Tender Grace

by Jackina Stark

  Is that why I opened my laptop the evening of July tenth?

  To speak?

  July 30

  I sat beside Rita in church today and felt like crying when a girl sang a song I hadn’t heard in some time, since long before Tom died. The refrain is all I remember, all I heard after the first few lines: “Jesus will still be there.” Not that I don’t know that. “I am with you always” runs through my mind most days, even as I sigh. But as she sang I saw the image of massive hands extending from strong arms reaching over a cliff and grasping my forearms. I remained suspended in midair throughout the song, but I didn’t fall.

  I wouldn’t have thought myself capable of such an optimistic image.

  July 31

  An idea came to me in the middle of the night.

  Even when I was sane I tended to roll my eyes at ideas conceived under such circumstances, so I’ll probably deem this one stupid too when I ponder it in the light of day.

  The kids called to check on me. Today would have been our thirty-second anniversary.

  A Tennyson line comes to me: “O death in life, the days that are no more.”

  August 1

  Twenty-four hours later, the idea seems feasible. The wildness of this late-night thought trumps the desperation of my days.

  I’m leaving here.

  three

  August 3

  I’ve “summoned” the children. They’ll come Saturday and go to church with me on Sunday. It will be nice not to go alone, nice to have friends gather around our pew to greet the kids and marvel at how cute the grandkids are.

  I took the car in for an oil change and asked them to check the tires, lights, and anything else that needs checking when one is taking off on a long trip. I sat in the waiting room watching Dr. Phil when a man I’d never seen before started talking to me.

  “Hot,” he said.

  I glanced away from Phil for a minute to see if the man was really talking to me. We were the only two people in the room, so I shook my head in agreement.

  “It is,” I said.

  “A hundred three degrees.”

  “Whew,” I replied.

  “It is” and “whew” were all he needed.

  He told me he laid tile for new construction, but it was just getting too hot for it; he told me about a new invention he’d come up with to take the ambiance of a tiled floor up a notch (I didn’t quite follow this); he told me in detail about the design he was doing for the kitchen he was currently working on, which featured little diamond-shaped insets made of colored glass.

  At some point in all this, I told him my husband laid the tile for the bathrooms in our new home.

  Driving away, I thought about my conversation with Chatty Man. (Generally speaking, that might be a prize-winning oxymoron.) It struck me as interesting that I called our house new. Most things are relative, I suppose; nevertheless, we didn’t move in last month, or last year—Tom laid those tiles eleven years ago.

  Still, I like the present tense sound of “our new home.” I can see why I chose it. I can see why I let it stand.

  August 5

  After we cleared the dinner table and settled the babies in the bonus room to watch Cars (an appropriate choice in retrospect), I asked the kids to sit with me in the living room.

  “I don’t mean to be mysterious,” I told them, “but I’m going on a road trip, destination and time frame undetermined.”

  The four of them looked at me as if I’d suggested a game of strip poker.

  Molly finally said, “What do you mean?”

  Then everyone was talking at once.

  They began to calm down somewhat when they realized I had been carefully preparing for this trip. Even in the fog of my existence, I knew if I didn’t give them an explanation of what I am planning and convince them I will be okay, they’d send the Mounties after me.

  Mark was impressed that I had the car taken care of, and he was glad to hear it still had substantial warranty time left on it. Molly was relieved to see my current insurance and AAA cards filed neatly in a plastic bag, ready for the glove compartment. The size and weight of my new atlas seemed to reassure them as well.

  “I may not know where I’m going from one day to the next,” I said, plopping it on the ottoman in front of the sofa, “but when I decide, I’ll know how to get there. Ultimately, I plan to visit an island near San Diego that your dad wanted me to see.”

  “That’s sad, Mom,” Molly said.

  “Sort of, I guess. But I want to do this.”

  I went on to tell them that the Bennetts, who have lived across the street since we built the house, would take care of the yard and collect the mail. “Mark can pick it up once a month and pay any bills for me that aren’t taken care of directly through the bank.”

