We rounded the boot of Italy into the Tyrrhenian Sea and stopped at Marsala where I bought beautiful lace that I didn't know what I'd do with once I got it home. It was handmade, and I felt one day it would be meaningful. Our last stop was Naples, and we traveled to Mount Vesuvius and were wowed by all the frescos in the Duomo di San Gennaro Cathedral.
The ten-day cruise ended near Rome, where Josh and I spent three days. On the first day, we toured Vatican City and attended Mass at St. Peter's Basilica and sat with our heads bent backward to view Michelangelo's 16th-century paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The next day we went to the Coliseum with its ancient Roman gladiator arena, then to the Pantheon temple built in the first century. It housed Renaissance tombs, including Raphael's, who was the artist who painted the large Madonna at the Vatican.
We swore we would return to tour all of the museums and other places we didn't have time for and left Italy in love with the Italian people and each other.
*
When we got home from our honeymoon, all of my and Lilly's things had been moved to Josh's house.
Josh, Lilly, and I were gloriously in love, and Lilly blossomed in our little family. Joe came over once a week or so for dinner and took Lilly overnight a couple times a month. We decided legal custody was the best way to handle things and were frank with Lilly. She was angry, at first, and said I was trying to steal her from her parents, but Josh, always the peacemaker and arbitrator, eventually convinced her that we all loved her and that now she had four parents, wasn't she the lucky one?
Lilly was sad that she didn't see Joe every day, but as he healed from losing Emma and the break-up with his girlfriend, he returned to his old self and was much more available to Lilly, which made us all happy. Sometimes he took Lilly to visit Emalene, and they would talk about how hard it was for both of them that she didn't really know them. Joe was almost as much a part of our lives during our first year of marriage as Lilly.
We wanted children right away. I was almost twenty-five, Josh was thirty-four, and we made love every chance we got. We would comment that, of course, it was because we were trying to make a baby, but, really, we couldn't keep our hands off each other when we were alone. Every month when my period came we were disappointed, but we just tried harder.
Josh completed his plastics fellowship and went to work with a large plastic surgery practice in Manhattan. We'd been married two years when he announced that he was going to Guatemala with Operation Smile to perform surgery on children with cleft lips and pallets. We had never been apart, and he suggested I go with him. Joe couldn't keep Lilly for two entire weeks, and I didn’t want to take that much time from work, so I stayed home.
The trips to different countries for Operation Smile became annual events and Josh loved the experiences. He'd come home with story after story and envelopes of pictures of children who'd been transformed by the operation. The best part was when he'd return to those countries the following years to see the recovered children. He said their lives were turned around and they and their families were happy and grateful.
*
We were six years into our marriage and still, no babies. I decided to quit working and try to finish my book. Maybe I'd be more relaxed and would get pregnant. In addition, Lilly was almost a teenager and needed more of my attention, so there seemed to be more reasons than not to quit my job and stay home.
She freaked out when she started her period, and I was glad I was there to guide her and teach her how to handle girl-things. She had a short-term boyfriend who broke her heart, and we worked through that turmoil with grace. She swore off boys after that—she said none of them were smart enough, anyway.
Lilly had quite a brain. Josh helped her with science and math, I helped her with English and history, and she excelled in all of her classes. Josh and I met with her teachers each semester and beamed with pride when they told us what a good student Lilly was and how kind she was to the other pupils. She was in a private school that was mostly white, but it didn't seem to affect Lilly, her teachers, or her friends that she was colored.
She had lots of friends, played the flute in the band, and had a beautiful singing voice, so she joined the chorus. After I quit working, I felt like a taxi service taking my little girl, who was growing into a beautiful pre-teen, to after-school practices, sessions, try-outs, rehearsals, and meetings. She spent a few hours every week tutoring younger students who were struggling with academics, and she volunteered with the literacy council to teach English and reading to immigrants.
