Lovey

The Best Gift in Life

My momma always said that a woman’s most important job was taking care of her husband. And I had done that tirelessly from the day I walked down that aisle. But, at eighty-seven, packing, traveling and the mental strain of caring for a relatively helpless man were becoming quite a bit more taxing than they had once been. But it had all been worth it. For that half hour that Dan had seemed like his old self again, I would have traveled day in and day out for the rest of my fleeting time on this earth.

I thought about the photo of that day in Times Square, packaged tightly in my suitcase, surrounded by a cushion of clothing. I had the perfect spot for it, over the credenza in the den, right beside Dan’s chair, where we could look at it together all the time.

“You ready to get home, Lovey?” Annabelle asked, shutting off her phone for takeoff.

I nodded, closing my eyes, smelling the smells of home, feeling the give of my mattress, hearing the whirr of the air-conditioning as it clicked on and shut off.

“Home,” I repeated. It truly was the sweetest word coming off my lips. Much like “naptime” had been when all my girls were young.

Home was Dan’s routine. Home was a revolving door of caregivers, our doctors down the street, the emergency room I knew, no worries about strokes or infections or tooth abscesses.

“You know, Annabelle,” I said, “as much as I hate it, I think this might be our last trip.”

She shook her head. “Don’t say that, Lovey. You and D-daddy love to travel so much.”

I smiled thinking of Dan, so dapper in his overcoat and top hat, holding my hand, walking through an airport, completely transformed, transported by being somewhere new. I turned to peek through the crack between the seats, almost expecting to see that same bright-eyed, shiny-skinned man he had been. When I turned, it was almost as if it was someone else sitting there, the sallow complexion, free from the suit he wore every day of our married life.

“We loved to travel,” I said. And it surprised me when “He doesn’t know where he is anymore” escaped from my lips.

Annabelle turned to look out the window, and I knew I had upset her. But pretending that things were all right didn’t change them. Sometimes the truth just is.

Even still, I squeezed her shoulder and closed my eyes, remembering my granddaughter a year earlier, as happy as I’d ever seen her.

When she walked through my front door with Ben, only months before her wedding date with Holden, I knew instantly what had happened.

“You said you wanted a Love band when you finally did it,” I had said as Annabelle sat down on the couch beside me.

Ben had sat down beside Annabelle, put his arm around her shoulder, squeezed her and kissed her cheek. “The weird part is that I found that ring ten years ago at an estate sale my mother dragged me to, and knew I wanted to give it to my wife one day.”

I picked up Annabelle’s hand and turned it over, examining each false screw. Not one line was out of place. No cuts. No lack of symmetry. Not even a hint that it had been resized. “Don’t tell me it fit.” Normally the ring would have been ordered to the perfect millimeter.

Annabelle smiled even bigger, if it was possible, so that I could see that her orthodontist had done a perfect job on even her back teeth. “What are the odds?”

“I didn’t even know what Cartier was until I pulled this ring out for Annabelle. I just thought it was pretty.”

Annabelle smiled sheepishly. “I guess I never saw myself getting married in Vegas, but it felt right in the moment, you know? Ben sang as I walked down the aisle, and it was just us. It was amazing.”

I tried to push away the feeling that none of this was Annabelle, that that ring was the only thing that fit. This man and this life she was so swept away by seemed to be the wrong size. But I’d never upset my girl, so I didn’t let on. I put my hands up over my face and shook my head. “So what do you think, Dan? Your favorite grandchild ran off to Vegas and married a musician she’d known three days.”

“Mmmm,” he muttered.

Annabelle and I laughed, the sparkle in our eyes matching, that a vestige of a man that we had both practically revered was showing itself. And I felt so sentimental in that moment that I let go of any anger I had at my granddaughter throwing away her perfectly orchestrated life of leisure. I knew what it was to be in love—even if it was misguided. And so did Dan.

“We can talk about the Holden of it all later, but what on earth did your mother say?”

