Broken Roads

by Ira Wagler

  And I pointed and walked up to it. “Look at this angel,” I told Ellen. “Isn’t it beautiful? I think I want it.”

  She was more than agreeable. “If you want it, buy it,” she told me. I forget the exact price. A hundred and thirty bucks sticks in my mind. Not the kind of money you just throw out there for nothing.

  “Let me think about it,” I said. And we walked around the mall some more for a while, dodging downstairs to the food court to grab something to eat. And it kept pulling me back, that store. “I’m going to go back and buy it,” I told her. We walked back. And I bought my first ever angel with my Discover card. I proudly carried it out to my truck.

  And I brought my stone angel home. “Right there, on the north edge of your garden, under the shrub tree, that’s where I’ll set it up,” I told Ellen. And that’s what I did. Set up the statue under the branches of that tree, on a little concrete slab. And it fit, the setting of it all, I thought. We were beyond help, we both knew that. But now an angel was standing there, looking at our home. Lifting its tiny stone hands in prayer.

  The Lord knew and I knew. The broken road before me stretched into the wilderness, as far out as the eye could see.

  March Is the Cruelest Month

  We were in trouble and we knew it. During the summer of 2006 we existed together, but that was all. And our marriage would soon be over as well. We spoke through the vast distance that separated us, our voices echoing in the darkness that was closing in from all around. We attended church together. Smiled in public. Even laughed together. Genuinely. People thought, What a nice, well-adjusted couple. They so complement each other. But the perception was false and hollow. And we knew it was not true.

  We had separated once before, for six months. A few years before. We both had worked on what it took to get back together. Attended counseling sessions. Talked. We had reunited on the first day of spring, March 20. And everything went OK for a while. But something under the surface always rankled, something not right. She was unfulfilled. I did not trust her. Mired in the issues that had separated us, we soon drifted apart again. The shaky foundations we had built together deteriorated. Over time, into nothing.

  That year, the summer drifted by, week by week. We talked now and then. Seriously, about our future and whether it would be with each other. We attended a relative’s wedding out of state in June. Hung out with my family.

  She had always wanted to see Valley Forge, so one Saturday morning in late August, we packed a picnic basket and drove there. Parked and got out. Walked the little paved path that traverses the perimeters of the camp and battlefield. Beautiful day. Windy, though. And unseasonably cool. Clouds obscured the sun for minutes at a time. We walked along, chatting amiably.

  At the midpoint, we found a stone bench. And sat and talked. She told me she was leaving. I already knew. We had discussed it before. I didn’t want her to go but didn’t know what to say. I knew I couldn’t convince her. She wanted actions, not words. I knew she was unfulfilled. Felt unpursued. She expressed her frustrations that day. She spoke clearly. Not in anger, but honestly, with feeling.

  Gloom descended on me. I heard her speak, but her words might as well have been spoken in another language. “I will never be able to be what you want,” I said. “The kind of man you want does not exist. Or marriage, either.”

  “You won’t if that’s how you feel,” she said. “You won’t even try.”

  I could live without her. I had seen and experienced hard things before. Brutal, life-altering things. Years ago, in another lifetime. Before I’d ever met her. Walked away when I thought it would kill me. It had taught me that when all else was stripped away, in silence or after all the words that could be spoken had been said, each person ultimately stood alone. And walked alone. There was no one I couldn’t live without. No one. I had learned the lesson well. I would survive.

  I looked at her, then away. At the people strolling past. I fleetingly wondered what problems they were facing. If any of them could relate to me and all that was going on. I turned back to her. “I have a lot of faults, I know,” I said simply. “The way you say. But I’m a good man. And you know I’m a good man.”

  A white cotton-candy cloud swept across the sun. The air chilled instantly. We got up and walked on into the wind.

  The weeks passed. Things were going on. And had been for most of the year. Evil things. I sensed it or should have. But I was bogged down in a stupor of depression and despair. So maybe I just chose not to see what became so clear in retrospect. I hunkered down and waited for the day to come. Her plans were made. And she told me. All was set. She would leave in March.

