Daring (53 page)

At Lally Weymouth's Fourth of July party that summer, I was seated again next to one of the gnomes of Wall Street. We had always joked about the sky being about to fall, and I would ask him, “Is it time, or can I have one more year in my house?” He had told me what he was telling his private investment clients: not to worry yet, housing prices were still climbing and the market wasn't about to blow up. But this summer he did not smile when I asked, “When do I have to sell my house before the sky falls?”

“Yesterday.”

As if to resist this ignominious fate, the East Hampton house developed all kinds of problems: scabs on its shingles, holes in its roof, plumbing backups of a severity that seemed to call for a colonoscopy. At first it felt like a reprieve. How could I sell the house that
Passages
had bought? It had been my family home for thirty years. All the best things happened here—watching my children splash in the pool and bounce on the trampoline, letting grandchildren try out their rubber legs on first tricycles, planting rosemary and rue and foxglove and cowslips to create a Shakespeare garden, picking lunch from our herb garden, doing yoga on the sun-dappled grass, entertaining friends under a bower of wisteria for long lazy Sunday lunches, and the solitary pleasure of early Monday mornings, when I could plunge into the pool and swim laps and settle in my favorite writing room, gazing out the bay window at the linden tree and watching for the resident pheasant to parade by until the words came and I lost myself in writing. At 10
A.M.
Ella would arrive from New York, bringing me a container of coffee and a jelly doughnut and ordering, “Get up off your meat, Miss Sheehy. Time to take a walk!”

I bit down hard and put the house on the market. Nobody wanted it. It cried out for renovation. Where to begin?

I began by trying to let go of control. Starting the morning with meditation in my Shakespeare garden, I would sit in the sunlight below a row of life-size Madonna lilies. Their huge white bulbs would be clasped as if in prayer. I prayed, too, for the serenity to accept the things I could not change. And then I asked for help. By the time I opened my eyes, the Madonnas would have opened their ivory trumpets and be pointing to the sky. I could have sworn they were playing Bach.

One morning as I was leaving a village coffee shop, I stumbled over help in the form of an exceedingly long leg.

“Sorry,” said a tall, gray-haired man. His eyes were deep-set and sad, mischievous but a smile played around his lips; I suspected he had tripped me up deliberately. I ignored his faux apology and went back to my sidewalk table. He followed me, mouthing more sincere apologies and bad jokes. I stared at my newspaper. He told me he designed and built houses. Did I live here? I turned my back. Then he let me know he was a recent widower. That got my attention. He had cared for his partner for two years after her stroke, he said. His eyes clouded. He recalled lovingly how he walked her up and down this very street, slowly, daily, until her life had ended six months earlier. I couldn't help but sympathize.

How did he know I was on the same journey? He didn't.

I mentioned that I had to sell my house, but I worried that it wouldn't pass inspection. He lit up.

“Why don't I come over and take a look at your place and see what we could do to increase its value?”

I declined his offer, said good-bye to the widower, and forgot about the impudent encounter.

It wasn't long before the widower bumped into me on the street, this time definitely on purpose. He introduced himself as Richard.

“Any offers yet?”

I had to admit there were none.

This time I allowed him to follow me to the house. He marched around the property like an African hunter, taking a machete to the thicket of vines and dead shrubs that obscured a good quarter of an acre of the land. I was suitably impressed by his strength. He was a man of about seventy, I guessed, but his legs in shorts looked to be made of rock and rope. He mentioned that he was a skier, world class; he was not shy.

“I could clear all this out and then buyers would see a vista straight into the woods,” he tantalized me. “It'll raise your price by half a million.” For emphasis, he performed an excavation of a rotted tree stump with his bare hands.

“I couldn't pay you very much.”

“Don't worry about it. Whatever you can, when you sell.” He would be my property manager, he said. To have anyone managing anything for me sounded tempting.

