Elliot used to say that big commercial movies finish with all the plot lines tied up in a neat bow, while independent films leave some loose ends dangling. So this story would be more of an indie, with good days and hard ones and questions still unanswered.
It’s been almost two years since he died. I have dug in at work, where I now have a full-time job covering education, one of the hottest beats at the paper. At least for the moment, there seems to be an enormous appetite for news about contentious attempts to fire bad teachers, fix rotten test scores and turn around chronically failing schools. This stuff matters to me, and it gives me a kick that at press conferences, New Jersey’s colorful Governor Christie calls on me by name.
My daughter, Devon, just got her driver’s license. My son, Alex, only a baby when Elliot and I got together, is fourteen, with blond fuzz where a moustache wants to be. It seems like any minute they’ll be heading off to college so I want to do things with them we’ll never forget. The three of us went on a gorgeous vacation in Costa Rica, where iguanas crawled by our toes at breakfast and monkeys played at the beach. We took surfing lessons and were shocked to find we could get up. It was impossible to keep my balance in the waves but simply trying made me feel young and light and free. It didn’t hurt to fall.
We’ve had some proud milestones. Max graduated from college in May and headed to Los Angeles to find a job in screenwriting. Elliot would be thrilled to see his youngest, the shy and serious one, taking such a daring leap. Aaron married Sallie in a lovely wedding in Chicago. They say they want to name their first son after Elliot. How I would love to give a tiny gurgling Elliot a very first kiss.
My personal milestone was a bit less dramatic. One day about a month ago I let Sadie off her leash in the woods so she could sniff around unencumbered. Usually when I did that she stayed close. Not this time. When a shaggy sheepdog lumbered by, she trotted after him and refused to come when I called her. I had to chase her down, blushing that I had so little clout.
“You can’t blame her,” said the dog’s master. “My Cookie must be her Prince Charming.”
I laughed as I bent down to grab Sadie’s collar. When I looked up I saw a handsome man with dark hair, an amused grin and relaxed way of walking. He seemed a few years younger than me.
In the Julia Roberts version, we would stop to talk, hit it off and stroll off into the sunset with our smitten puppies in the lead. But the stranger kept going his way and I went mine.
That’s when I took off my wedding ring. If I wanted such encounters to have a chance of leading somewhere someday, it didn’t make sense to advertise myself as off limits.
Elliot would have to understand. As a wise counselor once told me, “Even when you lose the person you feel most connected to, you don’t lose your deeply human need to connect.”
The thought that maybe it was time to put away my ring had struck me once a few months before. My friend Lynn had invited me for a summer weekend at her family’s country house in Connecticut, a gorgeous rustic cabin on a pond. We took a fifteen-mile bike ride with her parents, who were in their late seventies, still working and in fabulous shape. For thirty years I had admired their casual good looks and dedication to their careers in science and teaching. As we pedaled up the hills I marveled at their drive, especially when I noticed the scar on Lynn’s father’s back where he’d had major surgery the year before. Yet for all of their energy, and for all of Lynn’s mother’s beauty, their skin was more lined and their teeth seemed more fragile. Even this indefatigable couple was showing signs of wear. It dawned on me I would be lucky to be in such great shape at their age—and that was only about twenty-five years away. Not really much time at all. If I ever wanted to be part of a couple again, the window of possibility for meeting someone suddenly seemed small. Life is shorter than we think. Maybe I should wrench myself out of the past, sooner rather than later, or I’d be acting like one of those Indian women throwing herself on her husband’s funeral pyre.
Surely Elliot wouldn’t want that.
To my sentimental satisfaction, my finger is still indented where my ring used to be. Its shadow lingers as proof that he will always have his due influence.
“I hope I find somebody who loves me the way Elliot loved you,” my daughter declared out of the blue as we were doing errands one day. “He couldn’t have been more devoted.”
My heart swelled. We taught our children what real married love can mean. I can’t think of a better legacy.
Devon said I deserved to be happy with a man again and told me her daydream: This book would be made into a movie, and George Clooney would play Elliot.
“George will meet you on the set and fall in love,” she said. “Then you can marry Elliot, in George’s body, all over again.”
On our last big family vacation with Elliot, he got a T-shirt from the lodge where we stayed in the Adirondacks. The shirt is maroon, and under the Hedges logo there’s a hand-drawn picture of two people in a canoe on a lake surrounded by pine trees. The moon shines overhead. It’s an image of utter tranquility.
“That’s where I want to be right now,” Elliot used to say as he pointed to the peaceful scene on his chest.
Last weekend I took our kids back to the Hedges. It was perfect October weather. The leaves were glorious in the sun, all burnt orange and crimson and gold. I brought the brass box with Elliot’s ashes in his black L. L. Bean knapsack. In a private moment I couldn’t help unzipping the pockets. Yes, there were his computer screen wipes, umbrella and Trojans, as always. I smiled.
After breakfast Sunday the six of us headed out in canoes and made our way across Blue Mountain Lake towards a tiny island, really just an outcropping of rocks with a few evergreens.
“This is a beautiful spot,” was all I could say. As we drifted silently in our canoes I held the brass box at an angle over the side and let the grey ashes fall bit by bit into the clear water. They were darker than my dad’s, who knows why, and they swirled in a cloud under the ripples. In time the current pulled us away. We stayed quiet for a while, and then I wiped my eyes and took my paddle and began to head back to shore. The kids did the same. The wind picked up and blew against us. It became a challenge to move forward but we made it back to land eventually, one after another.
“That was a good idea,” Kate said simply as we hoisted our canoes onto the dock. I think so. I like to imagine Elliot near the hiking he loved so much, someplace we all had fun together, with good food, wine, campfires, a porch with rocking chairs for reading and a magnificent view. There’s something eternal about looking at the mountains.
It was hard to drive away. But sometimes you have to force yourself into the future.