Deena Goldstone - Surprise Me

“Leave Alina out of this.”

“She walks with me sometimes when I’m going back to town. Did you know that, Daniel, she and that new dog of hers?”

“Trixie.”

“Yes, and I know she’s desperate to ask questions about you. She wants to know how you’re doing, but she doesn’t say anything. She simply walks alongside me and takes whatever nuggets of information I give her.”

“Crumbs — she’s content with crumbs.”

“Why, Daniel? Why are these women — Rachel, your daughter — content with so little?”

“Have you seen Alina’s rooms? Have you been inside her barn?”

“Yes.”

“She won’t even allow herself any color .”

Isabelle laughs. “Maybe she just likes white.”

“She’d argue with you if you said this, but she doesn’t think she deserves much of anything.”

“Because you left her?”

“Because she mattered so little that I could leave her.”

“But that’s not the way you felt.”

“Leaving her was the hardest thing I ever did in my life.”

“You should tell her that.”

“Should I shout it across the meadow?”

Isabelle throws up her hands. “Surely you could find another way.”

“I don’t think anymore that it would make any difference.”

“It would. I guarantee you, it would.”

“Well, the next time she comes to visit me, I’ll broach the subject.”

“Impossible. You’re both impossible. Has either one of you heard of the notion of forgiveness?”

And they’re off, discussing forgiveness, arguing a bit, talking about Daniel and Alina and then veering off into the fictional territory of Jack Dyson and his daughter, until Daniel stops midsentence and switches gears. “When I’m not making sense anymore, I want you to go home. Take the manuscript and the laptop and go home. I won’t have you see me at the end. Promise me that.”

“All right.”

“Whenever that is — if it’s tomorrow. Whenever. If I can’t find the words I want to say, then I’m not here.”

—

WORDS, WHICH BROUGHT THEM TOGETHER ORIGINALLY: Isabelle’s words on paper, then Daniel’s words to her. And all the new words Isabelle wrote during the semester to please him. And then their e-mails to each other — words on a screen, words they cherished for so many years.

And now it’s Daniel’s words that bind them inextricably together. Will there be time for him to find the right ones to finish the book? Can Isabelle speak the right words to help him?

For twenty years words have been their lifeline, and now Isabelle can see, almost day by day, that Daniel is slowly losing the ability to produce them. Speaking takes more and more exertion, so Isabelle moves to the floor next to the couch to better hear whatever Daniel manages to say, however softly. Soon, she knows, the effort of producing the breath for even a few words will be too much and he’ll fall silent.

The hospice nurse orders a hospital bed, and Daniel leaves it only to make his slow walk to the bathroom. While they work, Isabelle sits on the bed, at the foot, and types in every syllable Daniel manages to get out. During the pauses, while Daniel is either thinking of what to say next or gathering his strength to voice his next sentence, Isabelle keeps a hand on his ankle. Don’t leave me yet. I’m here.

And then the day comes when Daniel leans back against the many pillows propped up behind him and is finally able to say, “Done.”

True to his earlier decision, he ends the novel with the messiness of life, without the rapprochement between father and daughter Isabelle had so hoped for.

Her head is bent over her computer when she hears him declare the book finished, and she remains frozen there, afraid to look up and meet his eyes. She knows before she hears it what he’s going to say next. But he waits for her, for her eyes to find his, and finally she looks up and meets his gaze.

Daniel is smiling. Relieved, she can tell. Happy. At this moment, happy.

“Go home now.”

She nods, ignoring the tears that fill her eyes. She comes to sit beside him on the bed and he reaches his arms out for her and she embraces him. Oh, he’s hardly there — so thin.

She tells him, her lips at his ear, “You have made all the difference.”

And he leans back again against the pillows, exhausted, content, smiling at her with such love that her heart seizes. “Yes,” he tells her, “you have.”

And then, because tears are streaming down her cheeks, he says, “Don’t cry,” and raises a large hand and wipes away as many of the tears as he can, and she takes his hand in hers and holds on. She can’t lose him. She is losing him. How can this be?

“I have a title,” he tells her, and she nods. She can’t speak. “Regrets of a Grateful Man,” he says, and despite herself she smiles at him through her tears, as he had hoped.

—

SHE LEAVES HIM BECAUSE HE TELLS her she must and she honors that last request, closing the door to his cabin for the last time and walking, simply walking, because she doesn’t know what else to do. Sobbing and walking, blind, and desperate to outwalk the grief, but it doesn’t happen.

She walks through the birch forest behind the cabin and across the open field above that and then along the two-lane road which curves and winds its way eventually to Winnock. Without thinking, she finds herself climbing the rise of the small hillock that leads to the pond where the beavers live. And it is here that she stops and stands and simply cries out her heartache into the stillness of the late-summer air until her chest hurts and her throat is raw and she has run out of tears.

Finally she sits on the ground, arms wrapped around her knees, a tight bundle rocking back and forth in misery. The beavers are there, the same family she has come to know — the diligent parents, the two smaller adolescents. Their work on the dam is finished, she can see, and the pond is full and secure. But they have a new building project. Some sort of structure is going up above the waterline, made from the same kind of sticks and branches and mud. It’s a mound, almost like a wooden igloo. A home — it must be their home for the coming cold weather. Isabelle has hardly registered the change, but the days have begun to shorten, the evenings hold a hint of chill. While it wouldn’t be the end of summer back in California, here in New Hampshire fall comes sooner, and the beavers know it, and they are preparing to survive. Of course.

And Isabelle sits and watches them as she has for all the weeks she’s been here, engrossed in their industriousness, their determination to get on with it, and when she stands up and prepares to walk back to town, she is calmer. Resolved.

It is when Isabelle comes through the birch trees toward Foyle’s Pond that she sees the white Toyota parked in the gravel driveway and recognizes it. Nancy, the hospice nurse, must be with Daniel. And there she is, just leaving Daniel’s cabin, closing the door softly.

Nancy is the most composed person Isabelle has ever met, tender even, and Daniel likes her, Isabelle knows. They all rely on her now — Bev, Daniel, and Isabelle — to answer questions, to make Daniel as comfortable as he can be, to show up whenever they need her. A small woman in her late forties, with strong hands and an unadorned face, she makes her way across the meadow toward her car, parked in front of the barn.

Alina is out in the garden harvesting yellow crookneck squash and foot-long zucchini, shaded now by the massive faces of bright yellow sunflowers, eight feet tall. When Nancy waves, Alina straightens up and returns it, then stands amid the overflowing garden, watching while Nancy gets into her car and drives slowly down the O’Malleys’ unpaved road and out toward the main highway.