Nine Lives Page 6

  She thanked Helen for the recommendation when they had lunch. They had gotten close since Brad’s death. Her son had been accepted at Yale, and would be playing hockey too, but hadn’t applied for a scholarship. They didn’t qualify, and he wasn’t a strong enough player to get one. Aden didn’t need a scholarship now either, although he didn’t know it. Phil Abrams and her lawyers were the only ones who did, and she intended to keep it that way. She had no desire to show off. On the contrary, she was extremely discreet. Aden’s scholarship was based on his talent, and the schools he applied to offered it as a lure to get him to come to their institution and play on their team. It was not based on his parents’ financial need or she would have felt obliged to decline it in their new circumstances, and would have had to explain it to Aden. She was glad she didn’t have to.

  “Wait till the married guys start hitting on you,” Helen said with a wry smile, and Maggie groaned.

  “Is that all that’s left out there now for women like us? Married guys and creeps?” she asked with a look of disgust. “I don’t want to date, and maybe I never will. But if I did, it’s slim pickings. Who do people go out with at our age?”

  “Old friends, people they went to school with, or met at work. Recently divorced guys, or younger ones. Or they meet online, but that always sounds scary to me,” Helen said warily.

  “I’d be terrified of meeting an axe murderer, or some guy fresh out of prison,” Maggie said grimly.

  “Or just a jerk, or a married guy lying about it. That’s happened to a lot of women I know. But some of them do meet nice guys on the internet. I just wouldn’t have the guts to try,” Helen said. She was glad she was married, even if their marriage wasn’t perfect.

  “Neither would I,” Maggie agreed about internet dating. But she was a long way from that. She still dreamed of Brad at night, and in her dreams he was alive. She still felt married to him when she was awake. She thought she always would. She couldn’t imagine being in love with, or sleeping with, someone else.

  “Have you thought any more about a job?” Helen asked her, and Maggie shook her head.

  “I haven’t worked full-time in eighteen years. I don’t even know what I can do. And I don’t want to do anything until Aden leaves for BU.”

  “Why don’t you take a trip then?” She suggested it and then looked embarrassed. “If you can afford to, obviously.” She was sure that Brad must have left them some kind of life insurance. He was a responsible guy, but she also knew Maggie was selling his business, and assumed she needed the money.

  “I can afford a trip,” Maggie said, “but traveling alone doesn’t sound like much fun. And where would I go?”

  “Why don’t you make a list of all the places you’ve always wanted to go to and never have, and then pick? It could be really fun. Then start job hunting when you get back.”

  “Maybe,” Maggie said, unconvinced. She loved traveling with Brad, but not alone.

  She put the suggestion out of her mind. Three days later, she had bigger things to think about. Aden had gotten in serious trouble for the first time in his life. He and five of his friends had gotten drunk at a friend’s house, broken into a skateboard park, and were doing tricks there with their skateboards. He had sprained his ankle badly but was otherwise unharmed. One of the other boys had broken a leg. The skateboard park had agreed not to press charges since the boys were first-time offenders from decent families, but they had been given a stern warning by the police. Maggie had to pick Aden up at juvenile hall, and then take him to the emergency room again. She gave him a serious talking-to when they got home.

  “What’s happening to you? You never acted like this before, when Dad was alive. Are you planning to turn into a juvenile delinquent now? Or get kicked out of school or off the hockey team?”

  “I’m sorry, Mom.” He looked remorseful and embarrassed. The beer had worn off by then. They weren’t that drunk, just out to have fun. And he had a slight buzz on. “You wouldn’t believe how high I got on the loops,” he said, looking pleased with himself. “I want to go back there again sometime with my board!”

  “So you can break an arm or a leg? I want to keep you alive and in one piece. You’re all I have now,” she said somberly. For an instant, he reminded her of her brother at his age, and Paul Gilmore with his skateboard before he graduated to motorcycles. She didn’t want that for her son. But every now and then she could see that thrill seeking and danger were in his blood. It always had been, like with her father and brother. Brad didn’t have that in him at all, which she had loved. “What’s going to happen when you’re in Boston and have no supervision? Are you going to go crazy, or behave? I don’t want to lie in bed every night, terrified, waiting for the phone to ring and hear you’re in trouble, or got hurt.”

