Authors: Elyse Douglas
It happens too fast to run
No emergency kit
Forget
Preparedness
There is no escape, no hiding
You’ve just got to die
Breathe
In and out, cry out like a newborn
And let it happen, like a new birth
Dead
Awakening to new breaths
New life to have it all come
Crashing
Down to begin rebuilding
A house with no walls
—Rita
I wrote her the following letter that same night.
Dear Rita:
I loved the poem. When did you start writing poetry? Are you writing other things? I’d love to read them. Did you ever start that novel? Someday, maybe we could discuss chapters, like we used to do at Jack’s. I would even try to throw something together; maybe some stories about my patients or about the medical field and its complexities, with a bent on what the word “healing” really means. Who knows, we might even get into some good arguments.
Are you happy living there? What are you doing? Have you met interesting people? Made friends?
I’ve been doing some
pro
bono
work on Saturday mornings with addictive patients: drugs, alcohol, tobacco and food. It’s really challenging. I try so hard to listen, counsel, understand and advocate. Sometimes I think I’m getting more from them than I’m giving. As I get older, I really do feel the need to try to give something back to the world, besides all my confusion and insecurities. Remember? We talked about all that last year, during the 4
th
of July fireworks down by Crystal Lake.
Anyway, I do like the people I’m counseling. It’s so tempting to blame them—not overtly—but subtly and in weaker moments, and then I realize I’m not really listening or I’m falling back into old patterns of thinking. So damned easy to do.
I was offered a job in Boston a couple of weeks ago. I guess the Boston area is hyper-specialized. A lot of wealthy people there. My colleague says that the disjointed care people get from a multitude of specialists is clearly worse care than the care they get from one primary care physician. I don’t know. The whole medical environment is so messed up right now. I’m just trying to do the best I can with it all. I have applied for a fellowship in cardiology at Harvard, but I’m not moving to Boston, at least not right now.
Rita, I’d love to hear from you again. A line, poem, story, anything.
Love,
Alan James
P.S. Jazz piano lessons continue. I’m playing a very clumsy
Blue Moon
.
P.S.S. My email address is enclosed. Do you have one?
P.S.S.S. My phone number is enclosed. Text me if you want to.
An e-mail from Rita arrived a week later, while I was at the office. I printed it out and disciplined myself to read only the first paragraph, waiting restlessly until early afternoon when I could read without interruption. I was in the Hungarian Pastry Shop on 111
th
Street and Amsterdam Avenue, sipping a cappuccino, when, with anxious heart beats, I read.
Dear Alan James:
Sedona is in northern Arizona (the high desert). Red Rock country. It’s hot, dry and stunningly beautiful. I drive along interstate I-17 sometimes, from Phoenix, and gaze out at the Saguaro cacti and take in the red monoliths and shimmering heat and I feel lifted up—free—and dissolved into it all, baptized by the drenching sun, desolate peace and endless sky. During jeep rides through the mountains, red dust gets all over me—even in my ears—but I love it. The seasons are mild and there’s plenty of sunshine. I feel an umbilical connection to this place that I can’t describe. It invites forgetting and a new “nowness” continually, with all its rust-red color, history, soaring eagles and wonderful 30-foot natural rockslide at Slide Rock State Park. I love watching the kids there.
I’ve started meditating. Okay, I’ve gone a little “new age”—but this place seems spiritual to me, so naturally and easily “religious;” so deeply quiet inside, if you know what I mean. I meditated at the Sinagua Indian ruins recently and I could almost feel the Earth spinning on its axis. It made me so high; so connected to the Earth. Strange? Yes, but it’s true.
When I first moved here, I waitressed at a small airport restaurant that you have to get to by dirt road. Red biplanes fly in and out, constantly, with 3-hour flights over the Grand Canyon and other places. I worked there for about five months. From there I went to the Oak Creek Brewery, a fun place to waitress, and then finally, through the help of a new friend, to The Sedona Golf Resort. I’m working at the Grill at Shadow Rock. I’m also working part-time at a gallery in Sedona, that sells Native American jewelry. The shopping area is called Tlaquepaque. The whole area is modeled after a Spanish village and it has many little shops and restaurants. Sometimes I feel so enlivened and “fresh” and full of the dance, that I think I must have been a Spanish senorita in a former life.
It’s easy for me to set goals here, Alan James. I’m taking on-line courses from the University of Phoenix and hope to finish my liberal arts degree in a little over a year. I’ll take the necessary teaching courses in Flagstaff, I think, and, hopefully, begin teaching in a little over two years. That’s the plan for now. But we both know how things can change…so very suddenly.
Alan James. I have no words to apologize for the destruction of your family’s home. Dad and I had a terrible argument when I was packing to leave. He threatened me. He said he was going to kill you. I told him I was leaving town and never coming back. Please forgive me, Alan James, for all that happened. I am so sorry.
My father was sick and, God forgive me, I’m glad he’s dead. I feel so much better inside just knowing he’s dead. Is that a bad thing to say? I don’t care. It’s true. I have wanted to write you my apology so many times—I even thought about calling, but I couldn’t get up the nerve. So I ran and ran. I disappeared from view and I have not looked back or reflected often. I’m still much too frightened to do that. I know I’ll have to someday. Even writing you now takes tremendous effort.
