The Living End Read online

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call you when Joey had the stroke. Besides, you all were away.”

  “That’s beside the point. We’re talking intentions here.”

  “Oh, brother.”

  “Don’t ‘oh, brother’ me, Pearly. Now get ready, we’re all going up to Havre de Grace.”

  “No we’re not.”

  “Yes. We are.”

  “We are not.”

  Cheeta crosses her arms. “I’m not going to let you regret this for the rest of your life.”

  Oh, brother. “I’m not going, Cheeta. I can’t.”

  “This is ridiculous.”

  “…”

  She crosses her arms the other way now and stares at me. “I’m not leaving until you tell me you’ll go.”

  She won’t either. “You’re a stubborn old goat,” I say.

  “Ten years more stubborn than you, that’s for sure.”

  She’s right about that.

  “I’m not going to the funeral. But I’ll drive up with you.”

  “That’s better. I’ll leave you alone until we leave, then. We go at five tomorrow morning.”

  “Five?!”

  “Yes, five. Period.”

  They drop me off at the house and head toward the cemetery. Maida’s driveway lies barren. I notice as I walk past the school, a nice little hike, but hardly impossible, that the buses are gone and all the classrooms sit empty, presumably everyone gone off to the funeral. The school sign says, “Good-bye, Dr. Laurel. We’ll miss you.” The downtown shopping area seems empty as well, a balloon with too little air.

  I want to see the grave. I want to be there. But I can’t.

  I figure sitting at the lighthouse will be a somewhat tribute: After strolling by the abandoned, boarded-up lightkeeper’s cottage, I cross the street toward the conical building. Concord Point Lighthouse squats small and spare, whitewashed to an Ultrabright gleam, its lantern room and roof painted a dull black. I’ve always loved it here, always felt at peace near this stone lady in her black bonnet. Today is no exception.

  I asked Joey about lighthouses once. I said, “What is it about them, Joey? Why do people love lighthouses so much?”

  “It’s about finding your way, Pearly. It’s purely metaphorical. Somewhere deep inside, we all know we’ll never completely avoid the rocks on our own.”

  “You’re my lighthouse, then,” I told him that day as we sat on the very banks I sit upon right now. That was about ten years ago.

  He didn’t tell me I was his lighthouse, for that would have been a lie. He just pulled me close.

  In truth, I’ve lived a charmed life. Good parents, farm upbringing, wonderful marriage to a charming, delightful man. Everything, even the deaths that I’ve been forced to bear until Joey’s, has come along as it should, in the proper timing. So is it any wonder I feel the way I do right now?

  So now what? My lighthouse has no automatic timer now that its lightkeeper has left. How can I find my way? Do I really care to?

  Joey’s thirty years old and he’s done it. He’s a Ph.D. now. We’ve done it together. Sure, I’d like to go back to school someday and get my degree, but I can’t say I don’t feel some sense of satisfaction at helping to support us while Joey went all the way. It’s a kick being married to a Ph.D., too. Sexy, really. All that brain in there finding me attractive, needing me. I like that a lot. Man, I love it when Joey makes love to me. He’s so intense and, well, so there, in tune with me. I feel like I am the most important thing in the world to him, like I am the Queen of Love and Beauty. Even though his schedule with school has been hectic, he finds time for me.

  The school was wonderful about his degree program too, extending him loads of time to study and learn. I look at him across our breakfast table. “What do you think, Joey? Time to hunt for a house?”

  He smiles. “There’s one for sale up west of the park. It’s not right on the water, but it’s only one house back. Rachel Hughes—you remember, mathematics? Her mother lives there, and she’s selling to move in with Rachel and her husband.”

  “Good price?”

  “Very. Now it’s small, but brilliant.”

  “I love small.” I stand up, lean over, and kiss his mouth. “Maybe we can go over there today?”

  “I’ll call them and ask.”

  Of course, with house payments I’ll have to keep my receptionist job at the local State Farm office, but that’s okay.

