Page 38 of The Holiday

“You think everything is easy, don’t you?” Heather narrowed her eyes at me. “I just wait to bury my husband, sell the house here, and move back to Shipwreck?”

I shrugged. “You could.”

“Where are you getting your information on being seventy?”

I pushed my plate to the side and set my elbows on the table. “I went to Tokyo to visit Molly,” I said (this was still a month before Molly’s passing). “It was incredible, Heather. I learned so much from her, and I want to tell you that anything is possible. If you can, don’t let anything make you bitter. Don’t let anything in life take away the possibility, because it’s all still out there.” I felt impassioned about this, and I fervently wanted her to believe what I now believed, to see through my eyes what I’d seen. “She’s swimming in the open water, and staying out late making new friends at restaurants and bars. She learned Japanese, and she just gets out there. I think we all can do that—if we want to.”

“Well, that’s the key, isn’t it?” Heather said, her face softening slightly. “We have to want to, Dexter. Maybe I want to relax a bit. Maybe all I want is to have lunch with Dave’s grandkids occasionally, and watch daytime television and go for walks. I don’t know.” She looked out the window next to our table, and her eyes were faraway. “Maybe I’m tired, Dex. I’ve been all over and I’ve loved so many men. That alone used to fuel my fire, but now I don’t even have the energy to paint my watercolors. I feel like I put so much of my heart into loving Dave that I don’t have much left for myself.”

I knew that might change when he was gone, but I also knew it might not. So rather than say more, we just sat in companionable silence, sipping our wine for a bit. It was somehow refreshing to see that the people around me were real, with real inner struggles. Turmoil plagues us all, and while sometimes we feel like we’re the only ones fighting a hard battle, that’s entirely untrue. I reached over and touched Heather’s arm lightly.

“I’m here, Heather,” I said. “I’m your friend. If you stay in Providence, I’ll drop by for a walk whenever I’m in Rhode Island.” We both laughed at this; no one just passes through Rhode Island casually. “If you decided to move back to Shipwreck, I’ll help you. If you want to relax, I support that.”

Her shoulders fell visibly. “Thanks, Dexter. I appreciate your friendship, just like I appreciated Ruby’s.” We sat there for a moment while she gathered her thoughts. “When Dave was first diagnosed, Ruby and I met in Manhattan—I think you guys were there for a couple of weeks.”

I vaguely remembered this; I’d been busy with my publisher, and she made a lunch date with Heather, catching me up briefly that evening over dinner.

“She knew a doctor there who specialized in Alzheimer’s—someone she’d met on a board that she’d sat on at some point—and she arranged for him to meet us for coffee after lunch. I have no idea how she convinced a busy New York specialist to sit down for an afternoon coffee with some old broad she knew from an island we once lived on together, but she did. And he was patient, and he answered all my questions and gave me the little bit of hope I needed to get through that hard time.” Heather looked to the window again, watching as an elderly couple walked slowly, arms looped together, down the sidewalk. “That was the kind of person Ruby Hudson was,” Heather said, pressing her lips together. “She had no compunction about using her connections as a First Lady to help an old friend, and she did things like that without expecting anything in return.”

She had been like that; I could confirm it, and I’d seen it in action many times myself. Things like Ruby pulling out an old-fashioned address book to look up someone she’d jotted in there under titles like “Homeless Advocate,” or “Hairstylist from Miami who makes wigs for kids with cancer.” And she’d just call the people up, ask the favors, make the connections. I think she loved doing it, but I think she also understood—really understood—the power and the responsibility of being in the position she was in. If a charity called and asked her to speak or make an appearance, anything involving children or literacy was an automatic ‘yes.’ Ruby had sat on the board of the National Council for Adoption with Sunday for years, and she continued to make donations and do appearances for the Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Foundation for the rest of her life, in honor of her late husband’s short battle with the disease.

“Thanks for reminding me about that,” I said, passing on a wine refill when Heather lifted the bottle. “I think we get to the point where we know someone the way we know them: as a spouse, a partner, as someone who likes to do puzzles, or who sneezes when they put pepper on their food. But we forget the bigger picture, and this book I’m writing is my way of recapturing that. And of sharing it. I want to remember the Ruby who everyone else knew, becausethatRuby was someone pretty incredible.”

“Oh, she most definitely was.” Heather sipped the last bit of the wine after pouring it into her glass. “She was the glue that held us all together. In fact, she was the glue thatputus all together. It might seem like a small thing, but that book club she started on Shipwreck Key was a lifeline for us girls.”