Josh and I were proud of Lilly, but we wanted more children; some of our own. We discussed adopting; after all, we looked at Lilly as an example of how beautiful adoption could work out.
“Maybe we should think about adopting one of the Operation Smile children.” Josh was sitting next to me on the sofa and we were looking at pictures of children who would have surgery that summer. He said we might think about one of the children he operated on in Haiti or Mexico.
Although we talked about it every year, we didn't pursue it with fervor until 1981, the summer Josh went to Peru with Operation Smile.
He was excited about the patients on his list, having received pictures and medical records in advance. One of his patients would be a baby boy named Hernando whose mother had died during childbirth.
Josh showed me the picture of this one-year-old child who he thought might be the right one for us.
“He’s adorable.” I held a picture of a brown-skinned boy with dark, straight hair and the largest brown eyes I’d ever seen. His crooked smile showed a few baby teeth above which was the cleft lip that deformed the bottom of his nose and upper lip.
“His name is Hernando.” Josh read his profile and talked about the possibility of bringing him back to the States. “If things look positive once I meet him and talk to the people who run the orphanage, you should plan to meet me in Peru.”
I was excited about Hernando and made Josh promise to do everything he could to bring the boy home with him.
Josh called me when he arrived in Peru for his mission, and again midway through the two weeks, as he'd always done. The day before his two weeks was up he always called to confirm his flight information with me because Lilly and I made a ritual of meeting him at the airport when he arrived back in New York.
When he called, I asked if he'd seen Hernando and he said he had, and asked if I would fly to Peru and meet the boy?
"That will only delay things, Josh. Just bring him home with you. I know I’ll love him," I told him over the phone.
"He lives in a remote village. I'll have to find transportation back there, which will delay me coming home." Josh asked me again to go to Peru to meet him but I refused to leave Lilly and begged him to go get Hernando. He said he'd try and would be home the following Friday.
I thought I'd written the date wrong on my calendar when I didn't hear from Josh the next Friday. I waited all day Saturday and still had no phone call but thought he was making arrangements for me to join him, or maybe the adoption process was underway. I was excited about Hernando.
On Sunday morning the doorbell rang. Lilly and I were alone, because Ruby didn't come in on weekends so I slipped on my robe and slippers and went to the foyer. I pressed the button on the monitor and saw two strangers, men dressed in suits and ties, standing on the stoop. I pressed the intercom and asked who they were and what they wanted.
"We're with Operation Smile. We have news for you about Dr. Joshua Ryan." The taller man had taken off his hat and leaned into the intercom. I thought maybe Josh had sent them with travel arrangements for me to meet him in Peru, but something sinister crept up my spine.
"Give me a minute." I went to the phone and called the security guard our association had on staff and asked him to come to my front door and check the credentials of the people on my stoop. I watched the monitor as Officer Jesup approached the men. They took out their wallets and Jesup examined several cards, the
n he looked into the monitor and nodded. I pressed the button.
"You can let them in, Mrs. Ryan. I'll come in with them." I pressed the door release and heard the click. When the door opened I smelled stale cigarette smoke that lingered on one of their jackets and I backed away as if their aura was contagious. By now Lilly, in her pajamas and robe, was standing next to me and we had our arms around each other.
"Mrs. Ryan. There's been an accident." The shorter man was talking but I no longer heard the words coming from his mouth about how Josh had taken a helicopter from a remote village in Peru with a little boy named Hernando.
“It crashed into a mountain before it reached the Lima airport.” The taller man’s lips were moving but nothing reached my buzzing ears.
It was as though a silent movie was playing in front of me in slow motion—lips moving, hands in the air, but no sound. Lilly screamed and buried her head in my chest, and I stood straight and tall and stared at the three men as though they were not there. There was no air in the room, as if someone had suctioned all life out.
