I was in no mood for a salad. After one look, I closed the Styrofoam lid and stuck it in the fridge. Rachel and Gina my teaching assistant for ten years, had conspired against me. Mesclun greens, an assorted mix of lettuce, are high in vitamin A and C. Late this afternoon, I’d asked Gina to order me an Angus Burger from Bella’s. The salad was unrequested.
I returned to the kitchen table and ate my burger. Since Rachel’s death, this had been my Monday night routine: leave my office, walk twenty minutes to Bella’s, pick up my takeout order, and drive home. The twice a day walk was becoming as bad as the Mesclun greens, tomatoes, red onions, olives, and peppers. Gina had made it even worse with that damn balsamic vinaigrette. I made a mental note to set the rabbit food on her desk first thing in the morning.
The Bears were just receiving the Patriot’s opening kick when I sat in my Lazy boy in the den. Like my feelings toward the salad, I wasn’t much in the mood for football, but I knew it was the best sleeping pill I possessed. Like last week, I’d rest here most of the night, turning the TV off when I made my predawn trip to the bathroom.
Nick Foles threw an interception on second down. I liked the 6-foot 6-inch kid, but he was a slow-starter and prone to turn-overs. And he didn’t have Mitch Trubisky’s running and scrambling ability. I muted the sound when a Lumen dating commercial appeared. That seemed an odd choice for the NFL.
A dating APP for those over fifty. It would have been more natural to think of myself, but strangely, my mother-in-law came to mind. It might be because the older woman, jogging, reminded me of a much younger Rosa. My broken promise also came to mind.
Saturday, after exiting Bella’s, I’d promised Rosa I’d take another look for her second most treasured book, after the Bible, of course. I’d spent the balance of Saturday mowing the yard the last time for the year and reviewing several emails from my friend and associate Professor Stallings. Mostly, I’d moped around the house and napped. I spent yesterday at school, prepping for this week’s lectures.
***
I switched off the TV and headed to the basement. My guilt gave me no other choice, even though I’d prefer a very long nap.
The fifteen minutes I spent Saturday morning before meeting Rob and Rosa for breakfast, were the first time I’d made it more than halfway down the stairs since Rachel had killed herself. There were simply too many reminders of my beautiful and brilliant wife.
She had aptly named the twenty-by-twenty-foot space “The Cave,” after we’d moved here mid-summer 2000. By the following January, she’d secured a job at Amity Regional High School and hired the carpenter husband of the school’s secretary. The man, Carlton I believe, had done an excellent job building and installing hundreds of feet of shelving on the four walls inclusive of a built-in desk. A few months later, Rachel had Carlton return and build waist-high cabinets topped with a basic Formica countertop. She naturalized the room by hanging a dozen landscape paintings along the unobstructed paneled walls above the countertops.
Other than a single, chain-pull bulb dangling from the center of the room’s ceiling, the only other light was a three-foot double fluorescent hanging low above her narrow desk and secured by the shelf above. Just like Saturday, I’d brought my flashlight to scan the fully stocked shelves.
After pulling the chain and flipping the fluorescent toggle switch, I sat at Rachel’s desk. Her chair was cloth, maroon-colored, and cheap. It was mobile, with a set of three rollers attached to the base. The seat and back were soft and adjustable. I tried to recall the last time I’d seen her sitting here. I fought sadness and a low rumbling portent of sickness when I recalled it was less than two weeks until the first anniversary of her death. It was the day after Thanksgiving, truly Black Friday. I literally shook my head, refusing to go there.
I rolled her chair back from her desk and switched on my flashlight. I pointed it to three shelves above her desk. Nothing but literature, textbooks and teaching guides, one set for each year she’d taught English at Amity Regional.
I stood, realizing I needed to conduct my search methodically. Each shelf deserved special attention. Before departing Saturday, Rosa had shown me an Amazon photo of Bonhoeffer’s book, including a colorful cover. However, according to Rosa, the book itself was solid gray other than the author’s name and book title on the spine, which were in a light-colored gold. Rosa remembered packing the book and bringing it along while traveling. She thought the cover had gotten torn during a return voyage from China and that she’d kept it tucked inside the book when she’d shipped it to Rachel a few years ago.
