Happy Birthday, Lulu!

Lulu (Apu Louise Brooks) is 14 today!

She's decided on a quiet day.

Ever since she was a pup named Dove, she's been a heat-seeking basenji.

Today is no different. If we had heat grates, she'd be on them, but we don't, so these days she prefers the easy chair in the bedroom, comfortably close to the radiator.

What a brave dog she's been! For years, she was a working girl. She got up every morning, five days a week, no matter the weather, got dressed and went to the office. 

Even when she was tired . . . 

These days we're re-tired . . . in warmer weather, we like to hike.

Every October, we attend the Blessing of the Animals at Christ Church Episcopal in Hudson. Lulu may glower her way through it, but she knows she needs it.  

She's grayer than she is in this photo, which was taken in 2011 . . . 

but she's still just as beautiful!

Happy Birthday, 

Sweet Pea, Cute Face, Lulu Dear, 

Loo Goo Gai Pan, Lulubelle, Lulubelski, 

from your sidekick.

Conversations

Writing a novel is, as someone else said, pathological. The writer goes along for years with voices in her head. Below are some of the conversations that Andrew and Annie have been having in my head lately. I think they move the story along. 

The first conversation is right after the March blizzard (Chapter 21), when Annie was snowed in with no phone service.

Listening Tour

“Andrew, it was a snow storm. They happen.”

“It was the Storm of the Century. Initial caps. Probably three hundred people died.”

“It was more like a hundred and fifty. Which is too bad  . . .” 

“Are you praying for them?”

“I’m pausing to remember them. Don’t be obnoxious. 

“Andrew, I could tell you that I’ll think about moving to New York, but I probably won’t. What I’ll think about is Kathleen’s Exploratory Committee and her Listening Tour in this school bus she’s bought. We’re meeting tonight to plan. 

“Not only what would I do and where would I live, but . . . at a certain point, you burn your bridges. Widowed small-town reporters don’t just waltz back into Manhattan. Or Staten Island.

“Plus, I like it up here. My friends are here. Except for you.”

“That’s probably the greatest number of words you’ve ever said to me at one time.” 

“Andrewwww . . . first, that’s not true, and second, are you listening.”

“Selectively. Your friends are there except for me. I’m smiling, can you hear it?”

“I can, you know. Your gold tooth is showing.”

“If you’re my friend, you know I mean well, but I can be a dunderhead.” 

“Is that Warren’s assessment?”

“Probably. But Caroline said it. She has a way of getting to the heart of the matter.” 

To Warren, Andrew said, “I’m getting confused over what I should tell you and what I should tell her.” 

“Is there anything you shouldn’t tell her?”

“I end up saying some things twice. They’re boring enough said once.” 

Car Talk

“Nice wheels.” Andrew lit a cigarette, kicked the tires of the Ford Escort. 

“Dull. They don’t rent Mustangs.” 

“Just as well. Killer car. How’s Azul?” Annie’s Honda was in the shop, with something terminal, Andrew was sure. 

“She needs a transmission job.” 

Andrew winced. “Sorry . . . what are you thinking?” He drew her toward him and they leaned against the Ford together. 

It was late April, Andrew’s first trip to Schuyler in weeks. Only nine Branch Davidians had survived the Waco siege. 

“Slimy,” he had replied to both Warren and Annie when they asked him how he felt about his weeks in Waco. 

“Once,” he told Warren, “I would have got back there. I would have reported from inside.” 

“But . . .”

“I found I didn’t want to die for the Branch Davidians. Or the radio station, for that matter.” 

“Why does that disappoint you about yourself?”  

“Maybe I should just sell life insurance.” 

“—That’s a long leap, as you know. Did the show want you to go inside?”

“No. They were probably afraid I would, that I would do something crazy. They sent me to Waco because they had to. I don’t have the background to cover the Middle East, via the World Trade Center. I have the background to cover government sieges.”

“Your reports were excellent . . . are you sure you didn’t get inside, ever?”

Andrew gave a big, innocent shrug. “As far as anyone can tell.” His talks with Warren might be confidential, and Warren already knew he was crazy, but some days, even therapeutically, Warren could operate on a need-to-know basis.  