Annabelle looked down at her hands and said, “Well . . .”

“No, no, no,” I said. “If you are grown enough to run off and get married on your own, then you’re grown enough to tell your parents on your own.”

“If I may,” Ben interjected. He moved around to one of the armchairs flanking the sofa, sat down and leaned over, his arms resting on his knees so that his face was only inches from mine. I found myself somewhat entranced by his dark eyes and the cadence of his voice. He reached over for my hand and said, “You are the most important woman in the world to the woman that is my world.” I would have rolled my eyes, but he was so sincere that I believed him. Plus, looking over at Annabelle, I realized: Why shouldn’t he be in love with her already? What’s not to love?

“All we want is to get to revel in the positive energy of this experience, to be young and in love and unutterably happy.” He nodded his head toward Annabelle. “She won’t be happy until her family is happy, and I’ll do anything in my power to keep her smiling.” He gave my hand a squeeze. “So, please. I’m begging you. Help me give her the one thing I can’t.”

I raised my eyebrows. “You’re good, kid.” Then I squinted my eyes. “How many times have you been married?”

He shook his head. “Never. Never even been in love. That’s how I knew TL was the one. I saw her, and I never wanted to be away from her again.”

“TL?”

“True love,” Annabelle sighed wistfully.

“Oh, mercy.” I rolled my eyes, but, in reality, I thought it was sort of sweet. If I closed my eyes, I could put myself back in those days where love was more butterflies and love songs than grit and commitment.

Then I gasped. “Of course. You’re pregnant.” I shook my head. “Well, I’m just glad you ran off and got this whole thing over with.”

Ben and Annabelle laughed. “I’m not pregnant, Lovey.”

“Well . . . ,” Ben said.

Annabelle smiled. “Okay. I can’t promise I’m not pregnant, but I can promise that I wasn’t pregnant before my wedding night.”

The thought of her having a baby was what finally put the fear in me. A misguided marriage is bad. But you can get out of it with little fanfare. Once children are a part of the equation, there’s an entirely new level of finality to the thing. As I picked up the phone, I hate to admit that, though I wasn’t sure about him, I was fantasizing about seeing Ben’s gorgeous eyes and Annabelle’s perfect complexion on a little great-grandchild.

When I had called my daughter, she answered on the first ring, as she always did. I think she was panicked that one of us would die and she wouldn’t be there. “Jean,” I remember saying to her one day, “we all know how much we mean to each other. And that’s the best gift in life. Because no matter when the final moment comes, we don’t have to feel regret. We’ve loved as hard as we can.”

I think it eased her mind, but not her predictability. She walked through the glass double front doors, into the entrance hall, and then she saw us. My tall, slender, fair-haired youngest girl stopped dead in her tracks, put her thumbs into the sides of the belt around her thin waist, took a deep breath and said, “Why do I get the feeling I’m being ambushed?”

They were the exact same words that came out of my mouth, not three hours after remembering that day, when Annabelle and I arrived home from Martha’s Vineyard. After a plane flight and car ride, I arrived at my front door, exhausted, only to be greeted by my five girls, lined up, side by side, on the brick front stoop.

I glared at them, already knowing they were up to something, the way a mother always does. “What is this?” I asked. “Are y’all playing Red Rover?”

Sally stepped forward and hugged me, and I could see the tiniest quiver in her chin, giving away her tender heart. I sighed.

I sat down on the iron bench on the front porch, knowing I wasn’t getting past that barricade of daughters any more than Dan was going to get up and salsa.

Lauren sat down beside me and said, “Momma, this is an intervention.”

“A what?” My voice was high and squeaky.

“You know,” Annabelle interjected. “Like on the show. ‘Your behavior has affected me in the following ways . . .’”

I looked at all of them like they had announced they were joining a cult and taking me with them on their comet to heaven tomorrow.

“We’re just worried about you and Daddy being here alone at night—” Louise started.

