(2008) Down Where My Love Lives (35 page)

WHEN MAGGIE OPENED HER EYES THAT NEW YEAR'S Day some seventeen months ago, I felt like I could see again. The fog lifted off my soul, and for the first time since our son had died and she had gone to sleep-some four months, sixteen days, eighteen hours, and nineteen minutes earlier-I took a breath deep enough to fill both my lungs.

I knelt and placed her hand in mine, and the tears and tremors I'd been holding back bubbled up and out. In truth, I cried like a baby. She did too. A long time passed, but neither of us spoke. At least not with words. Besides, just what would I say? Where would I begin?

Finally she managed a hoarse whisper. "Missed you."

It took me a second. "Me too."

She swallowed and tilted her head. "How long?"

I shrugged and swallowed hard again, wanting to break it to her gently. "Couple of months." She patted the bed, then shook her head, the tears spilling down the lines of her nose. "I knew when you were here. Each time. I tried to wake up, but ..."

She ran her fingers across the scar on my arm, a puzzled look appeared on her face, and she started to speak again.

I stopped her. "Shhh . . . " I placed my finger to her lips, and she reached for me.

But before I could hold her and let her hold me, I had to tell her. She had to know. "Honey ... he didn't ... I mean ..."

She nodded. "I know." The lines around her eyes slanted downward, the need showing. "Where?"

I nodded out the hospital window in the general direction of our farm. "Down by the river." I bit my lip, trying to gauge her response. "Amos and I ... we ..."

She reached again, and this time I let her pull me toward her, her breath washing my face, her eyes searching mine. Her mind was working hard to get the words out of her mouth. "You forgive me?"

I shook my head. "Maggs ... there's nothing to forgive."

She placed her hand behind my head, pressed my forehead to hers, and I knew that we were still "us."

Two weeks later, they told me I could take her home. Word spread, and even staff members who weren't scheduled to work packed the hallways to see her off and wish us well. Their faces and eyes suggested both a homecoming and a sending off. I'd have taken either one.

I pulled the truck around in front of the hospital, pushed the wheelchair into her hospital room, and for the first time since she woke up, wore something other than running shoes to the hospital. Maggie took one look at my feet and said, "Nice boots." She never did miss much.

"Blue picked them out."

She sat in the chair. "How's Pinky like them?"

"'Bout the same."

To much applause and too many cameras, I wheeled her out of the hospital and up to the side of an orange truck she'd never seen. She eyed the truck, then me, but didn't say a word until we drove off. She looked from hood ornament to tailgate and said, "Where'd you get this ... thing?"

`Jake's. "

She put her feet up on the dashboard, looked again at mine, and then leaned back against the headrest. "You mean ..." She paused for effect. `Jake's Jalopy?"

I nodded.

She shook her head and reached for my hand. "I really am married to the Marlboro man."

I tried not to take my eyes off the road and not to smile. I almost managed.

My friend Amos, in his sergeant's stripes and black SWAT T-shirt, escorted us home in his Crown Vic-lights flashing, siren blaring. We ran all three stoplights between there and here. When we passed over Johnson's Ferry and by Pastor John's church, I didn't say a word. Maggs and I had a lot of talking to do, but neither of these was the place to begin. We came into the drive, and I circled the house around back.

Maggie put her hand on mine and nodded toward the big oak down at the river.

That'd be a good place to start.

I parked the truck in the shade and helped her out, and she stood next to the grave, propped between me on one side and her cane on the other. She knelt on the grave and kissed the stone-cold face of her son. Maggie's tears trickled off her face and filled the carved granite letters. When they mixed with the dust and dirt on the grave, she dipped the tip of her finger on the drops and traced the shape of a heart like she would on a fogged-up bathroom window. I think she'd wanted to do that for a long time.

We walked into the house and by the nursery door, where she just leaned against the frame and looked inside. She stood there a long time, then wandered through the rest of the house, saw my drum on the mantel, read some of the letters from my students. Then she walked to the barn, sat down in the middle of Pinky's stall, and laughed for an hour while Pinky and twelve little pigs all vied for a scratch between the ears. It was glorious, smelly fun.

It didn't take me long to figure out that we were two people on two totally different schedules. She was used to sleeping twenty-four hours a day, and I had grown used to sleeping only three to four hours a night. I also found that she wanted to be near me, my hand on hers, hers on mine, asleep on my chest, whatever-she didn't let me out of her sight. And that was just fine with me.

MAGGIE HAD CREATED QUITE A STIR IN THE MEDIA WORLD. I held the reporters at bay, but sometime in the first week of February they found us. Tucked away in our seclusion and protective bubble, the media attention became pretty intense. Everybody wanted Maggie's story. Finally I called in Mr. Clean, aka Amos, and we brought all the reporters onto the back porch and gave a group interview that lasted about three hours.

Blue lay instinctively at Maggie's feet and bared his teeth while Amos controlled the crowd and questions. When Maggie got tired, I gave him the nod, and he started ushering people and cameras off the porch. Given the size of Amos's biceps and the way his shirt looked shrink-wrapped around his torso, nobody argued. That night we watched ourselves on the six o'clock news, and that weekend we watched an hour-long special in Amos's den along with Amanda-his wife-and Li'l Dylan, who had taken a liking to sitting in my lap.

The next morning, I left Maggie sleeping and drove up the road to the long-since-closed drive-in movie theater that was now home to our reclusive, multimillionaire neighbor, Bryce. I hadn't seen him for about a month, but that wasn't unusual. Bryce didn't keep time like everybody else.

