I Remember
Marsha Markman
I remember when we rented that dilapidated Victorian house at Lewes beach in Delaware. The one with the pencil thin sitting room and the picture window that looked out over the bay. We squeezed into the tiny garret and rearranged its meager furniture. You laid claim to the rumpled sofa and set up your easel; I covered a worn oak table with books, pens and my brand new Smith Corona; and for the most of each day the only sound in that room high above the sandy shore was the clacking of my typewriter as my words beat a rhythm across the page, and the whirring of your hair dryer as you waved it across a wet canvas.
It was a working vacation for us and we stopped only occasionally to watch the sailboats glide across our view and the children build sandcastles in the sand beneath our window. When you looked away from your easel and I from my typewriter, we shared our work and delighted in learning how alike we were as we went about the process of writing and painting. Then in the early evening, when the bathers and boaters had gone and the sky was washed with streaks of bleached coral, we walked along the waters edge recalling incidents from the long years of a friendship that was certain to endure into old age. But that was not to be.
You telephoned last year to tell me you had cancer. It was in your brain. (All too soon it would find its way into your lungs.) "Inoperable," the doctors said. But you were going to fight. You were going to be well again. "You can beat it," I said, a lump forming in my throat. "Look at the advances in medicine, the remissions and cures we read about daily." But I was afraid for you, and afraid I was lying to you…. And lying to myself as well.
In mid-July, we met again at Lewes beach; you were wearing a wig to cover your baldness, and your speech was slow and sometimes slurred. We said nothing of your illness. There was nothing more to say. Instead, we sat on a dock overlooking the shore, and watched boats sail across our view and children play in the sand below. We talked about al of our yesterdays and shied away from the tomorrows which were to be so few. And when you left, we hugged and I watched you drive away, smiling and waving goodbye.
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