By Liz Zuercher
I waved goodbye to my son, Chris, my daughter, Jessie and her husband as they drove away together. As their car disappeared around the corner, I turned around to look at my house - the broad front porch with the swing James and I sat on as teenagers falling in love, the bright white paint my father always insisted upon, the dark green shutters and deep red door my mother loved, the big yard my brothers and sisters and I played in. It was all still there, still the house where I grew up and later raised my own family. The house has stood witness to all my family’s comings and goings, the births and deaths, the joys and sorrows. Now there was just me - and the house. For the first time I could ever remember the house did not give me comfort. It just looked big and empty and lonely. James, my only love, my husband of thirty-nine years was dead and buried. What was I supposed to do now?
I walked up the steps to the front door, but I couldn’t go inside. Instead I sat on the porch swing and rocked back and forth. The swing’s chain was squeaking and I caught myself thinking, I have to have James oil this chain. I shook my head as if that would jar James out of my head, but of course that was impossible. If you’re fifty-nine years old and you’ve been with the same guy since you were fourteen, he’s never going to be out of your head or your heart, even if he was no longer there to hold your hand while you sat together on the swing. I stroked the empty spot next to me and kept on swinging.
This time last week I never would have thought that I would be sitting alone on the porch swing, a widow who has just seen off the last of her family after her husband’s funeral. But there I was. You just never know what life is going to throw at you. Just when you think you have everything figured out, that your life is pretty darned perfect, wham! Here comes a monkey wrench. Damn it, James.
The late afternoon October air was getting a little chilly, so I stopped the swing and decided to face my empty house. Just as I was getting up, a car screeched around the corner. That could only be Georgie. She never goes anywhere without a grand entrance. Sure enough Georgie’s car came to an abrupt halt in front of my house and out came my three best friends in the world.
“We brought dinner,” Georgie said, holding up a pizza box.
“And wine,” said Kate, a bottle in each hand.
“And ice cream,” said Louie. “And our jammies. We’re having a sleep over. Just like when we were kids.”
I think my house felt just as relieved to see my girlfriends as I was. We could stave off the loneliness a little longer.
* * * * *
My girls, I always called them. These days that phrase has been used to refer to breasts, so I sometimes feel a little funny talking about my girls. People get the wrong idea. And if they don’t think I mean my boobs, they think I mean my daughters. But I only have one daughter, and I only have two boobs. I have three girls: Georgie, Louie and Kate. I’ve known them since we all first set foot in Mrs. Finch’s cheerful kindergarten classroom.
I was the scaredy cat of the group, clinging to my mother’s skirt until she pried my fingers loose and gave me a gentle nudge into the classroom. My father took a picture of me on our front porch before school that day. I looked like Alice in Wonderland in my pale blue first-day-of-school dress with the smocking on top that my mother made for me. Tiny roses were appliquéd around the edges of the white Peter Pan collar. It was very much like my Easter dress, which had been pale yellow with daisies on the collar. I had a blue headband holding my straight blond hair back away from my face, and I had on white socks with patent leather Mary Jane shoes that I remember were a little too small and a little too fancy for kindergarten. The next day I begged Mama to let me wear my Keds instead.
That first-day-of-school night when Daddy tucked me in and asked me how I liked school, I rattled on and on about everything I’d done and everyone I’d met, especially the three friends I’d made.
“There was Georgette. She’s got so much red hair! It’s all curly around her face. She wants to be called Georgie. I wish my hair was curly like Georgie’s. And Katharine wants to be called Kate. She brought a camera to school! I want a camera, Daddy. And Louise had flowers in her hair, like a crown. She wants to be called Louie,” I said, stopping to catch my breath. I gave my father a puzzled look.
“What’s wrong, Emma?” he said.
“Why don’t I have another name to be called? Why am I just plain Emma?”
“Baby, there’s nothing plain about you or your name,” he told me.
“But Georgie and Kate and Louie have fun names they got to choose. I want a fun name, too,” I whined.
“Well, what do you want to be called, then?” Daddy said. “What should your fun name be? Chatterbug? Scooter? Peanut?” He giggled a little bit after each “fun” name and shook his head. Then his eyes got wide and he smiled, “I know! It’s Snickelfritz!”
At that he tickled me so hard I screamed with laughter until I yelled Uncle and he finally stopped.
“Okay, to sleep with you, Miss Snickelfritz,” he said with a big grin.
“Emma,” I said, settling down under the covers. “Call me Emma. Snickelfritz sounds silly.”
I guess even then the four of us knew who we were and what we should be called.
