Signs of Life (33 page)

Finally we start. We have a fifteen-mile ride and then a four-mile run. I take off with the front of the pack. Maggie is a little ahead of me. A ways in, I’m feeling good. I’m still near the front. Tammy leads the group. I catch up to Maggie, who has a computer on her bike. “How long has it been?” I yell. “Four miles,” she yells back. Great.

About ten minutes later, I start to slide. I can still see Tammy up ahead. She is chatting with the women next to her like they’re out for a walk. Jack, the guy with the belly, is right behind her. The miles start to feel longer. I feel my legs slow down. My pace tapers off, and Tammy, Jack, and the rest of the team fade out of sight.

Almost an hour later, I finish my fifteen. My legs feel rubbery. I get off my bike and start to run. But I cannot run. If someone yelled
fire
at this moment, I would have a better chance of moving if I used my hands and knees rather than my feet. I start shuffling. It’s slower than a walk but I’m lifting my knees, so it looks like a forward aerobic tap dance. All of the sudden I hear Coach Rick. “You look great, Natalie! Keep it up!” I suddenly hate Coach Rick.

Some really nice person made homemade cookies and brought bananas for after the workout. I sit in the shade staring at my
feet while the rest of the team talks cheerily and debriefs about the workout. I don’t think Tammy even broke a sweat. “See you next Saturday!” Jack yells on the way to his pickup truck. “You’re dreamin’,” my FMG says. She is lying on the pavement with a towel over her head and a half-eaten cookie in her left hand.

Maggie gets in the car and tells me that luckily her chain fell off a few times so Coach Rick had to rescue her. She considered the morning to be a complete success. I focus on my muscles not seizing up as I drive.

“Oh, come on,” she says, “that wasn’t so bad.” She hands me a bottle of water. I didn’t even bring any water. Like everything else in my life, I have gotten myself into a situation for which I am totally and completely unprepared. I glance over at her before we pull out.

“Your words, not mine.”

•  •  •

I decide to go back to Elk Lake for the first time since Josh died. I have to. It has to happen eventually. I have met everything else in the past year. This is the last holdout of places that I have to see without Josh. For some reason, going to Elk Lake without Josh somehow solidifies his death even further. Okay, he’s not in our house, and his car isn’t here, but certainly he’ll be at Elk Lake, right? But I need to go to try to wrap my head around the fact that Elk Lake exists in the absence of Josh.

The drive up I-75 is hard. Every sign reminds me of when I made this drive with Josh. I feel like I am walking into my house for the first time all over again. In the backseat I try to prepare myself for the cottage. I visualize every detail. I have a conversation with myself in my brain. “You’re going to see the
quilt on the bed. You’re going to see the lawn mower in the garage. You’re going to see the orange colander that he used for the morel mushrooms. You’re going to see the charcoal grill.” Step by step, I try to picture walking through so maybe it won’t be so bad when I get there.

Once we get to the cottage, I let my parents take Kai in first so I can be by myself. I stop to look at every little detail of the cottage from the driveway. It’s like slowly pulling off a Band-Aid; for some reason I need to feel the pain. I can’t just storm through. I listen to the sound of the back screen door as I open it. Somehow that signals the first step. I start with the back bedroom. I look at the twin bed where Josh and I slept together when we first started dating. It’s so funny how as a married couple we eventually felt like our queen-sized bed wasn’t big enough for two adults, but when we were in our early lightning-bolt days, we slept together in a twin bed. I look at the chair where he’d set his gaiters after fly-fishing. I look at the place where he took off his shoes. I walk by the pictures in the back hallway. They haven’t changed since I was here last time. I walk down the hallway and look into Margaret’s old room. She was here last time I was here too. I’m feeling okay. I think I can hold it together.

I turn the corner into the kitchen. I see the pictures on the fridge. Damn. I forgot about the pictures on the fridge. There is one of Josh riding his bike the summer he rode it across the country. It’s one of my favorite pictures in the world. I forgot all about it until this moment. On his trip, he and Toby went through the Upper Peninsula just so they could stop at Elk Lake. In the picture Josh is wearing his navy Airborne jersey and his hair is flying back in the wind. He didn’t cut his hair the whole ride, so he has this long, almost yellow-blond hair. The picture is a little blurry because he’s riding as it’s being taken. I stare at it for a long time. I just want to reach my hand into that picture and touch him.

