October Snow (41 page)

Matt and John were glaring at her.

“She’s
gone
.” Matt’s voice dripped with contempt.

Jo shook her head.
But I didn’t know
.

Her sons walked away, disgusted, and then they vanished.

Where are you
? she screamed.

“
Jo
!” Max was shaking her. “Jo,
wake up
!”

She sat up, looking blearily at Max.

She sat on the edge of the bed. “You were screaming, honey. Are you okay?”

With sudden, perfect calm, Jo said, “Turn on the light, Maxine.” She put her hand out to the side, on Daisy’s chest, waiting for the breath that didn’t come. As the light flooded the room, she looked down at her: her lips were pulled back in a grimace. Her teeth were showing, and her eyes were open and glassy.

Max gasped.

“Oh.” Jo’s voice was monotone. “Daisy.”

They buried her beside Lady the next morning. Jo put the yellow ball between her paws, then made a small cross from two twigs and some yellow ribbon that was left from the wedding. “Wait,” she said as Max reached for the shovel; she placed the cross on Daisy’s side.

“Go wait on the deck, Jo. I’ll finish.” She picked up the shovel.

“Okay…Wait,” she said again. With a vacant expression, she asked, “Did you check her carefully?”

“I did. She’s gone, honey.”

Jo looked down at her, wondering if she might give a signal of some kind. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.” She wanted, badly, to hug her friend, but she knew not to. Not now. “Go on, Jo, and let me do this.”

Gazing into the grave, she whispered, “Goodbye, baby,” so softly that Max barely heard it. She put a hand on Jo’s shoulder as she walked past her to the house.

Max hadn’t deliberately talked to God in many years, but decided it was a good time to start. As she finished burying Jo’s only remaining tether, she sank beside the grave and dissolved into tears.

Jo called John first. Again, his phone went straight to voicemail. Not wanting to leave a message with such terrible news, she simply asked him to call as soon as he could. Then she called Matt.

He picked up on the eighth ring.

“Mom,” he said curtly.

Jo, in her grief, and in trying to stay strong for him, didn’t notice his icy tone. “Honey, I have bad news.”

Matt waited silently.

“Daisy died late last night.”

“Oh, Mom …Oh
no
…” He sounded shocked, strained with grief; then, she heard someone whispering. “Daisy died,” he said to whoever was with him.

She heard muttering in the background, then Matt said, his voice now completely level, “Did she
really
die, Mom?”

The question stunned her. “Yes, Matt. Last night.”

“What happened to her?”

“I’m…pretty sure it was a heart attack.”

More whispering, then, “Have you told John?”

“I can’t reach him. Would you ask him to call me if you see him?”

“Sure.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie, I know it hurts.” Her stomach was knotting up. She felt like a total stranger to him.

“I’ll be fine. You got my messages?”

“Yes…”

“Then I hope I’ll be talking to you soon.” The line went dead.

Jo stared blindly at the phone. The pain in her stomach flared into rage.

“Jo?” Max was coming up the steps to the deck, taken aback by Jo’s ashen face. “What happened?”

“I told Matt.”

“How is he?”

“Fine. Keith and Shelly were there.”

Terrific
. “Oh.”

She got up then, leaning her hands on the railing, looking out over the lake. She thought–she knew, actually–that she saw Daisy running out there, and she smiled softly as the pain in her stomach subsided. “Thank you for taking over.”

“Of course.”

“You’re going to miss her, too.”

Max bit her lip, then whispered, “Yeah.”

“I’ll gather her things. It’s going to be hard enough, without having them around to remind us.”

In the days that followed, Max watched her grieve; but it was an odd, strangely quiet–almost content–place that Jo had gone into. One where Max couldn’t join her, which she suspected was Jo’s preference.

She was sensitive to Max, though, and attentive. Jo hadn’t gone the way of retreating; if anything, she was more loving than Max had ever known her to be. Jo had even comforted her, both times that Max broke down and cried.

And it was unnerving. It was frightening, Max thought. “It’s like she’s made her peace,” Sam had said, and the words echoed in Max’s head.

