Leaving Cold Sassy (9780547527291) (33 page)

At one point in the evening, as Olive Ann was telling a funny anecdote she planned to use in
Time, Dirt, and Money,
I happened to look across the room at Andy. He was seated on the edge of his chair, leaning forward, his hands clasped between his knees, listening with full attention to Olive Ann's every word. On his face there was a smile of pure delight. It was impossible to look at Andy and think of him as a sick man; he was a happy man—and that's what showed. Later, Olive Ann told me that much as she had enjoyed that evening, the high point for her was just after they had closed the door behind us. Then, Andy took her in his arms and said, “Wasn't that a wonderful party!”

A week later, on September 17, 1989, Andy died. Olive Ann believed that she could accept almost anything, but she never expected that she would have to accept the death of her husband. If there was a “dying story” to tell here, it was that after all those years of nursing Olive Ann, Andy was the first to go. All summer, Olive Ann had looked forward to attending John's wedding; it was to be her first real outing in over two years, and she had every reason to believe that Andy would be at her side. Now, she was going to his memorial service instead. She managed it, and afterward she invited family and friends back to the house. That afternoon, she admitted that she hadn't slept at all the night before. Lying in bed, she realized that she had to decide whether life was worth living without Andy; it would be so easy to just give up now and follow him. By morning, she knew that wasn't the answer. One by one, she told us, “I've decided that I want to live.” The way she said those words, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that she meant them. Losing Andy took an enormous toll on Olive Ann, but his death did not diminish her zest for life. There were still too many things she wanted to do.

A few days after Andy's service, Olive Ann wrote a note to a little boy down the street who had come to offer his condolences. “Dear Clark,” it said, “it's not easy to say good-bye to someone you love. It helps me to know that a boy like you cares that I am sad, and I want you to know that thinking about Mr. Sparks makes me smile. He enjoyed your visits. You brought sunshine into our house. Ask your mother to make this cake for your next birthday. It is big! It is so big you could ask 799 children to the party and still have a big piece left for your mom and dad and your brother and your sister. It makes 800 pieces of cake.” She enclosed a recipe that Andy had saved from the mess galley of the battleship U.S.S.
North Carolina.

In the weeks after Andy's death, friends and relatives gathered round to make sure that Olive Ann was well taken care of. Characteristically, she thanked everyone with a letter—a letter that was also intended to let us all know that she would be all right. “Andy assumed he'd get well this time,” she wrote, “just like twice before. ‘If I don't, it won't be for not trying.' In the spring, he laughed and said, ‘I know the chemo is working. It has taken most of my hair, my white cells, my red cells, and my energy.' But he did beat the lymphoma, as it turned out, and despite having chemotherapy that last week he looked and felt better every day. What caused heart failure and death was an overwhelming infection that started with a chill late Saturday night. He died at 8:30 the next morning.

“But we had a good year,” she continued. “There's something to be said for living dangerously! We didn't waste much time worrying, we cherished the fact that we were still together, we had some really good times with friends, got to the mountain house twice, enjoyed hearing about the goings-on in our Sunday school class and with the
Cold Sassy Tree
filming, and our hearts were constantly warmed by all that was being done to help us.

“Andy's garden was never lovelier. And there was great joy in looking forward to John and Judy's wedding. Sometime in July, on a bad day, he said, ‘If I don't make it to the wedding, I want you to see that it goes on exactly as planned.' I promised, but he was obviously so much better in general that I never once thought he wouldn't make it. As planned, three weeks after he didn't make it, the wedding took place in College Park at the home of Andy's sister, Jane Willingham. The house was built by their grandfather in 1904, and their mother and father married there in 1912. It was a lovely day.

“There is now something wonderful about knowing for sure that I can cope with whatever happens. Andy taught me how. It hasn't been hard for me to accept that Andy has died, though I think I don't quite believe it. It's just that he has disappeared and I miss him. Acceptance doesn't mean I haven't cried—a lot. But I never have to remind myself that we had much to be thankful for, and I still do, most especially for our family, neighbors, friends, and doctors.”

