Chapter 1 – Where is love?

“The desire to go home that is a desire to be whole, to know where you are, to be the point of intersection of all the lines drawn through all the stars, to be the constellation-maker and the center of the world, that center called love.” – Rebecca Solnit

 Janet was back again finally to the place where she grew up.  A run-down, paint-peeling wood house with a rusted metal roof on a forgotten street that started out as a dirt road between two towns.  A scrappy plot of land that had little attention paid to it with a backyard that was nothing more than a sewage field.  A place of dashed dreams where two adults existed, rather than lived, from day to day with little to no confidence that they would ever escape.

Janet hadn’t seen it in years, hadn’t wanted to after first her mother and then her father died. She used to do an annual drive-by when her husband and she would visit his family at the holidays, but the house and land looked worse each year until at last it looked completely abandoned. Seeing it in that state just made her depressed, so she stopped visiting it.

The house probably should have been sold as land to a developer or business after her parents died. But her brother and she couldn’t bring themselves to do it. Instead, they sold it to a couple who had grown up with them in the neighborhood and wanted to move out of the trailer in which they’d lived for too long. It was affordable, because the house needed a lot of work, and the husband was handy. Her hope that the couple would fix the house up and give it renewed life was short-lived, however. She supposed that the work was just too overwhelming and expensive. She found out that the couple moved out and into his parents’ home down the road after his mother died. They didn’t sell her home place, though, because they couldn’t afford to pay someone to tear it down, but they wanted the land for gardening, so it sat decaying, sagging and sinking into the earth as the vegetation tried to hide its hideousness by growing over it.

She stepped onto the concrete block sidewalk that her father had laid from the gravel and dirt driveway to the front door nearly 50 years ago. The day he laid the sidewalk was not one she would ever forget.

Her mother was mowing the front yard, while her dad was doggedly trying to lay the concrete blocks in straight rows. She was five years old and bored. She decided that she would go visit her friend who lived in the farmhouse next door. They had a long, graveled driveway that led back to the house and barns that were set far back from the road, but she had walked there before to play with him and visit the farm animals. She called out to her mom to tell her where she was going, and she was so excited about her great idea that she didn’t notice that her mother didn’t acknowledge her or give her permission.

She stayed a long time playing until it became dusk. Later, when she recalled the incident, she realized she didn’t really have a plan. Her mother hadn’t told her when she should return, so she just kept playing, until her friend’s grandparents, with whom he lived in the farmhouse, finally must have called her parents to see when and how she was supposed to go home. She had worn out her welcome.

When her father arrived at her friend’s front door, he grabbed her hand and quickly walked her down the long driveway, never saying a word but frowning all the way. As they neared the end of the driveway, she could see her mother and neighbors lining the street by the mailbox in front of her house. Her mother was crying and the neighbors were comforting her. What had happened?

The swat that her mother gave her as her father led her by the lineup was her first clue that she was the source of the concern. Her second clue was that her father led her straight to her bedroom and left her there as he firmly shut the door. The clincher was when her mother entered her room, wiping the tears from her eyes, but holding a fly swatter.

It turned out that, despite the fact that she had told her mother she was leaving, her mother hadn’t heard her and couldn’t find her once she finished mowing. They had looked for her for hours. The fly swatter was used to teach her the lesson that you should never worry your mother.

Her trip down memory lane left her at the front porch, which looked none too stable. Not willing to risk falling through, she turned to her right instead and walked over to the window that looked into her old bedroom. She peered in, hoping that there were no snakes in the grown up bushes and grass around the house. It was an unbelievably small room, not like she remembered it. Her dad built the two-bedroom addition to the house after her brother was born. Before that all three of them her mother, father and she – slept in the one bedroom that the house had – she in her crib and her parents in the one double bed. She was three and a half years old when her brother was born.

The two bedrooms that her dad built were the largest rooms in the house, and she remembered her room as huge. Looking at it now, she couldn’t imagine how the room held a full-size bed with a headboard that had shelves and drawers in it, two built-in bookshelves on either side of the bed, a desk, dresser and double closet. Plus, she had her Barbie doll’s house, Barbie’s car and Barbie’s whole family and friends, along with a dozen trolls and moon goons of various sizes and a full stable of plastic horses, all with their own real estate on the floor.

