.”

  Andy nodded. “Okay.”

  “I’ll come back. You won’t have to do everything alone.”

  “Okay,” she said again. “We’ll handle it together.” I heard her unsaid “this time.”

  I spent the next two days packing, knowing I wouldn’t hear from Dusty, hoping anyway. But the phone was never for me and the only person who came to the house was Esther carrying casseroles from the Neighborhood Club ladies.

  I had more to pack than when I came. How many sweatshirts had I bought, and what should I do with them? They were too warm for California. I thought of leaving them for Andy and giggled at the idea of her wearing clothes dotted with cherries. In a different family she could have been offended—but in ours Andy would laugh with me.

  Every family was different. The more I thought about them the more I realized I needed to spend more time with mine. Andy and Chris—and Thelma, of course—were the most important p
art of my life. And JoAnn—she was practically family and now she was depending on me. A smile crossed my face at the image of me trying to force JoAnn to diet and exercise. When things were under control in San Jose, I’d visit Chris. Perhaps I’d drive my new car, and Thelma could go with me. And at the edge of my thoughts lurked the idea that while Chris was working, I could check out tobacco farms in the area. Maybe. Just an idea.

  On Wednesday it was time for me to fly home. Andy had been out of the hospital for a week, and I couldn’t think of a legitimate reason to prolong my visit. We said our goodbyes and stood by the front door waiting for Bob to pick me up. “Know what?” I said. “This morning the temperature was forty-three degrees and I thought, wow, it’s so warm today.” I laughed. “The Iowa comes right back to you.”

  Andy smiled but seemed distracted. “Are you sure you have everything?” She’d asked that question a hundred times before but kept forgetting the answer.

  “Yes, Mom.” I put on my gloves and took them off again. Leaving was harder than I’d expected. What if Andy had a relapse? I ran through my list of instructions one more time. “You have enough medicine to get you through the week. After that, Esther will refill the prescription. Remind her if she forgets. Be sure to get plenty of rest and remember you have to eat. I told Esther to start you off with soups and puddings.”

  “Is all that in the fifty pages of instructions you left on the kitchen counter?”

  “Two pages and, yes, it is.” We grinned at each other. My smile slipped as I said, “I really hate to go. I’m going to miss you.”

  “Me too.” We both had tears in our eyes, something that had never happened in our pre-surgery days.

  I cleared my throat. “You know, I’ve been thinking, maybe I should move back to Iowa. We could spend more time together and I’d be closer to Chris. Thelma would love it here.

  Andy threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, give it up. You wouldn’t last a week in small-town Iowa. You’ve been gone too long.”