Though Louie keeps changing the way she spells her name depending on the numerological influences of the moment, she’s still my ethereal, good-hearted Louie, who went off to UC Berkeley, married Franklin and embraced the Haight Ashbury scene. I’ve given up on keeping track of which spelling she’s using, so she’ll always be Louie to me, not Looee or Looey or Louee or whatever else she comes up with. I can count on her to be ready with a hug and a novel, positive spin on life.
Georgie went off to New York for a boy and an acting career. She could have come back a sophisticated Georgette who had no time for someone like me who stayed put in Troy Hill, but to me she’s the same warm, wild, witty Georgie with the unruly red hair, who makes me try new things.
And Kate has photographed wars all over the world for God’s sake. She could be a worldly Katharine bored with such a cautious childhood friend as me, but she has never been anything but my brave, adventurous, no nonsense Kate, since I met her that first day of kindergarten. She sees through the baloney to what’s real in the world.
As for me, I stayed put here in Troy Hill, married James, raised a family and never strayed from being Emma. No, that’s not true. I became James-and-Emma for forty-five years. Until last week. Now I’m back to being just Emma, whoever she is.
By different quirks of fate my girls are all back in Troy Hill now, living in their family homes just like I am. We’ve lived our lives apart for most of our years, but now we are together again. And, boy, do I need my girls now!
* * * * *
The four of us sat at my kitchen table and ate the pizza in silence. A bite of pizza stuck in my throat and I took a big gulp of the red wine Kate had filled my glass with.
“Easy there, Emma,” Georgie said. “We don’t want to have to carry you up the stairs to bed. We’re too old for that nonsense.” At that, she took a big drink from her own glass.
I smiled at her and said, “You mean you didn’t bring sleeping bags to lay out on the living room rug like we used to do?”
“ Wow, remember when we used to do that?” said Louie. “It seems so long ago.”
“It was long ago,” said Kate. “And so much water under the bridge.” She looked really sad to me, like she was the one who had just lost her mate.
“In some ways it doesn’t seem so long ago,” Georgie said. “Do you ever feel like you’re a teenager again?”
“Except instead of zits, we have achy joints and hot flashes,” I said.
“And bum knees,” said Kate.
“And jowls,” Louie said. “And gray hair.”
“Speak for yourself,” Georgie said. “No gray hair for me – ever. I’ll be a red head until they plant me in the ground.”
The girls all looked at me, uncomfortable with the turn in the conversation.
“It’s okay,” I said. But the ache in my chest was starting up again. For a minute I’d let the reality of my situation fade into the background. With the girls around me I did kind of feel like a teenager again.
“We were so carefree back then,” Kate said. “So full of possibilities. Do you ever think about the choices you made and wonder if they were the right ones?”
“Never,” I said. I’d had just the life I wanted – a husband I loved, children, a beautiful home. I’d been happy until now.
“Always,” said Georgie. “Sometimes I’d like to go back and have a do-over, a Mulligan in the life choices department. I wonder how things would have been different today, if I’d gone to college, or to Hollywood instead of New York, if I hadn’t fallen for that creep, Buddy.” Georgie sounded so unsure of herself, and I thought I saw worry in her eyes. Where was her wild spirit, her zest for life?
“It’s pointless to do that,” said Louie. “We did what we were supposed to do, what the Universe meant for us to do. Besides, we can’t change all that. We can only learn from it and look forward.”
“Screw the universe,” Kate said with such vehemence that we all stared at her in disbelief. We knew she didn’t think much of Louie’s airy-fairy views, but she’d always respected her right to have them. This sounded like a personal challenge.
“What are you all looking at?” Kate said. “You haven’t seen what I’ve seen. You don’t have any idea what your precious universe is like.” She emptied her wine glass and poured some more.
“No one said it was all sunshine and roses out there,” Louie said in that calm sweet voice she uses when we just aren’t getting the big picture, but I could see that tears were threatening to well up in her eyes. So unlike Louie. I wondered what was going on with her.
We sat there for a moment, all of us staring at the empty pizza box as if all the answers to life’s mysteries were there.
“I need a sugar fix,” said Georgie. “What did the church ladies bring, Emma? There must be something decadent we can have.”
“There still some of Lola Metcalf’s double fudge layer cake,” I said. “And lemon bars and I think there’s some cherry pie. And there’s the ice cream you brought in the freezer.”
I started to get up and get the desserts, but the girls all jumped up at the same time to forage in the fridge and cupboards for sweets. Georgie ate cake. Louie had pie, and Kate dug into the rocky road carton with a big spoon, just like she’d always done as a kid. I picked at a lemon bar, not feeling very hungry any more.
“What would you do, Kate, if you were eighteen again and just out of high school?” I said. “What would you change?”
