Tonight, with Allie down the hall, I am alone. I will always be alone. This I thought as I lay in the hospital. This I’m sure of as I look out the window and watch the storm clouds appear. Despite myself I am saddened by our plight, for I realize that the last day we were together I never kissed her lips. Perhaps I never will again. It is impossible to tell with this disease. Why do I think such things?
I finally stand and walk to my desk and turn on the lamp. This takes more effort than I think it will, and I am strained, so I do not return to the window seat. I sit down and spend a few minutes looking at the pictures that sit on my desk. Family pictures, pictures of children and vacations. Pictures of Allie and me. I think back to the times we shared together, alone or with family, and once again I realize how ancient I am.
I open a drawer and find the flowers I’d once given her long ago, old and faded and tied together with ribbon. They, like me, are dry and brittle and difficult to handle without breaking. But she saved them. “I don’t understand what you want with them,” I would say, but she would just ignore me. And sometimes in the evenings I would see her holding them, almost reverently, as if they offered the secret of life itself. Women.
Since this seems to be a night of memories, I look for and find my wedding ring. It is in the top drawer, wrapped in tissue. I cannot wear it anymore because my knuckles are swollen and my fingers lack for blood. I unwrap the tissue and find it unchanged. It is powerful, a symbol, a circle, and I know,
I know,
there could never have been another. I knew it then, and I know it now. And in that moment I whisper aloud, “I am still yours, Allie, my queen, my timeless beauty. You are, and always have been, the best thing in my life.”
I wonder if she hears me when I say this, and I wait for a sign. But there is nothing.
It is eleven-thirty and I look for the letter she wrote me, the one I read when the mood strikes me. I find it where I last left it. I turn it over a couple of times before I open it, and when I do my hands begin to tremble. Finally I read:
Dear Noah,
I write this letter by candlelight as you lie sleeping in the bedroom we have shared since the day we were married. And though I can’t hear the soft sounds of your slumber, I know you are there, and soon I will be lying next to you again as I always have. And I will feel your warmth and your comfort, and your breaths will slowly guide me to the place where I dream of you and the wonderful man you are.
I see the flame beside me and it reminds me of another fire from decades ago, with me in your soft clothes and you in your jeans. I knew then we would always be together, even though I wavered the following day. My heart had been captured, roped by a southern poet, and I knew inside that it had always been yours. Who was I to question a love that rode on shooting stars and roared like crashing waves? For that is what it was between us then and that is what it is today.
I remember coming back to you the next day, the day my mother visited. I was so scared, more scared than I had ever been because I was sure you would never forgive me for leaving you. I was shaking as I got out of the car, but you took it all away with your smile and the way you held your hand out to me. “How ’bout some coffee,” was all you said. And you never brought it up again. In all our years together.
Nor did you question me when I would leave and walk alone the next few days. And when I came in with tears in my eyes, you always knew whether I needed you to hold me or to just let me be. I don’t know how you knew, but you did, and you made it easier for me. Later when we went to the small chapel and traded our rings and made our vows, I looked in your eyes and knew I had made the right decision. But more than that, I knew I was foolish for ever
considering someone else. I have never wavered since.
We had a wonderful life together, and I think about it a lot now. I close my eyes sometimes and see you with speckles of gray in your hair, sitting on the porch and playing your guitar while little ones play and clap to the music you create. Your clothes are stained from hours of work and you are tired, and though I offer you time to relax, you smile and say, “That’s what I am doing now.” I find your love for our children very sensual and exciting. “You’re a better father than you know,” I tell you later, after the children are sleeping. Soon after, we peel off our clothes and kiss each other and almost lose ourselves before we are able to slip between the flannel sheets.
I love you for many things, especially your passions, for they have always been those things which are most beautiful in life. Love and poetry and fatherhood and friendship and beauty and nature. And I am glad you have taught the children these things, for I know their lives are better for it. They tell me how special you are to them, and every time they do, it makes me feel like the luckiest woman alive.
You have taught me as well, and inspired me, and supported me in my painting, and you will never know how much it has meant to me. My works hang in museums and private collections
now, and though there have been times when I was frazzled and distracted because of shows and critics, you were always there with kind words, encouraging me. You understood my need for my own studio, my own space, and saw beyond the paint on my clothes and in my hair and sometimes on the furniture. I know it was not easy. It takes a man to do that, Noah, to live with something like that. And you have. For forty-five years now. Wonderful years.
You are my best friend as well as my lover, and I do not know which side of you I enjoy the most. I treasure each side, just as I have treasured our life together. You have something inside you, Noah, something beautiful and strong. Kindness, that’s what I see when I look at you now, that’s what everyone sees. Kindness. You are the most forgiving and peaceful man I know. God is with you, He must be, for you are the closest thing to an angel that I’ve ever met.
I know you thought me crazy for making us write our story before we finally leave our home, but I have my reasons and I thank you for your patience. And though you asked, I never told you why, but now I think it is time you knew.
We have lived a lifetime most couples never know, and yet, when I look at you, I am frightened by the knowledge that all this will be ending soon. For we both know my prognosis and
what it will mean to us. I see your tears and I worry more about you than I do about me, because I fear the pain I know you will go through. There are no words to express my sorrow for this, and I am at a loss for words.
So I love you so deeply, so incredibly much, that I will find a way to come back to you despite my disease, I promise you that. And this is where the story comes in. When I am lost and lonely, read this story—just as you told it to the children—and know that in some way, I will realize it’s about us. And perhaps, just perhaps, we will find a way to be together again.
Please don’t be angry with me on days I do not remember you, and we both know they will come. Know that I love you, that I always will, and that no matter what happens, know I have led the greatest life possible. My life with you.