Olive Ann did go to John's wedding, but by the time it was over it was clear that the stress of the preceding month had affected her heart. Some of the fluid had returned, and her doctor ordered her back to bed. Now, in addition to having to adjust to a world without Andy, Olive Ann had to get used to someone else taking care of her. There were decisions to make, financial affairs to settle, and tasks to be done—from finding someone to make her breakfast in the morning to cleaning out Andy's closet. She hired a cook-housekeeper to come in five mornings a week, and she spent some time with her brother-in-law and an investment broker, organizing her finances and arranging for a regular monthly income from the
Cold Sassy Tree
profits. As Olive Ann wrote in a letter to John and Judy, “To have the money question sorted out for me and to have the housekeeper and cooking problems solved seems like huge progress and a lot off my mind.”

One Sunday morning, two months after Andy's death, Olive Ann wrote that she had woken up at six o'clock and, for the first time, was able to think about him without crying. “It was a joy and a delight to think about him,” she said. “I think one reason I've missed him so is having to try not to, in order not to cry all day. I guess I'm healing, at least emotionally.”

By November she was catching up on her correspondence and getting ready to go back to work on the novel. She wrote a long letter to Faye Dunaway, complimenting her work on the movie and recalling the day they had spent together. “For myself,” she wrote, “it was enough to be with you as a delightful human being, so interesting that we could both forget photographers. It really was a lovely day, which Andy enjoyed as much as I did. The whole time that you were in Concord, we were getting reports and photographs of what was going on and felt we were a part of it. It really added a great sense of fun to those last months. He has disappeared now, and I miss him, but I'll soon be back to the sequel, and writing has always been my best escape, my best therapy, and my most pleasure.”

In the months that followed, Olive Ann did get back to work on her book. As always before, fiction transported her to a place where she could call all the shots. Having lost first her own health and now her husband of thirty-three years, she was glad to have at least one aspect of her life in her control. Although she was almost completely bedridden again, she spent the afternoons alone in the house, dictating and editing. “I do enjoy the afternoons by myself,” Olive Ann wrote to me, “and that's usually when I get around to working on the book.” Her deadline was just a year away, but, as she told us, “My first job is to stay alive, so there's no chance I'll be burning the midnight oil to make up for lost time during the last few months.” Olive Ann's doctors gave her permission to sit up but said that she mustn't walk any more than was absolutely necessary. “For the most part my walks now are to the bathroom and to the front door once a day to let Jack out, Jack being the cat,” she wrote.

To some, such a life might seem little more than a prison sentence, but Olive Ann didn't think of it that way. That winter, she indulged herself and wrote long, thoughtful letters, something that she truly loved to do. In answer to a letter from a young woman who had worked on the film of
Cold Sassy Tree,
Olive Ann wrote, “If balancing a career and family ever puts too much pressure on you, don't mind lightening up on the career for a few years. It's better than chronic exhaustion.” My Christmas letter from Olive Ann was full of memories of the first camping trip she and Andy had made with John and Becky, and reflections on being a parent. “The wonderful thing, I think, about children is that you see the world all new through their eyes,” she wrote, “whenever you try to show the world to them, whether it be a red maple leaf, a ladybug, dinosaur tracks, or the Metropolitan Museum. That's what it really is all about—that and love.”

***

On December 18, 1989, my husband called Olive Ann from my hospital room to let her know that I had just given birth to a baby boy. Over the next few months I sent more photos than letters to Boiling Road, and Olive Ann devoted herself to her book. She was feeling well enough to write and was determined to make “real headway now.” Rather than dictating the first draft, she was jotting down lines and paragraphs on scrap paper, fiddling with them till they were the way she wanted them, and then dictating them for Norma to type. “That way I have something on paper that I can see and work from,” she explained, “and I think it will cut out the necessity for so much rewriting of the first draft.” Arduous as the process might be, Olive Ann still refused to settle for anything that was less than perfect; she had worked out a method that enabled her to tinker more while Norma typed less. It seemed a good sign.