  “Once a month!” They were a choir.

  “I may be gone awhile.”

  My cell phone, I explained, would be on, but just for family emergencies (and to hit *55 at the first sign of trouble). I would communicate by e-mail, and I’d try to do it several times a week, at least once a week. I assured them I’d stay in nice places and be very, very careful.

  When I finished, I asked if they could think of anything I’d overlooked.

  “Someone to go with you,” Molly said. Mark nodded in agreement.

  “Who?” I asked.

  The girls stared at me, eyes brimming with tears.

  “I think this may be something I’m supposed to do. I won’t exactly be alone, you know. Something you can think of every time you start to worry is the promise that runs through my mind almost daily: ‘I am with you always.’ ”

  Because they are children of faith, this seemed to help.

  August 8

  Everything is in the car except my overnight bag and this laptop. My clothes are laid out for tomorrow, a midcalf brown cotton skirt, a white tank top, and brown leather flip-flops— the usual. Tom and I always packed the car the night before a trip. He wanted an early start and nothing to impede that goal. I’m not too interested in my departure time. Whenever I get around to it. I loaded up tonight to check for things I’ve forgotten and to have tomorrow morning to check again.

  Mark wanted me to take Tom’s Tahoe, a three-row version purchased with a number of grandchildren in mind. He liked the idea of my being in something tanklike. But I’m taking my Solara. I know it well—it’s my second one, and it takes much less gas. And I can park it.

  Molly asked me to stop by when I told her I planned to spend the first night in Tulsa.

  “Joplin’s on the way, Mom,” my daughter pleaded so sweetly.

  I couldn’t refuse her even though I will have barely been on the road an hour. The kids want to tell me good-bye again. The little boys aren’t old enough to know I’m going farther than Wal-Mart, but the girls are, and they aren’t much happier than their parents about this sojourn of mine. They have a charmingly limited point of view: I’m a nana, not a wanderer.

  What I am is a woman who wants her old life back.

  I don’t know how to be without Tom Eaton.

  August 9

  Molly had a nice lunch ready for my arrival and had me on my way in an hour. She and the kids walked me to the car, gave me hugs and kisses, and waved good-bye until my car turned the corner and headed for I-44. Part of me hated leaving them.

  Almost as much as I’d hated pulling out of my driveway this morning. I sat in the car with the garage door open, practically hyperventilating as I contemplated leaving everything I have loved. But in the end I put the car in reverse and drove away before the life that I have loved destroys me.

  Getting my overnight bag, two suitcases, and this laptop into my room (upstairs and down two hallways) took so much energy that I may stay here a week instead of two days. If that’s the case, I could have saved a good deal of money by staying at Mom’s, but I simply wasn’t up for going there without Tom. My room here has a microwave and a refrigerator, and I picked up a Weight Watchers meal for dinner. I also pu
rchased a twelve-pack carton of Diet Coke and hope it will last until morning.

  One of these days, I may stay at a hotel and use room service. I did that once when Tom took me with him to a principals’ conference in Orlando. I rather liked it. I really don’t mind eating alone, but I don’t want to eat alone in public. Who cares, I’m sure. But “know thyself,” and I’m just not up to that.

  My plan is to run down to the complimentary breakfast room tomorrow, should I wake up before breakfast is cleared away, and get a pastry and three pieces of fruit, two of them for my lunch. I’ve never done that before, but Rita does it all the time. I hope an alarm doesn’t go off when I walk through the doors with contraband fruit stashed in my purse.

  I saw Tom’s Bible sitting in the passenger seat when I was unloading the car. I put it there this morning after I made one last walk through the house and noticed it resting on the table by Tom’s chair, neglected for such a long time now. In the last fifteen months I’ve picked it up only on the rare occasions I’ve been compelled to dust the table it was sitting on. The morning I found Tom, that black leather Bible, worn from years of study, was in his lap, open to John 4 in preparation for a lesson he expected to teach the next Sunday. I had opened the door to the garage before I decided to go back and retrieve it. That Bible is the only thing of Tom’s I brought with me.