The next morning I awoke to the sound of a chain rattling and the groan of an overtaxed engine. It was Richard, hauling out the stump of a thirty-foot arborvitae with his truck. If he was an angel sent by the Madonnas, they knew how to find one tough angel. From that day on, the widower worked miracles on the house. He hired day workers to acid wash the stucco and repair the roof and spackle and paint. He rewired the electrical system and replaced faulty water pipes, and when I told him I couldn't afford to replace the pool, he dove to the bottom and plugged the leaks without a snorkel.

Within weeks, the house and grounds were handsome and virtually inspector-proof. A movie actress made a solid offer and put down a hefty deposit. I was, literally, home free.

Until the fickle buyer backed out. Her check had never been “cleared” for deposit. A crushing blow.

BY MIDSUMMER, MY DAYS AND NIGHTS
ran together in the pallor of a midtown hospital where double pneumonia kept Clay confined for weeks in and out of an ICU. When I finally got away to Long Island to arrange another house showing, the molten sun of late summer made me ache with longing. I knelt in the Shakespeare garden and wept as I cut back the wilted roses. I felt enveloped in darkness. Richard appeared. Suddenly the balance between light and dark shifted. I felt a jolt of masculine energy.

He insisted on taking me to his favorite spot, the walking dunes on the Atlantic Ocean. The sun there was still strong. The beach deserted. I tossed my sandals aside and slipped off my sweater and began running. My leaden legs loosened up. My white skirt billowed. The warm sand on my bare feet, the spanking breeze, the sparkling water, jolted my senses awake. How could I have forgotten the joys of nature? The delight in feeling again like a woman?

Richard asked if he could carry me to the top of the dunes. To be touched again was electric. Long-deadened desire erupted like a madness. Melting into his arms, I felt an explosion of joy and surrender. It was all wrong but I couldn't stop the wanting, it took me beyond thinking. And then we were rolling over and over down the dunes, laughing like kids and kissing.

I had to stop. I couldn't do this. “You are a delivering angel, Richard. But Clay is the love of my life.”

“I know.” He told me he was a rescuer by nature. He needed to fill the hole left by his partner's death. He saw me as another “damsel in distress.” Helping me helped him.

“I wish I could bring Clay out here,” I moaned. “For the last weeks or months before we give up our home.”

“Why not?” Richard offered to set up a hospital room in the country house. It sounded like deliverance.

BEFORE LONG, CLAY WAS SITTING
in his favorite chair in the dining room, a dominant presence again, supervising the interior repair work on the country house. We ate lunches together, the three of us. I no longer felt isolated.

A unique bond formed between these two men, both grown old enough that their macho urges were tempered by the rise of tenderness and need for connection. One day, when Richard helped to pull Clay up from his chair, they stood for a long moment, chest to chest. I watched Clay size up Richard. Clay had always been possessive and proud of being my protector. Although his mind was still fully functional, his body betrayed his efforts to help me. His shame was palpable. Clay raised his right arm. I froze. He clapped his hand on Richard's shoulder. Then, leaning on Richard, the two men walked the house with Clay pointing out cracks in the ceiling that needed patching. An understanding passed between them, man to man, without words. Clay let it be known that he appreciated what Richard was doing to help me. He needed to know that I could survive without him.

Richard insisted that I claim at least an hour a day to restore myself. “Just an hour when you take your mind completely off what's happening with Clay and not happening with the house.” It was my own mantra to other caregivers, coming out of his mouth.

Before the world woke up, Richard would come by with a thermos of coffee and sweet buns and drive us to a cove where he would slip his canoe into the still water and we would paddle out to a bank and spread a blanket. Silently, we would open our senses to the birdsong and the fiddling of rushes in the breeze, watch for fish jumping and maybe a tiger salamander slithering, for just an hour as the sun came up, a hidden hour, to feel fully alive. Those sunrise sojourns, I believe, restored my capacity for joy.

WEEKS BEFORE THE IRS THREATENED
to put a lien on the house, I had a solid offer. This time I was smarter; I asked that the deposit be nonrefundable. This buyer agreed. My
Passages
house was about to become history. So, sadly, were our Thanksgiving soirées.