“Okay, okay.” I cut her off. “I’ll hire a night nurse or make arrangements for that dreadful assisted living. Is that what you all want? Could I please just get inside and lie down? It has been quite a long trip.”

“That’s the thing,” Jean said.

And that’s when I could feel my own chin start to quiver. I somehow knew before my youngest even said a word that my home wasn’t my home anymore. I glared at Annabelle. “Did you know about this?”

She put her hands up in defense. “I promise I didn’t know a thing.”

I got up, pushed Jean aside and opened the front door. I gasped at how little furniture was left, the tears flooding to my eyes. Forty-five years of memories in this house, on this street, and—just like that—everything had changed. That seemed to be the theme of my life. “I can’t believe you didn’t even let me say good-bye,” I said softly.

“Momma,” Martha said kindly, “you would never, ever have said good-bye.”

“You never would have been able to part with anything,” Lauren said. “But we knew that this was what you really wanted.”

“So we were only trying to help,” Sally added.

Jean waved her hand as though she hadn’t just destroyed my past in a weekend while I was lounging on the Vineyard totally unaware that my life was being pulled out from under my feet.

“Before you get all upset,” Jean said, “why don’t we get you and Daddy back in the car and go over and check out the new place.”

“If you don’t like it, we’ll move all your stuff back,” Martha said.

“They called,” Lauren said, “and one of the new, remodeled units came available in the best place in town. We knew if we didn’t get it now then we would never get one.”

I was so angry I couldn’t speak. If you can’t say anything nice and all that was running through my mind as I got back in the backseat of the car. I crossed my arms indignantly. Annabelle was trying to calm me down, but I couldn’t even hear what she was saying, seething like I was. I patted Dan’s shoulder. “Our girls sure are something,” I said. “We might have raised them a little too headstrong.”

When we opened the door to our new light-filled assisted living apartment a few minutes later, my arm linked in Annabelle’s—she was the only member of my family, after all, that hadn’t completely betrayed me—we gasped in unison. Though I had shakily decided that I would move, I hadn’t even begun to look for places. In my mind’s eye, I had pictured worn laminate countertops and sterile, white hospital linoleum tile floors, inpatient white walls and sheet glass windows with those thick, black frames.

But this place, with its hardwoods, marble countertops, breakfast island and modern bathrooms complete with soaking tubs and lifts felt more like a spa than a nursing home. And the floor-to-ceiling French doors and windows leading to our private balcony illuminated the entire living space. I put my hand up to my mouth. “Oh my goodness,” I said, examining the waterproof lift remote by the tub. I’ll be able to take a bath again.” Then I looked over at my husband. “So what do you think, Dan?”

He said nothing in response.

“We can get up every morning and have our breakfast on the balcony overlooking the little lake,” I added.

“Yeah, D-daddy,” Annabelle said. “You and Lovey will be dining al fresco all the time.”

He looked up at Annabelle expectantly, like he was waiting for something else. And she smiled proudly as he said, “I think that’d be nice.”

The best part about the apartment was that it was filled with all my things. The Fabergé eggs collected on a glorious trip to Russia, the Herend from Hungary, Dan’s German Lugers from the war. The first antique chest we had ever bought together was perched in the corner of the small living room, a new TV hanging over top, and, of course, Dan’s chair, his lifeline of the past few years, was right across from it.

“So what do you think?” I asked my husband again, not exactly expecting a response but so practiced at figuring his needs into my daily equation that I didn’t know what else to do.

“I think my chair looks nice.”

All my girls laughed, I’m sure from a mixture of relief and happiness.

“Do you think you can stay here?” I asked Dan.

He looked up at me in that slack-jawed way that filled my heart with pity. “Yeah.”

“Well, girls,” I said. “Your daddy has spoken.”

I would have sooner dropped those Fabergé eggs out the window, one by one, with tiny, experimental parachutes than admit that they had been right. I guess, at eighty-seven, I’d never expected a fresh start.