Marriage Seasons 03 - Falling for You Again (32 page)

“You ride along with me,” Derek said, leading Charlie out the door.

The ambulance sat in the driveway, lights flashing, back door open, motor running. Charlie stared at it. The paramedics were sliding the gurney inside. Was that Esther lying there? She looked too small. Too pale.

“I should ride with her,” Charlie said.

Derek placed a supporting arm around his shoulders. “Kim’s bringing our car around. We’ll follow along right behind the ambulance. The EMTs need room to tend to Mrs. Moore. We’ll get to the hospital at almost the same time. You’ll see.”

“But you don’t know how Esther is about things like this.” Charlie watched in befuddlement as someone shut the ambulance door and it began to roll down the driveway toward the street. “I think it would have been better if I’d gone along for the ride. I don’t know what happened, Derek. Do you think Esther fainted? She didn’t seem sick at all. It was so … odd.”

“I’m not sure, Charlie.” Derek led him toward the car that Kim now pulled into the Moores’ driveway. “It’s hard to tell what might have happened. The doctors will have a better idea once they’ve examined her.”

Somehow Charlie found himself climbing into the passenger’s side of Derek Finley’s car. Kim and Brenda were in the backseat. And there was someone else.

“Brad? Is that you?”

“Hey, Mr. Moore.” The young man clamped a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “I saw the ambulance and ran over. How are you doing there, buddy?”

Charlie looked across the back of his seat. “You’ve got paint on your face, Brad. From the ceiling.”

The two men stared at each other. Charlie could remember that paint splattering across Brad’s nose. Not long afterward, he had left the Haneses’ house. Esther had been in the kitchen, hadn’t she? Weren’t they looking for a recipe? What could have happened?

“I called Ashley,” Brad said. “She’s meeting us over at the ER. Are you gonna be okay, Mr. Moore?”

Charlie couldn’t move his focus from the young man’s face. Gazing at Brad, he could suddenly see Esther. Her eyes had been closed and her chest still. She’d had no pulse. Her hands never moved. Her mouth never changed expression. Esther hadn’t fainted, had she? No. She hadn’t fainted at all.

The passengers fell silent as the car zipped along Highway toward Osage Beach. Charlie tried to replay the events of the past hour, but they kept getting out of order, so he would start again. At some point, Derek’s Water Patrol radio crackled on. Derek and someone began speaking to each other in code. That bothered Charlie. He wasn’t sure the conversation was about Esther, but he didn’t like to be kept in the dark.

Finally Derek brought the car to a halt near the emergency room, and everyone piled out. Brad came alongside Charlie, taking his arm. For a moment, Charlie considered pushing the kid away. He didn’t need help getting across a parking lot. He wasn’t a crotchety old man. But as they neared the door, Charlie decided he was grateful, and he leaned against his younger friend.

Inside, people moved far too slowly for a place called an emergency room.
“What emergency?”
they seemed to be saying.
“This is just our job. We’re in no hurry.”

Charlie stood beside Brad in the center of the tiled floor. Derek spoke to someone behind a desk. Over to one side, Kim and Brenda whispered back and forth.

“I have to see Esther,” Charlie said, irritated that no one seemed to notice he was there. Didn’t they realize he was worried about his wife? He kept seeing Esther’s face, unmoving and pale. He remembered trying to find her pulse and then the ambulance arriving and people pouring into the house.

“When Esther wakes up,” he told Brad, “she’ll need me beside her. I want to be with her while the doctors tend to her.”

“We’ve got to wait this one out, Mr. Moore.” Brad pointed at a row of seats. “How about we park ourselves over there?”

Parking himself was the last thing Charlie wanted to do. But somehow he found himself sitting down. Handing Derek Finley his wallet with the medical and other identification cards inside it. Watching people come and go. Trying to eavesdrop on Kim as she spoke to Derek. Listening to Brenda, who was on her cell phone making one call after another.

“We came here this summer when Luke had his diabetic emergency, remember?” Kim asked, stooping in front of Charlie. “The doctors are very good. We were pleased with the way they took care of him.”

Why didn’t she sit in a chair? Why wouldn’t anyone let him go talk to Esther? Didn’t they understand what almost fifty years of marriage meant? You couldn’t just take one person away without bringing the other along. He and Esther were a pair. A matched set, like salt and pepper or a left and right shoe. You didn’t expect one to stay apart from the other. It wasn’t right. Professionals ought to know that.