Now, the room was empty, except, strangely, for a child’s rocking chair sitting in the very center of the room. It looked so forlorn that she nearly cried. Why would someone take everything out of the house except for this one chair? Did a child who lived in this house die? Maybe the house was waiting for another child to sit in the chair and live there. She felt as if part of her soul was still in this sad, little house that was getting more desolate and desperate by the minute.

As compromised as life in that house was, she did have some fond memories. Family picnics in the front yard with her dad grilling, cousins playing, uncles jawing about the old days and jobs, aunts bringing their signature dishes, the men taking turns cranking the wooden-barreled ice cream churn, everyone eating watermelon, corn-the-cob, potato salad and macaroni salad made with vegetables from their gardens. Playing house under the trees in the back yard that was so deep that she thought no one knew she was there. Picking cherries off their cherry tree, when she was lucky enough to get them before the birds did. Setting up a kid’s table, chair and a lamp in her closet so she could read and work in there hidden away from the rest of the family. Practicing on the piano that her grandfather had bought for her when she was ten. Christmas Eve when she would try to catch Santa delivering presents and Christmas Day when she found rows and rows of presents that only Santa could have brought, because certainly her parents did not have the money. Taking care of her little sister, born late in her parents’ lives and so much younger than she that she seemed more like a daughter than a sister.

The good memories were overshadowed, however, by the slow death of the house, a death that had begun long before her mother got sick and died. The house seemed to be giving in to the bad memories. Whatever love had been shared there seemed to have abandoned the premises. Now that the façade of her family was gone, maybe what was left was the truth. She knew that her parents had loved their children and each other and that her mom, at least, wanted to make sure she had what she needed to become successful in life, but she wasn’t sure that her parents had been happy. She knew there were many times when she had not been happy.

She wanted to have the house torn down now, even if she had to spend her own money. But, she did worry about her decision. Who would she be, once the physical center of her family’s world no longer existed? The step seemed more final somehow than even her parents’ death.

What a mood she was in, she thought angrily to herself. But then again, after the past few years of frustration and loss, probably the last thing she should have done was come back to her hometown.

Chapter 2 – Lost Love

Turns out that 60 isn’t the new 40, at least not from her perspective. The year Janet’s husband turned 60 everything changed for both of them. Dan had always been healthy and active and handy. He was doggedly positive and determined to stay young forever – a self-described beach bum on the weekends and a hardworking business leader during the week. Work hard and play hard was a motto he embraced.

Then, Janet began to notice that he tired easily. He became dizzy if he exerted himself. Eventually and alarmingly quickly, he got to the point where he couldn’t walk across the room without sitting down to catch his breath. That’s when she was finally able to convince him to visit his doctor.

“Your white blood cell count is unusually high, it seems,” his doc said. “I’m going to refer you to an oncologist.” Oncologist. The kind of doctor that evokes fear, dread and shock. This can’t be good, Janet thought. Dan reassured her and told her that it was probably nothing. But, while Dan was the optimist, Janet was the realist with a good sense of the mood in situations, and she didn’t believe Dan’s reassurances. She was scared.

And, turned out she had reason to be. It was cancer, a blood cancer that has no complete cure. Dan was diagnosed in the fall and started chemotherapy before the end of the year. He responded well to the chemotherapy and was declared in remission by six months later. His oncologist was thrilled. He thought Dan had at least 3-5 years before the cancer would come back and have to be treated. And, he felt positive that advancements in treating this type of cancer would mean a long-term way to keep the cancer under control. Janet and Dan almost felt normal again and began to dream of retirement soon with lots of time to be together, travel and relax.

Their optimism got shot down just a little over a year later. The cancerous cells started their insidious growth. Just like before, Dan tired quicker and quicker doing just normal tasks like trying to help with vacuuming the house. Then, he became dizzy if he stood up too quickly. When he almost passed out while trying to put up the Christmas tree, they knew the truth without even hearing the doctor’s report.

What they didn’t expect to hear was that the cancer had spread beyond just his blood system. The doctor reassured them that she would aggressively treat the cancer with chemotherapy and radiation, but she didn’t sugarcoat the chance of success. After an agonizing year of fighting and enduring harsh treatments, Dan died.

Janet was barely able to survive that year herself. She worried about him constantly, and six months before he died, she took leave from her work to be with him. She was so exhausted and drained that she didn’t even really mourn. Truthfully, she couldn’t feel anything much in that year after his death. There was so much to be settled financially and in terms of their physical assets – his vintage car, their vacation home, all of the stuff they had accumulated in their 40 years of marriage – which gave her the excuses she needed to avoid dealing with her feelings.