  March. The date seemed far away yet so close. As the days counted down to D-Day, I felt it in the distance like some huge, looming storm. Approaching slowly, moving toward me inexorably, relentlessly.

  I feared growing old alone.

  We got along, mostly. Like I said. There was one major fight, in early January. It came at us on a Saturday afternoon. She was packing her things in plastic storage containers she had bought at Walmart. I paced about the house, perturbed. I muttered some comment about how it wasn’t going to work, her moving all the way out west like that. My words were not well received. She confronted me, her face contorted with rage. “Stop it right now,” she screamed. “All you do is walk around saying smug, stupid things. Stop it.” Tears of frustration rolled down her cheeks.

  I walked into the living room and sat on the couch, shaking. She raged on. I waited until the tirade subsided. “You are my wife, and I love you,” I said dully. “What am I supposed to do, just sit around and watch you leave? We are married. You are my wife. I am your husband. To me, that means something.”

  We both trembled with tension and anger and stress. She struggled to control herself. “You’ve known I’m leaving,” she said, more calmly. “And you haven’t done anything to stop it. Now all of a sudden you act like you don’t want me to go.”

  “I’ve never wanted you to go,” I retorted. “You know that. You’re the one who’s leaving. I’m not.”

  She looked at me, and the rage seemed to drain from her. She spoke my name. This was unusual. We rarely addressed each other by name anymore.

  “Ira, your heart left this marriage a long time ago,” she said.

  D-Day minus one. A Wednesday. I went to work as usual, then to the gym. Tried to approach the day as normally as possible. My great fear was that I would break down as she was leaving. I dreaded the actual moment.

  She would leave early the next morning. I had arranged to take the day off from work. I would go work out at the gym, then meet a close friend at noon. At a park for a few hours, just to talk it out and help me get through that fateful day.

  She had packed all her things. I helped her carry the plastic storage boxes to the garage, where they would stay until she could come and retrieve them. All the stuff she would take with her was packed in suitcases and bags and boxes.

  Evening came and darkness fell. Her car was parked outside, at the end of the short walkway. Pointed toward the road.

  Around nine p.m., she was ready to load. I lugged out the large suitcase and placed it in the trunk. Then stuffed in boxes and bags and jammed the trunk lid down. Then I crammed the back seat with boxes and bags until it was full.

  We chatted amiably. It felt strange. Surreal. But I held up. I knew that when she drove away the next morning, she would never return.

  We talked. I asked her to text me when she arrived at her destination. So I’d know she was safe. She said she would. We went to bed late, after eleven o’clock. She gave me half an Ambien so I could sleep and took the other half herself. Mercifully, we both fell asleep in minutes.

  We slept through the night. The clattering alarm roused us. I awoke. And realized the date was here. The date that had loomed so fearfully in my mind for so long.

  She got up, and I heard her puttering around in the kitchen and the bathroom. Getting ready to leave our home. I lay there in bed. Awa
ke. And numb.

  The final moment. She walked through the bedroom doorway. “I’m ready,” she said.

  “Take care” was all I could think to say. That was all. Nothing profound.

  She approached me and stood by the side of the bed. Leaned above me. Placed her arm around me. Said a short prayer. For traveling safety. For herself. For strength. For me. I said nothing. She walked out of the bedroom. The kitchen light went dark. I heard the porch door shutting softly. And then she was gone. I lay there, but sleep did not come again.

  After a while, I got up. Took a shower. Got dressed. An evil pulse throbbed silently through the house, a harbinger of the brutal truths that would emerge in the coming months. The eastern sky shimmered with the brilliant hues of dawn. The day broke. It would be clear and sunny.

  It was March. The cruelest month.

  I walked outside alone to face the world.