My plan was to work from top to bottom, shelf by shelf. I’d start in the far corner at the front of the house. But first, I needed something to stand on. Rachel’s rolling chair would be an accident waiting to happen. My body was stiff enough as it was, even considering my most recent two-mile walk. I made a quick trip upstairs for the stepstool stored in the utility room closet.
The top two shelves contained nothing but works of literature, single and multi-volume. There were works of many famous authors: Jane Austen, William Blake, Geoffrey Chaucer, Charles Dickens, John Donne, and dozens more, all neatly arranged with their spines flushed to the edge of the wood shelves. The stepstool was unnecessary. Thank goodness. With the flashlight, I could easily see the titles, even though they were two feet above my head.
This changed three-quarters of the way down the second shelf. Rachel had stacked the books horizontally, from bottom to top. Some stacks were tightly wedged, leaving at most a hair’s distance from the last one to the underside of the next shelf. But there was a problem. Even though the spine of each book aligned perfectly, Rachel had pushed each row farther back, making it harder to read each stack’s first few books, given the depth of the wooden shelves. I climbed onto the top run of the stepstool and continued using my flashlight. If I heard trickling water, I’d think I was in a cave.
Again, no luck. I conducted my second scan of the seven stacks, seeing only one gray-sided spine, The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot. It was next to the bottom on the last stack before the ninety-degree turn toward the backyard. I lowered myself to the first step and paused, quickly returning to the top rung. I held my flashlight out as far as I could. There was something beyond the last horizontal stack. It couldn’t be a book, but given my angle, my brain foisted a figurine. Probably one of the Heavenly hosts Rachel collected. The intersection of these two shelves, tucked virtually out of sight, seemed an odd place to feature the harp clad angel. Especially one captured behind a thick bookend that began Rachel’s self-help book collection.
I should have been more careful stepping off the stool. The sole of my right foot slid off the first step. I think I would have fallen if I hadn’t grabbed a bookshelf. Unfortunately, I dropped my flashlight. It broke and was dead the second it hit the floor. I walked upstairs and found an older one in the pantry, but its batteries were too weak to be helpful.
It took fifteen minutes to walk to the garage and extract the portable tripod light-stand from a tangled web of Christmas decorations, ancient sections of gutter, and a rotting, unfolded tarp. I consumed most of this time replacing two halogen bulbs.
The Patriots were up by ten when I passed through the den. I carefully descended the stairs, clumsily tilting the tripod to my left overhanging the basement floor. I don’t know why we never installed an outer handrail.
I plugged in the tripod and focused before climbing onto the stepstool. Removal of the last horizontally stacked literature hardbacks, half-a-dozen self-help paperbacks, and the heavy book end required three round trips down and up the stool. These efforts cleared my way to Michael the Archangel (per the tiny gold label at its base). I was careful to hold the ceramic being in one hand and hold on to the bookcase with my left as I again descended the stepstool. At Rachel’s desk, with the aid of her overhead light, a small key hanging like a backwards necklace around Michael’s neck caught me by surprise.
After removing the tiny key, I tugged on Rachel’s top left drawer. It opened freely. I had always known she kept copies of IEP (Individual Education Plans) for the dozen Special Education students scattered across her roster. She was always serious about each person and their individual learning. The drawer was empty, but I tried the key, anyway. It didn’t fit.
Now, I was curious. I made a quick trip to the utility room upstairs for an extension cord. I moved the tripod to the basement front and focused both lights towards the third shelf. For the first three feet, literature continued. Then there was what appeared to be geography. The upright spine of the first, rather thick book read, “LONDON.” These continued for another two dozen international locations, although two were American cities, Chicago and New York. I adjusted the tripod again and saw that Biographies were next. As far as I could see, each of them was by a famous author, virtually repeating the names of the writers from shelf one and two.