He stared at the doors between the waiting room and the rest of the ER. Why didn’t someone come out and talk to him? He could picture Esther lying on a bed back there, her blue eyes filled with confusion as doctors poked and prodded her. She wouldn’t like it, and she would expect Charlie to be right beside her.

“We’re having her artery cleaned on Friday,” he said aloud. “I’m going to be with her during that procedure.”

The chattering around him stopped, and now he realized that the room had slowly filled with friends and neighbors. There stood Ashley Hanes, Patsy Pringle, Pete Roberts, Steve Hansen.

Pastor Andrew had come too. Now he was a man of authority.

“I need to see Esther,” Charlie told his minister. “She was terrified to have the angioplasty and stent. This incident is going to upset her a lot. Could you ask someone to let me go back there?”

Pastor Andrew glanced at Derek Finley. Both men nodded and stepped to the front desk.
That’s better,
Charlie thought.
Get this thing moving along now.

Relief spilled through Charlie as the men beckoned him toward the double doors. Brad started to help him to his feet, but that wasn’t necessary. In a moment, he had joined Pastor Andrew and Derek in the short journey to a small, windowless room. He entered to find nothing but a few chairs around the perimeter.

“Wait … this isn’t right,” Charlie muttered. His irritation grew. “Where’s Esther? Listen, I’ve had enough of this waiting around. I want to talk to my wife.”

A doctor slipped into the room, shut the door behind him, and motioned for the men to take seats. That’s when Charlie understood.

He wasn’t going to see Esther again. Not his bright, chirpy little wife with the mischievous smile and busy hands. No more dishes clattering in the kitchen. No purple elastic-waist slacks and matching sweaters. No Friday set-and-style appointments. No long, gossipy reports about the Tea Lovers’ Club. No sweet kisses on the cheek. No warm arms reaching for him in the night.

Charlie studied the doctor. The man was speaking, and Charlie understood the words. But they made no sense. None at all.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

W
ith Boofer on his lap, Charlie sat in his recliner and pressed the remote control’s channel-changing button again and again. The sun rose—golden and far too bright—slanting through venetian blinds that hadn’t been adjusted in years. As a rule, Charlie didn’t watch television in the morning. Usually his garden or workbench beckoned at dawn, and he didn’t collapse into his chair until late afternoon. Today was different.

Laying a hand on the dog’s head, Charlie reflected on his television habit. Esther hadn’t approved, but he had always argued that game shows kept his mind active and alert. He told himself that filling out crossword puzzles or trying to beat the contestants on his favorite programs would prevent Alzheimer’s disease. Now, as he flipped past cartoons, shopping shows, and sports announcers, he realized that particular goal no longer mattered. In fact, he wouldn’t mind a good strong dose of amnesia.

“What’s the matter, Boof?” he asked the dog, who was in the midst of shifting position. “Why can’t you settle down, fella? Are you missing your mama? Well, I guess that makes two of us.”

Charlie had never been much of a weeper. His father had taught him that a man never cried. Facing life with a stoic attitude and an unwavering confidence in oneself and God formed the essential core of a male.

That was hogwash, Charlie realized not long after the doctor told him about Esther’s massive stroke. As it turned out, she had gone instantly. The ambulance ride, the long wait in the emergency room, the efforts of the doctors—that had been nothing but protocol. Derek Finley had probably known all along. No doubt everyone but Charlie suspected it.

To him, the news had hit like an earthquake—a gigantic seismic shifting of the earth, followed by ripples of aftershock. The doctor gently informed Charlie that his wife had died. Nothing could have been done to prevent the stroke—not even the angioplasty and carotid stenting would have helped in Esther’s case. And then Charlie began weeping. He hadn’t been able to stop since.

Charles Jr., Natalie, and their two children had arrived from California on the afternoon after Esther’s death. Ellie came in a couple of hours later from Florida.

It was Monday, someone told Charlie, the Monday before Thanksgiving, and things had to move fast. He couldn’t comprehend why that was so. To Charlie, the whole world had stopped in that tiny windowless room.

But the moments passed anyway, one after the other. Flowers came to the house. Ellie and Charles Jr. cried, made phone calls, hugged each other and their father. People knocked on the door and brought in casseroles or sandwiches or relish trays. The doorbell rang. More flowers. Charlie dozed off and on, but mostly he sat in the recliner with Boofer and watched everything through a blur of tears.