Yet, somehow in the course of that first year without Dan, the first year she had not had him in her life in 40 years, she began to define herself as a person who lives alone. She didn’t think of herself as single, but she did begin to come to grips with the fact that she had to figure out how to do everything on her own.

Dan and she had lived apart for work reasons before in their marriage, and they sometimes traveled separately for personal reasons, so being alone wasn’t new to her. But, in those cases, she always knew she’d be with Dan again soon. Now, she had to accept that he was never coming home again.

She wished so much that he was here to help her make the decision about whether to buy back the home where she grew up so that she could tear it down and then sell the land. This was either a smart financial idea or a totally romantic and stupid idea, and she didn’t think she was objective enough to decide which it really was. Janet had always trusted Dan’s decision-making ability over anyone else’s. Now she was on her own.

She wandered back to her car and gave the house another long look before turning the car around and heading back into town. She was staying with Dan’s mother for the time being, and she had promised to be back in time for dinner, which always was served promptly at five o’clock.

Chapter 3 – First Love

Emerging from a year of numbness, Janet realized that part of her healing process needed to include visiting Ann, who was Dan’s mother. Dan’s father had died five years before and, even though she was now 90, his mother still lived in the house Dan had grown up in. Janet had largely avoided Ann’s phone calls during the past year, because they only served to depress her further. But she knew she had to connect with Ann at least one more time. Otherwise, she would not feel good about trying to move on with her life.

She had known it wouldn’t be easy, because Ann seemed to like hanging onto the past and dwelling on memories. Every time Ann had called Janet in the past year, she started the conversation with, “How are you doing?” in her forlorn, little voice and then immediately started crying. All they seemed to be able to talk about was Dan – how could this happen, no one in their family had ever had this disease, why couldn’t the doctors do more, why did he die so young, maybe she hadn’t prayed hard enough for him to be healed or hadn’t been a good enough person, how lonely Janet must be, we must remember that we are married for life and so of course we can’t remarry, how hard it is to go places without a partner, and so on. Each call set her back emotionally and even drained her physically.

She knew she needed to walk away from the negative, but she also felt obligated to at least try in person to move Ann past her son’s death. So, here she was in her hometown one more time. The visit had not been easy, but she had made some progress with his mom. She had even gotten her to laugh about some of their shared memories and made some tentative plans for Janet to drive up the next spring, pick up Ann and drive the full length of the Blue Ridge Parkway. They would create new memories that acknowledged and, at the same time, honored Dan’s absence, because Janet and Dan had loved the Parkway, hiking, photographing and picnicking along many miles of it through the years.

Janet at last felt at peace about leaving his mom the next day to return to her home in Florida. And yet, she woke up this morning with a nagging sense that she still needed to do one more thing before leaving, because, frankly, she didn’t see herself returning again to spend time in the sleepy little burg.

The feeling that she was forgetting something bugged her all through the breakfast Ann had fixed her. She was so distracted that she didn’t hear Ann ask her if she wanted more eggs and only Ann’s pointed, fake cough broke through Janet’s worrying to catch her attention.

“As I said, Janet, would you like some more scrambled eggs? You know I hate having food left over,” Ann said.

“Everything was delicious, as always, but I couldn’t eat another bite,” Janet replied, thinking to herself that Ann had prepared the meal as if she thought Dan and Dan’s father both were still alive and eating with them. Dan’s father had an insatiable appetite and was the self-appointed official finisher of every bowl or plate of food served during a meal, so Ann had not had to deal with leftovers until he died. Janet was not going to be able or willing to fill those size 12 shoes, though.

“You seem distracted this morning,” Ann pointed out. “Are you worrying about the drive home tomorrow?”

“No, I’ve made that drive many times before, so I’m sure I’ll be fine,” Janet said. “I’ll want to get an early start tomorrow, though, so don’t fix me a big breakfast, please. Just a bagel and a mug of coffee to go would be fine.

But, you’re right. I am distracted today, and I don’t really know why. I guess it is hitting me that I’m leaving tomorrow, and I feel like I need to do or see one more thing. I think maybe I’ll take a drive around town and visit some old haunts. Maybe that’s what I need,” Janet confessed.

