Eternal Journey

by Carol Hutton

  Leaving the fog lights on, she got out of the car and walked up the slight incline. “I haven’t been to John Belushi’s grave in years,” she said to no one. But what a fitting place to wait for the fog to pass. Sitting on the slate bench facing his name, she looked down at the grave marker, smiling at the collection of beer and wine bottles flanking each side. As she poured herself a cup of coffee, flashes of the brilliant and tragic comedian and his companions in those now famous television skits danced before her eyes.

  “Annie, we shouldn’t be eating strawberry shortcake this late at night,” Beth had exclaimed as she piled a generous helping of ice cream and strawberries over the just-baked shortcake.

  “Oh, will you relax?” Anna retorted. “We’ll laugh off all those calories. Hurry up! Saturday Night Live just started. Besides, we walked all over the North End today, fought our way through Filene’s Basement, and practically ran down Boylston Street from Copley to Kenmore Square. You’re worried about a few calories?”

  After graduating from the University of Maryland, they had ended up in Boston. Eventually they both attended Boston University, with Anna studying psychology and Beth law. Saturday Night Live started out as a filler for those dateless Saturday nights and grew to become their favorite way to end the week. Before long, they had an apartment full of people every Saturday night, with their own cast of characters and wanna-bes, almost as funny as Chevy and Bill, John and Dan, Jane and Gilda. Back then, the silliness and satire created a perfect backdrop to the transition to adulthood that was challenging Anna and her friends. Anna would see patients all week and then be grilled each Friday morning by her supervising psychologist as to approach and intervention. Beth would spend hours in the law library each morning before she was off to the Legal Aid clinic in Boston’s South End. Anna would leave Boston City Hospital, meet up with Beth, and they would hop the MBTA back to Commonwealth Avenue. It was on one of those Saturday nights during the sparring between Jane and Gilda as they reported on the “news” of the day that Tom and Beth announced their engagement. They were married the week after Beth sat for the bar exam, and within three years had produced two beautiful baby girls. Even then, every Saturday night, either Anna or Beth would call the other as the guest host of the week appeared on the screen. That ritual abruptly ended the week John Belushi died. It was as if someone had pulled the plug on their escape route. Yet as the cancer ate away at her friend’s spirit, Anna had sent Beth a whole set of Saturday Night Live tapes from the early years, knowing that laughter was good for the soul.

  The fog was lifting slightly. Anna thought she heard a rustle and some footsteps. A brief but intense fear spread through her, until she realized she was on Martha’s Vineyard and not in South Florida. She turned to see the stranger for the third time now, and realized it was tears, not fog, blurring her vision.

  He had given her quite a start. Could he have heard her talking to the wind?

  The rain started softly as Anna stared at the stranger. This was now their third encounter, making her feel very uncomfortable and unusually vulnerable. Was he following her? Her guard was not totally down. Who is this man and why is he here? she wondered. How should she handle this? Conflicting thoughts clouded her consciousness, and then she began to feel angry. Anna had stood up abruptly and was looking directly at him when she suddenly realized this man must be the guest of the Duffys—the person staying at the house next door whom Becky had mentioned. Then she noticed the man’s bike.

  “An early-morning bike ride is good for the body, and the soul,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “However, I hadn’t planned on rain. I headed toward the light and here you are!”

  “Well, you show up at the most interesting times, and in the most unexpected places,” she said as she began walking toward the Explorer. “Come on, I can drive you back to the house. We’ll both catch our death”—she flinched as she uttered the words— “of cold if we stay here any longer.”

  They quickened the pace, reaching the Explorer just as the rain began in earnest. He hurriedly strapped his bike on top of the vehicle while Anna started the engine and turned on the heater. Realizing how hungry she was, Anna blurted before thinking, “Would you care to join me for breakfast?”

  “What a splendid idea!” he replied with a smile. “I haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday.”

