By Michael Riordan
Nobody really needs to know my whereabouts, I thought. ‘Whereabouts’—such a vague and unhelpful term. Being a widower was not about a place. It was just about missing my wife, Stella, and her life, puffing out in throaty gasps in a strange, awful rhythm until the end. She was gone; my whereabouts didn’t matter.
I sat on a stool at an up-market bar on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Like a role in a play I couldn’t memorize, everything seemed awkward, forced, and stiff. I’ll never get it, I thought. The part’s not right for me.
“How’s the burger, hon?” The busy server asked from behind the counter.
“Oh, uh, fine. Good,” I told her. She smiled and disappeared. I left half my sandwich on my plate before I clumsily dismounted the barstool. I kept checking my watch. I wanted to get to the airport early; I didn’t know why. I was on my way to Dallas to see my brother Dennis, and I thought about our last phone conversation:
“You know, you really should think about setting up close to us, Mike. I mean, you’ve got nothing there. You know—now that Stella’s gone. You can teach anywhere. Come down for a visit anyway. We’d love to have you.”
My brother means well, I thought. Everybody means well.
Less than six weeks after Stella died, well-meaning friends had invited me over for dinner and positioned me next to a heavily made-up Miss Sore Thumb, the only other “single” guest:
“Michael, I don’t think you know Cindy.”
No, I don’t know Cindy and I don’t want to know Cindy. She could be a great person, but don’t you understand? You people don’t even talk about Stella anymore. Just say her name once in a while, will you! Cindy, I’m going to fumble through the evening politely, but if Stella’s name slips out, it’s only because she is still so much in there…
***
I exited the plane in Memphis to await my connecting flight to Dallas. I shuffled over to the information board, found my flight number and the word “CANCELED” displayed in big red letters. I wheeled my carry-on over to a petite woman working behind a counter, and I slid a bent-up boarding pass toward her like a little boy with a note from his mother. Confirming the cancellation, she told me I would be put up in a nearby hotel for the night and that my flight had been rescheduled for the morning. She pointed to where I could pick up a courtesy bus to the hotel. She smiled and shrugged. “Enjoy the rest of your day,” she said.
The airport walkways were dressed up with original paintings and posters, arty variations of jazz and blues and guitars—and lots of Elvis and gaudy street scenes.
I shared the shuttle bus with a chain-smoking woman who hacked continuously during the short trip from the airport. Her face was pretty, but her sunken chest had drawn her near-emaciated form into a tottering stoop as if she had managed to suck all the substance from her body. I thought about Stella’s lifelong devotion to health and nutrition—and how she still got metastatic breast cancer. I had wanted to scold the young women who smoked outside the clinic where Stella endured her infusions. I wanted to grab those god-awful cigarettes away from their young fingers just to make my point: Stupid children, what on earth are you thinking?
Tired and almost angry, I inserted my card-key into the hotel room door.
That night, I turned on a bedside radio, and out came Johnny Cash—not Elvis—singing: “We’ll meet again some sunny day.” His voice was dark and heavy like coal. My fatigue eventually let me sleep. I tried to sink into one of my dreams in which Stella appears and says, “It’s all right. I am with you, Michael. Don’t be afraid because I am okay and free of pain.” And in my dream, I would always reply: “Stella, these dreams are okay, but I can’t always retrieve them. And when I wake up, I’ll still be missing you.”
My brother was waiting at Love Field in Dallas the next morning. Dennis’s banter filled the car on the way to his big house. I knew I needed to figure things out. What am I waiting for? Will grief make the first move or will it keep holding on, biting deep like a hound dog with a bone? Face it. No matter where I land, Stella is absent. What am I going to do about it?
In the middle of the night, awake and restless in Dennis’s big house, I sat and watched the brass pendulum of my brother’s huge grandfather clock. It swung in a steady audible pulse, like the afterbeat of an old, sad song.