It was Tuesday, Charles Jr. had informed him on the way to church. He hadn’t even noticed the passage of night. Seated in a pew with his children and grandchildren, Charlie studied the casket near the altar. Esther had never liked sitting near the front where everyone could look at her. She wouldn’t be happy with this arrangement, Charlie realized, but nothing could be done about it now.

Esther wore her nicest suit. She had told Charlie the shape was flattering. But then the figure lying motionless in the casket wasn’t really Esther. Charlie’s wife was nowhere to be found, he slowly began to realize. Not in the kitchen or the bathroom or the bedroom. Not marching down the hall while singing out some news she had just learned. Not stringing beads on the front porch.

“Heaven,” Pastor Andrew had said repeatedly during the funeral service. It was a place of joy. A land without pain. A home in the presence of the holy God.

What about earth?
Charlie had wondered. That’s where he had been left when Esther sighed and drifted away. What was he supposed to do now?

He could almost hear his wife explaining her death.
“It was silly of me, I know, sweetie pie. I hope you’re not too put out.”

As he flipped through television channels now that his children and everyone else had gone away, Charlie heard the doorbell chime. Boofer’s ears perked up, but when Charlie didn’t move, the dog settled down again.

That doorbell had become a nuisance in recent days, Charlie thought. People dropped by at all hours and expected to be let in. They came before and after the funeral, even after Charles Jr. and Ellie had returned home. They came in the morning, and they came at night—in and out, in and out, crying, telling stories, laughing, setting food inside the refrigerator. Everyone tried to make it better … and failed.

“Go away,” Charlie muttered after the doorbell echoed through the house a second time. “We’ve got enough relish trays, don’t we, Boof? We don’t need another ham or pot roast. We’ve got turkey tetrazzini coming out our ears, and I’m not even hungry.”

Someone began knocking. Charlie flipped the channel. “Skedaddle,” he said under his breath. “I’m busy.”

“Mr. Moore?” Cody’s voice filled the living room. “Hey, Mr. Moore, is that you in the recliner? Is that Boofer?”

“Well, who do you think it is, Cody?”

“I think it’s you, Mr. Moore. Sorry to open the door and walk in without being invited. I know that’s bad social skills.”

Charlie shook his head. He’d just lost the love of his life, his best friend for nearly fifty years. The last thing he needed was to try to decipher whatever Cody Goss had on his mind.

The young man appeared in Charlie’s range of vision. He was wearing a tan turtleneck, a brown leather jacket, and khaki slacks instead of his usual jeans and T-shirt.

Cody stood beside the TV for a moment. Then he let out a deep breath. “Aren’t you going to invite me to sit down, Mr. Moore? Because that’s manners.”

Charlie set the remote on the side table. “Cody, what do you want?”

“I want to sit on your sofa.”

“All right, sit, but I’m not in the mood to talk. I’m watching television.”

“Okay.”

Though Charlie made an attempt to focus on the show, it was impossible. So he reached for the remote and switched off the TV. Closing his eyes, he sniffled. He was awfully tired, and Esther would scold him for not taking better care of himself. Or rather, she would have scolded him if—

“Why did you come, Cody?” Charlie barked. He hadn’t meant to sound so harsh, but he didn’t have the energy to pretend niceness.

“I came to get you,” Cody told him. “We’re going to drive around Deepwater Cove in your golf cart. It’s a plan made by Brenda and the two Finley ladies and also Opal and Ashley and Patsy. I’m in charge of it, because I don’t have a house of my own. Besides, Brenda wanted me to go away because Jennifer didn’t have a good time on her mission trip to Mexico, and it’s better if I find something else to do. So here I am.”

Charlie took off his glasses, wiped them for the umpteenth time. Then he blew his nose and put them on again. He leaned back in the recliner and stared at the ceiling. “Cody, I’m not going anywhere in the golf cart today. You need to find someone else to bother. Why don’t you go see Patsy?”

“We will. She’s last on our list.” Cody fidgeted. “I think I’m going to have to tell you a secret, Mr. Moore, because this is important. Patsy Pringle loves Pete Roberts. She finally decided for sure. How I know is because I read a card that was sitting at her beauty station inside Just As I Am. I wasn’t supposed to read the card because that is snooping and it’s bad social skills. But I knocked over the card when I was dusting, and then I picked it up and it said
I love you, Pete
at the very bottom in Patsy’s handwriting. That’s how I know. Patsy tries to pretend she doesn’t care all that much about Pete. But I saw the card and also I know Pete loves her. It’s hard not to love someone who already loves you. It’s also hard if you love someone and they don’t love you. Love is hard no matter what.”