  Anna pulled out onto the road and together they headed east, this time away from the fog and into pouring rain. A comfortable silence filled the spaces between them, broken only by the rhythmic clicking of the windshield wipers. Anna looked over at her passenger. He seemed to be in another world.

  He must have felt her looking at him, as he turned and remarked, “Not the best of days to be on the island, wouldn’t you agree, Annie?”

  Anna returned the comment with a weak smile. She had no energy for superficial conversation. She sighed deeply, and looked over at her passenger with tired eyes.

  “To be honest,” Anna mumbled, “this rain fits my mood and circumstances. My dearest friend was buried three weeks ago, and I came here to think.”

  “Ah, I see,” he said softly. “I can relate in a way. I’ve got some things to think through as well, so perhaps the weather is accommodating us.”

  That brief exchange put Anna at ease. Normally she would respond to such a comment with a question. But, unaccountably, especially for a person as circumspect and private as she, she instead began telling him about Beth’s death. During the twenty-minute drive along the Edgartown–Vineyard Haven Road, Anna realized she was monopolizing the conversation. Neither apologetic nor self-conscious, Anna was aware she was talking nearly nonstop about herself to this total stranger. She looked over at him at one point to find him looking at her with interest and empathy. Dr. Anna Carroll, usually the one listening, began to tell this man her life story, and as her story came alive, she listened to herself perhaps for the very first time.

  It was as though once released, her innermost feelings flowed out from her soul. She marveled as she heard herself disclose to this stranger buried fears about her own brush with cancer. The odd part was that the more she spoke, the more she wanted to reveal. Instead of being sated, she felt compelled, indeed urged on to greater and more profound depths of disclosure and release. It was as if she were making up for lost time.

  Was it the somber atmosphere of this rainy day on the island? Was it this stranger’s gentle nature? There was something familiar and reassuring about his eyes; his expression conveyed acceptance and understanding, devoid of judgment or opinion. Something about him gave her comfort.

  Was it that Anna was so exhausted she didn’t care how she sounded? Was she so alone that she would tell this stranger about her secrets and her pain?

  Once they reached Edgartown, Anna found a deserted café on Water Street. Anna stared vacantly through the misty seventeenth-century panes of glass, and found herself weeping softly about the secret she had carried for years.

  “Beth was the only one who knew. All these years, she was the only one who knew the story. Kevin and I were in college. He was a senior and I was a year behind. We met, ironically, at an antiwar rally during the spring semester, in 1968. It was my first, and to be honest, I was really there more out of curiosity than protest.

  “The attraction was immediate and intense. It was as if from the moment our eyes met, we were joined together in a cosmic, karmic embrace. From the minute I met him, we were inseparable. Kevin and I spent every waking minute together for close to four months. I have never had another relationship like it. I have never felt that level of intensity nor experienced such passion or connection again in my life.

  “Kevin had been accepted to law school and had great aspirations of going into politics and reforming the world. We all did back then, though he unquestionably would have become someone who could make a difference. He ended up going to Vietnam instead of Yale. Kevin was killed during the Tet Offensive along with countless others— friends, lovers, brothers, sons, and fathers—who
died before their time.”

  Anna realized she had choked on the word “fathers”; she had never connected Kevin to fatherhood until that moment. But then she hadn’t talked about this for at least twenty-five years.

  “Kevin had been in Vietnam only ten days before he was killed. He had left two weeks before for the West Coast. He never even got to read the first and last letter I wrote him just after he left. I found out I was pregnant in the morning and that Kevin had been killed that afternoon. We were taking classes that summer. Beth heard me vomiting in the dorm bathroom.

  “ ‘Annie, how far along are you?’ she asked.

  “I looked at her and said, ‘When did Kevin leave for ’Nam?’ and threw up again in the cold white bowl.

  “I went for a walk in the early afternoon and found myself in front of the Catholic church on the main street of town. It was Saturday, and afternoon confessions had just started. I was pulled inside, desperate for consolation, understanding, maybe even advice. I must have sat there for two hours, until the session was almost over, before entering the confessional.