I felt something was odd. But that’s nothing new for me. And most every attorney I suspect. Law school, law practice, and especially law teaching, caused an almost biological gene mutation. The gene for “Distinction.” Or better understood, “Hairsplitting.” I retrieved the stepstool and sat gazing at Rachel’s bookshelves, focusing on the third row from the top, and more particularly the city volumes. After five minutes, I concluded Rachel misfiled them. No wonder lawyers aren’t the life of a party.
However, Rachel was an organizational nut. She was anal about everything: her kitchen, the laundry room, her flower beds, everything school related, not even considering our bedroom closet. For example: clothes categorized by days of the week, and color coordinated. It got worse, the first week of the month, Wednesday’s dominant color was green, second week, red. But everything somehow ignored the garage. She said that was my domain and insisted I keep the roll-ups closed.
There had to be a reason Rachel inserted the city volumes where she had. The only reason had to be a connection between the LIT writers and their domicile, or possibly where they had been born, if different. I moved the stool closer and balanced myself on the second step. I removed LONDON, surprised it wasn’t heavier. My shock came when I saw the small keyhole on the far-right edge of the front cover. LONDON wasn’t really about London, it was a locking book safe, a place where you store (or hide) stuff.
I retreated to Rachel’s desk. The florescent light highlighted the front cover. It was an expert painting of London Bridge, or Tower Bridge, I’m not sure. But after close inspection, one thing was certain, the safe was well crafted and durable.
Of course, I had to try the key. This time it worked. I opened the hinged cover, surprised again. Inside was a slightly smaller book embossed on the soft red cover with “Diary.” I looked inside at the front page. Rachel (I assume) had printed on the From and To lines: “07/01/69 through 12/31/69.” I almost closed the lid and returned LONDON to its third shelf home. Instantly, I recognized the time. It was the final six months she had lived in Boaz, the fall months being our tenth-grade year. I didn’t know for sure, but I believe the 31st was the day Rachel and her family flew from Atlanta to Miami, where they took an ocean liner to Hong Kong.
***
Instead of returning LONDON to its home, I removed the Diary and walked upstairs. After muting the TV, I sat in my Lazy Boy and closed my eyes. Was I really going to jump off this cliff? I couldn’t imagine any narrative that would relieve my pain. After a long minute of pondering, I opened my eyes and turned to page one. My plan was to read a few paragraphs, hoping Rachel’s words were light and happy, simple accountings extracted from her slow-paced days living in the Hunt House with little brother Randy, and a mom and dad who were busy sharing their China adventures with a host of local churches.
Rachel’s first entry was July 3rd. She had printed “World Events,” and underlined it, then listed “1. Prince Charles became Prince of Wales.” And “2. Car crash. John Lennon and Yoko Ono admitted to hospital.”
Then my dear wife started a new section, also underlined, “Local Events.” Other than watching the train and going to Phil’s Pharmacy on Main Street for a cherry-coke float, not much else happened.
Rachel was sporadic in her journal postings. I continued to peruse and saw the same categorization of events on each of her four July entries. The most interesting international event occurred on July 20th: “Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. Ray and I watched it on TV at his house.”
I noted she spoke often of a girl named Jane. I didn’t recall such a person. Penciled boldly at the bottom of the July 30th entry was “Miss Ray.”
I kept reading but was growing bored fast. Glancing at the TV, the Bears were making a comeback. I didn’t need the volume to know that. On August 3rd, “Ray returned.” Rachel didn’t say where he’d gone, but took half a page, making a point she could have made in two words. “Missed Ray.” It was hard to say, looking back fifty years, whether it was love or lust that she had longed for.
This was disgusting on several levels, none of which I intended to explore. I hastened my scan. The once or twice week postings were all basically the same; they all concerned either Jane or Ray. I noted an odd word at the end of each entry, “close.” I didn’t have a clue. My first guess was that Rachel was expecting her return to China, that it was close, or was rapidly approaching. By now it was mid-August and school, tenth grade, was in full swing. Nothing interesting was happening on the world stage, but locally Rachel was enjoying Friday night football and times with Ray. “Close.”