Yet Thanksgiving that year was never truer. Maura gave birth to a third grandchild, a golden redhead she gave the very Irish name Mairead. Bringing Clay out to the country for three whole days required elaborate arrangements. It rained like hell. When we arrived, I struggled to get Clay out of the car. We came close to the two of us sprawling in the mud. I called Richard. Racing over, he picked Clay up and carried him inside to his makeshift hospital room. Neither of them said a word. They didn't have to. Faced with the cruel limits of aging, people form attachments beyond the ordinary, and that summer and fall, we three helped one another survive.

The family all came and we cooked a traditional turkey dinner. Sitting in his chair by the window, Clay spoke with his eyes. His mind had always been engaged day to day, but he was seldom emotionally involved. He had seen himself as an outsider, extraneous. His transformation on that Thanksgiving was remarkable. He was an organic part of all that happened. Presiding over the family, he experienced himself as belonging again.

In the middle of carving the turkey, I stopped. This was Clay's role. I handed him the great knife. As I leaned over to kiss him, I saw his eyes glow. The muscles in his face relaxed, he looked around at everyone and smiled. Warmth and love radiated from him, and his presence once again filled the room.

I saw Richard wipe away his tears. He whispered, “I love him, too.”

THE DEADLINE FOR TURNING OVER
the house was January 1. I spent the month of December ransacking the archives of both our lives. Miraculously, an antique dealer surveyed the furnishings of the house and bought them, lock, stock, and barrel. That left the art and books and the precious pieces that Clay and I had collected over the years. Call it procrastination. On New Year's Eve I was still packing up books. It felt like I was closing the book on our lives. Alone in the house, I watched dense milky fog seal the windows.

I couldn't help myself, I called on Richard again. I hadn't seen him since Thanksgiving, when I told him we could not continue our relationship. He had wept. I felt horrible. But I did not return his love, and I did not have the emotional strength to support a double life. Clay needed all of me now.

Richard came over on New Year's Eve and became even more of a hero in my eyes, helping me as a friend through this most excruciating passage. At 4
A.M
. after we taped up the last box, he dropped me at a local inn. When I awoke and meditated, I felt cleansed. Ready to dare a new day. A new year. Undivided.

THE LONGEST WALK.
From the edge of Harlem. It had started with Clay's first admission to the Jewish Home Life Care rehab unit. After languishing there for several months, he had asked me to turn off the light before I left for the night. He whispered the words: “I can't read.”

I realized it had to be dark for him to dredge up this shameful confession.

“Oh, darling, why not?”

“Concentration.”

He tried to explain. But he could hardly speak intelligibly. Only much later did I learn that problems with reading comprehension are not uncommon in serious illness. His mind was so splintered from the rallying of emergency forces to save his major organs from malfunctioning, there wasn't much help left in the twenty-some stations of the brain needed to work together to accomplish one of the most complex tasks—reading—an indispensable skill for an editor.

I lay down by his side. We shared the silence of despair.

I thought the longest walk of my life had been down the back stairs from the Women's Department at the
Trib
to cross the DMZ of the city room and present myself at the door to Clay Felker's world. No, it was this walk. The nightly trudge along Columbus Avenue around midnight: a woman alone, indifferent to her safety, no future she cared to contemplate, shambling down the long dark blocks from the edge of Harlem, deserted on weeknights, then ducking into the meanest bar. A noisy sports bar.

I had no interest in contact sports, but I had a need for noise and a place where I wouldn't be known or noticed. Only the late-shift waitress recognized me from other nights, but she knew not to chat. I was just the lonely lady who dropped in late and sat opposite a vacant chair, waiting for my companion: a glass of cheap chardonnay. A generous pour. I would scribble in my journal. My new companion did not talk. Did not judge me. So I'd ask for another. And another, but just this one time. That's how I would put it to myself: I'll have a third glass, just this once.

When I went to Dr. Pat for my annual gynecological checkup, I mentioned that I was drinking more than usual, it wasn't really a problem, but . . .