Five Days (41 page)

‘I kind of worked that one out already, Mom. I also worked out something else – you waited all this time to leave because you didn't want to mess up my last years of high school. And I am incredibly grateful to you for that.'

Life moved forward. My lawyer, Amanda Montgomery, counseled me not to say anything to Dan about his attempts to get Ben and Sally into his camp:

‘Your children have already seen through that tactic – what we want to do now is get a deal in place without too much drama.'

Still, she had to send some very stern letters to the lawyer representing Dan, asking him to tell his client that if he made absurd demands – like wanting the house and half of the savings account and everything that I didn't take with me when I moved into that temporary apartment at Lucy's – we would now demand half the house etc. Did he really want to spend thousands in legal bills, especially when I was asking for so little and there was so little to actually divide?

Dan saw sense. The two lawyers met once and hammered out an agreement. Dan asked that it not be signed for a couple of months to give us both time to think about it; which was clearly his way of hoping against hope that I would change my mind. The curious thing was, once I had left the house he never phoned me – preferring to communicate by email, and only when he had something practical to discuss regarding the house or our children. According to Amanda – who gleaned this information from Dan's lawyer – my husband still wanted me to make the first move when it came to reconciliation, even though he had to understand that, as I was the one who'd left the marriage, that was never going to happen.

‘People go truly strange in the wake of a long marriage detonating,' Amanda said. ‘I sense that your husband simply can't face up to what's happening – and expects you to make it all right for him. Which, as I explained to his lawyer, was something you had repeatedly informed me was beyond the realm of possibility.'

‘I feel sorry for him.'

‘Not as sorry as he feels for himself.'

News of our impending divorce got around Damariscotta in the expected matter of nanoseconds. But the hospital still organized a goodbye drink for me; a little after-work soirée at the Newcastle Publick House in town. To my immense surprise, Sally showed up. And then, around an hour into the proceedings, in walked Ben.

‘Surprise,' he said quietly, planting a kiss on my cheek.

Dr Harrild made a little speech, talking about how I knew more about things radiographic than he did, and how my ‘professional rigor' was ‘matched by an immense decency', and how the hospital would be a lesser place without me. I found myself blushing. I have never been totally at ease with praise. But when asked to speak, after thanking Dr Harrild and all my colleagues for such interesting years and such ‘ongoing colleagiality', I then said this (having thought it through beforehand):

‘If there's one thing I know about my work it's that it constantly reminds me of the enigmas we all live with. The discovery that what seems to be evident is frequently cloudy; that we are all so profoundly vulnerable, yet also so profoundly resilient; that, out of nowhere, our story can change. I'm always dealing with people
in extremis
, in real possible danger, and grappling so often with fear. Everyone I have ever scanned or X-rayed has a story – their story. But though my equipment peers behind the outer layer we all have, if all these years at the hospital have taught me anything it is that everyone is a mystery. Most especially to themselves.'

Three days later I awoke at five and headed south to Portland, reporting as agreed at an early hour to go through the usual employee registration process: being photographed and fingerprinted, being issued an ID and parking sticker, doing all the paperwork to transfer me to the hospital's health scheme, being given a complete checkup by a staff doctor, then spending much of the day being taken around by a soon-to-be-retiring technologist named Ruth Redding – who, in her own quiet way, made it clear that this was the closest Maine came to a high-pressured urban hospital. Radiography operated day and night, ‘and though we might not be Mass General, the pressure is always on. But, trust me, it's never less than interesting – and from what I saw in your file, you can handle the pressure.'

Pressurized it was, especially as we were very much an adjunct of the ER and seemed to be dealing with at least a dozen bad accidents per day. Then there was the booked-full stream of scheduled procedures – and the need to maintain time-management efficiency (in Damariscotta we might have an entire forty-five minutes twice a day when no patient was scheduled, and accident cases usually were rushed to the bigger hospital in Brunswick). The head of radiology, Dr Conrad, was hyper-rigorous and exacting. But I had worked with this sort of boss in the past – and decided to show her, early on, that I would match her professionalism and clinical cool. Though she was notoriously closed-lipped when it came to praising others (as the other technologists in the department told me), she did turn to me after a few weeks on the job and say: ‘Hiring you was a good call.'

End of praise. But it still touched me.

‘So it's all right accepting praise from others?' Lisa Schneider asked during a session a few days later.

‘I'll tell you something rather interesting – the crying fits that used to characterize so much of the last year have largely stopped. Yes, I can still get deeply affected by a patient. There was a sixteen-year-old girl in last week with what was clearly a major malignancy in her uterus – and that was a tough hour. But I didn't break down afterwards, as I had done so often last year.'

‘And why do you think that is?'

I shrugged, then said:

‘I don't know . . . maybe the fact that I am no longer in an unhappy marriage. I can't say I am in a happy place myself . . . but then again, as you keep telling me, this is a period of serious transition, so don't expect “inner peace” or zen-like calm.'

Lisa Schneider looked at me quizzically.

‘Now I think you're putting words in my mouth.'

‘Actually, those were Sally's words – when I settled her into her dorm room at U Maine last weekend. “You're looking a little happier, Mom. Don't tell me you've gone all inner peace and zen on me.”'

‘How did all that go with Sally?'

‘It was a wrench, seeing my youngest child now starting college, for all the obvious reasons. Then again, having moved out of the house a few weeks before, there wasn't that terrible silence of coming home afterwards to the proverbial empty nest. Dan suffered that, however. We agreed by email that I would settle Sally in on Friday and Saturday, then leave Sunday morning – and he'd come up and see her then. Around ten o'clock that night, long after Dan usually goes to bed, I got a call on my cellphone. It was my soon-to-be ex-husband. Sounding beyond sad. Saying that coming home to this empty house was beyond awful. Telling me how stupid he had been. How if he could turn back the clock . . .'