I was charmed to hear her refer to a group of grown women as “girls,” but I kept the smile off my face and just nodded for her to go on.

“Midlife is a rough patch for most of us. We either have kids who are growing up and leaving us, or maybe we never had them at all and we’re grappling with that. We might be divorced, or widowed, or just alone. And our friendships from earlier in life have changed, sometimes leaving us feeling distant and lonely. So to meet new women and to be open and vulnerable with them is priceless. To have people to lean on, and to go through the ups and downs of life with—we all need that. And Ruby saw it and made it happen. It was just good luck how well we all got along.” Heather’s eyes searched mine. “I wouldn’t have gotten by without those ladies. And I wouldn’t have married Dave without Ruby smoothing things over before the wedding,” she added, just as Athena had promised that she would. “She had an uncanny knack for seeing people as they were. For guessing what they needed, and then using her power to make it happen. I really miss that girl.”

At this, I did allow myself an amused smile. “I miss that girl, too,” I said. We reached for each other’s hands and clasped them across the table.

As I'd imagined, I ended up settling Heather into my guest room at the B&B for a quick nap before I drove her home in her car and then took an Uber back. While she rested, I roamed the streets, wandering in and out of independent art galleries and small shops. I did this frequently in order to get used to doing these things alone—these things I might have done with Ruby for the rest of our lives if we’d been blessed enough to be together.

It never really got more comfortable, and I was always looking over my shoulder for my wife, wanting to show her something or point out an item that we should buy for Harlow or Athena or one of the grandkids, but it was good for me to practice solitude. Because no matter what Heather thought was still possible for me, I knew I'd already found the great love of my life. I knew I'd had her and lost her, and that for however many years I might have left, the best I was going to do was already done.

All I have now is my writing, and the people I care about. And those two things have left me feeling beyond fortunate.

Official Duties

I rode the train to D.C., which took about six hours from Providence. The travel time was intentional, and gave me some space to reflect on the things Heather and I had talked about.

Was there a right way to live your life past a certain age? A mindset we all needed to adopt? I’d left Tokyo feeling as if Molly had the keys to the mysteries of life, and as if she alone held the recipe for happiness. She’d sold me on adventure and energy and daring, but sitting with Heather in sleepy Providence (sleepy in comparison to Tokyo, anyway), I realized that for Heather, happiness was the security of a home she’d lived in with her husband for nearly twenty years, and the idea that she could relax and just meander towards old age. And who was I to say that was wrong?

Given that Ruby and Heather were contemporaries, my own wife would have been her age, and I truly believe she would have fallen somewhere between Molly and Heather if she’d lived. Ruby loved the adventure of travel, of meeting people, of negotiating connections between individuals who could help one another, or who needed help, but she was also perfectly content sitting on the deck of our Shipwreck Key house, or lounging around on Christmas Key and shacking up in the tiny home I’d kept there all these years.

Whenever we made it to Manhattan, she was a bundle of energy and she was ready for Broadway shows, dinners out, and meetings with friends, but if I’m being honest, I could see fatigue set in sooner for her as the years went on, and our evenings out ended earlier. As a man who has always been happiest with a book (either reading or writing one), you can believe me when I say that I never minded turning in early.

So I left Providence thinking about Molly’s sense of wild freedom and her appetite for life as she explored Tokyo, and even more about Heather’s life as the younger wife of six different men. That must have held its own sense of adventure for her, and certainly after caring for Dave in these recent years, she’d earned her right to a quieter life and a slower pace.

But what would Ruby have done? What would she be doing now? How might she have continued to use her platform to better herself and everyone around her? I was hoping my time in D.C. might serve to remind me of who she was before I met her, who she continued to be until the end, and what things she might have done with more time on Earth.

I started by meeting, oddly enough, our former Vice President, Peter Bond.

* * *

"Surely you won't be discussing me in this book," former Vice President Bond said, moving his glass of whiskey from coaster to hand. He held the glass aloft and eyed me sharply.

"Only as it pertains to Ruby," I said. "Selfishly, this is an endeavor meant to bring me more of my wife, and to share her with the world at large. It's not really about the rest of us." (But isn't it? a voice nagged inside my head.Isn't it about us as well--the way we live, the way we feel, the paths we choose? I shooed the voice away and went on.)

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