Finding no sign of him, I picked up a paper in Walterboro, filled up the tank, and drove home. When I saw our picture on the front page of the lifestyle section, I shoved the paper below the seat and figured we'd had about enough of our own story. Maybe Maggie could use a few days at the ocean.

We drove to Charleston, where I rented a house on the water for a week. When the owner saw Maggie, his bottom jaw dropped. In a European accent I couldn't place, he said, "Momma, come quick."

An older, baggy woman came to the door, wrapped in a shawl and loose-fitting slippers. Her eyes grew wide, and she said, "Oh my, it's ... Miracle Maggie."

That was the first time we'd heard anyone call her that.

The people were so blown away by Maggie's story that they gave us the top-floor suite for free. Every morning when we woke, the owner would cook us eggs, toast, jam, and strong coffee. We stretched a week into a month, and between midnight walks on the beach and that woman's cooking, Maggie found her sea legs. By the time we left, her cane was collecting dust in the corner.

Our second week there, we went to a famous seafood restaurant not too far from the water. For decades all kinds of famous people had frequented the place, and when they did, the owner nailed a bronze tag at the seat to let later patrons know who had sat there before them. He put me in Pat Conroy's seat.

Just before we left, the owner approached us, held up a shiny bronze tag, and asked, "Do you mind?"

I smiled and shook my head, and we watched as he nailed MAGGIE STYLES into place. Eyeing his handiwork, he brushed it off, turned, and said, "Please come back."

We walked home through the historic district, returning to our room about midnight. Maggie propped one foot up on the sink and began painting her toenails.

I picked up a magazine. "You know, I'm pretty good at that."

She eyed her pinky toe. "Uh-huh."

I stepped out onto the balcony, reading by flashlight when something metal clamored into the sink, followed by a single scream. I poked my head in and found her leaning in close to the mirror, studying the top of her head. She frowned and dug through her hair with the tips of her fingers like a mother monkey with her young. Then she stopped dead, pulled apart her hair like a curtain, and looked at me. "Is that what I think it is?"

"What?"

She rolled her eyes upward. "That!"

I stepped toward the sink and looked at Maggie's hair under the light. "Ahhh . . . " I fingered out the single gray hair and plucked it.

"Ouch!" she said, eyes narrowing. I held up the hair and was about to say something cute, but she held up a finger and said, "Not one word, Dylan Styles."

Yes, ma'am.

For two more weeks, we strolled the streets, rode in horse drawn carriages, and somewhere in there began swaying to the same rhythm. Somewhere in there, we started walking in sync.

WHEN WE GOT HOME FROM THE OCEAN IN THE FIRST WEEK of March, we walked down to our son's grave site, and there we heard the pipes. Bryce appeared, decked out in full military regalia, and stood blowing till his face looked like a spark plug. Maggie walked over and kissed him on the cheek, and with tear stained freckles, he faded away down the riverside.

We walked back to the house, and parked in the drive sat a brand-new red Massey Ferguson tractor. We walked around it like it was a snake, then decided it wouldn't bite us, and better yet nobody would accuse us of stealing it. Somebody had tied a case's worth of empty Old Milwaukee cans to the back and hung a sign from the rear of the seat that read JUST WOKE Up. On the front, an airbrushed sign read MAGGIE LovEs DYLAN. Corny, yes, but who am I to change Bryce? We spent most of the next day on that tractor, and Maggie drove the entire time.

Life in Digger had returned to some sort of normalcy. That is, if anything in Digger was ever normal. Love had returned. Smiles cracked the faces of once-cold hearts. And me? I could smell gardenias even when they weren't blooming, and seldom a day passed that I didn't walk to the river and palm the acorns and dirt off my son's tombstone.

BY MID-MARCH, MUCH OF MAGGIE'S STRENGTH HAD returned. As had her green thumb. Propped up on the front porch swing, she spent an entire morning sketching an aerial view of the house and designing the yard layout. The next morning, with plan in hand, she tugged on my arm, batted those trademark eyes, and said, "I'd like to buy a few plants for the yard."

She flashed her design, and I knew instinctively that the next step in this parade would be an expensive one. I also knew occupying her hands would free up her mind, giving her time to work through two hurdles we had yet to address. The first was children, and whether or not we could ever have one of our own. The second was trying to explain to Maggie what I'd done for four and a half months while she lay sleeping.

I looked at the yard, where I'd let weeds take over, then back at Maggie. "A few plants?"

She arched her eyebrows and said with a sneaky smile, "Well, maybe more than a few."

She pulled on a tank top, stepped into an old pair of bib overalls, laced up her running shoes, and stuffed her hair under a baseball cap. When Blue and I got in the truck, she was unconsciously tapping her foot and making notes on her list.

We reached the nursery and grabbed two flatbed carts and the assistance of a young guy with a "Can I help you?" look pasted across his face. Midway through the first greenhouse, I had serious deja vu. Toward the end of the aisle, I figured it out. The wholesale baby outlet. Although this little trip promised to cost even more. And just as I had in the baby store, somewhere down the second aisle I quit counting and just said, "Honey, I think whatever that is looks great, and we probably need a couple of those."

She rolled her eyes, stuck her pencil up into her baseball cap, and put her hand on her hip. "You're not helping me."

To say she was task-oriented would be an understatement. Chances were good that if she kept at this current pace, we'd be putting plants in the ground by flashlight. And I didn't care. My grandfather had lived by a pretty simple philosophy that made good sense to me-Happy wife, happy life.