  I ask Joey if he’ll make love to me before he heads off to school. I tell him I need him just now and I do. So we slip upstairs, back between the covers, and I tell him it’s okay if it’s quick, I know he needs to get to school. But he kisses my neck, and I know that he won’t mind being late just this once.

  I feel his hand slide across my stomach, and I remember the first time he ever did that. We were window-shopping down the streets of Annapolis on our first official date. There we stood in front of a jewelry store. I wore a pink sweater, and as he stood slightly behind me and to my right, I felt his right hand slip under the sweater and caress my bare stomach. His left arm encircled my left shoulder, the hand coming to rest on the opposite collarbone. Oh, my. Joey’s hands. The magic trails they leave behind.

  I am so very much loved.

  We are young, and we are lovers. Lovers of more than just the body. Oh, that truly is the definition of a lover, isn’t it? A true lover penetrates point by point, into more than the body, but into the mind, the heart, the soul. A true lover is all into all.

  I am his and he is mine.

  I figure it will be at least an hour before they come back, so I return to the house to bury my face in Joey’s coats. To smell his smell and quite possibly take some of him into my lungs. I left his other clothes back at the cabin.

  Sitting on the floor of his closet amid his shirts, I decide to let myself cry a bit. Cheeta finds me, how much later? I don’t know.

  “I should have figured as much. You would have done better to have shed those tears at the cemetery. It was a beautiful service. They had a memorial service at the school chapel beforehand, not that anyone told me about it.” She twiddles her necklaces.

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Of course you didn’t. This is the craziest thing, Pearly.”

  “That, I do know. What was everybody saying? What did you tell them?”

  “I told them you were prostate with grief.”

  “Prostate? Not prostrate?” Somebody just shoot me now!

  “They got the message. They send their prayers and condolences.”

  “I’m going to need them.”

  I am holding a fishing shirt of Joey’s. Balled up in my hands, it is moist from slobber and tears.

  “Lets go, Pearly. It’s a three-hour drive.”

  I nod and climb to my feet with a groan, my joints wanting to spring into action but feeling no gumption for it. I loved seeing Joey in his fishing shirt, watching him as he left the house and walked across to Maida’s. He loved so many things. What a shame he didn’t live to fulfill that list.

  “Some of these items are for you, Pearly,” he told me just before the stroke. Would he want me to tackle that list alone? The answer is easy.

  A feeling that I got what I came for eases me along to the car.

  Peta makes me sit up front as she drives. She talks about her garden and sounds like Grandma. This comforts me.

  “I’ve put up loads of pickled green tomatoes and cucumbers, of course. Green beans, squash, peaches, asparagus, limas too. So you want any vegetables this winter, go on down into the basement and get some, just put a little tick on the inventory paper tacked onto the freezer.”

  Inventory paper? What is this?

  She points at me, her finger almost up my nose. “If you planned on starving yourself with grief, you came to the wrong place.”

  Cheeta leans forward. “If you ask me, she needs some fattening up.”

  I roll my eyes and keep looking forward at the boring landscape of Route 13—fields, produ
ce stands, and old gas stations—humming by like a repeating pattern as we thread down the stitches of the highway.

  Crushing the soft flannel of Joey’s shirt to my nose, I breathe deeply. Peta sighs and sits back. Cheeta shakes her head and says, “Give me one of your cigarettes, Pearly. I’m dying here.”

  As if she knows what that really feels like.

  I’m alone! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

  It’s 4:00 P.M. and raining. I slip into my slicker, grab a waterproof tarp from the storage closet, and Wing down to the water’s edge.

  The platinum of the sky hushes the scene before me, the water now overlaid in pewter, the trees, wrought iron black, retreating quickly into mist at the far shore. A flock of geese rest to my left on a small, grassy peninsula.

  Canadian geese mate for life.

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

  I’m so sad for them.

  Yes, the anger begins.