And Annie . . . “Ed read somewhere that people who keep up with the news have a greater tendency to depression,” she told him. 

“Did Ed keep up with the news?”  

“Hourly.”  

 Now Annie leaned against him, and he had arrived here, in this godforsaken Republican backwater, as Annie called it, in daylight. The air hadn’t slapped him as he got off the train, as it did habitually; it didn’t caress him, either, this wasn’t Miami, but it left him alone. And there was Annie, glowing in her blond hair and a satin baseball jacket of black and white, with a full body hug. 

He loved even her problems, which seemed not intractable, or for life. 

“I can’t afford it,” she said about the transmission job. “But it’s cheaper than a buying new car.” 

“You know . . . if you lived in the city, you wouldn’t need a car.”

“Andrew, I’m about to burst into tears as it is. Please stop with that.”

“Sorry. I’m trying to be logical. If you want the transmission job, I’ll cover it. But you probably shouldn’t put that much money into Azul. I know you’re fond of the car,” he said, kissing the top of her head. 

“I can’t stand the thought of junking her. Do you think I could have her stuffed?”

He stopped himself just short of saying we could use it for parts. We.

“We can see,” he said. 

At breakfast Saturday in the diner, Annie took out a folder. “Catherine leases her car,” she said, “she gave me the info. Would you look at it? It’s only $100 a month . . .”

Andrew winced again. “Honey, that’s such a bad deal.” 

“It’s a way of having a good car when you can’t afford one.”  

“Let me see what I can get you at a police auction, OK?” Andrew was taking out his cell phone. 

“Drug dealers don’t drive Hondas.”

“In fact, they do, but they make low riders out of them . . . dammit, why don’t you have better cell coverage up here?”

“Because cell towers are a blight on the horizon. Why don’t the phone companies come up with better technology?”

By Sunday the plans were made. There was an auction Wednesday morning; Andrew and Carlos would attend. They discussed the details by phone in Spanish; a budget of up to $10,000, transferred from Andy to Carlos, since Carlos had a driver’s license. 

And in the diner Sunday morning, after Annie had been to church and Andrew had watched the park action—three quick deals, among people who knew each other—from his hotel room, he said, “Could I come calling this afternoon? I could take a cab, knock on your front door. I could bring cookies or something. You could show me your gardens when they aren’t buried by a blizzard. You probably have beautiful gardens.” 

“The yard is a mess. But yes, you can come over,” she said, aware of how easy it was to say that, “and I won’t ask you to rake. If you take a cab, I’ll have more time to straighten up.” 

“Don’t straighten up. Pretend it’s a surprise visit.” 

“I’m actually happier when things are tidy. You won’t believe that when you see the house. Will you go for a walk with Chloe and me?” 

“I’m wearing my new boots.” 

“We’re taking the next step,” Annie told Chloe as she stuffed two weeks’ worth of junk mail into the recycling bag. She stopped, looked at her watch, dialed Kathleen’s number. 

“We’re taking the next step,” she told Kathleen. 

“Good! I mean, it’s good, right? That’s why you’re telling me?”

“—Yes.”

As long as you feel safe with Andrew, Father Paul had said. 

“I mean, he seems as normal as anyone.”

“He does,” said Kathleen. “And more so than many. If you feel like talking later, call again. If we’re putting the kids to bed, leave a message.”

“Perfect. I’m taking him to the train at seven, then I’ll call you.”

Copyright © Debby Mayer

A Reading from 'Riptides'

Lisa's List

In late September I was fortunate to have my memoir, "Riptides & Solaces Unforeseen," reviewed by Lisa Dolan in her Lisa's List column in the Register-Star. Below is her article. 

‘Riptides’ Author Shares Her Process

By Lisa Dolan

Lisa Dolan is the literary coach for the Hudson City School District. Her book column, “Lisa’s List,” appears every Wednesday in the Register-Star. 

Late last week I passed a lovely hour with author, blogger and journalist Debby Mayer. A few weeks back I had finished her recently published “Riptides & Solaces Unforeseen” (Epigraph Books, May 2013). There was no need to revisit the pages before our interview. Her story stayed with me. I am guessing it always will.

