Tender Grace Read online

  I know this is a salvation passage, the gospel encapsulated. So I hope God doesn’t mind that I applied it to my current emotional state. It occurred to me as I read these verses that God probably isn’t condemning me for how badly I’ve handled things. Satan is the accuser. God is in the saving business.

  Did he put Tom’s Bible in front of me and insist I bring it along? Has he eased me into situations where I must engage life outside the walls of the home Tom and I built with such love?

  I have noticed one thing: Since I left home I haven’t once awakened with the thought, I don’t want to do this. I may not be moving very fast or doing very much, but I’m doing more than watching ten hours of television a day. I’m a long way from holding a glass half full, or even half empty, but I think I’ve peeked into the cabinet where the glasses are kept.

  In the spirit of that much enthusiasm, I’ve decided to take myself to the theater tonight to see South Pacific. That’s extreme—so extreme my heart races thinking about it.

  six

  August 18

  Tom and I never got farther south in Texas than Dallas.

  I decided to visit San Antonio because I’ve never seen the Alamo. I pulled up to the Hyatt (the zenith of my splurging) a little after six, surprised at how eager I was to see the old mission. Even though I surrendered my coonskin cap and overcame my Davy Crockett obsession by the fifth grade, the story of the patriots who gave their lives to fight against Santa Anna’s tyranny continues to fascinate me.

  I admire their courage. I wish some of it would be lurking in the air, just waiting for me to absorb it.

  When I think of San Antonio, I also think of the River Walk. Even Branson has a river walk now, but I heard of this one long before I heard of any others. I can see it from my eighth-floor window. I wish Tom could see it. We would have had fun exploring this place. I considered not coming to San Antonio. I have dreaded going where he hasn’t gone or seeing what he hasn’t seen.

  But somehow here I am.

  And I got a room, which, as it turns out, was a coup. There’s a canoe race tomorrow, and this place is bustling. The friendly bellman, who doesn’t look a day over twenty, told me all about it on the way up. He rattled off groups and organizations that would be racing, including the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. He said I could watch from my room if I wanted.

  His friendliness demanded some comment. What to say?

  “I’ll stand up here and root for the Girl Scouts.”

  He congratulated me on getting this room at the last minute, a choice room at that. He apparently had been nearby when the assistant manager told me someone had just canceled. “Unfortunate for them,” I told the young man, “fortunate for me.”

  I tried to make up for my lack of interesting banter with a good tip. He smiled, and I was glad I had at least attempted conversation.

  I may indeed watch the race from my room tomorrow. I doubt I’ll venture into the bedlam. I did get out for a while this evening, though. Since it was still light after I settled in my room, I rushed over to the Alamo only to find it was already closed. I rattled the doors in my frustration. If I’d had a pole, I would have vaulted myself over the walls. Actually, they’re low enough that I might have been able to scamper over them—were I the scampering type. I was disappointed I couldn’t see inside tonight. The outside itself, however, was a sight to behold, once I got over the shock of the diminutive edifice sitting right in the middle of this city. I am a victim of cinema and history books filled with period pictures. I expected miles of dusty plains to surround it, not glass and concrete and a smattering of grass.

  I walked back to the hotel, ordered room service, and e-mailed the kids that I had arrived safely at my next destination. I didn’t mention my run-in with the highway patrol, but I told them about wanting to pole-vault over the walls of the Alamo and about going to the theater in Dallas last night. I’m not sure they’ll know what to think about the latter.

  Even I don’t know what to think. I have never gone to a play, or even a movie, by myself. Nor have I gone out at night by myself since Tom’s death. I can’t say I was all that eager to see South Pacific, but Carrie Underwood wasn’t in town. Besides, can the people who have flocked to it for over fifty years be that wrong? In my experience, even one song can save a musical, and I thought “Some Enchanted Evening” had the potential for making my effort worth it. “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair,” memorable as that one line is, certainly wouldn’t have pried me from my hotel room.

