Folly Beach - Dorothea Benton Frank [3]
“I’m okay,” I lied, pushing aside my stupor and trying to gather my thoughts. I stepped forward and put my gloved hand on Addison’s polished casket.
In the last two days, I had relived our entire twenty-six-year marriage, looking for clues for how Addison’s zeal for life had deteriorated and how all the love we had shared over the years had completely and totally become unraveled. In the early days, we were insane over each other. I had never met a man like Addison. There I was, playing Cassie in a revival of A Chorus Line, when I caught his grin in the footlights. Sure, he was much older (twelve years) than I was, but he swept me right off my feet and then the stage forever, which, oddly enough, I never missed.
I was crazy about him. All I wanted to do was make him happy, and even now I believe that for a long time he had felt the same way. Our eyes were filled with each other and everything we did together seemed so perfect. A simple meal was a royal feast because we shared it. A country club waltz in a crowded room belonged only to us. He was ambitious, funny, charming, and so, so smart. The almost manic exuberance we felt was clear in every single photograph of us, and there were dozens of them from our early years all over our house. But as the children came along, demanding most of my time, he became consumed with business and slowly, slowly my diamond of a marriage began to lose its sparkle. I guess no honeymoon can last forever.
Oh Addison, I thought, how could you do it and why did you do it? Other men his age died from heart disease or cancer. But not my Addison. As he did most things, he leaped into projects full-strength and was a mad dog gnawing and growling until his battle was won. He leaped alright, but this time it was from the top of my piano with the extra-heavy-duty extension cord from our Christmas decorations tied around the rafters and his neck. I was the one who found him. I’d never get that vision of him out of my mind if I lived to be one hundred and ten years old.
I was white-hot furious with him for doing this to himself and to us. Who’s going to walk your daughter down the aisle, Addison? I strummed my fingers on the top of the casket and began pulling flowers from the blanket of white roses until I had six or eight clenched in my fist. I just needed to pull something apart. I dropped them on the ground and began pounding the casket with my fist. That was when I felt the strong hand of Mark, Patti’s husband, on my arm.
“Come on now, Cate. Come stand by me.”
I backed away from the remains of my husband and let Mark put his arm around my shoulder. Mark was a great human being, even though he could be very cheap, which to my way of thinking was a really terrible and unattractive trait. Still, I considered myself lucky to have him as a brother-in-law, because he was the one who would step forward in a situation like this and take any potential problems in hand. Following his uncle’s lead, my beautiful son Russ moved away from his contentious wife, Alice, and took my hand.
“It’s gonna be okay, Mom. You’ll see.”
“I know,” I said and thought I should be the one reassuring him.
But I had reassured him and Sara, my daughter. I had told them at least one hundred times in the last forty-eight hours that we would get through this together and everything would be all right. Talk about self-delusion? I didn’t believe that any more than they did. Together was over. We would get through the funeral together.