Mayer’s memoir is a personal, honest, often brutal account of her life partner Dan’s rapid passage from life to death. And all that happened in between. A nightmare of appointments, doctors, nurses and hospitals.

Mayer eloquently chronicles the “altered reality” of Dan’s decline. Dan, who at age 55 was diagnosed with a fast-onset brain cancer that claimed his life in four harrowing months.

I found this memoir too raw to put down. Readers having navigated the health care system from diagnosis to hospice will be nodding their heads; grateful for all of these sentiments, finally expressed in print.

From an early chapter, titled “Home”:

Dr. Ehrlich says that he can’t make a diagnosis based on the MRI film; he needs to do a brain biopsy. He explains the procedure, one I’ve never heard of, and its risks; the importance of getting enough of the brain to study, but not too much.

Think about it, he says. But if you decide to go ahead, I wouldn’t put it off — I’d have it done in the next week or two.

I should have spoken up. I should have said, but this is a man who skittered up and down the pyramids at Chichen Itza, who shovels snow off our roof in winter, who could recite the 26 words of James Coburn’s dialogue in ‘The Magnificent Seven.’ Three weeks ago he was running and doing the Times crossword puzzle daily. Today he is crippled and no one knows why.

What a treat to sit with Hudson resident Mayer after reading her very personal journey of loss. The questions came easily, as did her thoughtful responses:

Dolan: What compelled you to turn the tragic events of Dan’s illness into a book?

Mayer: What kept me going, through the long process of writing and publication, was to create this work as a tribute to Dan, my life partner for 25 years. I could quote the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas: “Do not go gentle into that good night . . .  Rage, rage against the dying of the light,” but it’s not even that simple. I also wanted to report on how our health care system had treated Dan, and by extension, me. I would not, could not, stand by silently.

Dolan: Would you talk about your writing process?

Mayer: After Dan’s death, I wrote out, on my computer, everything that had happened to us, every discussion we had been part of, everything that had been said to us during the four months of his illness. I had notes in my daybook, I have a good memory, and with my experience as a journalist, a good auditory memory. By doing this — my own sort of narrative therapy — I didn’t have to hang onto the story. I could let it go and move on. If I needed any detail, it was there. And it still is, electronically and in hard copy.

This took a long time. I worked full time in the Publications Office at Bard College, and I was now a team of one who had to take care of everything — dogs, house, self, in that order — by myself. I found that I was too tired to write in the evening, so I began getting up half an hour earlier every morning—at 5:30 a.m.—which gave me an hour to write before the rest of the day. I continue to do that today.

Having written everything out, I then began to pare it down, to try to get to the essential, to create a memoir, not journal entries. This also took a long time, during which I moved from Claverack to Hudson, so I lost several months in being consumed by real estate.

I spent time putting together an excerpt from the book. I thought that if I could get the excerpt published, that would generate interest in the book. I couldn’t get the excerpt, “Therapy Dogs,” published until the winter 2011 issue of Our Town. 

But in the meantime, in 2007, the excerpt won a grant in creative nonfiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts. As a result of my winning this grant, several literary agents read the book, but while they complimented the writing, they declined to represent it.

In May 2009, I went to Book Expo America, an annual publishing conference in New York City, as a sort of last-ditch effort to identify publishers that might be interested in “Riptides.” While there, I attended two workshops, one on print-on-demand and the other on self-publishing. And I realized that I had been stuck in the 20th century, seeking a literary agent who would then seek a publisher for my book. We were now well into the 21st century and writers were skipping the middle people and going straight to the reader, publishing their books themselves, online, in hard copy or both.

It still took me a while. Agents and publishers want writers to have a platform. To me, a platform is a good story, well told, but today that’s not enough. Publishers urge writers to have a blog, so they can write about what they’re writing about. In January 2011, after I had retired from Bard College, I started my blog, 2becomes1: widowhood for the rest of us. It was fun! For about two years I posted short personal essays about moving on after loss. This year I have been posting chapters of my new, untitled novel.

“Riptides” waited in the background until last year, when I started to work with a professional coach, Millie Calesky (milliecalesky.com). She helps me organize my projects. Slowly but surely, I added “Riptides” back into the mix. I decided to publish it with Epigraph Books in Rhinebeck, and it came out this past May.