The eight-page, single-spaced letter Olive Ann sent me in March 1990 was, it turned out, the last. It seems a fitting farewell. As Olive Ann herself warned, “You may have to read this letter in sections between feedings. Unless my voice gives out, it will have all the things I've stored up that I've thought about and wanted to tell you since last fall.” She began by reflecting on the friendship with Norma and what it had meant to her and Andy over the years. “I really love each person in my family, and we are all very close,” she wrote, “but Norma being next door and being over here so much washing dishes and cooking when we needed her, and typing, and needing Andy's advice about gardening, I think she—like you and Steve—had much in common with Andy and enjoyed and really experienced him in the same way I did. It was always a merry threesome whenever she came over.”

In fact, this letter is full of stories and recollections of happy times, from the days she and Andy had spent at the
Sunday Magazine
to the magical connections and friendships that had come about as a result of
Cold Sassy Tree.
Olive Ann described the afternoon she and Andy had spent with Jessica Tandy, who came to visit while she was in Atlanta filming
Driving Miss Daisy.
She gave a progress report on
Time, Dirt, and Money,
and brought me up to date on
Cold Sassy Tree
news, concluding, “
Cold Sassy Tree
does seem to have a life of its own, like a river with lots of little branches—or maybe I should say like a sassafras tree with many branches.”

And, much as she missed Andy, Olive Ann also wanted me to know that she was growing accustomed to life without him. “At first I had the feeling that Andy's death was a dream and I would wake up,” she said. “When I did wake up, my feeling was as if a meteorite had hit the earth in September and killed every witty, interesting, sweet, cheerful, courageous, loving, exciting, sometimes irritable, determined man of seventy who lived at 161 Boiling Road. It doesn't hit like that anymore, and I'm very grateful for the kind of marriage we had. We were married for thirty-three years but worked together every day for nine years before that.” Still, she felt that her recovery was occurring in stages, and that the process was a continuing one.

“The first few weeks, every morning when I woke up I had to remind myself, with surprise and amazement and often out loud, that ‘Andy is dead!'” she admitted. “Then for four months I hardly ever thought about him. I couldn't let myself. Any time I ever thought about him I cried, and even with a good heart it's exhausting to cry all day. I looked forward to the nights because I would sleep and not have to try so hard not to think.”

Once all of the legal and financial affairs were tended to, Olive Ann decided it was time to go through Andy's things, something she had dreaded. “It seemed like just another painful, overwhelming widow-type task,” she wrote, “until it dawned on me this was something I could do for him! He did hate to go through stuff, as is clearly evident when one opens his closet door or his drawers or his desk. I started with the desk, and it's turning out to be a happy time. The desk is like a profile of Andy and his life and his interests, with constant interesting or funny surprises.”

She found Andy's uncle's gold pocket watch; a box of coal ash containing the burned remains of a diamond ring that Andy's Aunt Mamie had wrapped in a piece of paper and accidentally thrown in the fire; a box of gold inlays (“Years ago I heard inlays are worth something, so whenever I had to have one replaced I'd make the dentist give me the old one. Even Andy, who was embarrassed by such, started asking for his”); and two stamped envelopes from Andy's mother's Aunt Em, mailed during the Civil War. “This desk work has been like being with Andy again,” Olive Ann wrote. “Too interesting to cry about, and full of memories of happy times, including my love letters that I didn't know he'd kept, and notes from the children when they were little. It's amazing what a difference it's made—feeling I'm doing something for Andy, almost with him. I bring batches out of the pigeonholes to my bed to go through, and I'm having a good time. But, oh, law, he's got two file cabinets full in the basement!”

Written words were never discarded in Olive Ann and Andy's household, and Olive Ann's going through Andy's desk didn't necessarily mean that she was throwing anything away; in fact, she was annotating, as I discovered a year later when I sorted through many of these same papers. To a bundle of tender and funny notes that Olive Ann had written to Andy over the years, and that he had saved, she added this explanation: “Whenever Andy was away overnight, I would tuck a card or a note into his suitcase. I never knew he kept them.”