  I wore my sleeveless black dress with a V-neck in both the front and the back. Tom loved that dress. I bought it for his retirement reception. The diamond drop necklace he gave me in New York on our thirtieth anniversary looks especially beautiful with it. My hair, almost shoulder length now, is long enough to pull up in a loose updo, and I took extra care with my makeup, though as Tom often pointed out, I spend an awful lot of time on my eye makeup just to have my eyes hidden behind bangs.

  “They’re wispy,” I’d say.

  “They’re long,” he’d say, brushing them out of my eyes.

  He wasn’t here to brush them aside tonight, so I fluffed my own bangs out of my eyes and walked to the elevator carrying my sequined black clutch purse and feeling a confidence I did not expect under such circumstances. No one was in the elevator except for a man about Tom’s age, dressed more elegantly than I. When I walked through the doors and gave him a fleeting look, he smiled, and I returned my standard smile for such encounters, quick and polite. When we stopped at the fifth floor, for what turned out to be an empty hallway, I realized he was staring at me.

  Was my zipper undone?

  I had no zipper.

  Did I have lipstick on my teeth?

  Who would know? My teeth hadn’t made an appearance since I got on the elevator.

  What?

  Perhaps he merely appreciated my posture. I’ve been popping calcium pills since my middle thirties, and my bones seem to be thriving.

  Whatever the reason for the scrutiny, the minute we reached the first floor, I rushed out of the elevator and click, click, clicked my way across the lobby in my black heels, through doors opened for me, and into a waiting cab, even though I had fully intended to get directions and drive.

  I slid across the black leather seat and told the driver the name of the theater. I didn’t bother telling him I might be coming right back since I would be arriving without a ticket.

  Tom always took care of that. But I remembered our going to a concert at the last minute one time and finding two wonderful seats still available, and I thought it could happen again, especially since I needed only one. And as it turned out, a perfect seat was available—row ten, right in the middle of the auditorium.

  Tom and I have had our share of perfect seats at plays and concerts. And some that weren’t so perfect. We were behind a pole at a Josh Groban concert, and we were so far away from the stage at a Garth Brooks extravaganza we had to use binoculars. But we had box seats at The Phantom of the Opera in Chicago and center orchestra seats when we saw Richard Harris in Camelot.

  Tom liked Camelot, but I loved it. Richard Harris’s performance thrilled me. They have stayed with me, his last three words after King Arthur’s kingdom was destroyed and the experiment of the Round Table had failed. A young boy found him in the rubble of the countryside and told the king that he wanted to be a knight of the Round Table. This moment was Arthur’s pinpoint of light in his darkest night. As I recall, he had the boy kneel so that he could knight him. Then he sent him away from the hostilities, shouting, “Run, boy, run!”

  I feel some affinity with the boy’s desire for something worthwhile and Arthur’s hope for the return of a glorious day.

  We had good seats when we saw Celine Dion too. I had wished we were in the privacy of our hotel room when she sang so passionately the song that we had replayed so many times we thought of it as “our song.”

  “I’m your lady,” she sang, “and you are my man.”
/>   I leaned my head against Tom’s shoulder as Celine sang about heading for something she didn’t understand, frightened but ready to learn “the power of love.”

  That is most definitely how I felt when I met Tom Eaton the fall of my twenty-second year. He was the first man I had been willing to date in two years, and while I might have been afraid, he most certainly wasn’t.

  I guess I’d have to say I enjoyed South Pacific even though I had no choice but to return to the hotel the way I had come.

  I’ve had an irrational fear of cab drivers since the day in sixth grade when Mom’s car wouldn’t start and I had to take a taxi to my piano lesson one freezing afternoon in January. The driver who brought me to the theater, friendlier than an insurance salesman, made a dent in my residual hesitation. I knew the names of his three kids before we pulled up in front of the marquee and I had to fork over enough money for his older son’s braces.

  The cab driver who took me back to the hotel, however, had nothing to say other than, “Where to?”

