A Borrowed Life

by Kerry Anne King

  Grateful that somebody has taken charge of me and is telling me what to do, I let Val lead me into the house. I sit on the sofa when she tells me to. Drink the glass of water she gives me.

  The ladies of the knitting circle collect their belongings in funereal silence, tucking unfinished blankets into knitting bags, returning their chairs to the dining room, putting the unused cups and plates back in the cabinet

  Val wraps an afghan around my shoulders, and only then do I realize how my body is trembling. “Is there anybody I can call?”

  I blink up at her as if the words are in a foreign language. Who would I call? My parents are dead. Thomas’s parents are both in a nursing home, his father so far gone with dementia he won’t comprehend what’s being said to him, his mother not much more coherent.

  As for friends, a pastor’s wife can’t have friends, not really. Inside the congregation, it looks like playing favorites when I’m supposed to love everybody equally and unconditionally. Friends outside the fold are off-limits. Val is the closest thing I have to a real friend.

  “Liz?” Val kneels down on the floor, puts her hands on my shoulders. “Do you want me to call Abigail?”

  My stomach lurches, rises. I press both hands over my mouth. Val’s kind face blurs and swims in front of me.

  I will need to call my daughter and tell her . . . tell her . . .

  I can’t do this. I can’t face this new version of the world, this new version of myself.

  The house looks strange, as if I’ve never seen it before. The greens in the throw rug in the living room grate on my nerves. I hate green, at least in that color, would have chosen blues if I’d had a say. Everything is so freakishly neat, it looks like a stage set. There is not one thing in this room that I love, that belongs to me. My entire married life feels like a book I read, a movie I watched.

  Outside of Thomas, I don’t have a life. Outside of Thomas, I don’t even exist.

  I hear myself laughing wildly, the lunatic laughter of a crazy woman.

  Kimber and Amy exchange glances and hustle out the door together. Felicity is already gone. Annie hesitates, touches my shoulder. I want to thank her, but the insane laughter doubles me over, and I can’t stop, can’t speak.

  “What is wrong with her?” Earlene demands, hovering, an expression of outright horror on her face.

  “Hysterics,” Val retorts. “Perfectly normal given what she’s just been through. I’m sorry, but do you need something?”

  Before Earlene can come up with a response, my laughter shifts to weeping, great tearing sobs that feel like they’re going to turn me inside out. Over the horrible, humiliating sounds I’m making, I hear Earlene’s voice, clear and authoritative, praying for both my soul and my sanity.

  “Do you have to do that?” Val challenges, interrupting.

  “I’m seeking intervention—”

  “Pretty sure He can still hear you if you pray silently.” Val turns back to me, her voice softening from commanding to coaxing. “Come on, Liz. Let’s get you to the hospital.”

  She fetches my coat and drapes it over my shoulders. Kneels down and slips my shoes off my feet, sliding on my warm winter boots in their place. I feel oddly comforted by this small action and sit there like a child, letting her dress me.

  Somehow Val even manages to shoo Earlene out of the house. She drives me to the hospital. Walks with me to the reception desk. Asks about Thomas.

  “Someone will be right out to speak with you,” the receptionist says. Her expression gives nothing away, and I try to guess whether this is good news or bad news. If Thomas is alive, miraculously recovered, surely she’d just say, “Go on in. He’s been asking for you.”

  Val and I settle into chairs, side by side. She holds my hand the whole time, her hand soft but capable, the skin a little dry and red on the back, nails trimmed short. In the chair across from me, an elderly man reads a magazine while the woman beside him rocks slightly, her face clenched in pain.

  When the double doors open and a bearded man in green scrubs comes out, a giant hand seems to squeeze my chest, stealing my breath.

  “Mrs. Lightsey? I’m Dr. Blaise.”

  I get to my feet, even though I know without him telling me that I’m not Mrs. Lightsey anymore. In order to be a “Mrs.,” there needs to be a “Mr.,” and the doctor’s expression tells me plainly that the “Mr.” part of this equation has passed into the great beyond.

  Chapter Three

  How do you tell your only child that her father is dead?

