The Cottage

“She died. A month ago. Terrible thing. A brain tumor. She started having headaches a few months ago, she said they were migraines. Three months ago they put her in the hospital for tests, brain scans, I guess. MRIs, CAT scans, whatever they do. She had a lot of tests. They found a brain tumor, they tried to operate but it was too big, and it had spread all over the place. She was dead in two months. I thought it was going to kill him too. I've never seen two people more in love. They never stopped laughing and talking and kidding around. He just gave me notice last week. He says he can't stay, it makes him too sad. I feel so bad for him, he's such a good man.” The building manager had tears in his eyes.

“How awful!” the woman said, feeling tears sting her eyes too. It was a terrible story, and she had noticed photographs of the two of them all around the apartment. They looked happy and in love in the pictures. “What a terrible shock for him.”

“She was very brave. Right up until the last week, they went on walks, he cooked dinner for her, he carried her down to the beach one day because she loved it so much. It'll be a long time before he gets over it, if he ever does. He'll never find another girl like her.” The building manager, who was both known and beloved for his gruffness, wiped a tear from his eye, and the young couple followed him downstairs. But the story haunted them for the rest of the day. And late that afternoon, the building manager slipped a note under Jimmy's door to tell him the young couple had taken the apartment. He was off the hook in three weeks.

Jimmy sat staring at the note. It was what he had wanted, and what he knew he had to do, but he had nowhere to go. He no longer cared where he lived. It didn't matter to him. He could have slept in a sleeping bag on the street. Maybe that was how people became homeless. Maybe they no longer cared where they lived, or if. He had thought of killing himself when she died, just walking into the ocean without a murmur or a sound. It would have been an enormous relief. He had sat on the beach for hours the day after she died, and thought about it. And then, as though he could hear her, he could imagine her telling him how furious she would be, and what a wimp he was. He could even hear the brogue. It was nightfall when he went back to the apartment, and sat for hours crying and wailing on the couch.

Their families had come out from Boston that night, and the rosary and funeral had eaten up the next two days. He had refused to bury her in Boston. She had told him she wanted to stay in California with him, so he buried her there. And after they all went home, he was alone again. Her parents and brothers and sisters had been devastated over their loss. But no one was as distraught as he, no one knew how much he had lost, or what she meant to him. Maggie had become his whole life, and he knew with absolute certainty that he would never love another woman as he had her, or perhaps at all. He couldn't conceive of another woman in his life. What a travesty that would be. And who could possibly be like her? All that fire and passion and genius and joy and courage. She was the bravest human he had ever known. She hadn't even been afraid to die, she just accepted it as her fate. It was he who had cried and begged God to change his mind, he who had been terrified, who couldn't imagine living on without her. Unthinkable, unbearable, intolerable. And now here he was. She had been gone for a month. Weeks. Days. Hours. And all he had to do now was crawl through the rest of his life.

He had gone back to work the week after she died, and everyone treated him like broken glass. He was back at work full-time with the kids, but there was no joy in his life now, no spirit, no life. He just had to find a way to keep putting one foot in front of the other for the rest of his life, to keep breathing, to keep waking up every morning, with absolutely no reason why.

Part of him wanted to stay in the apartment forever, and another part of him couldn't bear waking up there without her one more time. He knew he had to get out. He didn't care where. Just out. He had seen the name of a realtor in an ad, and called them. All the agents were out. He left his name and number, and went back to packing. But when he got to her half of the closet, he felt as though Mike Tyson had reached out and punched him in the chest. It took his breath away. The sheer reality of it was so powerful it sucked the air out of his lungs and the blood out of his heart. He just stood there for a long moment. He could smell her perfume, and feel her presence beside him as though she were standing in the room next to him.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do now?” he said out loud as tears sprang to his eyes, and he held on to the door frame. It was as though a supernatural force had almost knocked him down. The power of her loss was so great he could hardly stand up.