  That—and what’s left of my heart.

  It’s eight thirty and still pretty light outside. I went over and pulled the curtains, and now it’s as black as a moonless midnight in here. And it’s quiet, very quiet. I like that.

  It’s been a long day. This is the first motel room I’ve checked into by myself. I stood at the counter while the clerk processed my credit card and prepared my key envelope and felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. Yet while this all seems very strange, I think I can sleep. Sleeping is one of my gifts. I’m consistently among the twenty-six percent of Americans who get enough sleep at night. But if I’m wide awake when Law and Order is over, I’ll take the Excedrin PM I brought along for emergencies.

  I ran into a problem on the drive to Tulsa today. I’m surprised the potential for it eluded me while I planned.

  The problem? Hours to think. I about panicked. My diversion was gone: You cannot watch television while driving. But then I remembered I have satellite radio with two or three thousand talk radio channels. I’ve paid for it all these months without using it.

  Before I turned on the radio, I had been thinking about the time Tom and I visited Mom and Dad in Broken Arrow and went into Tulsa to spend an afternoon walking through the galleries of the Gilcrease Museum. There was a sculpture there that very nearly mesmerized me. Each time Tom and I became separated, he found me standing in front of it.

  “It’s captivating, don’t you think, Tom?” I said the first time he found me there. It became our designated meeting place.

  I’ve laid out clothes for tomorrow, even ironed the skirt. I changed it up a bit—white skirt, brown sweater set, and brown slides. I don’t want to flip-flop or freeze my way through the museum. I’ve stayed an extra day in Tulsa to find my bronze sculpture and see if it’s as lovely as I remember.

  August 10

  I made it to the museum by eleven. For me, that was pretty good.

  I picked out a painting for Tom: Morning in Aspen Grove. He would have loved it, and I would have spent as much time as he would allow searching through prints trying to find it for him.

  I found a painting for me too: Homer’s Watching the Breakers. Two women stand at the edge of the sea watching the waves break on the boulders near their feet. It instantly reminded me of another Tennyson poem, “Break, Break, Break.”

  Like “Tears, Idle Tears,” with its haunting last line, “O death in life, the days that are no more,” this poem also speaks of the helpless misery of loss. In college I couldn’t fathom the kind of anguish his words suggest. But in the first month or two after Tom’s death, before I declared a complete moratorium on reading, I pulled my English literature anthology off a shelf and let Tennyson’s lines speak for me:

  But O for the touch of a vanished hand,

  And the sound of a voice that is still!

  How easy Tennyson is to memorize:

  Break, break, break,

  At the foot of the crags, O Sea!

  But the tender grace of a day that is dead

  Will never come back to me.

  I spent quite some time with the Homer painting. I left it finally to take a lunch break, rummaging in my purse for an apple while I searched for a private bench where I could hide out and stare into space.

  I looked for the sculpture everywhere I went this afternoon and thought I’d surely find it in the Native American room. When I didn’t, I was so disappointed that I did something very unlike me, at least at this point in my life: I asked about it. I was so pleased when the lady said they still had it and directed me to the library reading room.

  And there he stood, just as I remembered him.

  He is a young Indian, exuding dignity. His hair in simple braids, he wears what appears to be buckskin pants with some kind of loincloth over them. He is looking up, and his arms are outstretched beside him, palms up. The work of artist Charles H. Humphriss, the sculpture is called Appeal to the Great Spirit.

  Like before, I did not want to leave.

  Unlike before, I felt suffocated by the desire for Tom to meet me there.

  four

  August 11

  I took my sweet time getting around this morning before I left for Oklahoma City. I knew I didn’t have far to drive, hardly two hours, so I didn’t remove the Privacy Please sign on the door of my room until checkout time forced me to leave at noon.