‘And how did you reply to all this?'

‘I was polite. I never once mentioned how he had talked about my affair with our children, and how monstrous I thought that all was. But when he asked if he could come over now and see me – that he really wanted to try and work things out – I was very definitive. I simply said no. That's when he started to cry.'

‘How did you feel about that?'

‘Sad, of course. But – and this was an interesting change – not guilty at all.'

‘That is an interesting change,' she said.

‘It's all interesting change, isn't it?'

‘You tell me.'

‘Something else happened a few days ago. During coffee break at the hospital I picked up the
Portland Press Herald
that is always left for us in the staff room every morning. Turned a page, saw a small item in the “In State” columns – the suicide of a prisoner at the State Psychiatric Prison Hospital in Bangor. William Copeland, age twenty-six. Richard's son.'

‘What terrible news,' she said with studied neutrality.

‘I was very shaken by it.'

‘Because?'

‘Because . . . Billy would have been my stepson, had everything worked out as we –
I
– had hoped. Because I felt so sorry for Richard. Because I still feel so insanely confused about my feelings for him. Part of me still loves him. Part of me is finally somewhat angry about it all – which I know you will tell me is “good”, because you think my inability to express anger has caused me to throw up these blockages that have stymied my life, right?'

‘You tell me.'

Oh God, how she wielded that line all the time like a scalpel.

‘I am still so incredibly hurt by what happened, and how his panic cost us both so much. Part of me thinks,
What a coward.
Part of me also thinks,
What a sad man.
Part of me also thinks,
Thanks to Richard I was able to get out of my marriage.
Right now, I so feel for him. He loved Billy. His son's life was such a tragic one.'

I fell quiet for a few moments. Then:

‘A day or so after reading the piece about Billy's suicide I sent Richard an email. Short. To the point. Telling him how what he was now going through was the worst thing that could befall a parent, and how I was thinking about him as he negotiated this very terrible period.'

‘Did he reply?'

I shook my head.

‘Did that bother you?'

‘We can't script anything, can we? I mean, it's not a novel, where the writer can make happen anything
actually
happen. But, yes, there was a big part of me that wanted Richard to call me up, tell me he had never stopped loving me, that the loss of his son had finally freed him from any sense of ongoing emotional guilt when it came to the wife he'd never really loved, and – then – he shows up on my doorstep and,
voilà
, the happy ending that never really arrives in life.'

‘But say that did happen? Would you open the door to him now?'

‘Yes, I would. That doesn't mean I wouldn't be a little wary as well. But what we discovered in each other that weekend, what we shared . . . I am not going to diminish it by saying I spent those three days living a middle-aged romantic hallucination that had no bearing on actual reality. Better than anyone – because I have taken it apart so much with you – you know that, for me, this was so completely real. As I know it was for Richard as well. So I can say something really obvious like, “Life is sometimes so unfair.” But the truth is, we are usually so unfair to ourselves.'

‘And knowing that now . . .?'

I shrugged again.

‘I still mourn what should have been. Just as I know that I can now do nothing about it. Maybe that's the hardest lesson here – realizing I can't fix things.'

‘Or others?'

‘That too. And now you're going to tell me, “But you can fix yourself.”'

‘Can you?'

‘I don't know.'

‘An honest answer.'

The only answer.

* * *

I moved into the new apartment. All the furniture I'd ordered from assorted secondhand shops around Portland arrived over a forty-eight-hour period. Ben and his two friends – Charlie and Hayden (both stoners, but sweet) – chipped in and bought a bottle of champagne to mark the occasion. Charlie had a van. He kindly drove up to Damariscotta to collect all my clothes and books. I had arranged with Dan a time when I could return to the house and pack up my library – maybe four hundred volumes – and the things we had agreed in principal that I could take with me. Charlie then transported them down with me to the new place – where the three boys also insisted on lugging everything up the stairs for me. Then we opened the champagne and toasted the great job they had done (the place really did look airy and light). After paying them each $1,000 cash I insisted on taking them all out to a local pizza joint. When I slipped off to use the washroom at the end I came back to find the bill had been paid.

Walking back to the apartment afterwards with Ben – Charlie and Hayden had decided to head off to a late-night rock joint – he let me know that ‘my friends think I have a cool mom'.

‘I'm hardly cool.'

‘That's your take. But I'm with Charlie and Hayden – you're cool. And the stuff you've chosen for the apartment – way cool. But hey, if you want to think otherwise . . .'

‘Thank you.'

‘Berlin in three days.'

‘You excited?'

‘Excited, terrified, worried, a little cowed by the idea of me at the art academy there.'

‘“
Cowed
”,' I repeated. ‘Good word.'

‘Like mother like son.'

‘I am going to miss not having you down the road. But I also think this is going to be fantastic for you.'

‘And I'm going to insist that you come spend a week with me over in Berlin.'

‘I won't be able to ask for any time off until the New Year.'

‘Easter then. The academy's closed for a week. I sent an email to them last week. They will rent out dorm rooms to family members of students for very little. If you book now you can find a Boston–Berlin airfare for around five hundred bucks.'

‘You've really researched this, haven't you?'

‘Because I know you, Mom. And I know that, though you would empty your bank account in a second for me and Sally, you hate spending a dime on yourself. And if allowed you'll talk yourself out of this trip.'

‘You do know me too well, Ben.'

‘I'll take that as a compliment.'

Four days later, Sally arrived down in Portland by bus. We went out for Japanese food – and she stayed the night at my new apartment, telling me:

‘So you've been secretly reading design magazines for years, Mom.'

‘It's hardly designer. Everything came from junk shops.'