But life is like that. Sometimes the nothing moments are everything.
Greer
JULY 21, 2016
I KNOW THIS IS THE last time I will be able to write, can feel the strength slipping from my fingers and the clarity slipping from my mind. There is so much to say when you are running out of time. It all feels so important, and yet also absurdly trivial. I am just one person. My struggles have so little bearing on the rest of the larger, wider world. At the beginning, I rushed, worried, finding people to take over my newspaper column and my Instagram account. I hurried to pass off all my responsibilities at the nonprofit, to train new people so Daddy wouldn’t have so much to do at the company. Now it all seems so pointless. What does it matter?
Even still, I hope I made a difference in my short time. I think about a woman who came to hear me speak this last time, who looked sad and troubled, who looked like life had won. She told me that my words had helped her through her divorce, had given her the strength to go forward and find a new career she loved, had eased her fear of starting over. I think about the woman we built a house for, the one who had lost everything in a fire, the way her tears felt against my cheek when we stood in the front yard staring at it, when she was too emotional to even step inside. I think about the children who drew their mothers cards to congratulate them when they finished our job skills training program and we helped them find employment.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a legacy. But I’m surprised to find that I don’t care about that anymore. A legacy means nothing. It’s a life that matters. And I know, without a doubt, that we helped to give those women lives they could own, that they could celebrate. It fills my heart, even now.
I can’t imagine that, even in heaven—if there is such a place—I won’t feel the pain of losing Parker, of being away from my beloved husband. I worry about leaving him behind, about what he will do. I worry that I have ruined his life, even though he says that I have made it. I feel deep anguish and guilt about the pain I have caused him, about the tasks that he has had to perform these past few months. It terrifies me to know that the worst is yet to come, the lifting and feeding and bathing will give way to much worse. And now I can only pray that it’s fast.
I can’t imagine that, even so far away, I won’t pine for the babies we never got to have, those embryos I had to leave behind, put back into that cold and impersonal freezer. A mother should never have to say goodbye to her children—even the ones that might never be.
I know that being with my own mother there in the great beyond will be a comfort. It soothes me as I begin a slow walk down a narrow corridor that I hope is leading somewhere even more glorious than I can imagine. It helps me push away the fear that there is nothing waiting for me on the other side, only darkness.
When I was growing up, when I would get in bed at night, my mind would often race with scary scenarios or bad dreams. My mother would tell me to think happy thoughts, to fill my head with chocolate drops and peppermints, ballet slippers and tutus. Now I fill my mind with my first wedding dance with Parker, the way the lights twinkled around us, the way he held me so close, how I knew I would always be safe in his arms. Even now, I may be leaving, but I am still safe in his arms.
I don’t know if Parker will ever read my journals, but I suspect he will. I would. So, Parker, if you are reading this, please know that leaving you is the worst thing I have ever faced. Worse than losing my mother, worse than dying myself.
I think you might find in these pages some parts of myself that I am ashamed of, some parts that, if I’m honest, I’d rather you never knew. For those parts, I am sorry, my love. I truly am. But please know that nothing in these pages changes the absolute certainty in my heart that you were my only one.
I am writing you a letter, and I will leave it with your mom, who, as you know, I loved almost as if she were my own.
She will give it to you when the time is right. She will know. Mothers always do.
Amelia
DREAM JOB
AS I OPENED THE DOOR to Palm Beach Conceptions only an hour after the most emotional scene of my life, I realized I should have been sitting at one of my friends’ houses, sobbing into a pint of Häagen-Dazs and a glass of rosé. But, damn it, I had been working on getting this interview for more than three months. Crying wouldn’t help. Writing, I knew, would.
I waved to two of the women in the waiting room, who called, “Hi, Amelia.” I’m sure they were wondering why I was here, if Thad and I were trying to have a baby. Even the gossipiest socialites in town couldn’t already know about my new, Thadless life, could they?
The thought gave me heartburn. What if everyone knew? What if I was the only person in all of Palm Beach who had been out of the loop on the truth about Thad? I couldn’t stay here now. I couldn’t bear to stick around knowing that I was the scandal of the week.
Maybe I could go back home to North Carolina. I had a decent amount of contacts now. I could freelance. But I wasn’t sure if I could make enough money freelancing to live. And try as they might, my parents weren’t in a position to help me. Plus, there wouldn’t be any alimony. I’d been the one paying our bills, while Thad “focused on his novel”—which I now knew was code for focusing on Chase.
I couldn’t very well throw Thad out of his own grandmother’s apartment. Even if I could, I’m pretty sure no one wants to sleep in the chintz-filled bedroom where her husband has been having sex with someone else.
All at once, this terrified, vulnerable feeling came over me. But at least I still had my job.
I didn’t have a single friend who still had the same job as when they graduated from college, so I guess that made me a little bit different. But getting hired at Clematis magazine had been my dream. Growing up, the daughter of two very refined Southerners, Clematis had been as much a part of my life as church on Sunday and my grandmother’s pearls around my neck. Clematis was aspirational, a symbol of the person that I might become one day, someone well traveled and well-read. Someone who could speak authoritatively on art and new museum exhibits and the importance of music in society. Someone like my mother.
I had taken early on to investigative pieces. Getting to the bottom of a secret, discovering a sordid underbelly, was my real forte. But I also loved to tell people’s stories. Real stories about life and love, hardship and heartache. About the way that people get back up when they fall down. In fact, my very first piece at Clematis had been about a disgraced young heiress whose father had been caught up in the Enron scandal. In a matter of days, she lost everything, the cushy, beautiful life she’d always known pulled out from under her. Years later, only in her midtwenties, she had begged and borrowed from every friend she had left to launch a makeup line that had sold for millions to Sephora, landing her back on top once again. Storytelling showed me that it’s not our failures that matter; it’s what we do after that counts.
There was no doubt about it: I was in the midst of the biggest, baddest failure of my life. I guess, in retrospect, there had been signs, a few rumors. Being from North Carolina, I should have known that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. But Thad laughed the rumors away.
I knew when I walked out of the apartment that this wouldn’t be a normal divorce. If Thad had left me for another woman, people would rally around me, curse him for how he had betrayed me. But now that he was leaving me for a man?