They went to Marcia’s on Tuesday morning. Gabe paid for their meals–Lettie had told him about Daisy. “I’m just so sorry, Jo. I really am,” he said, and he patted her on the shoulder.

The clouds were thickening as they left the diner. “Let’s go to Hampton,” Max said.

“Sure.”

Max was surprised to feel a rush of disappointment. She realized she had been hoping that Jo, hating the ocean, would protest. She would have given anything for some sign of life in her.

The beach was almost deserted, with the weather suddenly chilly and the skies dark gray, and the holiday weekend over. They laid a tattered blue blanket on the sand.

“Got change for a nickel? I don’t have a penny,” Max said, watching Jo gaze silently at the water.

She smiled. “I was thinking about a story about starfish.”

“What is it?”

“There’s a woman walking on the beach, throwing the marooned starfish back into the ocean, one by one. Some other woman comes by, and asks her why–with thousands of starfish on the sand–she bothers to save any of them, since she can’t save all of them, you know?” She drew her legs up, hugging them. “The woman says, ‘No, I can’t save them all,’ and she throws another one in, and says, ‘but I can save this one…And this one…’”

“Nice story.”

Jo shrugged.

“You don’t think so?”

“Well, I guess we could go save a hundred starfish right now.”

“You sound like it’s not worth doing.”

“It’s not that.” She pulled the hood of her jacket over her head, considering it. “But wouldn’t it suck to be starfish number one-hundred-one?”

With that, it all came together for her: she knew she had just learned the essence of Jo’s despair. “Yeah. It would. But that’s not a reason to not be a hero to the others.”

“Heroes.” She laughed bitterly. “I could count on one hand the heroes I’ve known, and still light a cigarette.” She glanced at Max. “I’m sitting with one of them right now, and you don’t even see it.”

Max could feel her own anxiety spinning out of control. She was breathing fast; she put her hand to her forehead.

“Are you okay?”

“Are
you
?” Max shot back.

Jo was confused, surprised at her sudden edginess. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

Max got up abruptly and walked to the water’s edge, her hands in her pockets.

Jo followed her a moment later, taking her arm as she came beside her. “Ask me the question, Maxine.”

Max didn’t look at her, didn’t respond.

“Go on, ask.” She ducked her head before her, forcing Max to look at her.

“Are you suicidal?”

“I…Maybe. Probably.”

Max breathed in, a whistling sound through her gritted teeth.

“But I could never take a life, Max. That includes my own.” She held her friend’s eyes as she said, “It’s not gonna happen.”

She looked out at the waves, picking up in intensity, rolling close to their feet. “Okay.”

“Feel better?”

“Not really. Not as much as I thought I would.”

“I’m sorry.” It was the truth.

“Really?
Really
, Jo? Well, that’s nice. All better now.” She picked up a rock from the sand, hurling it into the water. “And I’m real flattered that you think I’m some kind of a hero, when the truth is I can’t even
reach
you, let alone help.”

“Is
that
what you’re so upset about?”

Max stared at her, astonished. “That’s what you think?” She kicked at the sand in anger. “Know what? I can’t take this anymore. I can’t take
you
anymore.”

Jo was struck by a sudden jumble of feelings: fear, regret, anger–and then, a relief that she hoped her friend wouldn’t see.

But Max was taking in her expression, and began pacing in her frustration. She stopped in front of Jo. “Look at you! That’s what you
want,
isn’t it? For everyone to walk away? Why? So you can crawl into a cave someplace and be tragic?”

“Max, stop…” She backed away, her hands in front of her as if to ward her off.

“You go through this…this thing you call a
life
, always running to the rescue…”

“
Stop
it, Maxine.”

“…slaying the bad guys, being everybody’s champion, and then you disappear inside yourself like some kind of a phantom hero…”

“
Don’t tell me about heroes
!” The wail that erupted from Jo came from a place of despair that Max knew nothing about, and she covered her mouth with both of her hands, horrified by the pain in Jo’s eyes.

“You think there are people who come to the rescue? Who give a rat’s
ass
what happens?
Really
? Then I’ll tell you what.” She pointed her finger into Max’s face. “Go find a hero for Sammy and that baby. Or for that little girl who got her face smashed all to hell by her daddy. While you’re at it, where was the hero for your mother? For
you
?” Her voice faltered. “They
never come
.” May Walker’s bloody face floated in front of her, and she walked away quickly.

