THE DAY BEGAN THE same as a million others. Nothing in the universal scheme of things was any different, but by the time Ann Coulter watched the sun set low in the Pacific she knew the rest of her life had been unalterably changed. On December 23, 1969, Ann had come face to face with her own mortality.
Sitting in the shadows of early twilight, she was haunted by a hundred fantasies. Her life seemed to be made up of nothing but endings. Birth and death were inevitable, but the choices made along the way were her own. And such hard choices they had been.
What she had done this afternoon had taxed her strength to the breaking point. Placing Phillip in a nursing home was the hardest decision she had ever made. The sad images revolved in her mind until she thought she would go mad. Those long corridors filled with people in wheelchairs, the helpless men and women who had once raced to school, fallen in love, raised children of their own now reduced to total dependency. These were human beings no one seemed to want. Was this how people were expected to end their days? Ann could not come to terms with life’s cruelty. She was not afraid of growing old. It was the indignities of aging she could not bear. And for Phillip to have to suffer so before he was even sixty! She would never forget his bewildered expression when she said goodbye.
Leaving him in the nursing home had been like sending him to oblivion. How could she come to terms with herself, knowing that she alone was responsible?
It was tragic to end a marriage of almost thirty years, even if those years had not all been happy ones. In a way it would have been easier if he had died. Then the decision would have been God’s. She would have been sad, but surely she would have found some peace in the natural process of bereavement. This way there was no peace; instead, she was plagued with guilt. It wasn’t fair that life had placed that burden on her shoulders. Though she had watched Phillip’s decline, she had rejected the idea of sending him away by becoming oblivious to his loss of memory, and by reacting to his vagueness with anger. But what good would it do to think about all that now?
Staring out toward the San Francisco Bay she wondered what had happened to the years. Would she ever erase the sound of his voice asking, “Why are you doing this to me?” He knew that he was being abandoned, and at that terrible moment, she wanted to scream out, “I’m not leaving you here!” But she knew that she couldn’t do that. Dr. Cohn’s words kept her from weakening. “I know how you’re feeling, Ann. Sending someone you love to a nursing home is probably the most painful decision a person can make. But, as you asked me before—no, I don’t think it’s wise to keep him at home any longer. His condition will only deteriorate. No matter when you do this, it isn’t going to be easy.”
Wise Dr. Cohn. She knew he was right. It was no longer safe for Phillip to be home. Yet the rationale offered her no comfort. All she could do was hold him close and whisper, “I love you, Phillip. I’m sorry, darling….”
Suddenly she realized that it was completely dark. Brushing aside her tears, she turned on a lamp and poured herself a brandy. Passing the coffee table, she glanced down and saw a copy of New Horizons. Many of her professional achievements were chronicled in those pages. She laughed bitterly. During the interview, she had tried not to reveal too much of her personal life, especially facts concerning her marriage, but the reporter had kept pressing her for details. How had Phillip dealt with her success? Had he felt threatened by it? What was their relationship like? A marriage of almost thirty years was certainly good for a little space, surely worth mentioning for its longevity alone. Ann fielded most of the questions with vague but cheerful answers. On Phillip’s illness, she remained silent. He was entitled to his dignity.
Picking up the magazine, she turned the pages until she came to the image of herself which stared back. It belied her forty-nine years, although today she felt as if she were a hundred. The lonely silence was more than she could bear. Quickly she got up and put on a record, “Au Clair de Lune,” and sat back on the couch, still staring down at her picture. The caption was black and bold: MODEST AFTER HUGE SUCCESS.
A small voice within her whispered, It’s all a travesty, isn’t it? I’m no more prepared to handle my life now than I was when my mother died.
As though a veil had lifted, Ann looked back to her childhood and saw herself clinging to her father after the funeral. She had been six then, and oh, how she had loved him. She was all he had left—or so he had said. And Ann had believed him, until two years later, when he had met Stella Burke. The pain of her mother’s death had hardly faded, and Ann could still hear her own pathetic sobbing as she sat alone in her room the night he’d married Stella.
All through her teens she’d continued to feel as if her father had betrayed not only her mother’s memory but Ann herself. No wonder that when Phillip had come into her life she had been so eager to escape home.