I walk back to the bathroom to splash some cold water on my face and blow my nose. I walk outside to say hi to everyone. Deedee squeezes me so hard I think she’s going to pull me to the ground. I know it means the world to her that I came back. Chris already has Kai in the water.

•  •  •

For my twenty-fourth birthday, Josh gave me a digital camera. That was the last birthday of mine that we spent together. I’m not one to see certain pre-losing-Josh situations as prophetic or ominous, but I feel like that gift said something. Of course, he had no idea that he would tragically lose his life between my twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth birthdays, but I will always see that camera as an indication of what he wanted me to do more of in life: stop and appreciate the amazing people around me. Sure, take a picture of the blue water of Elk Lake or the big sand beaches of Lake Michigan. But really, my job with that camera is to somehow, if I can at all, hold on to the wonderful moments I encounter with the people I love. It has been one year and almost two months since Josh died. I still hate and love looking at pictures of him. I get so frustrated that looking at a photograph is the only way I can see him anymore. But those photos mean more to me than any other inanimate object in my life. And ironically, he bought me a new camera before he died.

Over the last several weeks, I lost the charger to that camera. This is expected of me. I lose things. I’ve been losing things my whole life. I lost a winter coat when I was in fifth grade. One time I lost my bike. And no matter how many
Real Simple
magazines I read or how many bins I buy from the home storage section of Target, I just can’t seem to hold on to things sometimes. But I recovered the twenty-fourth-birthday camera
and charger just in time to go to Elk Lake again for a whole week with my in-laws. This week, instead of having my parents just outside of town, I am at the Elk Lake cottage without refuge. Twenty-four hours a day with Ashley and Deedee for an entire week.

It is awesome. You might think living in close quarters with Deedee and Ashley for five full days might spark a complaint or two. But I have absolutely nothing negative to say about the visit. We have a great time. During the week, I develop a newfound respect for Ashley. It is amazing to see her operate when she thinks no one is watching her. She doesn’t do things for praise or for credit; she does things because they need to get done. I never thought she and Josh had a lot in common, but this week is the first time I realize that when it comes to working ceaselessly for their family, they are identical twins. All weekend she is cleaning out the garage, washing windows, perfecting the landscaping, taking care of the boat she bought, and carrying Kai around on her hip while doing all of it. They let me relax all weekend. I sleep in, lie around by the water, read my book. It is amazing. I keep calling it “Spa Elk Lake,” and I mean it too. I take pictures all week long. I don’t know what comes over me, but I can’t stop capturing the moment. There are so many moments to capture.

Tonight Ashley takes her boat out, and it stalls out on the water. The next-door neighbors, who are year-round residents and not from “downstate,” go out to help her. We are on the shore when she gets back, and although she is thankful for the help, I can tell she is frustrated about the boat and about how she needed to be rescued by the neighbors. Once she anchors the boat, the same neighbors offer to help Ashley put in the shore station she bought for the boat. She agrees, but it turns out to be a huge ordeal. It takes a lot of time and people standing
in the water pushing a massive metal contraption at a very slow pace. I keep taking pictures of Ashley, who is getting more frustrated by the minute. I get one picture where she is trying to finally lower the hoist to get the boat on and she is looking at the camera pointing her finger at me with this look like she’s going to put my lights out if I don’t get out of her face. But I love it. It’s really a picture of her. No makeup, no cleavage, no blow-dried hair, no three-inch heels. She looks at the picture later and calls me a bitch, in the joking way that Ashley calls people a bitch. But I think she looks beautiful.

Time hasn’t exactly worked wonders on my own grief, but I certainly think it has helped me see that Ashley is not only critical to my success as a single mother, but she is a hugely important person in Kai’s life also. I don’t know how close they would have been if Josh were here, which is not to say I would trade one for the other or that I am in any way grateful for his absence. I’m just making an observation. It is amazing to me how she can drive me absolutely insane, while at the exact same time, I never want her to go away.