  That I should do this monstrous thing—break into her ordinary day with such shattering news—seems as possible as climbing Mount Everest or flying to the moon. How will I even begin?

  My instinct is to shield her from danger, to kiss her hurts and make them better, and everything in me recoils from being the one to hurt her. If I must deliver this blow, I want to be able to hold her as I tell it. But as Val points out, very gently, if I wait, if I drive to Spokane, given the small town and church communication network that Abigail and I are both connected to, she is likely to hear it from somebody else.

  So I call her, even though she’s in the middle of a shift in the emergency room at Sacred Heart.

  “Hey, Mom,” she says. “We’re expecting an onslaught any minute. Can I call you back?”

  “No, honey. We need to talk now.”

  I take a breath and steel myself. She likes facts and abhors emotional scenes. I try to keep my voice even, as if I’m reporting on the weather.

  “Your father had a heart attack earlier this evening.”

  A space of silence. A quiet breath.

  “Abigail. Honey. I’m—”

  “What time? Has he had TPA? Are they life flighting him here or to Holy Family?” She sounds as calm as if she’s taking report on an incoming patient.

  “They’re not sending him anywhere. He’s . . .” Despite my best intentions, a sob escapes me, my voice breaking.

  “Mom. Take a breath. Just tell me.”

  “He’s not . . . he didn’t . . . honey, I’m so sorry, but he’s dead.”

  “Oh,” she says, still in that professional voice. “I should probably come home. I’ll need to get my shift covered.”

  And then she hangs up before I can even suggest that she get somebody to drive her. No tears. No I-love-yous. Just the silence of my own thoughts and all of the time in the world to think them. Maybe this is what hell is, I think. Being given the thing we think we want and then having to live with it.

  News travels fast, and members of the congregation come and go. Many of them bring food. Some offer comfort, but most seem to expect it from me.

  “God has a plan, even if we don’t understand it,” I tell them, because it’s the sort of thing Thomas would say, not because I believe it. Val stays with me, quietly making decisions. She carries the food into the kitchen and tactfully herds anybody toward the door who stays too long or cries too hard. All the while, I’m worrying about Abigail.

  The stretch of road from Spokane to Colville is treacherous, even in the summer. Corners, deer, idiot drivers who are in too much of a hurry and try to pass when they shouldn’t. This time of year, there could be packed snow or black ice. She was in shock on the phone. When that breaks, she’ll be distraught, maybe not safe to drive.

  I watch the clock, mentally tracking her progress. An hour, maybe, before someone can be called in to cover the rest of her hospital shift. Half an hour to drive to her apartment for an overnight bag. Another hour and a half for the trip home, maybe longer depending on the road conditions.

  It’s half past ten when I finally hear her car in the driveway. I run to the door, wrench it open. She’s standing on the porch, a duffel bag in one hand, the other clenched into a fist.

  All I want is to draw her into my arms, to comfort her, but Abigail hurt is Abigail defiant. She’s sealed herself off into a self-contained module, untouched and untouchable.

  I reach out a hand but let it fall when I see her s
tiffen. “Abigail. Honey . . .”

  She brushes past me into the house, and I watch her take it all in. Her father’s recliner, empty, when at this hour he should be comfortably ensconced with a cup of tea, absorbed in his bedtime reading. The kitchen, where a plastic-wrapped fruit basket sits on the counter next to an array of desserts and a simmering Crock-Pot. Still wordless, Abigail proceeds down the hall, past her own old bedroom, stopping at the open door of Thomas’s study. The inner sanctum, a threshold neither of us ever cross without invitation.

  Empty. Desecrated.

  Seeing it through my daughter’s eyes, I’m struck by remorse that I didn’t clean it up before she got here. I should have thought of this. The office chair lies on its back like a dead thing that could no longer support its own weight. There’s a litter of discarded packaging on the floor, left behind by the EMTs.

  Abigail drops to her knees in exactly the place where her father fell. She picks up his Bible and smooths the crumpled pages. Her body heaves as if trying to rid itself of some terrible toxin, and then she begins to weep, the choking, tearing sobs of a woman who hardly ever cries, forced beyond her limit of endurance.

