One Summer

6

Jack sat strapped into a wheelchair staring up at his wife’s coffin. Mikki and Cory sat next to him. Jackie had been deemed too young to attend his mother’s funeral; he was being taken care of by a neighbor. The priest came down and gave Jack and his children holy communion. Jack nearly choked on the host but finally managed to swallow it. Ironically, it was the first solid food he’d had in months.

At my wife’s funeral.

The weather was cold, the sky puffy with clouds. The wind cleaved the thickest coats. The roads were still iced and treacherous. They’d been driven to the cemetery in the funeral home sedan designated for family members. His father-in-law, Fred, rode up front, next to the driver, while he and the kids were squeezed in the back with Bonnie. She had barely uttered a word since learning her youngest daughter had been instantly killed when her van ran a red light and was broadsided by an oncoming snowplow.

The graveside service was mercifully brief; the priest seemed to understand that if he didn’t hustle things along, some of the older people might not survive the event.

Jack looked over at Mikki. She’d pinned her hair back and put on a black dress that hung below her knees; she sat staring vacantly at the coffin. Cory had not looked at the casket even once. As a final act, Jack was wheeled up to the coffin. He put his hand on top of it, mumbled a few words, and sat back, feeling totally disoriented. He had played this scene out in his head a hundred times. Only he was in the box and it was Lizzie out here saying good-bye. Nothing about this was right. He felt like he was staring at the world upside down.

“I’ll be with you soon, Lizzie,” he said in a halting voice. The words seemed hollow, forced, but he could think of nothing else to say.

As he started to collapse, a strong hand gripped him.

“It’s okay, Jack. We’ll get you back to the car now.” He looked up into the face of Sammy Duvall.

Sammy proceeded to maneuver him to the sedan in record time. Before closing the door, he put a reassuring hand on Jack’s shoulder. “I’ll always be there for you, buddy.”

They were driven home, the absence of Lizzie in their midst a festering wound that had no possible healing ointment. Jackie was brought home, and people stopped by with plates of food. An impromptu wake was held; devastated folks chatted in low tones. More than once Jack caught people gazing at him, no doubt thinking, My God, what now?

Jack was thinking the same thing. What now?

Two hours later the house was empty except for Jack, the kids, and his in-laws. The children instantly disappeared. Minutes later Jack could hear guitar strumming coming from Mikki’s bedroom, the tunes melancholy and abbreviated. Cory and Jackie shared a bedroom, but no sound was coming from them. Jack could imagine Cory quietly sobbing, while a confused Jackie attempted to comfort him.

Bonnie and Fred O’Toole looked as disoriented as Jack felt. They had signed on to help their healthy daughter transition with her kids to being a widow and then getting on with her life. Without the buffer that Lizzie had been, Jack could focus now on the fact that his relationship with his in-laws had been largely superficial.

Fred was a big man with a waistline large enough to portend a host of health problems down the road. He tended to defer to his wife in all things other than sports and selling cars, which was the line of work that had brought him to Cleveland. He was a man who would prefer to look at the floor rather than in your eye, unless he was trying to sell you the latest Ford F-150. Then he could be animated enough, at least until you signed on the dotted line and the financing cleared.

Bonnie was shorter than her daughter. The mother of four grown children, she was now well into her sixties, and her figure had lost its shape. Her waist and hips had turned into a solid wall of flesh. Her hair was white, cut short and rather brutally, and her eyeglasses filled most of her square face. Fred kept sighing, rubbing his big hands over his pressed suit pants, as though attempting to rub some dirt off his fingers. Bonnie, who had kept on her black outfit, was sitting very still on the couch, her gaze aimed at a corner of the ceiling but apparently not actually registering on it.

Fred sighed again, and this seemed to rouse Bonnie.

“Well,” she said. “Well,” she said again. Fred eyed her, as did Jack.

She looked over and gave Jack a quick glance that was undecipherable.

Then came more silence.

Finally, a few minutes later Fred helped Jack get into bed, and then he and Bonnie went up to Jack and Lizzie’s room. They would be staying here full-time until other arrangements were made.

Jack lay in the dark staring at the ceiling. The days after Lizzie had died had been far worse than when he’d received his own death sentence. His life ending he’d accepted. Hers he had not. Could not. Mikki and Cory had barely spoken since the police officer had come with the awful news. Jackie had wandered the house looking for his mother and crying when he couldn’t find her.

Jack slid open the drawer of the nightstand and took out the six letters. He obviously had not written one on Christmas Eve. In these pages he had poured out his heart to the person he cherished above all others. As he looked down at the pages, wasted pages now, his spirits sank even lower.

Jack rarely cried. He’d seen fellow soldiers die horribly in the Middle East, watched his father perish from lung cancer, and attended the funeral of his wife. He had shed a few tears at each of these events, but not for long and always in a controlled way. Now, staring at the ceiling, thinking a thousand anguished thoughts, he did weep quietly as it finally struck him that Lizzie was really gone.