Posted: May 29, 08 7:13am
This is the first page of a draft novel. Any feedback is welcome but especially the big question: Would you keep reading? THANKS
Lily was the first one to die. By the time that year of death was over, I realized we were lucky Bill lived as long as he did. The experimental drug left Bill weak and uninterested in the chocolates our friends sent. I ate them myself, licking raspberry filling off my fingers while he stared at the Weather Channel.
Lily had her last heart attack in the clinic waiting room. (If they can’t save you there, you truly can’t be saved.) I was shocked. I guess back then I did have hope for the new drug; I must have still thought Bill had a chance. Lily seemed to know what was coming, although in my memories of her, she is pink-cheeked with a lets-do-it grin. A group of us—patients and spouses—had begun meeting for coffee. Whenever the barista suggested pastries, she would clap her hands and demand everyone’s attention. “Don’t stop ’til you get enough,” she’d sing. Later, I came to think of this as Lily’s Law.
After Bill died and the group eventually broke up, I stayed friends with Mary Helen and Dolly. I seemed to have more in common with them than with my old friends, who brought over disposable dishes of food and told me how well I was doing. Mary Helen and Dolly knew about screaming heart monitors and bleed outs. Dolly, petite and usually wearing expensive tee shirts and slacks, was 74. Her husband died soon after Lily. Mary Helen’s husband Pete was the youngest in the test group and was the last to “pass on,” as she insisted on saying. Mary Helen was only 56 (I’m 64), but looked thicker and more matronly than Dolly and I did. Dolly’s hair was platinum, but Mary Helen’s was yellowed bleached blonde. Mine’s gray. By the time Mary Helen’s Pete died, we had all been to too many memorial services and heard too many kind words. I think we remained friends simply because we didn’t have to talk about any of it to each other. It was great being with people who knew the genuine sadness I felt about Bill, but let me laugh without prickles of guilt.
I got the job at the Bird Barn six weeks after Bill died. At his memorial service, everyone felt free to tell me what I should do. Volunteer at the hospital, Mary Helen said. (Pete hadn’t died yet so her opinion didn’t count for much.) Tutor at-risk kids—this from a niece of Bill’s, now in law school at Emory. Get a boyfriend, Dolly suggested. I assumed she was joking about the awkward evening when Lily’s husband showed up at one of our group dinners with a new woman. None of us had been quite ready for that. Travel. A lot of people suggested that, even my two boys. I nodded and smiled, but I couldn’t imagine a life by myself. No one coming home for dinner. Nothing that had to be immediately washed or mailed or have its oil changed. I sipped my glass of wine—Bill insisted we celebrate his life with a case of cabernet sauvignon—and tried to look as if I were interested in my friends’ suggestions. But I’d had enough of sickness and people who needed me. I certainly didn’t want a boyfriend, and I didn’t want to travel anywhere just to eat dinner by myself. I especially didn’t want to trudge around Europe, my swollen ankles spilling over white walking shoes, while I stared out of bus windows with other pathetic widows.
The job just sort of happened. I’d stopped all my volunteering within a month of Bill’s first heart attack After he died, it seemed everyone I’d ever met had called and invited me to lunch, but that wasn’t what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Sitting by Bill, listening as each breath struggled in and hissed out, I’d begun to imagine a life on my own. I’d pictured myself eating salads for dinner while watching an old movie and having friends over for coffee and high-cholesterol desserts. I noticed how the doctors spent less and less time with Bill. How they came in groups. As they filed out, one would pat Bill on the shoulder, as if admitting that they had done all the new drug and elaborate machines could do. I knew Bill was dying. I had closed my eyes and thought of all the things I wanted to do before I lay in that same cold bed.