  “As I started, the words, then tears, came, and I just blurted out, ‘Father, I think I’m pregnant. My boyfriend is in Vietnam, and I still have two years of school to finish. I don’t know what to do.’

  “He interrupted me at that point and said something like ‘So you aren’t married, my dear?’ I shook my head and started to answer, but without waiting for my reply, he began, ‘You know you have committed a terrible sin. You have had sex outside of the sacrament of marriage. You have disappointed God, your parents, the Church. You know this is a terrible sin.’

  “I swear he didn’t even hear me get up and leave. I could still hear him lecturing me, the voice rising in pitch as the big oak doors slammed shut. It was a very long time, a decade or more, before I would even enter a church, and that was the last time I ever stepped foot in a confessional.

  “I stormed back to my room, feeling very defiant and strong just then, the episode in the church energizing me in an odd sort of way. Beth greeted me, with grave concern in her eyes. I tried to reassure her. ‘Beth,’ I said, ‘it’s not that bad. Everything will be all right, you’ll see.’

  “She seemed tense, and I was actually thinking that maybe I shouldn’t have involved her. She was a very sensitive person, and I was feeling guilty that I had unburdened on her.

  “ ‘Annie, sit down,’ she said grimly. ‘This letter just came for you. It looks like it’s from Kevin’s mother.’

  “I sat on my bed, looked into her face, and went pale. Her hands trembled as she handed me the letter. I stared at the return address and remember feeling a sudden rush of nausea. My hands shook and my heart started to beat wildly. I handed the envelope back to Beth and asked her to read what I already knew to be inside. As Beth tried to choke out the words that Kevin’s mother had written to me, sentences like ‘He was very brave’ and ‘He died serving his country’ assaulted my ears. I grabbed the letter from her hands and read it over and over until I cried myself to sleep.

  “Sometime later, I remember being awakened from a terrible nightmare of blood and screams. Kevin was standing beside my bed, his hand on my face, saying, ‘I’m so sorry, Annie, this isn’t the way it was supposed to be.’ I was the one screaming, and it was Beth’s hand on my face, not Kevin’s. She was crying and trying to console me. We sat there like two little girls holding each other tight, crying and rocking back and forth on the bed. ‘Shhh, Annie. I’m here for you. Don’t worry, you will always have me.’ ”

  Anna sighed deeply. She gazed listlessly at the gray rain streaming down the windows and felt as desolate as the view from her booth. Her shoulders sagging from emotional exhaustion, Anna paused and took a deep breath, wondering if she had the courage to continue with her story. She slowly raised her eyes, prepared to mumble an awkward apology. But she found solace in his gaze, and he urged her to continue.

  “Beth’s mother had died when she was fifteen. We were inseparable, as we had been all through grammar school. Her mother had breast cancer and died the summer before we entered our junior year. One night after her mother’s funeral, I stayed over at Beth’s house. She had a wonderful canopy bed, with a wedding veil–like covering. We stayed up the whole night talking. We lay there hand in hand, and Beth told me about the day her mother died. I remember that night very clearly. Beth didn’t cry at all. She just held my hand and told me how scared she was, how quiet and lonely her house was now that it was just her and her dad. She made me promise that I would never die and go away and leave her like her mother did. ‘Of course I won’t ever leave you, Beth. We are friends forever. I’ll never go away, even if you want me to.’ Now in our junior year in college, she was consoling me.”

  Garish images pounded against Anna’s skull. She remembered how, the next morning after the worst night of her life, the nightmare had continued. She’d gone into the bathroom, feeling the wetness on her thighs. Stunned, she had stared as the blood dropped in rivulets of red. The blood turned into tissue and then into crimson rivers. Anna groaned now as she had groaned then, watching what was left of Kevin ebb away. Just how many lives had been lost that day so long ago?

  “Beth found me on the bathroom floor still bleeding, curled in a fetal position, with the letter crumpled in my hand. The pregnancy was gone as quickly as it had come, terminated by either my shock at the news of Kevin’s death or my rage at the priest. Perhaps both.

