A choice is really the gift I have now. I have chosen and I will go through with my choice because, well, there are forty-three reasons now. And it is only me, only Susan Paderson, who can say that this baby inside of me is a mistake. Only Susan Paderson who can say that it is impossible, that giving birth again would kill me, that it cannot happen.
I know now what I needed for so long, that what my life was truly missing was this flow of womanhood that has surrounded me on this walk and for these few short years when I have met with Mary, J.J., Chris, Janice, Sandy, Gail and Alice, oh my wonderful Alice.
Alice, who has held me like no one has ever held me and who has shown me the power of personal forgiveness. Alice, of all people, who said she will drive me first thing, right away when we get back, and who will come and stay with me for a few days. Alice who knows so well about the anguish of loss and regret. Can I ever thank her? Can I ever be for her what she is for me?
Beyond this day and the next and to the day after that, I really don't know what will happen to me. Chris thinks I should sell the house and buy one of those new condos close to her. She thinks I should move into administration and develop some hospice programs for people in this area. She thinks that until I divorce John, that I will go and be and do absolutely nothing.
Finally I know she is right. If I can see anything these days, it is a clear picture of how I have abandoned myself. Given and sacrificed and handed away one thing after another of my spirit until I have left myself standing thirsty in this self-created desert of a life.
And John? Well, hell, it's not John's fault I was so stupid and so willing and so eager to wash his socks and help him find his next appointment on that big map. I do know that in a year, I will be down the road and moving on, and that he will be heading in the same direction and perhaps that is his penance.
Already, it seems like one hundred years ago since I dropped that glass, that single glass, one of what, three I think, that is left from the set my Auntie Cheezda gave me just after our wedding. Would we even be here without that glass? Without me being pregnant? Without the wailing and moaning that took place on my kitchen floor?
Oh, I have a new idea! As soon as we get back, I am going to ask everyone over, and we are going to smash those last two glasses, the other ones from my wedding set. Maybe I can line them up on the fence by the garbage cans, and we can take turns shooting at them with the pellet gun.
We'll break those glasses, and then I'll get the hell out of there. I'll be able to turn to these friends of mine, these women that I love and say, “It's just a glass. Not the end of the world. The beginning, maybe.”
C
HAPTER
T
EN
T
HE LAST DAY WAS A GIFT
. An early-morning mist, lifting slowly from the dark hollow of trees, left shadows of light that Janice immediately likened to streaks of grace pouring from the sky. The immense quiet caused each of the women to lie still, listening only to the sighs of each other's breath, a leg swishing across the bottom of a sleeping bag, a zipper rattling against the rocky earth, even heartbeats pounding.
The birds had been flying for hours by the time the women kicked out of their bags. At first the quiet continued, and everyone was afraid to speak, until Gail stood and stretched her hands toward the sun and said everyone was acting like a morning-after lover.
“Remember those mornings?” she asked, dropping her hands into a practiced yoga stance. “Wondering if that was it and should you make breakfast, or put on clothes, or act as if nothing happened?”
“Some of us still have mornings like that,” said Sandy.
“Speak for yourself.” Alice rocked from one leg to the other to push blood through them so she wouldn't drop over when she stood up.
“My God, does anyone feel as wonderful as I do?” Gail asked. “Does anyone know with as much certainty that this isn't the end of anything? We've done something powerful and beautiful, and we can keep doing anything from now on, whatever in the hell we want.”
“I'm a little scared,” said Susan.
“Just the change jitters,” Chris offered wryly. “Change is always a bit frightening. You know now that you are not alone. That's pretty powerful right there.”
“Everything is different, I have to admit that,” Susan concluded, standing and twisting from front to back, unwinding, moving her hands in small circles. “I don't feel powerless, which is something brand-new for me.”
Alice threw small sticks of wood onto the dead bed of coals, bending at the waist and then blowing with all of her might to start a morning fire.
“Coffee,” she called out as she worked. “Once we all have coffee, I have an idea of something we could do before Mary shows up.”
“What?” J.J. asked.
“Just wait, come help me get this thing going and then I'll tell you.”
“My God, what would we have done if Mary hadn't been Mary and done all of this for us?” asked Janice. “Everything would have been different.”
“That's the beauty,” Chris said. “Each one of us has been and done what we needed to do. For Mary, that meant something totally different, which is really great. Don't you think?”
Sandy moved to grab some large pieces of wood. “When you think about it, Mary had more guts than the rest of us. Let's make Mary the president of our little club.”
“Ha!” laughed Alice, moving toward the cooler to see what was left for breakfast. “If you don't show up, you get to be in charge the next time.”
“The next time,” yelled J.J. “Hey, I like the sound of that.”
The plan for the day was simple. The women wanted to linger until early afternoon by their fire, talking, eating and protecting the last few minutes of their adventure. Then Mary would simply show up with her uncle's huge van to transport everyone home. There was the chance that no one would ever even know who they were or how they had left or why they had done what they needed to do.
“Oh right,” Chris told them. “And elephants will fly out my ass at high noon. Don't you think half the world already knows who we are? Reporters probably know our bra sizes and when we started menstruating, by now.”
“Do you think?”
“Well, of course I think. That's what I used to do for a living. Screw up people's lives who made terrible mistakes. Look through their garbage. Find out their favorite sex position. Interview their grief-stricken mothers and fathers. Get the dirt from their college roommates.”