  No Band-Aid will fix this hurt. I can’t kiss her and make it better. Helpless, I sink down beside her and lightly touch her head. When she doesn’t push me away, I stroke what I can of her hair, which is twisted up so tightly into a bun that it pulls the skin of her forehead into tiny hills and valleys.

  I long to loosen it, to see her beautiful hair free, to be able to soothe her by running my fingers through it like I used to do when a nightmare woke her. But it’s been years since she’s allowed me that liberty. We sit in that small space, physically pressed together, so that every one of her cries travels through my own body.

  Gradually, her weeping subsides to gentle sobbing. She draws in a deep breath, and I get up and bring her the box of tissues that always sits on Thomas’s desk for use by emotional advisees.

  “It doesn’t seem possible.” Abigail plucks tissues from the box, mops up her face, blows her nose.

  “I know.”

  “This room . . .” Her face crumples in on itself, and my heart crumples with it. I don’t want her to feel grief or heartbreak. I want to go backward in this day and press pause somewhere, anywhere, before Thomas died. But I can’t shift reality for either of us.

  Soft footsteps in the hallway. “Is there anything I can do?” Val stands in the doorway, an unlikely angel of salvation with her frizzled hair and overdone makeup, a serpent tattoo coiled around her forearm.

  “Thank you so much, but please don’t trouble yourself,” Abigail says.

  She corrects her posture. Neutralizes her expression. Puts on a polite veneer. My heart twists again as I watch her, knowing I’m the one who taught her this.

  “Everybody is watching you, honey. You need to be an example for the others.”

  The words nearly choked me then. Now the thought of them burns like acid.

  Val smiles, kindly. Her mascara is smeared black around her eyes from tears of sympathy. “I was about to put the food away, but you really should come and eat a little something, Liz. Just a little soup.”

  “I’ll take care of it. I’m sure you’d like to get home.” Abigail’s words are polite, but her tone is dismissive. It’s the sort of thing Thomas would have said, and it stings me.

  “Oh, I don’t mind.” Val either doesn’t notice Abigail’s coolness or she’s deliberately ignoring the hidden message. She reaches down a hand to me. “Come now. Your body needs food, at least a few bites.”

  “All right. Thank you, Val. For everything.” I infuse all of the warmth I can find into the words, remembering her arm around me, her hand holding mine. All of this day, she has been here for me. A rock. A tobacco-scented angel. I let her pull me to my feet, then reach out to my daughter. “Come. Let’s eat something.”

  Abigail gets to her own feet, ignoring my outstretched hand. Adjusts her blouse and skirt. Smooths hair that doesn’t require smoothing. “I’m not hungry. I’m going to ask one of my docs to call in a sedative and pick it up for you. Which pharmacy are you using?”

  “I don’t need—”

  “I guess it’s really a question of what’s still open,” she says as if I’ve never spoken.

  I glance at the clock. “Nothing, at this hour.”

  “Maybe I can pull some strings.” She taps her phone, searching for something.

  “Abigail. I don’t want to take a pill.”

  “It’s just for a few days, until you get over the shock.”

  A thread of anger winds through my grief. If I’m guilty of teaching her to hide her feelings, it was Thomas who taught her this sense of superiority masquerading as concern for my well-being. Always the two of them, riding over my words, discounting my opinion, knowing what I need better than I do. But Thomas isn’t here now, and Abigail is my child, and the shadow of my inner self bristles at the condescension.

  “What about you?” I ask. “Are you going to take Valium, too?”

  Abigail’s forehead creases as if I’ve asked her a puzzling riddle. “Why would I do that?”

  “Grief. Shock. All of the reasons you want to get the pills for me.”

  “I’ve never needed sedatives,” she says. “Okay, here we go.” She taps the phone and then holds it up to her ear. I walk away. If Abigail thinks I need to take pills right now, she’ll find a way to get them. If that will take her mind off her grief, I can be the grown-up and let her.

  I follow Val to the kitchen, where I’m met by a warm, savory aroma that fills my mouth with saliva.

  “Mmmm. That does smell good. Maybe I could eat a little. God. What am I going to do with all of this food?”