  I sit here on the banks of the Bay and begin to ruminate on the contents of the list, its wishes and wonders queued one behind the other, glowing with halos of what could have been. Now I would have quite possibly titled the list What I Would Like to Do Before I Die. But not Joey. His title, While I Live I Want To … proclaims his natural optimism.

  I smile. If Joey can’t do these things, I really am the next best person to accomplish the tasks. I will do it. For Joey. To seal a lifetime of love with a gift. And I may just add a few things of my own.

  31 October 1971: A Waffle House on I-85 somewhere in North Carolina.

  Her name is Marla Perkins and she waited on Pearly and me this morning. Marla’s sparse brown hair covers her head like a spider’s web in a breeze, glistening, fluttering threads around her face. She’s open about her faults. She has been married before, lived with many men. Is living with a guy named Jay right now in her grandma’s old house near the highway. The Woman at the Waffle House! “Men don’t give no nevermind about nothin’,” she said. “ ’Cept maybe for you, mister. You look like a real nice fella, you and your wife both.” I asked her what her story is and she said, “Repeated mistakes. That’s my story. Tell me, mister, why don’t I ever learn?”

  We ask her to sit down with us during her break. She and Pearly smoke like stacks and laugh like crazy about the smallest things. True, I may be more sensitive, in the enlightened, artistic sense. But Pearly, she’s a social chameleon, fitting right in wherever she goes. I sympathize with people, Pearly becomes them.

  The list sits atop the opened journal. I read it once again, and excitement wells up within me.

  1. Go whale watching in Alaska.

  2. See the mysterious figures on the plains of Peru.

  3. Climb a pyramid in South or Central America.

  4. Walk the Appalachian Trail.

  5. Spend a winter on a mountain.

  6. Try every entrée at Haussners.

  7. Get a tattoo.

  Yes, this is it. This is my purpose. And I decide something else. It will become the swan song of my life, my final chapter, the last stop on the line, and any other expression that I currently cannot think of. I cannot live without him. Not really live. Oh sure, I can inhabit his clothing and our cabin, I can drink wine, smoke cigarettes, and eat ham sandwiches. But I cannot live.

  However, I do want to fulfill some of my own desires, so I add to the list some items of my own.

  8. Go to a rock concert.

  9. Learn to play the guitar.

  10. Read War and Peace in its entirety.

  11. Run a 10K race.

  There, an even eleven. So neat and defined. So tidy. Oh, brother. The items are not nearly as ambitious as Joey’s, but I feel more relief than disappointment over that. I always envied Joey and his guitar. He did teach me how to play “Louie Louie,” telling me, “You can play a lot of songs with just these three chords, Pearly.”

  But I didn’t believe him. I forgot the chords the next day. Besides, hearing him play seemed a more prudent use of time. He improved as the years went by, practicing at school on his lunch hour, in the evenings at home.

  So welcome to my lot. After returning from my travels and my triumphs, I will visit Joey’s grave and join him. How will I complete the final, unwritten task on my list? That question deserves more thought than this moment affords me. But I definitely lean toward the overdose. Wouldn’t you? So right now, I’ll just sit here on the sunny deck and start on the copy of War and Peace that has wagged its finger at me here at the cabin for years and years. Years.

  I open up the volume.

  Oh, my! Why couldn’t I have picked something by D. H. Lawrence or a shorter Dickens piece?

  Besides, Joey hated Tolstoy.

  I opt for some TV instead, snuggling within the confines of Joey’s shirt and a blanket. Something mindless, something silly, yes. That’s what I need. Ah, MTV. That meets both qualifications. Let’s hope that a future civilization doesn’t dig up tapes of that network and so judge our society by the likes of that Aguilera girl, or that Marilyn Manson thing. What kind of conclusion could they possibly draw?

  Joey would laugh at the thought. Yes, I always could make Joey laugh.

  Eleven o’clock. Sitting at the counter in the kitchen, thoughtfully, playfully adding points to my list, I raise my nightcap to Joey. He’s laughing if he can see me, I can tell you that.