Where was your hero, Jo?

In a flash of desperation, Max caught up with her and grabbed her shoulder.

Jo tried to shake her off, then threw her hand to the side when Max didn’t let go. She turned on her slowly, deliberately, deciding that she had reached the end of allowing Maxine Allen to invade her thoughts. She leaned in close to Max’s face.

“
Leave me the hell
alone
,” she hissed through clenched teeth.

Max didn’t move. “
Not a chance
.”

No one had ever before stood their ground that way with her, and Jo didn’t know how to react or what to do next. She clasped her hands on top of her head as she walked away again.

Max followed her. “You aren’t backing me off.”

“I get that.”

“
Talk
to me.”

Jo kept walking.

“Okay, I’ll just piss you off with platitudes, then.”

Oh, please
. “Go to hell, Maxine.”

“Things get better.”

“Good to know.”

“They
do
get better. You aren’t powerless here. You can’t just give up.”

Jo stopped, then sat on her heels on the sand as if surrendering, tucking her hair behind her ears with trembling hands. “Max, did it ever occur to you that sometimes, the only power we
have
is the power to quit?” She was rubbing the top of her thighs. “To just let go?”

“Okay. Quit where you’ve been. But then you
start over
.” She sat beside her, watching Jo ball her hands into fists as she obsessively, seemingly unconsciously, ran them up and down the top of her legs.

“With
what
? I wrapped my entire life around making sure my boys survived. After a few years, the only reason I still wanted to
live
anymore was because they needed me to be there. Now, they don’t anymore…” The glance she directed at Max was almost apologetic, but her voice went flat. “I know that things get better. Time will go by, and life will seem less hopeless someday.” She was searching for the words, yet babbling in a torrent of disjointed thoughts that Max couldn’t follow. “But it’s not like things become hopeful then, either. Not when you’re done. You just…You reach a point where you just don’t even
want
it to get better. Because it doesn’t
mean
anything, once you’re done, and the indifference to all the good things–that’s the worst thing of all. The indifference to the good things.”

“Why do you do that?” Max pointed to her hands.

She stopped abruptly. “Don’t know. Old habit.” She clasped her hands together.

“Jo…”

“You know,” she hurriedly changed the topic, “there was this woman I knew once, she…Her husband shot her to death.”

“She was your client.” It was a simple statement, and Max wondered if she was developing some kind of a shell-shocked immunity to the horror of Jo’s stories.

Jo nodded. “And after her funeral, someone actually suggested to me that I celebrate her life, more than mourn her death.” She looked at Max in disbelief. “Celebrate?
That
life? Do you have any idea how she spent her
life
?”

“No.”

“She spent it
waiting for a hero
.”

They sat quietly for a while, each lost in their own thoughts.

Max recalled a discussion they’d once had, about the tree falling in the forest. They had come to the conclusion that it was the height of arrogance, to think that it made no sound; now, she wondered about the collateral damage, the things that had the misfortune of being in the path of the tree, and she berated herself for her selfishness at that moment.

But the reality of it was, she was worn out. A month ago, she had been a waitress, making her money and paying her bills, and going to Barley’s after work. Joking around with Sammy and Jo. Nothing too trying, not all that much to think about, care about, worry about. Nothing to hurt over–pain was buried safely away, and she had finally had some peace.

No place more peaceful than a tomb
.

She threw another rock into the surf, looking over at Jo.

Am I ever going to get you out of my head?

Jo broke the silence, still looking out at the ocean as she took Max’s hand. “I’m sorry, Maxine.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

She sighed as she got up. “Yeah, I do.”

“Then so do I.”

She pulled Max to her feet and hugged her, but she was hesitant. “I wish I were stronger.”

Max held her tight. “You know, I understand it now–what you meant that night at The Crate, when you said calling someone ‘strong’ isn’t always a compliment.”

Jo drew back, waiting.

“That line usually comes from people who have no intention of being
anyone’s
hero.”