In that dead silence, I could taste ashes and salt. Everything went black, and I fell to the bottom of a deep well where I was hollering and the sound of my screams was bouncing off the sides of the bricks inside the hole. My feet were in about a foot of water and something was crawling up my back. I started to swat at the creature, but it stuck to me and I fell and became drenched in the liquid that had turned red and coated me. I felt like I was breathing blood through my nose and that my lungs were filling with the thick substance.
When I stood up in the well, I was all alone, except for the feeling of something tightening around my waist. At first I thought the strange being was climbing up my body and would squeeze my chest and I would stop breathing; instead, I felt hands pulling on me and saw Lilly attached to me as if I was her life raft and could save her, even though I, myself, was drowning.
Somehow the two of us made it to the sofa where we spent the rest of the day.
I don't remember eating or drinking or going to the bathroom or talking. I only remember Lilly's arms around me, and how her tears drenched my nightgown and made it stick to me. I didn't cry. I couldn't feel anything but guilt. It was all my fault.
If I hadn't insisted that Josh bring Hernando home, they would both still be alive.
Joe came over that evening, but he was as bereft as we were. We all sat and stared at shadows in the living room.
Ruby came in the next morning and sat with Lilly and me all day, crying, sniffling, rubbing her eyes. My friends from Shilling Publications came and went. People from my church brought food and drinks. Joe hung around, left, and came back often. The priest from St. John's was there almost daily, I think.
Ruby walked around with red-rimmed eyes and Lilly would sit in the club chair in the corner of my bedroom and watch me. Mostly I stayed in my bed and stared at the ceiling. I might have slept in spurts but I can't say I remember sleeping or waking or crying or screaming or laughing, but later people told me I did all of that.
I vaguely remember the florist arriving with a huge bouquet of white lilies. I asked Ruby why they weren't brought to the funeral home and she said the delivery man said the instructions were specific—deliver them to the home. Every day or so, the doorbell rang and there was a long white box with one long-stemmed white lily to add to the bouquet. When some of the original ones started turning brown and dropping petals, Ruby would remove them. She added the new ones and the entire house was filled with a wonderful, fresh aroma.
It was the only thing I noticed over the next month.
They finally brought Josh's body home a week after I got the news. We held a funeral mass at St. John's. I remember wearing black and hanging onto Lilly. We sat in the first row and watched the priest go through the rituals of Mass and Communion. Marianne and Sissy appeared as if out of nowhere and sat on either side of Lilly and me, Sissy holding my hand, Marianne rubbing Lilly's back,
I remember the cemetery and the hole in the ground where Josh's brass-rimmed coffin rested on green straps. I remember smelling freshly cut grass and newly turned earth, and watching earthworms churn up the soil that was piled a few yards from the green tent with a row of cloth-draped chairs underneath.
I know Joe was there because he rode with Lilly, Sissy, Marianne, and me in a black car to and from the church and the cemetery, and back to our house in Brooklyn Heights—the house Josh and I were supposed to sell when we found something more family oriented, the house where Josh and I would start our family of at least four children with curly hair and green eyes and thick eyelashes.
The house with a vase overflowing with white, long-stemmed lilies that came from some nameless person every few days.
Sissy and Marianne went home, but returned about four weeks after the funeral. I was still in bed staring at the ceiling. They got me in the shower, made me put on decent clothes, not the sweats and T-shirts I'd been wearing for a month, and took Lilly and me to an Italian restaurant. It was the first time I'd been out of the house in a month, except for the funeral. They made me eat a slice of pizza and were very kind, but firm with me.
"You have to get a grip. Look at Lilly. She's hurting too. She needs you," Lilly had not left me, not even to spend a weekend with Joe. Marianne was holding both of my hands on the table. I finally started to cry. We got in a cab and went back to the house in Brooklyn Heights, and I cried all the way home. When we walked inside, and I looked around, I saw and felt and smelled Josh in every wall and door and lamp and rug and picture. I became hysterical.