  Just before ten I had gone down to the breakfast room and grabbed breakfast and lunch. When I had eaten my pastry and tidied the room, I plopped myself on the plump comforter, settled myself into the bevy of pillows propped against the headboard, and reached for the remote. In my peripheral vision, however, I saw Tom’s Bible sitting next to my suitcase.

  When had I brought it in?

  I don’t know why I’ve refused to read even the Bible for so long. Or why this morning I still hesitated, why I had to say to myself, “Do this.”

  After such a hiatus, what to read?

  I thought about opening it and reading whatever my finger landed on. People do that, you know. But instead I opened to the place Tom had marked with the card I gave him on our twenty-fifth anniversary, the first chapter of John. He had been taking our small group through John on Sunday nights. I settled back, thinking I’d read a chapter. A few verses into it I realized that a chapter was way too much for this shrunken spirit of mine. I ended up reading only a few of the verses Tom had highlighted in chapter one.

  In them Jesus is called life and light.

  Maybe I should begin calling him those things, my antithesis: dear Life, dear Light.

  I usually call God my Father, because as these verses say, I am a “child of God.” I have not forgotten that. My lostness is emotional, not spiritual. It is my earthbound existence that is in jeopardy. There are spiritual implications, of course. My choosing “death in life,” however unwittingly, seems worse than ingratitude; it seems a betrayal of Life and Light.

  And I wonder, Will he come to the likes of me?

  The answer comes to me, an echo of the words I offered the kids mere days ago: “I am with you always.”

  I needed a Coke break, which required an ice run. While ice tumbled into my little plastic bucket, I thought about another verse I read this morning: “From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another.”

  My bronze Indian gets that.

  I wish I did. When you’re emotionally dead, you don’t see. You don’t want. You don’t need. You don’t care. I wish I could see and embrace and rejoice in the blessings instead of hating this post-Tom existence.

  Post-Tom!

  Delete that compound modifier! It appalls me. It ir
ritates me. It grieves me.

  “Class, post-Tom is just the sort of modifier we want to cut from our papers,” I’d say, ambling down two rows of desks. “Ruthlessly cut,” I’d add with a two-handed machete move.

  (Teaching high school language arts has contributed to my madness.)

  But how dishonest it would be to malign those two words. They’re perfectly good descriptive words. If I’m going to grieve a word, perhaps it should be the word hating.

  I found a Law and Order episode to watch before I got on the Internet and started planning tomorrow. The one thing I’m sure I won’t be doing is the zoo. I’ve been to one too many zoos in the last five years. Three summers ago, Tom and I were horrified at a bear’s behavior when we visited him in his very nice habitat. With gasps (actually I gasped, Tom laughed) we turned the boys’ strollers toward the big cat section and called the little girls away from the iron fence enclosing the uninhibited grizzly. “Hurry, girls,” we said, “the tigers want to see you!”

  As zoos go, few could beat the St. Louis Zoo anyway, the bear notwithstanding. There is a botanical garden here I might visit. I’ve always considered botanical gardens quite enjoyable. They used to have the power to both enchant and calm me. There’s a modern art museum as well. I could try to stretch myself and embrace modern art, instead of sitting insatiably before Renoirs and Monets. Maybe another time.

  If Tom were here, we might take in the National Softball Hall of Fame. He had loved going to Cooperstown to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame. New York was our destination for our thirtieth anniversary, our last anniversary. We had a week in the city and a week in the countryside, together with our friends John and Rita, the trip culminating with Niagara Falls. We didn’t mean, we had told each other, to plan anything so obviously romantic. We weren’t the type. But the falls were phenomenal, like all such places, beyond what any picture or painting can express. Rita apparently does not believe this. It was she, leaning too far over a rail to get a better picture of this natural wonder than any postcard has rendered, who took the edge off romantic. And John too. Shocked by her uncharacteristic daring, and probably frightened as well, he called her stupid. Of course, we all knew he didn’t mean it.