  “Oh, Pearly,” he’d say. “This is a funny one! You amuse me, you know that?” And then he’d kiss my temple and tell me he couldn’t live without me.

  And I’d say, “I can’t live without you either.” Only I’m trying and it’s just as horrible as I imagined. I remember my mother telling me after Dad died that she felt as though she had lost her right shoe. Well, I feel as if my right foot is gone, nothing left but a bleeding stump that will never be able to support me.

  Back to my list, including a new, lower portion now titled Pearly Laurel’s Fantasy Wish List.

  12. Streak across the campus at Johns Hopkins.

  13. Snap a Pulitzer-winning photo.

  14. Eat whatever I want, wherever and whenever and however much I want, without gaining an ounce! Yes, that really is fantasy!

  15. Hold my own child in my arms.

  The final item surprises me, my hand giving voice to my heart without bothering to consult my head first. I’ve convinced myself for years that nonmotherhood is just dandy. The older kids from the school communed around our table every Friday and Saturday night. I felt maternal around these orphans and foster children. I fed them, listened to their trials and triumphs. But it wasn’t the same, was it? It wasn’t the same at all. How could it be?

  I tear off the fantasy list, ball up the paper, and fling it away from me. After all, only one item really means anything, and that is impossible. It lands somewhere behind the flour and sugar canisters. Let it lie, I say to myself. Let it lie.

  The people in my family sang and sang. Joey fit right in, even better than I, who can’t carry a tune. Now my grandma, who wagged her finger at me and said, “I’ll pray for your soul until the day I die, young lady,” sang hymns. On sad days, Methodist hymns like “Rock of Ages” and “Nearer My God to Thee.” On meadowy days, she married her humming to Baptists all over, singing “Beulah Land, Sweet Beulah Land” and “No, Not One.”

  “There’s not a friend like the lowly Jesus. No, not one. No, not one.”

  Sometimes, on a summer night, when the moths rammed the screens of the house and the breeze smelled of honeysuckle and meadowsweet, when the moon hung as feminine and true as the ovary of a cherry, and the darkness hovered between her and the Bay, I’d hum a Grandma song in my mind. Softly, so as not to disturb Joey as he sat quietly in his study.

  “Sweet hour of prayer! Sweet hour of prayer! that calls me from a world of care, and bids me at my Father’s throne make all my wants and wishes known.”

  That tune, contemplative, haunting, and clean, became my nighttime theme. Many times I wanted to pray, but in Grandma’s church I heard the preacher once say that God only li
stens to the prayers of His children. I suppose we are all God’s children in the way that orphans are the children of a headmistress. But I do not regard God as my father, and therefore I don’t expect a listening ear, much less a broad lap. I am not wounded or abused, and whether the life I live is one He’s given me or one I gave myself or one I allowed to be created by Joey, I cannot say. But after I married, the maturing embryo that was Pearly Kaiser went dormant, and I suspect it has long since died.

  Not that it matters now. For Joey’s sake, however, I will make one change. In what little time I have left, I will bring my own music to my own life and not rely on someone else to do it for me. I figure that by the time the end arrives, I will have heard the voices of angels or something as close to that sound as any foundling can come.

  That rock concert may not be a great first step in the right direction, but hey, it’ll at least knock one item off the list. I wonder who’s good these days. Of course, I’ll be learning the guitar as well, but somehow, I doubt I will really sound all that hot! In fact, it might make me do the final deed that much sooner!

  Believe it or not, an excitement fills me. Oh, Joey, look down, won’t you? See what just may become of your Pearly Laurel.

  August 1951, Long Pond, Jackman, Maine

  I am a rock.

  I told Pop that yesterday evening around the campfire and he laughed. “How so, son?”

  I told him how I was sitting down on the shore in front of our cabin, right there where a large slab of rock flows right down into the lake, and as I looked over the water, still in the evening and reflecting the red sky, I had this thought.