  Thus, with the lights of Dallas as a backdrop, I became lost in thoughts of the musicals Tom and I had seen together, lost in the songs that had made them so memorable: “Sunrise, Sunset” from Fiddler on the Roof, “Climb Every Mountain” from The Sound of Music, “Memory” from Cats, “All I Ask of You” from The Phantom of the Opera. Such beautiful music we loved.

  Then I thought of one of the songs from Camelot, one I doubt Tom would have remembered. It began to dominate my thoughts, to play in my mind as richly as if I sat before an orchestra accompanying Celine or one of the great Italian tenors. It played as I rode through the streets of Dallas, as I took the elevator to my room, and as I hung up my dress and took off my makeup. It was still playing when I mercifully fell asleep.

  “No, no, not in springtime, summer, winter, or fall. No, never could I leave you, at all.”

  August 19

  This afternoon I braved the crowds and got my first look inside the Alamo. Despite the pathos the place evokes, I wanted to absorb it. I stood trying to imagine men and boys fighting to the death so that someday Texas would be victorious, and I tried to imagine women with their children, huddled in the corner of a room, fearing and dreading the cost of future freedom.

  When I finished my self-guided tour, I walked over to get a pizza and sat at a booth, working hard to look like someone waiting for a carry-out order instead of someone sitting in a booth by herself. The difference, for a reason I can’t explain, matters. Clearly, any courage that may have been left in the Alamo didn’t come across the street with me.

  Twenty minutes later I walked into the impressive lobby of the Hyatt and felt somewhat conspicuous, wearing crop jeans and a tank top and carrying a box containing a small pizza, thin-crust beef with extra cheese.

  I am glad I saw the Alamo, but I am also glad to be back in my room.

  It is remarkable that I left the room at all today. Besides watching television from my bed and the canoe races from my window this morning, I opened Tom’s Bible to John 4 and found notes tucked in the pages. When I unfolded them and saw Tom’s neat handwriting, a blend of printing and cursive, I drew in my breath.

  Quite unexpectedly, I was taken to a place I’ve been avoiding for so long. I woke up that early morning aware that Tom’s side of the bed was empty. The lighted digital numbers on the clock radio said 3:15. I hated sleeping without him and was surprised I hadn’t awakened sooner. I got up and went to the bathroom and then started for the living room, where I assumed Tom had fallen asleep, like he did a good many nights, watching a ball game or reading a book.

  “Tom,” I called as I came out of our bedroom and into the living room. He was sitting in the recliner, just as I had suspected.

  But immediately, I knew everything had changed. I could tell by looking at him in the soft lamplight that he had left his mortal body behind to put on an immortality that I am not yet privileged to see. I stood across the room from him and shut my eyes, hoping it wasn’t true.

  “Not yet,” I whispered.

  But I knew our time together was over. I walked over to him, placed my palm on his cold face, kissed the corner of his mouth, folded his notes, and closed his Bible and placed it on the ottoman. Then, before I phoned 9-1-1 and before I made the wretched calls to the children, I backed away from Tom, looking at his beautiful, peaceful face, and dropped into my overstuffed chair across the room.

  Three short words reminiscent of a line from a Frost poem came to me: All is ruined.

  I have not cried since I found Tom that morning. I have felt numb, and I have preferred it that way. Or maybe instead of insensibility it is a case of Wordsworth’s “thoughts that . . . lie too deep for tears.”

  I never had trouble crying before he died; it was not difficult to touch or even break my heart. Tom said my sensitivity was one of the qualities that drew him to me. He said he was too objective, too black and white, too businesslike. He said I was his complement. He would be so surprised to hear me talk of insensibility, listlessness, stupor. I think he’d be glad I am making this journey.