Enough. I closed the Diary and set it on the end table. That’s when I noticed what looked like a wooden Popsicle stick two-thirds of the way inside. I couldn’t resist. The bookmark wasn’t a Popsicle stick, it was wider, like those flat wooden object’s doctors used to stick down your throat and ask you to say “ahh.” Written in dark pencil along one side was October 11, 1969. The identically labeled entry started on the left side of the journal. Rachel’s first words, before international news or local events, were, “I’m two months pregnant.”
These four words weren’t really news, but they were. After Rachel’s first suicide attempt 18 months ago, she’d finally confessed to this, and a later abortion. What was news was the details, the context of her entire ordeal. These specifics meant she had gotten pregnant around August 11th, 1969.
I kept reading, assuming I’d happen upon Rachel’s declaration that she had an abortion; it was a fact she and her family had left for China shortly before January 1, 1970. No abortion before their departure would mean the baby would be in its twentieth week. I now wish I’d taken a different tack when Rachel made her confession. Instead of refusing to ask questions—something diametrically opposed to every fiber of my being—I now could kick myself. My next thought was a shocker. Contrary to what I’d assumed, what if Rachel had not had her abortion until after she and her family arrived in Hong Kong? I knew I was correct in concluding that she had simply said, “when I was in the tenth grade, I got pregnant and had an abortion.” Her statement was certainly open to multiple interpretations, especially the time frame.
I fell asleep in my Lazy Boy after reading Rachel’s Thanksgiving weekend entries. There were two, and they were routine. Ray this, Ray that, Jane this and Jane that, half a page about America’s first settlers and their happy meal with the Indians, and finally, a summary of a Walter Cronkite segment: “Betsy Aardsma, 22, student, stabbed and murdered inside the Penn State University library while doing her schoolwork.” Another certainty, Rachel consistently watched the CBS Evening News.
It was 4:45 a.m. when I awoke and had to pee. I made a dash to the bathroom, flipped on the coffeemaker, and returned to the den. I wanted to finish Rachel’s reporting before showering and leaving for the law school.
The first entry since her Thanksgiving accounting brought back a mix of happy and sad memories. She dated it the fifteenth of December and covered two weeks of activities. It was one of Rachel’s longest postings. Friday the twelfth was the Boaz Christmas Parade. During that entire week, freshmen through seniors had built floats. Tenth graders conducted operations from a warehouse across from the Hunt House. I’m pretty sure the property was owned by the Young Supply Company, a hardware and construction materials outfit beside the railroad track. I couldn’t help but recall Kyle Bennett, my closest and best childhood friend. We were both shy and behind-the-scenes type of guys.
If it hadn’t been for the two of us, our Santa with reindeer float would have never materialized. The other students who showed up, other than a girl named Lillian (that’s a different story), were goof-offs and were more interested in flirting and sharing a nightly bottle of Jack Daniels someone had absconded from a parent, than doing any actual work. The float, complete with a high-quality PA system (a loan from First Baptist Church of Christ via Ray Archer’s father), propelled us into a second-place finish.
Kyle and I had attended the parade and watched from the second floor of Fred King’s Clothing Store (Lillian worked there part time and gained access via permission from the owners). As the last high school band and float disappeared, Kyle and I started our return walk to the warehouse. Halfway there, Kyla, my sister, approached and said Mother had ordered us home. “Now.” I think she had somehow caught wind of the drinking and smoking at the warehouse. I argued I had promised to help remove and return the PA system. About that time, Mother, out of the blue, appeared and enforced her order. Kyle told me not to worry, he’d take care of things. That was the last time I ever saw my best friend.
The first three sentences of Rachel’s fourth paragraph literally made me yell in horror and disbelief. “Ray shot and killed Kyle after the three of us dropped the PA system off at the church. Kyle knew too much and was sure to talk. Ray made me hide his father’s pistol at the Hunt House while he disposed of Kyle’s body.”
This had to be a joke. Rachel’s words read so normal, even trite. Her tone did not differ from a description of the turkey and dressing meal she and her family enjoyed Thanksgiving Day.
I was out of time. I laid the Diary on the end table and headed to the master to shower and dress. Professor Stallings and I planned our 7:00 AM meeting a week ago. I made a mental note to unlock and inspect the other book safes when I returned home tonight.
The Pencil Driven Life 