And if you save this letter to read again, then believe what I am writing for you now. Noah, wherever you are and whenever this is, I love you. I love you now as I write this, and I love you now as you read this. And I am so sorry if I am not able to tell you. I love you deeply, my husband. You are, and always have been, my dream.
Allie
When I am finished with the letter, I put it aside. I rise from my desk and find my slippers. They are near my bed, and I must sit to put them on. Then, standing, I cross the room and open my door. I peek down the hall and see Janice seated at the main desk. At least I think it is Janice. I must pass this desk to get to Allie’s room, but at this hour I am not supposed to leave my room, and Janice has never been one to bend the rules. Her husband is a lawyer.
I wait to see if she will leave, but she does not seem to be moving, and I grow impatient. I finally exit my room anyway, slow-shuffle, slide-the-right, slow-shuffle. It takes aeons to close the distance, but for some reason she does not see me approaching. I am a silent panther creeping through the jungle, I am as invisible as baby pigeons.
In the end I am discovered, but I am not surprised. I stand before her.
“Noah,” she says, “what are you doing?”
“I’m taking a walk,” I say. “I can’t sleep.”
“You know you’re not supposed to do this.”
“I know.”
I don’t move, though. I am determined.
“You’re not really going for a walk, are you? You’re going to see Allie.”
“Yes,” I answer.
“Noah, you know what happened the last time you saw her at night.”
“I remember.”
“Then you know you shouldn’t be doing this.”
I don’t answer directly. Instead I say, “I miss her.” “I know you do, but I can’t let you see her.”
“It’s our anniversary,” I say. This is true. It is one year before gold. Forty-nine years today.
“I see.”
“Then I can go?”
She looks away for a moment, and her voice changes. Her voice is softer now, and I am surprised. She has never struck me as the sentimental type.
“Noah, I’ve worked here for five years and I worked at another home before that. I’ve seen hundreds of couples struggle with grief and sadness, but I’ve never seen anyone handle it like you do. No one around here, not the doctors, not the nurses, has ever seen anything like it.”
She pauses for just a moment, and strangely, her eyes begin to fill with tears. She wipes them with her finger and goes on:
“I try to think what it’s like for you, how you keep going day after day, but I can’t even imagine it. I don’t know how you do it. You even beat her disease sometimes. Even though the doctors don’t understand it, we nurses do. It’s love, it’s as simple as that. It’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen.”
A lump has risen in my throat, and I am speechless.
“But Noah, you’re not supposed to do this, and I can’t let you. So go back to your room.” Then, smiling softly and sniffling and shuffling some papers on the desk, she says: “Me, I’m going downstairs for some coffee. I won’t be back to check on you for a while, so don’t do anything foolish.”
She rises quickly, touches my arm, and walks toward the stairs. She doesn’t look back, and suddenly I am alone. I don’t know what to think. I look at where she had been sitting and see her coffee, a full cup, still steaming, and once again I learn that there are good people in the world.
I am warm for the first time in years as I begin my trek to Allie’s room. I take steps the size of Pixie straws, and even at that pace it is dangerous, for my legs have grown tired already. I find I must touch the wall to keep from falling down. Lights buzz overhead, their fluorescent glow making my eyes ache, and I squint a little. I walk by a dozen darkened rooms, rooms where I have read before, and I realize I miss the people inside. They are my friends, whose faces I know so well, and I will see them all tomorrow. But not tonight, for there is no time to stop on this journey. I press on, and the movement forces blood through banished arteries. I feel myself becoming stronger with every step. I hear a door open behind me, but I don’t hear footsteps, and I keep going. I am a stranger now. I cannot be stopped. A phone rings in the nurses’ station, and I push forward so I will not be caught. I am a midnight bandit, masked and fleeing on horseback from sleepy desert towns, charging into yellow moons with gold dust in my saddlebags. I am young and strong with passion in my heart, and I will break down the door and lift her in my arms and carry her to paradise.
Who am I kidding?
I lead a simple life now. I am foolish, an old man in love, a dreamer who dreams of nothing but reading to Allie and holding her whenever I can. I am a sinner with many faults and a man who believes in magic, but I am too old to change and too old to care.
When I finally reach her room my body is weak. My legs wobble, my eyes are blurred, and my heart is beating funny inside my chest. I struggle with the knob, and in the end it takes two hands and three truckloads of effort. The door opens and light from the hallway spills in, illuminating the bed where she sleeps. I think, as I see her, I am nothing but a passerby on a busy city street, forgotten forever.
Her room is quiet, and she is lying with the covers halfway up. After a moment I see her roll to one side, and her noises bring back memories of happier times. She looks small in her bed, and as I watch her I know it is over between us. The air is stale and I shiver. This place has become our tomb.
I do not move, on this our anniversary, for almost a minute, and I long to tell her how I feel, but I stay quiet so I won’t wake her. Besides, it is written on the slip of paper that I will slide under her pillow. It says:
Love, in these last and tender hours is sensitive and very pure
Come morning light with soft-lit powers to awaken love that’s ever sure.
I think I hear someone coming, so I enter her room and close the door behind me. Blackness descends and I cross her floor from memory and reach the window. I open the curtains, and the moon stares back, large and full, the guardian of the evening. I turn to Allie and dream a thousand dreams, and though I know I should not, I sit on her bed while I slip the note beneath her pillow. Then I reach across and gently touch her face, soft like powder. I stroke her hair, and my breath is taken away. I feel wonder, I feel awe, like a composer first discovering the works of Mozart. She stirs and opens her eyes, squinting softly, and I suddenly regret my foolishness, for I know she will begin to cry and scream, for this is what she always does. I am impulsive and weak, this I know, but I feel an urge to attempt the impossible and I lean toward her, our faces drawing closer.