It was as though someone had opened a dam and all the pain, disbelief, shock, and loss flooded out of me at once. I'd stand in Josh's closet and wrap his clothes around me, inhale his scent, then wipe my tears on one of his suits. Lilly, Sissy, and Marianne took turns consoling me while my hysteria went on for two days and I finally ran out of tears.
At breakfast that Wednesday we all sat in the kitchen. Ruby, still red-eyed, was frying bacon and we had cups of coffee in front of us.
"Okay, Susie. We need to talk about your future—yours and Lilly's." Marianne had her arm around Lilly and Sissy was holding one of my hands. "You have to move on. You can't stay mired in this muck and grief. Josh would not want that." For the first time in over a month, I heard words come out of someone's mouth. And I listened.
Josh's lawyer came to meet with me that afternoon. We went into Josh's study and I asked Mr. Milton to sit behind the desk in Josh's chair. I sat in one of the French chairs in front of the desk, Lilly sat in the other. He told us that Josh left a will, and that almost everything was bequeathed to me—the Brooklyn Heights home we lived in, the condo in Manhattan I'd never seen that had been leased for years, his partnership in the plastic surgery practice, thousands of acres of land in Texas and Arizona where I'd never been, and money he'd inherited that had been in an investment account since his dad died. He also left a trust fund for Lilly that would be worth a fortune in the coming years. In addition, he left an endowment for Operation Smile.
"He set up a living trust for you about five years ago, Mrs. Ryan, in case something like this happened. He didn't want his money tied up where you couldn't get to it until the succession was completed."
"What does that mean?"
"It means you have a good deal of cash readily available while the will is probated and the properties are transferred to you. Lilly's trust fund is simple—she gets the first distribution at eighteen, then annual payments until she's twenty-five, when she'll get another lump sum. She will continue to receive annual disbursements as well as generous withdrawals every five years for life. Until then, if you need money for her care, you can draw on her trust since you are the trustee."
I thought about what Mr. Milton said—"He set it up five years ago in case something like this happened." Did Josh know he would die young? Why would a thirty-something year old think to set up something this complicated, in case?
When Mr. Milton lef
t, I leaned against the inside of the front door and stared at Lilly who was standing almost toe-to-toe with me. We were both overwhelmed. Josh's generosity was astounding; what's more, I had not been aware that Josh had so much money and property. He worked hard and was down-to-earth, so normal, not at all like a privileged kid who had inherited a fortune.
Mr. Milton left a file with the names of the investment people who handled Josh's money, the titles for the properties, the lease, and a lot of other papers I didn't care about. Lilly and I were sitting in the den holding hands and whispering things we remembered about Josh. She was crying softly and I rubbed her back to soothe her pain.
Marianne and Sissy came in and sat across from us.
"Our flights back to Louisiana are scheduled for tomorrow," Marianne said. "We're worried about leaving you two here alone." I took a deep breath and squeezed Lilly's hand. She turned to me with a frightened look and a big tear ran down her face. I couldn't imagine what we would do without my two sisters, Lilly's aunts, who loved us so well.
"Come home with us for a couple weeks. It would be good for you and for Lilly." Sissy got up and squeezed onto the sofa next to me and put her arm on my shoulder. She was my baby sister, nine years my junior, but now she was taking care of me.
"Look, you don't have to stay at the house with Daddy. You can stay in the Quarters with Marianne and Tootsie and I'll come over every day." Sissy squeezed my shoulder, and I looked at Lilly and saw her pain, and my heart broke for my daughter.
"What do you think, Lilly?" I reached my arm over her shoulder and she fell into my lap and hugged me around the waist. When she finished crying and pulling strength from me, she sat up.
"I'd like to go to Jean Ville and be with Tootsie, Marianne, and the families in the Quarters. It would be good to get out of this house for a while." She meant where Josh's ghost was in every corner and cubbyhole, and that if we were going to heal, we had to get away from the source of the pain, even if temporarily. Out of the mouths of babes…
*
Lilly Page 24
