Lizzie couldn’t help smiling. “I don’t know why I said that. It just sort of came out that way.”
“Go make your reservation,” George said. “I’ll be home as soon as I can. See if you can get an afternoon flight; I’ll take you to the airport.” He called back almost immediately. “Listen, don’t go there just for a few days. I think you should plan on staying with them as long as Marla needs you. And, Lizzie, this is a good time for you to think about what you want to do with your life. Our lives.”
For the next four months, the time James spent dying, Lizzie stayed in Santa Fe. Neither Marla nor James wanted their parents there. Lizzie and later the hospice nurses who came in daily to check on James were the only people they wanted to see. Lizzie slept on the trundle bed in Beezie’s room, and whatever Marla wanted her to do, she did. She took Beezie to her swimming classes. She stepped in as co-leader of Lulu’s Brownie troop. She took India to her speech therapy appointments. She made drugstore runs to pick up prescriptions, and supermarket trips to buy ice cream and hot fudge sauce. She made cookies with the girls. She cooked dinner and did the dishes.
Surprisingly, she and George talked every night. The evening she got there she called to fill him in on the results of James’s consultation with the top oncologist in Santa Fe, who sent him to Albuquerque for more tests. The next night she felt he needed to know what the tests revealed (nothing to provide any basis at all for optimism). The next night George called to say she’d left her parka at home and did she want him to send it, and that he’d been thinking about how good it was that she was there to help out and that she should give his love to Marla and James. The next night George called to tell Lizzie that Elaine had a touch of the flu and would probably love to talk to her. The night after that Lizzie called George to tell him that his mother seemed to be feeling better but that it was good she’d called. After that it began to seem natural to share all the events, big and small, of their days—India finally learning to say R at the beginning of words; meeting the team of hospice nurses who would see the family through what was to come; George’s invitation to speak in Reykjavik and how if the timing worked out maybe Lizzie could come with him, since he knew she’d always wanted to see the northern lights; the amazing sunsets in Santa Fe that were in such stark contrast to everything that was happening to James; Lizzie reading Phaedo, Plato’s dialogue about the death of Socrates, aloud to James; Marla’s decision to become a vegetarian; how much renting a hospital bed cost; Beezie jumping off the three-meter diving board at the pool where the girls took lessons. They never talked about George’s ultimatum or Lizzie’s feelings about Jack.
On a week when he had no other out-of-town travel scheduled, George flew to Santa Fe and he and Lizzie drove the three girls to Tulsa. It was I-25 to I-40, I-40 to I-44, and finally I-44 to Allan and Elaine’s. They stayed for a whole week. All the way there they sang songs and tried to be the first one to see all the letters of the alphabet on license plates and billboards. Lizzie read Alice in Wonderland to them on the way to Tulsa and Through the Looking Glass on the way home. She taught them how to play “A . . . My Name Is Alice.” George told jokes and funny stories about when he was a little boy. Elaine and Allan spoiled all of them and most importantly the trip gave Marla and James some time alone with each other.
Early one afternoon when the girls were at school and Marla was napping, Lizzie tiptoed into James’s room to check on him. She expected to find him dozing—he was on massive amounts of pain medication—but he smiled when she came in. She sat down in the chair next to his bed and took his hand. “Dearest James, I know you’re worrying about how Marla is going to manage, but I want you to know that of course I, George and I, will always be there for them. I promise you that with all my heart. You and Marla and the girls are my family . . .” Her voice trailed off.
James squeezed her hand. In the months since his diagnosis it had gotten more and more difficult for him to speak, but he said hoarsely, “I know you will.” They sat quietly for a few moments and Lizzie could see that his eyes were starting to close, but before he fell asleep he whispered, “Lizzie, I have to tell you something. I pushed that Ouija-board thingy around, even though I promised I wouldn’t. Do you think that’s going to go on my permanent record?”
“Oh, James, I think I’ve always known you did. I love you,” Lizzie said, leaning over and kissing his cheek.
The service at the graveside was not to be borne, but of course everyone had to bear it. They stood in a line, clutching each other’s hands, George, India, Marla, Beezie, Lulu, and Lizzie. While James’s colleagues and students spoke movingly and sincerely about how fortunate they’d been to know him, Lizzie had the confusing thought that the only way this funeral could even be marginally okay was if James were there with them, someone else was dead, someone they didn’t know or at least didn’t care about, and the three of them—she and Marla and James—were all completely stoned on some of his best weed, as they had been so much of the time in college. It was too bad, Lizzie thought, that the one single person in the whole world who would appreciate this thought was Marla. It was certainly no use telling George; he disapproved of drugs on principle. George. A huge wave of resentment and anger swamped Lizzie. How could George have that stupid way of looking at the world? How dare he say that James’s death wasn’t a tragedy? She caught his eye and said, silently but distinctly, “This is a tragedy. You are absolutely, totally, completely wrong.” George shook his head, but whether he’d been able to read her lips was unclear. All those adverbs. The chances were he hadn’t.
When they lowered the casket into the ground, India turned to George and said, with wonder in her voice, “That’s my daddy down there.”
Someone behind them heard her and let out a sob. Lizzie thought it was James’s mother. George squatted down so he was close to India’s height. “I know it is, honey,” he said. “Should we say good-bye to him now?”
India nodded. They all said their last good-byes to James, husband, father, and dearest friend.
Later that afternoon, after everyone else had gone, Lizzie and Marla were sitting on the big screened porch, watching another beautiful sunset, while inside George played Parcheesi with all three girls. There were simultaneously shrieks of laughter and groans of despair as the four of them moved their counters around the board. From what Marla and Lizzie could tell, Lulu had just landed on the square George was on, sending his piece back to the beginning.