Dolan: What do you think Dan would have thought about the book?

Mayer: Dan was private man. Yet he always supported my writing and my efforts to be published. A character based on Dan plays a small but vital role in my novel, “Sisters,” and Dan didn’t object to that. So I think at the very least he would have put up with this and maybe, even, he is proud of it. (I think of his spirit as a living thing.)

Dolan: Will you share the genesis of the title?

Mayer: I had a hard time titling this book. I used one title for years as I wrote it, until a friend advised me that I simply couldn’t use that title, it would be confused with something completely different. This friend and I sat in The Parlor (now Rev) coffeehouse on upper Warren Street and brainstormed titles. 

We came up with “Riptides” because that’s what the experience of Dan’s illness felt like: a strong current that pulled us away from our “shore,” our normal life, a current over which we had no control. We could struggle against it, but we would never get back to the life we had previously known. “And Solaces Unforeseen” was added because there were solaces, in our friends, our families, and even in our two dogs, which I brought weekly to the hospital to visit Dan.

“Riptides and Solaces Unforeseen” is available at Spotty Dog Books & Ale in Hudson, the Chatham Bookstore and the gallery at the Greene County Council on the Arts office in Catskill. “Riptides” can also be borrowed through the Mid-Hudson Library System. Mayer’s blog can be accessed at debbymayer.blogspot.com.

Posted in Lisa’s List September 25, 2013

Copyright © Columbia-Greene Media

Debby on the radio

I interrupt my untitled novel to bring you another event: Between the Lines, a monthly magazine show on WGXC 90.7. I'm one of three people interviewed, bracketed by two visual artists. I tried to put the link below. You can either listen to the program at 2 p.m. on Thursday, September 19, 2013, find it archived at wgxc.org, or try the link below. 


From WGXC: 

This month's edition of Between the Lines is guest hosted by Paul Smart, and features three interviews dealing with the relationship between mortality and creativity. 

Originating host Ann Forbes Cooper, on sabbatical for a few months, speaks with and memorializes the late Steve Crohn, the "man who could not catch AIDS," who had a mysterious immunity to the disease he witnessed from its earliest appearances, and who took his own life in August 2013. 

Debby Mayer, local journalist with The Columbia Paper, discusses her memoir, Riptides & Solaces Unforeseen, and how she's turned the horrors of dealing with her late partner's demise to brain cancer into something healing. 

And finally, the painter's painter John Lees, who opens a solo exhibit at John Davis Gallery in Hudson on October 12, 2013, discusses the ways in which time, mortality, and the primacy of paint itself work together in his art. 

Music is by Sara Barreilles; Pablo Casals, playing Johannes Sebastian Bach; and the great Ben Webster. 

Between the Lines, WGXC 90.7

Chapter 21 / Phone Chat

“Fed Ex from Andrew!” said Marilyn with a wink. 

Tina was out of the office having her hair colored, so Annie quickly opened the box. Inside was another box and inside that was a cell phone, tucked into bubble wrap. Annie stared at it as if a good-sized salmon had arrived on her desk. Raw. Without a recipe.

1993 cell phone,
courtesy Wikipedia

No, there was a recipe, three words scrawled in black ink on a piece of scrap paper taped to the phone: Turn Me On. 

OK, Andrew, she thought, and pressed Power. Immediately there was a ringing at the other end. 

“Andrew Logan.”  

“Annie Sullivan!” She tried to make her voice as firm as his.  

“You got it!” Now he was smiling, she could tell. 

“You know,” she said, “it probably won’t work around here.” 

“Keep it on anyway, OK? The account is in my name, the bill will come to me. At night, recharge it. If I can remember to recharge my phone— 

“Darlin’, I have another call. I’ll call you later, OK?”

OK. It was Tuesday, and in Waco, Texas, the Branch Davidian standoff had begun, and Andy was on the scene, covering it for Democracy Today. The previous Friday, just past noon, a bomb had gone off in the garage of the World Trade Center. Catherine had been driving back to the office after covering an Economic Development Committee meeting in Schuyler and heard about it on the radio. She had rushed upstairs to Tina, who wanted to know only about economic development in Schuyler.

