with what to say to her. Her breath stilled and her attention focused as she studied him for some signal, one hint that he wanted a kiss goodbye or a familiar pat on the rear as he hugged her. He used to love to hug her.
A new stubbornness kept her from leaping up and running into his arms as she always had before, a tenuous clinging to self-esteem after his rebuff in bed last night. She would not go to him first.
Keeping her silence, staying in place, she noticed his hair was damp with perspiration. He was a heavy sweater—all the Porters were—but it wasn’t that hot this morning and he’d just come outdoors from the air-conditioning. He’d need a shower by the time he got to San Diego, she worried.
“I’ll call you when I get there,” he said, and her ears perked at the hint of sadness in his voice. “Give you my room number.”
This was the usual modus operandi these days, unlike back when she carefully posted the hotel name and number on the kitchen bulletin board, up high beside the car pool schedule, the pizza lunch schedule and emergency telephone number. She nodded and opened her mouth to say goodbye, to wish him a good trip, maybe to say I love you, but he’d already turned his back.
She bent over her garden and dug her small, oval nails into the soil, squeezing it between her fingers. Her eyes swam in water, and through the white noise of pain in her ears, she heard the car door slam, the roar of an engine and the grind of tires along dry cement. When the sound of his car disappeared, she felt a tremendous sense of loss. They couldn’t continue on like this, she thought, sniffing loudly. When he came home they’d have a long talk, maybe go out to dinner. Wiping her eyes with her elbow, she methodically tugged out scores of the tiny invasive clovers, ripping them out one by one, quick and neat.
By six o’clock that evening Tom was long out of her thoughts. Her day was busy and she didn’t have time to dwell. In truth, Tom was gone so much of the time lately that she’d learned to cope without him. She was chief cook and bottle washer around here. The children depended on her. She knew she was the axis upon which their worlds spun. On this first day of summer, Finney had won the football game for his team with a score in the last quarter and Bronte had come home with a triumphant smile and bags of clothes she’d bought on sale at Nordstrom’s with her birthday money. Eve wiped her hands at the sink, feeling especially pleased with herself because, despite all the chauffeuring, she’d found time to shop at the farmer’s market and bake an angel food cake to serve with the fresh berries. She’d surprise the children and serve it with a cheery, “Happy first day of summer!”
“Children, dinner!” she called up the stairs. After hearing their mumbled replies from behind closed bedroom doors, she hurried out the door to her garden to pluck a few flowers for the table. So early in the season, it was slim pickings. Many of the flowers were just gaining ground. She stood with her chin in her palm, considering the selection.
“Mom! Telephone!” Finney’s voice cracked on the final syllable.
She smiled, then checked her watch. “Is it a solicitation?” She couldn’t abide those pesty calls at the dinner hour. She snipped off one rose, then two more, careful of the slant. After a moment, she heard Finney again.
“Mom! She says it’s important.”
Irritation tightened her lips. These telephone solicitors were getting so cagey. “Well, who is it?”
“She says she’s from San…San…something hospital.”
Eve felt a chill and a cloud passed overhead. For a moment, time seemed to stand still. As though she were a remote stranger looking through a lens, she turned her head and saw her world, sharpening the focus. She saw her lovely redbrick Prairie-style house with its imposing porte cochere lined in front by broad-leafed rhododendron, the shadow of her fourteen-year-old daughter in the windows on her way to the dining room for dinner with a telephone to her ear, her lanky twelve-year-old son leaning against the frame of the open front door awaiting her instructions with the impatience of youth. This was her perfect world and instinctively she knew she’d better take a good last look.
Her breath exhaled in a prayer. “You’re just being ridiculous,” she told herself. She had such a flair for the dramatic. Tom was on grand rounds at San Diego Hospital. It was a message from him. What was the matter with her lately?
“Tell them I’m coming!” she called to Finney. She gathered the roses, then ran up the front steps, surprised at how wobbly her knees felt. She ignored Finney’s darkened gaze and went straight to the phone lying on the kitchen counter.
“Hello,” she managed to get out through dry lips. “This is Mrs. Porter.”
“Hello, Mrs. Porter,” came the soft, even tones of the faceless woman. “This is Dr. Raphaelson at San Diego Medical Center.”
“Yes, what can I do for you?”
“Are you married to a Dr. Thomas Porter? From Riverton, Illinois?”
“Yes…”
There was a brief pause. Eve felt the heaviness of the delay as an anvil on her own chest. Her breath stilled.
“Mrs. Porter, I’m very sorry to inform you that your husband had a heart attack this afternoon.”
She clutched the telephone. “What? How? Where?”
“He was at the hospital when the attack occurred, but it was too severe. I’m sorry, Mrs. Porter. We did everything we could.”
None of this made any sense to her. Tom was at the San Diego Hospital for grand rounds. He would be gone for two days and then he’d come home. They had things to talk about, to settle between them. What was this woman talking about?
“No, that’s not possible.”
“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Porter. Your husband died at two-thirty this afternoon, western time.”
The woman’s words were knocking on her brain but she wouldn’t let them in. “I’m sorry.” Knock. “Very sorry.” Knock. If she opened up to the meaning, she knew she’d hear the toll, He’s dead, dead, dead. She felt frozen. The phone dropped out from her splayed hands along with the three rose stems. Looking down, she saw pricks of blood trickling down her palm but she couldn’t feel a thing.
Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. In her ears was a relentless roar of waves. With halting breaths she slowly looked around the room, her eyes wide with shock. In front of her were the frightened faces of Finney and Bronte, who were instinctively moving closer to her. She held out her hand to ward them off, not wanting to be touched. She shook her head as her heart thumped loudly and her mouth worked soundlessly. Those cursed, painful words were forcing their way into her brain, their meaning scorching, cracking the ice and shattering her defenses. Tom was dead.
The searing words created a furnace in her chest, fueled by her pain, burning away her denial, creating a pressure in her chest until she couldn’t hold it back any longer. She knew she was going to erupt. She slapped her palms against her mouth but the pain burst through, bellowing forth as a primeval scream at the top of her lungs.
Then she wrapped her arms around her children, pressed them close and felt them cling tight to her; Bronte’s head beside hers, Finney’s against her chest.
Two
The time is here for me to leave this life.
