Free Once Upon a Time, There Was You by Elizabeth Berg Page B

about going here or there all the time. Irene did that, and it always made him feel like home with him would never be enough for her, she wanted to go to Italy, she wanted to go to Africa, she wanted to buy a summer home so they wouldn’t be here all the time. She said that last looking out the window at the backyard one rainy day, and he wanted to say, “What are you seeing when you say that, Irene? The grass that we finally got to be heaven on bare feet? The little vegetable garden with the chicken wire Sadie labored to install and then photographed, in her pride? The blueberry bush that you yourself insisted upon? The rope swing under the elm tree? Or maybe the double hammock, in which one night, while Sadie slept in her room upstairs, we crept out and made love most adroitly?” He didn’t ask her that. He did ask her why she always wanted to leave home, and she gave him a withering look and said, “People go on vacations , John. People need to go on vacations.” Well, he didn’t need to. He didn’t like to, really. All that packing and unpacking. Those awful stacks of mail upon return, the forgotten milk turned sour in the fridge. Amy was a woman who apparentlyshared his convictions, a woman who saw the vacation in going nowhere at all.
    It’s more important than ever that he reveal the truth to her about him not being a widower. He has to do it tonight.
    Just after they are settled out on the porch with their glasses of wine, Amy suddenly sits up straighter in her chair. “John. I have a confession to make.”
    He laughs. “Funny you should say that. I do, too.”
    “Can I go first?”
    He gestures expansively: Be my guest .
    She looks down at her lap, tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, speaks softly. “This is about my husband, about when he died. I think I told you he died at home.” She looks quickly over at John, and he nods.
    “Well, on the last day, I was sitting beside him and I had been up all night—again—and I was so exhausted, all the way down to my bones. And he was such a mess by then. I’m sorry to say it that way, but he was a mess—that’s the way he described himself, too. We even laughed about it one day. He’d asked for a mirror, and he looked at himself in it, and he got real still; and then he just started laughing, and I did, too. Oh, that was such an odd and dear moment.
    “But anyway. He looked nothing like himself. And the room reeked from him. It did, it just reeked all the time, nothing I did helped. But that day I was sitting there with him, and he all of a sudden started having trouble breathing, he was gasping and snorting and …” She pauses, gathers herself. “He wasn’t able to talk at that point, but I knew he was having trouble breathing. And I knew what to do to help him; I’d done it before. I’d readjusted him, I’d suctioned him a million times. But that time, I didn’t do anything. I just sat there. And he died.”
    She looks over at him, her eyes full of tears. “The doctor hadtold me he didn’t have much longer, maybe another few days, but I let him die then. I never told anyone this. But in those last moments, he looked over at me, needing help, and I did nothing. I think he was aware that I was choosing to do nothing. And all that was in his eyes …” She swallows hugely. “All that was in his eyes was love.
    “I was wrong to do that. I was so wrong. And I see that day over and over. I wish I’d helped him. But I didn’t. You must think I’m a terrible person. I killed him.”
    “Amy.”
    “I did!”
    “ Cancer killed him.”
    She says nothing, wipes a tear from beneath one eye, then the other.
    “I wonder if he wasn’t grateful to you.”
    “I don’t think he was grateful .” Her torso jerks, holding back a sob.
    “Well, want me to tell you what I think?”
    She nods.
    “I think the last thing he saw was a wife who loved him and did not want him to suffer any longer. He knew he was going to die. I suppose one way he might