  “You won’t, I promise.” But she wasn’t sure she believed him. “Maybe I could be a race car driver one day,” he said with a dreamy expression, and she groaned.

  “You’re not reassuring me, Aden. Maybe you should become a CPA like your dad. My mom was right about that. Thrill seekers and wild men always run into trouble. They either kill themselves or break everyone’s heart or both. My father did, my brother was like that too, even though he died in the war, but he always loved speed and danger and anything high risk. I had a boyfriend like that in high school. My first love. He went off to race motorcycles and do all kinds of crazy stuff after high school. He’s probably dead by now too. I don’t want that happening to you. How would you feel if I became a trapeze artist in the circus, or a skydiver, or something where I could be killed?” He laughed at the image of his mother on the high wire.

  “I’d think it was cool.”

  “Go to bed, before I lock you in your room and throw away the key,” she said, only half joking. Sometimes he terrified her. More than ever now, without Brad’s influence and fatherly control over him. And she also knew that if he had that kind of thirst for high-risk pursuits and danger, it would be hard to curb that as he got older and had more freedom. She hoped he stayed safe in Boston, and didn’t go crazy without her watching over him.

  Aden was relatively well behaved after that. Just the usual senioritis and hijinks before and after graduation. They cut some classes and sneaked some beer. He took a couple of driving trips with friends that summer, before they all left for college. He had a hot romance with a beautiful girl for the last month of summer, which kept him distracted. He spent most of his nights with her, and suddenly seemed very grown up to his mother. He was turning into a man right before her eyes. His summer romance left for UC Santa Cruz a week before he left for Boston, and he seemed to get over her quickly as he got ready to leave himself. It hadn’t been a serious romance for either of them, just a fling. And the girl didn’t try to continue it once she left, nor did Aden.

  Maggie flew to Boston with him. It was the first time she had flown since the crash eight months before, and it was hard for her. After the crash, they had flown her back to Chicago, sedated, on a gurney in an air ambulance, and she hardly remembered it. But flying as a normal passenger with Aden was harder than she had feared it would be. She could hardly speak on the plane, she was so nervous, and Aden’s attempts to distract her had been ineffective. She was sheet-white, and didn’t speak until they got off in Boston. Aden felt sorry for her, and wondered if she’d ever be able to fly easily again. But she had done it so she could help set him up in the dorm.

  They had a trunk with them, and two duffel bags with all his hockey equipment. He was starting practice on the junior team in two days. He wouldn’t be on the varsity team until junior year. And for either team, he had to maintain his grades. He would have to prove himself and earn his place there. He had already had several emails from the coach, who had a great reputation and was supposed to be tough. Buck had taken Aden out to dinner before he left, and told him to stay in touch when he was a big NHL star one day. Aden still
wasn’t sure he wanted to play pro hockey, but he was looking forward to playing in college, and doing a lot of other things. His life was unrolling in front of him like a red carpet. It made him miss his dad more than ever at times.

  They got his dorm room set up in a day, with all his computer and stereo equipment, and a small fridge they rented. They bought a bike for him to use on campus. And he had snuck his skateboard into one of the duffel bags. Maggie found it and wasn’t happy about it, but she let him keep it if he promised not to use it in traffic on the streets, and he agreed. Sometimes she wished that she’d had a daughter instead of a son. It would have been so much easier than all the different kinds of physical danger boys were attracted to, the men in her family anyway. But girls did other things to put themselves at risk, so maybe it was all the same in the end. She loved Aden with all her heart. It nearly killed her when it came time to say goodbye to him. She couldn’t stop crying after she left, and she had to keep reminding herself, as Brad would have, that he was going to be okay. It was so hard doing this alone. And the return trip on the plane was even harder without him, but the flight was smooth, with no problems.