  “Beth is the only one who knew I was pregnant and lost my baby,” Anna said. “She alone knew how hard I’ve worked all these years to plug the hole in my heart. Beth is the only one who knows about my life that was not to be.

  “ ‘I’ll tell Kevin about the baby for you, Annie, when I’m on the other side,’ she said in those final hours. ‘And remember, I’ll always be here for you.’

  “Beth died just three hours later,” Anna said, concluding her story.

  Tears streaming down her cheeks, Anna looked up into the gentle eyes of the man sitting across the table from her. His gaze was steady and deep, and tears matching hers fell from his eyes. He reached across the table, put his hand on top of hers, and turned his head toward Edgartown Harbor.

  It was nine o’clock in the morning, and the rain showed no signs of stopping. It was going to be a miserably bleak, depressing day. But Anna didn’t feel depressed at all. She felt very strange. Tired but at the same time energized. She had never told anyone that story, ever. She looked across the table at his face and again was amazed at how comfortable she felt. There was something remotely familiar about him, yet she was sure they had never met. Anna was just about to ask him if they had when he looked away from her in the direction of the little island of Chappaquiddick.

  “Are you up for a walk by the ocean, Annie? This weather will break, I just feel it. You have the perfect vehicle for exploring the dunes. Let’s go see what answers Cape Poge has to offer today.”

  And with that, he stood up and walked toward the Explorer.

  Anna loved the wildlife refuge, but she thought even the few birds and animals remaining would be wise enough to keep shelter on a drenchingly wet day like this. She silently followed him out the door anyway, got behind the wheel, and drove the Explorer onto the barge that would take them across the harbor and deposit them on Chappaquiddick.

  The barge, endearingly referred to as the “ontime ferry,” had no schedule. It carried people and vehicles across the inlet upon demand. Once she settled her vehicle on the barge, Anna couldn’t take her eyes off the light that beckoned from the Edgar-town lighthouse. She was hypnotized by the flashes that danced across the windshield in an even, predictable rhythm. As she stared at the beam, Anna thought she heard someone call her name. She turned very suddenly. The bright light grew before her eyes, momentarily blinding her, so that all she could do was listen.

  “You are fine, Anna,” said the reassuring nurse. “The surgery went well. You are fine.”

  The pain was unlike any she had ev
er experienced. And just as she became aware of the pain, the first wave of nausea consumed her. Lips chattering, she stammered, “I feel awful.”

  “You are in the recovery room, Dr. Carroll.” It was a male voice now. “I’m going to give you something for the pain. You are doing fine.”

  She remembered thinking they must mean that there was no cancer. That’s what they mean by fine, she had thought, because I’m not fine, I feel awful. But all she had said was thank you as she felt the pain medication course through her veins.

  “Annie, Annie.” The stranger’s voice startled her from her memory. “You can start the engine now.”

  They drove the brief distance from the ferry toward the cape. As they passed the Japanese gardens the rain began to let up. The dunes were almost in sight now. Anna pulled the Explorer close to the marker detailing the wildlife that inhabited the preserve. Only four-wheel-drive vehicles were allowed out on the dunes, and permits were required at that.

  While Anna was sure Becky and Michael would have followed the rules, she was inclined to overlook them. But driving the dunes on this bleak day seemed like trespassing, so she turned to her companion and said, “Let’s walk out to the cape. Nature seems too pensive today to be disturbed.”

  Together they trekked over the infamous footbridge to East Beach. Her companion helped her up the mound of soft, wet sand that gave the cape its allure and challenge. The view once over the slight crest was breathtaking, rain or not. In fact, Anna noticed that the rain had almost stopped. Only miles of sand and water lay between them and the other side of the world. As she turned to speak to the stranger, she saw that he had started walking up the beach. Hurrying to reach him, she nearly tripped in the deep sand. He turned, as if he had heard her behind him, and patiently waited for her to catch up.