  I scoured his notes looking for anything remotely personal, but all I found was a lesson outline on the first section of John 4, where Jesus speaks with the woman at the well, a woman who might have been miserable enough to take off like I have if she could have managed such a thing. Tom listed three things their encounter tells us about God and his people: (1) he knows everything about us, (2) he still wants relationship with us, and (3) he offers us what no one else has to give, living water. Jesus says this water is like a “spring of water welling up to eternal life.” Tom’s notes say he’s offering “vigorous, abundant life.” That is a strange group of words, as mysterious to me these days as hieroglyphics.

  If I were sitting on the edge of Jacob’s well, looking into the eyes of Life himself, would I believe that all is not ruined, that something so glorious as abundant life is possible? Can I muster up enough wisdom and trust and courage to accept his offer of living water?

  I thought of something this morning as I sat holding Tom’s Bible, trying to recover from thoughts of finding Tom that April morning. The fourth of April, two days before Tom died, we spent the afternoon working in the yard. That night, invigorated by a day of spring sunshine and manual labor, we made love, candlelight flickering on the golden yellow walls. Afterward, instead of falling quickly into a relaxed sleep, we talked for at least a half hour about the kids, about what we wanted to do to the yard that spring, about the upcoming trip to Alaska. We talked until Tom began drifting off.

  I raised myself up on my elbow, leaned over, and kissed him lightly on his soft, warm lips.

  “I love you, Tom Eaton,” I said.

  He opened his eyes, smiled sleepily at me, and closed them again. Then as I rolled over and snuggled into my side of the bed, I heard him mumble, “I love you too, Audrey Eaton.”

  That was the last night I was ever to sleep with my husband.

  It seems impossible that until now I have not stopped to give thanks for this gift, this lifetime of solace.

  seven

  August 20

  I left the hotel too late and then made the mother of wrong turns. I ended up driving in what seemed like circles and never managed to find the church. I was downright mad when I finally decided to give it up. I would have missed half the service anyway, not to mention the fact that my spirit was woefully unfit for worship. This is the first time I’ve loused up so badly. I drove back to the hotel after stopping for directions—at two convenience stores I might add—and put my car away. Walking seemed prudent today.

  After chilling awhile in front of the television, I took the riverboat tour, a San Antonio equivalent of my Dallas trolley ride, and that, plus the peacefulness of my room, helped restore me to my senses. I found a seat in the boat and told God, hoping he’d see the humor in it, that I would worship this Sunday in a boat like so many do. When the tour was completed and I arrived back where I started, I headed to the glass mall, im
posingly huge as well as intriguing. I doubt I would have gone if I hadn’t been desperate for makeup. Because I’m getting so good at reading any sort of map, aside from today’s significant lapse, I found a department store and the counter I needed in a relatively short amount of time. It restored my confidence to a degree.

  The clerk, this one quite pleasant, rifled through the drawers and quickly handed me the liquid foundation and mascara I asked for, but because the powers that be keep retiring any shade of lipstick I prefer, we spent a lot of time together looking for something I could tolerate. I use a significant amount of makeup, but the effect is nothing if not subtle. I choose earth tones for my eyes, eschewing bright eye shadows; smoky is as adventurous as my eyes get. I wear color on my cheeks, enough to look healthy, but I have an unreasonable and unyielding aversion to lip color. This clerk seemed to understand that no amount of cajoling or flattery could convince me to wear anything on my lips in the red or brown family, or even pink and most peaches. The fact that Plush Nude was the name of my discontinued lipstick made an impression on her.

  “You don’t want a sticky gloss,” she said, putting the cylinder she had just shown me away. “What you’re looking for is a moist lipstick with a little shine but only the slightest touch of color.”

  “Exactly!” I said.

  I wanted to give her a gold star.

  Each of us leaned over our respective side of the counter, drawing lines of potential candidates across the back of my hand. A counter covered with no less than twenty different testers and a colorful wad of Kleenex testified to our tenacity. We were Audrey and Ginger long before I handed her my credit card.

  “You should have my name,” Ginger said, nodding at my hair. “Is that natural?”

  “So far,” I said.

  “I change my color at least once a month,” she said, “but if I had your auburn hair and those eyes not far from the same color, I’d never fool with it.”