  She felt drained and empty when she got back to Chicago, and had one of her worst nightmares that night, that Aden had drowned with Brad. She could see them both slipping under the water and couldn’t reach them in time. She woke up sobbing, and sat up in bed for the rest of the night with the TV on, unable to get the image out of her mind.

  She called Aden in the morning, when he was on his way to the store to buy his books. He sounded happy and busy and fine. He liked his roommates and rushed her off the phone. She sat down in her kitchen with a sigh. The house was as empty as she had feared it would be, without a sound, and nothing for her to do. Helen called her just as she was thinking of going back to bed, which she knew was a bad idea, but she couldn’t help it. She felt as though she had lost everything now that Aden had flown the nest.

  “So have you made your list?” Helen asked her.

  “What list?” Maggie’s mind was a blank.

  “Of all the places you want to go that you’ve never been to. That was homework. Remember?”

  “Yeah. I guess I forgot,” Maggie said sheepishly with a grin. But she didn’t want to go anywhere alone. “I can see them on the internet.”

  “You’re not a shut-in, Maggie. You’re a young widow with a kid in college. That means you have freedom. How about celebrating it?” It didn’t feel like a celebration to her, and it made her miss Brad more. Aden leaving for college had brought the loss into even sharper focus. “I’m coming over,” Helen said, and she was there twenty minutes later, as she had been off and on for the past eight months.

  Helen had turned out to be incredibly loyal. Some of Maggie’s other friends hadn’t been. They acted nervous around her, as though losing her husband might be contagious, or she might try to hit on their husbands now, or her sadness and loss made them uncomfortable. Of all her friends, Helen had been the most present, and the most proactive. Every time Maggie started to sink, Helen dragged her up to the surface again, and got her going in the right direction. Except for this stupid idea about Maggie taking a trip by herself, which she didn’t want to do. Helen insisted she’d have fun once she got to her various destinations. And she reminded Maggie that if she hated it, she could always come home. She wasn’t going to the moon. She could cut it short if she really wanted to, but she should at least try to broaden her horizons again, and change scenery.

  “I did it after my sister died, and it helped me,” she said firmly.

  “What do other widows do?” Maggie asked glumly, as they sat in her kitchen with her laptop on the table in front of her.

  “They try internet dating, if they want to date. Change jobs, move houses, travel, take cruises, or get plastic surgery if they can afford to. You don’t need it. You’re gorgeous and don’t look your age. You refuse to date and don’t seem to want to sell your house, so that leaves travel. Turn on your computer.” Maggie laughed. Helen had a piece of paper in front of her and a pen in her hand. She was taking the project seriously. Maggie wasn’t. “Okay, so where haven’t you been that you always thought would be cool?” Helen refused to be daunted, and stubbornly persisted.

  “China,” Maggie said off the top of her head.

  “Really?” Helen was impressed. “Do you want to go there?”

  “No, but I like reading about it. And Japan.”

  “Do you want to go there? Tokyo, Kyoto, the temples?”

  “No, it’s too far. I think I’d be scared. San Francisco,” she said reasonably, and Helen wrote it down.

  “Perfect. You get two points for that. What about L.A.?”

  Maggie shook her head.

  “No, we took Aden to Disneyland there. It would be too sad without Brad and Aden, and I didn’t love L.A. But I’ve always wanted to see Big Sur, and the Napa Valley, and the Golden Gate.” They were all locations in or close to San Francisco.

  “Anyplace else in the U.S.?”

  “No, we went to a lot of cities for Brad’s conventions. I think we’ve hit all the high spots.”

  “Europe?” Helen asked her, enjoying the game. Maggie was starting to get into it too, in spite of herself, even if she never took a trip in the end. She didn’t really intend to. She was humoring Helen.

  “I’ve never been there,” Maggie admitted, and Helen looked shocked.

  “Never?”