She shook her head and took another bite of rocky road. “I have no idea,” she said. “I can’t imagine ever doing anything else but what I’ve done. I was always so sure, even as a kid, that being a photojournalist was the only thing I was meant to do. But what I wonder is if it was right for me. Was it the best for me? Here I am now, on the verge of sixty, and my body is broken and keeping me from doing what I love. That makes me so frustrated and angry that I wish I’d never even picked up a camera and headed to the war zone.”
“You don’t mean that,” Georgie said. “You wouldn’t be you without your camera.”
“But did I have to take pictures of war? Why did I do that? What was the point in all of it?” Kate said.
“In all of what?” I asked.
“The wars. The pictures. The horror. What was the point? And did it make any difference at all to anyone, the work I did?”
“Of course it made a difference,” Georgie said. “Your work was important. People needed to know what was going on over there. You showed people that.”
“I’m not so sure anyone cared about what I showed them. Did all those horrific photographs change anything in the world? I doubt it. People are still killing each other all over the world. So what difference did my pictures make to anyone? Except maybe to me. The only difference all that work made was to break me.”
Kate was getting really heavy with all this talk. I tried to think of a way to change the subject, but right then I was pretty much broken, too. And I hadn’t even been to war.
“If you want to talk about making a difference in life, what about my life? How much laundry detergent do you have to sell on TV commercials to make a difference? Talk about a waste of a life,” Georgie said. Georgie was always a little overly dramatic, but this was way more serious than her drama usually tended to be.
“No life is a waste,” said Louie. “We’ve all made a difference in one way or another. We just may not realize what that way was, and it may be entirely different from what we thought we were doing.” She looked down at the cherry pie and scooped up another bite. “Like this pie,” she said. “If you’re having it for the first time, it looks so sweet, but when you get it in your mouth it’s the tartness that makes you take notice, not at all what you’d expect if you’d never had a cherry pie. It’s sweet, yes, but it has a bite to it, too, and that’s what makes it special – the contrast. So you have another bite to make sure you are right about it, and yep, it’s sweet and sour, just like life. You think it’s going to be one way, and it turns out to be the opposite. And the surprise of it makes it all the more interesting. You just have to go for it.” At that she stuffed a big forkful of cherry pie into her mouth and said, “Mmmmmm. So good!”
“Huh?” said Georgie. “We are so teenagers again! And Louie has just given us the cherry pie philosophy of life. Instead of a box of chocolates, life is like cherry pie, so dig in!”
We all started laughing, even Louie, and once the girls get started laughing, there’s no stopping us. I laughed so hard my jaws ached and tears streamed from my eyes. I’d cried a lot in the past week, but these tears were like healing waters flowing down my cheeks, washing away a tiny bit of pain.
Once our laughter trailed off, we sat there quietly, each of us lost in her own thoughts. I looked up at the kitchen wall clock. It said 8:30, and I had to bite my tongue before I blurted out, I wonder why James is so late tonight. Suddenly, I felt like someone had sucked every bit of life out of me. I looked around at the girls and couldn’t summon the oomph to even interact with them. I had to be alone in my house with my memories of James. Nothing else would be right for me, I knew.
“I need to go to bed,” I said.
“Sure. We’ll all get our nighties on,” Georgie said. “And we can camp out in the living room like we used to as kids.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I love you all for being here with me, but I think I need to be alone now. I have to do it sometime. It might as well be now. And I’m just so worn out.”
All three of them looked at me with concern and love in their eyes.
“Are you sure?” said Kate.
“Yes,” I said.
“Okay,” Louie said. “We’ll just clean up and then we’ll go. You can head on up to bed if you want. We know the way out.”
I nodded and left the kitchen to the girls, my wonderful girls. As I climbed the stairs to my room, I could hear them whispering to each other as they did the dishes. I knew they were worried about me and wanted to stay with me, but I also knew they would do whatever I wanted them to do, whatever they could to help me. No one could help me now but me. And right now the only thing I needed was sleep.
I brushed my teeth, put on my nightgown and climbed into bed. I pulled the pillow from James’ side of the bed into a hug and curled around it. As I closed my eyes, I heard the front door close and Georgie’s car pull away. I felt uneasy about my girls and our conversation. Life was changing for all of us. Each of us seemed to be at a crossroads, like a second adolescence. We’re not who we used to be. How could we be the same at sixty as we were at sixteen? We all have decisions to make about what comes next.
My own next chapter – the one where I am the main character instead of the supporting cast – was beginning. I had visions of cherry pie right before I drifted off to sleep. Sweet and sour, Louie had said, like life. This was most definitely the sour. I wondered how long it would be before I tasted the sweet part again. I couldn’t even imagine.