  I muddled through, those first few months. Ellen moved to a faraway city out west. I stumbled along at home. And that first summer, she filed the divorce papers from where she was. I didn’t fight anything. I signed where I needed to sign and sent the papers back. And I will say this. It was a numbing and painful time. But through all that, our divorce could not have been more amicable than it was. We never even hired any lawyers at all. Just signed an agreement written up by an attorney friend of mine. We listed her stuff and listed mine. Before leaving, she had lugged in some big old tubs and loaded them with her things, and I had carried the tubs out to the garage and stacked them there against the wall. There they remained for many years, and I never had a problem with any of all that. There were a few pieces of furniture, too, that stayed. And I was OK with that as well. It was pretty strange, how relaxed it all came down in some ways. It really was.

  The divorce got finalized that fall, in November of 2007. It was kind of funny how that happened. From here, anyway, it was. Back then, it wasn’t. I had gotten the official notice. On such and such a day, at four thirty p.m. my time, the judge would call me from the bench. And we’d go through with the hearing. I dreaded the moment, but still, you just walk forward in a time like that. That’s all you can do. The day came. Four thirty came. No phone call. Then it was closing time at the office, five o’clock. I got into my truck and headed for home. Over the mountain. And as I approached the little town of White Horse, sure enough, my cell phone rang. A blocked number. I couldn’t see where it was coming from. I answered. “Hello.”

  An authoritative female voice. “Is this Ira Wagler?”

  I hedged. “Depends on who’s asking.”

  “This is Judge [I don’t remember her name],” she said. “Is this Ira Wagler? Please identify yourself.”

  I was done hedging. “It is,” I said. I was driving right by the fire station, so I pulled in and parked. And we proceeded with the hearing. I answered a few questions, and I heard Ellen’s voice answering the same questions on the other end. It was all pretty laid back.

  And after ten minutes or so, the judge was done. “I hereby declare you divorced,” she proclaimed. And then it was over. I hung up and just sat there for a moment.

  It felt so very strange. I remember thinking, I’m divorced. Then, before driving on, I called my brother, Stephen. “I just got divorced in the parking lot of the White Horse Fire Station,” I told him. Stephen had known it was coming, but he was just silent for a moment. He said something then, I don’t remember what. And I told him, “I’m sure it’s probably the first time in history that anyone got divorced in the parking lot of a fire station.” We both chuckled. It was funny, when you thought about it. And then I drove on out toward home.

  The Long Good-Bye

  She was bedridden now, mostly, they told me. She’d stay that way all the time, they told me, too. Except they got her up every day, for at least a little while. Sat her in a chair so her body position changed. And so the blood could flow. Ate, because they fed her. She didn’t know a whole lot, if anything, about what was going on around her. Except she smiled sometimes, as if she grasped a bit of it. But then she reclined back on the bed and fell asleep. And she slept and slept. Through the night, into the next day. And they did it all over again. Woke her. Got her up. Cleaned her. Then fed her as a baby is fed. One spoonful at a time. Then she’d sit for a while in her wheelchair, maybe. But always, soon, back to bed. In 2012, that was the state of my mother’s long, helpless descent into the cruel and fading twilight that is Alzheimer’s.

  We had noticed the first little bumps in her memory about a dozen years before. You can’t ever precisely pinpoint the onset of Alzheimer’s, not when it’s coming at you, because it comes at you slow. An aberration, at first. A flash of anger so far out of character that you flinch back. What was that? Where did that come from? That’s not who you are. And that’s how it was with Mom. We looked back from that point and saw the first few times. Her words were hurtful to the person she spoke to. That could not have been my mother speaking. But she said the words, in all their savage meaning.

  Her condition didn’t deteriorate that fast, really. But it was steady. And by around 2004, we spoke the dreadful word in our family. Alzheimer’s. Mom was coming down with it. I don’t really remember how I felt. Just a sense of foreboding, I think, along with a vague and desperate hope that she wouldn’t linger for years and years in that condition. Not like her older sister Mary, who had silently suffered in a hollow shell for ten years.