Annie had called Andrew, left a message. She figured he wouldn’t be on the train that night, but since she didn’t hear from him, she went to the train station, just to make sure. 

“Like that Japanese dog that met the train every night for ten years, looking for his dead human,” she told Andrew when they finally talked on Saturday night. 

“I hate that story,” he said. 

“So do I, but probably for different reasons.” 

She had sat in her car that Friday so that people wouldn’t feel sorry for her. She watched the arrivals talk animatedly with their friends, and thought how good one of Andrew’s full-body hugs would have felt just then. Instead she went home thinking about how important the story would be to him, and remembering how she used to stand in line for half-price theater tickets in the World Trade Center, and how remote that was to her now. Andrew had tried to call her on Saturday, but they kept missing each other until evening. Now she had her first cell phone.

And now it was Tuesday and the snowstorm of the century was predicted for the coming weekend. She would be buried in snow while Andrew was buried in news, real news, and he was happy, she could tell, no longer a pundit but a reporter, a journalist, on the ground covering national news while she put together the religion page for the Thursday edition of a newspaper with a total circulation of just under 15,000, including 5,727 subscribers. She took the calls from the parishioner volunteers, from the energetic Methodist to the shy elderly Lutheran who had a meltdown if her line were busy. She thought about them and their sermon titles and the Bible chapters that would be read this Sunday, or not, depending on the storm. 

She was the only one on this newspaper who cared about these calls—no, Tina and Wendy cared, because it put more local names into the paper—but right now, at least, she would rather be putting together the religion page, Chloe settled at her feet in this drafty pole barn of an office. This morning, brushing her teeth, she had heard Andy’s report from Waco and she thought, how did he find that out? And she thought, if he is screwing another beautiful photographer, well, she, Annie, would have to live with that, wouldn’t she; for example, she wouldn’t have to read the cell phone manual.

This week she was off on Wednesday and Thursday, during which time Tina has instructed her to stock up on canned food, candles and batteries as if she were a nitwit who had never lived through a storm before. The storm did make Annie anxious, however; the stores would run out of canned soup, batteries, and candles, so she would buy them tomorrow, and over the weekend the electricity would inevitably go off and while it was March, not January—the pipes probably wouldn’t freeze—it would be damned uncomfortable. 

Don’t turn your heat down at night was another piece of Tina advice, which Annie planned to follow, even though it would give her a nosebleed. Leave your car at the end of your driveway was important to Tina, who had a quarter-mile driveway, but not to Annie, whose only Honda would be tucked into the garage so that her neighbor Frank—this winter’s Piers Plow Man—could plow with his pickup truck. 

*  *  *

“Hello!”

Monday morning and the phone had rung, but on the line Annie could hear nothing but the hiss of the snow. She stood at the sliding glass door, watching icy snow blown horizontal and listening to it on the phone.

“Hello!”

It was eight o’clock, which meant it had been snowing for 17 hours. The electricity had gone off overnight, and the county was in official lockdown, she had learned this morning from her battery-operated radio, a State of Emergency that closed roads to all but official vehicles, the only time that Tina and Wendy would give their staff a reprieve from driving to the office. 

“I can’t hear you. I’m going to hang up.” 

But the phone kept ringing . . . on the hour, she saw, and sometimes other times. And she thought, maybe they can hear me. 

“Hello! I can’t hear you. But I’m all right. It’s still snowing hard and the electricity went off last night. But I have a gas stove. I do not use the oven to heat the house! I use the burners to melt snow for washing and for flushing the toilet. It makes a nice steam.” 

“Hello! I’m still here, wearing my coat and hat. If this is Wendy, I can’t do phone interviews but I’m reading that county history you wanted me to write about, so I can do that.” 

Chilled, faced with hours of minimal activity and maximum anxiety, she began to look forward to the calls, to prepare what she would report. 

“Hello! My neighbor Frank stopped by, on his snowshoes, to see if I wanted to go to the shelter at the firehouse. But they can’t take pets, and I can’t see leaving Chloe here alone. Frank and Nancy aren’t going either. Nancy won’t leave their cats, and Frank won’t leave Nancy. He’ll stop by again tomorrow.” 

