Part 57 (1/2)

”No, Andrew, I want you to understand. And there's more: there are things in there about you, from when we first met. . . well, it's not all flattering, but I wanted you to know, to have a record, of how important you've been to me.”

I got it then, what was troubling me: this was a going-away present. ”Penny,” I said. ”You are coming back to Autumn Creek, right?”

She bit her lip. ”For a while,” she said.

”A while,” I said. ”And then what? You're moving away? This. . . this isn't because of the way I was acting, is it? You're not --”

”No! No, Andrew, this is something I have to do for me, kind of the last step in my therapy: starting over in a new place, as a new me.”

”What new place?”

”California,” she said. ”I'm not sure what city yet, but. . . maybe San Diego. One of the other residents at Orpheus had some really good things to say about it.”

San Diego: southernmost California, over a thousand miles from Seattle. I felt hollow. ”When would you go?”

”I was thinking after Thanksgiving.”

”Three months.” My voice got husky, and my eyelids started blinking. ”Wow. . . wow.”

”Andrew?” Penny said. ”You are going to be OK, aren't you?”

I wanted to say no, but after all the grief I'd given her over the reintegration, I thought I'd pretty much used up my selfishness quota for the year. ”It'll be. . . hard,” I told her. ”But if this is what you need to do. . .”

She reached out and took my hand, and that gesture, the feel of her small palm in mine, was all Penny. ”It's still three months,” she said. ”We'll spend lots of time together until then. And I will come back to visit.”

”Good,” I said, tears tracking down both cheeks now. ”OK, that's good. . .”

Penny drove me back to Autumn Creek that night, and from then on until she left, we spent pretty much every free moment we had together -- but of course, it wasn't enough. To make three months go by faster, you'd have to lose time.

It was long enough for me to get a better sense of how Penny's reintegration had changed her, although in trying to describe it I find myself drawn to the same contradictory locutions that she used: Penny was different, but she also wasn't. I eventually got used to the ”new” Penny, the one who exhibited characteristics of as many as half a dozen souls simultaneously, but she wasn't always like that: there were times, most often in moments of stress or great emotion, but occasionally in calmer moments too, when a single soul seemed to predominate, so that I would have sworn I was in the presence of Maledicta -- the ”old” Maledicta -- or Loins, or Duncan. Or Mouse. I said nothing about this -- if they were content, I wasn't going to spoil it for them -- but I did take comfort in the thought that reintegration wasn't so scary after all. My best friend, all of her, still existed.

And then it was the end of November. We said good-bye in the parking lot of the Harvest Moon Diner, following a last breakfast together. It was a drawn-out farewell, with pretty much everyone insisting on coming out to wish Penny a safe trip, and I got worried she wouldn't have anything left for me. But she did. We hugged each other a very long time, and then Penny got in the car.

”You'd better write,” I told her, hanging on the driver's door. ”And call.”

”I will,” Penny promised. She drew my head down and kissed me on the lips. ”Sweet thing,” she said, and winked. ”Don't take any s.h.i.+t from anybody.” Then, with one hand on the steering wheel and the other reaching over to thumb the b.u.t.ton on the cigarette lighter, she drove away.

A month later, I stayed up with Mrs. Winslow to welcome in the year 2000. We moved my TV out to the kitchen so we could watch the fireworks in color, and when midnight came we opened a bottle of nonalcoholic sparkling grape juice. I was happier than I'd been for a long while, but my happiness was still tinged with a melancholy I couldn't conceal.

”You miss her, don't you?” Mrs. Winslow said.

”Every day.” Then, not wanting to spoil the evening: ”It's OK, though. I still have you.”

”Well. . . it's funny you should mention that. . .”

”Why funny?” I said. ”You're not. . . oh my G.o.d, Mrs. Winslow! You're not dying, are you?”

She laughed. ”No, not dying. Just the opposite, I hope. I don't suppose you've noticed, but lately I haven't been waiting on the mail as much.”

I had noticed, actually -- or Adam had. For the past several weeks, after seeing me off on my way to work in the morning, Mrs. Winslow had been going back inside the Victorian instead of taking up sentry on the porch. ”But I thought, I don't know, maybe you were just cold . . .”

”My creaky old bones not able to handle the winter anymore?” She smiled. ”I'm not that old yet -- but I will be. This spring will be fifteen years since Jacob and the boys died; almost a decade since the last note came. It's time I moved on.”

Oh no, I thought, not you too. ”That's great!” I said. ”That's wonderful!”

”You're a lousy liar, Andrew,” Mrs. Winslow said, not unkindly. ”I know this is going to be hard for you, and if I thought it was more than you could handle. . . but it isn't. You've had some difficult times this past year, but you've held up well. I think you're ready to go on without me.”

”Sure,” I said, not sure at all.

”Good. Because I'm going to need your help.”

”Sure,” I said, more certainly. ”Anything. What do you need me to do?”

”I should probably make a clean break with the past, but I don't think I'm strong enough to do that -- not all at once. So if I do leave this house, I'm going to want somebody I can trust to stay behind and keep an eye on the mailbox for me. Just in case. It wouldn't be forever. A year at most -- if I didn't come back -- and then I'll be ready to let it go for good.”

”I can do that. I mean, it'll save me having to look for a new apartment, so that works fine.”

”You'd have the run of the whole house, too,” Mrs. Winslow said. ”And of course I wouldn't charge you rent anymore.”

”Oh no, Mrs. Winslow, you don't have to do that.”

”It's all right, Andrew. I'd prefer you put the money into savings, and start thinking about what you want to do next. As I say, this won't be forever -- in a year, maybe two, I'll want to sell this house.”

”All right then,” I said. ”I'll keep it for you until you're ready to get rid of it.”

Like Julie, Mrs. Winslow also left me her car, but it was a true gift and not just a temporary loan.

She insisted I get a license, too, so when she left town on the first day in May, I was able to drive her to the airport. She was headed to Galveston, Texas; she had people there, old college friends who'd been trying to get her to move down for years. ”Mostly it's to get me moving somewhere,” Mrs. Winslow said. ”If I don't like Texas, there are other places.”

After Mrs. Winslow's plane took off, I got back in the car and went for a very long, aimless drive around Puget Sound. It was well after dark by the time I returned to Autumn Creek. My plan had been to go straight to bed, so I wouldn't have to think about how empty the Victorian was, but I couldn't get to sleep. I went into the kitchen and made both tea and warm milk. I fixed the tea the way Mrs. Winslow liked it, and set the mug at her place at the table. Then I sat in my own seat, drank warm milk, and cried.

I survived the night, though. And in the morning I made my own breakfast. Adam's bacon strip was a little crispy, and my scrambled eggs had too much salt, but I knew that I'd get better with practice.

A week later I got a letter from Mrs. Winslow. Galveston was very hot, but she'd found a nice place, an air-conditioned bungalow right on the beach by the Gulf of Mexico. ”Swam all afternoon yesterday,” she wrote, ”& last night, for the first time in memory, I slept until dawn. . . I believe I may stay here awhile.” And so she has.