Those two months I spent with you in that house were the best time of my life. A big part of me was “healed.” You, Dr. Lincoln, did heal so many of my wounds and I will always thank God for the time we had together. I will always love you for that and for so much, much more.
Now, I feel so removed and somehow protected by these glorious mountains; by the Chapel of the Holy Cross and Courthouse Butte; by Bell Rock and its energy vortex. The desert keeps the devils away. The crisp blue sky covers me and envelops me in gracious protection. The people here are so kind, creative and generous.
Dear Alan James. I cannot ask you to come. Someday, perhaps, when I have the strength, the distance, the grace to face the past again. Then maybe. I cannot right now. I’m sorry, darling.
When I was pregnant with Darla, I thought of myself as walking Earth—a holder of life; a participant in its purpose and glory. I’m learning to just let go a little now. Letting go little by little until I can just freely and naturally and quite probably, finally, let go. I’m praying for that.
How does one become wise, Alan James? How do we understand the things that happen to us? How does one accept this world, so frightening, so treacherous, so very beautiful, and breathe, and say “Okay. Yes. Okay, I accept, I struggle, I see, I don’t really see at all.”
Sometimes I wonder how people can be so damned calm about living, when we don’t really know very much about it. We don’t know anything about where we came from or where we’re going. No one can tell us where the Earth is really located. We’re just spinning around out in the middle of nowhere, in a void, in darkness. Sometimes I think we should all focus our energy, skills and knowledge in seeking to find the true mysteries of life, instead of continually repeating the same damned mistakes over and over again until we fall over dead.
Listen to me go on, Alan James. See what living out here has done to me. Who knows, maybe you’ll find out some of the answers someday. You’re so smart.
My dear, Alan James. I hope you have the happiest of lives. I’m so proud of you for what you’re doing, for how you’re growing as a man and as a doctor. I hope you remain the golden man I have loved since I was 18, when you came up to me and asked, with those frightened little eyes, if we could meet and exchange our stories. What was that spark that set me ablaze with comfort and longing for you? I don’t know. Mystical. But you know my love for you is an “always” thing. A growing thing. A wonderful, healing thing that will continue to heal me for as long as I live and even, perhaps, beyond.
I may not write again, Alan James. I need to go back into my little safe cave for awhile. But we know that life will steer us toward each other again, as it must, because we truly are lovers.
With all my love,
Rita
I folded the page in half and creased it. I sat breathing and staring at nothing.
Chapter Four
It is an easy day to remember, a Thursday, the third week of October. Trees blazed with color, vibrated spectacles of color, scattered color in bursts of chilly wind, flinging gold, ocher and red like confetti across parks, sidewalks and crowded streets. Sunlight glinted from towering windows, reached through shadowy streets with crossbeams of light, finding the delicate tremulous leaves of the smallest tree near a firehouse, a library, or a block of 5-story brownstones. New York was art in all that color and, under a sharp blue sky, it was painted anew with every brush of sunlight and every moving cloud.
Yellow cabs, slicing through Central Park, sprayed leaves. Kids kicked at them, talked to them, studied them. Leaves carpeted the carriage path in Riverside Park and, as red double-decker tour buses slid by Riverside Church and its gothic spires, leaves exploded from curbside trees, like crazy birds.
Autumn sang through trees, rippled the gray Hudson River and reminded students from Columbia, Barnard and Manhattan School of Music, who persisted in shorts and T-shirts, that winter, mounted and approaching, was, indeed, part of the curriculum.
I had gone to a morning seminar on obesity at the Pierre Hotel, returned to the office at 2 o’clock, saw patients for three hours, and took a walk along Riverside Park at around five, just as the sun was beginning its descent. The temperature was dropping.
My cell phone rang. I stopped and answered.
“Alan. It’s Megan.”
“Yes…what’s up?”
“How was the seminar?” she asked.
“Good. You scooted out early.”
“Yeah, Paul called. Tyler had a fever and was calling for me.”
“Is he okay?”
“Yeah…weepy and irritable. But okay. I was on the internet and guess what?”
“No idea.”
“There’s a seminar in Phoenix…right now.”
“…And?”
“Alan…come on. You’re an intelligent man and a hellova doctor who wants to keep up on all the latest medical trends and techniques, such as alternative treatments and doctor/patient trust and…”
I had been reviewing the facts of the seminar I’d just completed, rewinding and playing back, in my head, conversations with patients I’d had that afternoon. They were instantly erased from my mind. I cut her off. “…In Phoenix?”
“Yes, Alan. Phoenix. Did you know that my mother lives in Phoenix and that Sedona is about 100 miles or so from Phoenix?”
My wide eyes jumped from empty benches, to trees, to squirrels, to the rosy sunset.
“Alan?”
“Yes, Megan, I’m here. I could use another seminar…there’s so much to learn and so many things to catch up on.”
“And surely you remember the mythological Phoenix who crashed to the earth, and was reborn?”
“Yes…”
“We can cover for you, Alan.”
I perched on a park bench, my mind alive with anxious possibility. “Megan…I’m leaving tonight. And…thank you.”