“Hello! The blue spruce fell down . . . I loved that tree . . .” She heard her voice catch, tired of the anxiety, of being cold and trying to get Chloe to pee on the deck. “It was very polite . . . the branches just scraped the screened porch, instead of crashing onto the roof . . .”

“Hello! It’s dark now and I don’t want to light candles. The stove is off. Chloe and I are in our sweaters and jackets, under the down comforter. Good night.” 

The calls stopped then and began again at daylight. 

“Hello! . . . Damn, I still can’t hear anything. The snow has stopped. I’ll go to work later when the roads are cleared. Maybe they have a generator. I still don’t have electricity. If this is Andy, the cell phone still doesn’t get any signal, but your report from Waco was excellent. As for me, this morning Chloe and I will share a chicken and rigatoni soup for breakfast. I’m going to hang up now and heat it.”    

It was always him. In the northeast, Kathleen and Jaime and Nick’s phones were out too. They worried a little about Annie alone, but they knew she could take care of herself—they had all been through this before—and it wasn’t January; the pipes probably wouldn’t freeze. 

So it was Andrew who called and listened to her, his eyes closed, his free hand holding up his head. He listened and he thought, she cannot stay there alone, she has to come to New York, I have to find her a job in New York.  

Copyright © Debby Mayer

What do I know about self-publishing?

Find out on September 12, when I give a talk for the Upper Hudson Chapter of the Editorial Freelancers Association. Please do join us for discussion, questions, and answers (or advice on how to look it up).

Debby crosses the river

Hey, everyone, I am working on another chapter of my novel and will have a new post soon, but in the meantime, here's another Riptides event! It's perfect for those on the west side of the Hudson River, and for the rest of us, it's time we learned that it's only a river . . . get over it. 

Another completely different program—I'm paired with Melanie Young, author of Getting Things Off My Chest, A Survivor's Guide to Staying Fearless & Fabulous in the Face of Breast Cancer. Our two perspectives should be most interesting! The Greene County Council on the Arts has more on their Facebook page and website (greenearts.org), but their flier didn't fit here, so I'm using the flier created for me by Heather Gibbons, flier designer extraordinaire. 

And soon I'll have a new photo!

Debby at the Germantown Library

In the latest new news, I'm reading from Riptides at the Germantown Library on August 21. Didn't they make a nice flier!

This will be yet a different program, convenient to southern Columbia County, Red Hook, and Rhinebeck.

Hope to see you there.

Debby at the Chatham Bookstore

New news! 

I'll be at the Chatham Bookstore, 27 Main Street, Chatham, NY, on Saturday, July 13, from 5 to 7 p.m. A brief reading, yes, but mostly the evening is conversation with Tom Chulak of the bookstore, and the audience. Tom does a great program—this will be a good introduction to Riptides or, if you've read it, an opportunity to discuss it. Free, with refreshments, of course! 

Hope to see you there.

Chapter 20 / Suckers

“Putting aside theology for a moment—or for as long as you want—first comes your physical safety,” said Paul. “God wants you to be safe.”

With this information Andrew has isolated you. 

No. She had always been good at using resources. She went to church. She liked the rector. He was in his 50s, a calm, bespectacled man who had been drawn to ministering as a second, if not a third or fourth, career. Word on the street, and in the congregation, was that in his last parish, in Vermont, he had helped smuggle Cuscútlano refugees into Canada. Or out of Canada, people weren’t sure which, and all he would say was that they were friends, these people, who stayed with him and his family while they got on their feet after leaving their home country. 

Annie sat facing Paul, aware of a computer on his desk and a wall of books behind her. 

“I’m dating a man who’s done time for manslaughter,” she said. “Pled down from Murder Three. Depraved indifference to human life. This is a new world for me. I need help dealing with it.” 

And Paul, who preferred to be called Paul, not Father anything, put aside theology for the moment, and asked about her safety. She felt safer immediately.

“I met him on an airplane, Paul. Do you know the Tom Waits song with the line, ‘only suckers fall in love with total strangers’?”

Paul tapped his forefinger three times, thinking. “The one he does with Bette Midler.” 

“Yes.”

“So then, you’re in love with Andrew?”

“I like him. I think about him. I mean, I still think about Ed ten times a day, but that’s down from a hundred. And then Andy calls and I’m happy, and I think about something that’s now, not in the past. Or I could, before he started to tell me about his past. 