  They lived in Bloomfield, Iowa, then, she and Dad. In a cozy little Daudy house on my brother Joseph’s farm. Their house was connected to his by a walkway. Joseph had moved from his old home north of West Grove and bought Gid Yutzy’s dilapidated old farm along Drakesville Road at public auction. A perfect place for his metal-sales business. Two miles south of Drakesville. Right in the center of the community, along a paved road.

  And they settled in their little house, she and Dad. Back then she still cooked on her wood-burning kitchen stove. And on the kerosene stove in summer. Mostly did well getting the meals together. The rhythm of her life was so ingrained that she walked her daily steps from habit. At that time, she kept a little flock of chickens in a tiny run-down wooden shack. She walked out every day, rain or snow or shine, to feed them, talk to them, and gather the eggs. Fussed when the hens came up one egg short. Which one wasn’t feeling well? She’d have to look into it. Take care of the matter. And the chickens clucked and came running when she called. She smiled and chattered at them. “Here’s your feed for today. Eat well now, and lay me lots of eggs.”

  And it seemed like that was where they would end their days in peace, she and Dad. Right there in the cozy Daudy house in Bloomfield. Sure, most of the family had scattered now, moved out. Only two of their sons and their wives remained in Bloomfield. Joseph and Iva. And Titus and Ruth, a mile or so south and west.

  And I remember the last time we were there, in that house, Ellen and me. During the winter of 2006–2007. I’m not sure exactly of the date. We knew we didn’t have long to be together anymore, so we made one last trip home together to see Dad and Mom. The roads were sheets of ice when we arrived. I remember the bleak, dreary day, how the biting sleet swept sideways from the sky. The kitchen stove crackled, the little house was almost uncomfortably warm. Mom met us, smiling. Dad was sitting in the living room, pounding away at his typewriter. He got up to shake hands, then folded his arms, and he and I sat down to visit.

  Mom welcomed us both. Ellen sat there in the kitchen with her, drinking coffee, and the two of them just chatted right along in Pennsylvania Dutch. Mom always completely accepted Ellen. I guess Dad did, too, after we were married. It never was Mom who wouldn’t come to the wedding. That was Dad, all the way. And on this day, Mom had a little gift. A little white home-sewn apron. For Ellen to wear when she was cooking, Mom said. And I watched them and grieved quietly in my heart. The two of them together, laughing and talking. I knew this would be the last time. It was.

  Mom went downhill rapidly in 2007, mostly mentally, but physic
ally, too. She was still active, though, still absorbed in her daily household work. That was all she ever knew, and even though her mind was receding, her body stayed on autopilot.

  In some ways, her condition was a blessing for me, I suppose. That spring, my marriage fell apart, and my world imploded around me. I hunkered down in the storm. All my siblings and even my father quietly offered support such as I had not expected and had never known before. But they never told Mom. She never had to endure or absorb the knowledge that her son had messed up his life to such a low point. And that he now was slogging down a tough, weary road. I’m glad she didn’t know. But with that blissful blessing of ignorance also came a sorrow, for me, a few years later. She never knew that I wrote of her, told of her world as it was, and so much of what she had endured. She never knew that I dedicated my first book to her.

  We gathered around her when we could, her children. At weddings and funerals, and sometimes over Christmas. And right up until the summer of 2012, she always recognized us and spoke our names. She wasn’t there much in any other way, but she knew her children. And with the passing of each month, it seemed, she sank ever farther into a world we cannot know, a world from which no one has ever returned to tell of how it was.

  I remember the early 1990s, when Nathan and I headed home to Bloomfield every year at Christmastime. How Mom always welcomed us, excited and smiling. Her boys were home. And then, a few days later, as our departure loomed, how she smiled still. Bravely. The sadness shone from her eyes. “Good-bye,” she said with forced cheer. “Good-bye. Drive carefully and take care. Come home again.” And she always pressed some little gift into our hands.