  “We’ll freeze most of it. What doesn’t fit in your freezer, I’ll store in mine. I’ve still got a big old freezer from before my son moved out. It’s nearly empty now. Why don’t you go sit in the living room and I’ll bring you a mug of soup?”

  “I can’t let you—”

  “Why ever not?”

  “It’s asking too much. It’s late. You’ve given up your evening—”

  “Are you kidding? What sort of friend wouldn’t be here? What else would I possibly be doing?”

  Friend.

  The word sends little tendrils of warmth running through me.

  The closest person I ever had to a friend was back in high school, before Thomas. Everything in my life has been marked by that dividing line. Before Thomas. After Thomas. On one side, Liz, wild and fierce, looking for love to compensate for parental neglect. On the other, Elizabeth, tamed and subdued and half killed by kindness. The thought of having a real friend brings fresh tears to my eyes.

  “Liz?” Val queries.

  “Sorry, I got lost there for a minute.”

  She touches my arm. “That’s to be expected. You’re shivering. Go curl up on the couch and let’s get something warm in you. And maybe we can turn up the heat a little? It’s cold in here.”

  I am shivering. I feel cold to my bones, as if I’ll never be warm again, but it hasn’t even occurred to me to turn up the heat.

  “Women and thermostats,” Thomas says in my head. “Up, down, up, down. Somebody gets a hot flash or has their monthly and the setting goes down. Or it looks cold outside and the setting goes up. I’m sorry, ladies, but I’m the boss of this piece of household equipment.”

  But Thomas isn’t here. I can turn the heat up if I want.

  I walk to the thermostat and boost it up, from sixty-eight to seventy. And then, in an extravagant burst of rebellion, all the way to seventy-two. Then I snuggle into the couch underneath the afghan.

  Val brings me soup in a mug, and I cradle it in my hands, letting it warm me.

  Another rebellion. We do not eat in the living room in this house. We take our meals as a family, at a set time, at the table. Routine is right next to the gospel. But there are no more routines, there can’t be, because Thomas was at the center of all of them. It feels go
od to be eating here, where I won’t expect to look up and see his face across the table.

  “Thank you, Val. For everything.”

  I want to get up and hug her, but I have the mug, and my body feels too heavy to manage the effort. Instead I reach for her hand and squeeze it.

  She squeezes back. “I’ll leave you alone now, but I’ll check on you tomorrow. Call if you need anything, okay?”

  I feel an unexpected loss when the door closes behind her, a reluctance to be alone with my daughter. Things have never been easy between the two of us, and we are now in completely uncharted waters.

  When Abigail walks down the hallway a few minutes later, she’s completely put back together. She’s washed her face, put on a touch of makeup. The only thing that gives her away is the puffy redness of her eyes.

  She eyes my mug with disapproval. “Coffee? At this time of night? You’ll never sleep, even with a sedative.”

  “It’s soup.”

  “You’ve spilled.” She says it like I’ve emptied an entire tanker of oil into a pristine ocean.

  I follow her gaze to a slop of soup glistening on the surface of the coffee table, a noodle curled at the center like an obscene worm.

  Abigail bustles into the kitchen for a cloth and wipes up the table. Sets down a coaster.

  “I’m going to go pick up your meds.”

  “From where? Everything’s closed.”

  “I worked something out with the hospital pharmacy. Will you be okay alone? I could ask Earlene to come over.”

  “Please don’t. Just stay here yourself. I don’t need a sedative.”

  She puts her jacket on. Reaches for her boots. “I’ve already called in favors to get them. Earlene will—”

  “Oh fine, then. Go get your pills, if you must. But I do not want Earlene over here.”

  “They’re not my pills, Mom.”

  I take a breath, astonished by my rising anger and my inability to shove it back down.

  “Oh, for God’s sake. I can’t stop you if you want to go, but Earlene is not coming over. Do you hear me? You will respect my wishes, Abigail.”

  I’ve uttered one of Thomas’s phrases. Abigail’s body jerks as if I’ve struck her, and for half an instant, I see the vulnerable child gazing out at me, wounded. Already I regret the phrasing, but before I can call it back, she’s gone, slamming the door behind her.