  “Never. Brad wasn’t a big traveler unless he could justify it for business. He promised me that we’d travel after Aden left for college. I’m not sure he meant it, or would actually have done it.”

  “Okay, here we go. London?”

  “Maybe. It looks cool and I speak the language,” Maggie conceded. Helen wrote it down after San Francisco.

  “Paris! You can’t go to Europe and not go to Paris. It’s fantastic.” Helen wrote it down even before Maggie nodded. “Rome. Ohmygod. The food is so incredible and the country is so romantic. Florence is wonderful too, but less fun alone. And Venice is the most romantic city ever, maybe you should save that.” She wanted to say for her next honeymoon, but didn’t. “There it is. Four of the most fantastic cities in the world, if you eliminate Florence and Venice. You can do them in three or four weeks, and it will change your whole life and perspective. It beats the hell out of sitting around here watching TV, being bored, and feeling sorry for yourself. You said you can afford to travel. Call your travel agent.”

  “And I just go by myself?” Maggie was skeptical and nervous about it. And she didn’t want to take all those flights alone.

  “I’d go with you, but Jeff disintegrates if I leave him on his own with the kids for two days when I visit my mother in Detroit. Four weeks would probably kill him.”

  “It might kill me too,” Maggie said, smiling.

  “You can always come home,” Helen reminded her again. “You’ll never forget a trip like this, Maggie. And you have nothing else to do.” Her son didn’t need her anymore and there was no one else.

  “I have to go to parents’ weekend at BU in a few weeks.” Maggie grabbed at a weak excuse.

  “And after that, he won’t be home till Thanksgiving. He won’t even think about you by next month. You have plenty of time to travel. Grab it. Maggie, I swear to you, you won’t regret it.” Helen hoped she was right, if she decided to do it.

  Maggie mulled it over all that night, and feeling utterly crazy, she called her travel agent the next morning and figured out what it would cost her. It was expensive, but she could afford it. And on the spur of the moment, she told her to set it up. San Francisco, from there directly to Rome, Paris, London, and then home. Four cities, four weeks, flying business class and staying at very good hotels, where she’d be safe. She had never done anything like it in her life, but she wondered if Helen was right and she should just do it. It was so out o
f character for her. But what else was she going to do between now and Thanksgiving except cry over Brad, miss Aden, and call him too often?

  She was going to leave for San Francisco three days after parents’ weekend in Boston. She’d miss Halloween, although she had no one to celebrate with. The travel agent told her that September and October were the best months to travel in Europe. It wasn’t as crowded and the weather was still beautiful. She suggested a weekend in the South of France between Paris and London, but Maggie decided she could always add that once she was in Europe. The price for the whole trip was steep, but not totally insane, particularly given what she had now, and she was traveling in the best possible conditions, in total comfort at famous hotels that she had heard about and never dreamed she would actually see. She would never have gotten to Europe with Brad. It just wasn’t on his radar, and he didn’t have an explorer’s nature. He thought a weekend in New York was as exotic as he wanted to get. It had taken ten years to get him to Miami, to show him where she had lived as a teenager, and he’d only gone because there was a convention there to justify it.

  She called Helen when she hung up with the travel agent. “Okay, I did it. I leave from O’Hare to San Francisco. I’m going to rent a car and check out Big Sur and the Napa Valley. I’m staying at the Fairmont on Nob Hill, and I’m flying from there to Rome five days later, staying at the Hassler above the Spanish Steps. A week there, then to Paris, staying at the Ritz, and then Claridge’s in London and home.”

  “I’m proud of you,” Helen said and meant it. “I couldn’t afford all that when Jenna died, but I got a Eurail pass and traveled all over Europe for a summer. I felt alive again after that, went back to school and finished, and then I met Jeff in my first job after I graduated. I don’t think I’d have been the same person if I hadn’t taken that trip. I didn’t think I had permission to live or have fun after she died. And then I realized that she would have wanted me to. She didn’t want me to mourn her forever. And she would have done it if I died.”