When I’m old and sick, she’ll visit me in the hospital, just like Ethel and Birdie. She’ll storm into the hospital room and tell everyone how to do their job and pronounce herself the Fountain of All Knowledge with all things geriatric. “Nat, I know you said you wanted the full-length compression hose, but I talked to my friend Alice from work and she said that these short ones are way better. See? Here, feel them, feel them, aren’t they
so
much softer … Oh
my
God, what are they feeding you? That looks completely
disgusting
. Is there a fucking nurse around here who can get you something else? Ugh! That smells horrible.” We are together for a lifetime. And I am grateful.

terrah’s
wedding is at the beginning of August. It’s lovely. I get to walk down the aisle with Terrah’s brother Dusty, who was once described by his own mother as “a social beast.” Mr. Battersby is at the reception. He comments on how nice it is to see me having such a good time. Gentry and I have a heart-to-heart about weddings and marriage and how we both think, for a variety of reasons, it’s a generally stupid idea. We are thrilled for our friends, wish them the best—we will fully celebrate with an open bar—but we’re not completely convinced it’s as magical as they make it out to be. Obviously, I would still like
to be married, and sure it is easier to cope with being a widow if I convince myself that the institution of marriage is flawed. But now that marriage is really more of a spectator sport for me, it’s not that I totally resent it or think that it can never work, it’s just that I think it’s a lot harder to be happy over time than people my age think. Maybe my grief goggles can help me see into the future, or maybe I can just tell that not everyone considers what a lifetime commitment actually means. My grandpa always says that marriage is like an exotic plant; you’ve really got to work hard and pay attention if you want to keep it alive. But how can anyone except a wise old man understand that? I think my grief goggles are making me pay more attention to wise old men than to glossy women’s magazines.

The one highlight was watching Terrah’s parents dance. I don’t slam holy matrimony when I see people like Mr. and Mrs. Brewer. After Josh died, Terrah told me that her mom was engaged to be married when she was in her early twenties. Right before the wedding, Mrs. Brewer’s fiancé was killed in a car accident. She didn’t meet Mr. Brewer until ten years later, and then she decided to try it again. Lo and behold, here she is in her beige mother-of-the-bride dress.

Weddings are funny events because they last one day. I am beginning to see that people my age and younger have no sense of time. We think four years is a long time. Women think a year is a long time from engagement to wedding. We expect things to happen overnight. We want to be rich and famous and accomplished in the first few years out of college. We get frustrated when things don’t move at an efficient pace. We curse the Internet when it takes more than ten seconds to load a website and we get annoyed that the voice mail lady takes so damn long to give us instructions. But now that I have Kai, I look at the parents of all of my friends in a new light. Mr. and Mrs. Brewer,
Mr. Battersby, my mom and dad, Deedee—these people understand time because they have watched their children go from toddlers in jelly shoes to women in wedding dresses. They have watched something grow. My guess is if people in their midtwenties had any concept of time, not as many of us would be promising a lifetime to a person we met four months ago.

Right now, I’m rereading
Walden
for a new unit we’re creating for our eleventh-grade English curriculum.
Walden: A Life in the Woods
is written by this guy named Henry David Thoreau who spent a year living alone on Walden Pond outside of Concord, Massachusetts. He wrote down every single observation about the pond and the natural world around him. While I wouldn’t exactly consider his detailed account of the woods riveting, it is interesting to read his description of the pond transitioning from winter to spring. Ever so slowly and carefully it goes from ice to water. He records the process of the thaw, and although Thoreau’s narrative of ice melting may not wow the average twenty-first-century audience, the process itself really is amazing when you think about it. Nature understands that things take time. You can’t rush certain things if you want them to work correctly. It took Mrs. Brewer ten years to find love again, and here she is at her daughter’s wedding, having the time of her life. I guess that kind of healing and growth needs a whole decade. Sometimes I really look forward to how I will feel in ten years.