“They're in for a treat when they try to track down all my old roommates and lovers,” hooted Sandy.
“Really?” Alice asked. “I don't think it will be that bad because of what Mary said, you know, how all the people we know aren't saying anything.”
“Does the name Linda Tripp ring a bell?”
“Yes,” answered Gail. “But our walk isn't bad, Chris, this is something good, and although it's different, it's not like we hurt anyone. In fact, it's really just the opposite of that. We've helped each other.”
“Sure,” Chris said. “But not everyone thinks that way.”
“But, really, who gives a shit?” Sandy finally asked. “Do we really care if someone had tried for a peek into our underwear drawers, or found out that we've screwed up and needed to do this to feel better, and now each one of us has gained something powerful and wonderful?”
“Oh hell, of course not,” Chris said. “Of course not.”
There had already been crying and tears and talk about the realities of life, and endings and beginnings, and the miraculous way we are able to recall and remember and close our eyes to transcend time and space and whatever else might be in the way of getting back to a place or person of light and warmth. As the moon and sun traded places above them, several women continued to share sacred moments, about experiences that they had frozen in time and could recall in exact detail, about people they had loved, who still crossed through their minds and whispered in their ears and made that glorious spot just below their pubic bones burn and ache and tremble. They said for something to be over didn't mean it really had to end.
All the women were wise enough to know that it is impossible to linger forever in one favorite place or one comfortable position. But they were also wise enough to know it is possible to cherish forever a sense of all the details, a part of the total memory, to rekindle the essence of a time and place when the spirit needs it most. To see a color and remember a day on the lake. To eat pasta and think of that girl who touched your face that summer afternoon, or that strange time when you let a man drive you home when you had a flat tire and kiss you and touch your breasts right in front of your apartment door when you didn't even know his name. That day too, when a solitary wind felt like a tornado and pushed you back into the house and the phone rang and it was your mother crying and asking you to come right then, that instant.
There were a hundred memories and a thousand losses, and then the brilliant fact that what mattered most was the very second in which they stood and breathed and looked from sky to earth and from face to face together. To take this one moment, they all agreed, was the magic of life, and the bottom line of every single thing they had been walking toward.
“It's clear now,” Alice told them in the dark. “As clear as anything, and I suppose it's up to us to keep this all alive. To not let what we have gained slip through our hands again, ever again.”
After Alice spoke, the women cried. They cried for the lost babies and the men and women who had managed to snip off a piece of their souls, for the dark clouds of life that had snagged their emotions, for the mistakes, and the time they had wasted with the thinking and anger and sorrow that could have been placed somewhere, anywhere else. The time when they could have been under a bright light or walking, yes, walking toward something new.
By the time Alice pushed the coffee off the small metal grate, the intoxicating smell of it had everyone standing mute, waiting for their cup of comfort.
“Why does everything taste so wonderful when you're outside?” asked J.J.
“I think it's because your senses are heightened,” said Gail. “You don't have the distractions of walls, telephones, chemicals that float out of wallboards, things like that.”
“And we've been walking so much, we just get hungrier.”
“Well, breakfast isn't much more than roadkill this morning, girls.” Alice passed out funky brown donuts and bananas. “But we can have twenty-three pots of coffee if we want to.”
The women ate crouched by the fire, turning to watch the sun climb by inches, from one level of the horizon to the next, thinking about just what they saw in that moment, what they felt at that moment and looking carefully into each other's eyes—as if they wanted to make certain they were really seeing another person.
Finally Alice put another pot of coffee onto the grate, shuffled wood across the sides of the fire, kicked down some ashes with her cheap tennis shoes, and then pulled a handful of stones from her pocket.
“Okay,” she said softly, moving back from the fire to stand away from the heat. “Okay then.”
Alice jiggled the stones in her hand, moving them back and forth with her other hand, touching them gently with the tips of her fingers. Everyone waited, wondering what in the world she was about to say and do.
“Here's what I have been thinking,” she said, raising her face to sweep her eyes across the faces of all her friends. Alice told them that she knew each one of them had something or someone that they needed to get beyond in their lives. She told them that was surely true of herself as well. “What I did was to think about my own self, you know, and the loss of my baby and what it did to the rest of my life. Well, the rest of my life up until now that is. The day we were walking and I realized what I had given up to mourn, to hold that loss so close inside of me for so many years, the very second I released myself, I looked down and I saw this beautiful stone right on the highway.”
Alice held up a stone the size of a quarter that was flecked with tiny pieces of black and red. When she moved her hand up and down, the stone glittered. “So what I did after that was to keep this stone in my pocket, to hold it and feel it as my touchstone for a new beginning. When I think of the steps before this stone, I see darkness, and when I think of the steps after I found the stone, I see brightness and clear skies, and everything is better, so much better.”
“Alice, that's lovely.” Susan reached out to touch Alice's arm. “Very lovely.”
“So finding this stone made me feel so good that I looked at all of you, and each time I saw a stone that I thought you could use, that would be something that you could touch and hold in your hand and remember, well, I picked up that stone. I put it in my other pocket and saved it for you. For the end of our walk, for now.”
Everyone was quiet, looking at Alice, gentle, small, perfect Alice, in amazement.
“What a great idea,” Sandy said. “Maybe we could have them polished and make necklaces or bracelets with them.”
“But first,” Alice said, lowering her eyes toward the ground, “first, I want you to come up here one at a time, and I want you to say something about what we have done and what you have given away or left behind.”