... Number 12 J Street ...
A ROOM WITH A VIEW
It had seemed like the right day to make a move.
I mean, we’d looked at a lot of places over the years. All of them though felt a little bit right and a little bit wrong. We’d looked at places out in the country; we’d even considered one with a view of a small valley that overlooks a school where I once worked. There are people there—those "almost-family" sorts—which would mean we’d at least know somebody and wouldn't be alone or trying to get to know our neighbors. It was idyllic, really, but somehow it (the place) felt very exposed to the elements (if that makes any sense at all).
Still, we considered it, but looked further.
And yes, in case you weren't wondering: There has never any question of getting a place here in town. We've lived here, and, well, it’s been great, but the places around here were older, with a sense of vintage that really didn't belong to us. There had been one other possibility: a new gated community, but someone had said it was formerly a dog park. Yeah, no—the idea of settling in on "repurposed land" didn't make me feel all warm and fuzzy.
I could have gone south, and she west, or me east to Kansas kin, but none of those places ever seemed to fit the bill.
It made you wonder, though: were we running out of time to make a move?
II.
She didn't say much about it.
In her usual stoic (and stubborn) way, she didn't even really express an opinion. Occasionally, she'd break her silence with a, "Well, wouldn't you like to go down to your mom’s?" or an, "I don't think being there with your dad would work for me." She never really said much more, though. You would have thought that after nearly fifty years of marriage I might have had a better idea of what would work best for her, but I suppose I either wasn't paying attention—yes, that sounds like me—or was thinking some magic place might fall out of the sky.
The only thing I will say about any of this is that she did tell me we were going to need to make that move.
And then began to see it.
She never stated so, or said something directly. It was, after all, for me to figure out. However, I could tell that, in the end, she simply wanted to go home. It was a simple enough request and a simple enough idea—though she never voiced it. It was implied that I, as her husband, should (and would) see the answer eventually and figure it out for myself, even if it did take fifty years. I began to see it in her eyes in these later years- you know when the conversation would come up about moving. I would almost call it homesickness if I didn't know any better. It wasn't an emotion I felt all that strongly myself when it came to considering a move. After all, my people seemed to be everywhere in some form or another. Sure, there were better locales than others, but I’d not really considered her own need to simply go home.
I'm lying, of course. I knew it all along.
I knew this fifty years ago. In fact, I'd even planned on it fifty years ago. I mean, I am not so stupid as to not have known it—or even desired it for myself way back when. Yes, that any move should take you to a place where you are comfortable, but more so, to a place where she is the most comfortable. There really was no other place. Considering someplace else, or any place else, after all these many years was just mental camouflage for us both.
In the end, I was happy to oblige her.
Yes, yesterday had been a good day to finally make a move.
III.
We chose a slightly larger place.
It's just down the block from her mother and dad, her grandparents, and a couple of aunts and uncles. I had to wonder why I had put it off for so many years. I mean, they'd sold all of the real estate in the devlopment except for three lots, and well, by the time we had gotten around to picking out just where we wanted to be, the selections and elevations had pushed us away from being as close to family as I know she would have preferred.
There’d been one fairly decent corner lot.
However, it was higher on the hill than I liked. It was closest to where her parents wanted to be, but it was a bit of an odd shape. It seemed to have a larger "backyard" than street front. I suppose if it hadn't been so high on the hill it might have worked better for me and certainly for family gatherings. I hope I wasn't wrong to talk her out of it. You see, I favored a larger place the next street over. It was a little more mainstream if not grand, a larger lot with a good view, and not so high up on the hill. I liked "#12 J Street" better. I thought it was good—close enough to family but giving us a little bit of privacy, too. It seemed dignified and personal.
(You know how family can be.)
She just smiled and said it would do nicely.
So we followed the land agent into the office and signed the paperwork. The office was quite grand, furnished a la early California style with a dash of bordello. And yes, We bought "that condo," at #12 J Street, just down the block from my in-laws and other family. It's a good spot in the heart of California's wine country. They tell me the community has been around since 1859. It has an old-world California charm about it. I will admit; It’s a bit unfamiliar to my "New England and Southern California" roots, but I like it. I always have. I feel comfortable.
I know I will be at home.
IV.
I couldn't believe it.
"Honey, what's going on?" I looked over at my wife in the passenger seat. After we'd signed with the land agent, we stopped for lunch at one of those familiar franchises- "Applebumbs." I remember thinking that the place did not feel right. There was a coat of grease on the table that the unctuous smiles of the waitresses did not assuage or undercut the film on everything. The food tasted well enough—or did it? It was all on the edge of cleanliness. What worse (for me) worse was that The Muzak played so loud that the French fries seemed to toss and turn as they grew colder.
Now we were back in the car, on our way north, circling the drains for back to back roundabouts that some bureaucrats had slipped into the road on our return trip back home
"I have no place to hold onto..." she said, slipping down into the seat.
"What are you talking about?" I asked, unsure what she could mean.
"I'm spinning and I can't stop..."
We'd reached the Yolo Causeway—an interminable bridge of freeway that crosses over a section of the delta before moving traffic in both directions to and from Sacramento and the Bay Area. There was no place to stop. There was no parking. The commute home had begun for that Monday, and there was nowhere to go except to swing upstream with the rest of the salmon.
And then it came.
She clutched her mouth as the vomit began to come. At first, I thought maybe it was just a little—you know, what happens to all of us sometimes when we eat too much. But this was not the case. Telling her I had no place to go—no exit, no road shoulder—I reached for a carpet she carried for nursery plants in the back seat to give her something to catch the nausea that was coming out of her at seventy miles an hour.
It was awful for her.
It was awful for us.
"Hey you! You're okay!" I cried out. "I don't care about the damn barf! Get it all out!" I said hurriedly. "Are you trying to make the move before we've got the new place properly decorated?" (I joked, trying to lighten the seriousness of the mood.)
"Do you need me to go to a hospital?" I asked.
"No, I'm fine, just go home," she replied.
Was she, though, really?
V.
I believe my wife, the love of my life (and oftentimes stubborn pain in the neck) likely had a heart attack yesterday in the car driving home from purchasing #12—a niche in Row J of the Main Mausoleum in Tulocay Cemetery, Napa, California.
My wife has had bypass surgery, a valve replaced after that, and suffers from diabetes. And while we could all stand to live healthier lives, these are things she inherited by design. She did not choose any of this. It breaks my heart that now, in her mid-seventies, that we are both running close to the wire.
It scares me that I do not always know what to do.
I do not know if I should have taken her to the emergency room and ignored her request of "Just go home" or not. How do you take care of a loved one and honor their wishes at the same time?
A better person than me would know.
VI.
So we are home. I didn't expect that our trip—that very same trip we'd been considering options for and putting off for fifty years—would become so relevant to the story on the very same day and that we would be traveling seventy miles an hour down the Yolo Causeway, and not an hour removed from viewing our final resting place. I am crossing my fingers that the dirty "Applebumps's" was the source of all this madness and that the waitress's alligator grin caused this mess.
Yeah, I'm gonna go with the mess of "bad food."
But not the mess of our move.
Yes, our "move" to our final resting place.
I think I was God-smacked, as they say.
She sleeps now. I think she’s feeling better, but I have admonished her that if she monkeys around again like this, I will be calling the ambulance. Like my son says, "Don't ask, just do..." I need to try to get her to eat something, which has not been easy lately. She is still worried about "gaining weight," and I can't seem to make her understand I think she is perfect just the way she is.
I still see my twenty-five-year-old Nancy.
I'm just not quite ready to move to "#12 J Street" just yet. We need to hang out with each other a wee bit longer.
☮
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