“Well, I have to clean up the kitchen from breakfast, but after I finish that I could go with you,” Ann said. “There are a lot of new things to see in this little town – new buildings on the university campus, new housing developments – that I could show you.”

“I appreciate your offer, but I think I need to do this alone. Besides it is the old things, not new things, that are calling me, and my history with this town isn’t the same as yours,” Janet pointed out.

“Well, I guess I understand that,” Ann said. “You go on and visit your town, while I straighten up. When you get back, we’ll have time to visit this afternoon. Oh, by the way, didn’t you date a boy named George before Dan and you started dating in high school.”

Startled by the sudden change in conversation and the name she hadn’t heard in so long, Janet’s hand jumped involuntarily and nearly turned over her juice glass. Her reaction wasn’t lost on Ann.

“Yes, I dated him for about a year,” she admitted once she got herself under control again.

“I thought so. Well, I keep forgetting to tell you that he’s in ICU at the hospital here in town. He’s not expected to live this time.”

“What do you mean by this time,” Janet said. “He’s been in the hospital before? Why? What’s wrong with him?” She was shocked. She hadn’t heard anything about George for many years, since their 15^th high school reunion more than 20 years ago, and then he was fine, much heavier than the beanpole he had been in high school, but happy and obviously glad to see her, as she was him.

“He has cirrhosis. Evidently they won’t put him on the list for a liver transplant, because he’s an alcoholic. Sad life he’s led – three wives have left him, his children won’t have anything to do with him. I’m just glad my boys turned out to be the fine men they did. His parents must be devastated to know that he’s going to die from his own careless actions. At least my son died from something he didn’t bring on himself.”

Janet bristled at the degrading tone in Ann’s voice. “Well, alcoholism is a disease, too. I should get going so that I can make sure to get back before dinner.”

As she carried her dishes back to the kitchen, she knew what one of the trips she needed to make today was.

Chapter 4 – Love Recalled

Janet had known George because he was in the same grade as she was, but she had never thought about dating him. He hadn’t yet dated girls, and she didn’t think he was interested in her. But he was a good friend with the boy that her best girlfriend, Tracey, at the time was dating, and they both ran track. Janet often went to meets with Tracey to cheer for her boyfriend.

Tracey got the bright idea that Janet should date George, so that they could double-date with Tracey and John, and, as usual, what Tracey wanted she got. Janet went on the double-date to make her happy, but she had little reason to believe a relationship between George and her was going to take. She was surprised to discover, however, that George was funny and more interesting than she had observed as he sat in the back homeroom, playing tricks on others and acting goofy with his friends.

Truth was that he wasn’t in any of her classes other than homeroom, because she was on an advanced track, and he was in regular classes only. By evening’s end, she wondered why, because he seemed smart and quick on his feet. Maybe he was just coasting by, rather than pushing himself to excel. At any rate, he was raised in her esteem greatly on that first date. And, he was much cuter once she got to know him, especially when he was telling jokes and laughing, and he had wonderful manners. He opened her car door and held the door to her run-down little house when he took her home.

She must have made an okay impression herself, because he began asking her out regularly.

George’s family was strange in its own way, too, His dad was well known in the town because he ran the local hardware store so everybody knew George senior. But, when Janet would go over to his house sometimes after school, she never met George’s mother even though she knew she was there. George always said that his mother didn’t feel well and that she had a headache, so she was upstairs resting.

Janet found out, however, that the rumor mill said his mother was an alcoholic. She didn’t have a headache. She was upstairs sleeping off a hangover.

Somehow that endeared George to her even more, maybe because his family was imperfect like hers, in its own way. George and Janet became a steady item. He even took her one night to the dinner theater in the nearby city, a big trip and a big expense for a kid his age, and gave her at a signet ring, as a sign that they were going steady.

She loved the ring and loved being able to say she had a steady boyfriend, but the relationship didn’t last. In retrospect, they were both too young, and she was too insecure. After a year they had a big argument, because Janet didn’t think he was paying enough attention to her. George didn’t like being hemmed in so that was that.

The breakup never officially happened. George just quit coming around. One Friday evening, she was waiting as usual for him to arrive, standing at the kitchen window where she could his car come down the road to her house. He was late as usual but he was even later than usual. She stood at that window for probably an hour and he never showed up, never called, never acknowledged her again at school. She was so hurt and embarrassed that she never asked why he stood her up. It was the first time that she realized that someone you love and who you think loves you can still hurt you very badly.