“I like it that he visits me. The last time he visited was Valentine’s weekend, so I decided I would bring flowers for him, when I picked him up at the train station, and I found some beautiful yellow tulips. I don’t usually buy flowers that aren’t in season, but these were such a lovely pale yellow, closed up, ready to open. I couldn’t resist. 

“And when the train came in, Andrew had flowers for me—six gorgeous yellow roses. We exchanged our flowers, and a kiss. People at the train station applauded us. We all smiled. But do I just go blithely on, or should I worry about what’s in back of us, what no one at the train station sees?”

“When Andrew visits, do you feel safe with him?” 

“Right. Safe. What I was trying to say before, with the song, is that I feel as safe with him as I would with any man who’s a stranger.” 

“Which is . . .”

“He’s been to my house only once. During that sudden blizzard we had in January, remember?”

Paul nodded. 

“It was the middle of the night. We had gone dancing, of all things—my idea—and we had talked, all day, and we had driven through a blizzard together . . . in my twenties, that would have been enough. Now it wasn’t. I locked my bedroom door. 

“On my road, the nights are dark—black. And silent. I can lie in bed with my eyes open and not see or hear a thing. I like it. If that’s the grave, then the grave isn’t frightening. But this night I lay in the dark, acutely aware that a stranger lay upstairs. Someone I knew nothing about. 

“When I picked cotton in Cuscútlan, I lived in a co-ed dorm with strangers from all over the country. And it’s possible that I lay next to Ed for 15 years and didn’t really know him, but that’s another story, let’s stay with Andy today. It was . . . the one-ness of it, or the two-ness, the solitude, the blackness, just the two of us in the pitch dark. 

“I did fall sleep, and when I woke up the sun was shining and we were all still alive. I put on coffee and took Chloe for a walk, and when I came back Andy was up, drinking coffee and playing the piano. I almost burst into tears.

“Say more . . .” 

“There was music coming from my house. Live music, played by a person who loves the piano. These days I barely remember to turn on the radio. Andy had opened ‘Skylark,’ which was the song I was learning when Ed died. 

“Otherwise, we’re alone only in the car, or in public places. It feels like something we both want. We haven’t slept together, if you’re wondering.”

“And you feel he’s attentive to your comfort, your needs? The flowers were lovely, but in other instances . . . “

“Yes. I wish he could drive. Being in jail, out of the country, in the hospital—renewing his driver’s license was a low priority. Now, staying out of trouble for minor infractions like driving without a license is a high priority. But I think it’s more than that.” 

“What does he say about it?”

“I asked him if he’d like to practice in my car, in a parking lot. I told him if he can play the piano, he can drive a car with a stick shift. And it’s easier to take the road test up here. 

“He said he would practice with me. But it might be a while before he could take the road test. That seemed like a start, and he does take cabs when he can.” 

Paul blinked. 

“Yes. He takes cabs as if he were in Manhattan. He likes to talk to the drivers, among other reasons.”

“And he likes to talk to you?”

“I think so. He’s good at tracking things, like what I’m doing at work, what my friends are doing. He’s a reporter, he tracks things.” 

“Not because he likes you?”

“I guess.” 

“You’re not sure?”

“It’s a matter of gaining confidence. One person leaves you. Another comes along. He might leave too. You’ve learned that.

“But I liked your sermon about God’s plan. About how God has a plan, we just don’t know what it is. It was my plan to grow old with Ed. It wasn’t God’s plan. God has something else in mind. It might be better, it might be worse. We’ll find out. I suppose the sermon was more complex than that.”

“No, that’s a good takeaway. In the meantime, if you’re concerned,look into how forthcoming Andrew is about his responsibility in Polly’s death. Does he acknowledge his share in her death? Does he give an honest appraisal of the situation? Has he made an effort to change himself? 

“God forgives everyone. But it’s your decision to forgive Andrew, in prayer with God. Just keep in mind that life is set free by forgiveness. The life God wants for you is freed from the past, by forgiveness. 

“But it can wait for the right time. It doesn’t have to happen all at once, as long as you feel safe with Andrew.”

Copyright © 2013 Debby Mayer

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